Two unmarked cars sped down the road to the south.
Jane and Nick were in the first car, Elizabeth and Katherine in the second. Between them were two RRT patrol cars.
"Is he making it that easy for us?" asked Elizabeth as they sped down the road. Rain drummed against the windshield and on the roof.
Katherine lifted her shoulders. "Maybe he knows it's over."
Nick's voice cracked in the radio. "I wanted to tell you something else. Earlier in Jane's office," he said.
"Shoot!"
"You won't believe this!"
"Now go on!" Elizabeth was getting impatient. Nick was sometimes just as wordy as her wife.
"Fairview Cemetery," he said. "That's where Christy Parrish was buried two days ago."
"Excuse me?" Elizabeth and Katherine looked at each other. The Parrish's don't live in Hyde Park; they live in Charlestown."
"Yes, but the family is originally from Hyde Park. There's a family grave there. There were already three places there, so to speak, for the mother and then also for Christy."
Elizabeth had always found reserving grave sites macabre. But here, it had a completely different meaning. She knew that murderers often turned up at the funerals of their victims.
Katherine looked out of the window. "The classic," Katherine said. "The murderer at the funeral of his victims. Or later at the gravestone. Or both."
"If you prophylactically arrested and interrogated everyone at the funeral of a murder victim, you'd usually have the murderer," Elizabeth said with a sigh. She noticed storm clouds moving across the sky, and rain still pelted the ground.
It was dark, even without a power cut. Because not only was summer over, but so was fall. Now, only winter was coming. Then blackness. And then, at some point, the end.
Katherine leaned forward a little to make out something in the darkness. "The main gate is further ahead. The RRT is getting ready."
Further ahead, the main house of the cemetery and the cemetery administration office were already rising.
Elizabeth looked to her right just briefly out of the corner of her eye. There was a small gate. It appeared to be a second entrance to the cemetery. Behind the gate was a car.
Black.
Just in time, she recognized the lettering written in white on the rear window.
Her heart skipped a beat.
BodyCount.
BodyCount was written on the rear window.
The name of the murderer on the dark web.
The name of the man who ran the Red Rooms.
The name of the man they were looking for.
Their car stopped with screeching tires.
Katherine looked at her sister in confusion. "But Christy Parrish's grave is --"
"But his car is here. I saw the lettering ... BodyCount."
Katherine remained in her seat while her sister unbuckled her seatbelt. "Are you going there alone?"
Elizabeth drew her gun. "You bet I do."
"You're acting like this is a personal thing." Katherine jumped out of the car as well.
"It is!" Elizabeth growled and ran towards the gate.
xxx
Elizabeth and Katherine ran into the cemetery, crouching.
The rain had finally let up a little. Rows of gravestones peeked out of the damp earth, resembling the gnashed teeth of a giant. A weathered stone cross rose sharply and steeply into the sky like the demonic leader of a horde of body-eating ghouls. The wind whistled cold and wintry from the north, and heavy clouds drifted across the evening sky. Dark banners of a lost army marching to its doom.
Some of the gravestones were weathered by the years and decades; others shone with a black or white smoothness as if to mock in their integrity the dead who had long since decomposed into a greasy mass six feet below them. Some graves were still relatively fresh; flowers lay on mounds of earth, some glowing in pale colors, others already as decayed as the dead they had once been meant for. The sun kissed the black, dark, wet earth like a vampire kissing his dying bride.
Death, Elizabeth thought as she moved with quick steps inside the cemetery, the detective in front, gun in hand, her sister behind her. Death is always the moment of clarification.
She, Elizabeth, had spent her life chasing death, punished death, and wrestled with death. And she tried to understand death. Yet it was not an enemy. Not an opponent. Not fate. It was simply there. When its time had come, it was there. And so death was a constant that did not often exist in life, and probably not often in death either.
Death was the moment of clarification.
The moment you found the answers you had been searching for all your life.
Death was clarity.
Its hammer shattered the mirrors.
Its light was darkness. But it was a light that unmasked the shadows. And brought forth the truth.
Elizabeth had once read the last greetings of death row inmates from Texas on the Internet. They were all somehow at peace with themselves. Many had found God. Almost all of them asked their victims for forgiveness, as well as their families.
Death.
It led to repentance. To clarity. And to the end.
And Elizabeth, this graveyard, this field of death, would perhaps lead to the murderer of her baby. And thus also to the end. To the absolute.
She sprinted straight ahead with springy steps. She didn't know why. But for some reason, she knew where she had to go. Perhaps this was the moment when the murderer wanted to reveal himself. The moment when he was finished? Because he had achieved everything he wanted to achieve? Because things could only get worse from now on? Worse for him. Worse for her too?
A man stood by an old grave. He wore a worn, black trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat with rain dripping from the brim.
There were hardly any flowers on the grave, just a gravestone about waist-high. Elizabeth couldn't read the writing.
The man stood before the grave and looked at the stone while his coat blew in the autumn wind.
For some reason, Elizabeth knew that the man had heard her footsteps. That he knew they were coming. And that he realized she knew he knew. Perhaps also because he was the man who wanted to meet Elizabeth now.
To finish the job. Because he no longer wanted to live.
The man she had been chasing for days and weeks.
The man who had taken Elizabeth and Maggie's unborn baby.
The man who had sent the junkies to bring the parents the body parts of their daughters.
The man who had a strange name. The ...
"BodyCounter," Todd Quimby said softly, and he turned around.
He said it quietly, but his voice sounded like thunder in Elizabeth's ears.
The rain dripped from his hat onto his face, onto the thick, slightly fogged lenses of his glasses that barely showed his eyes, and onto his dull blond hair.
Elizabeth looked at the gravestone, looked up, then at his face, then down again. At the coat that hung open over his shoulders. At what he had in his pocket. Something big that was probably a glass. At what he was holding when he said the words.
"BodyCounter." A grin on his face.
What he held was half in his hand, half hidden in the deep pocket of his shabby coat.
"Elizabeth Rizzoli --," he said then. Just like on the phone less than an hour ago. He raised his hand slowly. "...We'll meet again!"
He raised his hand a little further. The empty hand. Took his other hand out of his pocket.
The gears of time had shifted down several gears while the cemetery around them lay in stony silence, broken only by the pattering of the rain. Standstill and silence. And time, whose speed had been turned back.
The time that told its terrible story only to the silence.
Todd Quimby gripped the gun with both hands.
And shot.
xxx
Jane and Nick stood in front of Christy Parrish's grave.
Behind them, in the cover of the cemetery bushes, were three RRT officers.
Black marble.
Black like the RRT's bulletproof vests and boots.
But different.
Everything like new.
And yet old.
Because Christy was no more.
Nick looked around searchingly, his breath standing in white clouds in the air. "Quimby's not here."
"Was Liz right after all?" Jane looked around as well. Her anger that her daughter had arbitrarily changed her battle plan evaporated. "One unit south immediately."
Philip nodded in agreement. "Understood."
"Liz --," Jane said, half to herself and half to Nick. Then she looked at her son-in-law. "I wonder if she was right?"
Nick looked around again, his gaze sliding over the wreaths and slogans on Christy Parrish's grave. Not gone, but gone before, it said. And: In our heart, you live forever ... "That he's back there? Not here?"
Jane nodded slowly, with a worried look and furrowed brows. She was about to turn on her heel.
At that moment, they all heard the shot.
