A/N: Since it's Friday 13th and there's probably a black cat waiting somewhere to whack me over the head with a ladder, I'll try to get the remaining chapters uploaded before that happens. Two more after this one. Thanks for reading!
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Chapter 9 – Night 3 & Day 4
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Shortly thereafter, a half-eaten pizza was waiting on Jane's couch table under the watchful eyes of Jo Friday sprawled out on an armchair and contently growling into a cushion, while Jane stood behind the kitchen counter in her casual sweatpants and a BPD T-shirt and absentmindedly stirred two tea bags in two mugs, her attention fully consumed by a rather unusual sight in front of her.
Still all churned up inside by the string of stressful events over the past few days, Maura had decided to break with her habit of logically analyzing her own emotions and to let her instincts take over instead. And her instincts were quite angry right now. Consequently, Jane's self-defense dummy was once again forced to hang around helplessly and to let another fusillade of punches pelt against its skin. And though Maura's jabs weren't as powerful as the detective's, they came in a much more rapid succession. Right, left, right, right — the blonde clearly didn't hold back.
"Am I doing it right?" she asked in between another two punches. When there was no response, she paused and turned to the brunette in the kitchen. "Jane?"
Still absorbed in her thoughts, Jane suddenly realized that Maura had stopped. "Huh?"
"Am I doing it right?" the blonde repeated rather impatiently and continued her attack on the poor dummy.
"Yeah, looks… perfect," the detective approved and admiringly watched Maura in her sports outfit skip around the dummy. "You've gotten much better since our last training…"
"That's because I'm imagining Pike's head up there," Maura gasped out and landed two uppercuts on the dummy's head to demonstrate her point.
"Please, don't leave any evidence behind when you kill Pike some day," Jane joked. "Wouldn't wanna arrest you…"
"Don't worry," the medical examiner sent her a rather roguish glance. "There are some fairly simple methods to dispose of a body without leaving anything behind."
"Uh, okay…," the detective frowned playfully. "And remind me to never make you mad at me…"
Out of breath, Maura finally stopped and admonishingly looked at the brunette. "Well, you're getting there since you're still not lying down…"
"But… you wanted tea?!" Jane protested and pointed at the two mugs in front of her.
"And I believe this tea has been ready for more than five minutes," the blonde nagged and inspected the two mugs. "It's bad enough that you only have those abominable tea bags. You could at least pay attention to the correct steeping time."
"Or I could just get a beer…" Jane suggested stubbornly.
With a sigh, Maura removed the tea bags and rolled her eyes at the detective. "Would you please lie down and take care of your costae fluctuantes for a while now?"
"That sounds highly inappropriate…," the brunette continued her teasing but instantly shrunk down at the glare she got from Maura in return.
"I guess I should call your mother…," the medical examiner muttered to herself as she picked up the two mugs and headed to the couch. "Maybe you'll listen to her…"
"God, woman!" Jane huffed but eventually followed and plopped down next to the blonde.
"No, no, on your back!" Maura immediately ordered and pulled the brunette down onto her back, leaving her hand on Jane's shoulder to make sure she wouldn't dare to get up again.
"Do you treat your other patients like that, too?" Jane grumbled but gave up her resistance and let her legs dangle over the armrest at the other end of the couch.
"I don't have any other patients," the medical examiner pointed out.
"Gee, I wonder why…," the detective murmured and sleepily closed her eyes.
Feeling a little guilty about her moodiness, Maura apologetically squeezed Jane's shoulder. "I'm sorry… It's been a long day…"
"I know… It's okay," the brunette soothed her. When she felt Maura lean forward to reach for something on the couch table, she grinned and didn't even bother opening her eyes. "And I also know you're just trying to keep that pizza all to yourself."
"No, I do not," the blonde objected in her telltale high-pitched voice before taking a bite from the slice of pizza she had just grabbed.
"You do too," Jane chuckled, followed by a bark from the Yorkshire terrier still lounging in the armchair. "See, even Jo Friday knows."
Maura contemplatively studied the dog while gulping down her pizza. "I think I'm getting you a sniffer dog…"
"You what?" The detective was suddenly wide awake again.
"Well, you've already been in two explosions within just one week," the medical examiner reminded her. "I won't let you get into a third one…"
"But I think Jo Friday would be jealous with another dog around…," Jane mused, and right on cue again, Jo Friday signaled her agreement with another bark.
"Fine," Maura pondered her strategy. "Then we'll teach Jo Friday how to sniff bombs…"
"Yeah, good luck with that…," Jane quipped, but before they could discuss her dog's career options any further, the detective's phone buzzed away on the couch table. Tiredly, she reached for the device and answered the call. "Rizzoli…" For a few moments, she just listened to the person at the other end of the line. "I see… thank you," she eventually hung up and tossed the phone back onto the table. "Well, so much for our chance to get Carl Henslow to talk…," she grunted. "He's dead."
Weary and frustrated, Maura leaned back. "Now what?"
"Back to square one," Jane sighed.
In the early morning hours of the following day, Jane, Maura, and Korsak were huddled around a desk in an office next to the crime lab at BPD and meticulously going through the evidence from Carl Henslow's pockets as well as from what was left of his apartment. After several hours of uninterrupted sleep, the three of them looked much more alert and determined to dive back into the case. Unfortunately, the hand-made bomb that Henslow had installed in his apartment to fend off any surprise visitors had destroyed most of his computers and documents that otherwise might have revealed the identity of the true mastermind behind the Il Caminoattack.
Annoyed by their lack of progress, Jane flipped through the pages of the worn notebook that they had found with Henslow after his attempted escape. "It's all abbreviations. Without any additional clues, there's no way to figure out the names of his clients," she sighed at the sight of Henslow's encrypted listing of clients and assignments.
"The crime lab is working on the hard drives that the CSRU techs recovered from his apartment," Maura said and peeked at the notebook in the detective's hands. "Maybe they'll find some hints…"
"I've gone through the records from Walpole again," Korsak announced and looked up from the laptop screen in front of him. "Apparently, Henslow had a cousin in there who died during the fight that got Henslow his extended prison term." Trying to compensate for Frost's computer skills as best as he could, the sergeant quickly browsed through his files. "Henslow blamed Buccitelli, who claimed it was self-defense. A few days later, Buccitelli got attacked in the prison yard, so they moved him to another facility for the remaining few weeks of his term."
"So, Buccitelli meets Henslow in prison and pisses him off," Jane began to recollect all facts. "Then Henslow tries to get back at him but fails. Buccitelli is released and Henslow does his time. And a few months later, Buccitelli supposedly blows up the prosecutor who got him into prison, while in fact, it was Henslow who triggered the bomb."
"Something like this, yes," the sergeant confirmed. "Quite a scheme if all Henslow wanted was revenge for his cousin…"
"Right… it seems like a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone," Jane mused. "So who hired Buccitelli to deliver that briefcase? Henslow was already at the scene when Buccitelli arrived… And if Welsh is somehow involved in this, I doubt that he would get his own hands dirty…"
Korsak fished a two-page document out of a stack of papers next to his laptop. "We checked Henslow's cell phone records, but we didn't get any hits from his last calls — most of them are prepaid phones… nothing traceable," the sergeant explained, while Maura reached for the list and studied it.
Before they could discuss the case further, an officer knocked on the open door. "Detective Rizzoli? Someone upstairs wants to talk to you… Says she's an assistant of Andrew Connelly…"
"Okay, thank you," Jane nodded, then exchanged a look of curiosity with Korsak as they got up.
"I'll check with the crime lab to see if they got anything from Henslow's computers," Maura suggested.
"Alright, I'll see you later," Jane smiled thankfully and followed the sergeant upstairs.
Minutes later, the detective and the sergeant had sat down opposite Julie Borsky, a lean and bleary-eyed young woman, who had been Andrew Connelly's personal assistant until his untimely death just three days ago. She looked shaken and certainly hadn't gotten much more sleep than Jane and Korsak themselves.
"I'm glad you've come out of hiding," Jane declared after having briefly introduced herself and Korsak.
"I… I would have come forward sooner, but I was worried…," Borsky hesitatingly admitted.
"Worried about what?" the sergeant inquired.
"Well, I was the only one who knew about Andrew's meeting with Mr. Welsh," she revealed quietly. "But then the restaurant blew up, and I thought—"
"Hold on," Jane frowned. "Connelly had a meeting with Michael Welsh? At the Il Camino restaurant?"
"Yes, on Tuesday," the young woman nodded. "But nobody knew except Andrew and me… and maybe his wife."
"What was so important about this meeting that you couldn't tell anybody?" Korsak wondered.
"Well, I had done some research for a presentation on campaign spending, and there were some irregularities in Mr. Welsh's records," Borsky explained. "You know, most of them are publicly accessible—"
"Yeah, through the Office of Campaign & Political Finance, I know," Jane confirmed impatiently.
"So, I told Andrew about it, and he wanted to discuss it with Mr. Welsh first before involving anybody else," the assistant continued and her features softened. "Andrew was all about keeping this campaign clean. He wouldn't have gone public with such findings unless he had clear proof that something fishy was going on."
"And this planned meeting with Welsh — do you have anything in writing about it?" the sergeant asked hopefully.
Borsky shook her head. "Not really. I mean, I made a non-specific note in our calendar, but Andrew scheduled the meeting over the phone… I don't think they exchanged any e-mails, if that's what you're asking…" With trembling fingers, she reached into her jacket's pocket and revealed a memory stick. "But I brought you this. It includes all my files with the data on this year's campaign spending… I thought it'd be easier for you… so you wouldn't have to look through the public records yourself…"
"Okay, thank you," Jane accepted the stick. "But why didn't you come to us right away?"
"Well, think about it," Connelly's assistant steadied her voice. "Aside from Andrew and me, nobody else knew about any of this. And then Mr. Welsh didn't show up, but instead, some crazy guy triggered a bomb, so I figured we must have accidentally uncovered something really bad in those financial records. And I was worried, of course. I thought they might come after me too…"
"Who exactly?" Korsak wondered.
"Mr. Welsh and his staff, I guess… or whoever is behind this… I don't know…," Borsky stuttered. "But I felt as if I was stuck in a bad movie… as if I was the key witness whom everybody was trying to… trying to kill…"
When the young woman's eyes filled with tears, Jane lowered her voice and comfortingly reached for Julie Borsky's hand. "And what made you change your mind now?"
"I… I just thought I owe it to Andrew," she declared sobbingly. "He trusted me. He and his family, they deserve to know the truth, and I wanted to help find it…"
Jane and Korsak exchanged a quick glance of mutual understanding. Julie Borsky's tears were real and they both believed her story.
"You did the right thing," the sergeant offered his support to the young woman as they slowly got up. "I'll have an officer take you home… Do you have any family or friends where you could stay for a few days?"
"Yes, thank you," Borsky whispered and dabbed off her tears with a handkerchief.
"We'll look into this," Jane promised before she and the sergeant stormed out of the conference room to pursue their new and rather unsettling lead in this case.
Several hours of reviewing the files on Julie Borsky's memory stick later, it was clear that these documents did indeed contain a number of dubious donations to Welsh's mayoral campaign. While one or two irregularities maybe could have been dismissed as typos or glitches in the OCPF's public system, several dozens of donations from people with fake identities and stolen social security numbers as well as larger campaign contributions from shady PO box organizations made it impossible to ignore the suspicious patterns as mere oversights. Thus, Jane and Korsak had eventually decided to pay the candidate a surprise visit in order to get to the heart of the matter.
Thirty minutes later, Jane parked her blue sedan in front of Welsh's campaign headquarters just as Korsak on the passenger seat finished his phone call with one of the BRIC officers.
"Connelly's cell phone records prove that he made several calls to a number at Welsh's headquarters," the sergeant informed the detective. "Last call was made about two hours before the explosion. After that, he only called his wife and received several calls from the press and from a few numbers we haven't been able to track yet."
"Okay then, let's have a little chat with Welsh," Jane said, grabbed a folder with printouts of Welsh's campaign spending records, and got out of the car. "I bet if we set up a camera out here, he'd come running within five seconds. That prick has a sixth sense for cameras."
"True…," Korsak chuckled in agreement and followed her towards the entrance of the modern multi-story building near Boston Common.
Once inside, the difference to Connelly's headquarters became clear immediately. This large office was still bustling with activity, phones were ringing incessantly, and volunteers were eagerly typing away on various computer keyboards. And in the midst of it all, Welsh's ever-curious cameraman from the candidate's social media team was recording every minute of the campaign.
After a few glances across the room, Jane spotted Michael Welsh in an office behind glass windows with their blinds only halfway down. With him was another young man in suit and tie, and apparently they were having quite an argument.
The brunette nudged Korsak, and they both headed straight for the office — until Logan Linklater blocked their way and greeted them with his most honest feigned smile.
"You're that detective, right?" Welsh's campaign manager asked and stretched out his hand.
"Detective Rizzoli, yes," Jane confirmed rather sullenly and ignored his hand. "And this is Sergeant Korsak. We need to talk to Mr. Welsh — in private."
"Mr. Welsh is in an important meeting right now," Linklater declared and pointedly held his ground between her and the office, unimpressed by the urgency in the detective's voice and unwilling to clear the way just yet. "Maybe I can help you? What do you need?"
Secretly wondering what she'd do to the young man in front of her if she ever met him alone in a dark alley at night, Jane stepped closer and lowered her voice. "If you don't move your hollow suite out of the way right now, I'll make sure your Spielberg wannabe over there gets a nice scene for his documentary," she hissed and nodded towards the cameraman.
Seizing Linklater's momentary indecisiveness on how to hold her back, Jane pushed him out of the way and marched to Welsh's office, where the candidate was still absorbed in a heated discussion with his staff member. With Korsak following close on her heels, she knocked briefly, rather symbolically, and opened the door without waiting for permission.
"This goes too far and—" Welsh was yelling at the other man but then paused abruptly and turned to the intruders standing in the doorframe. "What the hell?!"
"We need to talk to you," Jane declared while subtly blocking the door with her arm to prevent Linklater behind her from sneaking inside.
Confused by the interruption, Welsh searched Linklater's eyes and ignored the detective. A bad idea.
"Now!" Jane demanded brusquely.
Slightly intimidated by the detective's tone, Welsh finally waved his staff member off and signaled Jane and Korsak to have a seat at his disproportionately large desk.
"What were you two arguing about?" Korsak asked inconspicuously as they all sat down.
"Just a difference in opinion regarding my public appearances," Welsh politely fended him off.
"You mean the way you have embraced every PR opportunity since the bombing?" the sergeant took another shot.
"Look, I didn't make the rules — that's just how this business works. It's all about the public image," the candidate defended his strategy but then switched to a more placatory tone. "But you're right — sometimes, less is more. Unfortunately, my strategist and I, we don't always see eye to eye on that one…" Welsh absentmindedly looked through the glass windows towards his upset staff member before straightening up and focusing on his visitors. "So, why exactly are you here?"
Jane fished a slip of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Welsh. "Whose number is that?"
The politician glanced at the phone number. "That's one of our generic numbers from our campaign ads. Incoming calls are routed to the next available staff member… Why are you asking?"
The detective observantly studied Welsh's face, waiting for even the tiniest twitch that might indicate he was lying. "Why didn't you show up for your meeting with Andrew Connelly on Tuesday?"
"My what?" A puzzled look flashed over Welsh's face.
"We've been told you were supposed to meet your opponent for dinner at the Il Camino restaurant," Jane explained.
"What? Who would say that?" the candidate wondered incredulously. "I participated in a panel discussion at BU that night. Hundreds of people saw me there…"
"What makes you think you'd need an alibi?" Korsak smirked.
"Well… you obviously imply I had something to do with that atrocious act…," Welsh retorted. "Should I call my lawyer?"
"We'd prefer if you called your campaign accountant," Jane placed her folder with the printouts on the table and pulled out several sheets. "It's interesting how many charitable organizations support your campaign…"
"That's perfectly legal in Massachusetts!" the politician argued as he reached for the documents and studied them with a frown.
"Not if they are just smoke screens for other shady activities…," the detective added. "And what about all these individual donors who don't even exist? Do you expect them to vote for you, too? Because I hate to break it to you, but that's perfectly not legal in Massachusetts…"
"I can't stop people from supporting my campaign," Welsh objected. "And I… I don't have time to check each individual donation for its legitimacy!"
"Oh, don't worry," Jane sneered. "We'll be happy to do that for you."
The mayoral candidate shrugged rather indifferently. "Do what you have to do." With growing indignation about those unpleasant questions, he rose from his chair and disdainfully stared at his two visitors. "But I can assure you, neither did I talk to Mr. Connelly on the phone nor did I have any plans for meeting with him at that restaurant." He pointedly opened his office door. "Would that be all? I'll be hosting another panel discussion and a dinner reception tonight, so I'm rather busy…"
Exchanging an annoyed eye-rolling, Jane and Korsak got up and reluctantly left the office.
"Make sure your cameraman tags along tonight so people can see that your week is as terrible as everybody else's," the brunette sardonically advised Welsh in passing. "It's all about the public image, you know…"
Without further words, Jane and Korsak left Welsh's campaign headquarters under the curious eyes of his still upset strategist, his campaign manager, and the candidate himself.
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