The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

priest?”
    “
Just
because?” He shook his head and gave a sad laugh, his breath white in the chill air. “I guess that answers my question.”
    “I don’t make guesses. I don’t assume anything about other human beings, because too often, they surprise you.”
    They reached the front gate. He opened it for her, and she stepped out. The gate swung shut between them, suddenly separating his world from hers.
    “You know that man who collapsed on the sidewalk?” he said. “The one we did CPR on?”
    “Yes.”
    “He’s alive. I went to visit him this morning. He’s awake and talking.”
    “I’m glad to hear that.”
    “You didn’t think he’d make it.”
    “The odds were against him.”
    “So you see? Sometimes the numbers, the statistics, are wrong.”
    She turned to leave.
    “Dr. Isles!” he called. “You grew up in the church. Isn’t there anything left of your faith?”
    She looked back at him. “Faith requires no proof,” she said. “But I do.”
             
     
    The autopsy of a child was a task every pathologist dreaded. As Maura pulled on gloves and readied her instruments, she avoided looking at the tiny bundle on the table, trying to distance herself, as long as possible, from the sad reality of what she was about to confront. Except for the clang of instruments, the room was silent. None of the participants standing around the table felt like saying a word.
    Maura had always set a respectful tone in her lab. As a medical student, she’d observed the autopsies of patients who had died under her care, and although the pathologists performing those postmortems regarded the subjects as anonymous strangers, she had known those patients while they were alive, and could not look at them, laid out on the table, without hearing their voices or remembering how awareness had lit up their eyes. The autopsy lab was not the place to crack jokes or discuss last night’s date, and she didn’t tolerate such behavior. One stern look from her could subdue even the most disrespectful cop. She knew that they were not heartless, that humor was how they coped with the darkness of their jobs, but she expected them to check their humor at the door, or they could count on sharp words from her.
    Such words were never needed when a child lay on the table.
    She looked across at the two detectives. Barry Frost, as usual, had a sickly pallor to his face, and he stood slightly back from the table, as though poised to make an escape. Today, it was not foul smells that would make this postmortem difficult; it was the age of the victim. Rizzoli stood beside him, her expression resolute, her petite frame almost lost in a surgical gown that was several sizes too large. She stood right up against the table, a position that announced: I’m ready. I can deal with anything. The same attitude Maura had seen among women surgical residents. Men might call them bitches, but she recognized them for what they were: embattled women who’d worked so hard to prove themselves in a man’s profession that they actually take on a masculine swagger. Rizzoli had the swagger down pat, but her face did not quite match the fearless posture. It was white and tense, the skin beneath her eyes smudged with fatigue.
    Yoshima had angled the light onto the bundle, and stood waiting by the instrument tray.
    The blanket was soaked, and icy pond water trickled off as she gently peeled it away, revealing another layer of wrapping. The tiny foot that she’d seen earlier now lay exposed, poking out from beneath wet linen. Clinging to the infant’s form like a shroud was a white pillowcase, closed with safety pins. Flecks of pink adhered to the fabric.
    Maura reached for the tweezers, picked off the bits of pink, and dropped them onto a small tray.
    “What is that stuff?” asked Frost.
    “It looks like confetti,” said Rizzoli.
    Maura slipped the tweezers deep into a wet fold and came up with a twig. “It’s not confetti,” she said. “These are dried flowers.”
    The significance of this finding brought another silence to the room. A symbol of love, she thought. Of mourning. She remembered how moved she had been, years ago, when she’d learned that Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers. It was evidence of their grief, and therefore, their humanity. This child, she thought, was mourned. Wrapped in linen, sprinkled with dried flower petals, and swaddled in a wool blanket. Not a disposal, but a burial. A farewell.
    She