The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

happen.”
    “It must happen. They’re human beings.”
    “It doesn’t happen.”
    “No one breaks the rules? No one jumps the wall?”
    “We have no need to leave the abbey. Mrs. Otis buys our groceries. Father Brophy attends to our spiritual needs.”
    “What about letters? Phone calls? Even in high security prisons, you get to make a phone call every so often.”
    Frost was shaking his head, his expression pained.
    “We have a telephone here, for emergencies,” said Mary Clement.
    “And anyone can use it?”
    “Why would they wish to?”
    “How about mail? Can you get letters?”
    “Some of us choose not to accept any mail.”
    “And if you want to send a letter?”
    “To whom?”
    “Does it matter?”
    Mary Clement’s face had frozen into a tight, lord-give-me-patience smile. “I can only repeat myself, Detective. We are not prisoners. We choose to live this way. Those who don’t agree with these rules may choose to leave.”
    “And what would they do, in the outside world?”
    “You seem to think we have no knowledge of that world. But some of the sisters have served in schools or in hospitals.”
    “I thought being cloistered meant you couldn’t leave the convent.”
    “Sometimes, God calls us to tasks outside the walls. A few years ago, Sister Ursula felt His call to serve abroad, and she was granted exclaustration—permission to live outside while keeping her vows.”
    “But she came back.”
    “Last year.”
    “She didn’t like it out there, in the world?”
    “Her mission in India wasn’t an easy one. And there was violence—a terrorist attack on her village. That’s when she returned to us. Here, she could feel safe again.”
    “She didn’t have family to go home to?”
    “Her closest relative was a brother, who died two years ago. We’re her family now, and Graystones is her home. When you’re tired of the world and in need of comfort, Detective,” the Abbess asked gently, “don’t
you
go home?”
    The answer seemed to unsettle Rizzoli. Her gaze shifted to the wall, where the crucifix hung. Just as quickly, it caromed away.
    “Reverend Mother?”
    The woman in the grease-stained blue jumper was standing in the hall, looking in at them with flat, incurious eyes. A few more strands of brown hair had come loose from her ponytail and hung limp about her bony face. “Father Brophy says he’s on his way over to deal with the reporters. But there are so many of them calling now that Sister Isabel’s just taken the phone off the hook. She doesn’t know what to tell them.”
    “I’ll be right there, Mrs. Otis.” The Abbess turned to Rizzoli. “As you can see, we’re overwhelmed. Please take as much time as you need here. I’ll be downstairs.”
    “Before you go,” said Rizzoli, “which room is Sister Camille’s?”
    “It’s the fourth door.”
    “And it’s not locked?”
    “There are no locks on these doors,” said Mary Clement. “There never have been.”
             
     
    The smell of bleach and Murphy’s Oil Soap was the first thing Maura registered as she stepped into Sister Camille’s room. Like Sister Ursula’s, this room had a mullioned window facing the courtyard and the same low, wood-beamed ceiling. But while Ursula’s room felt lived-in, Camille’s room had been so thoroughly scrubbed and sanitized it felt sterilized. The whitewashed walls were bare except for a wooden crucifix hanging opposite the bed. It would have been the first object Camille’s gaze would fix upon when she awakened each morning, a symbol of her focused existence. This was a chamber for a penitent.
    Maura gazed down at the floor and saw where areas of fierce scrubbing had worn down the finish, leaving patches of lighter wood. She pictured fragile young Camille down on her knees, clutching steel wool, trying to sand away . . . what? A century’s worth of stains? All traces of the women who had lived here before her?
    “Geez,” said Rizzoli. “If cleanliness is next to Godliness, this woman was a saint.”
    Maura crossed to the desk by the window, where a book lay open.
Saint Brigid of Ireland: A Biography.
She imagined Camille reading at this pristine desk, the window light playing on her delicate features. She wondered if, on warm days, Camille ever removed her novice’s white veil and sat bareheaded, letting the breeze through the window blow across her cropped blond hair.
    “There’s blood here,” said Frost.
    Maura turned and saw that he was