Blue

Chapter 14

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: I think this is the most ambitious story I've written. It's the first time I've tried to do a crime/mystery as part of it. I'm reasonably pleased with how it's gone. I think it will wrap up soon, maybe another 2-3 chapters. Many, many thanks to everyone who is still reading, reviewing, signing up for alerts, etc.

After Petrozelli left her office, Jane looked through the personnel files again. She needed to find someone she could go talk to who might possibly be receptive. She narrowed in on Michael Brosnan. He had worked his way up to Homicide, and Maura had linked him to a murder based on the timeline, but he had only stayed in Homicide for about a year.

Jane found his current address and then sent Maura a text telling her she was going to see Brosnan and that she'd see her at home. Then she walked the short way to her apartment to get her car and drove to Brosnan's house in Charlestown.

Jane knocked on Brosnan's door with her badge visible on her hip and he answered shortly. "Hi, my name is Detective Jane Rizzoli. Can I ask you a few questions?"

"I knew this day would come. I honestly thought it would be sooner. Are you here to arrest me?"

"Uh, no. Well, not yet anyway. I can just come in so we can talk?"

"Yes, of course. Come on in." Jane followed Brosnan and looked around the apartment. It was filthy. All manner of papers were stacked on just about every available surface. He led her into his kitchen and then each took a seat at a small table in the corner of the room.

"Can I get you anything to drink?" he asked

"No, thank you."

"Well, what do you want to talk about?"

"I'm looking at old unsolved cases. I found a string of murders that had similar characteristics. You were assigned to one of them. You left homicide not too long after. Another one of the murders occurred the first week you were assigned to homicide. I want you to tell me what you know about these murders."

"I know everything about the murders. I've spent twenty years waiting for this day. Waiting for someone like you to show up and ask these questions."

"Why didn't you tell anyone what you know?"

Brosnan sighed. "I'm a coward. That's not an excuse but it's true. You know what they do to cops in jail. And I'm afraid of Lieutenant Petrozelli. I have an ex-wife and two kids. They hate me, but Petrozelli said if I ever told anyone anything he would hurt them. And he is a crazy, dangerous motherfucker."

Jane was silent. He was rambling a bit but she thought it might be the best way to get all the info from him.

"From the time I became a cop I wanted to make detective and I wanted to work homicides. They were always the elite squad. And even though when I was a beat cop there was talk of homicide being into bad stuff and operating like a cult under Petrozelli, I still wanted to be there and I was overjoyed when I was eventually assigned to homicide." He sighed. "The rumors didn't even come close. It was like a cult. The guys who bought into Petrozelli's bullshit acted like they were gods, like they had power over life and death because they investigated murders. I couldn't take it. So after about a year I requested a transfer and I went into Narcotics. But he's still had a hold over me this whole time."

"Tell me about the women. I know a lot of the story, but I don't know why." Jane said.

"It was like an initiation into the department. Petrozelli told us that we needed to get insight into the mind of a killer. Like to solve murders you had to understand what it meant to kill. And we had be man enough to do it, to not be weak about death. We had to be willing to kill in the line of duty without hesitation so this was proving we could do it. It makes me sick to think I was naïve enough and spineless enough to do what he told me to do."

Jane was stony faced but inside she was boiling. "Forgive me if I don't exactly feel bad for you. All this time the families of these women have gone on not knowing why they were killed and without anyone being punished for it and you've known this whole time. What about the H?"

"H for homicide. It seems pretty obvious if you think about it."

"Sure, if you're thinking it's the police killing people. How were the women chosen?"

"Nothing special. Our first week on the job Petrozelli would take us out for a drink. Sometimes other guys would come too. They'd decide on a woman and we'd follow her when she left the bar. He'd narrow in on some woman and decide she was a bitch or too full of herself. Some of the other detectives talked about their victims among us and it seemed like they all had the same experience. They talked about it like a rite of passage, like losing your virginity or something. I've been waiting for so long for someone to take Petrozelli down."

"There's not much evidence in the files. How do I prove Petrozelli was ordering these murders?"

"I don't know. But I have something for you." Brosnan got up and disappeared upstairs. He returned with a plastic evidence bag with a bullet and casing inside. "This is the bullet I used. We were supposed to use our service weapons, it made it more of a risk or some other bullshit. A few years after I went into Narcotics I was involved in a shootout with suspected heroin smugglers. I was still using the same gun then and they performed the standard ballistics tests to verify the officer's accounts of incident. So this bullet will match my gun in the database."

"How do I prove this bullet was used to kill your victim?" Jane asked.

"Just log it as evidence in the original case file. No one will know. And then you happened to decide to test the ballistics evidence again."

"That's a terrible idea, but it's the best I've got right now. Mr. Brosnan, thanks for your help, but frankly, I hope you rot in jail for the rest of your life. I'd arrest you right now, but I need to prove the rest of this first."

"Good luck, Detective, and watch your back."

Jane left and went back to headquarters. She took the bullet Brosnan gave her and tried to make it look like it had been with the evidence from the case of the woman he killed all along. If anyone looked at all closely at the case file and evidence logs they'd know something was off, but Jane just had to hope it would never come to that. She pulled all of the bullets and casings that had been logged as evidence in the eleven cases, brought them all to the forensics lab, and asked that ballistics testing be performed and the bullets and casings be checked against all available databases. Then Jane went to Maura's house.

When Maura arrived home she found Jane slumped in the middle of the couch, seemingly staring at nothing. "Jane, are you okay?"

Jane gave a brief summary of what she had learned from Brosnan and then said, "Sometimes this job makes me hate all people. Don't you ever get tired or depressed by what you see?" Jane said, sounding more tired than Maura had ever heard her.

Maura slipped off her shoes and sat down on the couch, tucking her legs under her and facing Jane. "There's a clinical detachment in what I do. I only have to determine what happened and how. You need to figure out why and who. It's very different. You have so much more to deal with."

"The whole premise of doing this job is that there are good people and bad people and it's supposed to be obvious who the bad people are. We're investigating murders. Bad people commit murder. But if the good guys are also the bad guys, how do we go on?"

"Just because there are sometimes dirty cops, that doesn't mean we can't tell the good guys from the bad guys."

"Are you sure?" Jane said with more energy and conviction. "Marino killed another cop. But I killed him. What does that make me?"

Maura put her hand on Jane's arm in what she hoped was a calming fashion. "You shot him because he was a bad guy."

"It took nothing at all for Petrozelli to get those guys to commit murder. Some bullshit about what it takes to be a homicide detective with some macho talk thrown in and that was it."

"Charismatic leaders are capable of getting people to take extreme actions. And when you add in that he was an authority figure, he had a lot of power over people."

"How can you try to rationalize what they did?" Jane said angrily.

"I'm not. I'm just saying that there are explanations and lots of examples of normally rational people doing horrible things."

"What if we're not the good guys like we think we are?" Jane asked, sounding tired again.

"You find people who commit murder. You bring closure to grieving families. You put criminals in prison."

"We can make mistakes."

"I don't." Maura hoped that would lighten the mood a little but Jane just looked at her more intently.

"Maura," Jane said slowly, "All the time we spent avoiding each other...I was lost without you. I need you."

Maura felt like her heart was going to leap out of her throat, despite the obvious fact that that was physically impossible. There was something so raw about Jane right now it was both scary and irresistible. Before Maura had time to think anymore she was pressing her lips against Jane's.

There was no hesitation on Jane's part. She pulled Maura onto her lap, resting her hands on Maura's waist and parted her lips just enough to take Maura's lower lip into her mouth.

Maura let out a small gasp at Jane's actions but didn't pull away. She threaded her fingers into Jane's hair and kissed Jane deeply, hoping to convey all of her feelings in that kiss. At one point when they stopped for a breath, Maura said, "I hate thinking about you being with those other women."

"They weren't important. They didn't matter. And how do you think I felt every time you went out on a date?"

Maura didn't bother answering, she just started kissing Jane again, eagerly exploring Jane's mouth with her tongue.

Neither woman knew how long they had been in that position kissing when Jane's cell phone rang. She pulled the phone off her hip and looked at the caller ID, and surprised, said, "It's Korsak." She answered the phone, "Rizzoli."

"Uh, Jane, did you know a Michael Brosnan?" Korsak asked.

"Yes, why?"

"I'm at his house right now. He's dead. It looks like a suicide."

"I'll be right there."

"No, just go to headquarters. I'll meet you there soon," Korsak said and hung up.