The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

moving. Focus, damn it. Something for Frankie. A book? She could think of a few appropriate titles.
The Miss Manners Guide to Not Being An Asshole.
Too bad Miss Manners never wrote that one; there’d be a market for it. She cruised up the aisle, down the next, searching, searching.
    And then she came to a halt, her throat aching, her fingers numb as she clutched the cart handle.
    She was staring at an aisle of baby supplies. She saw little flannel sleepers embroidered with ducks. Doll-size mittens and booties and fuzzy caps topped with yarn balls. Stacks of pink and blue receiving blankets in which to swaddle newborns. It was the blankets she focused on, remembering the way Camille had swaddled her own dead infant in powder-blue wool, wrapping it with a mother’s love, a mother’s grief.
    It took several rings before the sound of her cell phone cut through her trance. She pulled it from her purse and answered with a dazed: “Rizzoli.”
    “Hey, Detective. It’s Walt DeGroot here.”
    DeGroot worked in the DNA section of the crime lab. Usually Rizzoli was the one who called him, trying to goad him into a quicker turnaround on test results. Today she responded to his call with dulled interest.
    “So what have you got for me?” she asked, her gaze moving back to the baby blankets.
    “We ran that maternal DNA against the infant you found in the pond.”
    “Yeah?”
    “The victim, Camille Maginnes, is definitely the mother of that child.”
    Rizzoli gave a tired sigh. “Thanks, Walt,” she murmured. “It’s what we expected.”
    “Wait. There’s more.”
    “More?”
    “This, I don’t think you expected. It’s about the baby’s father.”
    All at once she was focused completely on Walt’s voice. On what he was about to tell her.
    “What about the father?” she asked.
    “I know who he is.”

E IGHTEEN
     
    R IZZOLI DROVE through the afternoon and into the gray of dusk, seeing the road ahead through a fog of rage. The gifts she’d just purchased were still piled on her backseat, along with rolls of wrapping paper and foil ribbon, but her mind was no longer on Christmas. It was on a young girl, walking barefoot through the snow. A girl who sought the pain of frostbite, if only to mask her deeper agony. But nothing could match the girl’s secret torment, no amount of prayer or self-flagellation could silence her private shrieks of pain.
    When at last she drove past the granite pillars, and into the driveway of Camille’s parents, it was nearly five P . M ., and her shoulders were stiff from the tension of that long drive. She stepped out of the car and inhaled a stinging lungful of salt air. She walked up the steps and rang the bell.
    The dark-haired housekeeper Maria answered the door. “I’m sorry, Detective, but Mrs. Maginnes isn’t here. Was she expecting you?”
    “No. When will she be home?”
    “She and the boys went out shopping. She should be back for dinner. Another hour, I think.”
    “Then I’ll wait for her.”
    “I’m not sure—”
    “I’ll just keep Mr. Maginnes company. If that’s all right.”
    Reluctantly, Maria admitted her into the house. A woman accustomed to deferring to others was not about to bar the door against law enforcement.
    Rizzoli did not need Maria to show her the way; she walked across the same polished floors, past the same marine paintings, and stepped into the Sea Room. The view across Nantucket Sound was ominous, the wind-roiled water flecked by whitecaps. Randall Maginnes lay on his right side in the hospital bed, his face turned to the windows so he could see the gathering storm. A front-row seat to nature’s turbulence.
    The private-duty nurse sitting beside him noticed the visitor, and rose from her chair. “Hello?”
    “I’m Detective Rizzoli, Boston P.D. I’m just waiting for Mrs. Maginnes to get home. Thought I’d look in on Mr. Maginnes. See how he’s doing.”
    “He’s about the same.”
    “How’s his progress since the stroke?”
    “We’ve been doing physical therapy for months now. But the deficits are pretty severe.”
    “Are they permanent?”
    The nurse glanced at her patient, then made a gesture for Rizzoli to follow her out of the room.
    In the hallway, the nurse said: “I don’t like to talk about him where he can hear us. I know he understands.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “It’s the way he looks at me. The way he reacts to things. Even though he can’t talk, he does have a functioning mind. I played a CD of