“You’re sure that’s all it is?”
Rizzoli shoved her hair off her face and slowly sat up straight. “Yeah. And I shouldn’t have had all that coffee this morning.”
“How much?”
“Three—maybe four cups.”
“Isn’t that overdoing it?”
“I needed the caffeine. But now it’s eating a hole in my stomach. I feel like puking.”
“I’ll walk you to the bathroom.”
“No.” Rizzoli waved her away. “I can make it, okay?” Slowly she rose to her feet and just stood for a moment, as though not quite confident of her footing. Then she squared her shoulders, and with a hint of the old Rizzoli swagger, walked out of the room.
The clang of the gate bell drew Maura’s gaze back to the window. She watched as the elderly nun once again emerged from the building and shuffled across the cobblestones to answer the call. This new visitor did not need to plead his case; the nun at once opened the gate. A man dressed in a long black coat stepped into the courtyard and laid his hand on the nun’s shoulder. It was a gesture of comfort and familiarity. Together they walked toward the building, the man moving slowly to match her arthritic gait, his head bent toward her as though he did not want to miss hearing a single word she said.
Halfway across the courtyard, he suddenly stopped and looked up, as though he sensed that Maura was watching him.
For an instant, their gazes met through the window. She saw a lean and striking face, a head of black hair, ruffled by the wind. And she caught a glimpse of white, tucked beneath the raised collar of his black coat.
A priest.
When Mrs. Otis had announced that Father Brophy was on his way to the abbey, Maura had imagined him to be an elderly, gray-haired man. But the man gazing up at her now was young—no older than forty.
He and the nun continued toward the building, and Maura lost sight of them. The courtyard was once again deserted, but the trampled snow bore a record of all who had walked across it that morning. The morgue transport team would soon arrive with their stretcher and add yet more footprints to the snow.
She took a deep breath, dreading the return to the cold chapel, to the grim task that still lay before her. She left the room and went down to await her team.
THREE
JANE RIZZOLI STOOD at the bathroom sink, staring at herself in the mirror, and not liking what she saw. She could not help comparing herself to the elegant Dr. Isles, who always seemed regally serene and in control, every black hair in place, her lipstick a glossy slash of red on flawless skin. The image Rizzoli saw in the mirror was neither serene nor flawless. Her hair was as wild as a banshee’s, the black coils overwhelming a face that was pale and strained. I’m not myself, she thought. I don’t recognize this woman looking back at me. When did I turn into this stranger?
Another wave of nausea suddenly washed through her and she closed her eyes, fighting it, resisting it as fiercely as though her life depended on it. Sheer willpower couldn’t hold back the inevitable. Clapping a hand to her mouth, she made a dash for the nearest toilet stall, getting there just in time. Even after her stomach had emptied itself, she lingered there with her head hung over the bowl, not yet daring to leave the security of the stall. Thinking: It’s got to be the flu. Please, let it be the flu.
When at last her nausea had passed, she felt so drained she sat down on the toilet and slumped sideways against the wall. She thought about the work that lay before her. All the interviews still to be done, the frustrations of trying to tease out any useful information from this community of stunned and silent women. And the standing around, worst of all, the exhaustion of just standing around while CSU performed its microscopic treasure hunt. Usually she was the one eagerly sifting for evidence, always more evidence, the one who fought for control of every crime scene. Now here she was, holed up in a toilet stall, reluctant to step back into the thick of it, where she always strove to be. Wishing she could hide out here, where it was blessedly silent, and where no one could glimpse the turmoil written on her face. She wondered how much Dr. Isles had already noticed; perhaps nothing. Isles had always seemed more interested in the dead than the living, and when confronting a homicide scene, it was the corpse who commanded her attention.
At last, Rizzoli straightened and stepped out of the stall. Her head felt clear now, her stomach settled. The ghost of the old Rizzoli, creeping back into its skin. At the sink, she scooped icy water into her mouth to rinse out the sour taste, then splashed more water on her face. Buck up, girl. Don’t be a wimp. Let the guys see a hole in your armor, and they’ll aim straight for it. They always do. She grabbed a paper towel, blotted her face dry, and was about to drop the paper into the trash can when she paused, remembering Sister Camille’s bed. The blood on the sheets.
The trash can was about half full. Among the mound of crumpled paper towels was a small bundle of toilet paper. Quelling her distaste, she unwrapped the bundle. Although she already knew what it contained, she was still jolted by the sight of another woman’s menstrual blood. She dealt with blood all the time, and had just seen a lake of it beneath Camille’s corpse. Yet she was far more shaken by the mere glimpse of this sanitary pad. It was soaked, heavy. This was why you left your bed, she thought. The warmth seeping between your thighs, and the dampness of the sheets. You got up and came into the bathroom to change pads, depositing this soiled one in the trash can.
And then . . . what did you do then?
She left the bathroom and returned to Camille’s chamber. Dr. Isles had left, and Rizzoli was alone in the room, frowning at the bloodstained sheets, the one bright blot in this colorless room. She crossed to the window and looked down, at the courtyard.
Multiple footprints now tracked across the frosting of sleet and snow. Beyond the gate, yet another TV news van had pulled up outside the wall, and was setting up its satellite feed. The dead nun story, beamed straight into your living room. Sure to be a lead at five, she thought; we’re all curious about nuns. Swear off sex, retreat behind walls, and everyone wonders what it is you’re hiding underneath that habit. It’s the chastity that intrigues us; we wonder about any human being who girds herself against the most powerful of all urges, who turns her back on what nature intended us to fulfill. It’s their purity that makes them titillating.
Rizzoli’s gaze swung back across the courtyard, to the chapel. Where I should be right now, she thought, shivering with the CSU crew. Not lingering up here in this room that smelled of Clorox. But only from this room could she picture the view that Camille must have seen, returning from her nocturnal trip to the bathroom on a dark winter’s morning. She would have seen light, shining through the chapel’s stained-glass windows.
A light that should not have been there.
Maura stood by as the two attendants laid out a clean sheet and gently transferred Sister Camille. She had watched transport teams remove other bodies from other sites. Sometimes they performed the task with perfunctory efficiency, other times with evident distaste. But every so often, she saw them move a victim with special tenderness. Young children received this attention, their small heads cradled with care, their still forms caressed through the body pouch. Sister Camille was treated with just such tenderness, just such sorrow.
She held open the chapel door as they wheeled out the stretcher, and followed it as it made its slow progress toward the gate. Beyond the walls, the news media swarmed, cameras ready to capture the classic image of tragedy: the body on the stretcher, the plastic shroud containing a clearly human shape. Though the public could not see the victim, they would hear that she was a young woman, and they would look at that bag and mentally dissect its contents. Their ruthless imaginations would violate Camille’s privacy in ways Maura’s scalpel never could.
As the stretcher rolled out the abbey gate, a ring of reporters and cameramen surged forward, ignoring the patrolman yelling at them to stand back.
It was the priest who finally managed to hold the pack at bay. An imp
osing figure in black, he strode out of the gate and swept into the crowd, his angry voice carrying over the sounds of chaos.
“This poor sister deserves your respect! Why don’t you show her some? Let her pass!”
Even reporters can sometimes be shamed, and a few of them stepped back to allow the transport team through. But the TV cameras kept rolling as the stretcher was loaded into the vehicle. Now those hungry cameras turned to their next prey: Maura, who had just slipped out of the gate and was headed toward her car, hugging her coat tight, as though it would shield her from notice.
“Dr. Isles! Do you have a statement?”
“What was the cause of death?”
“—any evidence this was a sexual assault?”
With reporters bearing down on her, she fumbled in her purse for the keys and pressed the remote lock release. She’d just opened her car door when she heard her name shouted out. But this time, it was in alarm.
She looked back, and saw that a man was sprawled on the sidewalk, and several people were bending over him.
“We’ve got a cameraman down!” someone yelled. “We need an ambulance!”
Maura slammed her car door shut and hurried back toward the fallen man. “What happened?” she asked. “Did he slip?”
“No, he was running—just kind of keeled over—”
She crouched down at his side. They had already rolled him onto his back, and she saw a heavyset man in his fifties, his face turning dusky. A TV camera, emblazoned with the letters WVSU, was lying in the snow beside him.
He wasn’t breathing.
She tilted his head backwards, extending the beefy neck to open the airway, and leaned forward to start resuscitation. The smell of stale coffee and cigarettes almost made her gag. She thought of hepatitis and AIDS and all the other microscopic horrors one could catch from body fluids, and forced herself to seal her mouth over his. She blew in a breath and saw the chest rise, the lungs inflating with air. Blew in two more breaths, then felt for a carotid pulse.
Nothing.
She was about to unzip the man’s jacket, but someone else was already doing it for her. She looked up and saw the priest kneeling opposite her, large hands now probing the man’s chest for landmarks. He placed his palms over the sternum, then looked at her, to confirm he should begin chest compressions. She saw startling blue eyes. An expression of grim purpose.
“Start pumping,” she said. “Do it.”
He leaned into the task, counting aloud with each compression so she could time the breaths. “One one-thousand. Two one-thousand . . .” No panic in his voice, just the steady count of a man who knows what he’s doing. She didn’t need to direct him; they worked together as though they had always been a team, twice switching positions to relieve each other.
By the time the ambulance arrived, the front of her slacks was soaked from kneeling in the snow, and she was sweating despite the cold. She rose stiffly to her feet and watched, exhausted, as the EMTs inserted IVs and an endotracheal tube, as the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance.
The TV camera the man had dropped was now being wielded by another WVSU employee. The show must go on, she thought, watching the reporters mill about the ambulance, even if the story is now about your own colleague’s collapse.
She turned to the priest standing beside her, the knees of his pants soaked with melted snow. “Thank you for the help,” she said. “I take it you’ve done CPR before.”
He gave a smile, a shrug. “Only on a plastic dummy. I didn’t think I’d ever have to actually use it.” He reached out to shake her hand. “I’m Daniel Brophy. You’re the medical examiner?”
“Maura Isles. This is your parish, Father Brophy?”
He nodded. “My church is three blocks from here.”
“Yes, I’ve seen it.”
“Do you think we saved that man?”
She shook her head. “When CPR goes on that long, without a pulse, it’s not a very good prognosis.”
“But there’s a chance he’ll live?”
“Not a good one.”
“Even so, I’d like to think we made a difference.” He glanced at the TV reporters, still fixated on the ambulance. “Let me walk you to your car, so you can get out of here without having a camera shoved in your face.”
“They’ll go after you next. I hope you’re ready for them.”
“I’ve already promised to make a statement. Though I don’t really know what they want to hear from me.”
“They’re cannibals, Father Brophy. They want nothing less than a pound of your flesh. Ten pounds, if they can get it.”
He laughed. “Then I should warn them, it’s going to be pretty stringy meat.”
He walked with her to her car. Her wet slacks were clinging to her legs, the fabric already stiffening in the chill wind. She would have to change into a scrub suit when she returned to the morgue, and hang the slacks to dry.
“If I’m to make a statement,” he said, “is there anything I should know? Anything you can tell me?”
“You’ll have to speak to Detective Rizzoli. She’s the lead investigator.”
“Do you think this was an isolated attack? Should other parishes be concerned?”
“I only examine the victims, not the attackers. I can’t tell you his motives.”
“These are elderly women. They can’t fight back.”
“I know.”
“So what do we tell them? All the sisters living in religious communities? That they’re not safe even behind walls?”
“None of us is entirely safe.”
“That’s not the answer I want to give them.”
“But it’s the one they have to hear.” She opened her car door. “I was raised Catholic, Father. I used to think nuns were untouchable. But I’ve just seen what was done to Sister Camille. If that can happen to a nun, then no one is untouchable.” She slid into her car. “Good luck with the press. You have my sympathies.”
He closed her car door and stood looking at her through the window. As striking as his face was, it was that clerical collar that drew her gaze. Such a narrow band of white, yet it set him apart from all others. It made him unattainable.
He raised his hand in a wave. Then he looked toward the pack of reporters, who were even now closing in on him. She saw him straighten and take a deep breath. Then he strode forward to meet them.
“In light of the gross anatomical findings, as well as the subject’s known history of hypertension, it is my opinion that this death was from natural causes. The most likely sequence of events was an acute myocardial infarction, occurring within the twenty-four hours prior to death, followed by a ventricular arrhythmia, which was the terminal event. Presumptive cause of death: fatal arrhythmia secondary to acute myocardial infarction. Dictated by Maura Isles, M.D., Office of the Medical Examiner, Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
Maura turned off the Dictaphone and stared down at the preprinted diagrams on which she had earlier recorded the landmarks of Mr. Samuel Knight’s body. The old appendectomy scar. The blotches of lividity on his buttocks and the underside of his thighs, where blood had pooled during the hours he had sat, lifeless, on his bed. There had been no witnesses to Mr. Knight’s final moments in his hotel room, but she could imagine what went through his mind. A sudden fluttering in his chest. Perhaps a few seconds’ panic, when he realizes that the fluttering is his heart. And then, a gradual fadeout to black. You were one of the easy ones, she thought. A swift dictation, and Mr. Knight could be set aside. Their brief acquaintance would end with the scrawl of her name on his autopsy report.
More reports sat in her in-box, a stack of transcribed dictations needing her review and signature. In cold storage, yet another new acquaintance waited for her: Camille Maginnes, whose autopsy was scheduled for nine o’clock the next morning, when both Rizzoli and Frost could attend. Even as Maura flipped through reports, jotting corrections in the margins, her mind was still on Camille. The chill she’d felt in the chapel that morning h
ad not left her, and she kept her sweater on as she worked at her desk, bundled against the memory of that visit.
She rose from her chair to feel whether her wool slacks, which she’d left hanging over the radiator, were now dry. Close enough, she thought, and quickly untied her waist drawstring and slipped out of the scrub pants she’d worn all afternoon.
Sinking back into her chair, she just sat for a moment, eyeing one of the floral prints on her wall. To counteract the grimness of her job, she had decorated her office with reminders of life, not death. A potted ficus thrived in the corner of the room, the happy recipient of constant fussing and attention by both Maura and Louise. On the wall were framed images of flowers: a bouquet of white peonies and blue irises. Another with a vase of centifolia roses, the blossoms so lush with petals that the stems drooped. When the stack of files grew too tall on her desk, when the weight of death seemed overwhelming, she would look up at those prints and think of her garden, and of the smell of rich soil and the bright green of spring grass. She would think of things growing, not dying. Not decaying.
But on this December day, spring had never seemed so distant. Freezing rain was tapping against the window, and she dreaded the drive home. She wondered if the city had salted the roads yet, or if it would still be an ice rink out there, cars sliding like hockey pucks.
“Dr. Isles?” said Louise over the intercom.
“Yes?”
“There’s a Dr. Banks on the phone for you. He’s on line one.”
Maura went very still. “Is it . . . Dr. Victor Banks?” she asked softly.
“Yes. He said he’s with the charity One Earth International.”
Maura said nothing, her gaze fixed on the phone, her hands frozen on the desk. She was scarcely aware of the sleet hitting the window. She heard only the pounding of her own heart.
“Dr. Isles?”
“Is he calling long distance?”
“No. He left a message earlier. He’s staying at the Colonnade Hotel.”
The Sinner Page 4
