The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

Justin. For that comment, he got a playful jab in the ribs. “Well, he does!”
    Rizzoli wondered about two brothers who could exchange such lighthearted banter while their stepsister lay, so recently deceased, in the morgue.
    She asked, “When did you two last see your sister?”
    Blake and Justin looked at each other. Said, almost in unison, “Grandma’s funeral.”
    “That was in March?” She looked at Lauren. “When Camille came home for a visit?”
    Lauren nodded. “We had to petition the church to let her come home for the services. It’s like asking for a prisoner’s parole. I couldn’t believe it when they didn’t let her come home again in April, after Randall had his stroke. Her own father! And she just accepted their decision. Just did what they told her to do. You have to wonder what goes on inside those convents, that they’re so afraid to let them out. What sorts of abuse they’re hiding. But that’s probably why she liked being there.”
    “Why would you think that?”
    “Because it’s what she craved. Punishment. Pain.”
    “Camille?”
    “I told you, Detective, she was strange. When she was sixteen, she took off her shoes and went walking barefoot. In January. It was ten degrees outside! The maid found her standing in the snow. Of course, all our neighbors soon heard about it as well. We had to take her to the hospital for frostbite. She told the doctor she did it because the saints had suffered, and she wanted to feel pain, too. She thought it would bring her closer to God.” Lauren shook her head. “What can you do with a girl like that?”
    Love her, thought Rizzoli. Try to understand her.
    “I wanted her to see a psychiatrist, but Randall wouldn’t hear of it. He never, ever admitted that his own daughter was . . .” Lauren paused.
    “Just say it, Mom,” said Blake. “She was crazy. That’s what we all thought.”
    Camille’s father made a soft moan.
    Lauren rose to wipe another thread of drool from his mouth. “Where is that nurse, anyway? She was supposed to be here at three.”
    “When Camille came home in March, how long did she stay?” asked Frost.
    Lauren looked at him, distracted. “About a week. She could have stayed longer, but she chose to go back to the convent early.”
    “Why?”
    “I guess she didn’t like being around all these people. We had a lot of my relatives up from Newport for the funeral.”
    “You did tell us she was reclusive.”
    “That’s an understatement.”
    Rizzoli asked, “Did she have many friends, Mrs. Maginnes?”
    “If she did, she never brought any of them home to meet us.”
    “How about at school?” Rizzoli looked at the two boys, who glanced at each other.
    Justin said, with unnecessary callousness, “Only the wallflower crowd.”
    “I meant boyfriends.”
    Lauren gave a startled laugh. “Boyfriends? When all she dreamed about was becoming the bride of Christ?”
    “She was an attractive young woman,” said Rizzoli. “Maybe you didn’t see it, but I’m sure there were boys who noticed it. Boys who were interested in her.” She looked at Lauren’s sons.
    “No one wanted to go out with her,” said Justin. “They’d get laughed at.”
    “And when she came home, in March? Did she spend time with any friends? Did any men seem particularly interested in her?”
    “Why do you keep asking about boyfriends?” said Lauren.
    Rizzoli could think of no way to avoid revealing the truth. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But shortly before Camille was murdered, she bore a child. A baby who died at birth.” She looked at the brothers.
    They stared back at her with equally stunned expressions.
    For a moment, the only sound in the room was the wind whipping off the sea, rattling the windows.
    Lauren said, “Haven’t you been reading the news? All those terrible things the priests have been doing? She’s been in a convent for the last two years! She’s been under
their
supervision,
their
authority. You should talk to
them
.”
    “We’ve already questioned the one priest who had access to the convent. He willingly gave us his DNA. Those tests are pending.”
    “So you don’t even know yet if he’s the father. Why bother us with these questions?”
    “The baby would have been conceived sometime in March, Mrs. Maginnes. The month she came home for that funeral.”
    “And you think that it happened
here
?”
    “You had a house full of guests.”
    “What are you asking me to do? Call up every man who