The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

mind.
    She was first to arrive at Graystones Abbey. She sat in her parked car and waited for him, every nerve humming, her anxiety turning to nausea.
    Pull it together, goddamn it. Focus on the job.
    She saw his rental car park behind her.
    At once she stepped out and welcomed the punishing wind on her face. The more brutal the cold, the better, to slap some sense into her. She watched him emerge from his car and greeted him with the crisp nod of a fellow cop.
    Then she turned and rang the gate bell. No pause for conversation, no fumbling for words. She went straight to business, because it was the only way she knew how to cope with this reunion. She was relieved when a nun soon emerged from the building and began shuffling through the snow, toward the gate.
    “It’s Sister Isabel,” said Rizzoli. “Believe it or not, she’s one of the younger ones.”
    Isabel squinted at them through the bars, her gaze on Rizzoli’s companion.
    “This is Agent Gabriel Dean from the FBI,” said Rizzoli. “I’m just going to show him the chapel. We won’t disturb you.”
    Isabel opened the gate to let them in. It gave an unforgiving clang as it swung shut behind them. The cold sound of finality. Of imprisonment. Sister Isabel immediately returned to the building, leaving the two visitors standing in the courtyard. Alone with each other.
    At once Rizzoli took control of the silence and launched into a case review. “We still can’t be sure of the point of entry,” she said. “Snowfall covered up any footprints, and we didn’t find any broken ivy to indicate he climbed the wall. That front gate’s kept locked at all times, so if the perp came that way, someone inside the abbey had to let him in. That’s a violation of convent rules. It would have to be done at night, when no one would see it.”
    “You have no witnesses?”
    “None. We thought, at first, that it was the younger nun, Camille, who might have opened the gate.”
    “Why Camille?”
    “Because of what we found on autopsy.” Rizzoli turned her gaze to the wall, avoiding his eyes, as she said: “She’d recently been pregnant. We found the dead infant in a pond behind the abbey.”
    “And the father?”
    “Obviously a prime suspect, whoever he is. We haven’t identified him yet. DNA tests are still pending. But now, after what you’ve just told us, it seems we may have been barking up the wrong tree entirely.”
    She stared at the walls that encircled them, at the gate that barred the world from entry, and an alternate sequence of events suddenly began to play out before her eyes, a sequence far different from the one she had imagined when she first set foot on this crime scene.
    If it wasn’t Camille who opened the gate . . .
    “So who let the killer into the abbey?” said Dean, eerily reading her thoughts.
    She frowned at the gate, thinking of snow blowing across the cobblestones. She said, “Ursula was wearing a coat and boots . . .”
    She turned and looked at the building. Pictured it in those black hours before dawn, the windows dark, the nuns asleep in their chambers. The courtyard silent, except for the wind.
    “It was already snowing when she came outside,” she said. “She was dressed for the weather. She walked across this courtyard, to the gate, where someone was waiting for her.”
    “Someone she must have known would be out here,” said Dean. “Someone she must have expected.”
    Rizzoli nodded. Now she turned toward the chapel and began to walk, her boots punching holes in the snow. Dean was right behind her, but she was no longer focused on him; she was walking in the footsteps of a doomed woman.
    A night swirling with the season’s first snow. The stones are slippery beneath your boots. You move in silence because you don’t want the other sisters to know you are meeting someone. Someone for whom you are willing to break the rules.
    But it’s dark, and there are no lamps to light the gate. So you can’t see his face. You can’t be sure this is the visitor you’re expecting tonight. . . .
    At the fountain, she abruptly halted and looked up at the row of windows over the courtyard.
    “What is it?” said Dean.
    “Camille’s room,” she said, pointing. “It’s right up there.”
    He gazed up at the room. The stinging wind had made his face ruddy, and ruffled his hair. It was a mistake to stare at him, because she suddenly felt such hunger for his touch, she had to turn away, had to press her fist against her