The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

Banks?” she asked softly.
    “Yes. He said he’s with the charity One Earth International.”
    Maura said nothing, her gaze fixed on the phone, her hands frozen on the desk. She was scarcely aware of the sleet hitting the window. She heard only the pounding of her own heart.
    “Dr. Isles?”
    “Is he calling long distance?”
    “No. He left a message earlier. He’s staying at the Colonnade Hotel.”
    Maura swallowed. “I can’t take his call right now.”
    “It’s the second time he’s called. He said he knows you.”
    Yes. He certainly does.
    “When did he call before?” Maura asked.
    “This afternoon, while you were still at the scene. I did leave his message on your desk.”
    Maura found three pink
while you were out
memos, which were hidden beneath a stack of folders. There it was.
Dr. Victor Banks. Called at 12:45 P . M .
She stared at the name, her stomach churning. Why now? She wondered. After all these months, why do you suddenly call me? What makes you think you can step back into my life?
    “What should I tell him?” asked Louise.
    Maura took a deep breath. “Tell him I’ll call back.”
When I’m goddamn ready.
    She crumpled the slip and threw it into the rubbish can. Moments later, unable to focus on her paperwork, she rose and pulled on her coat.
    Louise looked surprised to see her emerge from her office, already bundled up for the weather. Maura was usually the last to leave, and almost never out the door before five-thirty. It was barely five now, and Louise was just shutting down her computer for the night.
    “I’m going to get a head start on the traffic,” said Maura.
    “I think it’s too late for that. Have you seen the weather? They’ve already closed most city offices for the day.”
    “When was that?”
    “At four o’clock.”
    “Why are you still here? You should have gone home.”
    “My husband’s coming to get me. My car’s in the shop, remember?”
    Maura winced. Yes, Louise had told her about the car that morning, but of course she’d forgotten. As usual, her mind had been so focused on the dead, she had not paid enough attention to the voices of the living. She watched Louise wrap a scarf around her neck and pull on her coat and thought: I don’t spend enough time listening. I don’t take the time to acquaint myself with people while they’re alive. Even after a year of working in this office, she knew little about her secretary’s personal life. She’d never met Louise’s husband, and knew only that his name was Vernon. She could not recall where he worked, or what he did for a living, partly because Louise seldom shared personal information about her life. Is that my fault? Maura wondered. Does she sense that I’m not a willing listener, that I’m more comfortable with my scalpels and Dictaphone than I am with the feelings of people around me?
    Together, they walked down the hall, toward the exit leading to the staff parking lot. No small talk, just two parallel travelers, headed toward the same destination.
    Louise’s husband was waiting in his car, its windshield wipers swinging furiously against the falling sleet. Maura gave a goodbye wave as Louise and her husband drove off, and got a puzzled look from Vernon, who probably wondered who that woman was, waving as though she knew them.
    As though she really knew anyone.
    She crossed the parking lot, slipping on the glazed blacktop, her head bent under stinging pellets of sleet. She had one more stop to make. One more duty to execute before her day was over.
    She drove to St. Francis Hospital to check on the status of Sister Ursula.
    Although she had not worked in a hospital ward since her internship years ago, the memories of her final rotation in the intensive care unit remained vividly unpleasant. She remembered moments of panic, the struggle to think through the fog of sleep deprivation. She remembered a night when three patients had died on her shift, and everything had gone wrong at once. She could not walk into an ICU now without feeling haunted by the shadow of old responsibilities and old failures.
    The surgical intensive care unit at St. Francis had a central nursing station surrounded by twelve patient cubicles. Maura stopped at the ward clerk’s desk to show her identification.
    “I’m Dr. Isles, from the Medical Examiner’s office. May I see the chart for your patient, Sister Ursula Rowland?”
    The ward clerk eyed her with a puzzled look. “But the patient hasn’t