CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SIX MONTHS LATER

Detective Jane Rizzoli strolled tiredly into the Division One café. "Hey, ma."

"Oh, Janie, you look exhausted. You want some coffee?"

"Please," Jane sighed, audibly demonstrating exactly how tired she felt as if the slump of her shoulders and hump of her back alone wouldn't cut it. Rubbing a hand over her face, smothering some of her words, she grumbled, "This case just keep getting worse and worse. It's like a nightmare."

"I saw some reporters still hanging around outside."

"They don't help matters," Jane growled, "pestering us for information every five minutes. I wish someone could get rid of them and just let us do our jobs."

Angela was very sympathetic and gripped Jane's forearm in solidarity after offering up a large steaming cup, "I'm sorry sweetheart."

The detective patted her mother's hand and smiled thankfully before taking a sip, "Not your fault, ma. I just want it to be over."

"How's Maura?"

Jane chuckled mirthlessly, "Honestly? I'm not sure, I haven't seen much of her since this started."

"I'll bet." Angela shook her head, "She works too hard, you both do." Jane was just about to argue when Angela rolled her eyes and continued, her palms raised in pre-emptive surrender, "I know, I know, you love what you do and you get to put away the bad guys." She pressed a kiss to Jane's cheek and whispered, "I'm very proud of you both."

"Thanks, Ma." Jane turned to leave with a smile on her face. This right here, this new relationship with her mother, was something she could happily experience for the rest of her life and it filled her chest with warmth. Now, if she could just solve this latest mystery and get back to spending time alone with her girlfriend, she'd be a happy woman. Calling over her shoulder, she said, "Keep your fingers crossed we don't have any more bodies today."

Angela had already turned to serve the next person in line but she called to Jane all the same, "Will do, sweetie."

oOo

The blonde Medical Examiner was already midway through an autopsy when Jane pushed her way quietly through the morgue door.

"What time was it this morning?" husked the detective.

Maura turned brightly, her eyebrows high, her attention obviously having been elsewhere, "Hmm?"

Jane clarified, "When you got up and came to work. What time?"

"Oh," Maura was silent for a beat, holding a heart in bloody, glove-covered hands in front of her torso, before she shook her head, "I'm not even sure -"

"Maura," Jane chided with a whine.

The blonde placed the heart gently into a steel bowl that sat on the side table by her hip and looked lovingly up at the brunette. She spoke softly as she reassured, "I'm fine, I promise. I just couldn't get back to sleep and decided to make the best use of the extra time I had because..." It wouldn't do to have Jane stressed and worrying about her own well-being on top of everything else. She gestured a hand and peered sadly down at the body lying prone on the table, an elderly man with his chest cracked wide open. Feeling every ounce of the dark-eyed weariness she had covered with concealer before dawn, she sighed, "We don't know when the next one might come in."

"I guess not." To the doctor's ears Jane sounded as if she hadn't been out of bed very long, that early morning huskiness still present and still very disarming. "You still could have woken me."

Maura tipped her head sympathetically, "You spent sixteen hours on your feet traipsing around Boston yesterday. You were exhausted."

Jane relented, too tired to argue and, more precisely she supposed, concerned that Maura would easily see through her - the big, bad detective, clingy pain in the ass, more upset about waking up alone than she was about the nine bodies currently occupying Maura's examination tables and refrigerated drawers.

They could go back and forth like this forever anyway; Jane arguing that Maura had spent just as much time on her feet cutting up dead people and Maura arguing how it's not the same as doing the actual gumshoe thing, Jane arguing about all the brain power required to be a certified, if somewhat dorky genius, and Maura arguing she at least had a whole team of dorky geniuses to help her.

Regardless, Jane thought, her mother was right; they both worked hard, as hard as was necessary and for as long as it took. That's who they were and would always be. But this was turning out to be the case that would really test them, professionally and personally, as a team, and as a newly-formed couple.

One suspicious death had quickly turned into three and within twenty-four hours Maura had confirmed acetone poisoning as the cause of death. After forty-eight hours, Maura had a total of ten bodies to contend with; seven prematurely dead victims and three impatient and increasingly-irritating detectives.

They'd been banned from the morgue after that, told not to disturb the scientists from doing their tests and getting the answers the detectives kept begging for. Jane would have apologized over dinner that evening for her own behavior but she and Maura had been like ships passing in the night as it was, and after seventy-two hours, with two more bodies in cold storage and a whole slew of reporters camped outside BPD, she had totally forgotten about it.

Maura's eyebrow rose and she barked a very Rizzoli-like, "Really?"

Snapping out of her musings, Jane murmured with a shake of her head, "Hmm?"

The blonde chuckled at the irony, "You've harassed my staff for days for results that we couldn't give you, but when I can talk to you about my findings you zone out."

Jane huffed, despondent about the case and her own ability to focus in her current state, "Sorry, Maur'."

Sweeping a hand over the body, Maura said, "I'm not done here, as you can see, but everything so far indicates possible poisoning." She held a halting finger up at the brunette's sparkling eyes and excited expression; no matter how much Jane teased her she would not guess and she would not take shortcuts. "Unless I uncover something that's not already explained in his medical records we'll just be waiting for the toxicology results to confirm my suspicions."

"Like all the others." Jane nodded, happy in a way that this body could be connected to their case; it made things simpler somehow, "Okay, I'll head up and tell the guys." Remembering the apology she had wanted to give days ago, she added quietly before turning to leave, "I'm sorry for disturbing you."

"Jane -" Maura snapped off her gloves and moved around the table, meeting the detective where she stood just inside the door. Reaching up on tip toes, a palm covering each olive-skinned cheek, the doctor planted a full, wet kiss on the brunette's lips and whispered alluringly, "You can disturb me anytime."

Smirking, the brunette tipped her head, wrapped her free arm around the smaller woman's waist and bent down to peck soft lips again, "Oh, really?"

"No," Maura deadpanned, slapping Jane in the chest, making the brunette jump, release her and slosh coffee over the rim of her cup onto her fingers all at once. Flashing a dimpled smile, she shucked a thumb over her shoulder and moved away, "But I'll forgive you this once. Now you should go so I can finish examining Mr. Fields."

Jane turned with a smile and ducked out of the door, pausing to regard her girlfriend working through the little glass window as it swung closed. They'd be fine, she thought, if they could work through everything just like this; staying true to who they were, working hard for what was right, respecting each other and not being too proud to apologize.

oOo

Up in the bullpen, his desk littered with newspapers, Sergeant Detective Korsak greeted the brunette with a flick of his bushy eyebrows over his reading glasses.

Swaggering towards her own desk, Jane gestured to the articles with her free hand and groaned, "What's the verdict?"

Dramatically, Korsak read from the covers of the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, "Murder mystery baffles city's best cops. Nine bodies and counting as killing spree goes unsolved."

Jane chuckled, nodding a morning greeting at Frost as she sat down opposite him, "Well, they got one bit right."

Frost frowned, confused, "Nine bodies?"

Shaking her head, Jane grinned, "City's best cops."

He let out a bark of laughter, she was right of course, though the murder mystery part was discouragingly accurate, too.

For three days they had been run ragged by this case and not a single bit of information they'd turned up from house-to-house calls, background checks, or relative interviews had been helpful. They'd trudged through half the city looking for connections between victims, between crime scenes, tracking down criminals and informants alike for any sniff of a motive. At the end of the third day they had nothing, and it hurt. They weren't even back at square one; they'd never left it.

There were no reports of altercations, no witnesses, no forced entries, nor any dodgy pasts that might have snuck up on a victim. There were no outward injuries, no defensive wounds, no bullet holes or marks of restraint. The bodies just appeared, scattered across the city at random. Everything confounded; taunting the detectives and haunting the medical examiner.

But then, the first batch of tox reports had come back and Maura had confirmed poisoning, though she'd said something infinitely more scientific and baffling which had caused all three detectives to scratch their heads for several minutes. And then, as if a tiny bit of momentum was all they had ever needed, Barry had had an epiphany and the link between their seemingly random and unconnected victims had been suggested, researched and tentatively confirmed.

Every person, before ending up in the morgue, had bought groceries from the same store on the same day. CCTV, credit card payments, family statements; it all fit. It was flimsy and far from airtight but it was enough to spur on the detectives and make them feel like they were getting somewhere.

Korsak removed his glasses and placed them on the desk, clearing his throat, "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"