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Authors: Tess Gerritsen

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“Her name’s Camille Maginnes. Sister Camille. Hometown,
Hyannisport,”
said Rizzoli, sounding Dragnet-cool and businesslike. “She was the first
novice
they’ve had here in fifteen years. Planned to take her final vows in
May.”
She paused, then added: “She was only twenty,” and her anger cracked
through
the facade.

“She’s so young.”

“Yeah. Looks like he beat the shit out of her.”

Maura pulled on gloves and crouched down to study the destruction.
The death instrument had left raggedly linear lacerations on the scalp.
Fragments
of bone protruded through torn skin, and a clump of gray matter had oozed out.
Though
the facial skin was largely intact, it was suffused a dark purple.

“She died facedown. Who turned her onto her back?”

“The sisters who found her,” said Rizzoli. “They
were
looking for a pulse.”

“What time were the victims discovered?”

“About eight this morning.” Rizzoli glanced at her
watch.
“Nearly two hours ago.”

“Do you know what happened? What did the sisters tell
you?”

“It’s been hard getting anything useful out of them.
There
are only fourteen nuns left now, and they’re all in a state of shock. Here
they
think they’re safe. Protected by God. And then some lunatic breaks
in.”

“There are signs of forced entry?”

“No, but it wouldn’t be all that hard to get into the
compound.
There’s ivy growing all over the walls—you could hop right over
without
too much trouble. And there’s also a back gate, leading to a field, where
they
have their gardens. A perp could get in that way, too.”

“Footprints?”

“A few in here. But outside, they’d be pretty much
buried
under snow.”

“So we don’t know that he actually broke in. He could
have
been admitted through that front gate.”

“It’s a cloistered order, Doc. No one’s allowed
inside
the gates except for the parish priest, when he comes in to say Mass and hear
confession.
And there’s also a lady who works in the rectory. They let her bring her
little
girl when she can’t get child care. But that’s it. No one else comes
in
without the Abbess’s approval. And the sisters stay inside. They leave only
for doctors’ appointments and family emergencies.”

“Who have you spoken to so far?”

“The Abbess, Mother Mary Clement. And the two nuns who found
the
victims.”

“What did they tell you?”

Rizzoli shook her head. “Saw nothing, heard nothing. I
don’t
think the others will be able to tell us much, either.”

“Why not?”

“Have you seen how old they are?”

“It doesn’t mean they don’t have their wits about
them.”

“One of them’s gorked out by a stroke and two of them
have
Alzheimer’s. Most of them sleep in rooms facing away from the courtyard, so
they wouldn’t have seen a thing.”

At first Maura simply crouched over Camille’s body, not
touching
it. Granting the victim a last moment of dignity. Nothing can hurt you now, she
thought.
She began to palpate the scalp, and felt the crunch of shifting bone fragments
beneath
the skin. “Multiple blows. All of them landed on the crown or the back of
the
skull. . . .”

“And the facial bruising? Is that just lividity?”

“Yes. And it’s fixed.”

“So the blows came from behind. And above.”

“The attacker was probably taller.”

“Or she was down on her knees. And he was standing over
her.”

Maura paused, hands touching cool flesh, arrested by the
heartbreaking
image of this young nun, kneeling before her attacker, blows raining down on her
bowed head.

“What kind of bastard goes around beating up nuns?” said
Rizzoli. “What the fuck is wrong with this world?”

Maura winced at Rizzoli’s choice of words. Though she
couldn’t
remember the last time she’d set foot in a church, and had ceased believing
years ago, to hear such profanity in a sanctified place disturbed her. Such was
the
power of childhood indoctrination. Even she, for whom saints and miracles were
now
merely fantasies, would never utter a curse in full view of the cross.

But Rizzoli was too angry to care what words came tumbling out of
her
mouth, even in this sacred place. Her hair was more disheveled than usual, a
wild,
black mane glistening with melted sleet. The bones of her face jutted out in
sharp
angles beneath pale skin. In the gloom of the chapel, her eyes were bright
coals,
lit with rage. Righteous anger had always been Jane Rizzoli’s fuel, the
essence
of what drove her to hunt monsters. Today, though, she seemed feverish with it,
and
her face was thinner, as though the fire was now consuming her from within.

Maura did not want to feed those flames. She kept her voice
dispassionate,
her questions businesslike. A scientist dealing in facts, not emotions.

She reached for Sister Camille’s arm and tested the elbow
joint.
“It’s flaccid. No rigor mortis.”

“Less than five, six hours then?”

“It’s also cold in here.”

Rizzoli gave a snort, exhaling a puff of vapor in the frigid air.
“No
kidding.”

“Just above freezing, I’d guess. Rigor mortis would be
delayed.”

“How long?”

“Almost indefinitely.”

“What about her face? The fixed bruising?”

“Livor mortis could have happened within half an hour. It
doesn’t
help us all that much with time of death.”

Maura opened her kit and set out the chemical thermometer to
measure
ambient temperature. She eyed the victim’s many layers of clothing and
decided
not to take a rectal temperature until after the body had been transported to
the
morgue. The room was poorly lit—not a place in which she could adequately
rule
out sexual assault prior to the insertion of the thermometer. Wrestling off
clothes
might also dislodge trace evidence. Instead she took out syringes to withdraw
vitreous
fluid for postmortem potassium levels. It would give her one estimate for time
of
death.

“Tell me about the other victim,” Maura said as she
pierced
the left eye and slowly withdrew vitreous fluid into the syringe.

Rizzoli gave a groan of disgust at the procedure and turned away.
“The
vic found by the door was Sister Ursula Rowland, sixty-eight years old. Must be
a
tough old bird. They said she was moving her arms when they loaded her into the
ambulance.
Frost and I got here just as they were driving away.”

“How badly injured was she?”

“I didn’t see her. Latest report we got from St. Francis
Hospital is that she’s in surgery. Multiple skull fractures and bleeding
into
the brain.”

“Like this victim.”

“Yeah. Like Camille.” The anger was back in
Rizzoli’s
voice.

Maura rose to her feet and stood shivering. Her trousers had
wicked
freezing water from the soaked hem of her coat, and her calves felt encased in
ice.
She had been told on the phone that the death scene was indoors, so she had not
brought
her scarf or wool gloves from the car. This unheated room was scarcely warmer
than
the sleet-swept courtyard outside. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets,
and
wondered how Rizzoli, who was also without warm gloves and scarf, could linger
so
long in this frigid chapel. Rizzoli seemed to carry her own heat source within
her,
the fever of her outrage, and although her lips were turning blue, she did not
seem
in a hurry to seek a warmer room anytime soon.

“Why is it so cold in here?” asked Maura. “I
can’t
imagine they’d want to hold Mass in this room.”

“They don’t. This part of the building’s never used
in winter—it’s too expensive to heat. There are so few of them still
living
here, anyway. For Mass, they use a small chapel off the rectory.”

Maura thought of the three nuns she’d seen through the
window,
all of them elderly. These sisters were dying flames, flickering out one by one.

“If this chapel’s not used,” she said, “what
were
the victims doing in here?”

Rizzoli gave a sigh, exhaling a dragon’s breath of vapor.
“No
one knows. The Abbess says the last time she saw Ursula and Camille was at
prayers
last night, around nine. When they didn’t appear at morning prayers, the
sisters
went looking for them. They never expected to find them in here.”

“All these blows to the head. It looks like sheer rage.”

“But look at her face,” said Rizzoli, pointing to
Camille.
“He didn’t hit her face. He spared her face. That makes it seem a lot
less
personal. As if he’s not swinging at her specifically, but at what she
is
. What she stands for.”

“Authority?” said Maura. “Power?”

“Funny. I would have said something along the lines of faith,
hope, and charity.”

“Well, I went to a Catholic high school.”

“You?” Rizzoli gave a snort. “Never would’ve
guessed.”

Maura took a deep breath of chilly air and looked up at the cross,
remembering her years at Holy Innocents Academy. And the special torments meted
out
by Sister Magdalene, who had taught history. The torment had not been physical
but
emotional, dispensed by a woman who was quick to identify which girls had, in
her
opinion, an unseemly excess of confidence. At the age of fourteen, Maura’s
best
friends had not been people, but books. She’d easily mastered all her
classwork,
and had been proud of it, too. That was what had brought Sister Magdalene’s
wrath down upon her shoulders. For Maura’s own good, that unholy pride in
her
own intellect needed to be beaten into humility. Sister Magdalene went about the
task with vicious gusto. She had held Maura up to ridicule in class, had written
cutting comments in the margins of her immaculate papers, and sighed loudly
whenever
Maura raised her hand to ask a question. In the end, Maura had been reduced to
conquered
silence.

“They used to intimidate me,” said Maura. “The
nuns.”

“I didn’t think anything scared you, Doc.”

“Lots of things scare me.”

Rizzoli laughed. “Just not dead bodies, huh?”

“There are far scarier things in this world than dead
bodies.”

They left the body of Camille lying on her bed of cold stone and
moved
back around the room’s perimeter, toward the bloodstained floor where
Ursula
had been found, still alive. The photographer had completed his work and
departed;
only Maura and Rizzoli remained in the chapel, two lone women, their voices
echoing
off stark walls. Maura had always thought of chapels as universal sanctuaries,
where
even the spirit of the unbeliever might be comforted. But she found no comfort
in
this bleak place, where Death had walked, contemptuous of holy symbols.

“They found Sister Ursula right here,” said Rizzoli.
“She
was lying with her head pointed toward the altar, her feet toward the
door.”

As though prostrating herself before the crucifix.

“This guy’s a fucking animal,” said Rizzoli, the
angry
words clipped off like shards of ice. “That’s what we’re dealing
with.
Out of his mind. Or some coked-up asshole looking for something to steal.”

“We don’t know it’s a man.”

Rizzoli waved toward the body of Sister Camille. “You think a
woman did that?”

“A woman can swing a hammer. Crush a skull.”

“We found a footprint. There, halfway up the aisle. Looked to
me like a man’s size twelve.”

“One of the ambulance crew?”

“No, you can see the Med-Q team’s footprints here, near
the
door. That one in the aisle’s different. That one’s
his
.”

The wind blew, rattling the windows, and the door creaked as
though
invisible hands were tugging at it, desperate to get in. Rizzoli’s lips had
chilled to blue, and her face had taken on a corpselike pallor, but she showed
no
intention of seeking a warmer room. That was Rizzoli, too stubborn to be the
first
to capitulate. To admit she had reached her limit.

Maura looked down at the stone floor where Sister Ursula had been
lying,
and she could not disagree with Rizzoli’s instincts, that this attack was
an
act of insanity. This was madness she saw here, in these bloodstains. In the
blows
slammed into Sister Camille’s skull. Either madness, or evil.

An icy draft seemed to blow straight up her spine. She
straightened,
shivering, and her gaze fixed on the crucifix. “I’m freezing,”
she
said. “Can we get warm somewhere? Get a cup of coffee?”

“Are you finished here?”

“I’ve seen what I need to. The autopsy will tell us the
rest.”

 

T
WO

T
HEY EMERGED
from the chapel, stepping over the
strand
of police tape which by now had fallen from the doorway and lay encased in ice.
The
wind flapped their coats and whipped their faces as they headed beneath the
walkway,
their eyes narrowed against rebel gusts of snowflakes. As they stepped into a
gloomy
entranceway, Maura registered barely a whisper of warmth against her numb face.
She
smelled eggs and old paint and the mustiness of an ancient heating system,
radiating
dust.

The clatter of chinaware drew them down a dim hallway, into a room
awash in fluorescent light, a disconcertingly modern detail. It glared down,
stark
and unflattering, on the deeply lined faces of the nuns seated around a battered
rectory table. Thirteen of them—an unlucky number. Their attention was
focused
on squares of bright floral cloth and silk ribbons and trays of dried lavender
and
rose petals. Craft time, thought Maura, watching as arthritic hands scooped up
herbs
and wound ribbon around sachets. One of the nuns sat slumped in a wheelchair.
She
was tilted to the side, her left hand curled into a claw on the armrest, her
face
sagging like a partly melted mask. The cruel aftermath of a stroke. Yet she was
the
first to notice the two intruders, and she gave a moan. The other sisters looked
up, turning toward Maura and Rizzoli.

Gazing into those wizened faces, Maura was startled by the frailty
she saw there. These were not the stern images of authority she remembered from
her
girlhood, but the gazes of the bewildered, looking to her for answers to this
tragedy.
She was uneasy with her new status, the way a grown child is uneasy when he
first
realizes that he and his parents have reversed roles.

Rizzoli asked, “Can someone tell me where Detective Frost
is?”

The question was answered by a harried-looking woman who had just
come
out of the adjoining kitchen, carrying a tray of clean coffee cups and saucers.
She
was dressed in a faded blue jumper stained with grease, and a tiny diamond
glinted
through the bubbles of dishwater on her left hand. Not a nun, thought Maura, but
the rectory employee, tending to this ever more infirm community.

“He’s still talking to the Abbess,” the woman said.
She cocked her head toward the doorway, and a strand of brown hair came loose,
curling
over her frown-etched forehead. “Her office is down the hall.”

Rizzoli nodded. “I know the way.”

They left the harsh light of that room and continued down the
hallway.
Maura felt a draft here, a whisper of chill air, as though a ghost had just
slipped
past her. She did not believe in the afterlife, but when walking in the
footsteps
of those who had recently died, she sometimes wondered if their passing did not
leave
behind some imprint, some faint disturbance of energy that could be sensed by
those
who followed.

Rizzoli knocked on the Abbess’s door, and a tremulous voice
said:
“Come in.”

Stepping into the room, Maura smelled the aroma of coffee, as
delicious
as perfume. She saw dark wood paneling and a simple crucifix mounted on the wall
above an oak desk. Behind that desk sat a stooped nun whose eyes were magnified
to
enormous blue pools by her glasses. She appeared every bit as old as her frail
sisters
seated around the rectory table, and her glasses looked so heavy they might
pitch
her face-forward onto her desk. But the eyes gazing through those thick lenses
were
alert and bright with intelligence.

Rizzoli’s partner, Barry Frost, at once set down his coffee
cup
and rose to his feet out of politeness. Frost was the equivalent of
everybody’s
kid brother, the one cop in the homicide unit who could walk into an
interrogation
room and make a suspect believe Frost was his best friend. He was also the one
cop
in the unit who never seemed to mind working with the mercurial Rizzoli, who
even
now was scowling at his cup of coffee, no doubt registering the fact that while
she
had been shivering in the chapel, her partner was sitting comfortably in this
heated
room.

“Reverend Mother,” said Frost, “This is Dr. Isles,
from
the Medical Examiner’s office. Doc, this is Mother Mary Clement.”

Maura reached for the Abbess’s hand. It was gnarled, the skin
like dry paper over bones. As she shook it, Maura spotted a beige cuff peeking
out
from under the black sleeve. So this was how the nuns tolerated such a cold
building.
Beneath her woollen habit, the Abbess was wearing long underwear.

Distorted blue eyes gazed at her through thick lenses. “The
Medical
Examiner’s office? Does that mean you’re a physician?”

“Yes. A pathologist.”

“You study causes of death?”

“That’s right.”

The Abbess paused, as though gathering the courage to ask the next
question. “Have you already been inside the chapel? Have you seen . .
.”

Maura nodded. She wanted to cut off the question she knew was
coming,
but she was incapable of rudeness to a nun. Even at the age of forty, she was
still
unnerved by the sight of a black habit.

“Did she . . .” Mary Clement’s voice slipped to a
whisper.
“Did Sister Camille suffer greatly?”

“I’m afraid I have no answers yet. Not until I complete
the
. . . examination.”
Autopsy
was what she meant, but the word seemed
too
cold, too clinical, for Mary Clement’s sheltered ears. Nor did she want to
reveal
the terrible truth: That in fact, she had a very good idea of what had happened
to
Camille. Someone had confronted the young woman in the chapel. Someone had
pursued
her as she fled in terror up the aisle, wrenching off her white novice’s
veil.
As his blows avulsed her scalp, her blood had splashed the pews, yet she had
staggered
onward, until at last she stumbled to her knees, conquered at his feet. Even
then
her attacker did not stop. Even then, he had kept swinging, crushing her skull
like
an egg.

Avoiding Mary Clement’s eyes, Maura briefly lifted her gaze
to
the wooden cross mounted on the wall behind the desk, but that imposing symbol
was
no more comfortable for her to confront.

Rizzoli cut in, “We haven’t seen their bedrooms
yet.”
As usual, she was all business, focusing only on what needed to be done next.

Mary Clement blinked back tears. “Yes. I was about to take
Detective
Frost upstairs to their chambers.”

Rizzoli nodded. “We’re ready when you are.”

 

The Abbess led the way up a stairway illuminated only by the glow
of daylight through a stained glass window. On bright days, the sun would have
painted
the walls with a rich palette of colors, but on this wintry morning, the walls
were
murky with shades of gray.

“The upstairs rooms are mostly empty now. Over the years,
we’ve
had to move the sisters downstairs, one by one,” said Mary Clement,
climbing
slowly, grasping the handrail as though hauling herself up, step by step. Maura
half
expected her to tumble backwards, and she stayed right behind her, tensing every
time the Abbess paused, wobbling. “Sister Jacinta’s knee is bothering
her
these days, so she’ll take a room downstairs, too. And now Sister Helen has
trouble catching her breath. There are so few of us left. . . .”

“It’s quite a large building to maintain,” said
Maura.

“And old.” The Abbess paused to catch her breath. She
added,
with a sad laugh, “Old like us. And so expensive to keep up. We thought we
might
have to sell, but God found a way for us to hold onto it.”

“How?”

“A donor came forward last year. Now we’ve started
renovations.
The slates on the roof are new, and we now have insulation in the attic. We plan
to replace the furnace, next.” She glanced back at Maura. “Believe it
or
not, this building feels quite cozy, compared to a year ago.”

The Abbess took a deep breath and resumed climbing the stairs, her
rosary beads clattering. “There used to be forty-five of us here. When I
first
came to Graystones, we filled all these rooms. Both wings. But now we’re a
maturing
community.”

“When did you come, Reverend Mother?” asked Maura.

“I entered as a postulant when I was eighteen years old. I
had
a young gentleman who wanted to marry me. I’m afraid his pride was quite
wounded
when I turned him down for God.” She paused on the step and looked back.
For
the first time, Maura noticed the bulge of a hearing aid beneath her wimple.
“You
probably can’t imagine that, can you, Dr. Isles? That I was ever that
young?”

No, Maura couldn’t. She couldn’t imagine Mary Clement as
anything but the wobbly relic she was now. Certainly never a desirable woman,
pursued
by men.

They reached the top of the stairs, and a long hallway stretched
before
them. It was warmer up here, almost pleasant, the heat trapped by low dark
ceilings.
The exposed beams looked at least a century old. The Abbess moved to the second
door
and hesitated, her hand on the knob. At last she turned it, and the door swung
open,
gray light from within spilling onto her face. “This is Sister
Ursula’s
room,” she said softly.

The room was scarcely large enough to fit all of them at once.
Frost
and Rizzoli stepped in, but Maura remained by the door, her gaze drifting past
shelves
lined with books, past flowerpots containing thriving African violets. With its
mullioned
window and low-beamed ceiling, the room looked medieval. A scholar’s tidy
garret,
furnished with a simple bed and dresser, a desk and chair.

“Her bed’s been made,” said Rizzoli, looking down
at
the neatly tucked sheets.

“That’s the way we found it this morning,” said
Mary
Clement.

“Didn’t she go to sleep last night?”

“It’s more likely she rose early. She usually
does.”

“How early?”

“She’s often up hours before Lauds.”

“Lauds?” asked Frost.

“Our morning prayers, at seven. This past summer, she was
always
out early, in the garden. She loves to work in the garden.”

“And in the winter?” asked Rizzoli. “What does she
do
so early in the morning?”

“Whatever the season, there’s always work to be done,
for
those of us who can still manage it. But so many of the sisters are frail now.
This
year, we had to hire Mrs. Otis to help us prepare meals. Even with her help, we
can
scarcely keep up with the chores.”

Rizzoli opened the closet door. Inside hung an austere collection
of
blacks and browns. Not a hint of color nor embellishment. It was the wardrobe of
a woman for whom the Lord’s work was all-important, for whom the design of
clothing
was only in His service.

“These are the only clothes she has? What I see in this
closet?”
asked Rizzoli.

“We take a vow of poverty when we join the order.”

“Does that mean you give up everything you own?”

Mary Clement responded with the patient smile one gives to a child
who has just asked an absurd question. “It’s not such a hardship,
Detective.
We keep our books, a few personal mementoes. As you can see, Sister Ursula
enjoys
her African violets. But yes, we leave almost everything behind when we come
here.
This is a contemplative order, and we don’t welcome the distractions of the
outside world.”

“Excuse me, Reverend Mother,” said Frost. “I’m
not Catholic, so I don’t understand what that word means. What’s a
contemplative
order?”

His question had been quietly respectful, and Mary Clement favored
him with a warmer smile than she had given Rizzoli. “A contemplative leads
a
reflective life. A life of prayer and private devotion and meditation.
That’s
why we retreat behind walls. Why we turn away visitors. Seclusion is a comfort
to
us.”

“What if someone breaks the rules?” asked Rizzoli.
“Do
you kick her out?”

Maura saw Frost wince at his partner’s bluntly worded
question.

“Our rules are voluntary,” said Mary Clement. “We
abide
by them because we wish to.”

“But every so often, there’s got to be some nun who
wakes
up one morning and says, ‘I feel like going to the beach.’ ”

“It doesn’t happen.”

“It must happen. They’re human beings.”

“It doesn’t happen.”

“No one breaks the rules? No one jumps the wall?”

“We have no need to leave the abbey. Mrs. Otis buys our
groceries.
Father Brophy attends to our spiritual needs.”

“What about letters? Phone calls? Even in high security
prisons,
you get to make a phone call every so often.”

Frost was shaking his head, his expression pained.

“We have a telephone here, for emergencies,” said Mary
Clement.

“And anyone can use it?”

“Why would they wish to?”

“How about mail? Can you get letters?”

“Some of us choose not to accept any mail.”

“And if you want to send a letter?”

“To whom?”

“Does it matter?”

Mary Clement’s face had frozen into a tight,
lord-give-me-patience
smile. “I can only repeat myself, Detective. We are not prisoners. We
choose
to live this way. Those who don’t agree with these rules may choose to
leave.”

“And what would they do, in the outside world?”

“You seem to think we have no knowledge of that world. But
some
of the sisters have served in schools or in hospitals.”

“I thought being cloistered meant you couldn’t leave the
convent.”

“Sometimes, God calls us to tasks outside the walls. A few
years
ago, Sister Ursula felt His call to serve abroad, and she was granted
exclaustration—permission
to live outside while keeping her vows.”

“But she came back.”

“Last year.”

“She didn’t like it out there, in the world?”

“Her mission in India wasn’t an easy one. And there was
violence—a
terrorist attack on her village. That’s when she returned to us. Here, she
could
feel safe again.”

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