The apartment was dark as a tomb. The blinds were down.

Nick Simms was waiting for his sister-in-law at the apartment door. He, too, was a detective with the BPD and responsible for IT issues and cybercrime. But because he knew his way around not only the virtual space but could also be a force in the physical world - which, at 6'0" and with a beefy build, wasn't difficult - Nick was often called upon to work on other cases. Elizabeth had worked with him for years and held him and his approach in high regard. She liked his two faces, that of the fierce grizzly bear and the fluffy teddy bear who could gloat or marvel like a little boy.

"Why is it so dark here?" she asked as Nick led her into the apartment, shining a flashlight.

"The son of a bitch did a great job. He ripped out the fuse."

"And who discovered the body?"

"Monday mornings, the cleaner always comes here. At about eleven a.m. Today, too, and she found the dead man."

"Who is the man?" Elizabeth asked with furrowed brows. "Do we even know who lives here?"

"Officially, a guy named Steven Foreman, one of the bosses in the Boston rocker scene lives here. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the body is Foreman. A colleague from the Organized Crime Unit will call me back in a minute, and I'll run the ID through Maggie's office anyway."

"Any of her people here yet?" asked Elizabeth, looking around for the redhead in the darkness; as if in response to her question, a man in a Tyvek suit she hadn't noticed before flipped open his laptop at a table casting faint toxic green light into the room.

"We need to get some light in here first," Nick replied. "By the way, Maggie sends her love. She's in court and will look at the body later."

Elizabeth took a deep breath and gritted her teeth for a moment. "How did the killer get in here, anyway?"

"I don't know. It almost looks like he had a key card from whoever."

"And the light?" Elizabeth cautiously put one foot in front of the other.

"Our guys are already downstairs working on the junction boxes. The guy also pulled down the blinds and ripped out the circuits' wires."

"So we're not going to get the blinds back up anytime soon," Elizabeth sighed. "Well, that's okay. The neighbors don't have to see or hear everything." She took a few steps forward. "The body?"

"Here it is." Nick stood next to his partner, and the forensic technician joined her. Elizabeth couldn't tell which technician it was in the darkness, but that was secondary for now, anyway.

"We found him on the dining room table," Nick continued. "The killer threw a vase of flowers and a few other items on the floor, then tied the victim to the table."

The flashlight's beam first hit the vase, which lay broken on the floor. Next to it flowers, shards, and water. Then the cone of light hit the corpse, which stared at the ceiling with its mouth open and eyes wide: eyes that had seen the killer but were now only rigid, murmur-like balls of protein. The man's upper body was exposed. Tattoos depicting snakes, skulls, and weapons stretched across arms and pectorals marred by deep gashes. But what stood out most was the hole in the chest cavity. A rather large hole. The skin had been cut open, the ribs severed. Behind it was nothing but blackness. Blood splatters on the walls testified that the victim had been alive when these gruesome injuries and mutilations had occurred.

"Jesus," Elizabeth whispered. "Did he --?"

"Yes," said the man from Maggie's team. "He cut his heart out."

"And taken it with him?" the detective asked. "Or is it here somewhere?"

Nick shook his head slowly. "No."

"Detective Rizzoli?" One of the uniformed men came into the apartment. "Dr. Isles is here."

Elizabeth looked at her brother-in-law, a little surprised. "Oh, I thought she was still in the UK. Okay, thanks; I'll pick her up."

Katherine stood at the door with a shoulder bag. She looked a little tired.

"There you are." Elizabeth paused in the motion to hug her sister when she realized she was already wearing gloves. She smiled wryly as she took a long, close look at her younger sister. "I didn't expect you to be here so soon."

Katherine smiled as well. "Well, you can see how much of a hurry I'm in when death calls in our good o'town."

"How was Scotland Yard?"

Katherine had been in London the entire last week. Just an hour ago, her plane had landed.

When she'd gotten the call from Nick, she'd driven from the airport to the crime scene. She had temporarily stored her travel cases in one of the patrol cars.

"Very interesting. People from the Obscene Publications Squad had also come, the Scotland Yard's porn unit. They have to slog through all sorts of porn and alleged snuff movies to track down crime cartels that way, which works amazingly well. You wouldn't believe all the things you learn about the makers of this film in one movie."

Katherine had taken the early plane from London; added to that was a few hours less sleep time because of the time difference. She seemed correspondingly tired. Otherwise, she looked again as if she had just given a history lecture at Harvard. "So, how are things here?"

"The horror continues," Elizabeth replied with a very deep frown. "Come with me, please, Kate." She led her sister to the body.

Katherine blinked in the semi-darkness until her eyes adjusted to some degree. Then she smiled warmly in greeting at her husband, who stood beside the dead man and looked down at the murdered man's torso. "Oh, shit. Cut skin, cut ribs, and removed heart." The doctor bent over the wound. "All the other organs seem to be there still. What's that?"

The beam of Nick's flashlight twitched downward.

In a pool of blood lay the sternum with the rib attachments cleanly severed on the floor. A trail of blood began beside the sternum, and it led about five yards away from the body, then disappeared into nothingness.

"It's like he held the heart in his hand until here and then stowed it away somewhere," Elizabeth said, searching the floor but unable to detect any other tracks.

"Here's something," one of the officers called out. "This is ... oh shit --"

The two detectives and the psychiatrist rushed to the corner of the room opposite the apartment door.

"Is that a fucking dog?" asked Nick with furrowed brows.

"Yeah. A Pittbull, by the looks of it." The ME turned the animal's head to the side. One eye socket was left just a sticky, bloody hole, similar to the hole in the man's chest, only much smaller.

"Here," the ME Maggie sent to the crime scene continued, holding a ballpoint pen. "This is what the killer drilled into the eye. Through the eye into the brain." He dropped the pen into an evidence bag.

Nick furrowed his brows and shook his head. "What kind of guy must that be? Killing an attack dog like that --"

"And a muscular man like this." Elizabeth pointed to the body lying on the table. "The killer must be a real beast."

Nick's phone hummed. "Simms," he came forward. "Deathguards? Interesting. Who could tell us about ... The second man? Yeah, he's no stranger to it. All right, we'll look into it." He ended the call and looked at Elizabeth and Katherine. "The man who lives here is Steven Foreman, boss of the Deathguard Chapter here in Boston. Now, we need all the info from the ME's office, and the identification will be complete."

Elizabeth looked at him long and hard. "Deathguards? Isn't that some bike club?" She'd heard the name before.

"Yes, similar to the Hells Angels or Bandidos. But a lot younger."

"Then we should talk to the deputy boss of the Deathguards as soon as possible. You were talking about a second man on your cell phone, Nick. Is that him?"

"Yes. His name is Akin Kara, the number two man in Deathguards Boston. Our guys dealt with him a few years ago when that whorehouse got shut down for money laundering in North Boston."

"Akin Kara? Sounds Middle Eastern to me."

Nick grinned wryly. "Mexican, it doesn't sound, anyway. He's originally from Turkey, as far as I know. They don't all have to be named Abdul or Ahmet."

"I thought the biker gangs didn't take in Turks or people from the Middle East."

"Globalization has hit them, too."

Katherine was still standing in front of the body, looking at it thoughtfully.

"What's going on?" asked Elizabeth with a slight frown. She could hardly imagine her sister being shaken by seeing a dead man. And she certainly didn't feel much sympathy for a gang boss, either.

Katherine's gaze was fixed on the torso of the corpse, especially the arms and the strange mark cut into the victim's flesh.

"That mark," the psychiatrist said. "I've seen it somewhere before."

xxx

Jane closed the door to her office with a deep sigh and looked at her daughter. "Seems like a pretty bad deal," she said as she took a seat behind her desk. "I've already skimmed the file. Ninety percent of the time, the dead man is Steven Foreman, the boss of the Deathguards in Boston. We won't know until Maggie goes through with her people, though. Foreman the killer. That he, of all people, would be the victim of another killer was not in the cards."

"He who lives by the sword will die by the sword," Elizabeth replied.

"Sounds like gang warfare to me, anyway."

"I think so, too," Elizabeth replied, nodding. "A war, though, fought ruthlessly."

Jane pressed her lips together and pointed to the crime scene images in front of her on the desk. "After all, these gangs are never squeamish. The only odd thing is that plenty of fingerprints and DNA were found at the scene, and unfortunately, the DNA isn't in any database nor fingerprints."

"I wonder if they flew in a hit man from out of town?" asked Elizabeth with furrowed brows as she leaned over the desk a bit. "A hit man from the Dark Web?"

Jane sorted through the papers in front of her desk and pressed her lips together. "Who knows? We haven't searched all the databases yet, though."

The detective pointed to another picture of the dead man lying in front of the chief. In this picture, the cuts and marks were visible ... "Kate says she's seen these marks somewhere before."

Jane examined the picture, and a deep frown dug into her forehead. "Maybe there was a similar case here once."

Elizabeth licked her lips with a sober shrug. "Possibly. But Kate says she didn't see it here; she saw it elsewhere."

Jane gave her daughter a long look and nodded slowly. "Now, don't make it more complicated than it is. We'll see what comes of it." She pulled out another file. "Next subject is the guy we need to talk to."

The detective took a surprising number of seconds until she looked at the chief. "Akin Kara? The number two Deathguard?"

Jane nodded slowly but firmly. "That's the one."

"And where do we find him?"

Jane leaned back in her chair. "At the SBCC."

Elizabeth's eyebrows shot up. "He's incarcerated at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Lancaster?"

"And probably for quite a while." Jane took her reading glasses off her nose. "He could be out sooner, too. Only if he starts chatting, though. But these bikers-the Deathguards, Hells Angels, Bandidos, and whatnot-live by the ACAB motto."

The detective slowly lowered his eyebrows. "ACAB. All Cops Are Bastards."

Jane licked her lips. "The assholes do their business among themselves. Turning to us cops is considered a betrayal of secrets by them. They even have a special fucking fund that pays for lawyers and keeps the families of the incarcerated well-fed. That's how the fuckers want to prevent anyone from spilling the beans. And almost no one is talking. This Akin probably has to serve less time than the others."

"Why?"

Jane flipped through a file after putting her glasses back on. "He may protected two men from five beatings on the subway." She seemed to like the story. "He walked up to the guys and briefly undid his leather coat. And underneath was --"

"A knife?"

"No, an Uzi."

"An Uzi? Was he going to use it to shoot around in the subway?"

"That's what the thugs asked him. And do you know what he said?"

Elizabeth took a deep breath and now leaned back in her chair, shaking her head as she did so.

"He said, in effect, 'If I go to jail for shooting shitheads like you on the subway with an Uzi, that's just my problem now, not yours, because you'll be dead as deep-fried chicken asses. Or I'll shoot your knees off or your fucking spine. Then you'll be crippled for the rest of your miserable lives, rotting in some nursing home'."

Elizabeth pursed her lips and nodded slowly. "Seems like a badass," she said, accepting the file her mother handed her across the desk. "Can't wait to see what kind of conversation this will be." She looked at the file again. "And he's Turkish?"

Jane took a deep breath. "Turkish or Kurdish."

Elizabeth looked at her mother long and hard, then raised her eyebrows. "The difference would already matter, Chief."

Jane tapped her index finger on her desk and took a deep breath. "Ask the prison administration at SBCC for more specific details."

Nodding, Elizabeth got up from her chair and was already about to leave the office when she suddenly paused and looked at her mother a fraction too long.

Jane looked up from the file in front of her, over the rim of her glasses, frowning. "Is there anything else, Detective?"

Elizabeth frowned a little, opening her mouth to answer the question honestly, but then took a deep breath and shook her head with a smile. "No, ma'am."

The chief looked at her closely and made a superficial hand gesture toward the door. "Then get to work, Detective." As soon as Elizabeth had left the office and closed the door behind her, Jane took the glasses off her nose one more time and dropped them on the desk with a loud sigh.

Elizabeth stood rooted to the spot on the other side of the door. She closed her eyes for a moment, hating herself for the fact that while she was able to chase and look an abysmal monster in the eye, not once or twice, she didn't seem to be able to reveal to her mother that she had received a job offer from the FBI.

She opened her eyes and took a long look at her mother's receptionist, who looked at her with an expectant smile but also a meaningful glint in her eyes.

Elizabeth opened her mouth and then walked down the hall to the elevator with her head bowed. "Have a nice day, Veronica."

"You too, detective," the Chiefs' veteran secretary replied with a knowing smile. "Happy hunting."

Elizabeth chuckled and pushed the elevator button.