The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

gas is literally eating away your mucous membranes. Fluid leaks through, flooding into your lungs. It’s called pulmonary edema. You drown, Dr. Banks, in your own secretions. But I’m sure you know that, since you’re a doctor.”
    His head dipped in a defeated nod.
    “That Octagon factory knew it too. It wouldn’t take long for them to realize they’ve made a terrible mistake. They know that methyl isocyanate is denser than air. That it will collect in low areas. So they hurry out to check the leper village in the valley, just downwind of them. The village of Bara. And what they find is a dead zone. People, animals—nothing left alive. They’re staring at the corpses of almost a hundred people, and they know they’re responsible for those deaths. They know they’re in trouble. There’ll certainly be criminal charges, and possibly arrests. So what do you think they did next, Dr. Banks?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “They panicked, of course. Wouldn’t you? They wanted the problem to go away. They wanted it to vanish. But what to do with all that evidence? You can’t hide a hundred bodies. You can’t make a village disappear. Plus, there were two Americans among the dead—two nurses. Their deaths weren’t going to be ignored.”
    She spread the photos across the table, so all were visible at once. Three views, three separate piles of corpses.
    “They burned them,” she said. “They got to work covering up their mistakes. Maybe they even cracked a few skulls, to confuse the investigators. What happened in Bara didn’t start off as a crime, Dr. Banks. But that night, it turned into one.”
    Victor pushed back his chair. “Am I under arrest, Detective? Because I’d like to leave now. I have a plane to catch.”
    “You’ve known about this for a year, haven’t you? But you’ve kept quiet, because Octagon paid you off. A disaster like this would have cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in fines. Add in lawsuits and stock losses, not to mention criminal charges. Buying you off was the far cheaper option.”
    “You’re talking to the wrong person. I keep telling you, I wasn’t there.”
    “But you knew about it.”
    “I’m not the only one.”
    “Who told you, Dr. Banks? How did you find out?” She leaned closer, gazing across the table at him. “Why don’t you just tell us the truth, and maybe you’ll still have time to catch that plane to San Francisco.”
    He was silent for a moment, his gaze on the photos spread out before him. “She called me,” he finally said. “From Hyderabad.”
    “Sister Ursula?”
    He nodded. “It was two days after the . . . event. By then, I’d already gotten word from Indian authorities that there’d been a massacre in the village. That two of our nurses had been killed in what they believed was a terrorist attack.”
    “Did Sister Ursula tell you otherwise?”
    “Yes, but I didn’t know what to make of her call. She sounded scared and agitated. The factory doctor had given her some tranquilizers, and I think the pills were adding to her confusion.”
    “What did she say to you, exactly?”
    “That something was all wrong with the investigation. That people weren’t telling the truth. She’d spotted some empty gasoline containers in one of the Octagon trucks.”
    “Did she tell the police?”
    “You have to understand the situation she was in. When she got to Bara that morning, there were burned bodies everywhere—the bodies of people she knew. She was the only survivor, and she was surrounded by factory employees. Then the police arrived, and she took one of them aside and pointed out the gasoline cans. She assumed it would be investigated.”
    “But nothing happened.”
    He nodded. “That’s when she got frightened. That’s when she wondered if the police could be trusted. It wasn’t until Father Doolin drove her all the way to Hyderabad that she felt safe enough to call me.”
    “And what did you do about it? After that call?”
    “What could I do? I was half a world away.”
    “Come on, Dr. Banks. I can’t believe you just sat there, in your office in San Francisco, and let it drop. You’re not the kind of man who’d hear a bombshell like that, and not do anything about it.”
    “What was I supposed to do?”
    “What you ended up doing.”
    “What would that be?”
    “All I have to do is check your phone records. It should be there, somewhere. The call you made to Cincinnati. To Octagon corporate