The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

pointed.
    “She was out there.”
    “Outside the gate?”
    “Uh-huh. She had a big scarf around her face. Like she was a bank robber.”
    “So you didn’t see her face?”
    The girl shook her head, brown curls tossing.
    “Did this lady talk to you?”
    “No, the man did.”
    Rizzoli stared at her. “There was a man with her?”
    “He asked me to let them in, because they needed to speak to Sister Ursula. But it’s against the rules, and I told him so. If a sister breaks the rules, she gets kicked out. My mommy says the sisters don’t have anywhere else to go, so they
never
break the rules, because they’re afraid to go outside.” Noni paused. Looked up and said with a note of pride: “But I go outside all the time.”
    That’s because you’re not afraid of anything,
thought Rizzoli.
You’re fearless.
    Noni began to tramp a line in the snow, her little pink boots marching with a soldier’s precision. She cut one trough, then did an about-face and marched back, stamping out a parallel line. She thinks she’s invincible, thought Rizzoli. But she’s so small and vulnerable. Just a speck of a girl in a puffed-up jacket.
    “What happened then, Noni?”
    The girl came clomp-clomping back through the snow and came to an abrupt halt, her gaze focused on her snow-crusted boots. “The lady pushed a letter through the gate.” Noni leaned forward and whispered: “And I saw she didn’t have any fingers.”
    “Did you give Sister Ursula that letter?”
    The girl gave a nod that made her curls bounce like a head full of Slinkies. “And she came out.
Right
out.”
    “Did she talk to these people?”
    A shake of the head.
    “Why not?”
    “Because when she came out, they were already gone.”
    Rizzoli turned and stared at the sidewalk where the two visitors had stood, imploring a recalcitrant child to let them in the gate.
    The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly bristled.
    Rat Lady. She was here.

S IXTEEN
     
    R IZZOLI STEPPED OFF the hospital elevator, strode past the sign announcing ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN , and barrelled straight through the double doors into the intensive care unit. It was one A . M ., and the unit lights were dimmed to allow the patients to sleep. Coming straight from the bright hallway, she confronted a room where nurses were faceless silhouettes. Only one patient cubicle was brightly lit, and like a beacon, it drew her toward it.
    The black woman cop standing outside the cubicle greeted Rizzoli. “Hey, Detective. You got here fast.”
    “She said anything yet?”
    “She can’t. She’s still got that breathing tube in her throat. But she’s definitely awake. Her eyes are open, and I heard the nurse say she’s following commands. Everyone seems really surprised that she woke up at all.”
    The squeal of the ventilator alarm made Rizzoli glance through the cubicle doorway at the knot of medical personnel huddled around the bed. She recognized the neurosurgeon, Dr. Yuen, and the internist Dr. Sutcliffe, his blond ponytail an oddly disconcerting detail in that gathering of grim professionals. “What’s going on in there?”
    “I don’t know. Something about the blood pressure. Dr. Sutcliffe got here just as things started to go haywire. Then Dr. Yuen showed up, and they’ve been fussing with her ever since.” The cop shook her head. “I don’t think it’s going well. Those machines’ve been beeping like crazy.”
    “Jesus, don’t tell me we’re gonna lose her just as she wakes up.”
    Rizzoli squeezed into the cubicle, where lights shone down with a brilliance that was painful to her tired eyes. She could not see Sister Ursula, who was hidden within the tight circle of personnel, but she could see the monitors above the bed, the heart rhythm skittering like a stone across water.
    “She’s trying to pull out the ET tube!” a nurse said.
    “Get that hand tied down tighter!”
    “. . . Ursula, relax. Try to relax.”
    “Systolic’s down to eighty—”
    “Why is she so flushed?” said Yuen. “Look at her face.” He glanced sideways as the ventilator squealed.
    “Too much airway resistance,” a nurse said. “She’s fighting the ventilator.”
    “Her pressure’s dropping, Dr. Yuen. It’s eighty systolic.”
    “Let’s get a dopamine drip going. Now.”
    A nurse suddenly noticed Rizzoli standing in the doorway. “Ma’am, you’re going to have to step out.”
    “Is she conscious?” asked Rizzoli.
    “Step
out
of the cubicle.”
    “I’ll