The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

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