The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

it.”
    Sutcliffe glanced up, once again, at the monitor. Then his gaze met Rizzoli’s through the window. And he shook his head.
             
     
    An hour later, Maura arrived at the hospital. After Rizzoli’s phone call, she had rolled straight out of bed, leaving Victor asleep on the pillow beside her, and had dressed without showering. Riding the elevator up to the ICU, she could smell his scent on her skin, and she ached from the rawness of the night’s lovemaking. She had come straight to the hospital while reeking gloriously of sex, her mind still focused on warm bodies, not cold. On the living, not the dead. Leaning back against the elevator wall, she closed her eyes and allowed herself to savor the memories for just a while longer. One more moment of remembered pleasure.
    The opening of the door startled her. She jerked straight, blinking at the two nurses who stood waiting to step in, and she quickly exited, her cheeks flushing.
Do they notice it?
she thought as she walked down the hall.
Surely anyone can see, in my face, the guilty glow of sex.
    Rizzoli was in the ICU waiting room, slouched on the sofa and sipping from a Styrofoam cup of coffee. As Maura walked in, Rizzoli gave her a long look, as though she too detected something different about Maura. An unseemly flush to her face, on this night when tragedy had called them together.
    “They’re saying she had a heart attack,” said Rizzoli. “It doesn’t look good. She’s on life support.”
    “What time did she code?”
    “Around one. They worked on her for almost an hour, and managed to get a heart rhythm back. But she’s comatose now. No spontaneous breathing. Unreactive pupils.” She shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anyone home anymore.”
    “What do the doctors say?”
    “Well, that’s the controversy. Dr. Yuen isn’t ready to pull the plug yet. But hippie boy thinks she’s brain dead.”
    “You mean Dr. Sutcliffe?”
    “Yeah. The hunk with the ponytail. He’s ordered an EEG in the morning, to check for brain activity.”
    “If there’s none, it’ll be hard to justify maintaining life support.”
    Rizzoli nodded. “I thought you’d say that.”
    “Was the cardiac arrest witnessed?”
    “What?”
    “Were medical personnel present when her heart stopped?”
    Rizzoli looked irritated now, put off by Maura’s matter-of-fact questions. She set down the cup, sloshing coffee onto the table. “A whole crowd of ’em, in fact. I was there, too.”
    “What led up to the code?”
    “They said her blood pressure shot up first and her pulse went crazy. By the time I got here, her pressure was already falling. And then her heart stopped. So yeah, the whole event was witnessed.”
    A moment passed. The TV was turned on, but the volume was muted. Rizzoli’s gaze drifted to the CNN news banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
Disgruntled employee shoots four in North Carolina auto plant. . . . Toxic chemical spill in Colorado train derailment . . .
A running tally of disasters across the county, and here we are, two tired women, struggling just to make it through this night.
    Maura sat down on the couch beside Rizzoli. “How’re you doing, Jane? You look wiped out.”
    “I feel like hell. Like it’s sucking up every ounce of my energy. And there’s nothing left for me.” She drained her coffee in one last gulp and threw the empty cup at the trash can. It missed. She simply stared at it, too tired to get up and retrieve it from the floor.
    “The girl ID’d him,” said Rizzoli.
    “What?”
    “Noni.” She paused. “Gabriel was so good with her. It kind of surprised me. Somehow, I didn’t expect that he’d be good with kids. You know how he is, so hard to read. So uptight. But he sat right down with her and had her eating out of his hand. . . .” She looked off wistfully, then gave herself a shake. “She recognized Howard Redfield’s photo.”
    “He was the man who came to Graystones? The one with Jane Doe?”
    Rizzoli nodded. “They were both there together. Trying to get in, to see her.”
    Maura shook her head. “I don’t get it. What on earth did these three people have to do with each other?”
    “That’s a question only Urusla could have answered.” Rizzoli rose and pulled on her coat. She turned toward the door, then stopped. Looked back at Maura. “She was awake, you know.”
    “Sister Ursula?”
    “Just before she coded, she opened her eyes.”
    “Do you think she was