The Sinner (20 page)

She hit him with another one. “I believe our Jane Doe may
have
been from that same village in India.”

“You told me earlier you thought she was Hispanic,” said
Crowe.

“It was only a guess, based on her skin pigmentation.”

“So are you changing the guess to make it fit the
circumstances?”

“No, I’m changing it because of what we found at
autopsy.
Remember that strand of yellow thread adhering to her wrist?”

“Yeah. Hair and Fiber said it was cotton. Probably just a
piece
of string.”

“Wearing a loop of string around your wrist is supposed to
ward
off the evil eye. It’s a Hindu custom.”

“India again,” said Dean.

Maura nodded. “It does keep going back to India.”

“A nun and an illegal immigrant with leprosy?” said
Crowe.
“How do we link them to a corporate hit?” He shook his head.
“Professionals
don’t get hired unless someone has a lot to gain.”

“Or a lot to lose,” said Maura.

“If these are all contract killings,” said Dean,
“you
can be sure of one thing. That the progress of your investigations will be
tracked
very carefully. You need to control any and all information about these cases.
Because
someone’s watching everything Boston P.D. is doing.”

Watching me too, thought Maura, chilled at the thought. And she
was
so visible. At crime scenes, on the TV news. Walking to her car. She was
accustomed
to being in the eye of the media, but now she considered the other eyes that
might
be watching her. Tracking her. And she remembered what she had felt in the
darkness
at Mama Cortina’s: the prey’s cold sense of dread when it suddenly
realizes
it is being stalked.

Dean said, “I need to see that other death scene. The
convent,
where the nuns were attacked.” He looked at Rizzoli. “Could you take
me
through it?”

For a moment, Rizzoli did not respond. She sat unmoving, her gaze
fixed
on the death photo of Howard Redfield, curled in the trunk of his car.

“Jane?”

She took a breath and sat up straight, as though she’d
suddenly
found some new well of courage. Of fortitude.

“Let’s go,” she said, and rose to her feet. She
looked
at Dean. “I guess we’re a team again.”

F
IFTEEN

I
CAN DEAL WITH THIS
. I can deal with him
.

Rizzoli drove to Jamaica Plain with her eyes on the road, but her
mind
on Gabriel Dean. Without warning, he had stepped back into her life, and she was
still too stunned to make sense of what she was now feeling. Her stomach was
knotted,
her hands numb. Only a day ago, she had thought that she was over the worst of
missing
him, that with a little time and a lot of distraction she could put their affair
behind her. Out of sight, out of mind.

Now he was back in her sight, and very much on her mind.

She was first to arrive at Graystones Abbey. She sat in her parked
car and waited for him, every nerve humming, her anxiety turning to nausea.

Pull it together, goddamn it. Focus on the job.

She saw his rental car park behind her.

At once she stepped out and welcomed the punishing wind on her
face.
The more brutal the cold, the better, to slap some sense into her. She watched
him
emerge from his car and greeted him with the crisp nod of a fellow cop.

Then she turned and rang the gate bell. No pause for conversation,
no fumbling for words. She went straight to business, because it was the only
way
she knew how to cope with this reunion. She was relieved when a nun soon emerged
from the building and began shuffling through the snow, toward the gate.

“It’s Sister Isabel,” said Rizzoli. “Believe
it
or not, she’s one of the younger ones.”

Isabel squinted at them through the bars, her gaze on
Rizzoli’s
companion.

“This is Agent Gabriel Dean from the FBI,” said Rizzoli.
“I’m just going to show him the chapel. We won’t disturb
you.”

Isabel opened the gate to let them in. It gave an unforgiving
clang
as it swung shut behind them. The cold sound of finality. Of imprisonment.
Sister
Isabel immediately returned to the building, leaving the two visitors standing
in
the courtyard. Alone with each other.

At once Rizzoli took control of the silence and launched into a
case
review. “We still can’t be sure of the point of entry,” she said.
“Snowfall covered up any footprints, and we didn’t find any broken ivy
to indicate he climbed the wall. That front gate’s kept locked at all
times,
so if the perp came that way, someone inside the abbey had to let him in.
That’s
a violation of convent rules. It would have to be done at night, when no one
would
see it.”

“You have no witnesses?”

“None. We thought, at first, that it was the younger nun,
Camille,
who might have opened the gate.”

“Why Camille?”

“Because of what we found on autopsy.” Rizzoli turned
her
gaze to the wall, avoiding his eyes, as she said: “She’d recently been
pregnant. We found the dead infant in a pond behind the abbey.”

“And the father?”

“Obviously a prime suspect, whoever he is. We haven’t
identified
him yet. DNA tests are still pending. But now, after what you’ve just told
us,
it seems we may have been barking up the wrong tree entirely.”

She stared at the walls that encircled them, at the gate that
barred
the world from entry, and an alternate sequence of events suddenly began to play
out before her eyes, a sequence far different from the one she had imagined when
she first set foot on this crime scene.

If it wasn’t Camille who opened the gate . . .

“So who let the killer into the abbey?” said Dean,
eerily
reading her thoughts.

She frowned at the gate, thinking of snow blowing across the
cobblestones.
She said, “Ursula was wearing a coat and boots . . .”

She turned and looked at the building. Pictured it in those black
hours
before dawn, the windows dark, the nuns asleep in their chambers. The courtyard
silent,
except for the wind.

“It was already snowing when she came outside,” she
said.
“She was dressed for the weather. She walked across this courtyard, to the
gate,
where someone was waiting for her.”

“Someone she must have known would be out here,” said
Dean.
“Someone she must have expected.”

Rizzoli nodded. Now she turned toward the chapel and began to
walk,
her boots punching holes in the snow. Dean was right behind her, but she was no
longer
focused on him; she was walking in the footsteps of a doomed woman.

A night swirling with the season’s first snow. The stones
are
slippery beneath your boots. You move in silence because you don’t want the
other sisters to know you are meeting someone. Someone for whom you are willing
to
break the rules.

But it’s dark, and there are no lamps to light the gate.
So
you can’t see his face. You can’t be sure this is the visitor
you’re
expecting tonight. . . .

At the fountain, she abruptly halted and looked up at the row of
windows
over the courtyard.

“What is it?” said Dean.

“Camille’s room,” she said, pointing.
“It’s
right up there.”

He gazed up at the room. The stinging wind had made his face
ruddy,
and ruffled his hair. It was a mistake to stare at him, because she suddenly
felt
such hunger for his touch, she had to turn away, had to press her fist against
her
abdomen, to counter the emptiness she felt there.

“She might have seen something, from that room,” said
Dean.

“The light in the chapel. It was on when the bodies were
found.”
Rizzoli looked up at Camille’s window, and remembered the bloodstained
sheet.

She awakens with her sanitary pad soaked. She climbs from bed,
to
use the bathroom and change her pad. And when she comes back to her room, she
notices
the light, glowing through the stained-glass windows. A light that should not be
on.

Rizzoli turned toward the chapel, drawn by the ghostly image she
now
saw, of young Camille, stepping out of the main building. Shivering as she moved
beneath the covered walkway, perhaps regretting that she had not pulled on a
coat
for this short walk between buildings.

Rizzoli followed that ghost, into the chapel.

There she stood in the gloom. The lights were off, and the pews
were
nothing more than horizontal slats of shadow. Dean was silent beside her, like a
ghost himself, as she watched the final scene play out.

Camille, stepping through the door, just a slip of a girl, her
face
pale as milk.

She looks down in horror. Sister Ursula lies at her feet, and
the
stones are splattered with blood.

Perhaps Camille did not immediately understand what had happened,
and
thought at first glance that Ursula had merely slipped and hit her head. Or
perhaps
she already knew, from that first glimpse of blood, that evil had breached their
walls. That it now stood behind her, near the door. Watching her.

That it was moving toward her.

The first blow sends her staggering. Stunned as she is, she
still
struggles to escape. Moves in the only direction open to her: Up the aisle.
Toward
the altar, where she stumbles. Where she drops to her knees, awaiting the final
blow.

And when it’s done, and young Camille lies dead, the
killer
turns back, toward the first victim. Toward Ursula.

But he doesn’t finish the job. He leaves her alive. Why?

She looked down at the stones, where Ursula had fallen. She
imagined
the attacker, reaching down to confirm the kill.

She went very still, suddenly remembering what Dr. Isles had told
her.

“The killer didn’t feel a pulse,” she said.

“What?”

“Sister Ursula is missing a carotid pulse on the right side
of
her neck.” She looked at Dean. “He thought she was dead.”

They walked up the aisle, past rows of pews, following in
Camille’s
last footsteps. They came to the spot near the altar where she had fallen. They
stood
in silence, their gazes on the floor. Though they could not see it in the gloom,
traces of blood surely lingered in the cracks between stones.

Shivering, Rizzoli looked up and saw that Dean was watching her.

“That’s all there is to see here,” she said.
“Unless
you want to talk to the sisters.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“I’m right here.”

“No, you’re not. Detective Rizzoli is here. I want to
talk
to Jane.”

She laughed. A blasphemous sound in that chapel. “You make it
sound like I’m a split personality or something.”

“That’s not too far from the truth. You work so hard at
playing
the cop, you bury the woman. It’s the woman I came to see.”

“You waited long enough.”

“Why are you angry at me?”

“I’m not.”

“You have a strange way of welcoming me to Boston.”

“Maybe because you didn’t bother to tell me you were
coming.”

He sighed, huffing out a ghost. “Can we just sit together for
a moment and talk?”

She went to the front pew and sank onto the wooden bench. As he
sat
down beside her, she gazed straight ahead, afraid to look at him. Afraid of the
emotions
he stirred in her. Just inhaling his scent was painful, because of the longing
it
reawakened. This was the man who had shared her bed, whose touch and taste and
laugh
still haunted her dreams. The result of their union was growing even now, inside
her, and she pressed her hand to her belly to quell the secret ache she suddenly
felt there.

“How have you been, Jane?”

“I’ve been good. Busy.”

“And the bandage on your head? What happened?”

“Oh, this.” She touched her forehead and shrugged.
“Little
accident in the morgue. I slipped and fell.”

“You look tired.”

“You don’t bother much with compliments, do you?”

“It’s just an observation.”

“Yeah, well, I’m tired. Of course I am. It’s been
one
of those weeks. And Christmas is coming up and I haven’t even bought my
family
any gifts yet.”

He regarded her for a moment, and she looked away, not wanting to
meet
his eyes.

“You’re not happy to be working with me again, are
you?”

She said nothing. Didn’t deny it.

“Why don’t you just tell me what the hell is
wrong?”
he finally snapped.

The anger in his voice took her aback. Dean was not a man who
often
revealed his emotions. Once that had infuriated her, because it always made her
feel
as if
she
was the one out of control, the one always threatening to boil
over.
Their affair had started because she had made the first move, not him. She had
taken
all the risks and put her pride on the line, and where did it get her? In love
with
a man who was still a cipher to her. A man whose only display of emotion was the
anger she now heard in his voice.

It made her angry, as well.

“There’s no point rehashing this,” she said.
“We
have to work together. We have no choice. But everything else—I just
can’t
deal with that now.”

“What can’t you deal with? The fact we slept
together?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t seem to mind it at the time.”

“It happened, that’s all. I’m sure it meant about
as
much to you as it did to me.”

He paused. Stung? She wondered. Hurt? She didn’t think it was
possible to hurt a man who had no emotions.

She was startled when he suddenly laughed.

“You are so full of shit, Jane,” he said.

She turned and looked at him—really
looked
at
him—and
was struck breathless by all the same things that had attracted her to him
before.
The strong jaw, the slate-gray eyes. The air of command. She could insult him
all
she wanted to, yet she’d always feel he was the one in control.

“What are you afraid of?” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“That I’ll hurt you? That I’ll walk away
first?”

“You were never there to begin with.”

“Okay, that’s true. I couldn’t be. Not with the
jobs
we have.”

“And it all comes down to that, doesn’t it?” She
rose
from the bench and stamped the blood back into her numb feet. “You’re
in
Washington, I’m here. You have your job, which you won’t give up. I
have
mine. No compromise.”

“You make it sound like a declaration of war.”

“No, just logic. I’m trying to be practical.” She
turned
and started back toward the chapel door.

“And trying to protect yourself.”

“Shouldn’t I?” she said, looking back at him.

“The whole world isn’t out to hurt you, Jane.”

“Because I don’t let it.”

They left the chapel. Walked back across the courtyard and stepped
through the gate, which gave a resounding clang as it shut.

“Well, I don’t see the point of trying to chip away at
that
armor,” he said. “I’ll go a long way to meet you. But you have to
come halfway. You have to give, too.” He turned and started toward his car.

“Gabriel?” she said.

He stopped and looked back at her.

“What did you think would happen between us this time?”

“I don’t know. That you’d be glad to see me, at
least.”

“What else?”

“That we’d screw like bunnies again.”

At that, she gave a laugh and shook her head.
Don’t tempt
me.
Don’t remind me of what I’ve been missing.

He looked at her over the roof of his car. “I’d settle
for
the first, Jane,” he said. Then he slid inside and shut the door.

She watched him drive away, and thought: Screwing like bunnies is
how
I got into this mess.

Shivering, she looked at the sky. Only four o’clock, and
already,
the night seemed to be closing in, stealing the last gray light of day. She did
not
have her gloves, and the wind was so bitter, it stung her fingers as she took
out
her keys and opened the car door. Sliding into her car, she fumbled to insert
the
key in the ignition, but her hands were clumsy, and she could barely feel her
fingers.