The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

side.”
    “He surprised her,” said Sutcliffe.
    “And it would have been enough to send her reeling. Then the next blow landed, farther back on the head, here.” She pointed to the second fracture line.
    “A heavier blow,” he said. “It compressed the skull table.”
    He took down the skull films and put up the CT scans. Computerized axial tomography allowed one to look into the human cranium, revealing the brain slice by slice. She saw a pocket of collected blood that had leaked from torn vessels. The mounting pressure would have squeezed the brain. It was an injury as potentially devastating as that done to Camille.
    But human anatomy and human endurance are variable. While the much younger nun had succumbed to her injuries, Ursula’s heart kept beating, her body unwilling to surrender its soul. Not a miracle, merely one of those quirks of fate, like the child who survives a fall from a sixth-floor window, and is only scratched.
    “I’m amazed she survived at all,” he murmured.
    “So am I.” She looked at Sutcliffe. The glow of the light box lit half his face, glancing across the strong angles of his cheek. “These blows were meant to kill.”

F OUR
     
    C AMILLE M AGINNES HAD YOUNG BONES , thought Maura, gazing at the X rays hanging on the morgue light box. The years had not yet chewed away at the novice’s joints, nor collapsed her vertebrae or calcified the costal cartilage of her ribs. Now the years never would. Camille would be placed into the earth, her bones forever arrested in a state of youth.
    Yoshima had x-rayed the body while it was fully dressed, a standard precaution to locate loose bullets or other metal fragments that might be lodged in clothing. Except for the crucifix, and what were clearly safety pins over the chest, no other pieces of metal were visible on the X rays.
    Maura pulled down the torso views, and the stiff X rays made a musical
boing
as they bent in her hands. She reached for the skull films, and slid them under the light box clips.
    “Jesus,” Detective Frost murmured.
    The damage to the cranium was appalling. One of the blows had been heavy enough to drive bone fragments deep below the level of surrounding skull. Although Maura had not yet made a single incision, she could already envision the damage inside the cranium. The ruptured vessels, the taut pockets of hemorrhage. And the brain, herniating under the mounting pressure of blood.
    “Talk to us, Doc,” said Rizzoli, crisp and to the point. She was looking healthier this morning, had walked into the morgue that morning with her usual brisk stride, the warrior woman back in action. “What are you seeing?”
    “Three separate blows,” said Maura. “The first one hit here, on the crown.” She pointed to a single fracture line, running diagonally forward. “The other two blows followed, at the back of the head. My guess is, she was facedown by that time. Lying helpless and prone. That’s when the last blow crushed through the skull.”
    It was a finale so brutal that she and the two detectives fell silent for a moment, imagining the fallen woman, her face pressed to the stone floor. The attacker’s arm rising, hand gripping the death weapon. The sound of shattering bone breaking the silence of that chapel.
    “Like clubbing a baby seal,” said Rizzoli. “She didn’t have a chance.”
    Maura turned to the autopsy table, where Camille Maginnes lay, still clothed in her blood-soaked habit. “Let’s undress her.”
    A gloved and gowned Yoshima stood waiting, the ghost of the autopsy room. With silent efficiency, he had assembled the tray of instruments, angled lights and readied specimen containers. Maura scarcely needed to speak; with only a look, he could read her mind.
    First they removed the black leather shoes, ugly and practical. Then they paused, eyeing the victim’s many layers of clothing, preparing for a task they had never before attempted: the disrobing of a nun.
    “The guimpe should come off first,” said Maura.
    “What’s that?” asked Frost.
    “The shoulder capelet. Only I don’t see any fasteners on the front. And I didn’t see any zippers on X ray. Let’s turn her onto her side, so I can check the back.”
    The body, now stiff in rigor mortis, was light as a child’s. They logrolled her sideways, and Maura peeled apart the edges of the capelet.
    “Velcro,” she said.
    Frost gave a startled laugh. “You’re kidding.”
    “The medieval meets the modern age.” Maura slid