The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

his account a month ago. And then he left home.”
    “Sounds like someone who’s on the run and doesn’t want to be traced,” said Maura. “Or someone who’s scared.”
    Dean looked at the photo. “Obviously, he was right to be.”
    “Tell us more about this victim,” said Rizzoli. She was back in control now, and able to gaze, without flinching, at the photo.
    “Mr. Redfield was formerly a senior VP of Octagon Chemicals, in charge of their overseas operations,” said Dean. “Two months ago, he resigned from the company, ostensibly for personal reasons.”
    “Octagon?” said Maura. “They’ve been in the news. Aren’t they currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission?”
    Dean nodded. “The SEC enforcement division has filed a civil action against Octagon, alleging multiple violations involving billions of dollars in illegal transactions.”
    “Billions?” said Rizzoli. “Wow.”
    “Octagon is a huge multinational, with annual sales of twenty billion dollars. We’re talking about a very big fish.”
    Rizzoli looked at the death scene photo. “And this victim was swimming in that pond. He’d know the inside scoop. You think he was a problem for Octagon?”
    “Three weeks ago,” said Dean, “Mr. Redfield made an appointment to speak with officials from the Justice Department.”
    “Yep,” said Crowe with a laugh. “He was definitely a problem for them.”
    “He asked that Justice officials meet him here, in Boston.”
    “Why not Washington?” asked Rizzoli.
    “He told them there were other parties who wished to make statements. That it had to be done here. What we don’t know is why he contacted the Justice Department, rather than go directly to the SEC, since we assume it had to do with the Octagon investigation.”
    “But you don’t know that for certain?”
    “No. Because he never kept the appointment. By then, he was dead.”
    Crowe said, “Hey, if it looks like a paid hit and it smells like a paid hit . . .”
    “What does any of this have to do with Rat Lady?” asked Rizzoli.
    “I’m just getting to that,” said Dean. He looked at Maura. “You performed the autopsy. What was her cause of death?”
    “A gunshot wound to the chest,” said Maura. “Bullet fragments penetrated her heart, and there was massive bleeding into the pericardial sac, preventing the heart from pumping. It’s called pericardial tamponade.”
    “And what type of bullet was used?”
    Maura remembered the X ray of Rat Lady’s chest. The spray of shell fragments, like a galaxy of stars scattered through both lungs. “It was a Glaser blue-tip,” she said. “A copper jacket containing metal pellets. It’s designed to fragment inside the body, with little chance of through and through penetration.” She paused, and added: “It’s a devastating projectile.”
    Dean nodded at the photo of Howard Redfield, lying curled and bloody in the trunk of his car. “Mr. Redfield was killed with a Glaser blue-tip. A bullet fired from the same gun that killed your Jane Doe.”
    For a moment, no one spoke.
    Then Rizzoli said, in disbelief, “But you just laid the case for a contract killing. Octagon’s way of dealing with a whistle-blower. This other victim, Rat Lady—”
    “Detective Rizzoli’s right,” said Maura. “Rat Lady is the most unlikely target of a corporate hit that I could imagine.”
    “Nevertheless,” said Dean, “The bullet that killed her was fired by the same weapon that killed Howard Redfield.”
    Crowe said, “That’s how Agent Dean came into the picture. I requested a DRUGFIRE search on that blue-tip copper jacket you took out of her chest.”
    Similar to the FBI’s national AFIS database for fingerprints, DRUGFIRE was a centralized database for firearm-related evidence. Marks and striations found on bullets from crime scenes were stored as digitized data, which could then be searched for matches, linking all crimes committed by the same firearm.
    “DRUGFIRE came up with the match,” said Dean.
    Rizzoli shook her head in bewilderment. “Why these two victims? I don’t see the connection.”
    “That’s what makes Jane Doe’s death so interesting,” said Dean.
    Maura did not like his use of the word
interesting
. It implied that some deaths were not interesting, not worthy of special attention. Those victims would certainly not agree.
    She focused on the photo, an ugly splash of gore lying on the conference table. “Our Jane Doe doesn’t