The Sinner: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel

what you might be destroying. How many people—innocent people—you might be hurting.”
    She flinched as he moved toward her. But he didn’t stop; he walked right past her. She heard his footsteps move down the hallway, and then the front door slammed shut.
    At once she rose and went into the living room. Through the window, she watched his car back out of the driveway. She went to the front door and turned the deadbolt. Then she bolted the door leading to the garage. Locking Victor out.
    She returned to the kitchen to lock the back door as well, her hand shaking as she slid the chain in place. She turned and gazed at a room that now seemed foreign to her, the air still reverberating with the echoes of threat. The cocktail that Victor had poured for her was sitting on the countertop. She picked up the drink, which was no longer chilled, and poured it down the sink, as though it was contaminated.
    She
felt contaminated now, by his touch. By his lovemaking.
    She went straight to the bathroom, peeled off her clothes, and stepped into the shower. There she stood under the stream of hot water, trying to wash away all traces of him from her skin, but she could not purge the memories. She closed her eyes and it was still his face she saw, his touch she remembered.
    In the bedroom, she stripped the sheets, and his scent wafted up from the linen. Yet another painful reminder. She made the bed with fresh sheets that did not smell of their lovemaking. Replaced the towels in the bathroom, towels he had used. Went back to the kitchen and discarded the takeout food he had left warming in the oven—a casserole of eggplant parmesan.
    She ate no dinner that night; instead she poured a glass of zinfandel and carried it into the living room. She lit the gas fireplace and sat staring at the Christmas tree.
    Happy holidays, she thought. I can crack open a chest and bare the contents of a torso. I can slice off slivers of lung, and through the microscope, diagnose cancer or tuberculosis or emphysema. But the secret of what lies inside a human heart is beyond the reach of my scalpel.
    The wine was an anesthetic, deadening her pain. She finished the glass and went to bed.
    In the night, she awakened with a start, and heard the house creaking in the wind. She was breathing hard, her heart racing, as the last shreds of a nightmare tore away. Burned bodies, stacked like black twigs on a pyre. Flames, casting their glow on a circle of standing figures. And she, trying to stay in the shadows, trying to hide from the firelight. Even in my dreams, she thought, I can’t get away from those images. I live with my own private Dante’s inferno in my head.
    She reached out to feel cool sheets beside her, where Victor had once slept. And she missed him then, his absence suddenly so painful to her that she crossed her arms over her stomach, to quell the emptiness there.
    What if she was wrong? What if he was telling her the truth?
    At dawn, she finally climbed out of bed, feeling drugged and unrested. She went to the kitchen to make coffee, and sat down at the table, sipping from her mug in the gloomy light of morning. Her gaze fell to the folder of photographs, still lying on the table.
    She opened it, and saw the inspiration for last night’s nightmares. The burned bodies, the charred remains of huts. So many dead, she thought, killed in one night’s paroxysm of violence. What terrible rage must have driven the attackers to slaughter even the animals? She gazed at dead goats and humans, mingled in a common tangle of corpses.
    The goats. Why the goats?
    She mulled this over, trying to understand what could motivate such senseless destruction.
    Dead animals.
    She turned to the next photo. It showed the One Earth clinic, its cinder block walls scorched by fire, the pile of burned bodies lying in front of the doorway. But it was not the bodies she focused on; it was the clinic roof, made of corrugated tin, still intact. She had not really looked at the roof before. Now she studied what appeared to be fallen leaves. Dark blots were scattered atop the ridged metal. They were too small for her to make out any detail.
    She carried the photo into her office and switched on the lights. Hunting in her desk, she found a magnifying glass. Under the bright desk lamp, she studied the image, focusing on the tin roof, her lens bringing out every detail of the fallen leaves. The dark blots suddenly took on a terrible new shape. A chill whispered up her spine.