A/N: A little something for your Sunday reading.. probably more to come today.
In the early morning of the next day, right before the peak of rush hour, the man was again driving through the streets of Boston in pursuit of his next victim. After he had spent the past evening cleaning up the bloody mess that Brenda Williams had left behind on the wooden floor in his living room, he had grabbed his laptop and driven to an Italian 24/7 take-out restaurant just a few blocks away. He had ordered his usual meatball pasta and a bottle of cheap Soave and then spent the night in his car browsing through the comprehensive collection of information about his potential victims that he had meticulously gathered over the past ten months. And after he had compared the blonde women's schedules with map data, traffic forecasts, and their latest status updates on different social media sites, he had concluded that Katherine Oliver would be his best bet for the next morning.
Unfortunately, the man hadn't anticipated that today of all days his chosen victim would be late and half an hour behind her usual schedule. And as he was now following her white family van through the Brookline neighborhood, nervously tapping his fingers on the wheel, the man wondered what had caused the delay and whether he should call the whole thing off.
No, there's no time to pick another one, he decided. There'll be plenty of opportunities as long as she sticks to her usual Wednesday morning activities. He slipped his gloves on, hid his eyes behind his sunglasses, and pulled his Red Sox cap deep into his face. After just two days of practice — and ten months of obsessive planning —, all these little steps had already become second nature to him and strengthened his confidence in his ability to follow through with his plan despite Katherine Oliver's spontaneous tardiness.
A few minutes later, the white van parked in front of the St. Mary of the Assumption elementary school, and the woman got out of her car, hurried over to the passenger side, and opened the door for her 7-year-old daughter, who was the spitting image of her mother.
The man stopped his silver sedan a few car lengths away and curiously watched how Katherine Oliver hugged and kissed her little sunshine, then handed her a lunch-box and waved as the blonde girl ran towards her friends at the school's entrance. He wondered what it felt like to have children. A family. A wife. But now I will never know. He would have loved to build a family with Darlene, but all his dreams had been brutally smashed to pieces on that one fateful night ten months ago.
When the woman got back into her car and drove off, the man inconspicuously followed her, hoping that there wouldn't be any other unforeseen changes in her schedule. If everything went according to plan, her next stop should be the local library, where she would pick up this week's book for her Tuesday night book club. He knew from her Facebook page that she and the other bookaholics had selected Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn to be read until the coming week because it was all the rave right now and would be turned into a movie very soon. Even though he hadn't read the book himself, he couldn't help but smirk at its title. Gone Girl. How fitting. Soon, Katherine Oliver will be gone, too. With some luck and more efforts from Detective Rizzoli, she might be found again, but if not… The man wondered what he'd do if this third attempt failed just like the previous two. He would definitely have to raise the stakes for the detective. If Rizzoli isn't looking in the right places, I'll have to force her to pay more attention. Maybe he would have to make the case more personal for her. He had already started researching her colleagues at BPD, and clearly, there were some interesting options.
He was ripped from his thoughts when Katherine Oliver's white van pulled into a small parking lot — not of the local library but of a second-hand bookstore in a quiet side street. The man grinned at the woman's predictability. He waited until she had parked her car and disappeared inside the store, before he parked his own vehicle in one of the few empty spots in the lot.
For a split second, that nagging voice deep down inside of him cried out again, begged him to choose another candidate and to let this woman go home and be there for her daughter in the afternoon. But the anger and pain over the loss of his beloved Darlene instantly drowned whatever sanity was still left in his mind. This will actually be beneficial to my plan, he convinced himself. The woman's little daughter would be incentive enough for Detective Rizzoli to step up her game and finally help him find closure. Yes, this will work!
The thought of his pending success filled the man's broken heart with excitement as Katherine Oliver emerged from the bookstore, a brown paper bag under her arm, and strolled towards her car. It's now or never.
Except for a few cars, the parking lot was still empty, and if he followed his usual routine, there wouldn't be enough time for anybody to stop him. He took a deep breath and grimaced with determination.
And then, everything happened like a well-rehearsed dance routine. While the woman was fishing for her car keys in her pocket, the man got out of his sedan, leaped towards the blonde, rammed his fist into her right temple, and opened his arms to catch her body before it would hit the ground — except that Katherine Oliver didn't fall down. She staggered and momentarily lost her balance, but just a second later, she instinctively clutched the newly bought book in her paper bag and whacked it into the man's right jaw. He moaned in surprise, turned away his face, and blindly snatched at the woman. Katherine Oliver knew this would be her only chance, and she intended to use it.
"Help!" she cried out and staggered away from the man.
But like a wounded beast, the man got even more furious by his pain and by her attempts to escape. He seized her from behind, spun her around, and sent her head flying against her car. The blonde's fingers let go off the book and she finally slumped down.
Panting heavily, the man glanced around. Surely, the noise of their fight couldn't have gone unnoticed. He heaved the woman over his shoulder, hurried to his car, and popped the trunk. With a mad grunt, he threw Katherine Oliver's body into his car, slammed the trunk shut, and got back behind the wheel. Right when he drove off the lot with squeaking tires, the elderly owner of the small bookstore stepped outside, but it was already too late. The only thing he could do was watch the silver sedan disappear around the corner.
Around the same time, Jane was standing in front of her locker in the basement of Boston Police Headquarters, dressed in her usual black slacks and a tank top, her dark and curly hair still damp from a shower just minutes before. Lost in thought, the detective was staring at her reflection in the mirror on the inside of the locker's door.
She had woken up right before 7 a.m. after a surprisingly long and deep sleep despite her curled-up position on Maura's narrow couch. Somehow, she had managed to bring her numb bones back into their appropriate position, and after a long yawn and a short stretching, she had felt awake enough to face the day and the next e-mail from the killer that would undoubtedly arrive very soon. She had peeked into the autopsy room and thought about making a random the-morning-after joke — her own special way to let Maura know that she was feeling better and appreciated her concern the night before. But when she had found the medical examiner still typing up her report on Brenda Williams' autopsy, Jane had decided to let her finish undisturbed and just left a little note on Maura's desk before heading towards the fitness room in the basement. A 20-minute workout on one of the treadmills had jump-started her body, and a quick shower afterward had temporarily washed away her memories of the previous night's gloomy ending near Bussey Brook Meadow.
But now that she was staring at her own tired reflection in the mirror before reaching for a spare shirt she always kept at hand in a gym bag in her locker, all her doubts about her job and its purpose began to creep back into her mind. Her position as a detective didn't come with the comfortable rhythm of a 9-to-5 job, and she had spent many a night in the office or out in the streets without time to stop at her apartment for a quick shower, dinner, or any other activity ordinary people would enjoy in their spare time. Jane tried to remember the last time she had done something for fun outside of work — besides hanging out with Maura, which, of course, was fun except when the medical examiner used her as a guinea pig for strange new vegan food or other crazy activities. But other than that, Jane barely found time for anything else beyond work. Maybe I should indeed take a day off? Or a week? A month even? And there they were again, her lingering doubts about her career, about the whole point of it all. She reached for her badge and weighed it in her hand. Does it really matter what I do?
When another cop entered the locker rooms, whistling to himself and briefly acknowledging Jane with a friendly nod, she took a deep breath and grabbed her gun and jacket. She glanced at her own tired reflection again, then shook her head and closed her locker's door. Out of sight, out of mind. I got work to do.
Ten minutes later, after a quick phone call with Lieutenant Cavanaugh to update him about her case, Jane arrived back at Maura's office and found the medical examiner behind her desk. She had already changed from her black scrubs into dark pants and a fashionable blouse and barely showed any signs of the long night.
"Okay, where are you hiding your clone?" Jane asked as she noticed her friend's perfect appearance and plopped down on the couch.
"My what?" Maura looked up in confusion.
"You look like you've just returned from a spa weekend, so where is the other Maura who stayed up all night and did the autopsy?"
Seeing that the detective was comfortably slouching between the pillows again, Maura tried to suppress a satisfied smile. "I thought you didn't like my couch?"
The brunette playfully punched one of the cushions. "I'll like it as soon as you add more pillows… and replace it with a real couch." Jane grinned but switched to a more serious tone when Maura ignored her teasing and focused on the autopsy report in front of her. "Found anything?"
"More of the same," the medical examiner said with a sigh. "Perimortem bruises, the same cotton fibers under her fingernails, and a very similar incision to her abdomen. She bled out, and lividity indicates that she must have died shortly before her body was found."
"So, our killer is hiding somewhere in or near Chestnut Hill?" the detective mused.
Maura nodded, then hesitated for a moment. "And it looks like he's getting more violent. The second victim had more bruises than the first one as well as a perimortem thorax trauma and two broken ribs."
Jane nervously rubbed the scars on the back of her hands. "Yeah, because we're not doing what he expects us to do. He's losing patience."
Maura wanted to continue the detective's thought but was interrupted by the faint buzzing of Jane's phone.
The detective checked the caller ID and frowned before answering the call. "Rizzoli." After a few seconds, Jane got up and began to pace back and forth in the small office. Whoever was on the other end of the line obviously had important news. "Okay, keep me up to speed, alright?" she eventually ended the call, then tensely looked at Maura. "Apparently, a woman was abducted from a parking lot in Brookline this morning. They're still at the scene figuring out what exactly is going on, but that's gotta be our killer. I don't believe in coincidences."
"Well," Maura protested shyly, "statistically speaking, coincidences happen much more frequently than one would assume. For example, the probability of two people sharing the same birthday is already above 50% in a group of just 23…"
Jane rolled her eyes and waited for the medical examiner to stop. "And the probability of me getting bored is close to 100% in a group of just me and you."
A sudden knock at the door to the medical examiner's office averted the next round of their morning banter. The two women turned around to find Angela in the door frame carrying a tablet with two plates of bunny-shaped pancakes and two cups of coffee. "I heard you two had a long night, so I thought I'd bring you some breakfast."
"That's very nice of you, thank you!" Maura smiled at her and eagerly reached for one of the plates and cups.
"How did you know we've been here all night?" Jane asked and curiously studied her mother's face.
"Sean told me…," the older Rizzoli woman hesitantly admitted.
"When? I just told him fifteen minutes ago?" the detective continued her interrogation.
"Uh, I was in the car with him when you called…," Angela sheepishly cocked her head and tried to appease her daughter with the remaining pancakes.
Annoyed, Jane reached for one of the napkins on the tablet and wrapped a pancake in it before turning to Maura. "I'll chip in a pair of cows if you go ahead and hire her that milkman…" She gave her mother one last admonishing look, then darted off. "I gotta go."
"What milkman?" Angela asked in confusion.
Maura just chuckled and shook her head as she watched the detective disappear towards the elevators.
