"So if it isn't Frost, then who is our John Doe?" Jane asked, pacing around the bullpen.
As a police officer, Frost would have been in the system, effectively eliminating him as the vic. This still, however, didn't settle her nerves regarding her partner. She had a nagging feeling that something was simply not right. Frost simply did not miss work without a call or a text. Frankie hadn't heard from him, his mother and her partner still had not arrived home…it was all a little disconcerting.
Frost aside, Jane saw her case sink further into the proverbial mud. They had no leads, no witnesses, no vic ID, no fingerprints. She and Korsak had spent the better part of the day calling the businesses in the area surrounding Fenway in a vain attempt to garner any information about the victim or the alleyway. There had to be something to help them.
"Hey, Maur? Did you ever send that sticky stuff on the watch to the crime lab?"
"Oh, yes. Senior Criminalist Chang said she'd have it done before she goes home tonight."
"Great! I'll go down there and check her progress—"
"I don't believe you would be comfortable down there, Jane," Maura interrupted.
"And why is that?"
"Well, Senior Criminalist Chang has taken to bringing her nudism to work on late nights—she claims it helps her to work better."
Jane's mouth dropped open slightly. Korsak held his round stomach and laughed heartily.
"It is very liberating," Maura mused. "I've been thinking about adopting the practice myself."
Maura, naked, legs crossed, in her Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts chair, a cool, seductive grin on her face.
Stop staring at her boobs, you moron.
Jane's phone went off, breaking the awkward silence Maura seemed to take no notice of.
"Rizzoli." Jane sighed, listening to whatever the person on the other line was saying. "Well, fuck. Okay. Don't bother calling Dr. Isles or Korsak, I have them right here. We'll be there as soon as we can." She hung up her phone and looked at her best friend. "Keep your clothes on, Dr. Isles. We've got another murder."
"Swans Reflecting Elephants. Another Dali classic," Maura commented easily upon entering the crime scene.
Dark brown cuts across two dirty squares of sidewalk in arcs and lines. Smaller and more rushed than the previous painting, the brushstrokes crudely depicted three swans, their reflections stretching into elephants. They sat in a ruddy pool in front of a small island of broken, barren trees. An old black pipe sat next to the drained body of a stocky middle-aged man.
Crack! Korsak pulled on a pair of blue latex gloves to pick up the pipe. "Hasn't been used in quite some time. Must be a prop."
"More attention to detail. There is a man standing on the left side of the original painting that has a pipe in his mouth." Maura bent down to get closer to the body, the curve of her ass momentarily hijacking Jane's vision.
"I assume you're working very hard, sis?" Frankie says as he sidles up to the gawking Jane.
"Shut up, asswipe." Jane hip checks her younger brother and crouches down to Maura's level. "What do we have?"
"Caucasian male, mid-forties, suffers from acute alopecia—"
"Alo-what?"
"Commonly referred to as baldness," Maura clarified. "Has excessive blood loss due to severed right jugular, generally used to drain the body of blood during embalming."
"The murder seems to be much more precise…but the painting seems to be much more rushed. Maur, can you tell if he was killed here?"
"There are no signs of blood loss anywhere in the area, nor any signs of other injuries. I need to check the angle of the score, but upon initial analysis, he seems to have been attacked from behind with a sharp, precise object."
"So you think this was premeditated?"
"I refuse to venture a guess, but it does seem that way, doesn't it?" Maura carefully ended her statement with a question, so as to be very clear she was not, in fact, guessing.
Jane rolled her eyes, but was glad for her best friend's almost-agreement with her. The last murder had looked hasty, angry, passionate. This murder seemed very calm and precise, though the execution of the bloody Dali rendition was much more hurried.
"Did anybody see anything?" Jane asked one of the police officers at the crime scene tape.
"We do have one lady. She's a bit shaken up, but she'll talk."
He led Jane over to a stout woman who was wringing her hands nervously. Jane inwardly groaned: she could feel the drama pouring off the woman in waves.
Here we go.
"Hello, ma'am. I'm detective Jane Rizzoli. I hear you saw something?"
"Oh, yes! It was traumatic!"
"I'm sure it was, Ms.—" Jane paused for her name.
"Yates."
"I'm sure it was traumatic, Ms. Yates. And I know it seems insensitive to talk about it right now, but it's really important that we get your statement down while it's fresh in your head. Anything you can remember will be crucial to helping me bring this man to justice. So anything you can remember—anything at all—I would like you to tell me." Jane hated giving this speech, but it was routine, and helpful in calming her impatience when she had to wring details out of nervous witnesses.
The lady bobbed her head in understanding. "I'm really—I'm glad to be of help, detective," she said solemnly. "I was walking home from work and saw a man crouching down on the sidewalk with a paint bucket in his hand." She paused, waiting for Jane to write down what she said. "I saw someone lying next to him, and didn't think twice about it, only as I got closer, I noticed he seemed very hurried, like he wanted to leave but couldn't. I couldn't see his face, but I did notice that he was wearing black gloves and carrying some sort of cane." Here, she paused again, the scratching of Jane's pen loud between them. "As soon as he heard me come near, he ran away. I found the body and called our boys in blue—" She paused, took in Jane's masculine appearance and then quickly corrected, "our people in blue, immediately."
Jane forced a smile and handed the proud woman one of her business cards. "If you think of anything else, please don't hesitate to call me."
He commits the murder elsewhere—probably somewhere nearby—bleeds our vic out into the paint bucket and then moves the body to the street to do the painting?
Jane analyzed the blood on the pavement. Some lines seemed more fresh, others more thick.
No. Why would he risk having a dead body out there with him? He probably bled the vic out, finished the painting, brought the vic out and then realized some details were missing. Our guy probably was a perfectionist and decided to do some touch-ups when Yates showed up.
"Hey, Korsak. C'mere." She waited until her former partner was crouched down beside her. "Look. See how this is still wet, but this is already dry?"
Korsak nodded.
"It looks like our perp came back and touched this up later." She related to him her crime scenario.
"Seems plausible. That means he had to be going back and forth from somewhere…"
"Somewhere close."
"You know what that means."
"Canvass time! My favorite!" Jane's voice lilted up in feigned excitement, her eyes wide with sarcasm.