The Sinner (16 page)

The lights of the tree twinkled like multicolored stars as she lay
on the floor beneath him. She closed her eyes, yet even then, she still could
see
those lights winking above her in a firmament of colors. Their bodies rocked
together
in a knowing dance, without clumsiness, without the uncertainty of first-time
lovers.
She knew his touch, his moves, and when pleasure overtook her and she cried out,
she felt no embarrassment. Three years of separation were swept away in this one
act, and after it was done, and they lay together among the tangle of discarded
clothes,
his embrace felt as familiar as a well-worn blanket.

When she opened her eyes again, she found Victor gazing down at
her.

“You’re the best thing I’ve ever unwrapped under a
Christmas
tree,” he said.

She stared up at a glittering strand of tinsel hanging from a
branch
above. “That’s how I feel,” she murmured. “Unwrapped.
Exposed.”

“You make it sound like it’s not a good thing.”

“It depends on what happens next.”

“What does happen next?”

She sighed. “I don’t know.”

“What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t want to be hurt again.”

“You’re afraid that’s what I’ll do.”

She looked at him. “It’s what you did before.”

“We hurt each other, Maura. In a lot of different ways.
People
who love each other always do, without meaning to.”

“You had the affair. What did I do?”

“This doesn’t get us anywhere.”

“I want to know,” she said. “How did I hurt
you
?”

He rolled away to lie beside her, not touching her, his gaze
focused
somewhere on the ceiling. “Do you remember the day I had to leave for
Abidjan?”

“I remember,” she said. Still tasting the bitterness.

“I admit, it was a terrible time to leave you, but I had to
go.
I was the only one who could handle the negotiations. I had to be there.”

“The day after my dad’s funeral?” She looked at
him.
“I
needed
you. I needed you home with me.”

“One Earth needed me too. We could have lost that whole
container
of medical supplies. It couldn’t wait.”

“Well, I accepted it, didn’t I?”

“That’s exactly the word.
Accepted
it. But I knew
you
were pissed off.”

“Because it kept happening. Anniversaries,
funerals—nothing
kept you at home. I always came in second.”

“And that’s what it came down to, didn’t it? I had
to
choose between you and One Earth. I didn’t want to choose. I didn’t
think
I should have to. Not with so much at stake.”

“You can’t save the world all by yourself.”

“I can do a hell of a lot of good. You used to believe that,
too.”

“But everyone burns out eventually. You spend years obsessing
about people dying in other countries. And then one day you wake up, and you
just
want to focus on your own life for a change. On having your own children. But
you
never had time for
that
, either.” She took a deep breath and felt
tears
catch in her throat, thinking of the babies she’d wanted but would probably
never have. Thinking, too, of Jane Rizzoli, whose pregnancy brought Maura’s
own childlessness into painful focus. “I was tired of being married to a
saint.
I wanted a husband.”

A moment passed, the Christmas lights above her blurring into
smears
of color.

He reached for her hand. “I guess I’m the one who
failed,”
he said.

She swallowed, and the colors sharpened once again to lights
twinkling
on a wire. “We both did.”

He did not release her hand, but held it firmly in his, as though
afraid
that if he let go, there would be no second chance at contact.

“We can talk all we want,” she said, “But I
don’t
see that anything’s changed between us.”

“We know what went wrong.”

“It doesn’t mean we can make it different this
time.”

He said quietly, “We don’t have to do anything, Maura.
We
can just be together. Isn’t that enough for the moment?”

Just be together.
It sounded simple. Lying beside him, with
only
their hands touching, she thought: Yes, I can do this. I can be detached enough
to
sleep with you and not let you hurt me. Sex without love—men enjoyed it
without
a second thought. Why couldn’t she?

And maybe this time,
a cruel little voice whispered,
he’ll
be the one who gets his heart broken.

T
WELVE

T
HE DRIVE TO
H
YANNISPORT
should have
taken
them only two hours, south on Route 3, and then along Route 6 into Cape Cod, but
Rizzoli needed two restroom breaks along the way, so they didn’t reach the
Sagamore
Bridge until three in the afternoon. Once across that bridge, they were suddenly
in the land of seaside vacations, the road leading through a series of small
towns,
like a necklace of pretty beads strung along the Cape. Rizzoli’s previous
trips
to Hyannisport had always been during the summertime, when the roads were
clogged
with cars, and lines of people in T-shirts and shorts snaked out of ice cream
shops.
She had never been here on a cold winter’s day like this one, when half the
restaurants were shuttered, and only a few brave souls were out on the
sidewalks,
coats buttoned up against the wind.

Frost turned onto Ocean Street and murmured in wonder: “Man.
Will
you look at the size of these homes.”

“Wanna move in?” said Rizzoli.

“Maybe when I earn my first ten million.”

“Tell Alice she’d better get cracking on that first
million,
’cause you sure aren’t gonna make it on your salary.”

Their written directions took them past a pair of granite pillars,
and down a broad driveway to a handsome house near the water’s edge.
Rizzoli
stepped out of the car and paused, shivering in the wind, to admire the
salt-silvered
shingles, the three turrets facing the sea.

“Can you believe she left all this to become a nun?” she
said.

“When God calls you, I guess you gotta go.”

She shook her head. “Me? I would’ve let him keep
ringing.”

They walked up the porch steps and Frost pressed the doorbell.

It was answered by a small dark-haired woman who opened the door
just
a crack to look at them.

“We’re from Boston PD,” said Rizzoli. “We
called
earlier. Here to see Mrs. Maginnes.”

The woman nodded and stepped aside to let them in.
“She’s
in the Sea Room. Let me show you the way.”

They walked across polished teak floors, past walls hung with
paintings
of ships and stormy seas. Rizzoli imagined young Camille growing up in this
house,
running across this gleaming floor. Or did she run? Was she allowed only to
walk,
quietly and sedately, as she wandered among the antiques?

The woman led them into a vast room where floor-to-ceiling windows
faced the sea. The view of gray, windswept water was so dramatic that it
instantly
captured Rizzoli’s gaze and she did not, at first, focus on anything else.
But
even as she stared at the water, she was aware of the sour odor that hung in the
room. The smell of urine.

She turned to look at the source of that smell: a man lying in a
hospital
bed near the windows, as though displayed like a piece of living art. Seated in
a
chair beside him was an auburn-haired woman, who now rose to greet her visitors.
Rizzoli saw nothing of Camille in this woman’s face. Camille’s beauty
had
been delicate, almost ethereal. This woman was all gloss and polish, her hair
cut
in a perfect helmet, her eyebrows plucked into arching gull’s wings.

“I’m Lauren Maginnes, Camille’s stepmother,”
the
woman said, and reached out to shake Frost’s hand. Some women ignore their
own
sex and focus only on the men in the room, and she was one of them, turning her
full
attention to Barry Frost.

Rizzoli said, “Hi, I spoke to you on the phone. I’m
Detective
Rizzoli. And this is Detective Frost. We’re both very sorry about your
loss.”

Only then did Lauren finally deign to focus on Rizzoli.
“Thank
you” was all she said. She glanced at the dark-haired woman who’d
shown
them in. “Maria, could you tell the boys to come down and join us? The
police
are here.” She turned back to her guests and gestured toward a couch.
“Please
sit down.”

Rizzoli found herself seated closest to the hospital bed. She
looked
at the man’s hand, contracted into a claw, and his face, one side drooping
into
an immobile puddle, and she remembered the last months of her own
grandfather’s
life. How he had lain in his nursing-home bed, his eyes fully aware and angry,
imprisoned
in a body that would no longer obey his commands. She saw such awareness in this
man’s eyes. He was staring straight at her, at this visitor he did not
know,
and she saw despair and humiliation in that gaze. The helplessness of a man
whose
dignity has been stolen. He could not be much older than fifty, yet already his
body
had betrayed him. A line of drool glistened on his chin and dribbled onto the
pillow.
On a nearby table were all the paraphernalia needed to keep him comfortable:
cans
of Ensure. Rubber gloves and Handi Wipes. A box of adult diapers. Your whole
life
reduced to a tabletop’s worth of hygiene products.

“Our evening shift nurse is running a little late, so I hope
you
don’t mind sitting here while I keep an eye on Randall,” said Lauren.
“We
moved him into this room because he’s always loved the sea. Now he can look
at it all the time.” She reached for a tissue and gently dabbed the drool
from
his mouth. “There. There, now.” She turned and looked at the two
detectives.
“You see why I didn’t want to drive all the way up to Boston. I
don’t
like to leave him for too long with the nurses. He gets agitated. He can’t
talk,
but I know he misses me when I’m gone.”

Lauren sat back down in the armchair and focused on Frost.
“Have
you made any progress with the investigation?”

Once again, it was Rizzoli who responded, determined to hold this
woman’s
attention, and irritated that it kept slipping away from her.

“We’re following some new leads,” she said.

“But you didn’t drive all the way to Hyannis just to
tell
me that.”

“No. We came to talk about some issues we felt more
comfortable
handling in person.”

“And you wanted to look us over, I imagine.”

“We wanted a sense of Camille’s background. Her
family.”

“Well, here we are.” Lauren waved her arm. “This is
the house she grew up in. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? Why
she’d
leave this for a convent. Randall gave her everything any girl could ask for. A
brand-new
BMW for her birthday. Her own pony. A closet full of dresses that she hardly
ever
wore. Instead, she chose to wear black for the rest of her life. She chose . .
.”
Lauren shook her head. “We still don’t get it.”

“You were both unhappy about her decision?”

“Oh, I could live with it. After all, it was her life. But
Randall
never accepted it. He kept hoping she’d change her mind. That she’d
get
tired of whatever it is nuns do all day, and she’d finally come home.”
She looked at her husband, lying mute in the bed. “I think that’s why
he
had his stroke. She was his only child, and he couldn’t believe she left
him.”

“What about Camille’s birth mother, Mrs. Maginnes? You
told
me on the phone that she was dead.”

“Camille was only eight years old when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

“Well, they called it an accidental overdose, but are any of
those
really accidents? Randall had already been widowed several years when I met him.
I guess you could call us a reconstituted family. I have two sons from my first
marriage,
and Randall had Camille.”

“How long have you and Randall been married?”

“Almost seven years now.” She looked at her husband.
Added,
with a note of resignation, “For better or for worse.”

“Were you and your stepdaughter close? Did she share much
with
you?”

“Camille?” Lauren shook her head. “I have to be
perfectly
honest. We never really bonded, if that’s what you’re asking. She was
already
thirteen when I met Randall, and you know what kids are like at that age. They
want
nothing to do with adults. It’s not that she treated me like her evil
stepmother
or anything. We just didn’t, well,
connect,
I guess. I made the
effort,
I really did, but she was always so . . .” Lauren suddenly stopped, as
though
afraid she’d say something she shouldn’t.

“What’s the word you’re looking for, Mrs.
Maginnes?”

Lauren thought about it. “Strange,” she said finally.
“Camille
was strange.” She looked at her husband, who was staring at her, and
quickly
said, “I’m sorry, Randall. I know it’s awful for me to say that,
but
these are policemen. They want to hear the truth.”

“What do you mean by strange?” asked Frost.

“You know how, when you walk into a party, you sometimes spot
someone who’s standing all alone?” said Lauren. “Someone who
won’t
look you in the eye? She was always off by herself in a corner, or hiding out in
her room. It never occurred to us what she was doing up there. Praying! Down on
her
knees and praying. Reading those books she got from one of the Catholic girls at
school. We’re not even Catholic, we’re Presbyterians. But there she
was,
locked in her room. Whipping herself with a belt, can you believe it? To make
herself
pure. Where do they get such ideas?”

Outside, the wind sprayed sea salt on the windows. Randall
Maginnes
gave a soft moan. Rizzoli noticed that he was looking straight at her. She gazed
back at him, wondering how much of this conversation he understood. Full
comprehension
would be the greater curse, she thought. To know everything that was going on
around
you. To know your daughter, your only natural child, is dead. To know your wife
feels
burdened by your care. To know that the terrible odor you’re forced to
inhale
is your own.

She heard footsteps and turned to see two young men walk into the
room.
Clearly they were Lauren’s sons, with the same reddish-brown hair, the same
handsome features stamped on their faces. Though both were dressed casually in
jeans
and crew-neck sweaters, they managed, like their mother, to project stylish
confidence.
Thoroughbreds, thought Rizzoli.

She reached out to shake their hands. Did it firmly, establishing
her
authority. “I’m Detective Rizzoli,” she said.

“My sons, Blake and Justin,” said Lauren.
“They’re
home from college for the holidays.”

My sons, she had said. Not our sons. In this family,
reconstitution
had not completely blended the lines of love. Even after seven years of
marriage,
her sons were still hers, and Randall’s daughter was his.

“These are our two budding lawyers in the family,” said
Lauren.
“With all the arguments they have around the dinner table, they’ve had
plenty of practice for the courtroom.”

“Discussions, Mom,” said Blake. “We call them
discussions.”

“Sometimes I can’t tell the difference.”

The boys sat down with the easy grace of athletes, and looked at
Rizzoli,
as though expecting the entertainment to begin.

“In college, huh?” she said. “Where do you boys
go?”

“I’m at Amherst,” said Blake. “And
Justin’s
at Bowdoin.”

Both within easy driving distance to Boston.

“And you want to be lawyers? Both of you?”

“I’ve already got my application in to law
schools,”
said Blake. “I’m thinking of entertainment law. Maybe work out in
California.
I’m getting a minor in film studies, so I think I’m laying a pretty
good
foundation for it.”

“Yeah, and he wants to hang out with cute actresses,
too,”
said Justin. For that comment, he got a playful jab in the ribs. “Well, he
does!”

Rizzoli wondered about two brothers who could exchange such
lighthearted
banter while their stepsister lay, so recently deceased, in the morgue.

She asked, “When did you two last see your sister?”

Blake and Justin looked at each other. Said, almost in unison,
“Grandma’s
funeral.”

“That was in March?” She looked at Lauren. “When
Camille
came home for a visit?”

Lauren nodded. “We had to petition the church to let her come
home for the services. It’s like asking for a prisoner’s parole. I
couldn’t
believe it when they didn’t let her come home again in April, after Randall
had his stroke. Her own father! And she just accepted their decision. Just did
what
they told her to do. You have to wonder what goes on inside those convents, that
they’re so afraid to let them out. What sorts of abuse they’re hiding.
But that’s probably why she liked being there.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because it’s what she craved. Punishment. Pain.”

“Camille?”

“I told you, Detective, she was strange. When she was
sixteen,
she took off her shoes and went walking barefoot. In January. It was ten degrees
outside! The maid found her standing in the snow. Of course, all our neighbors
soon
heard about it as well. We had to take her to the hospital for frostbite. She
told
the doctor she did it because the saints had suffered, and she wanted to feel
pain,
too. She thought it would bring her closer to God.” Lauren shook her head.
“What
can you do with a girl like that?”

Love her, thought Rizzoli. Try to understand her.

“I wanted her to see a psychiatrist, but Randall
wouldn’t
hear of it. He never, ever admitted that his own daughter was . . .” Lauren
paused.

“Just say it, Mom,” said Blake. “She was crazy.
That’s
what we all thought.”

Camille’s father made a soft moan.

Lauren rose to wipe another thread of drool from his mouth.
“Where
is that nurse, anyway? She was supposed to be here at three.”

“When Camille came home in March, how long did she
stay?”
asked Frost.

Lauren looked at him, distracted. “About a week. She could
have
stayed longer, but she chose to go back to the convent early.”

“Why?”

“I guess she didn’t like being around all these people.
We
had a lot of my relatives up from Newport for the funeral.”