The Sinner

by Tess Gerritsen

  In all her years of undressing corpses, Maura had never felt such reluctance to strip a victim nude. This was a woman who had chosen to live hidden from the eyes of men; now she would be cruelly revealed, her body probed, her orifices swabbed. The prospect of such an invasion brought a bitter taste to Maura’s throat and she paused to regain her composure. She saw Yoshima’s questioning glance. If he was disturbed, he did not show it. His impassive face was a calming influence in that room, where the very air seemed charged with emotion.

  She refocused on the task. Together, she and Yoshima lifted the tunic, sliding it up over the thighs and hips. It was loosely fitted, and they were able to remove it without breaking rigor mortis of the arms. Beneath it were yet more garments—a white cotton hood that had slid down around her neck, the front flaps safety-pinned to a bloodstained T-shirt. The same pins that had appeared on the X ray. Heavy black tights covered her legs. They removed the tights first, revealing white cotton panties beneath. They were absurdly modest briefs, designed to cover as much skin as possible, the underwear of an old lady, not a nubile young woman. A sanitary pad bulged beneath the cotton. As Maura had suspected earlier, from the bloodstained bed sheets, the victim was menstruating.

  Next Maura tackled the T-shirt. She unfastened a safety pin, peeled apart more Velcro flaps, and slid off the hood. The T-shirt, however, would not come off so easily due to rigor mortis. She reached for scissors and cut straight up the center of the shirt. The fabric parted, revealing yet another layer.

  This one took her aback. She stared at the band of cloth wrapped tightly around the chest, fastened at the front with two safety pins.

  “What’s that for?” asked Frost.

  “It looks like she bound her breasts,” said Maura.

  “Why?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Substitute for a bra?” Rizzoli suggested.

  “I can’t imagine why she’d choose to wear this instead of a bra. Look how tightly it’s wrapped. It had to be uncomfortable.”

  Rizzoli snorted. “Yeah, like a bra’s comfortable?”

  “It’s not some kind of religious thing, is it?” said Frost. “Part of their habit?”

  “No, this is just standard Ace wrap. The same wrapping you’d buy at a drugstore to bind a sprained ankle.”

  “But how do we know what nuns usually wear? I mean, for all we know, under all those robes, they could be dressed in black lace and fishnet.”

  No one laughed.

  Maura gazed down at Camille, and was suddenly struck by the symbolism of bound breasts. Womanly features disguised, suppressed. Squeezed into submission. What had gone through Camille’s mind as she’d wound the cloth around her chest, pulling the elastic taut against her skin? Had she felt disgust about these reminders of womanhood? Had she felt cleaner, purer, as her breasts vanished beneath the strips of bandage, her curves flattened, her sexuality denied?

  Maura undid the two safety pins and set them on the tray. Then, with Yoshima’s assistance, she began to unwrap the binding, baring successive bands of skin. But even smothering elastic could not make healthy flesh shrivel away. The last strip came off, revealing ripe young breasts, the skin stippled with the imprint of the fabric. Other women would have been proud of those breasts; Camille Maginnes had concealed them, as though ashamed.

  There was one last item of clothing to remove. The cotton briefs.

  Maura slid the elastic waistband down over the hips and peeled it past the thighs. The sanitary napkin, affixed to the underwear, was stained with only a scant amount of blood.

  “Fresh pad,” noted Rizzoli. “Looks like she’d just changed it.”

  But Maura was not looking at the pad; her gaze was focused on the toneless abdomen, sagging and loose between jutting hipbones. Silvery streaks marred the pale skin. For a moment she said nothing, silently absorbing the significance of those streaks. She was thinking, too, of the tightly wrapped breasts.

  Maura turned to the tray, where she had left the bundle of Ace wrap, and slowly unrolled it, inspecting the fabric.

  “What’re you looking for?” asked Rizzoli.

  “Stains,” said Maura.

  “You can already see the blood.”

  “Not bloodstains . . .” Maura paused, the Ace wrap spread across the tray to reveal dark rings where fluid had dried. My god, she thought. How can this be possible?

  She looked at Yoshima. “Let’s set her up for a pelvic.”

  He frowned at her. “Break rigor mortis?”

  “She doesn’t have a lot of muscle mass.” Camille was a slender woman; it would make their task easier.

  Yoshima moved to the foot of the table. While Maura held down the pelvis, he slid his hands under the left thigh and strained to flex the hip. Breaking rigor mortis was as brutal as it sounded—the forcible rupture of rigid muscle fibers. Never a pleasant procedure, it clearly horrified Frost, who stepped back from the table, his face paling. Yoshima gave a firm shove, and Maura felt, transmitted through the pelvis, the snap of tearing muscle.

  “Oh man,” said Frost, turning away.

  But it was Rizzoli who moved unsteadily toward the chair near the sink, and sank into it, dropping her head in her hands. Rizzoli the stoic, who never complained of the sights or the smells of the autopsy suite, now seemed unable to stomach even these preliminaries.

  Maura circled to the other side of the table, and again held down the pelvis while Yoshima worked on the right thigh. Even she had a twinge of nausea as they strained to break the rigidity. Of all the ordeals she’d known during her medical training, it was her rotation in orthopedic surgery that had most appalled her. The drilling and sawing into bone, the brute force needed to disarticulate hips. She felt that same abhorrence now as she felt the snap of muscle. The right hip suddenly flexed, and even Yoshima’s normally bland expression betrayed a flash of distaste. But there was no other way to fully visualize the genitals, and she felt some urgency about confirming her suspicions as quickly as possible.

  They rotated both thighs outward, and Yoshima aimed a light directly on the perineum. Blood had pooled in the vaginal canal—normal menstrual blood, Maura would have assumed earlier. Now she stared, stunned by what she was seeing. She reached for gauze and gently wiped away the blood to reveal the mucosa beneath it.

  “There’s a second degree vaginal tear at six o’clock,” she said.

  “You want to take swabs?”

  “Yes. And we’ll need to do a bloc removal.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Frost.

  Maura looked at him. “I don’t do this very often, but I’m going to remove the pelvic organs in one mass. Cut through the pubic bone and lift it all out.”

  “You think she was sexually assaulted?”

  Maura didn’t answer him. She circled to the instrument tray and picked up a scalpel. Moved to the torso to begin her Y incision.

  The intercom buzzed. “Dr. Isles?” Louise said over the speakerphone.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a call for you on line one. It’s Dr. Victor Banks again, from that organization, One Earth.”

  Maura froze, hand gripping the scalpel. The tip just touching the skin.

  “Dr. Isles?” said Louise.

  “I’m unavailable.”

  “Shall I tell him you’ll return his call?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the third time he’s called today. He asked if he could reach you at home.”

  “Do not give him my home phone number.” Her answer came out more harshly than she’d intended, and she saw Yoshima turn to look at her. She felt Frost and Rizzoli watching her as well. She took a breath and said, more calmly: “Tell Dr. Banks I’m not available. And keep telling him that until he stops calling.”

  There was a pause. “Yes, Dr. Isles,” Louise finally responded, sounding more than a little stung by the exchange. It was the first time Maura had ever spoken sharply to her, and she’d have to find some way to smooth over the rift and repair the
damage. The exchange left her flustered. She looked down at the torso of Camille Maginnes, trying to refocus her attention on the task at hand. But her thoughts were scattered, and her grip was unsteady around the scalpel.

  The others could see it.

  “Why’s One Earth bugging you?” asked Rizzoli. “They hitting you up for donations?”

  “This has nothing to do with One Earth.”

  “So what is it?” pressed Rizzoli. “Is this guy harassing you?”

  “He’s just someone I’m trying to avoid.”

  “Sounds like he’s pretty persistent.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “You want me to get him off your back? Tell him where to go?” This was more than just Rizzoli the cop talking; it was also Rizzoli the woman, and she had no tolerance for overbearing men.

  “It’s a personal matter,” said Maura.

  “You need help, all you have to do is ask.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll handle him.” Maura pressed the scalpel to skin, wanting nothing more than to drop the subject of Victor Banks. She took a breath, and found it ironic that the scent of dead flesh was less disturbing to her than the mere utterance of his name. That the living tormented her far more than the dead ever could. In the morgue, no one hurt her, or betrayed her. In the morgue, she was the one in control.

  “So who is this guy?” asked Rizzoli. The question that was still on all their minds. The question Maura would have to answer, sooner or later.

  She sank the blade into flesh and watched skin part like a white curtain. “My ex-husband,” she said.

  She cut her Y-incision, then reflected back flaps of pale skin. Yoshima used common pruning shears to cut through the ribs, then lifted the triangle of ribs and breastbone to reveal a normal heart and lungs, disease-free liver and spleen and pancreas. The clean, healthy organs of a young woman who has abused neither tobacco nor alcohol, and who has not lived long enough for her arteries to narrow and clog. Maura made few comments as she removed organs and placed them in a metal basin, moving swiftly toward her next goal: the examination of the pelvic organs.

  A pelvic bloc excision was a procedure she usually reserved for fatal rape cases, as it allowed a far more detailed dissection of those organs than the usual autopsy did. It was not a pleasant procedure, this coring out of pelvic contents. As she and Yoshima sawed through the bony pubic rami, she was not surprised to see Frost turn away. But Rizzoli, too, shrank from the table. No one spoke now of the calls from Maura’s ex-husband; no one pressed her for personal details. The autopsy had suddenly turned too grim for conversation, and Maura was perversely relieved by this.

  She lifted the entire bloc of pelvic organs, external genitalia, and pubic bone, and moved it to a cutting board. Even before she sliced into the uterus, she knew, just by its appearance, that her fears were already confirmed. The organ was larger than it should be, the fundus well above the level of the pubic bone, the walls spongey. She slit it open, to reveal the endometrium, the lining still thick and lush with blood.

  She looked up at Rizzoli. Asked, sharply: “Did this woman leave the abbey at any time during the last week?”

  “The last time Camille left the abbey was back in March, to visit her family on Cape Cod. That’s what Mary Clement told me.”

  “Then you have to search the compound. Immediately.”

  “Why? What are we looking for?”

  “A newborn.”

  This seemed to hit Rizzoli with stunning force. She stared, white-faced, at Maura. Then she looked at the body of Camille Maginnes, lying on the table. “But . . . she was a nun.”

  “Yes,” said Maura. “And she’s recently given birth.”

  FIVE

  IT WAS SNOWING again when Maura stepped out of the building that afternoon, soft, lacy flakes that fluttered like white moths, to light gently on the parked cars. Today she was prepared for the weather, and had worn ankle boots with rugged soles. Even so, she was cautious as she walked across the parking lot, her boots slipping on the snow-dusted ice, her body braced for a fall. When she finally reached her car, she released a sigh of relief, and dug in her purse for her keys. Distracted by the search, she paid scant attention to the thud of a nearby car door slamming shut. Only when she heard the footsteps did she turn to face the man who was now approaching her. He came to within a few paces and stopped, not saying anything. Just stood looking at her, his hands tucked in the pockets of his leather jacket. Falling snowflakes settled on his blond hair, and clung to his neatly trimmed beard.

  He looked at her Lexus and said, “I figured the black one would be yours. You’re always in black. Always walking on the dark side. And who else keeps a car that neat?”

  She finally found her voice. It came out hoarse. A stranger’s. “What are you doing here, Victor?”

  “It seemed like the only way I could finally see you.”

  “Ambushing me in the parking lot?”

  “Is that what it feels like?”

  “You’ve been sitting out here, waiting for me. I’d call that an ambush.”

  “You didn’t leave me much choice. You weren’t returning any of my calls.”

  “I haven’t had the chance.”

  “You never sent me your new phone number.”

  “You never asked.”

  He glanced up at the snow, fluttering down like confetti, and sighed. “Well. This is like old times, isn’t it?”

  “Too much like old times.” She turned to her car and pressed the key remote. The lock snapped open.

  “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

  “I need to get going.”

  “I fly all the way to Boston, and you don’t even ask why.”

  “All right.” She looked at him. “Why?”

  “Three years, Maura.” He stepped closer, and she caught his scent. Leather and soap. Snow melting on warm skin. Three years, she thought, and he’s hardly changed. The same boyish tilt of his head, the same laugh lines around his eyes. And even in December, his hair looked sun-bleached, not artificial highlights from a bottle, but honest blond streaks from hours spent outdoors. Victor Banks seemed to radiate his own gravitational force, and she was just as susceptible to it as everyone else. She felt the old pull drawing her toward him.

  “Haven’t you wondered, just once, if it was a mistake?” he asked.

  “The divorce? Or the marriage?”

  “Isn’t it obvious which one I’m talking about? Since I’m standing here talking to you.”

  “You waited a long time to tell me.” She turned back to her car.

  “You haven’t remarried.”

  She paused. Looked back at him. “Have you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess we’re both equally hard to live with.”

  “You didn’t stay around long enough to find out.”

  She laughed. A bitter, distasteful sound in that white silence. “You were the one who was always heading for the airport. Always running off to save the world.”

  “I’m not the one who ran from the marriage.”

  “I’m not the one who had the affair.” She turned and yanked open the car door.

  “Goddamn it, can you just wait? Listen to me.”

  His hand closed around her arm, and she was startled by the anger she felt transmitted in that grasp. She stared at him, a cold look that told him he had gone too far.

  He released her arm. “I’m sorry. Jesus, this isn’t the way I wanted it to go.”

  “What were you expecting?”

  “That there’d be something left between us.”

  And there was, she thought. There was too much, and that’s why she couldn’t let this conversation go on any longer. She was afraid that she’d be sucked in again. She could already feel it happening.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m only in town for a few days. I have a meeting tomorrow at the Harvard School of Public Health, but after that, I have no plans. It’s almost Christmas, Maura. I thought we could spend t
he holidays together. If you’re free.”

  “And then you’ll just go flying off again.”

  “At least we could catch up on things. Couldn’t you take a few days off?”

  “I have a job, Victor. I can’t just leave it.”

  He glanced at the building, and gave a disbelieving laugh. “I don’t know why you’d even want a job like that.”

  “The dark side, remember? That’s me.”

  He looked at her, and his voice softened. “You haven’t changed. Not a bit.”

  “Neither have you, and that’s the problem.” She slid into her car and pulled the door shut.

  He rapped on the window. She looked at him, gazing in at her, snowflakes glistening on his lashes, and she had no choice but to roll down the glass and continue the conversation.

  “When can we talk again?” he asked.

  “I have to go now.”

  “Later, then. Tonight.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll get home.”

  “Come on, Maura.” He leaned close. Said softly, “Take a chance. I’m staying at the Colonnade. Call me.”

  She sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

  He reached in and squeezed her arm. Again, the scent of him stirred warm recollections, of nights they had slept beneath crisp sheets, legs twined around each other. Of long, slow kisses, and the taste of fresh lemons and vodka. Two years of marriage leave indelible memories, both good and bad, and at that moment, with his hand on her arm, it was the good memories that dominated.

  “I’ll wait for your call,” he said. Already presuming he had won.

  Does he think it’s so easy? she wondered as she drove out of the parking lot and headed toward Jamaica Plain. One smile, one touch, and all is forgiven?

  Her tires suddenly skittered across the ice-crusted road, and she gripped the wheel, her attention instantly focused on regaining control of the car. She had been so agitated, she hadn’t realized how fast she was going. The Lexus fishtailed, tires spinning, searching for purchase. Only when she had steered it back into a straight line did she allow herself to breathe again. To be angry again.