Maura Doyle

Jane had been stuck behind a desk for almost a month. Despite discharging herself from hospital early and arguing long and loud with Cavanaugh that she was ready to go to work, he had allowed her back in the building on the condition that she did not go into the field. For the first couple weeks she wasn't even cleared to drive, she was so hopped up on painkillers. But the idea of sitting around at home 'recovering' while South Boston went to hell and Maura was lost somewhere in the midst of it all was a complete impossibility for her. Cavanaugh heard the edge in her voice and saw the look in her eye, and took the warning from Angela that the best thing for everyone involved was to give her something to do.

Still, had it just been the prospect of Jane Rizzoli on the warpath, the lieutenant might have stood firm and kept her off duty. The truth was he couldn't afford not to have her there. Bodies were coming in almost every day now; the turf war in South Boston was raging in full force. Sometimes it was a hit on a known member of a family or gang, and mostly it was their henchmen that caught a bullet, but a few familiar faces had shown up in the morgue over the past month. Sometimes it was drug dealers on corners exchanging fire, and sometimes- too often- innocent victims became collateral damage. Just that morning two kids from the rowhouses in Doyle's- now Ferguson's- territory had been hit by stray bullets that came through their window from a teenage gunfight on the street. The shooter had been fleeing, spraying bullets wildly over his shoulder as he ran. They hadn't gone anywhere near their intended target, just straight through the bedroom window and into a brother and sister as they'd peaked outside to see what was going on.

Jane stood in the morgue, biting her lip and trying her hardest to stay still as she watched Dr. Pike examine each body with excruciating slowness. If one of her arms wasn't strapped to her chest she felt like she might run over and shake some sense of urgency into him. Come to think of it, that could probably be accomplished with just one arm- she was strong enough...

Just then Korsak entered the morgue, interrupting her fantasy of assaulting the medical examiner.

"Got the bullets yet?" he asked.

"Dr. Pike is still ruminating on the best way to remove them from the bodies," Jane replied with her sweetest smile that did nothing to cover the threatening tone in her voice.

"Come on, Pike," Korsak called encouragingly. "We know what killed them, we know how and where. We just need the bullets for ballistics so we can actually start working on who."

"We know that too, Korsak," Jane pointed out with a frustrated sigh. "We know just about every damn thing about this case and all the others that have come through here this month. We just can't prove it."

"Hence the need for a carefully executed forensic examination!" proclaimed Dr. Pike triumphantly. "Perhaps I can provide some of the crucial evidence you so desire."

Jane gave Korsak a look of complete exasperation. "We need to be out there on the streets. Picking up random gang members is not going to stop this war. We've gotta take out the main players or we're just gonna keep racking up the body count until one side runs out of men or bullets."

"That's what Agent Dean is working on," Korsak said sympathetically. "Building the case against Ferguson so we can take him out of the picture and hope that the Doyle clan's in-fighting will clear up, maybe that whole territory will implode, and things with the other families will settle back down again."

"Yeah well it would be nice if he would share a little of his insight with the rest of us. So much for giving us access to his case files- he hasn't given us shit! All he's done is bug me about whether I've heard from Maura."

"She's still awol?"

Jane nodded. "He thinks I'm lying. Hell, he probably has my phone tapped, just in case." She looked dejected. "I just wish I knew she was ok."

Korsak patted her good arm understandingly. "Dr. Isles is a smart woman. She knows how to take care of herself."

Her old partner gave her a significant look. He knew as well as she did that the old Maura didn't have any street smarts. But since she'd told him the details of how things had gone down in the parking garage, they both knew that it would be a mistake to underestimate this new Maura- the one who had been pushed to the edge and forced to adapt...

"At least when everyone has their own turf, you know who's in charge. People don't step out of line. Why'd Colin Ferguson had to come along and stir everything up?" Jane said bitterly, hating the uncertainty that seemed to pervade everything these days.

"He probably thought it would be a straight-up takeover. He had no idea people would be so loyal to Paddy Doyle."

"Yeah well how bad do you think things are gonna get when Agent Dean takes Ferguson out and there's this huge power vacuum in the Doyle clan? Doyle has the docks- that's good territory. Worth going to war over," Jane said, worrying her lip again as she continued to watch Dr. Pike's slow movements and fastidious documenting. "And right now Dean's entire investigation seems to hinge on finding Maura and using her to take Ferguson out. You know, he thinks Maura could be in a position to fill that void- that Ferguson is going for her because he sees her as a threat. A challenge to his power."

Korsak nodded. "I've heard similar rumblings around the station."

Jane looked at him sharply.

"You haven't told anyone? About-" she glanced over at Pike and dropped her voice to a murmur. "About Maura being the shooter in Peters' death?"

"Of course not, only you, me, and Cavanaugh know that."

She went back staring at Pike as she pulled absent-mindedly on her bandages.

"Do you think he's right?"

"Who?"

"Agent Dean," Jane said in a small voice. "Do you think Ferguson really sees Maura as a threat?"

"How Ferguson sees Maura has no bearing on who she is, or what she's actually likely to do," Korsak said reassuringly. "He doesn't know Maura. We do."

His voice held so much conviction and Jane wanted to believe him. But she knew what Maura herself would say: that under the right circumstances even the most docile individual can be capable of the most uncharacteristic acts- violence, murder even. And how extraordinary were the circumstances in which Maura now found herself? She'd been gone for three months, completely cut off from contact with any of her friends and family, on the run, hunted by police and criminals alike, fearing for her life... Jane had focused on the horrifying possibility that her friend might be changing as a result of her experiences, of having to do terrible things. Because the alternative- that Maura might not even still be alive- was so much worse.

Jane had finally become too antsy to stand in the morgue for another minute, trying to talk Dr. Pike into giving her the bullets that, if they were very lucky, would be matched to a discarded, untraceable weapon, wiped clean of prints and with no DNA. She was tired of chasing dead ends. The only thing that was going to put a stop to the killing was to take out the men at the top. Or more specifically, the man who had started all this.

"Screw this, I'm heading back upstairs to do something that's actually useful," she said to Korsak, already half out the door as she called to Pike over her shoulder, "You'll let me know when you have those bullets ready for ballistics, yeah?"

And then she was racing back upstairs, gone before she could catch Pike's look of disappointment. Korsak chuckled and followed after her.

When he reached the office, Jane was already all over the suspect board, pinning up pictures and names, rifling through old files in an effort to map what remained of the Doyle clan in as much detail as possible. Her desk and those of her fellow officers were already piled high with boxes of old case files; so much old information had been dug up over the last month for cross referencing as old names had resurfaced, old connections been reaffirmed, sides had been switched and alliances tested, people were given up, tips were called in, and old cases became relevant or were reopened. It was an unholy mess.

"Dead," Korsak said as she went to pin a new name to the board. She stopped and looked over at him. "Stabbed in prison three years ago. That one too," he indicated another face on the board.

"Dueling prison-shanks?" Frost looked up from his computer.

"Nah, that one was a heart attack. Too much steak and fries."

Jane grinned at Korsak as he settled into his chair and Frost rounded the desk to stand behind her, watching her work at the board.

"You're mapping the Doyle clan?" Frost asked after observing her rummaging about in various boxes of case files for a few minutes.

"I'm mapping all the families," she corrected, grabbing another box and riffling through the files.

"So we've got the Doyles, the Columbians, the Petrellis, and the gangs in the projects," Jane narrated as she finished her rudimentary groupings of families. "We're never gonna make any headway on this thing until we know who we're dealing with. Til we know who's even still around and who their allegiance is with."

"Dead," Korsak interrupted again as she moved to stick another picture to the board.

Frost let out a slow breath, raising his eyebrows. "We're gonna need to go through a lot more files, and not just murders if we want to really map everyone."

Jane nodded, unphased by the enormity of the task she was undertaking.

"And we're gonna need a bigger board," Frost added.

They continued late into the evening, with other officers pitching in, running down to fetch old boxes of case files from storage. Jane had commandeered Frankie to act as a liaison for the drug unit, and he was adding his own intel from their investigations. Korsak had been instrumental in mapping the older members of the families and filling in the details of old ties and rivalries. Frost sat at the heart of the computer centre in the next room, searching databases as he rolled about the room on his chair, pushing off from one terminal to land at another to check on the status of a search and calling out new information as it came up.

Cavanaugh was standing in his doorway, watching the flurry of activity when Angela arrived.

"What's going on?" she asked him in hushed tones. She'd caught the look of focused determination on her daughter's face and knew better than to interrupt.

"Jane's taking down the crime families of Boston," he replied wryly. "Tomorrow she'll be tackling world peace."

"Well, then she's gonna need coffee. And pasta," Angela announced nonplussed, as if Cavanaugh had told her Jane had decided to tackle a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

Angela set off back towards the cafe, and was back in half an hour with a tray-full of sustenance, nearly colliding with her son as Frankie struggled through the door with an armful of new boxes. Jane pounced on him immediately and had the boxes open before he could even set them down.

"Ow! Easy Janie, just give me a second would you!"

"Who wants coffee?" Angela called loudly. "Donuts? Spaghetti?"

Eager detectives swarmed around her while Jane sat down in the middle of the floor with the new boxes, pouring through the files already.

"Coffee Janie," her mother said, carefully placing the cup into her outstretched hand.

"Thanks Ma," Jane didn't even look up.

Her mother shook her head but didn't say anything, heading back into the throng of hungry officers to set aside some of the food for Jane.

"Hey Korsak, who's Steve MacAuley?" Jane called out. "His name keeps coming up but I haven't seen him tied directly to any murders, no drug deals, nothing."

"Not even a parking ticket," Frost's muffled voice came from the computer room- he'd scooted quickly back to his post but not before clamping a donut between his teeth and grabbing a couple more for the road.

"He's high up in Doyle's circle," Korsak said soberly. "We could never find his prints on anything, but you can bet he knows all about Paddy Doyle's dealings. They go way back- their fathers works on the docks together when they were young. The Doyles and the MacAuleys have always been tight."

"That him?" Jane pointed at the wall-monitor in Frost's room, clambering to her feet and heading over to where Steve MacAuley stared back from a not-so-covertly taken surveillance picture.

Korsak followed her and regarded the man projected onto the wall.

"Yup, that's him."

"I know that guy- he was there the night Peters died," Jane said, still staring at the picture. "He was driving the vehicle that took Maura."

Korsak and Frost exchanged a look.

"Well I guess that would make sense," Korsak said slowly. "MacAuley was always loyal to Paddy Doyle."

"And Maura is technically a Doyle," Agent Dean's voice cut into the quiet of the computer room.

Jane whipped around to see him lurking in the doorway.

"We knew she had to be working with someone," he continued.

"We don't know anything," Jane interjected with barely-contained fury. "We could fill up a board twice that size with all the things we don't know about Maura's situation right now!" she indicated the suspect board in the other room, which was now in fact four separate boards that had been lined up next to one another.

Agent Dean walked nonchalantly into the main office and regarded their day's work.

"Impressive," he noted in a tone that seemed calculated to hide any genuine surprise.

"Yeah well, the FBI wasn't being exactly forthcoming with their intel, so we had to get creative," Jane shot back as she followed after him, standing combatively with her hands on her hips.

"I'm working on that, Jane," Agent Dean said, somewhat apologetically. "You think the bureaucracy is bad at Boston PD? Getting clearance for inter-agency intelligence sharing takes time."

Jane gave a derisive snort and pointed her finger at him, gearing up to launch into a tirade of condescending takedowns.

But she didn't get the chance. At that moment Frankie burst into the office, panting hard like he'd just run up ten flights of stairs.

"A cop's been shot!" he announced to the room.

Everyone fell silent immediately and turned to stare at him as he continued. "The Doyle clan's territory. Or I mean Ferguson's," he corrected himself. "By the docks."

He didn't manage to get out any more details before everyone was grabbing jackets and badges and guns and running for the door.

Agent Dean watched the room clear out in seconds, and then slowly turned back to the board. He regarded the detailed map of faces, names, nicknames, ranks, and the web of differently coloured string that wove them all together, illustrating the complex connections. Then he picked up a lone picture from Jane's desk, walked to the board that hosted the Doyle clan, and pinned it in the centre. Picking up a pen, he neatly wrote a label underneath: Maura Doyle.

"Like it or not, Jane," he said to himself softly, "she's right in the middle of all this."

Across town, a car pulled up quickly to a darkened warehouse. An older man stepped out and walked around the vehicle to open the passenger door. Maura Doyle stepped out, nodding her thanks to the man as she strode quickly inside, followed by a stumbling younger man who was covered in blood.

She could hear the sirens wailing in the distance, tearing towards the docks. Towards the crime scene. Towards the body of a dead officer.

"Hurry," she instructed. "We don't have much time."