A/N: As usual, thanks for still reading. Let's have some fun with bad guys.
…
Chapter 8 – Day 3
…
A little less than two hours later, after she had dropped Maura off at the makeshift morgue, Jane arrived at the Back Bay headquarters of late mayoral candidate Andrew Connelly. The spacious ground-floor office was quiet and mostly deserted. A few flags and leaflets scattered on tables and pinned to walls were gloomy reminders of the team's promising lead in the polls. Only a handful of people were still manning the desks, and cleaning up, and handling the untimely ending of their campaign.
When Jane stopped in the lobby and studied one of the posters with Connelly smiling and promising a safer Boston, a young man in a suit but with his tie hanging loosely around his neck approached her. "Detective…?"
"Rizzoli, yes. We've talked on the phone," Jane confirmed as they shook hands.
"I'm Dan Jones, Mr. Connelly's campaign manager," he introduced himself and led her towards a secluded office area in the back.
"I'm sorry your campaign ended like this," the brunette said. "And I'm sure you have a lot on your plate right now, but we need to check a few details—"
"No, no, I understand," Jones quickly assured her. "We all want to know who's responsible. But I thought they found a suicide note in the apartment of the guy with the bomb?"
"They did," Jane nodded. "But he might not have acted alone. We just want to make sure we got the right guy."
"Okay… so, how can I help you?" the young man wondered as they entered a well-lit office with Connelly's name on its door.
"Why was Mr. Connelly in the restaurant? Did he have an appointment with someone?" the detective inquired and routinely looked around in the candidate's office.
"Actually, I didn't know about it until I heard it on the evening news," Jones admitted. "On Tuesdays, Andrew usually has, uh… had dinner with his wife. They had this agreement that they'd reserve at least one night per week for themselves no matter how stressful his political career would get."
"But he wasn't there to meet his wife?" Jane asked. When the campaign manager shook his head, she frowned. "So, he must have had an important reason to cancel on her and go to that restaurant instead…"
"I guess so…," Jones agreed. "Wait, you mean the bomber lured him there?"
"That's what we're trying to find out…," the brunette nodded. "Do you have access to Connelly's personal schedule? Or did he have an assistant?"
"Ah, yes, he did — Julie Borsky," the campaign manager said and pointed at a young woman in a staff photo on Connelly's desk. "She organized everything for him, but she's not here."
"Where is she?" Jane asked.
"I don't know. We haven't heard from her since Tuesday… since the explosion. But things have been chaotic, and many of our staff members haven't showed up," he excused her absence and grabbed a business card from the desk. "Here, that's her. If you want to talk to her…"
"Okay, thank you." Jane studied Julie Borsky's card. "Are you aware of any enemies your candidate might have had…? Any threats or weird e-mails he has received…?"
Dan Jones paused but then shook his head. "No, nothing unusual. Of course, there are always some disgruntled voters who feel ignored. But I don't think any of them would have blown up a restaurant to make their point…"
"Well, if you remember anything, even if it doesn't seem important, give me a call," the detective urged him as they left Connelly's office.
"Sure, I will," Jones promised. "Anything else I can do to help?"
"If you hear from Ms. Borsky, tell her to get in touch with us." Before Jane had a chance to think of anything else, her phone rang and she quickly checked its display. "Uh, I gotta go. Thank you for your time."
She nodded him goodbye and answered her phone. "Hey, Korsak, what have you got?" The brunette's face filled with determination as she listened to the sergeant's news and left the Connelly campaign headquarters. "Okay, I'll meet you there," she said and rushed to her car.
Twenty minutes later, Jane parked her sedan close to Horatio Harris Park in Roxbury and joined Korsak as well as several SWAT units in bullet-proof vests near a rundown brick stone apartment complex on Harrishof Street, where Carl Henslow was supposed to be hiding.
"You sure you want to come along?" Korsak greeted her as she was putting on her own bullet-proof vest. "Doctor Isles was pretty adamant about you resting your ribs…"
Jane rolled her eyes. "I'm not gonna let a few bruises stop me from getting that asshole who killed my partner."
"Thought so," the sergeant admitted with a grin. "Alright. Come on, they're about to go in. His apartment is on the first floor."
Jane and Korsak followed the SWATs to the apartment building until one of the trained specialists held up his hand and signaled them to wait outside near some parked cars.
With guns drawn and helmets pulled in deep, several SWATs snuck into the building, while the remaining ones stood guard outside and secured potential escape routes.
"Got anything useful from Connelly's headquarters?" Korsak asked as he and Jane were forced to wait for the mission to unfold.
"Not really…," the brunette sighed. "Except that his personal assistant has kept a low profile since Tuesday…"
At the same time, the first two SWAT members inside the building took their position to the left and to the right of Apartment 8 on the first floor and gave each other the thumbs-up. Then one of them kicked the door open with his foot and stormed inside, closely followed by his partner.
The sudden beeping of a sophisticated device on a table close to the door instantly made them regret their strategy.
When the first SWAT member turned towards the ever-intensifying noise, his eyes widened and a wave of adrenaline surged through his veins.
"BOMB!" he yelled and pushed the other SWATs back out of the apartment as fast as he could.
Almost tripping over one another, they all stormed towards the building's front door.
Right outside, Jane and Korsak were eagerly waiting on the stairs and stumbled backwards in confusion when they heard the SWATs yelling and saw them running into their direction.
"Go, go, go!" one of the SWATs shouted.
"What the—" was all that Jane could utter before the SWATs pushed her and Korsak behind a car and dove down behind them.
And then the second bomb within just two days went off in Boston.
BAMM!
Walls shaking… glass shattering… pieces of the front door getting ripped out… and a few SWATs almost flying down the stairs in front of the building…
When the smoke finally cleared, Jane heaved herself up behind the car that had served as protection and found Korsak sending her a worried glance.
"You alright?" the sergeant gasped out.
The brunette looked down on herself and brushed off some dust. "Yeah… think so," she muttered under her breath, while her aching ribs made her wish she had heeded Maura's advice and just stayed home.
"That sucker had a bomb waiting for us in his apartment," the SWAT leader cursed and looked around. "Everybody okay?"
While one SWAT member after another nodded and signaled that everything was fine, Jane's eyes were caught by something else — the sight of a man climbing over a fence at the back of the building and taking off.
"Korsak!" she guided the sergeant's attention to the fugitive before dashing after him.
Restricted by their protective gear, the SWATs took a few seconds to get back onto their feet and to follow the detective who was following that suspicious man.
Ignoring the stinging pain in her ribcage, Jane ran after the suspect and chased him around several corners and across several streets.
Just when she thought she couldn't run any further and her chest would explode, the man had maneuvered himself into a cul-de-sac and couldn't run any further either. Panting heavily, Jane blocked his escape route and aimed her gun straight at Carl Henslow in front of her.
The man grinned at the detective. A maniac, devilish grin. The grin of someone who knew he had lost but who wasn't ready to give up.
And Jane knew it, too. She had seen that expression way too often before. "Who hired you?" she asked in one last attempt to get some information out of him before it would be too late. But that moment had already passed.
In an instant, Henslow pulled a gun from the back of his pants and jerked his arm with the weapon forward — and Jane did what she had to do.
BANG!
The bullet went straight through Henslow's right shoulder, and the force of the shot sent him tumbling backwards and landing on his ass. Though his arm hung limp at his side, he was still clutching his gun.
"Just give me a name!" Jane demanded in desperation just as several SWATs arrived in her back.
But all she got was another devilish grin, then Henslow tightened his grip around his gun, grimaced, and launched his arm up again to aim at the detective.
BANG!
Another shot kept him at bay, and the second bullet lodged itself deep within his abdominal flesh. Henslow slumped down, shivering, his fingers now loosely hugging his gun.
Still keeping her own gun aimed straight at him, Jane carefully approached the man on the ground, kicked away his weapon, and earned herself one last grin from Henslow as he squinted at her before passing out.
When the SWATs took over and immobilized Henslow until an ambulance would arrive, Jane finally let her gun sink down, took a few steps backwards, and leaned against a fence to catch her breath. Just seconds later, Korsak reached the scene and worriedly studied her from head to toe.
"Well, the good news is that you survived another bomb and some sicko trying to shoot you…," the sergeant sighed.
"And the bad news…?" Jane gasped.
"I think Doctor Isles will kill you for your recklessness…," Korsak smirked.
The brunette let out a chuckle of relief but immediately rubbed her chest at the resulting protest from her ribs.
One of the SWAT members approached them and presented Korsak with a cell phone, a small notebook, and a wallet from Henslow. "I assume you wanna take this…?"
"Yeah," the sergeant nodded, fished a plastic bag out of his pocket, and sealed the three items inside.
"We probably won't be able to recover much from his apartment…," the SWAT guy regretted and marched off.
When the sirens of an ambulance were heard in the distance, Jane and Korsak cast one last glance at the unconscious body of Carl Henslow on the ground and trudged back towards Harrishof Street.
In the late afternoon on this second day after the fateful Il Camino explosion, the team in the makeshift morgue was making steady progress with the identification of the victims. Relatives had come down and brought toothbrushes, combs, used wine glasses, and a variety of other items that would allow the extraction of DNA for comparison testing with the DNA recovered from the remains of the bodies. The victims found in the ruins of the apartments next to the restaurant had almost all been identified by now, but there was a lot of work left to be done, especially in the right section of the morgue, where several tables still held numerous bone fragments that would prove extremely difficult to identify.
In the middle section, where only a few victims were still without a name, Maura leaned against one of the tables and stared at an opened body bag containing the burned bones of the latest victim that had just been identified. After a moment of silence, she zipped up the bag and sighed, then took off her gloves and rubbed her tired eyes. Almost sixty hours without much sleep were taking a heavy toll on her body, and she knew it would have been irresponsible to continue her grim task without stepping away for at least a few minutes. Reluctantly, she made her way out of the maze of tables and picked up the list with identified victims from a large whiteboard that held all information on those who had died in the blast. Suppressing a yawn, the medical examiner headed towards the office section next door.
Just a few steps later, she paused when she spotted the small group of desperate relatives gathered at the end of the hallway, waiting for an update on those who had died and clinging to their faint illogical hopes that there might be another explanation for the lack of any signs of life from their loved ones since the attack. As the Chief Medical Examiner, Maura rarely had to inform someone of the death of a family member, and she was thankful for that. Though she had overcome her former uneasiness in the presence of other people, this was still one of the few responsibilities she preferred to delegate at all cost. However, no matter how uncomfortable this task would make her feel, she would never unleash Doctor Pike on those poor relatives who were already suffering so much. Thus, she slowly approached the small gathering and secretly wished for a last-minute distraction that would take this burden off her shoulders.
And for a brief moment, Maura's wish almost came true when hectic noises emerged from behind her in the morgue and she turned back around — but only to see Michael Welsh and his entourage enter the scene. Her choice was now between facing those desperate relatives or letting a PR-hungry politician use her for his latest media stunt. And as such, the choice was surprisingly easy.
When she reached the victims' relatives and quietly cleared her throat, several pairs of eyes looked at her in despair and searched her face for any signs of good news. In vain.
"We have identified five more people over the past hours…," Maura started hesitatingly, then focused on the list in her hand. As she read aloud the newly added names, each one of them was accompanied by sobs and sighs from the people around her.
"We will continue the identification process for as long as it takes, and we appreciate your patience," the medical examiner concluded. "I know it must be very hard for—"
"What about Ann Thomas?" an elderly woman with teary eyes asked and pushed forward. "She's my daughter…"
Maura checked her list again. "I'm sorry, but I don't know at this point," she said as calmly as possible, trying to keep her own emotions at bay. "I promise I'll let you know as soon as I have any new information."
When the medical examiner turned away to return to the morgue, the prolonged uncertainty about her daughter's fate got the better of Mrs. Thomas and she glared at Maura.
"Aren't you the daughter of that mob boss?" the elderly woman asked loud enough for everyone to hear. All eyes turned to the blonde again.
Maura stopped dead in her tracks and questioningly looked at the other woman. "Excuse me?"
"Why are you even allowed to work here?" Mrs. Thomas added without any attempt to contain her frustration. "I mean, given that the sick bastard who blew up our families was involved with that mobster you call your father, they shouldn't let you mess with this process…"
Swallowing hard, Maura tried to suppress those hauntingly familiar doubts that always crept up her spine at the mention of Paddy Doyle. "I don't call this man my father, and—"
"I don't want you to touch the remains of my daughter!" Mrs. Thomas exclaimed in agitation just as Jane emerged from around the corner.
"What's going on here?" the detective stepped in.
"Nothing," Maura whispered as she withdrew to seek refuge in the morgue.
Confused, Jane watched the blonde leave, then faced the angry woman and the gathering of relatives, whose grief had temporarily turned into curiosity and indignation. "Is there a problem?"
"You bet there is!" Mrs. Thomas declared ferociously. "How can they let this woman in here?! She's related to that mobster who tells his minions to blow up restaurants and—"
"Okay, calm down," Jane tried to appease her and comfortingly patted her arm. "I'm terribly sorry for your loss, but this woman happens to be the best medical examiner out there, and I can assure you that she and her team will—"
"Can I help here?" Michael Welsh suddenly asked from behind after having snuck up on the gathering as soon as Mrs. Thomas' agitated voice had caught his attention. And like magnets, his whole entourage had followed along, including his campaign manager Logan Linklater, a cameraman, an incessantly scribbling journalist, and a handful of other media representatives.
Annoyed by the mayoral candidate's seemingly endless thirst for positive PR, Jane frowned and stepped out of the camera's range. "Geez, do you have a little alarm that goes off whenever there's an opportunity for you to pull another publicity stunt?"
"Well, excuse me, but it was impossible to ignore the commotion over here," Welsh apologized hypocritically. "I just wanted to help."
"We don't need your help," the detective quickly objected.
But before Jane had a chance to get rid of Welsh and his followers, Mrs. Thomas stepped forward and beggingly reached for the candidate's hand. "I just want to take my daughter home… She… she went to BC and I came to visit her… We wanted to meet in… in… in the… restaurant…"
When her words turned into sobs, Welsh immediately put his arm around the woman's shoulders to comfort her — but not without glancing at his cameraman to make sure he had the best angle on the scene. "I promise I will personally look into this and make sure everything is handled with utmost care…"
Annoyed by the candidate's slyness, Jane rolled her eyes and quietly stepped away from the scene. But she wasn't fast enough.
"Detective, when can we expect your investigation to be completed?" Welsh asked insistently, and his cameraman immediately zoomed in on the brunette. "These people deserve some closure, don't you think?"
Trying not to let herself go in front of the camera, Jane gave him a piercing stare but kept her voice calm. "I'm sure you'll understand that we have to look into every detail before we can officially close this case."
"Yes, of course," Welsh held her gaze with a feigned smile. "But I was under the impression that the culprit has been identified and that a suicide note has been found in his apartment. What else do you need?"
"Proof that he didn't have any accomplices, for starters…," Jane grumbled and turned around to leave.
"What, you think there was someone else behind this?" Welsh called after her, and silence filled the hallway as everybody was waiting for the detective's response.
"No comment," Jane shouted without looking back and disappeared around a corner, her mind already focused on a much more important matter.
Minutes later, after having checked various rooms in vain, she finally found said important matter sitting near a coffee machine in a small office. Jane slid onto a chair next to Maura and arched her eyebrow at the sight of the cup of instant coffee in the medical examiner's hand.
"Okay, whatever bad happened is still no reason for you to drink this swill," the detective decided jokingly and took the cup out of Maura's hand.
"Wait, I want to finish that," the blonde protested rather unconvincingly as she let go of the cup.
"No, you don't," Jane grinned and sipped at the coffee.
Relieved by Jane's presence and her much lighter mood in comparison to just two nights before, Maura pouted playfully but then noticed the detective's dirty clothes. "Do I want to know why you're all covered in dust again?"
"Nope…," Jane smirked and took another sip.
"Did you at least find that driver of the Corvette?" the medical examiner tried to distract herself from her earlier confrontation with Mrs. Thomas.
"We did… but he's kinda not able to talk right now…," Jane sighed. When she realized that Maura wasn't really listening, her voice became more serious. "What happened with that woman out there?"
"Nothing," the blonde shrugged and tiredly buried her face in her hands. "She was just grieving the loss of her daughter… She didn't mean it…"
Not quite satisfied with that answer, Jane rubbed the small of her friend's back. "Anything I can do?"
No…," Maura shook her head but then changed her mind and looked up with determination. "Actually, yes…"
…