Elizabeth sat down at her desk and rolled her eyes when her cell phone rang a second later.

Nick sat across from her and just grinned.

"Rizzoli," she answered the call without glancing at the display.

"We have DNA from the brain residue now," the caller said flatly.

"The brain residue --" The detective had to sort out her thoughts for a moment before she knew she was talking to her wife.

"Yeah, the ones we found under the junkie's boots."

"I think you mean the one your team found," Elizabeth replied, looking at her partner. "Do you, Maggie?"

Nick grunted briefly, pretending to type something into his laptop.

You could literally hear Maggie's eye roll. "Yeah, the one my team found under the junkie's boots."

Elizabeth couldn't help a hint of a smile. "So?"

"In that case, he's already not a murderer."

The detective pulled out her notebook. "Why?"

"The brain under his boots is from a traffic accident at the train station. A cyclist was hit by a truck." Maggie paused for a moment and pursed her lips. "More accurately, she was run over. Or rather, her head was run over and popped open. That's where all the brain matter came from. It was scattered all over the street. And that's where the guy ran through."

"Was he trying to steal from her? Or just gawking?"

"According to the officers at the scene, a junkie tried to steal the dead woman's purse. It must have been our junkie. It's nothing new, really. Happens all the time in Boston accidents. Half of the people gawp and film, the other half take the valuables from the dead or injured."

Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. She knew the phenomenon. Body snatching at its best. "And in the process, he walked over brain tissue scattered on the street?"

"Yes. He didn't realize what he was walking over, fogged as he was. And an officer took the purse right back from him. Then the officers had to deal with the driver, the dead woman, and who knows what else, and the junkie took off."

"Was the accident on the same day."

"Yeah, last Tuesday. Right before the accident, you guys took care of."

"Okay, thanks, Maggie." Elizabeth ended the call and immediately called Dr. Carter. She answered after the third ring. "Dr. Carter, you helped examine the junkie from last week. Did he have brain tissue on his hands or just his boots?"

"Wait a minute," Carter said, rustling something. Apparently, he was looking at the file. "No, just on the boots. Nowhere else. Anything new?"

Elizabeth succinctly explained the context to Carter. "Then he's not a direct perpetrator in the first place," the doctor said. "Anything else?"

"Not for now." Elizabeth hung up and stared at her laptop momentarily, then out the window. The killer might have been using junkies as package carriers to make the tricky deliveries he didn't want to get caught with. And the brain matter was from an accident victim with whom the junkie had nothing directly to do. Still, the man remained suspicious; he had had the box with the severed feet. And who knows, she thought. Someone who ran to the scene of an accident to steal from a dead woman whose brains were scattered yards across the street might have killed someone, too. Or chopped-off feet.

Murderer or courier for someone else, or murderer and courier? That was the question. She glanced at her wristwatch and then at the calendar on the wall. Four days had passed again!

Elizabeth reached for her cell phone one more time. Called Galloway's assistant. "Any word yet?"

"He's still in a coma. And we won't be able to wake him out of it yet, either."

"How long do you think he'll be?"

"Maybe three days. Or four."

Four days could be an eternity. Even more so when searching for a murderer. "Damn, we need to talk to him urgently," the detective said.

"Talking will be difficult even without a coma," the assistant said. "After all, he couldn't say anything coherent when he came to us. And he wasn't under anesthesia or in a coma then. Whereby --"

"Whereby what?" Elizabeth brightened.

"He was mumbling something. The moment we put him under anesthesia, then opened his skull."

"Murmured? What?"

"Just once. One word. It sounded like BodyCounter."

BodyCounter, Elizabeth thought. Precisely what he had said after the accident, too.

BodyCounter. Was this the unknown puppeteer who was directing the junkie? And had he perhaps even been smart enough to give him drugs that first put him in a coma for a week shortly after the crime?

But he had repeated his name. Maybe his own, but perhaps that of the killer controlling him: BodyCounter.

xxx

"Where are we going?" asked Chief of Detectives Jane Rizzoli, standing drinking coffee at the open window near the coffee machine in the break room as Elizabeth made her way to the elevator with her padfolio.

Elizabeth made a face and stopped, looking at her mother. "One more time to see Mr. Williams."

Jane nodded slowly and turned slowly to her daughter. "Do you think anything will come of this?"

"Well, what do you think?"

Jane pulled the corners of her mouth down. She didn't know either. "There's no way we're not going to find this guy or those guys! What do you think?"

"You know the BTK killer?"

"Who doesn't know the son of a bitch?" The Chief looked meditatively into her steaming coffee cup.

"The authorities didn't catch him for twenty years."

Jane nodded slowly. "And that was only because he sent the authorities a disk with a letter. On it a Word file. And in it, a signature. From the local church congregation where he was a board member."

Elizabeth gritted her teeth for a moment. "A model Christian. Anyway. I put together some pictures of the junkie. And of a couple of teens who are also under surveillance and suspected of crimes. Maybe we can narrow down the perpetrator in this way. Even if it's probably just a wild goose chase."

"We're talking about Lisa's killer and the unknown girl," Jane said. She took a sip from her cup. "Yes. Unless it's the same killer who kills girls and prostitutes. But even Kate isn't sure about that." She stepped a little closer to Elizabeth. "What do you have there?"

Elizabeth showed the chief the pictures.

Jane furrowed her brows a little. "Oh, there are pictures of the floater in there, too."

Elizabeth smiled a little. "I'll keep an eye on those so Mrs. Williams doesn't get to see them."

Jane took a deep breath and nodded reluctantly but then with some approval.

xxx

The Williams family home was less than a five-minute walk from Elizabeth's house. The detective thought she could have visited the Williams' after hours. So she had to make a circuitous trip back to BPD and then back home. Nice waste of gas and time.

But something else occurred to her, too. The horror had struck here. Here, very close. It had happened to others. It could happen to her and her family, too. And it had happened to her. In her childhood, in her former apartment, too. There, Satanists had put bloody cow carcasses in her living room, and one had climbed up to her kitchen window, a gun in his teeth. On the tenth floor!

Then another thought occurred to her: how was she to protect Maggie and her unborn child in such a world?

She took a deep breath and pressed the bell on the front door of the apartment building.

xxx

Gabriele Williams sat on her fashionable couch of light leather. She was pretty and athletic, with a tanned face and half-length blond hair. PR manager type. She was still crying. She looked at the pictures one by one. The one of the junkie. The sketch of Smiley. "I don't know them," she sobbed over and over. "It would help me so much if I knew any of them, but I've never seen them." She put her hand on Elizabeth's but immediately took it down again. "If I only knew where she was. My little girl. My little Lisa. She's dead, isn't she? She's dead, isn't she?"

Elizabeth had already told the parents that Lisa was most likely dead because there was no underbleeding on the severed nose. The nose had, therefore, been severed post mortem. And that it was indeed not the severed nose of anyone but of their daughter. But even if that were not the case: What else could she tell the parents? Your daughter is not dead, but instead, the perpetrator cut off her nose while she was still alive? And, who knew what he might cut off her next?

"Look closely at the pictures again," Elizabeth said with furrowed brows. "Maybe you did miss something. Maybe there is someone you know after all?" She had little hope. But she had to at least try. She achieved the opposite, however. Complete despair spread through Gabriele Williams.

"Why?" the distraught mother sobbed, tears coming like a torrent. "Why?" She shook her head, and her tears fell to the floor right and left. "My little girl is dead. Our whole world ... she's dead! She was our everything!"

Our whole world is dead, the detective thought. She was right. Gabriele Williams was right. Their world was destroyed. Not only theirs. Because whoever killed one person killed a whole world.

Gabriele Williams once again jerkily grabbed Elizabeth's hand, tighter this time but more uncontrollably.

Elizabeth tried to hold on to the images but wasn't fast enough. The whole padfolio fell out of her hand and landed on the floor.

"I'm ... sorry about that," Gabriele said.

Elizabeth shook her head. "It's all right." She had seen that one of the pictures of the floater was now visible on the floor. She reacted quickly enough while Mrs. Williams wiped the tears from her eyes, bent down, and placed another picture over it.

At that moment, the sobbing had stopped. Elizabeth looked up. And looked into the face of Gabriele Williams. A tear fell down onto the picture. But otherwise, the woman's face was suddenly a mask of restraint. Serious. Clear. Purposeful. But also a hint of wonder. "That --" was all she said, "where did you get that?"

Elizabeth looked at the pictures she had frantically superimposed over the image of the floater. One showed the junkie at Bonnie's ranch. Another showed the necklace the prostitute had worn around her neck. The prostitute who had become the floater. The silver chain with the green stone. And the cross. Elizabeth looked up once more into the face of Gabriele Williams. Then came four words.

"That's ... Lisa's necklace."