The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

busy,” was all she said.
    “Yeah, I hear. What’s with the nuns?”
    “We don’t know yet.”
    “I heard one of the nuns was a mommy.”
    “Where did you hear that?”
    “You know. Around.”
    “What else did you hear?”
    “That you dragged a baby out of a pond.”
    It was inevitable that the news would get out. Cops talked to each other. They talked to their wives. She thought of all the searchers standing around the pond, the morgue attendants, the crime scene technicians. A few loose lips and pretty soon, even a retired cop out in Newton knows the details. She dreaded what the morning papers would bring. Murder was fascinating enough to the public; now there was forbidden sex, a potent additive that would keep this case front and center.
    The waitress set down their food. Rizzoli’s order took up most of the table, the dishes spread out like a family feast. Attacking her food, she bit into a french fry so hot it burned her mouth, and had to gulp her Coke to cool things down.
    Korsak, for all his self-righteous comments about fried foods, was staring wistfully at her onion rings. Then he looked down at his broiled fish, sighed, and picked up his fork.
    “You want some of these rings?” she asked.
    “No, I’m fine. I tell you, I’m turning my life around. That coronary might be the best thing ever happened to me.”
    “You serious?”
    “Yeah. I’m losing weight. Kicked the cigarettes. Hey, I think I even got some hair growing back.” He dipped his head to show her his bald spot.
    If any hair was growing back, she thought, it was in his head, not on it.
    “Yeah, I’m making a lot of changes,” he said.
    He fell silent and concentrated on his salmon, but did not seem to enjoy it. She almost shoved her plate of onion rings toward him out of pity.
    But when he raised his head again, he looked at her, not at her food. “I’ve got things changing at home too.”
    Something about the way he said it made her uneasy. The way he looked at her, as though about to bare his soul. She dreaded hearing the messy details, but she could see how much he needed to talk.
    “What’s happening at home?” she asked. Already guessing what was about to come.
    “Diane and me—you know what’s been going on. You’ve seen her.”
    She had first met Diane at the hospital, when Korsak was recuperating from his heart attack. At their first encounter, she had noticed Diane’s slurred speech and glassy eyes. The woman was a walking medicine cabinet, high on Valium, codeine—whatever she could beg off her doctors. It had been a problem for years, Korsak told her, yet he had stood by his wife because that’s what husbands were supposed to do.
    “How is Diane these days?” she asked.
    “The same. Still stoned out of her head.”
    “You said things were changing.”
    “They are. I’ve left her.”
    She knew he was waiting for her reaction. She stared back, not sure whether to be happy or distressed for him. Not sure which he wanted to see from her.
    “Jesus, Korsak,” she finally said. “Are you sure about this?”
    “Never been more sure of anything in my whole frigging life. I’m moving out next week. Found myself a bachelor pad, here in Jamaica Plain. Gonna set it up just the way I want it. You know, wide-screen TV, big fucking speakers that’ll blow out your eardrums.”
    He’s fifty-four, he’s had a heart attack, and he’s going off the deep end, she thought. Acting like a teenager who can’t wait to move into his first apartment.
    “She won’t even notice I’m gone. Long as I keep paying her pharmacy bills, she’ll be happy. Man, I don’t know why it took me so long to do this. Wasted half my life, but I tell you, that’s it. From now on, I make every minute count.”
    “What about your daughter? What does she say?”
    He snorted. “Like she gives a shit? All she ever does is ask for money.
Daddy, I need a new car. Daddy, I wanna go to Cancun.
You think I ever been to Cancun?”
    She sat back, staring at him over her cooling onion rings. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
    “Yeah. I’m taking control of my life.” He paused. Said, with a note of resentment, “I thought you’d be happy for me.”
    “I am. I guess.”
    “So what’s with the look?”
    “What look?”
    “Like I’ve sprouted wings.”
    “I’ve just got to get used to the new Korsak. It’s like I don’t know you anymore.”
    “Is that a bad thing?”
    “No. At least you’re not blowing smoke in my face