"Stupid privacy talk," Jane said as they descended the stairs. Outside the BPD, she took a deep sip from her steaming paper cup.
Elizabeth Rizzoli, Jane's daughter, and a BPD homicide detective followed her mother. So did Nick Simms.
Two of a team of four people, busy with nothing but hunting down the worst scum of society.
Joost Boonstra came panting after them. Despite his fifty-five years, Boonstra had reddish-blond hair and a boyish face, was on a permanent diet, and was in a permanently bad mood. In the morning, he only ate his so-called 'single breakfast', black coffee and a cigarette. He still didn't get thinner, perhaps because breakfast was the least important meal to cut down on, even if the goal was to lose weight.
He tugged at the shirt that stretched across his belly and lit a cigarette.
"Try the Marine diet," Jane had told him earlier, tapping his belly. Boonstra had looked at her in irritation. "Just order the next uniform one size larger." Boonstra hadn't found that funny while Nick and Elizabeth pressed their lips together.
Boonstra held out the pack of cigarettes to Elizabeth, but she pulled the corners of her mouth down and shook her head.
Jane looked at her daughter with furrowed brows. "You're a non-smoker again?"
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows for a moment and took a deep breath. "Sort of in solidarity with Mags. If she can't have 'real' coffee, I'll give up my smokes."
Jane smiled a little and nodded slowly.
"You don't like privacy?" asked Boonstra, looking closely at Jane. Boonstra was Dutch and worked at Europol in The Hague, but had taken on some computer training for the FBI and BPD, like this privacy training that was taking place today. He was also a crack at cyber espionage.
The honeymoon with his wife Femke had been over for quite some time for that, so he didn't mind working late, which was a vicious cycle. Because he was working so much, his wife had sought out a therapist, who had told her the first thing she needed to do was take more care of herself. Femke quit her job after graduation to care for their two children. The therapist had told her that she had to force her husband to be more aware of her. She had to make him finally notice the gaps in her life caused by his many jobs.
The therapist said the best thing would be for Joost to woo her properly once again, as if he were falling in love with her all over again. Boonstra understood that, but it didn't quite work out with falling in love.
'I want to be seen. To be noticed,' she had told Boonstra and all her friends.
'Don't worry about it,' Boonstra had replied, 'you won't be overlooked.' For she had gained similar weight to Boonstra and had also become bitchy and dragon-like. That Boonstra's counterattack had not exactly saved the marriage went without saying. He was currently living in a trial separation, which amounted to his wife occupying the house they shared and engaging in self-discovery, magic stones, and hot yoga. He lived in the basement, which didn't improve his mood either. He was all the happier that he could be in Boston for two weeks, in a nice hotel where he didn't have to spend hours being grateful because someone changed the towels in the bathroom.
"You live in the basement? It's almost like Silence of the Lambs," Jane had said, "the investigators are in the basement of the FBI Academy there, too. Jack Crawford, Clarice Starling, and so on --"
Boonstra found that only mildly funny, too. So did the tip about the Marine diet. He found little fun anyway. But his bad temper had helped him more often when it came to cracking down. At Europol, he had cleaned up the international department and fired two dozen people. These McKinsey qualities had earned him the nickname Boonstra the Butcher among his English-speaking colleagues. A name, Elizabeth thought, that also suited her job well.
Jane looked up at the facade of the BPD building and frowned a little. "Privacy," she growled, "means perp protection first and foremost. Terrorists communicate with each other via X-Boxes or other game consoles, and we're not even allowed to store smartphone data. With telecommunications laws from the fifties."
Boonstra grinned broadly. "At least I'm helping you guys learn a few tricks."
"Yeah," Nick said with furrowed brows, shoving his hands into his pants pockets. "But only because you're deviating from the agenda, and learning isn't what we're here to do."
Boonstra looked at him long and hard. "How's Riskid going?" he asked. Riskid was a program designed to prevent doctor hopping by parents abusing their children. If a pediatrician became suspicious because the child was increasingly maltreated, the parents went to another doctor. At Riskid, pediatricians could exchange protected information. This made it much easier to notice when parents presented their injured children to a new doctor because the old pediatrician had started asking too many questions.
Jane took a deep breath and shrugged. "All right. It's just a drop in the bucket, though. In most cases, things stay the same after all. And any child murderer will get a lot less than some egg thief or parking violator." She looked at Nick. "Weren't you on the Dorchester case?"
Nick looked at his mother-in-law long and hard and furrowed his brows. "You mean the microwave case?"
Jane nodded slowly, disgusted. "Yes."
Boonstra looked at the two cops. "What was going on there?
Elizabeth knew the story and took a deep breath. "Some guy beat his kid half to death and then stuck his head in the microwave."
"So?" asked the Dutchman, raising his shoulders. "Microwaves don't go on until you close the door, do they?"
Nick's facial muscles twitched for a millisecond. "He rigged that on purpose. I guess the guy used to be an electronics engineer, and he also researched the Internet to make sure the radiation came out even when the door was open."
Even Boonstra's eyes widened. "And the kid's head?"
Jane snorted in disgust, then made a pained face. "Exploded and was a total mess."
"My God." Boonstra shook his head in shock. "And what about the perp?"
Jane pulled the corners of her mouth down and shrugged. "These days? No ahun. Probably a warning for property damage. Or reprimand for improper handling of technical equipment."
Elizabeth straightened abruptly. "Ma'am, I think you're exaggerating."
"Wouldn't be any different in Netherlands today," Boonstra growled.
"If anything, I'm exaggerating a little," Jane retorted. "Most things just fall under the radar anyway because no one notices them."
Boonstra raised his eyebrows. "It almost sounds like Boston is heading to a failed state."
Jane gritted her teeth for a millisecond. "Doesn't just sound that way."
Elizabeth knew her boss and mother all too well. Today Jane was having another one of her pessimistic-fatalistic days, where Jane painted everything in maximally gloomy colors. Where Jane herself didn't think the comparison with a country that was on its way to the abyss, like Libya, Syria, or Iraq, was far-fetched
Jane continued to speak, but Elizabeth noticed how she only caught bits and pieces of what her mother was saying, and her mind wandered.
"It doesn't get freezing here anymore," Jane said, looking up at the sky and shoving her hands into her coat pockets. "It's the end of October, and we can still stand out here. It's not going to be a white Christmas anymore."
Nick smiled wryly. "I didn't realize you were so keen on winter."
"She's often cold as ice, after all," Boonstra interjected. "Nomen est omen."
The words drifted past Elizabeth's mind like clouds that couldn't be held in place.
"Still," Nick said. "Last year, you were grumbling about heating costs. Don't you have a classic wood-burning fireplace?"
"Yes, but there I have to carry wood, and it's not good for my back," Jane replied with a shrug.
"At least you don't have to chop it."
"No, we could use some of our serial killers for that. They like to chop things up. Living and dead. What was that crazy guy's name who chopped up the women?"
Elizabeth realized her mother had turned to her, and she was instantly back here and now. "Bryson Gill," she said, "the werewolf."
Elizabeth remembered him well. The werewolf had killed seven women in Boston in a bestial way. Some of the women he had raped before and after the crime. And he had hacked them to pieces with an axe, striking the bodies so blindly that some axe blows had not only severed the limbs but had penetrated the mattress core of the bed and destroyed the parquet floor beneath. For some women, he had cut open their intestines and smeared them with their feces. Total domination and submission. Elizabeth remembered this because she had shot Bryson Gill, the werewolf. Katherine had directed her to the correct address via the perp profile. The werewolf was a brutal, exploratory rapist who wanted to be a great pike. That's why he drove a Corvette. And through the car owner's address at the DMV, they reached Gill's address. A corvette makes them wet, Katherine had quoted the raunchy, unofficial advertising slogan that summed up the apparent effect of Corvettes on women. And Gill, the werewolf, wanted to be that cool, too. Katherine had been right.
My God, Elizabeth thought, how long had it been? Four years? Five?
In the end, Elizabeth had once again looked evil in the eye and turned Bryson Gill's head into a bloody ruin with an RRT officer's assault rifle and the wall behind it into a Jackson Pollock-style work of art.
"Let's get back inside," the detective heard Boonstra's voice say. "We're moving on."
Jane nodded, grumbling. "Getting a little chilly now, isn't it?"
Nick looked at his mother-in-law with amusement. "I thought there was no more winter."
"There isn't," Jane retorted. "A little cold is not winter. And it's still autumn anyway."
"Does this have to do with the fall of America, too?" Nick wanted to test Jane's pessimistic cultural theory for consistency.
"Sure," she said, "America is becoming a Third World country. And most Third World countries don't have winter either."
Nick grinned wryly. "Point taken."
"Winter is important," Boonstra growled, "Europe and America got so rich because, in winter, all the bacteria and pathogens are killed. That's why there's no malaria here or any of that shit. That's why Europe and America have become a world power."
Jane looked at him, amused. "You being a flying Dutchman, must know," she winked.
The three officers were about to return to BPD together when they heard the crash.
Like an explosion.
Loud.
Not fifty yards away.
xxx
James Madsen could no longer brake his truck fast enough.
All he could do was swerve.
The man with the cardboard box just kept running. Crossed the road from south to north as if there were no cars.
Madsen had seen the convertible and heard the screech of brakes. He had already guessed that things could go so wrong.
The truck's wheels locked as Madsen jerked the vast steering wheel to the right. He saw the man with the box. Saw the gloves for a moment, and saw the eyes staring at him from below, uncertain and a bit stupid, before the run-down man turned them back to the road. The look is just on the road! As if there was no truck in front of him at all! What would he have done if I hadn't braked so fast? When --
Then Madsen heard a dull crash. The man was gone!
Had he run him over?
But he had no more time to think about it.
Briefly, the red facade of the hotel flashed before Madsen's windshield. Red tiles and a huge glass window through which the driver could see the hotel inside. The reception desk. Tables at which guests were seated. Behind them, the breakfast and bar area. Like a giant peephole.
Madsen saw it all in a split second as the red of the tiles raced toward the truck as if the whole world had been drenched in blood.
The exact second when the people behind the glass jumped up in panic.
At that exact second, the man in front of the truck suddenly disappeared.
He saw all that and heard the crashing, the clanging of glass, and the screaming of people. Saw guests jumping up and running to safety. Tables and chairs fell over; people stumbled inside. It was the second the truck drilled into the hotel's front window.
