The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

damage. The exchange left her flustered. She looked down at the torso of Camille Maginnes, trying to refocus her attention on the task at hand. But her thoughts were scattered, and her grip was unsteady around the scalpel.
    The others could see it.
    “Why’s One Earth bugging you?” asked Rizzoli. “They hitting you up for donations?”
    “This has nothing to do with One Earth.”
    “So what is it?” pressed Rizzoli. “Is this guy harassing you?”
    “He’s just someone I’m trying to avoid.”
    “Sounds like he’s pretty persistent.”
    “You have no idea.”
    “You want me to get him off your back? Tell him where to go?” This was more than just Rizzoli the cop talking; it was also Rizzoli the woman, and she had no tolerance for overbearing men.
    “It’s a personal matter,” said Maura.
    “You need help, all you have to do is ask.”
    “Thank you, but I’ll handle him.” Maura pressed the scalpel to skin, wanting nothing more than to drop the subject of Victor Banks. She took a breath, and found it ironic that the scent of dead flesh was less disturbing to her than the mere utterance of his name. That the living tormented her far more than the dead ever could. In the morgue, no one hurt her, or betrayed her. In the morgue, she was the one in control.
    “So who is this guy?” asked Rizzoli. The question that was still on all their minds. The question Maura would have to answer, sooner or later.
    She sank the blade into flesh and watched skin part like a white curtain. “My ex-husband,” she said.
             
     
    She cut her Y-incision, then reflected back flaps of pale skin. Yoshima used common pruning shears to cut through the ribs, then lifted the triangle of ribs and breastbone to reveal a normal heart and lungs, disease-free liver and spleen and pancreas. The clean, healthy organs of a young woman who has abused neither tobacco nor alcohol, and who has not lived long enough for her arteries to narrow and clog. Maura made few comments as she removed organs and placed them in a metal basin, moving swiftly toward her next goal: the examination of the pelvic organs.
    A pelvic bloc excision was a procedure she usually reserved for fatal rape cases, as it allowed a far more detailed dissection of those organs than the usual autopsy did. It was not a pleasant procedure, this coring out of pelvic contents. As she and Yoshima sawed through the bony pubic rami, she was not surprised to see Frost turn away. But Rizzoli, too, shrank from the table. No one spoke now of the calls from Maura’s ex-husband; no one pressed her for personal details. The autopsy had suddenly turned too grim for conversation, and Maura was perversely relieved by this.
    She lifted the entire bloc of pelvic organs, external genitalia, and pubic bone, and moved it to a cutting board. Even before she sliced into the uterus, she knew, just by its appearance, that her fears were already confirmed. The organ was larger than it should be, the fundus well above the level of the pubic bone, the walls spongey. She slit it open, to reveal the endometrium, the lining still thick and lush with blood.
    She looked up at Rizzoli. Asked, sharply: “Did this woman leave the abbey at any time during the last week?”
    “The last time Camille left the abbey was back in March, to visit her family on Cape Cod. That’s what Mary Clement told me.”
    “Then you have to search the compound. Immediately.”
    “Why? What are we looking for?”
    “A newborn.”
    This seemed to hit Rizzoli with stunning force. She stared, white-faced, at Maura. Then she looked at the body of Camille Maginnes, lying on the table. “But . . . she was a nun.”
    “Yes,” said Maura. “And she’s recently given birth.”

F IVE
     
    I T WAS SNOWING again when Maura stepped out of the building that afternoon, soft, lacy flakes that fluttered like white moths, to light gently on the parked cars. Today she was prepared for the weather, and had worn ankle boots with rugged soles. Even so, she was cautious as she walked across the parking lot, her boots slipping on the snow-dusted ice, her body braced for a fall. When she finally reached her car, she released a sigh of relief, and dug in her purse for her keys. Distracted by the search, she paid scant attention to the thud of a nearby car door slamming shut. Only when she heard the footsteps did she turn to face the man who was now approaching her. He came to within a few paces and stopped, not saying