The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

how did you survive that attack?”
    The room was dead silent, waiting for her story. A story she didn’t even want to think about, because it still gave her nightmares. She remembered the lonely hilltop in Wyoming. She remembered the thud of the deputy’s vehicle door as it closed, trapping her in the backseat behind the prisoner gate. She remembered her panic as she’d futilely battered her hands against the window, trying to escape from a man she knew was about to kill her.
    “Dr. Isles, how did you survive? Who came to your aid?”
    She swallowed. “A boy.”
    “Julian Perkins, age sixteen, I believe. A young man who shot and killed that police officer.”
    “He had no choice!”
    Whaley cocked his head. “You’re defending a boy who killed a cop?”
    “A
bad
cop!”
    “And then you came home to Boston. And declared Mr. Dixon’s death a homicide.”
    “Because it was.”
    “Or was it merely a tragic accident? The unavoidable consequence after a violent prisoner fights back and has to be subdued?”
    “You saw the morgue photos. The police used far more force than was necessary.”
    “So did that boy in Wyoming, Julian Perkins. He shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy. Do you consider that justifiable force?”
    “Objection,” said Aguilar. “Dr. Isles isn’t the one on trial here.”
    Whaley barreled ahead with the next question, his gaze fixed on Maura. “What happened out there in Wyoming, Dr. Isles? While you were fighting for your life, was there an epiphany? A sudden realization that cops are the enemy?”
    “Objection!”
    “Or have cops always been the enemy? Members of your own family seem to think so.”
    The gavel banged down. “Mr. Whaley, you will approach the bench
now.”
    Maura sat stunned as both attorneys huddled with the judge. So it had come to this, the dredging up of her family. Every cop in Boston probably knew about her mother, Amalthea, now serving a life sentence in a women’s prison in Framingham. The monster who gave birth to me, she thought. Everyone who looks at me must wonder if the same evil has seeped into my blood as well. She saw that the defendant, Officer Graff, was staring at her. Their gazes locked, and a smile curled his lips.
Welcome to the consequences
, she read in his eyes.
This is what happens when you betray the thin blue line
.
    “The court will take a recess,” the judge announced. “We’ll resume at two this afternoon.”
    As the jury filed out, Maura sagged back against the chair and didn’t notice that Aguilar was standing beside her.
    “That was dirty pool,” said Aguilar. “It should never have been allowed.”
    “He made it all about me,” said Maura.
    “Yeah, well, that’s all he has. Because the autopsy photos are pretty damn convincing.” Aguilar looked hard at her. “Is there anything else I should know about you, Dr. Isles?”
    “Other than the fact that my mother’s a convicted murderer and I torture kittens for fun?”
    “I’m not laughing.”
    “You said it earlier. I’m not the one on trial.”
    “No, but they’ll try to make it about you. Whether you hate cops. Whether you have a hidden agenda. We could lose this case if that jury thinks you’re not on the level. So tell me if there’s anything else they might bring up. Any secrets that you haven’t mentioned to me.”
    Maura considered the private embarrassments that she guarded. The illicit affair that she’d just ended. Her family’s history of violence. “Everyone has secrets,” she said. “Mine aren’t relevant.”
    “Let’s hope not,” said Aguilar.



The Sinner
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

    A Ballantine Book
    Published by The Random House Publishing Group

    Copyright © 2003 by Tess Gerritsen
    Excerpt from The Silent Girl copyright © 2011 by Tess Gerritsen

    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

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    This book contains an excerpt from The Silent Girl by Tess Gerritsen. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

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