First you break my heart. Then you almost get me killed.
An irrational thought, but there it was. Victor inspired irrational thoughts.
By the time she pulled up across the street from Graystones Abbey, she felt wrung out by the drive. She sat for a moment in the car, wrestling her emotions under control. Control was the word she lived by. Once she stepped out of the car, she was a public person, visible to law enforcement and to the press. They expected her to appear calm and logical, and so she would. Much of the job was simply looking the part.
She stepped out, and this time she crossed the road with confidence, her boots gripping the road. Police cars lined the street, and two TV news crews sat in their vans, waiting for some breaking development. Already, the wintry light was fading into evening.
She rang the gate bell, and a nun appeared, black habit emerging from the shadows. The nun recognized Maura and admitted her without a word of conversation passing between them.
Inside the courtyard, dozens of footprints had churned the snow. It was a different place than on the morning Maura first walked in. Today, all semblance of tranquility was disrupted by the search now under way. Lights shone in all the windows, and she could hear men’s voices echoing from archways. Stepping into the entrance hall, she smelled the scent of tomato sauce and cheese, unpleasant odors that conjured up memories of the bland and leathery lasagna that had been served so often in the cafeteria of the hospital where she’d trained as a medical student.
She glanced into the dining room and saw the sisters seated at the rectory table, silently eating their evening meal. She saw tremulous hands lift unsteady forks to toothless mouths, and saw milk dribble down wrinkled chins. For most of their lives, these women had lived behind walls, growing old in seclusion. Did any of them harbor regrets about what they had missed, what lives they might otherwise have lived, had they simply walked out the gate and never returned?
Continuing down the hall, she heard men’s voices, foreign and startling in that house of women. Two cops waved at her in recognition.
“Hey, Doc.”
“Have you found anything?” she asked.
“Not yet. We’re calling it quits for the night.”
“Where’s Rizzoli?”
“Upstairs. The dormitory.”
Climbing the stairway, Maura saw two more members of the search party on their way down—police cadets, who looked scarcely old enough to be out of high school. A young man, his face still spotty with acne, and a woman, wearing that aloof mask that so many female cops seemed to adopt as a matter of self-preservation. They both dropped their gazes in respect when they recognized Maura. It made her feel old, watching these youngsters deferentially step aside to let her pass. Was she so intimidating that they didn’t see the woman beneath, with her bundle of insecurities? She had perfected the act of invincibility, and she played the part even now. She dipped her head in polite greeting, her gaze moving swiftly past them. Aware, even as she climbed the stairs, that they were watching her.
She found Rizzoli in Sister Camille’s room, sitting on the bed with her shoulders slumped in exhaustion.
“Looks like everyone’s going home but you,” said Maura.
Rizzoli turned to look at her. Her eyes were dark and deeply hollowed, and there were lines of fatigue in her face that Maura had never seen before.
“We haven’t found a thing. We’ve been searching since noon. But it takes time, combing through every closet, every drawer. Then there’s the field and the gardens out back—who knows what’s underneath the snow? She could have wrapped it up and just thrown it in the trash a few days ago. Could have handed it to someone outside the gate. We could spend days looking for something that may or may not be here.”
“What does the Abbess say about it?”
“I haven’t told her what we’re looking for.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want her to know.”
“She might be able to help.”
“Or she might take steps to make sure we don’t find it. You think this archdiocese needs any more scandals? You think she wants the world to know that someone in this order killed her own baby?”
“We don’t know that the child’s dead. We just know it’s missing.”
“And you’re absolutely sure of your autopsy findings?”
“Yes. Camille was in the advanced stages of pregnancy. And no, I don’t believe in immaculate conception.” She sat down on the bed beside Rizzoli. “The father may be key to the attack. We have to identify him.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking about that word. Father. As in priest.”
“Father Brophy?”
“Good-looking man. Have you seen him?”
Maura remembered the brilliant blue eyes that had gazed at her across the fallen cameraman. Remembered how he had strode through the abbey gate like a black-robed warrior, to challenge that wolf pack of reporters.
“He had repeated access,” said Rizzoli. “He said Mass. He heard confession. Is there anything more intimate than sharing your secrets in a confession booth?”
“You’re implying the sex was consensual.”
“I’m just saying, he’s a good-looking guy.”
“We don’t know that the baby was conceived in this abbey. Didn’t Camille visit her family, back in March?”
“Yeah. When her grandmother died.”
“It’s the right time frame. If she conceived in March, she’d be in her ninth month of pregnancy now. It could have happened during that visit home.”
“And it could have happened right here. Inside these walls.” Rizzoli gave a cynical snort. “So much for that vow of chastity.”
They sat without talking for a moment, both of them gazing at the crucifix on the wall. How flawed we humans are, thought Maura. If there is a god, why does he hold us to such unattainable standards? Why does he demand goals we can never reach?
Maura said, “I wanted to be a nun, once.”
“I thought you didn’t believe.”
“I was only nine years old. I’d just found out I was adopted. My cousin let the cat out of the bag, one of those nasty revelations that suddenly explained everything. Why I didn’t look like my parents. Why I didn’t have any baby pictures. I spent the whole weekend crying in my room.” She shook her head. “My poor parents. They didn’t know what to do, so they took me to the movies to cheer me up. We saw the Sound of Music, only seventy-five cents, because it was an old movie.” She paused. “I thought Julie Andrews was beautiful. I wanted to be just like Maria. In the convent.”
“Hey, Doc. You want to hear a secret?”
“What?”
“So did I.”
Maura looked at her. “You’re kidding.”
“I may have been a catechism dropout. But who can resist the pull of Julie Andrews?”
At that, they both laughed, but it was uneasy laughter that quickly stuttered into silence.
“So what made you change your mind?” Rizzoli asked. “About being a nun?”
Maura rose to her feet and wandered over to the window. Looking down at the dark courtyard, she said: “I just grew out of it. I stopped believing in things I couldn’t see or smell or touch. Things that couldn’t be scientifically proved.” She paused. “And I discovered boys.”
“Oh, yeah. Boys.” Rizzoli laughed. “There’s always that.”
“It’s the real purpose of life, you know. From a biological point of view.”
“Sex?”
“Procreation. It’s what our genes demand. That we go forth and multiply. We think we’re the ones in control of our lives, and all the time, we’re just slaves of our DNA, telling us to have babies.”
Maura turned and was startled to see tears shimmering on Rizzoli’s lashes; just as quickly they were gone, dashed away by a quick swipe of her hand.
“Jane?”
“I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping very well.”
“There’s nothing else going on?”
“What else would there be?” The answer was too quick, too defensive. Even Rizzoli realized it, and she flushed. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said and stood up, as though eager to escape. At the door she stopped and looked back. “By the way, you know that book on the desk over there? The one Camille was reading. I looked up the name.”
“Who?”
“Saint Brigid of Ireland. It’s a biography. Funny, how there’s a patron saint for everything, every occasion. There’s a saint for hat makers. A saint for drug addicts. Hell, there’s even a saint for lost keys.”
“So whose saint is Brigid?”
“Newborns,” Rizzoli said softly. “Brigid is the saint of newborns.” She walked out of the room.
Maura looked down at the desk, where the book was lying. Only a day ago, she had imagined Camille sitting at this desk, quietly turning pages, drawing inspiration from the life of a young Irish woman destined for sainthood. Now a different picture emerged—not Camille the serene, but Camille the tormented, praying to St. Brigid for her dead child’s salvation. I beg you, take him into your forgiving arms. Bring him into the light, though he be unbaptized. He is an innocent. He is without sin.
She looked around the stark room with new comprehension. The spotless floors, the smell of bleach and wax—it all took on new meaning. Cleanliness as a metaphor for innocence. Camille the fallen had desperately scrubbed away her sins, her guilt. For months she must have realized she was carrying a child, hidden beneath the voluminous folds of her habit. Or did she refuse to accept reality? Did she deny it to herself, the way pregnant teenagers sometimes deny the evidence of their own swollen bellies?
And what did you do, when your child came into the world? Did you panic? Or did you coldly and calmly dispose of the evidence of your sin?
She heard men’s voices outside. Through the window, she saw the shadowy forms of two cops emerging from the building. They both paused to pull their coats tighter, to glance up at the snow, tumbling like glitter from the night sky. Then they walked out of the courtyard, and the hinges squealed as the gate shut behind them. She listened for other sounds, other voices, but heard nothing. Only the stillness of a snowy night. So quiet, she thought. As though I am the only one left in this building. Forgotten, and alone.
She heard a creak, and felt the whisper of movement, of another presence in the room. The hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up and she gave a laugh. “God, Jane, don’t sneak up on me like . . .” Turning, her voice died in mid-sentence.
No one was there.
For a moment she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just stared at empty space. Vacant air, polished floor. The room is haunted was her first irrational thought, before logic reasserted control. Old floors often creaked, and heating pipes groaned. It was not a footstep but the floorboards, contracting in the cold. There were perfectly reasonable explanations for why she had thought someone else was in the room.
But she still felt its presence, still sensed it watching her.
Now the hairs on her arms were standing up as well, every nerve singing with alarm. Something skittered overhead, like claws against wood. Her gaze shot to the ceiling. An animal? It’s moving away from me.
She stepped out of the room, and the panicked drumming of her own heartbeat almost drowned out any sounds from overhead. There it was—moving farther down the hallway!
Thump-thump-thump.
She followed the noise, her gaze on the ceiling, moving so fast she almost collided with Rizzoli, who’d just emerged from the bathroom.
“Hey,” said Rizzoli. “What’s the rush?”
“Shhh!” Maura pointed to the dark-beamed ceiling.
“What?”
“Listen.”
They waited, straining to hear any new sound. Except for the pounding of her own heart, Maura heard only silence.
“Maybe you just heard water running in the pipes,” said Rizzoli. “I did flush the toilet.”
“It wasn’t the pipes.”
“Well, what did you hear?”
Maura’s gaze snapped back to the antique beams running the length of the ceiling. “There.”
The scrabbling sound again, at the far end of the hall.
Rizzoli stared upward. “What the hell is that? Rats?”
“No,” whispered Maura. “Whatever it is, it’s bigger than a rat.” She moved quietly down the corridor, Rizzoli right behind her, approaching the spot where they had heard it last.
Without warning, a chorus of thumps drummed across the ceiling, moving back the way they had come.
“It’s headed into the other wing!” said Rizzoli.
With Rizzoli in the lead, they pushed through a door at the end of the hallway, and Rizzoli flipped on the light switch. They gazed down a deserted corridor. It was chilly in here, the air closed-in and damp. Through open doorways, they saw abandoned rooms and the ghostly shapes of sheet-draped furniture.
Whatever had fled into this wing was now silent, revealing no hint of its whereabouts.
“Your team searched this end of the building?” Maura asked.
“We made a sweep of all these rooms.”
“What’s upstairs? Above this ceiling?”
“It’s just attic space.”
“Well, something’s moving up there,” Maura said softly. “And it’s intelligent enough to know we were chasing it.”
Maura and Rizzoli crouched in the chapel’s upper gallery, studying the mahogany panel that Mary Clement had told them would lead to the building’s crawl space. Rizzoli gave the panel a gentle push; noiselessly it swung open, and they stared into the darkness beyond, listening for sounds of movement. A whisper of warmth touched their faces. The crawl space was a trap for the building’s rising heat, and they could feel it spilling out through the panel opening.
Rizzoli shone her flashlight into the space. They glimpsed massive timbers and the pink matting of newly installed insulation. Electrical wires snaked across the floor.
Rizzoli was first to step through the opening. Maura turned on her own flashlight and followed. The space was not tall enough for her to stand up straight; she had to keep her head bent to avoid the oak beams arching across the ceiling. Their lights swept in wide arcs, carving a circle in the darkness. Beyond that circle was unseen frontier; Maura could feel her breaths coming too fast. The low ceiling, the stale air, made her feel entombed.
She almost jumped when she felt a hand touch her arm. Wordlessly, Rizzoli pointed to the right.
Timbers creaked under their weight as they moved through shadows, Rizzoli in the lead.
“Wait,” whispered Maura. “Shouldn’t you call for backup?”
“Why?”
“For whatever’s up here.”
“I’m not calling for backup, if all we’re hunting down is just some stupid raccoon. . . .” She paused, her flashlight arcing left, then right. “I think we’re over the west wing now. It’s getting nice and warm up here. Turn off your flashlight.”
“What?”
“Turn it off. I want to check out something.”
Reluctantly, Maura switched off her light. So did Rizzoli.
In the sudden blackness, Maura felt her pulse throbbing. We can’t see what’s around us. What might be moving toward us. She blinked, trying to force her eyes to accommodate to the darkness. Then she noticed the light—slivers of it, shining through cracks in the floor. Here and there, a wider shaft, where the boards had pulled apart, or where knotholes had contracted in the dry winter air.
Rizzoli’s footsteps creaked away. Her shadowy form suddenly dropped to a crouch, her head bent toward the floor. For a moment she held that pose, then she gave a soft laugh. “Hey. It’s just like peeking into the boys’ locker room at Revere High.”
“What are you looking at?”
“Camille’s room. We’re right above it. There’s a knothole here.”
Maura eased her way through the darkness, to where Rizzoli was crouched. Dropping to her knees, Maura
peered through the opening.
She was staring down directly at Camille’s desk.
She straightened, a chill suddenly running its cold fingers up her spine. Whatever was up here could see me, in that room. It was watching me.
Thump-thump-thump.
Rizzoli spun around so fast, her elbow slammed into Maura.
Maura fumbled to turn on her flashlight, her beam jerking in all directions as she hunted for whoever—whatever—was in this crawlspace with them. She caught glimpses of feathery cobwebs, of massive crossbeams, hanging low overhead. It was so warm up here, the air close and stifling, and the sense of suffocation fed her panic.
She and Rizzoli had instinctively moved into defensive positions, back to back, and Maura could feel Rizzoli’s tense muscles, could hear her rapid breathing as they both scanned the darkness. Searching for the gleam of eyes, a feral face.
So swiftly did Maura scan her surroundings, she missed it in the first sweep of her flashlight. It was only as she brought it back that the farthest reach of her beam rippled across an irregularity on the rough-planked floor. She stared, but did not believe what she was looking at.
She took a step toward it, her horror mounting as she moved closer, as her beam began to pick up other, similar forms lying nearby. So many of them . . .
Dear god, it’s a graveyard. A graveyard of dead infants.
The flashlight beam wavered. She, whose scalpel hand had always been rock-steady at the autopsy table, could not stop shaking. She came to a stop, her beam shining directly down on a face. Blue eyes glittered back at her, shiny as marbles. She stared, slowly grasping the reality of what she was seeing.
And she laughed. A startled bark of a laugh.
By now, Rizzoli was right beside her, flashlight playing over the pink skin, the kewpie mouth, the lifeless gaze. “What the hell,” she said. “It’s just a friggin’ doll.”
Maura waved her beam at the other objects lying nearby. She saw smooth plastic skin, plump limbs. The sparkle of glass eyes stared back at her. “They’re all dolls,” she said. “A whole collection of them.”
“See how they’re lined up, in a row? Like some kind of weird nursery.”
The Sinner Page 7