The Mephisto Club (13 page)

“This is all bullshit,” he said.

“And when’s the bullshit going to end, huh?” Jane shot back at him. “When are you going to grow up?”

“This is none of your beeswax.”

“Oh no? She’s sitting in my apartment right now, probably crying her eyes out. All because you can’t keep your goddamn pants zipped.”

“She?” said Sandie. “Who’re we talking about?”

“Thirty-seven years of marriage, and you dump her for boom-boom here?”

“You don’t understand,” said Frank.

“Oh, I understand just fine.”

“You have no idea what it’s like. Just a damn worker bee, that’s all I am. Some drone to put food on the table. I’m sixty-one years old, and what do I got to show for it? You don’t think I deserve a little fun, for once in my life?”

“You think Mom’s having any fun?”

“That’s
her
problem.”

“It’s mine, too.”

“Well, I take no responsibility for
that.
”

“Hey,” said Sandie. “This is your daughter?” She looked at Jane. “You said you were a cop.”

Frank sighed. “She
is
a cop.”

“You’re breaking her heart, you know that?” said Jane. “Do you even care?”

“What about
my
heart?” Sandie cut in.

Jane ignored the bimbo and kept her gaze on Frank. “I don’t even know who you are anymore, Dad. I used to respect you. Now look at you! Pathetic, just pathetic. This blondie shakes her ass and you’re like some idiot dog, sniffing at it. Oh yeah, Dad, hump away.”

Frank shoved a finger at her. “That’s enough outta
you
!”

“You think boom-boom here is gonna take care of you when you’re sick, huh? You think she’ll stand by you? Hell, does she even know how to cook?”

“How dare you,” said Sandie. “You used your badge to scare me.”

“Mom’ll take you back, Dad. I know she will. Go talk to her.”

“There’s a law against what you did,” said Sandie. “There’s gotta be! It’s police harassment!”

“I’ll show you what police harassment is,” Jane shot back. “You just keep pushing me.”

“What’re you gonna do, arrest me?” Sandie leaned into her, eyes narrowed to slits of mascara. “Go ahead.” The woman shoved her finger against Jane’s chest and gave a hard shove. “I dare you.”

What happened next was purely reflexive. Jane didn’t even stop to think, but simply reacted. With one sweep of her hand, she grasped Sandie’s wrist, twisted her around. Through the rushing of her own blood, she heard Sandie screaming obscenities. Heard her dad yell, “Stop it! For God’s sake, stop!” But she was operating on automatic now, all nerves firing on full thrust as she shoved Sandie to her knees, the way she’d handle any perp. But this time there was rage fueling her, making her twist harder than she had to, making her want to hurt this woman. Humiliate her.

“Rizzoli! Jesus, Rizzoli, that’s
enough
!”

The sound of Frost’s voice finally penetrated the pounding of her own pulse. Abruptly she released Sandie and stepped back, breathing hard. She stared down at the woman who knelt whimpering on the sidewalk. Frank dropped to his knees beside Sandie and helped her to her feet.

“What the hell’re you gonna do now?” Frank looked up at his daughter. “Arrest her?”

“You saw it. She shoved me.”

“She was upset.”

“
She
made the first contact.”

“Rizzoli,” Frost said quietly. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

“I
could
arrest her,” said Jane. “Damn it, I
could.
”

“Yeah, okay,” said Frost. “You could. But do you really want to?”

She heaved out a breath. “I got better things to do,” she muttered. Then she turned and walked back to the car. By the time she climbed in, her dad and the blond had already vanished around the corner.

Frost slid in beside her and pulled his door shut. “That,” he said, “was not a cool thing to do.”

“Just drive.”

“You went in looking for a fight.”

“Did you see her? My dad’s going out with a friggin’ bimbo!”

“All the more reason why you need to stay a hundred miles away from her. You two were gonna kill each other.”

Jane sighed and dropped her head in her hand. “What do I tell my mom?”

“Nothing.” Frost started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Their marriage is not your business.”

“I’m gonna have to go home and look at her face. See all the hurt there. That
makes
it my business.”

“Then be a good daughter. Give her a shoulder to cry on,” he said. “Because she’s gonna need one.”

What do I tell my mom?

Jane pulled into a parking space outside her apartment and sat for a moment, dreading what came next. Maybe she shouldn’t tell her what happened today. Angela already knew about Dad and Miss Golden Retriever. Why rub her face in it? Why humiliate her even more?

Because if I were Mom, I’d want to be told. I wouldn’t want my daughter keeping secrets from me, no matter how painful they were.

Jane stepped out of the car, debating what to say, knowing that, no matter what she decided, this was going to be a miserable evening, and that little she could do or say would ease her mother’s pain. Be a good daughter, Frost had said; give her a shoulder to cry on. Okay, that much she could manage.

She climbed the stairs to the second floor, her feet feeling heavier with every step as she silently cursed Miss Sandie Huffington, who had screwed up all their lives. Oh, I’ve got my eye on you. You so much as jaywalk, Bimbo, and I’m gonna be right there. Outstanding parking tickets? Bad news for you. Mom can’t hit back, but I sure as hell can. She thrust her key into her apartment door and paused, frowning at the sound of her mother’s voice inside. The sound of her laughter.

Mom?

Pushing open the door, she inhaled the scent of cinnamon and vanilla. Heard a different laugh now, startlingly familiar. A man’s. She walked into the kitchen and stared at retired detective Vince Korsak, who sat at the table with a cup of coffee. In front of him was a huge plate of sugar cookies.

“Hey,” he said, lifting his coffee cup in greeting. Baby Regina, sitting right beside him in her infant carrier, lifted her tiny hand, too, as though in imitation.

“Um…what are you doing here?”

“Janie!” scolded Angela, setting a pan of freshly baked cookies on the stovetop to cool. “What a thing to say to Vince.”

Vince? She’s calling him Vince?

“He called to invite you and Gabriel to a party,” said Angela.

“And you, too, Mrs. Rizzoli,” Korsak said, winking at Angela. “The more chicks that come, the better!”

Angela flushed, and it wasn’t from the oven’s heat.

“And I bet he smelled the cookies over the phone,” said Jane.

“I just happened to be here baking. I told him that if he came right over, I’d whip up an extra batch for him.”

“No way I’d pass up an offer like that,” laughed Korsak. “Hey, pretty nice having your mom here, huh?”

Jane eyed the crumbs all over his wrinkled shirt. “I see you’re off your diet.”

“And I see you’re in a good mood.” He took a sloppy gulp of coffee and swiped a fat hand across his mouth. “I hear you caught yourself a freakin’ weird one.” He paused, glanced at Angela. “Pardon my French, Mrs. Rizzoli.”

“Oh, say whatever you want,” said Angela. “I want you to feel right at home.”

Please don’t encourage him.

“Some kinda satanic cult,” he said.

“You heard that?”

“Retirement didn’t make me deaf.”

Or dumb. As much as he might irritate her with his crude jokes and appalling hygiene, Korsak was one of the sharpest investigators she knew. Although retired since his heart attack last year, he had never really left the badge behind. On a weekend night, she could still find him hanging out at JP Doyle’s, a favorite Boston PD watering hole, catching up on the latest war stories. Retired or not, Vince Korsak would die a cop.

“What else did you hear?” asked Jane, sitting down at the table.

“That your perp’s an artist. Leaves cute little drawings behind. And he likes to”—Korsak paused and glanced at Angela, who was sliding cookies off the pan—“slice and dice. Am I warm?”

“A little too warm.”

Angela lifted off the last of the cookies and sealed them in a ziplock bag. With a flourish, she placed them in front of Korsak. This was not the Angela whom Jane had expected to come home to. Her mother was actually
bustling
around the kitchen now, gathering pans and bowls, splashing soapsuds as she washed up in the sink. She didn’t look miserable or abandoned or depressed; she looked ten years younger.
Is this what happens when your husband walks out on you?

“Tell Jane more about your party,” said Angela, refilling Korsak’s coffee cup.

“Oh yeah.” He took a noisy slurp. “See, I signed my divorce papers last week. Almost a year of wrangling over money, and it’s finally over. I figured it was time to celebrate my new status as a free man. I got my apartment all decorated. Nice leather couch, big-screen TV. I’m gonna buy a few cases, get some friends together, and we’re all gonna par-
tee
!”

He’d turned into a fifty-five-year-old teenager with a potbelly and a comb-over. Could he get any more pathetic?

“So you’re coming, right?” he asked Jane. “Second Saturday in January.”

“Let me check the date with Gabriel.”

“If he can’t make it, you can always come stag. Just be sure to bring your older sister here.” He gave Angela a wink, and she giggled.

This was getting more painful by the minute. Jane was almost relieved to hear the muffled ringing of her cell phone. She went into the living room, where she’d left her purse, and dug out her phone.

“Rizzoli,” she said.

Lieutenant Marquette did not waste time with pleasantries. “You need to be more respectful of Anthony Sansone,” he said.

In the kitchen, she could hear Korsak laughing, and the sound suddenly irritated her.
If you’re going to flirt with my mom, for God’s sake, take it somewhere else.

“I hear you’ve been giving him and his friends a hard time,” said Marquette.

“Maybe you could define what you mean by
hard time
?”

“You questioned him for nearly two hours. Grilled his butler, his dinner guests. Then you went back to see him again this afternoon. You’re making him feel as if he’s the one under investigation.”

“Well, gee, I’m sorry if I hurt his feelings. We’re just doing what we always do.”

“Rizzoli, try to keep in mind the man is not a suspect.”

“I haven’t reached that conclusion yet. O’Donnell was in his house. Eve Kassovitz was killed in his garden. And when his butler finds the body, what does Sansone do? He takes photos. Passes them around to his friends. You wanna know the truth? These people are not normal. Certainly Sansone isn’t.”

“He’s not a suspect.”

“I haven’t eliminated him.”

“You can trust me on this. Leave him alone.”

She paused. “You want to tell me more, Lieutenant?” she asked quietly. “What do I not know about Anthony Sansone?”

“He’s not a man we want to alienate.”

“Do you know him?”

“Not personally. I’m just conveying the word from above. We’ve been told to treat him with respect.”

She hung up. Moving to the window, she stared out at an afternoon sky that was no longer blue. More snow was probably on the way. She thought:
One minute you think you can see forever, and then the clouds move in and obscure everything.

She reached for her cell phone again and began to dial.

SEVENTEEN

Maura watched through the viewing window as Yoshima, wearing a lead apron, positioned the collimator over the abdomen. Some people walk into work on Monday mornings dreading nothing worse awaiting them than a stack of fresh paperwork or message slips. On this Monday morning, what had awaited Maura was the woman who lay on that table, her body now stripped bare. Maura saw Yoshima reemerge from behind the lead shield to retrieve the film cassette for processing. He glanced up and gave a nod.

Maura pushed through the door, back into the autopsy lab.

The night she had crouched shivering in Anthony Sansone’s garden, she had seen this body only under the glow of flashlight beams. Today, Detective Eve Kassovitz lay fully bared to view, harsh lights washing out every shadow. The blood had been rinsed away, revealing raw, pink injuries. A scalp laceration. A stab wound on the chest, beneath the sternum. And the lidless eyes, the corneas now clouded from exposure. That was what Maura could not help staring at: those mutilated eyes.

The whish of the door announced Jane’s arrival. “You haven’t started yet?” Jane asked.

“No. Is anyone else joining us?”

“It’s just me today.” Jane paused in the midst of tying on her gown, her gaze suddenly fixed on the table. On the face of her dead colleague. “I should have stood up for her,” she said quietly. “When those jerks in the unit started in with the stupid jokes, I should have put a stop to it right there.”

“They’re the ones who should feel guilty, Jane. Not you.”

“But I’ve been there myself. I know how it feels.” Jane kept looking down at the exposed corneas. “They won’t be able to pretty up these eyes for the funeral.”

“It will have to be a closed coffin.”

“The eye of Horus,” Jane said softly.

“What?”

“That drawing on Sansone’s door. It’s an ancient symbol, dating back to the Egyptians. It’s called Udjat, the all-seeing eye.”

“Who told you about that?”

“One of Sansone’s dinner guests.” She looked at Maura. “These people—Sansone and his friends—they’re weird. The more I find out about them, the more they creep me out. Especially
him.
”

Yoshima came out of the processing room, carrying a sheaf of freshly developed films. They gave a musical twang as he clipped them to the light box.

Maura reached for the ruler and measured the scalp laceration, jotting its dimensions on a clipboard. “He called me that night, you know,” she said, without looking up. “To make sure I got home safely.”

“
Sansone
did?”

Maura glanced up. “Do you consider him a suspect?”

“Think about this: After they found the body, do you know what Sansone did? Before he even called the police? He got out his camera and snapped some photos. Had his butler deliver them to his friends the next morning. Tell me that isn’t weird.”

“But do you consider him a suspect?”

After a pause, Jane admitted, “No. And if I did, it would present problems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gabriel tried to do a little digging for me. He called around to find out more about the guy. All he did was ask a few questions, and suddenly doors slammed shut. The FBI, Interpol, no one wanted to talk about Sansone. Obviously he has friends in high places who are ready to protect him.”

Maura thought of the house on Beacon Hill. The butler, the antiques. “His wealth could have something to do with it.”

“It’s all inherited. He sure didn’t make his fortune teaching medieval history at Boston College.”

“How wealthy are we talking about?”

“That house on Beacon Hill? It’s his equivalent of slumming. He’s also got homes in London and Paris, plus a family estate in Italy. The guy’s an eligible bachelor, he’s loaded, and he’s good-looking. But he never turns up on the society pages. No charity balls, no black-tie fund-raisers. He’s like a total recluse.”

“He didn’t strike me as the kind of man you’d find on the party circuit.”

“What else did you think about him?”

“We didn’t have that long a conversation.”

“But you did have one that night.”

“It was freezing outside, and he invited me in for coffee.”

“Didn’t that seem a little weird?”

“What?”

“That he made a special effort to invite you in?”

“I appreciated the gesture. And for the record, it was the butler who came out to get me.”

“You, specifically? He knew who you were?”

Maura hesitated. “Yes.”

“What did he want from you, Doc?”

Maura had moved on to the torso, and she now measured the stab wound on the chest and jotted the dimensions on her clipboard. The questions were getting too pointed, and she didn’t like the implications: that she’d let herself be used by Anthony Sansone. “I didn’t reveal anything vital about the case, Jane. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“But you did talk about it?”

“About a number of things. And yes, he wanted to know what I thought. It’s not surprising, since the body was found in his garden. Understandably, he’s curious. And maybe a little eccentric.” She met Jane’s gaze and found it uncomfortably probing. She dropped her attention back to the corpse, to wounds that did not disturb her nearly as much as Jane’s questions.

“Eccentric? That’s the only word you can think of?”

She thought of the way Sansone had studied her that night, how his eyes had reflected the firelight, and other words came to mind.
Intelligent. Attractive. Intimidating.

“You don’t think he’s just a little bit creepy?” asked Jane. “Because I sure do.”

“Why?”

“You saw his house. It’s like stepping into a time warp. And you never saw the other rooms, with all those portraits staring from the walls. It’s like walking into Dracula’s castle.”

“He’s a history professor.”

“Was. He’s not teaching anymore.”

“Those are probably heirlooms, and priceless. Clearly he appreciates his family legacy.”

“Oh yeah, the family legacy. That’s where he got lucky. He’s a fourth-generation trust-funder.”

“Yet he pursued a successful academic career. You have to give him some credit for that. He didn’t just turn into an idle playboy.”

“Here’s the interesting twist. The family trust fund was established back in 1905, by his great-grandfather. Guess what the name of that trust fund is?”

“I have no idea.”

“It’s called the Mephisto Foundation.”

Maura glanced up, startled. “Mephisto?” she murmured.

“You gotta wonder,” said Jane, “with a name like that, what kind of family legacy are we talking about?”

Yoshima asked, “What’s the significance of that name? Mephisto?”

“I looked it up,” said Jane. “It’s short for Mephistopheles. Doc here probably knows who he was.”

“The name comes from the legend of Dr. Faustus,” said Maura.

“Who?” asked Yoshima.

“Dr. Faustus was a magician,” said Maura. “He drew secret symbols to summon the Devil. An evil spirit named Mephistopheles appeared and offered him a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“In exchange for the full knowledge of magic, Dr. Faustus sold his soul to the Devil.”

“So Mephisto is…”

“A servant of Satan.”

A voice suddenly spoke over the intercom. “Dr. Isles,” said Maura’s secretary, Louise. “You have an outside call on line one. It’s a Mr. Sansone. Do you want to pick up, or shall I take a message?”

Speak of the Devil.

Maura met Jane’s gaze and saw Jane give a quick nod.

“I’ll take the call,” said Maura. Stripping off her gloves, she crossed to the wall phone and picked up the receiver. “Mr. Sansone?”

“I hope I’m not interrupting you,” he said.

She looked at the body on the table.
Eve Kassovitz won’t mind,
she thought.
There is no one as patient as the dead.
“I have a minute to talk.”

“This Saturday, I’m hosting a supper here at my home. I’d love to have you join us.”

Maura paused, acutely aware that Jane was watching her. “I’ll need to think about it,” she said.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what this is all about.”

“Actually, I am.”

“I promise not to pick your brain about the investigation.”

“I can’t talk about it anyway. You do know that.”

“Understood. That’s not why I’m inviting you.”

“Then why?” A blunt, inelegant question, but she had to ask it.

“We share common interests. Common concerns.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Join us on Saturday, around seven. We can talk about it then.”

“Let me check my schedule first. I’ll let you know.” She hung up.

“What was that all about?” asked Jane.

“He just invited me to dinner.”

“He wants something from you.”

“Not a thing, he claims.” Maura crossed to the cabinet for a fresh pair of gloves. Although her hands were steady as she pulled them on, she could feel her face flushing, her pulse throbbing in her fingertips.

“You believe that?”

“Of course not. That’s why I’m not going.”

Jane said quietly, “Maybe you should.”

Maura turned to look at her. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’d like to know more about the Mephisto Foundation. Who they are, what they do at their secret little meetings. I may not be able to get the information any other way.”

“So you want me to do it for you?”

“All I’m saying is, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea if you go. As long as you’re careful.”

Maura crossed to the table. Staring down at Eve Kassovitz, she thought:
This woman was a cop and she was armed. Yet even she wasn’t careful enough.
Maura picked up the knife and began to cut.

Her blade traced a Y on the torso, two incisions slicing from both shoulders to meet lower than usual beneath the sternum. To preserve the stab wound. Even before the ribs were cut, before the chest was opened, she knew what she would find inside the thorax. She could see it in the chest films now hanging on the light box: the globular outline of the heart, far larger than it should be in a healthy young woman. Lifting off the shield of breastbone and ribs, she peered into the chest and slid her hand beneath the swollen sac that contained the heart.

It felt like a bag filled with blood.

“Pericardial tamponade,” she said, and looked up at Jane. “She bled into the sac that surrounds her heart. Since it’s a confined space, the sac becomes so taut, the heart can’t pump. Or the stab itself may have caused a fatal arrhythmia. Either way, this was a quick and efficient kill. But he had to know where to aim the blade.”

“He knew what he was doing.”

“Or he got lucky.” She pointed to the wound. “You can see the blade pierced just below the xiphoid process. Anywhere above that, the heart’s pretty well protected by the sternum and ribs. But if you enter here, where this wound is located, and aim the blade at just the right angle…”

“You’ll hit the heart?”

“It’s not difficult. I did it as an intern, on my ER rotation. With a needle, of course.”

“On a dead person, I hope.”

“No, she was alive. But we couldn’t hear her heartbeat, her blood pressure was crashing, and the chest x-ray showed a globular heart. I had to do something.”

“So you
stabbed
her?”

“With a cardiac needle. Removed enough blood from the sac to keep her alive until she could make it to surgery.”

“It’s like that spy novel,
Eye of the Needle,
” said Yoshima. “The killer stabs his victims straight in the heart, and they die so fast, there’s hardly any blood. It makes a pretty clean kill.”

“Thank you for that useful tip,” said Jane.

“Actually, Yoshima raises a good point,” said Maura. “Our perp chose a quick method to kill Eve Kassovitz. But with Lori-Ann Tucker, he took his time removing the hand, the arm, the head. And then he drew the symbols. With this victim, he didn’t waste a lot of time. Which makes me think Eve was killed for a more practical reason. Maybe she surprised him, and he simply had to get rid of her, on the spot. So he did it the fastest way he could. A blow to the head. And then a quick stab to the heart.”

“He took the time to draw those symbols on the door.”

“How do we know he didn’t draw them first? To go with the bundle he’d just delivered on the doorstep?”

“You mean the hand.”

Maura nodded. “His offering.”

Her blade was back at work, cutting, resecting. Out came lungs, which she dropped into a steel basin, where they formed a spongy mass. A glance at the pink surface, a few slices into each of the lobes, told her these had been the healthy lungs of a nonsmoker, designed to serve their owner well into old age. Maura moved on to the peritoneal cavity, gloved hands reaching into the abdomen to resect stomach and pancreas and liver. Eve Kassovitz’s belly had been enviably flat, the reward no doubt of many hours laboring at sit-ups and stomach crunches. How easily all that effort was reduced by a scalpel to incised muscle and gaping skin. The basin slowly filled with organs, loops of small intestine glistening like tangled eels, liver and spleen settling into a bloody mound. Everything healthy, so healthy. She sliced into the retroperitoneum, removed velvety smooth kidneys, sliced off tiny chunks, which she dropped into a specimen jar. They sank into formalin, trailing swirls of blood.

Straightening, she looked at Yoshima. “Can you put up the skull films now? Let’s see what we have.”

He pulled down the torso x-rays and began mounting a new set, which she had not yet examined. Films of the head now glowed on the viewing box. She focused on the table of bone just beneath the scalp laceration, searching the outline of the cranium for some telltale fracture line or depression that she’d been unable to palpate, but she saw none. Even without a fracture, the blow could still have been enough to stun the victim into submission, to bring her down long enough for the killer to yank open her jacket and lift her sweater.

To thrust the blade into her heart.

At first, the skull was what held Maura’s focus. Then she moved on to a lateral view and focused on the neck, her gaze stopping on the hyoid bone. Posterior to it was a cone-shaped opacity unlike anything she had seen before. Frowning, she moved closer to the light box and stood staring at the anomaly. On the frontal view, it was almost hidden against the greater density of the cervical vertebrae. But on the lateral view it was clearly visible, and it was not part of the skeletal structure.