A/N: Here ya go. Let's have some quality time with our friendly killer, shall we? :-)


Several hours had passed at Boston Police Headquarters, and they still hadn't received any response from the mysterious kidnapper. Jane was pacing back and forth between the desks in the homicide unit's bullpen, her eyes fixated on a printout of the two e-mail messages. Sergeant Korsak was huddled over his desk and worriedly glanced towards the brunette detective.

"Take a break, Jane, and get something to eat," her former partner suggested. "I'll stay here and let you know as soon as we receive any response." Noting Jane's fierce expression and her apparent unwillingness to let go, not even for a brief moment, Korsak gave her a warm smile. "There's not much you can do right now. At least not before we have any idea where the woman is being held."

Jane let her arms sink down and stretched her shoulders. Her bones felt stiff, her muscles tense. "Alright. But I'll stop by the lab again to check if they have finally traced those e-mails. It can't be that hard, can it?"

Korsak shrugged. "Don't ask me. Whenever I can't sleep, I just imagine Frost jabbering about his toys. Works like a charm."

Jane couldn't help but smile. Vince Korsak was always good for a little relief. At first sight, he might appear like a reserved veteran cop who had seen too much in his long career to still be able to enjoy life. But Jane knew him better than that. He had a good heart, with a particular soft spot for stray animals, and he was like a father to her. Whenever a tough case would fret her and lead her to ignore her most basic needs — eating, sleeping, and all that —, Korsak would intervene and keep her on track. Just like today.

She was about to follow the older sergeant's suggestion and head downstairs to fill her empty stomach when her cell phone rang. Jane glanced at the display. "Speaking of your geeky friend…," she nodded to Korsak, then spoke into her phone. "Hey, Frost, what have you got?"

A few miles away, on that ominous parking lot in Chestnut Hill, Detective Frost stood in front of the convenience store, while a Crime Scene Response Unit behind him was examining the scene.

"I talked to the store owner," Frost informed Jane at the other end of the line. "Says he's known Karen Newman for a while, and she'd come here once or twice a week after work." The detective looked over his shoulder and watched as Karen Newman's white compact car was being towed to be brought to BPD for further inspection. "He recognized her photo in her purse on the ground, which is why he called us right away about her abandoned car. But other than that, he hasn't noticed anything suspicious."

Back at BPD Headquarters, Jane scratched her head. "And no surveillance cameras at all?" she asked her partner on the phone.

"Nope. The owner says it's a quiet neighborhood and people don't want anybody snooping around and watching them mind their own business." He paused for a moment as the tow truck went into reverse and its obnoxiously beeping alert signal drowned everything else. "They'll be bringing in the woman's car in a few. Maybe our techs will find something. But for now, this is a dead end."

Jane sighed. "Okay, thanks. Let me know when you get back, alright?" She hung up and tiredly looked at Korsak. "Frost got nothing. We're still stuck at square one. I'm gonna head downstairs and—"

She was interrupted by Maura emerging from around the corner, with her usual positive smile and that sparkle in her eyes that had brightened Jane's darkest days at work so often before.

"Anything new?" the medical examiner inquired.

"Nope," Jane shook her head. "I was just about to come downstairs. Wanna grab a bite to eat?"

"Yes, I'd like that. But no beer for you today," Maura decided, earning herself an annoyed eye-rolling from Jane. "And no wine either," she quickly added as they strolled towards the elevator.

Jane groaned in feigned disappointment. "Darn, I've been looking forward to another round of wine tasting all day!"


As dusk began to descend upon the city of Boston, the bearded man was again seated at his wooden table in the dimly lit living room of his house just a few miles away from BPD. The dark corner that had cradled Karen Newman during her last hours on earth was clean and empty, with small puddles of acid cleaners gathering in the cracks of the wooden floor. A dark tint of red on the planks was the only reminder the blonde woman had left behind. Her body was gone and would soon be found by some random, unlucky stranger who might have just wanted to go for an evening stroll, or who had to walk the dog, or who simply happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the flickering candle light, the man was spooning up cheap Ramen noodles from a plastic cup, occasionally slurping and leaving tiny stains of soup both on his sleeve and on the table. He didn't bother though and instead focused on his laptop computer. The screen was filled with several pages of portraits and headshots of young women, some of them strikingly beautiful, others rather low-key, and some even a little nerdy. He browsed through dozens of pictures until he found a woman who resembled the dead blonde from the convenience store. He double-clicked the picture and pulled up associated data on her identity. His cursor and his eyes skimmed the information in order to decide whether or not the woman met his criteria. You're not as beautiful as my dear Darlene, he thought. No one is. No one ever will be. He squinted and clicked through several more photos of the same woman, all of them taken in the same studio setting. But, I guess, you're close enough. He selected her file and moved it into another folder, which already contained half a dozen candidates. The good ones go into the pot, the bad ones go into your crop, he thought with a smirk and continued the process of selecting and discarding suitable women the way normal people would select clothes from a shopping catalog.

Once he was done with his noodles and satisfied with his selection of women, the man compiled their pictures and related data on two pages and opened a printer interface. It took him less than thirty seconds to arrange all items and choose his desired print settings. Clearly, his computer skills were above average and he could recite all shortcuts and commands in his sleep. He sent off the print job, leaned back and stretched his arms, and waited for the quietly buzzing printer on a cupboard nearby to spill out the pages with his choice of women who all shared the unfortunate fate of having made it into the man's final selection.

After a few minutes, he shut down the computer, dragged himself out of his chair, and straightened his stiff bones. Even though he hadn't slept for more than four or five uninterrupted hours on any given night over the past ten months, the stress and strenuous efforts of the last 24 hours made him feel even more tired and exhausted than usual. The soreness in his muscles painfully reminded him of his little excursion in the afternoon when he had to carry the dead blonde back to his car, manhandle her into the trunk, drive her to a quiet park a few miles away, and eventually heave her out of the trunk and dump her in the bushes on the side of the road. He could have sworn that the woman had been much lighter when he had carried her into his house.

Fuck, who cares. She wasn't good enough and she's gone. It's time to try again.

The man shook his head to clear his mind from all distractions and utterly useless regrets. Once he had regained his composure, he walked over to the printer and picked up the two pages with his selection of candidates for his next attempt at fixing what had broken him almost exactly ten months before. Satisfied with the printouts' quality, he turned off the printer, grabbed his jacket and laptop, blew out the candle, and headed towards the garage.

This time, it will work.