The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

the thighs. The sanitary napkin, affixed to the underwear, was stained with only a scant amount of blood.
    “Fresh pad,” noted Rizzoli. “Looks like she’d just changed it.”
    But Maura was not looking at the pad; her gaze was focused on the toneless abdomen, sagging and loose between jutting hipbones. Silvery streaks marred the pale skin. For a moment she said nothing, silently absorbing the significance of those streaks. She was thinking, too, of the tightly wrapped breasts.
    Maura turned to the tray, where she had left the bundle of Ace wrap, and slowly unrolled it, inspecting the fabric.
    “What’re you looking for?” asked Rizzoli.
    “Stains,” said Maura.
    “You can already see the blood.”
    “Not bloodstains . . .” Maura paused, the Ace wrap spread across the tray to reveal dark rings where fluid had dried. My god, she thought. How can this be possible?
    She looked at Yoshima. “Let’s set her up for a pelvic.”
    He frowned at her. “Break rigor mortis?”
    “She doesn’t have a lot of muscle mass.” Camille was a slender woman; it would make their task easier.
    Yoshima moved to the foot of the table. While Maura held down the pelvis, he slid his hands under the left thigh and strained to flex the hip. Breaking rigor mortis was as brutal as it sounded—the forcible rupture of rigid muscle fibers. Never a pleasant procedure, it clearly horrified Frost, who stepped back from the table, his face paling. Yoshima gave a firm shove, and Maura felt, transmitted through the pelvis, the snap of tearing muscle.
    “Oh man,” said Frost, turning away.
    But it was Rizzoli who moved unsteadily toward the chair near the sink, and sank into it, dropping her head in her hands. Rizzoli the stoic, who never complained of the sights or the smells of the autopsy suite, now seemed unable to stomach even these preliminaries.
    Maura circled to the other side of the table, and again held down the pelvis while Yoshima worked on the right thigh. Even she had a twinge of nausea as they strained to break the rigidity. Of all the ordeals she’d known during her medical training, it was her rotation in orthopedic surgery that had most appalled her. The drilling and sawing into bone, the brute force needed to disarticulate hips. She felt that same abhorrence now as she felt the snap of muscle. The right hip suddenly flexed, and even Yoshima’s normally bland expression betrayed a flash of distaste. But there was no other way to fully visualize the genitals, and she felt some urgency about confirming her suspicions as quickly as possible.
    They rotated both thighs outward, and Yoshima aimed a light directly on the perineum. Blood had pooled in the vaginal canal—normal menstrual blood, Maura would have assumed earlier. Now she stared, stunned by what she was seeing. She reached for gauze and gently wiped away the blood to reveal the mucosa beneath it.
    “There’s a second degree vaginal tear at six o’clock,” she said.
    “You want to take swabs?”
    “Yes. And we’ll need to do a bloc removal.”
    “What’s going on?” asked Frost.
    Maura looked at him. “I don’t do this very often, but I’m going to remove the pelvic organs in one mass. Cut through the pubic bone and lift it all out.”
    “You think she was sexually assaulted?”
    Maura didn’t answer him. She circled to the instrument tray and picked up a scalpel. Moved to the torso to begin her Y incision.
    The intercom buzzed. “Dr. Isles?” Louise said over the speakerphone.
    “Yes?”
    “There’s a call for you on line one. It’s Dr. Victor Banks again, from that organization, One Earth.”
    Maura froze, hand gripping the scalpel. The tip just touching the skin.
    “Dr. Isles?” said Louise.
    “I’m unavailable.”
    “Shall I tell him you’ll return his call?”
    “No.”
    “It’s the third time he’s called today. He asked if he could reach you at home.”
    “Do
not
give him my home phone number.” Her answer came out more harshly than she’d intended, and she saw Yoshima turn to look at her. She felt Frost and Rizzoli watching her as well. She took a breath and said, more calmly: “Tell Dr. Banks I’m not available. And keep telling him that until he stops calling.”
    There was a pause. “Yes, Dr. Isles,” Louise finally responded, sounding more than a little stung by the exchange. It was the first time Maura had ever spoken sharply to her, and she’d have to find some way to smooth over the rift and repair the