"The twenty-sixth week," Maggie said. The Chief ME had returned from maternity leave the week before and looked more than exhausted. She cleared her throat and frowned a little. She hadn't expected a case like this as a debut. "Twenty-six weeks," she repeated slowly.

For Maggie, the doctor, the twenty-sixth week was medical information. To Maggie, the mother, it was the doomsday number.

Elizabeth stared at the corpse and nodded slowly, her brows furrowed. She had killed two children.

Both bodies, Nancy and her unborn child lay on one of the steel tables in the autopsy room.

Maggie took a deep breath and looked at her wife for a long time. "There's no way the baby would have survived, even if you hadn't hit it in the stomach, but its mother in the chest." She saw the look on the Sergeant's face. "There's no way it would have survived, like I said. Twenty-six weeks is far too early for an incubator, incubator, and the devil knows what. If the maternal circulation stops, you only have two to four minutes for an emergency cesarean section so that the child doesn't die. Also, at twenty-six weeks, the lungs are not yet mature. Even if a child is born under optimal conditions by a neonatologist in a delivery room and is immediately placed in an incubator, it is by no means certain that it will survive. Without lung maturation and as an emergency C-section by a doctor on the dirty floor, however --" Maggie looked at some of the crime scene pictures in front of her and shook her head, lips pressed together. "It wouldn't have stood a chance."

Elizabeth had killed the mother, and so had the baby. The baby would still have died. But Maggie's words did not comfort her.

The homeless man who had been burnt to death on the YouTube video was still lying two tables away. The whole room smelled of burnt flesh. When there were corpses on an autopsy table, there were two kinds of people, as Maggie always said. Those who suddenly developed an appetite for barbecued food, and those who could never eat barbecued food again.

Either way, the child would never have survived. Elizabeth knew her wife was right, but not even Maggie was making stupid jokes at that second.

The second homeless man Nancy had set on fire as Elizabeth stood in front had survived. He was being operated on at Mass Gen right now. The experts there, who were among the best in their field, were at that moment racking their brains as to which parts of his skin they could transplant to save the poor guy's life somehow and make the rest of his life somewhat worth living.

Maggie closed the autopsy report and clasped it awkwardly under her arm while she took off both gloves with a snapping sound and let them disappear into the garbage can. "We're done with that here, too."

But the Sergeant was still working on the subject. "What about the child?"

Maggie pressed her lips together and glanced at her watch. "As usual. "The child back in the womb. They'll both be buried together."

The thought, Elizabeth thought, was just awful. Back into its mother's womb, which it had never left. Back to where it had died. The womb is not the place where the baby is prepared for life but an organic burial chamber. The baby returned to this burial chamber before it was placed in a larger grave together with its mother. Both dead. In a world of darkness and silence.

xxx

The next stop was the office of Chief of Police Jane Rizzoli.

Elizabeth sat with Nick in the small conference room.

Ms. Bories, Jane's bad-tempered secretary, balanced a tray with three coffees at the table while Jane, in a dark gray, tailored suit, scowled at the two of them like an unloved wife he had to put up with because he couldn't do without her. But not with her either.

Jane took a deep breath and took her reading glasses off her nose. "Liz, I'll be brief. You're suspended from duty until the matter is resolved. IA has already opened the investigation, and until that's completed, you, Sergeant, have no business being here."

Nick furrowed his eyebrows and was the first to speak. "Excuse me?"

"You both heard me correctly," Jane replied. "The matter needs to be looked into. Until that's seen, you're on leave." She scowled at Elizabeth. At the same time, a little good-naturedly. "You'll still get paid, of course, as well as insurance benefits and pension entitlements. It's almost as if you were here. You'll have to hand in your service weapon and badge."

Elizabeth could hardly believe that it was her mother she was talking to. Only now did she realize what that meant. She hadn't even come to terms with Nancy's death yet, and now the next blow to the pit of her stomach came with a sledgehammer.

"We went to Connecticut because this Nancy wanted to see me herself!" Elizabeth was about to jump to her feet. Her heart was racing.

"I know that," Jane replied with furrowed brows.

Nick licked his lips, slid a little in his seat, and looked closely at his mother-in-law. "And Nancy Benitez has threatened to set more homeless people on fire unless Elizabeth Rizzoli herself shows up. Since we don't have jurisdiction over Connecticut, the Sarge wouldn't have been obligated to do that. Neither were the rest of us. Newtown is not Boston. Nevertheless, we did it. Because the Sergeant and all of us care more about people's fucking lives than bureaucratic shenanigans."

"I know that too," Jane replied, leaning back in her desk chair. "Your dedication is greatly appreciated, Sergeant Rizzoli, as is yours, Detective Simms. Nevertheless, as head of the BPD, I must also look at the results. And the result we have is that yet another homeless person is now dead. One badly burned, and Nancy Benitez is also in the morgue." The chief put his reading glasses back on and looked at the records. "And so is her unborn child, if I understand correctly."

Thanks for the punch in the gut, Elizabeth thought and took a deep breath. "That was self-defense," she said calmly, but she could feel the anger rising inside her.

Jane removed the glasses and dropped them off her nose on the desk. "You tried to do the right thing, and it went wrong. The important thing is that you're alive. Still, with something like this, we must take the --" She almost choked on the words and gritted her teeth, "...the formalities. Especially in a city like Boston, where the police are hated in a way that only other, larger cities usually are." She licked her lips. "As I said, even in self-defense, an IA investigation will question you either later or tomorrow morning at the latest. The result should be known in a week. A mere formality. Once everything has been clarified, you'll return as if nothing had happened." She looked at her daughter and took a deep breath. "We don't want to make it complicated or difficult for you, but as I said, we must keep to these formalities this time!" She shook her head and dropped the Chief of Police facade for a moment. "I'm sorry, but that's how it is when using a service weapon."

Nick stood up and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets with a furrowed brow. "Why doesn't anyone ask why a seventeen-year-old is so perverted that she burns people alive? And walks around with a loaded Glock? Because that thing was fucking loaded!"

Jane nodded slowly, not taking her eyes off her son-in-law. "That's a Roblem too. But first, we need to sort out another problem."

Nick snorted blatantly. "And what would that be?"

"That Nancy Benitez is dead. And that she wasn't the first to shoot. That's the bigger problem for now."

Nick snorted in annoyance. "Problem?" He didn't let up. And Elizabeth was glad she didn't have to defend herself alone. "Nancy Benitez set fire to two homeless people! Isn't that enough? And she would have shot Elizabeth next! The girl had finished with everything anyway. If the Sergeant hadn't shot her, she would have done it herself. That wasn't murder; that was suicide by cops! If that means anything to you!"

Jane stood up abruptly from her chair and stepped towards him, clearly at odds with herself. "Of course, I know what that means, Detective," she said in a raised voice. "The fact is that Nancy Benitez is dead. And that her unborn child is dead! There's no way to sugarcoat it!"

Elizabeth blinked a few times and looked at her mother. "I spoke to her ... I thought I could stop Nancy. Because otherwise, she would have killed me. And the other homeless guy. I killed a young girl. And her unborn child. I know what that feels like."

Jane nodded slowly and furrowed her brows. "I remember more than enough about what happened to Maggie and you, and I'm more than glad that you're sitting here today and you two have patched things up." She hung her head momentarily and pushed her lower lip forward before looking at her daughter again. "Maybe the past few months have been too stressful for you."

Elizabeth nodded, licked her lips, and then gritted her teeth. "So that means I can go now?"

Jane took a deep breath and nodded slowly. "Yeah, try to relax a little." She straightened up and looked at her daughter with furrowed eyebrows. "We'll need you here again tomorrow morning because of the examination. It'll be fine if we do it tomorrow. You should get some rest today." She went to the office door and opened it. "Take advantage of the week with Ash, Nikki, and Ben."

Elizabeth let what she'd just heard sink in for a few seconds. "I have time with my kids --" she began, looking her mother straight in the eye "...because I shot an underage girl and her unborn baby to boot? And I'm supposed to be happy about that?" She shook her head and snorted. "With all due respect ... Chief ... but only you would come up with such a stupid idea."