Maura put away dirty plates into the dishwasher and looked at her wife while watching her daughters, Nick and Maggie, sit together and likely talk about something other than work. That's exactly what she wanted to do that night with this early family dinner.

"Have you talked to Liz yet?" she wanted to know.

Jane looked at the lawyer and furrowed her brows. "Talked about what?"

"Jane!"

The chief took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. "Maura --"

"The FBI will up the ante if this investigation goes in our favor, Jane," Maura replied, looking at the four of them at the dining room table. "Which means you'll have to raise the stakes, too, and give Liz and Nick a reason to stay with the BPD, just like Kate." She smiled when she saw the look on her wife's face. "You don't think the team will stay in place if Liz decides to join the FBI, do you? Would you have stayed with BPD if I had left the DA's office?"

Jane closed her eyes for a moment. "That's different."

"Why?"

Jane opened and closed her mouth without answering the actual question. "I don't know if Liz is ready to take the sergeant's exam. A position like that means even more responsibility, which she's already taking on, and even less time with her family. I mean, Maggie and Liz are expecting a baby."

Maura nodded slowly and frowned a little. "How about you leave that decision to our daughter, offering her the BPD?"

Jane sighed loudly and took a sip from her beer bottle. "The way this case is going right now, I'm not sure that offer even exists anymore, Maura. Bell's pretty pissed."

"Bell's an idiot," Maura retorted, looking at the investigators' group. "A jerk who will come around once you solve the case."

"This time, I'm not so sure. If publicly gets to know that there have been investigative errors, then heads are rolling. And in the worst case, my head will be among them."

"In the meantime, you still have freedom of action, Jane."

At that moment, Ashlyn returned to the dining room with a picture in her hand and a strained look on her face. "This is a rune," she said, turning the picture toward the adults, unaware she was holding a close-up of Al Zaid.

Elizabeth went pale with wide eyes and automatically stood up from her chair. "Where did you get that picture?"

Ashlyn looked at her mother and glanced over her shoulder to a sideboard in the living room where a file lay. "It was on the floor, Ma. Must have fallen out of the file."

"Oh my God," Maura whispered, as this file had been carelessly placed on said sideboard earlier by Jane and had been forgotten.

Jane closed her eyes, hurried to the sideboard and grabbed the file.

Elizabeth scowled at her mother before turning to her daughter with concern. "You didn't open the file, did you?"

Ashlyn made a face. "Of course not." She pointed to the picture and frowned. "But that's a rune."

"We know that, honey," Elizabeth replied, letting her daughter sit next to her.

Ashlyn looked at her mother with wide eyes, as her mother didn't seem to understand her. "Well, runes used to be written on beech sticks, Ma."

Nikki, busy in the living room with Jalen, looked over her shoulder and stood up in surprise.

Jane looked at Maura and pulled the corners of her mouth down. "Look at that; we learned something new again."

Elizabeth ignored her own mother's objection and looked at her daughter. "How do you know?"

Ashlyn pulled the corners of her mouth down and shrugged. "I read now and then?"

Elizabeth smiled broadly and nodded slowly.

Ashlyn ran her fingers over the rune on the picture and frowned a little. "The oldest surviving set of runes is called the Futhark, after the first six letters of the runic alphabet. This alphabet - the series, to be precise - consisted of twenty-four characters in all."

Nick looked at his wife in surprise, and Katherine opened her mouth in equal surprise, nodding briefly.

Ashlyn ran her fingers over the cut on the picture, almost as if in a trance. "Odin, the god of runic knowledge and magic, hung on the world ash Yggdrasil for nine days, then he gained the power of the runes. This arrow rune is the rune of heaven. Called Tiwaz. This rune represents the Germanic god Tyr, the god of justice and war. Tiwaz also signifies the pole star. Or the sky god."

Elizabeth looked at her wife with wide eyes. She was overwhelmed by this situation and didn't know how to handle it.

Jane cleared her throat and sat at the head of the table, looking closely at her granddaughter. "What did this Tyr do that was special?" she asked the girl cautiously.

Ashlyn looked at her for a long moment, raising her brows and pulling down the corners of her mouth. "He helped chain up a creature called Fenirswolf, a kind of monster of the early days. The gods wanted to try a chain on the wolf to tame it. But the wolf didn't agree to that. Therefore, one of the gods had to put his hand into the animal's mouth. Tyr was the only one who dared."

Jane nodded slowly." What happened?"

"The chainss held. But the wolf bit off Tyr's hand."

Elizabeth closed her eyes. First, because her daughter knew those facts and stories, and second, because she was being used as a source of information she didn't realize Ashlyn was, to advance the case possibly.

"The Nazis used that rune, too," Ashlyn said suddenly.

Nick leaned forward. "The rune was a Nazi insignia?"

Ashlyn nodded vehemently. "The Tyr rune was an awarded badge of a military school of the Nazi Party, and good students were given this rune and wore it on their left upper arm."

Elizabeth listened up and looked at her sister, brother-in-law, and mother with wide eyes. "On the left upper arm?" She hastily got up and left the dining room with Katherine, Jane, and Nick. Made sure she was out of reach of the children. "It was the same with the victims", she whispered.

Nick gave her a long look and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Is this guy a Nazi or something like that?"

Elizabeth ran a hand through her hair and shook her head. "No, he's --" Inside her head, it was working. Somewhere was the solution. Close by.

Nikki came up to the group, followed by Blu, and pressed her lips together. She looked at each of them and frowned. "They're rank insignia, too, Ma."

Elizabeth looked at her older daughter and blinked a few times, her mouth hanging open. "A rank insignia," she muttered, looking at her sister. "Did we investigate in that direction, too?"

Katherine shook her head. "No."

Elizabeth stormed back into the dining room and pointed to the picture still in front of Ashlyn. "This rune-like mark is a badge of rank. This killer, the Draftsman, honors his victims and marks them out. They're his fallen, and it's like a fucking promotion. Shit, why didn't I think of that myself? We're looking for a fucking ex-military guy."

Jane looked at her daughter long and hard. "Military?"

"Yes. Military," Elizabeth replied vehemently. "That's exactly where we need to look!"