DISCLAIMER: I do not own this show, the books, or these characters. I only borrow them.

Chapter 30

As Frost and Korsak walked down the brightly lit white hallways toward their destination, Korsak couldn't help mumbling the whole way that it was the farthest from the parking garage. And he was correct. The twelfth floor of the Blake building at Massachusetts General Hospital contained the Neuroscience Care Unit that currently housed Beverly Stewart, and her parents during visiting hours. Entering the room in the NCU, both Frost and Korsak were tossed back in time.

Korsak saw the bandaged right hand. He remembered seeing Jane in the hospital after Hoyt got to her. He still felt bad about that day...wondering if he could have been by her side to prevent what happened, wondering if she was going to be okay after the fact both emotionally and physically, wondering if her hands would work the same and if she would be able to even hold a pencil or button up a shirt, wondering if she was going to be able to be his partner again or if the injuries would prevent her from using her hands and so qualifying for shooting. He looked at the empty space where the right index finger should have been and so was reminded that this girl in front of him was not his injured partner but another survivor to a heinous criminal. Just one more girl with scars to remind them daily of the horror they went though...but also that they were survivors.

Frost saw the bandaged head. From the brief glance he had of the parents, he assumed that the victim's hair was a deep brunette like Jane's, which did nothing to help stop him from thinking about his partner laying in a similar bed less than two months ago. The machines beeping and the pale skin scared him. He worried that he would lose his partner. He joked to her about being paired with Korsak, but it was more than that...he feared losing her to death. Losing her as a partner if the injuries damaged her beyond healing and returning to work would be bad, but he could live with that. He wasn't sure about the other possibility. He wouldn't be able to live with that fact knowing he wasn't by his partner's side fighting tooth and nail with her when she was in danger. He was supposed to have her back, and all he had was a view of her front as the gun went off and he watched her face contort in pain. He looked again at the bandages on the head and hoped that Beverly would be able to heal as well as his partner seemed to be doing. They were both survivors and would become stronger for what all they went through...so he prayed fervently.

At similar times, the two partners turned their gaze from the victim on the bed to the two parents. The mother looked like she usually tried to dress as impeccably as Dr. Isles, but with worry over her daughter, a couple buttons on her shirt were skewed and her skirt was wrinkled were she kept grasping at the hem when she did not have either her husband's or daughter's hand to clutch. Her dark chocolate hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, but some medium length strands were falling out. A nearly empty box of tissues lay nearby her chair, and the partners could tell that the smeared mascara around her green eyes had not been fixed or cared about in awhile. The husband was now standing at his wife's side with a hand on her shoulder as if to hold her in place emotionally. He was wearing jeans and a cream colored polo shirt. His lighter salt and pepper hair was slightly messed from carding his fingers through his hair in worry over his daughter. He held out his right hand to shake the two detectives' hands as he introduced himself and his wife as Marten and Susan Stewart. "Thank you for coming and looking into what happened to our daughter."

Frost caught himself before he could say something stupid like 'it's our pleasure.' "I'm Detective Frost, and this is Detective Korsak," he said pointing over to his partner. He debated his next line but the parents needed to know, "with Boston Homicide."

With the word homicide, the look on the parents' faces changed. They stared first at the detectives and then at their daughter lying in the bed. Worry even more prevalent on their faces, but also a bit of gratitude that she wasn't dead, so fully in need of homicide detectives, even though they feared what else they might hear. Marten nearly collapsed back into his seat. "What is this about?"

"We've had similar victims as your daughter, only they haven't been so lucky." Frost almost kicked himself for that word.

"Lucky, LUCKY! How is this lucky?" Susan finally spoke up. She got up and walked over to her daughter's side. "She is going to school for art. She wants to illustrate children's books, and she loves to play the piano. This will kill her, even though someone didn't, which is what you are saying, right? And that is if she wakes up and is herself." A sob tore through the room at the realizations Susan just spelled out about her daughter's possible future.

"Ma'am, I'm truly sorry..." Frost would have gone on trying to apologize, but Marten walked over to try and calm his distraught wife down which would do more than he ever could at this point.

Korsak just looked over at Frost with a 'shit happens' look. After things settled down a bit Korsak decided to ask some pointed yet safer questions. "Where is she going to school?"

"She goes to Suffolk University. She is working on getting a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Illustration next year...she just started her senior year." Marten calmly gave the answer as he and his wife gazed through the window at Blossom Street. He was still rubbing his wife's back to help calm her down and so missed the looked the two detectives gave each other.

There was now another victim associated with Suffolk University. "Do you know if she was friends with a girl named Saleemah al-Sarif?" Korsak asked.

"No," the shaky answer came from the wife as she turned back around to face the pair of detectives again. "She didn't have many friends at school. She was always buried in her art. I would have remembered if she mentioned someone with a name like that as it's so unique."

They asked a few more basic questions before handing over their cards and asking that they be called if the parents thought of any information no matter how small. They wished their daughter well before leaving to stop briefly at Suffolk University and then heading back to the office.

The parents sat and waited for their daughter to wake up, and Beverly slept away in a coma like she didn't have a care in the world or so it seemed to those worrying about her.

Korsak was glad that Jane was nowhere to be seen when they got back to the office over two hours later. He knew that she was going to be a grump after not being able to go to the hospital especially after she found the lead. Not that it was as much of a lead as they were hoping for, even though they did have the university connection to go on now. They knew from the two majors: Illustration and Computer Science, it was unlikely that the two girls ever ran into each other in classes. Beverly wasn't doing computer illustrations where MAYBE they would have met in the computer labs.

Frost called Saleemah's cousin when they returned to the office, where he learned that he had never heard the name Beverly Stewart. Most of his cousin's friends had either been in the same area of study or Muslim or both. He again thanked the man and reminded him to call if he thought of anything before he ended the call how he was expecting.

More questions, but no answers came forth the rest of the day.

Another break came the next morning from Erin Volchko. She actually came out of her windowless cramped room S269, also known as the hair, fiber, and trace evidence lab. The criminalist had a winning smile on her face as she walked toward the bank of desks, and Jane wondered as she watched her coming closer if her brother would have gone for a mousey blond who lived in the labs and seldom came out for air. Today her pinched eyed like she was still still squinting into a microscope held a glint of amusement.

"So what do you have for us?" Korsak had to ask as the file was passed to Frost.

"I learned that the hairs found on Saleemah's body was an anagen hair from a Caucasoid male."

Jane just smiled knowing how Erin loved to stretch the answer out and make you work for it. "Are you going to explain or should I call up Dr. Isles for clarification."

Erin just chuckled, "No need for that. An anagen hair has an elongated root as it's in an active growth phase."

"Check, so the hair is growing. Thank you. Now we will watch our suspects closely...that would be worse than watching a pot boil," Korsak couldn't help grousing.

"And the Cuckold male part?" Frost asked.

Jane and Korsak erupted in laugher, which got louder at Frost's dumbfounded look. "Wouldn't that be a penis?" Korsak staged whispered crudely.

"Bet you know the term well with all those wives, huh, Korsak," Jane said.

That shut-up one of the laughing fools, "Low blow Jane, low blow."

Jane would have commented on how low if the pain in her side now allowed her to talk let alone laugh anymore. She was lucky to still be able to breath shallowly.

Erin smiled over at Frost, "Caucasoid is the anthropological term for human beings from Europe originating from Indian subcontinents."

Jane knew she was still testing them. She wheezed out, "But you had enough DNA to determine all that and male..."

"Yea, so we are left with what? An eighth of the population as suspects?" Korsak complained.

"On a bad day for us yes, but on a bad day for your suspect he was in the system for petty larceny, Anand Gupta." Erin just smiled more broadly at Korsak.

"And you couldn't just tell us this?"

"What fun would there have been in that?"

As Erin started to walk away, Jane could have sworn she saw her wink at Frost who was still holding the file with the name of the new...well, only suspect. Was she hitting on Frost? She wouldn't be doing that if she had just lost Frankie as a boyfriend, would she? Jane had been so sure Frankie's girl had been Erin. She might have to rethink that.

Korsak and Frost pulled up to an old brownstone on Joy Street and got out of their vehicle. Korsak looked again at the address from the DMV print out as he started toward the door. "These old buildings really should have elevators."

"Then you'd just complain that they were a death trap or something," Frost joked back. The old man wasn't so bad once you started to get to understand him and his complaining.

"Probably," and with that he held his tongue, more to deal with the three flights of rickety stairs. When he got to door 403 and knocked, an Hispanic young man answered the door...definitely not who they were looking for. "Is there an Anand Gupta at this residence?" Korsak asked without flashing his badge yet.

"Yea... ANAND," the kid yelled into the other room and a gruff "What?" was heard nearly as loud. "Some coppers are looking for you."

So much for not flashing their badge, but luckily for them...and for Anand no running took place as he came to the door.

"Can I help you?"

That was a pleasant change Korsak thought. "We were wondering if you could come down to the station and talk to us about Saleemah al-Sharif..."

"What about my girlfriend?" Anand asked.

"We have some questions about her murder..."

Anand nearly fell on the floor as he staggered backwards before he found a kitchen chair, "She's dead?...Who would hurt her?"

"That is what we are hoping you could help us with," Frost took over. Which was how the trio ended up in an interview room not twenty minutes later.

"Where were you Wednesday night, October 6th, between 8pm and midnight?" Korsak asked siting down on the uncomfortable metal chair.

"Yeah, my friends and I were watching a Resident Evil Marathon as we were finally going Friday to see Afterlife 3D..."he sobered up, "was that when Saleemah was..." he took a deep breath not able to say the word.

Frost pushed over a legal pad, "We'll need a list of names to verify where you were."

"Sure, no problem," and with that Anand started writing his friends' names down on the lined paper. "I really hope you catch whoever hurt my Leema. I really loved her."

"Why didn't we learn about you from her friends and family then?" Korsak wondered aloud.

"We were keeping it low key knowing the family wouldn't approve as she is Muslim and I'm Hindu...but we love...loved each other."

Frost thought he was able to switch tenses quickly, "Her cousin said she planned to dump whoever she was dating."

"She was saying that just to get him off our back. She thought he wouldn't watch her as closely if she said she wasn't dating anyone anymore."

"We found some of your hairs on her clothes...that is how we found you. Can you explain that?" Korsak was hoping to trip him up.

"I'm around her a lot as her boyfriend."

"Yes, but to have roots for DNA they had to have been pulled out..."

"Leema really likes to card her fingers through my hair, and sometimes she has to tug a bit if there is a tangle." Anand gave the answer without an hint of a lie or nervousness.

Anand looked and sounded truthful and sincere, but something about him just rubbed Frost wrong. He knew that Jane would be listening in, and maybe she would have an idea. Woman's intuition was often helpful in cases involving relationships, not that Frost would call it that to her... gut feeling, because if he pointed out Jane was a WOMEN he would be in pain for quite awhile.

AN: Jane learns about the relationship after her first case off desk so got another week story time at best and I need to finish up this case...but no worries at least I think the next chapter is one of the more fun and interesting ones to tide you over...or annoy you more :D