Blue

Chapter 8

Disclaimer: Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles do not belong to me. No infringement intended and no profit will be made from their use.

A/N: Thanks to everyone who is reading this story and for all the reviews and alerts.

Monday morning Maura walked into Jane's office and found her sleeping on the couch again. As Maura turned to leave, Jane cracked an eye open and said, "You don't have to go, I'm awake. I could hear those heels from a mile away."

"That's not really possible. Perhaps if you were an owl." Maura moved to perch on the edge of Jane's desk. She crossed her legs and watched Jane sit up and stretch. Jane's pants and sweater were wrinkled. Her hair was loose and disheveled. Maura couldn't help but notice that Jane looked even thinner than usual and her face looked pale. "You look terrible. Did you sleep here again?"

"Yeah, I had to get out of the house yesterday. I came here last night to read more files and decided to sleep here."

"You smell terrible too. Are you drunk?"

Jane considered that question and said, "Possibly. I did drink quite a bit over the weekend. Was there something you wanted?"

"I want to talk to you about something, but maybe now isn't the best time. I should go."

"No, don't go. Now is fine. I'm perfectly capable of having a conversation."

"Well, I wanted, I mean, I need to ask you something. This is the first real conversation we've had in almost three months. I want to know why. Why did you stop talking to me?" Maura asked, holding her gaze on Jane's face.

Jane looked away and said, "I could ask you the same thing, you know."

"I believe the customary response is something like too bad, I asked first."

Jane looked at her hands and rubbed over the scars. "Do you know why I'm down here?" she asked.

"Not really."

"Cavanaugh tried to tell me it was like a promotion which is clearly complete fucking nonsense. I think it's because the brass doesn't trust me anymore. They can't fire me right now because the newspapers wrote stories about me being a hero and firing me would be bad press, so I think they're trying to make it so unpleasant for me here that I'll quit."

"What does all of that have to do with me?" Maura asked.

"Maybe they're right. I've been in too many life threatening situations on the job and in all of them I can share some of the blame for putting myself there. You could have been hurt or killed and it would have been my fault. I brought Marino down to the lab, to you, for selfish reasons because Frankie was hurt. I can't stand the thought of something happening to you because of me. I didn't want to put you in that position again."

Maura was indignant. "Don't I get some say in that? That it isn't your decision to make."

"I killed Marino," Jane said softly.

"Because he was threatening you and everyone else with a gun. If you hadn't done it, someone else would have. You can't feel badly about that."

"Then how come you went away? Why did you stop talking to me?" Jane asked.

"Because I was afraid." Maura answered.

"See, that's what I mean."

"No, you don't understand. I wasn't afraid for my physical safety. I was, I still am, afraid for my emotional safety. I've never been as close to anyone as I was to you. I've never had the emotional connection I have with you with anyone else. When you were in the hospital I could deal with it on a strictly clinical level. But when it was clear that you were going to be okay and I had time to think about it, it was just too much. I couldn't handle thinking about losing you so I ran away and I decided that I couldn't risk putting myself through that again."

"That's no different than what I'm saying. I don't-"

"But I think I made a mistake," Maura interrupted. "I don't know if I can forget what happened or forget the past three months. I don't know how to not be afraid or how to go back to the way things were, but I would like to try."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Perhaps we can start with having lunch together sometime? Maybe you can use the main elevators or stairway instead of avoiding me and using the back stairs? We can perhaps start over."

Jane couldn't hide the surprised look on her face when Maura said that. "Start over?"

Maura gently hopped down from her seat on the desk and smoothed out her skirt. "I don't know if I'm the same person I was three months ago. I know I'm not the same person I was three years ago. Perhaps we'll find we don't even want to be friends anymore."

"Yeah, okay, I get it. We can give it a try," Jane said.

Maura nodded slightly and left.

Jane decided that Thanksgiving had been just a big unwelcome distraction from work. She refocused on getting through the first reading of the case files. Two weeks of not going out and no drinking and she finished the first read through of the case files. When she finished the first cut, Jane ended up with a fourth pile of eleven cases spread over sixteen years, 1977-1993. The cases had enough disturbing similarities that Jane considered that they could be the work of one killer. When Jane had found eight in the post 1980 cases, she scanned through the older cases backwards and found three more. She didn't see any before 1977, although she stopped looking in 1974 and could have missed some.

She wanted another opinion, another set of eyes to read the files and tell her if she was actually seeing what she thought she was seeing. Jane's first choice was Maura. She needed someone to look at the forensics reports anyway. Maura was still dropping off coffee each morning before Jane arrived. And one morning Jane found a new wool blanket folded and sitting on the couch in her office. They'd had lunch twice since their talk. Both times Maura had picked up food and they ate together in her office. The first time Jane's jaw almost hit the floor when she saw the redecoration Maura had done.

The lunches had been a little uncomfortable. They chatted about work, with Maura mostly talking about the recent cases she had worked on. Jane had little she was willing to talk about aside from work. She certainly didn't want to tell Maura what she had been up to when she wasn't working, even though Maura gently probed.

Jane had wandered over to Maura's office with copies of the eleven files on Thursday afternoon. Maura was out on a call so Jane left the stack on Maura's desk with a note that read: "Will you look at these files for me? I don't want to tell you why because I don't want to influence your thoughts. Thanks, Jane."

The following Monday morning, Maura knocked on Jane's office door and said. "I read all of the reports."

"And?" Jane asked eagerly.

Maura eyed the couch but decided to sit in one of the chairs. "First of all, I know we have access to better forensics techniques now then when some of these cases occurred, but some of what was done here was just sloppy."

"Okay."

"Nothing stands out in terms of physical attributes to link the victims other than the fact that they are all female. The "H" mark found on each of the victims is certainly significant, although it was in different places on the bodies and created differently, raising the possibility of copycats. I don't know if you've looked for press coverage of the murders. All of the victims were shot and the autopsies concluded that the gunshot was the cause of death. A bullet or casing was not found in all cases, but in cases where one or both was found the bullet used was a 38 special. No ballistics tests were done. In other words, there was no attempt to match the bullets found to a specific gun. However, I was able to compare the bullets to an FBI database that can tell us what type of gun was likely used and in the seven cases with bullets the database matched with the Walther PPK. The last two pieces of evidence are troubling. As you probably know, that type of bullet and gun were very common among law enforcement officials in the 70s and 80s."

Jane only nodded and Maura continued.

"No other forensic evidence was found at any of the scenes, so either the killers were very careful or the detectives were very sloppy. The autopsies were performed by a few different pathologists. I think that covers my areas of expertise."

Jane felt a surge of adrenaline and stood up and started pacing. For the first time in nearly four months she was really working again. "I agree some of details are extremely troubling. Nowhere in any of the files is it mentioned that the "H" marking was found in other cases. I don't see how it's possible that no one made that connection. There's something very wrong here."

"What are you going to do?" Maura asked.

"I don't know. For now, can you not tell anyone else about this? I need to do some more digging."

"Sure. I'm also supposed to tell you that your mother would like you to visit her. She says you haven't been returning her calls."

"Yeah, sure, I will sometime this week."

Maura stood. "I should get back to the lab. You're looking better Jane. It's nice to see," she added before leaving.