The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

to her body, a reminder not to touch any surface—as if she would want to. She heard rustling all around her in the shadows, and thought of thousands of insect legs skittering across the walls and clinging to the ceiling above her head. She might be stoic about the gory and grotesque, but scavenging insects truly repelled her.
    Stepping into the dining area, she smelled the tired bouquet of scents that always clings to alleys behind old restaurants: the smell of garbage and stale beer. But here, there was also something else, an ominously familiar odor that made her pulse quicken. It was the object of her visit here, and it stirred in her both curiosity and dread.
    “Looks like bums have been crashing in here,” said Crowe, aiming his flashlight at the floor, where she saw an old blanket and bundles of newspapers. “And there are some candles over there. Lucky they didn’t burn the place down, with all this trash.” His flashlight moved across a mound of food wrappers and empty tin cans. Two yellow eyes stared at them from the top of the pile—a rat, unafraid, even cocky, daring them to advance on it.
    Rats and roaches. With all these scavengers, what would be left of the body? she wondered.
    “It’s around that corner.” Crowe picked his way with athletic confidence past tables and stacked chairs. “Stay to this side. There are some footprints we’re trying to preserve. Someone tracked blood away from the body. They fade out right about there.”
    He led her into a short hallway. Faint light spilled out a doorway at the end. It came from the men’s restroom.
    “Doc’s here,” Crowe called out.
    Another flashlight beam appeared in the doorway. Crowe’s partner, Ed Sleeper, stepped out of the restroom and gave Maura a tired wave of his gloved hand. Sleeper was the oldest detective in the Homicide Unit, and every time she saw him, his shoulders seemed to be sagging a little deeper. She wondered how much of his dispiritedness had to do with being paired with Crowe. Neither wisdom nor experience could trump youthful aggression, and Sleeper had long since ceded control to his overbearing partner.
    “It’s not a pretty sight,” said Sleeper. “Just be glad it’s not July. I don’t want to think about what it’d smell like if it wasn’t so damn cold in here.”
    Crowe laughed. “Sounds like someone’s ready for Florida.”
    “Hey, I got a nice little condo all picked out. Only one block from the beach. I’m gonna wear nothing but swim trunks all day. Let it all hang out.”
    Warm beaches, thought Maura. Sugary sand. Wouldn’t they all love to be there right now, instead of in this grim little hallway, lit only by their trio of flashlights.
    “All yours, Doc,” said Sleeper.
    She moved to the doorway. Her flashlight beam fell on dirty floor tiles, laid in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. It was tracked over with footprints and dried blood.
    “Stay along the wall,” said Crowe.
    She stepped into the room and instantly jerked backwards, startled by a streak of movement near her feet. “Jesus,” she said, and gave a startled laugh.
    “Yeah, those rats are big mothers,” said Crowe. “And they’ve had themselves a little feast in there.”
    She saw a tail slither beneath the door of a bathroom stall, and thought of the old urban legend of rats swimming through sewer systems and popping out of toilets.
    Slowly, she played her beam past two sinks with missing faucets, past a urinal, its drain clogged by trash and cigarette butts. Her beam dropped, to the nude body lying on its side beneath the urinal. The gleam of exposed facial bones peeked through tangled black hair. Scavengers had already been gorging on this bounty of fresh meat, and the torso was punctured by numerous rat bites. But it was not the damage caused by sharp teeth that horrified her most; it was the diminutive size of the corpse.
    A child?
    Maura dropped to a crouch beside the body. It lay with its right cheek pressed against the floor. As she bent closer, she saw fully developed breasts—not a child at all, she thought, but a mature woman of small stature, her features obliterated. Feasting scavengers had gnawed hungrily on the exposed left side of the face, devouring skin and even nasal cartilage. The skin still remaining on the torso was deeply pigmented. Hispanic? she wondered, her light beam moving across bony shoulders, and down the knobby ridge of spine. Dark, almost purplish nodules were scattered across the