I'm so sorry for not updating yesterday! Duty forced me to go to my mother-in-law's book launch, where I was emotionally drained from schmoozing with rich fiftysomethings and physically inhibited by the quaffing of one glass too many of delicious wine to buoy my lacking social skills.
Jane trudged to the fourth apartment building of the day, her standard black work boots dragging dramatically on the pavement.
"Jane, don't slouch. It stresses the muscles surrounding your cervical and thoracic curves and can also impede eupnea."
"It's a good thing I'm slouching, then. Eu-whatsacallit sounds like it hurts."
"Eupnea is simply the term for normal breathing," Maura says, comically attempting to roll her eyes. Though she had been spending time with Jane for years, she hadn't to date been able to master the Rizzoli Eye Roll.
Jane dragged her body up the concrete steps knocked on the door of the next tenement building. "Maurrrrr," she whined. "I just want a break in the case already!"
A weathered old woman answered the door in a robe. Her wizened face showed no emotion, barring one pencil-drawn eyebrow that was slightly raised.
"Boston PD. I'm detective Jane Rizzoli. Do you have a few minutes to talk?" Jane flashed her BPD badge. "And this is Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Maura Isles." Maura smiled politely, inclining her head in greeting to the woman through the grainy mesh of the screen door.
The woman pursed her lips in thought. "Chief Medical Examiner, eh?" Her penciled eyebrows contracted, almost touching. "That mean there was a murder?"
"I'm afraid so, ma'am. We were wondering if maybe you knew this man?" Jane held a picture of the dead man up to the screen door, slightly perturbed that the woman hadn't let them in yet. She waited while the woman squinted at the picture. Her lips pursed, then released. Pursed, then released.
"I think he was one of my tenants," she said finally, sighing. "Bastard owed me two months' back rent. I almost kicked him out yesterday, but he said was working on some sort of project and would definitely have it to me by tomorrow." She opened the door for the two women. "Guess you'd better come in now, shouldn't ya?"
A narrow set of stairs greeted them at the end of the short hallway just inside the door. The three of them stood awkwardly cramped in the narrow hallway while the old woman shouted, "SONNY! SALVATORE! SONNNNNYYYY!"
"I'm com-ing! I'm com-ing," was the shouted response. A door closed somewhere above them and the distinctive shuffling of aged feet sounded on the creaking tenement stairs.
Jane's olive arm was flush with Maura's freckled one. Her fingers slowly found those of the medical examiner. Squeezing quickly, they conveyed all of the usual Rizzoli swagger and assurance.
I got this, the squeeze said to Maura.
But when the hand upon hers loosened, it didn't let go.
Stay with me, it said.
Maura smiled, feeling like the most fortunate woman in all of Boston.
Eek eeek eeek. The stairs alerted them of the progress of the aged feet, which were moving at a frustratingly slow pace.
"Jesus. How many floors are there?" Jane whispered into Maura's ear. She began shifting her weight from one foot to the other while Maura stood perfectly still next to her.
"We have six. And no elevator," the woman said to them sharply. Jane rolled her eyes behind the woman, but responded with, "Oh, really? I would have only guessed three," in her sweetest voice.
Salvatore appeared at the top of the last flight of stairs. He wore long black pants too wide for his withered frame, a thin white v-neck under a red cardigan and a Yankees cap squarely over his snowy hair. His blue eyes sparkled with interest, but his breathing was labored. He took the steps in the way someone in pain would: one foot down followed by the other onto each individual step.
"What can we do for you girls?" he asked, conveying much more friendliness than his female counterpart.
"We're here with the BPD concerning this man," Jane said, holding up the picture of their latest vic.
He nodded his head sadly. "Yep. He lived here all right. Can't say I didn't see it coming."
Jane's hand squeezed Maura's again, this time out of excitement. She smiled genuinely at the man and asked his name.
"Everyone calls me Sonny. And this is my wife Shirley. Come on this way," he said, leading them through a door to their left. Inside was a room that functioned as a parlor and a kitchen, a small partition about waist high separating the two. "Sit down, sit down!" he said, ushering them to a couch. "Shirley, some tea?"
The woman's blank face belied her real apprehension of the two women, especially the taller one. She nodded, and then busied herself in the kitchen.
"He's dead, huh?" Sonny asked.
Jane nodded definitively. "Found him a couple of hours ago. He was probably killed…" Jane paused, realizing she had never gotten a time of death from the medical examiner. "Dr. Isles, do we have a time of death?"
"My initial findings indicate that he was definitely killed within the last eight hours. I'll be able to narrow that down further—"
"Thank you, Dr. Isles," Jane interrupted. She had anticipated a long explanation and wanted to get home at least before the sun rose. "So what do you know about him?"
"He went by the name of Alli McKinley. He came to us about three months ago asking to rent a room. He always hung around with two fellas, a floofy lookin' black guy and a skinny white guy. They would argue occasionally, but it never got bad enough for my wife and me to kick 'em out. He paid his first months' rent all right, but never gave us the last two. He said he was working on finishing up a job, and then he'd have enough money. I believed him—what else was I to do? Can't undo two months, now can ya?"
Shirley set two cups of tea down in front of Jane and Maura. Maura dutifully sipped hers; Jane sat thoughtfully chewing her lip.
A 'floofy' black guy…Jane thought she'd give it a shot. She pulled out a picture of her first vic. "This guy look familiar?"
"You don't say! That's the fella he was always with. Was some sort of magician. Always was showin off some sort of card trick or mind game. He memorized a whole deck of cards right in front of me once. What a fella!"
"Did you ever get his name?"
"Fraid not. They just called him 'G."
"Can we go up and see his room?" Jane asked. Sonny assented, getting up and giving them a key.
"Room 302. It's the second one on the left."
Jane and Maura thanked them for their time and the tea, apologized for the late hour and then made their way up the creaky stairs to Alli McAlister's room.
The '2' in the 302 was cleaner and bigger than the first two numbers and hung slightly askew. The door took two or three tries to click open, the slightly rotting wood making the lock stick.
Alli McAlister had been living with the bare minimum. A bed, a dresser, a table and a bathroom. A strange dartboard hung on one wall and an odd array of gaudy, glittering clothing hung in the open closet on the opposite side.
"What the…?" Jane asked, fingering the stretchy material.
"Did Ru Paul decide to try designing wrestling costumes?" Jane asked a clueless Maura Isles.
"Ru Paul?"
"The drag queen! Have you never seen my mother watching Ru Paul's Drag Race? You, Dr. Maura Isles, live in a box."
"It's actually a polyhedron."
Jane sighed, secretly loving that her best friend couldn't understand colloquialisms. Her eyes searched out foresty ones, her body subconsciously relaxing when they found their target. Right now the forest was dark. Mysterious. The eyes of a predator glinted from behind undergrowth.
Jane felt her body tense as Maura moved into her space to put a strand of unruly hair behind her ear. Her hand lingered on Jane's chiseled cheek, her eyelids lowering seductively.
Kiss me, Maura willed.
Bzzzzzzt. The sound of Jane's phone caused the two of them to quickly pull themselves out of the mire that was the other person.
Casey: R U going to be home tonight?
Jane: Not sure. Just got a break in the case.
Casey: I miss u.
Jane: Don't wait up.
"Hey, Jane! Look." Maura waved Jane over to the dresser, where a large collection of knives rested on a bed of fake red velvet.
"This just gets weirder. Why would he have all these knives and not one on him?"
Maura looked from the dartboard to the clothes and to the dresser and then back again, her mouth slightly in a pout as she ruminated. Jane watched the blonde's face as she put all the factors together, imagining Maura using some sort of algorithm and plugging in all the factors.
Maura's face brightened suddenly. She picked a small knife up and walked to the board, standing about five feet from it. She lifted up the knife and took aim. The knife sailed through the air, spinning masterfully and hit the target one ring away from the bulls-eye.
Jane crossed her arms and smiled proudly.
That's my girl.
"As impressive as that was, may I remind you that we have a case to solve?"
"Au contraire, this is actually very pertinent. As I just demonstrated, these are perfect knives for knife-throwing, and this is a perfect target for knives."
Jane stared, jaw clenched, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised.
Maura sighed. "Our victim was a knife-thrower! He most likely was in some sort of performance troupe, as supported by those costumes." Maura gestured over to the awful clothing.
"Our vic was in a circus?" Jane asked, disbelievingly. "I guess that explains our first vic being a magician. Maybe they worked together," she mused. "Let's get back to the precinct and tell Korsak what we know. Maybe we can find out some more now that we have a name."
They slipped the key under the door of the building owners and drove back toward BPD, the Boston streetlights sporadically illuminating their clasped hands and soft smiles.