The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

was too quick, too defensive. Even Rizzoli realized it, and she flushed. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said and stood up, as though eager to escape. At the door she stopped and looked back. “By the way, you know that book on the desk over there? The one Camille was reading. I looked up the name.”
    “Who?”
    “Saint Brigid of Ireland. It’s a biography. Funny, how there’s a patron saint for everything, every occasion. There’s a saint for hat makers. A saint for drug addicts. Hell, there’s even a saint for lost keys.”
    “So whose saint is Brigid?”
    “Newborns,” Rizzoli said softly. “Brigid is the saint of newborns.” She walked out of the room.
    Maura looked down at the desk, where the book was lying. Only a day ago, she had imagined Camille sitting at this desk, quietly turning pages, drawing inspiration from the life of a young Irish woman destined for sainthood. Now a different picture emerged—not Camille the serene, but Camille the tormented, praying to St. Brigid for her dead child’s salvation.
I beg you, take him into your forgiving arms. Bring him into the light, though he be unbaptized. He is an innocent. He is without sin.
    She looked around the stark room with new comprehension. The spotless floors, the smell of bleach and wax—it all took on new meaning. Cleanliness as a metaphor for innocence. Camille the fallen had desperately scrubbed away her sins, her guilt. For months she must have realized she was carrying a child, hidden beneath the voluminous folds of her habit. Or did she refuse to accept reality? Did she deny it to herself, the way pregnant teenagers sometimes deny the evidence of their own swollen bellies?
    And what did you do, when your child came into the world? Did you panic? Or did you coldly and calmly dispose of the evidence of your sin?
    She heard men’s voices outside. Through the window, she saw the shadowy forms of two cops emerging from the building. They both paused to pull their coats tighter, to glance up at the snow, tumbling like glitter from the night sky. Then they walked out of the courtyard, and the hinges squealed as the gate shut behind them. She listened for other sounds, other voices, but heard nothing. Only the stillness of a snowy night. So quiet, she thought. As though I am the only one left in this building. Forgotten, and alone.
    She heard a creak, and felt the whisper of movement, of another presence in the room. The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up and she gave a laugh. “God, Jane, don’t sneak up on me like . . .” Turning, her voice died in mid-sentence.
    No one was there.
    For a moment she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just stared at empty space. Vacant air, polished floor.
The room is haunted
was her first irrational thought, before logic reasserted control. Old floors often creaked, and heating pipes groaned. It was not a footstep but the floorboards, contracting in the cold. There were perfectly reasonable explanations for why she had thought someone else was in the room.
    But she still felt its presence, still sensed it watching her.
    Now the hairs on her arms were standing up as well, every nerve singing with alarm. Something skittered overhead, like claws against wood. Her gaze shot to the ceiling.
An animal? It’s moving away from me.
    She stepped out of the room, and the panicked drumming of her own heartbeat almost drowned out any sounds from overhead. There it was—moving farther down the hallway!
    Thump-thump-thump.
    She followed the noise, her gaze on the ceiling, moving so fast she almost collided with Rizzoli, who’d just emerged from the bathroom.
    “Hey,” said Rizzoli. “What’s the rush?”
    “Shhh!” Maura pointed to the dark-beamed ceiling.
    “What?”
    “Listen.”
    They waited, straining to hear any new sound. Except for the pounding of her own heart, Maura heard only silence.
    “Maybe you just heard water running in the pipes,” said Rizzoli. “I did flush the toilet.”
    “It wasn’t the pipes.”
    “Well, what did you hear?”
    Maura’s gaze snapped back to the antique beams running the length of the ceiling.
“There.”
    The scrabbling sound again, at the far end of the hall.
    Rizzoli stared upward. “What the hell is that? Rats?”
    “No,” whispered Maura. “Whatever it is, it’s bigger than a rat.” She moved quietly down the corridor, Rizzoli right behind her, approaching the spot where they had heard it last.
    Without warning, a chorus of thumps