The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

among the antiques?
    The woman led them into a vast room where floor-to-ceiling windows faced the sea. The view of gray, windswept water was so dramatic that it instantly captured Rizzoli’s gaze and she did not, at first, focus on anything else. But even as she stared at the water, she was aware of the sour odor that hung in the room. The smell of urine.
    She turned to look at the source of that smell: a man lying in a hospital bed near the windows, as though displayed like a piece of living art. Seated in a chair beside him was an auburn-haired woman, who now rose to greet her visitors. Rizzoli saw nothing of Camille in this woman’s face. Camille’s beauty had been delicate, almost ethereal. This woman was all gloss and polish, her hair cut in a perfect helmet, her eyebrows plucked into arching gull’s wings.
    “I’m Lauren Maginnes, Camille’s stepmother,” the woman said, and reached out to shake Frost’s hand. Some women ignore their own sex and focus only on the men in the room, and she was one of them, turning her full attention to Barry Frost.
    Rizzoli said, “Hi, I spoke to you on the phone. I’m Detective Rizzoli. And this is Detective Frost. We’re both very sorry about your loss.”
    Only then did Lauren finally deign to focus on Rizzoli. “Thank you” was all she said. She glanced at the dark-haired woman who’d shown them in. “Maria, could you tell the boys to come down and join us? The police are here.” She turned back to her guests and gestured toward a couch. “Please sit down.”
    Rizzoli found herself seated closest to the hospital bed. She looked at the man’s hand, contracted into a claw, and his face, one side drooping into an immobile puddle, and she remembered the last months of her own grandfather’s life. How he had lain in his nursing-home bed, his eyes fully aware and angry, imprisoned in a body that would no longer obey his commands. She saw such awareness in this man’s eyes. He was staring straight at her, at this visitor he did not know, and she saw despair and humiliation in that gaze. The helplessness of a man whose dignity has been stolen. He could not be much older than fifty, yet already his body had betrayed him. A line of drool glistened on his chin and dribbled onto the pillow. On a nearby table were all the paraphernalia needed to keep him comfortable: cans of Ensure. Rubber gloves and Handi Wipes. A box of adult diapers. Your whole life reduced to a tabletop’s worth of hygiene products.
    “Our evening shift nurse is running a little late, so I hope you don’t mind sitting here while I keep an eye on Randall,” said Lauren. “We moved him into this room because he’s always loved the sea. Now he can look at it all the time.” She reached for a tissue and gently dabbed the drool from his mouth. “There. There, now.” She turned and looked at the two detectives. “You see why I didn’t want to drive all the way up to Boston. I don’t like to leave him for too long with the nurses. He gets agitated. He can’t talk, but I know he misses me when I’m gone.”
    Lauren sat back down in the armchair and focused on Frost. “Have you made any progress with the investigation?”
    Once again, it was Rizzoli who responded, determined to hold this woman’s attention, and irritated that it kept slipping away from her.
    “We’re following some new leads,” she said.
    “But you didn’t drive all the way to Hyannis just to tell me that.”
    “No. We came to talk about some issues we felt more comfortable handling in person.”
    “And you wanted to look us over, I imagine.”
    “We wanted a sense of Camille’s background. Her family.”
    “Well, here we are.” Lauren waved her arm. “This is the house she grew up in. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? Why she’d leave this for a convent. Randall gave her everything any girl could ask for. A brand-new BMW for her birthday. Her own pony. A closet full of dresses that she hardly ever wore. Instead, she chose to wear black for the rest of her life. She chose . . .” Lauren shook her head. “We still don’t get it.”
    “You were both unhappy about her decision?”
    “Oh, I could live with it. After all, it was her life. But Randall never accepted it. He kept hoping she’d change her mind. That she’d get tired of whatever it is nuns do all day, and she’d finally come home.” She looked at her husband, lying mute in the bed. “I think that’s why he had his stroke. She was his only