The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

yesterday,” said Maura. “There are acute inflammatory changes. Edema, infiltration by granulocytes. Some deep micro-abscesses. There are also inflammatory changes in the blood vessels as well.”
    “And you have no bacteria growing?”
    “Both the Gram stain and Fite Faraco stains are negative for bacteria. These are sterile abscesses.”
    “You already know the cause of death, right?” said Bristol, his dark beard catching the crumbs of his muffin. “Does it really matter what these nodules are?”
    “I hate to think I’m missing something obvious here. We have no identification on this victim. We don’t know anything about her, except for the cause of death and the fact she was covered with these lesions.”
    “Well, what’s
your
diagnosis?”
    Maura looked down at the ugly swellings, like a mountain range of carbuncles across the victim’s skin. “Erythema nodosum,” she said.
    “Cause?”
    She shrugged. “Idiopathic.” Meaning, quite simply, cause unknown.
    Costas laughed. “There’s a wastebasket diagnosis for you.”
    “I don’t know what else to call it.”
    “Neither do we,” said Bristol. “Erythema nodosum works for me.”
    Back at her desk, Maura reviewed the typed autopsy report for Rat Lady, which she had dictated earlier, and felt dissatisfied as she signed it. She knew the victim’s approximate time of death, and the cause of death. She knew the woman was most likely poor, and that she had surely suffered from the humiliation of her appearance.
    She looked down at the box of biopsy slides, labeled with the name Jane Doe and the case number. She pulled out one of the slides and slid it under the microscope lens. Swirls of pink and purple came into focus through the eyepiece. It was a hematoxylin and eosin stain of the skin. She saw the dark stipples of acute inflammatory cells, saw the fibrous circle of a blood vessel infiltrated by white cells, signs that the body was fighting back, sending its soldiers of immune cells into battle against . . . what?
    Where was the enemy?
    She sat back in her chair, thinking of what she’d seen on autopsy. A woman with no hands or face, mutilated by a killer who harvested identities as well as lives.
    But why the feet? Why did he take the feet?
    This is a killer who seems to operate with cool logic, she thought, not twisted perversions. He shoots to kill, using an efficiently lethal bullet. He strips the victim but does not sexually abuse her. He amputates the hands and feet and peels off the face. Then he leaves the corpse in a place where its skin will soon be gnawed away by scavengers.
    It kept coming back to the feet. The removal of the feet was not logical.
    She retrieved Rat Lady’s X-ray envelope and slid the ankle films onto the light box. Once again, the abrupt demarcation of severed flesh shocked her, but she saw nothing new here, no clues that would explain the killer’s motive for the amputation.
    She took the films down, replaced them with the skull films, frontal and lateral views. She stood gazing at the bones of Rat Lady’s face, and tried to envision what that face might have looked like. No older than forty-five, she thought, yet already you have lost your upper teeth. Already, you have the jaw of an elderly woman, the bones of your face rotting from within, your nose sinking into a widening crater. And scattered across your torso and limbs are ugly nodules. Just a glance in the mirror would be painful. And then to step outside, into the eyes of the public . . .
    She stared at the bones, glowing on the light box. And she thought: I know why the killer took the feet.
             
     
    It was only two days before Christmas, and when Maura walked onto the Harvard campus, she found it almost deserted, the Yard a broad expanse of white, scarcely marred by footprints. She tramped along the walkway, carrying her briefcase and a large envelope of X rays, and could smell, in the air, the metallic tang of a coming snowfall. A few dead leaves clung, shivering, to bare trees. Some would view this scene as a holiday postcard with a
Season’s Greeting
caption, but she saw only the monotonous grays of winter, a season she was already weary of.
    By the time she reached Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology, cold water had seeped into her socks and the hems of her pant legs were soaked. She stomped off the snow and walked into a building that smelled of history. Wooden steps creaked as she went down the stairwell to the