When Elizabeth came to the BPD the following day, there was a flurry of excitement. Maggie had finally confirmed the DNA match. She had written a text to her wife, which the detective had already read in the car. But the positive DNA test wasn't the only cause for excitement.
Jane was standing by the window in the break room with Nick, arguing loudly with her son-in-law. "We're going there right now to look at it," she said firmly to Nick.
"And Bell?" retorted Nick just as forcefully.
Jane gritted her teeth for a moment, furrowing her brows. "That's who we'll call when we get to the scene. We'll hardly have to ask Bell's permission just because some murder doesn't suit him. This is real life, not a bowl of cherries. We --" Only now did she spot her daughter standing in the doorway. "Good morning, Elizabeth! Maggie's already given me the good news."
That looked like the chief. It probably hadn't been Maggie who had called first at all. Impatient as Jane was, the chief had perhaps called Maggie at the office as early as 7 a.m. this morning.
"By good news, I take it you don't mean the retesting of DNA with the sample from Quantico?" replied Elizabeth tersely.
"Yes, I do." Jane grinned broadly. "That's the one I mean. At least now we know where we stand, and we're no longer poking around in the dark."
Elizabeth looked around. "Are Brooks and Williams here yet?"
"They're probably still sleeping. Let's leave them alone a little longer. As soon as they hear what's happening with the DNA, they'll be wide awake anyway." She closed the window. "That's not all, though."
Elizabeth frowned a little. "No?"
"No. Does Ali Al Zaid and his gang mean anything to you?"
The detective thought for a moment. "Aren't they Libyan or Syrian gangs that set up shop here in Boston in the seventies? Prostitution, drugs, protection rackets, that sort of thing?"
"Right. Al Zaid is one of those underworld big shots that we could never prove anything against because he was pretty good at pressuring witnesses. Or killing them outright."
"So?"
"Now that it's been established that the killer isn't the Body Broker after all, but someone else - wouldn't someone like Al Zaid fit the bill?"
Nick had a hard time stifling a grin.
Elizabeth sat her leather satchel on the table and peered toward the coffee maker. God, she needed a strong coffee now. At the same time, she was annoyed that her mother was deliberately dragging out the explanation again. "Are you saying --"
"Ali Al Zaid was murdered. Last night," the chief said. "He hasn't been identified one hundred percent yet, but a body that looks a lot like him is lying in his townhouse in Brighton."
Elizabeth was instantly wide awake, even without coffee. "Last night?"
"Yes. Probably last night or sometime that night," Jane replied, nodding. "Forensics has only been able to get a quick look at the body so far."
"Who found the deceased?"
"From the looks of it, it was a customer trying to buy drugs. The man is being questioned in a patrol car right now. We want to get there right away, too." Jane glanced out the window. "Al Zaid's mother and sister came immediately, and they both broke down in tears on the lawn in front of the townhouse. It was hard to stop them from running into the house."
"And what does the crime scene look like?"
"Bad, our people say," Nick replied with a sigh. "The killer messed up Al Zaid pretty bad."
"Did he get into a hand-to-hand fight with that monster?" Elizabeth realized once again what a beast this killer was.
"That remains to be seen," her mother now said. "And he's not the only one dead."
Elizabeth looked at Jane for a long moment and drew her eyebrows together in surprise. "What?"
"There are two more of Al Zaid's girls that he must have been having fun with. Both dead, by the looks of it."
The detective thought for a moment. "What makes you so sure that the culprit is the man we're after?"
Jane answered promptly. "The responding officers, who are already on the scene, talked about Al Zaid having strange symbols cut into him."
Strange symbols, Elizabeth thought. "What are we waiting for?" she asked.
"For you," Jane replied. "Now we can go!
xxx
"Are you relatives, too?" one of the officers asked Elizabeth as she and Jane approached Ali Al Zaid's townhouse.
"Of what relatives?"
"Of ... Al Zaid," the officer stammered, for at that moment, he realized he had made a mistake. "I'm sorry. I thought so because you --"
"This is Detective Elizabeth Rizzoli," Jane explained as she and her daughter flashed badges.
"Oh, I'm sorry," the man said. "And who are you?"
Elizabeth grunted briefly and pressed her lips together to keep from laughing.
Jane blinked a few times, wondering if this officer had forgotten his glasses or if he generally couldn't read. "Chief of Detectives Rizzoli."
The officer shrank several inches. "I think I'd best say no more at all."
"I think you're right." But then Jane smiled and patted the man on the shoulder. "That's all right. You can't know everyone."
As they climbed to the second floor of the building, she said to Elizabeth, "I don't envy the guys. They have to secure buildings and bust their humps in cold weather. They have to take the heat for people who hate them. They have to protect politicians who want to abolish the police. And so on and so forth. The fact that none of them has run amok yet amazes me every time. I --" Jane paused because she almost ran into a man at the door.
Maggie was also on the scene and hurried past Jane to the stairs. "Sorry, I'll be right back."
She had left something in her car downstairs, or the nasty morning sickness was hitting her. In any case, here she was, and then she was gone.
Jane and Elizabeth entered the bedroom. The first thing that caught their eye was obvious: Ali Al Zaid's body lay on the blood-covered bed. A bullet wound in the shoulder, the spine unnaturally twisted, the chest open. Where the heart had been, there was only a black hole. On his arms and torso, the rune-like mark immediately jumped to everyone's attention. But that wasn't all. Next to Al Zaid's body lay a dead woman. Her arms pressed against her body as if in agony; her eyes were wide open. Her skull was only a splintered mass. Pieces of her brain, splinters of bone, skin, and bloody tufts of platinum blond hair were scattered on the bed, on the wall behind it on Al Zaid's body. Some splatter was visible four yards away on the bedroom's large window front, the curtains, and the double-leaf balcony door.
"The killer shot the woman directly in the head with a large caliber weapon." Jane took a step forward and blinked, looking at the dead woman. "He shot --"
"Careful," one of the men from Forensics said as the chief took another step forward, "there's another body lying there."
Elizabeth's gaze jerked downward. There lay an African-American woman. She was naked except for her sexy lingerie, and her neck was strangely twisted. The detective's stomach turned. What was this maniac doing to her?
"My goodness," the chief groaned, "this is a battlefield."
"Demolition of the cervical spine from the base of the skull," said Maggie, who was coming back in the door with a silver suitcase but looking rather pale.
"This killer must be an incredible animal," Jane growled with furrowed brows.
Maggie looked at her mother-in-law and nodded slowly. "Indeed. You only pick a fight with him twice, the first and the last time."
Jane approached the bed. "Have you been able to see anything here yet?"
"Only the obvious. The bodies are still very fresh," the redhead replied, "no decay, sparse death marks. They are," she pressed her right thumb on Al Zaid's skin, "partially squeezable away. Rigor mortis in the joints, on the other hand, "Maggie tried to move the dead man's leg at the knee joint, "is full-blown."
Jane looked at Maggie with amusement as she grasped the dead man's knee joint. "The dead man's physical therapist," she murmured to the detective.
Elizabeth looked at her mother punitively. However, she had to admit that the comparison, especially given her wife's white Tyvek suit, wasn't entirely out of the air.
"See? The joints are stiff from rigor mortis," Maggie concluded. "On this body, however," she pointed to the African-American woman, "we have abnormal cervical spine mobility."
"No wonder," the chief said, "after all, the bastard broke her neck, didn't he?"
"That's right."
"How did he get in here?"
"Either downstairs through the door or here, over the balcony." Maggie pointed outside to the open balcony door.
Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "Then he climbed up here?"
"What do you think?" her wife asked. "Guys who can pull off something like this," she pointed to the gruesome scene, "are going to be able to climb up to a balcony, right? Besides that - safes and locks are like women. With the right tools, you can get anything open."
Elizabeth tucked her chin in with lowered eyebrows as her wife smiled at her, and Jane pressed her lips together in amusement. "I didn't hear that," the detective growled, and Maggie grinned widely.
Outside, a car driving up could be heard.
Jane looked around questioningly. "Who could that be? Can I go out on the balcony?"
Maggie nodded, pulling the corners of her mouth down. "Sure. Forensics is done there."
Downstairs, a black BPD sedan pulled up. Michael Bell got out. Two of the officers stepped back reverently. The Chief of Police let his eyes wander over his surroundings and tugged his tie into place. It was evident from his expression that he didn't like what he saw.
"Good morning, Chief Bell!" called Jane down to him from the balcony.
"Good morning," grumbled the Chief of Police Boston.
"It looks like the previous cases, the rune-like symbol, everything!"
"Thanks for the information." Bell scowled and looked up, burying his hands in his pants pockets. "But you don't yell at the whole neighborhood."
"We can also feel free to call the men at the detention center," Jane, who couldn't help it, added, "to see if the Body Broker has broken out. Because that's who's going to have done it, right?"
Elizabeth had to pull herself together to keep from laughing out loud. But she wasn't standing on the balcony, so Bell didn't see her. That the DNA from Quantico matched that of the perpetrator in Boston - at least in the previous two cases - Bell had indeed already learned from Nick, as sour-faced as he looked.
"Stop with the stupid jokes, Rizzoli!" shouted Bell. "We --"
a dog from the canine squad suddenly began barking loudly.
"Nomen est omen," Jane sneered softly. "Bell."
"No way," she heard one of the officers below call out moments later. "Here's another one!"
Two forensic technicians sprinted downstairs while the third, standing below, held the dog on a leash and stared at his grisly find. Jane watched as the two technicians pulled another body forward from the bushes, a man in a black suit and white shirt, his hair blond and gelled.
"That's number four already," Jane exclaimed.
Bell raised his arms defensively as if he didn't want to hear anymore.
"What do we do now, Chief Bell?" asked Jane in feigned naiveté.
"What do we do now?" Bell looked up at the balcony, snarling, and glared at Jane. "What do you think? Catch the bastard for crying out loud!"
"And the people from Quantico and New York?"
"Fuck the FBI for all I care if it'll make you catch the lunatic faster, and they're already here anyway!"
"Anything else, sir?"
"No, that's it!"
With those words, Bell got back into the car and barked a quick order at the driver. The limousine roared away.
"All right, Liz," the Chief of Detectives said as she stepped off the balcony, patting her daughter on the shoulder. "That was fun, and let's go down to the backyard and see what Forensics found."
Elizabeth let her eyes wander one last time over the gruesome scene in the bedroom. Saw the body of Al Zaid with an open chest. The body of the blonde woman whose head looked like an exploded melon. The body of the African-American woman lying on the floor with her neck twisted.
Fun, thought the detective, fun looks different.
xxx
Meanwhile, the officers and the two men from Forensics had pulled the body out of the borders and carefully placed it on its back. Well dressed in an expensive black suit and white shirt.
One of the technicians reached into the man's inside pocket and pulled out a wallet. "Pavel Grabowski," he read out, "still has his papers with him. And money."
"A thief is not our murderer," Jane muttered.
"And here," the man said, "there's even a gun." After looking at it more closely, he reached for it and dropped it into an evidence bag. ".44 caliber, he could have taken that too," he said.
"He's not in it for the money. Maybe he's got enough of it. And he's not interested in the guns either," Elizabeth replied. "And that worries me."
"So am I," Jane said with furrowed brows. "Because then it quickly becomes ideological with the killing. And ideologues don't stop that quickly." She paused for a few seconds and pointed to the man's body from the borders. "What might that be?" she asked, shaking her head. "That Grabowski, you guys just pulled out of the flowerbed."
"Looks like a bodyguard, if you ask me," one of the officers replied.
"Nice bodyguard," Jane grumbled, "very helpful to his boss." She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Maybe the man had to die first. What do you think?" She looked at her daughter.
Elizabeth nodded slowly and took a deep breath. "I think so, too. The killer sneaks up, kills the bodyguard, pulls him under the bushes, climbs up, gets into the apartment, and kills Al Zaid and the women, in whatever order."
"Okay," Jane said slowly. "This all has to go to the lab. And the bodies to Maggie in the morgue. And I want the DNA sample from the killer in Los Angeles and New York matched to this crime scene here." Her eyes roamed over the townhouse and garden to the barred squad car parked outside the gate. Two cops stood beside the vehicle, smoking.
"Come on, Liz," she said, "let's see if they have anything else for us."
The two women walked to the patrol car. "Who do you have in there?" the chief asked the two officers, pointing to the vehicle.
"Tarek Assad," one of the officers replied. "A customer of Al Zaid who came here to buy drugs. He discovered the body first. Shortly after, Al Zaid's mother and sister came here. And they caught this guy in there," he pointed to the patrol car, "in the apartment. He wanted to steal money from the safe and some more drugs. Meth and stuff like that. The house was empty, after all. Everybody was dead." The officer paused. "Anyway, that's theft and illegal possession of drugs. If not drug trafficking."
The man in the patrol car looked out. When he saw Elizabeth, he began gesturing wildly.
"So believe me, sister!" he shouted through the window. "I'm innocent, sister!"
"If he has a sister, I feel sorry for her," Elizabeth muttered.
At that moment, her cell phone buzzed. "It's Kate," she said after glancing at the screen. "She's at BPD with Brooks and Williams. Should we head back?"
"Yeah, there's nothing more we can do here anyway," the chief replied before she turned back to the townhouse. "So many deaths in just one night."