Chapter 3

The third crime scene definitely confused Jane Rizzoli. The other stabbings had appeared to be crimes of opportunity – a hidden alley, a wharf with an isolated sidewalk; but this? This was something new entirely. It irritated Jane terribly that she could not connect the incidences. She reminded herself that after three killings, it is generally pointless to consider a motive, but it still played on her mind.

James Connolly was smartly dressed and sported a very shiny Rolex on his left wrist. He was killed in the elevator in his own office; his body had been found by a very flustered blonde intern who'd been sitting glass-eyed on the curb ever since, trying to hold back nausea.

Maura bent over the body, compressing the abdomen to judge the internal damage, the positioning of the stab wounds. Her team had already arrived and were waiting with a gurney, but she insisted on examining him before he entered cold storage.

There were several bystanders gathered around – workers from Connolly's law firm, sales reps from the real estate business run from the ground floor office, clients of each firm and a few maintenance staff. Jane's theory at the moment was that Connolly had been killed in the elevator – the blood spatter was definitely consistent with that – and his murderer had fled onto one of the many floors between Connolly's sixth floor space and this pristine reception area.

"He's coming out of rigor, want us to break him?" one of the coroner's staff asked, heaving with his colleague to raise the victim from the floor on a stretcher.

Jane turned from the front office doors to see Maura sigh as she answered the question with the weary tone of a much-repeated sentence. "No, put him on his side."

As Maura turned to face her, Jane smiled, nostalgia making an appearance as she remembered all their crime scenes together, all the times she'd repeated that phrase. Jane snapped off her gloves as Maura did, knowing that they didn't have much hope of finding convicting evidence in such a public place.

Maura scrutinised Jane in a way that made her feel uncomfortable, but the doctor seemed to think better of once again asking if she was feeling alright. Together they walked to Maura's Prius and climbed inside, welcoming its softness after such a long day. It was a full twenty-minute drive back to the police building, and Maura was startled to find upon arrival that Jane had slipped into a steady sleep in what appeared to be a very uncomfortable position; she was slouched low in her seat and had her arms folded across her belly, her chin resting on her clavicle. More than anything, Maura wanted to leave Jane in peace, to deal with whatever it was that was making her so run-down, but she knew they had work to do, so she leaned across the gearshift and gently shook Jane's shoulder with one hand, reaching around to raise her head with the other.

Jane startled awake and grabbed Maura's wrist so suddenly and with such force that Maura jumped in surprise, letting escape a quiet yelp. "Maura?" Jane mumbled, her voice thick with sleep. "Sorry," she said, freeing Maura's hand.

"That's okay. Jane, I'm worried about you. You're the only detective in the building that can pull a forty-eight-hour case, what's going on?"

"I'm really not sure, Maura," Jane said, her face contorting in puzzlement.

"Well, let's start by feeding you," Maura suggested, and they clambered out of the car to head into the cafeteria, where Angela met them with such warmth.

"Jeez, Jane, what the Hell happened to you?" Angela cried once she saw her daughter walk inside.

Jane pulled a face, announcing a silent "Really?" and Maura laughed, glad that her friend seemed to once again be resembling her old self.

"Angela she's just hungry, we've been busy all day," Maura tried to stick up for Jane, but Angela obviously wasn't convinced.

"It's lasagne today," Angela told them.

"That's great, Ma, thanks," Jane said as she shuffled over to the coffee machine and looked through the windows at the cloudy sky as it slid between dusk and night. Angela should be clocking off very soon, she thought. She added her usual heap of sugar to take some edge of bitterness out of the appalling coffee here before carrying it to the table Maura sat at.

"Maura?" Jane asked softly.

"Yes?" Maura's curiosity had been seized.

"I..." Jane sighed. "I've been meaning to ask... for a while, but... Have you heard from... your father?"

Maura's mind seemed to jerk as she heard Jane ask, but she realised quickly how Jane had tried to soften the topic. She didn't want to hurt Maura, that much was obvious.

"I only spoke to his doctors. It looks like he'll be well enough to transfer soon."

Jane noticed how detached Maura sounded and decided not to pursue the difficult subject further; she nodded while she attempted to come up with another topic of conversation.

"Here you go!" Angela cheerily announced the arrival of dinner, all worried about Jane's appearance mercifully forgotten.

It wasn't until a piece of steaming pasta stroked Jane's tongue did she realise how hungry she was, and she quickly dug into her cube, burning her mouth in her haste. And though she complained about her mother all the time – her busy-body, invasive character, the fact that they worked in the same place – it could not be denied that Angela was a fantastic cook, and were it not for her, Stanley would have had to go months back.

"You look better," Maura said with a smile and a note of relief, watching the colour return to Jane's cheeks.

Jane could just manage a smile around her full mouth.

Though they both knew that good things must always end to be seconded by work, the two women were disappointed to leave the comforts of the cafeteria and head down to the morgue to complete the second autopsy, on one John Doe. Once gowned and gloved, they pushed through the yellow doors and headed past Professor Ewell's corpse, which had been neatly stitched up by Yoshima, to the second table, where their victim lay with an apparent scowl across his jaw. Maura's assistant had already removed his clothes and, most likely with the help of the lab techs, broken rigor mortis. The coroner's staff placed a tag on the third victim's toe on the last remaining table before departing to the loading area without another word.

Maura went through her usual proceedings, stating into the recorder approximate height, weight, age, race and name, before she raised her scalpel and deftly sliced through layers of skin, fat and muscle in order to gain access to glistening organs and blackened blood.

Jane witnessed her go through the same procedure as with the first body, weighing organs, cutting vessels, retrieving jars of formalin. By now it was 7pm, and Yoshima had long since gone home. Maura wielded the bone saw herself, and expertly caught the brain and slid it into a bucket of formalin in one swift movement.

"Okay, Jane, this man was definitely killed by the same person as Dr. Ewell. There is bruising from the hilt of the knife – it was thrust into the body with extreme force. In the X-Rays of Dr. Ewell you can see very small metal fragments, and I found a large one in this man's liver. It is pointed, and I would be prepared to hypothesise that it is from a knife blade, but you are not to take that as solid fact until I have the metals run," Maura warned. "And most decisively, this man died from a stab to the kidney, which sent the body into circulatory shock and induced cardiac arrest."

"Okay. So we have a serial – provided Connolly was killed in the same way. But why these victims? A lawyer, a professor and this man, who likely was a dock worker. It doesn't sit right with me, Maura, I've got a bad feeling."

"Me, too," Maura agreed. "Come to my office," she instructed.

Maura sat at her desk and began to type up the autopsy report while Jane sat heavily on the sofa across the room and tried to build a theory out loud, hitting a dead end quickly with each bizarre tale. "Maybe there's just a psycho butcher running around," she finally said, resigned.

Ignoring her comment other than to smile and shake her head, Maura continued tapping on her keyboard.

"Ah, Dr. Isles and Detective Rizzoli, I assume?" said a deep male voice from the doorway. Both women looked up at a tall, dark and handsome man in a smart suit with a pair of aviators hooked in his breast pocket.

"Yeah, who the Hell are you?" Jane asked rudely.

"My name is Zack Poole and you may want to be nicer to me now that I'm assigned to your case," suggested Zack Poole, holding up an FBI badge.

Jane sighed and slumped, sending Maura her most pissed-off look.

"Could this day get any worse?"