The Sinner by Tess Gerritsen Read Free Book Online

as the
stretcher
was loaded into the vehicle. Now those hungry cameras turned to their next prey:
Maura, who had just slipped out of the gate and was headed toward her car,
hugging
her coat tight, as though it would shield her from notice.
    “Dr. Isles! Do you have a statement?”
    “What was the cause of death?”
    “—any evidence this was a sexual assault?”
    With reporters bearing down on her, she fumbled in her purse for
the
keys and pressed the remote lock release. She’d just opened her car door
when
she heard her name shouted out. But this time, it was in alarm.
    She looked back, and saw that a man was sprawled on the sidewalk,
and
several people were bending over him.
    “We’ve got a cameraman down!” someone yelled.
“We
need an ambulance!”
    Maura slammed her car door shut and hurried back toward the fallen
man. “What happened?” she asked. “Did he slip?”
    “No, he was running—just kind of keeled over—”
    She crouched down at his side. They had already rolled him onto
his
back, and she saw a heavyset man in his fifties, his face turning dusky. A TV
camera,
emblazoned with the letters WVSU, was lying in the snow beside him.
    He wasn’t breathing.
    She tilted his head backwards, extending the beefy neck to open
the
airway, and leaned forward to start resuscitation. The smell of stale coffee and
cigarettes almost made her gag. She thought of hepatitis and AIDS and all the
other
microscopic horrors one could catch from body fluids, and forced herself to seal
her mouth over his. She blew in a breath and saw the chest rise, the lungs
inflating
with air. Blew in two more breaths, then felt for a carotid pulse.
    Nothing.
    She was about to unzip the man’s jacket, but someone else was
already doing it for her. She looked up and saw the priest kneeling opposite
her,
large hands now probing the man’s chest for landmarks. He placed his palms
over
the sternum, then looked at her, to confirm he should begin chest compressions.
She
saw startling blue eyes. An expression of grim purpose.
    “Start pumping,” she said. “Do it.”
    He leaned into the task, counting aloud with each compression so
she
could time the breaths. “One one-thousand. Two one-thousand . . .” No
panic
in his voice, just the steady count of a man who knows what he’s doing. She
didn’t need to direct him; they worked together as though they had always
been
a team, twice switching positions to relieve each other.
    By the time the ambulance arrived, the front of her slacks was
soaked
from kneeling in the snow, and she was sweating despite the cold. She rose
stiffly
to her feet and watched, exhausted, as the EMTs inserted IVs and an endotracheal
tube, as the stretcher was loaded into the ambulance.
    The TV camera the man had dropped was now being wielded by another
WVSU employee. The show must go on, she thought, watching the reporters mill
about
the ambulance, even if the story is now about your own colleague’s
collapse.
    She turned to the priest standing beside her, the knees of his
pants
soaked with melted snow. “Thank you for the help,” she said. “I
take
it you’ve done CPR before.”
    He gave a smile, a shrug. “Only on a plastic dummy. I
didn’t
think I’d ever have to actually use it.” He reached out to shake her
hand.
“I’m Daniel Brophy. You’re the medical examiner?”
    “Maura Isles. This is your parish, Father Brophy?”
    He nodded. “My church is three blocks from here.”
    “Yes, I’ve seen it.”
    “Do you think we saved that man?”
    She shook her head. “When CPR goes on that long, without a
pulse,
it’s not a very good prognosis.”
    “But there’s a chance he’ll live?”
    “Not a good one.”
    “Even so, I’d like to think we made a difference.”
He
glanced at the TV reporters, still fixated on the ambulance. “Let me walk
you
to your car, so you can get out of here without having a camera shoved in your
face.”
    “They’ll go after you next. I hope you’re ready