Tess Gerritsen - The Keepsake

Months ago he had broken the vows that bound him to his church. She was the one responsible; she had caused his fall from grace, a fall that once again brought him into her bed, into her arms. It was a destination so familiar to him now that he knew exactly what she wanted, what would make her clutch him and cry out.

When at last she fell back with a satisfied shudder, they lay together as they always did, with arms and legs wrapped around each other, two lovers who knew each other’s bodies well.

“It feels like it’s been forever since you were here,” she whispered.

“I would have come Thursday, but that workshop went on forever.”

“Which workshop?”

“Couples counseling.” He gave a sad, ironic laugh. “As if I’m the person who can tell them how to heal their marriages. There’s so much anger and pain, Maura. It was an ordeal just sitting in the same room with those people. I wanted to tell them, It will never work, you’ll never be happy with each other. You married the wrong person! ”

“That might be the best advice you could have given them.”

“It would have been an act of mercy.” Gently he brushed the hair from her face, and his hand lingered on her cheek. “It would have been so much kinder to give them permission to leave. To find someone who would make them happy. The way you make me happy.”

She smiled. “And you make me hungry.” She sat up, and the scent of their lovemaking wafted up from the rumpled sheets. The animal smells of warm bodies and desire. “I promised you dinner.”

“I feel guilty that you’re always feeding me.” He, too, sat up and reached for his clothes. “Tell me what I can do.”

“I left the wine in the car. Why don’t you get the bottle and open it? I’ll put the chicken in the oven.”

In her kitchen they sipped wine as the chicken roasted, as she sliced the potatoes and he made the salad. Like any married couple, they cooked and they touched and they kissed. But we’re not married, she thought, glancing sideways at his striking profile, his graying temples. Every moment together was a stolen one, a furtive one, and although they laughed together, sometimes she heard a desperate note in that laughter, as though they were trying to convince themselves that they were happy, damn it, yes they were, despite the guilt and the deceptions and the many nights apart. But she was beginning to see the emotional toll in his face. In just the past few months, his hair had gone noticeably grayer. When it’s completely white, she thought, will we still be meeting with the curtains closed?

And what changes does he see in my face?

It was after midnight when he left her house. She had fallen asleep in his arms and did not hear him rise from the bed. When she awakened he was gone, and the sheet beside her was already cold.

That morning she drank her coffee alone, cooked pancakes alone. Her best memories of her otherwise disastrous and brief marriage to Victor were of Sunday mornings together, rising late from bed to lounge on the couch, where they’d spend half the day reading the newspaper. She would never enjoy such a Sunday with Daniel. While she dozed in her bathrobe with the pages of The Boston Globe spread out all around her, Father Daniel Brophy would be ministering to his flock in the church of Our Lady of Divine Light, a flock whose shepherd had himself gone terribly astray.

The sound of her doorbell startled her awake. Groggy from her nap, she sat up on the couch and saw that it was already two in the afternoon. That could be Daniel at the door.

Scattered newspapers crackled beneath her bare feet as she hurried across the living room. When she opened the door and saw the man who stood on her porch, she suddenly regretted not combing her hair or changing out of the bathrobe.

“I’m sorry I’m a little late,” said Anthony Sansone. “I hope it’s not inconvenient.”

“Late? I’m sorry, but I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Didn’t you get my message? I left it on your answering machine yesterday afternoon. About coming by to see you today.”

“Oh. I guess I forget to check the machine last night.” I was otherwise occupied. She stepped back. “Come in.”

He walked into the living room and stopped, gazing at the scattered newspapers, the empty coffee cup. It had been months since she’d seen him, and she was struck yet again by his stillness, by the way he always seemed to be testing the air, searching for the one detail he’d missed. Unlike Daniel, who was quick to reach out even to strangers, Anthony Sansone was a man surrounded by walls, a man who could stand in a crowded room yet seem coolly apart and self-contained. She wondered what he was thinking as he looked at the clutter of her wasted Sunday. Not all of us have butlers, she thought. Not all of us live the way you do, in a Beacon Hill mansion.

“I’m sorry for bothering you at home,” he said. “But I didn’t want this to be an official visit to the ME.” He turned to look at her. “And I did want to find out how you’ve been, Maura. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I’m fine. It’s been busy.”

“The Mephisto Society’s resumed our weekly dinners in my house. We could certainly use your perspective, and we’d love to have you join us again some evening.”

“To talk about crime? I deal with that subject quite enough at my own job, thank you.”

“Not in the way we approach it. You only look at its final effect; we’re concerned with the reason for its existence.”

She began picking up newspapers and stacking them into a pile. “I don’t really fit in with your group. I don’t accept your theories.”

“Even after what we both experienced? Those murders must have made you wonder. They must have raised the possibility in your mind.”

“That there’s a unified theory of evil to be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls?” She shook her head. “I’m a scientist. I read religious texts for historical insights, not for literal truths. Not to explain the unexplainable.”

“You were trapped with us on the mountain that night. You saw the evidence.”

On the night he spoke of, a night in January, they had almost lost their lives. That much they could agree on, because the evidence was as real as the blood left in the aftermath. But there was so much about that night that they would never agree on, and their most fundamental disagreement was about the nature of the monster who had trapped them on that mountain.

“What I saw was a serial murderer, like too many others in this world,” she said. “I don’t need any biblical theories to explain him. Talk to me about science, not fables about ancient demonic bloodlines.” She set the stack of newspapers on the coffee table. “Evil just is. People can be brutal and some of them kill. We’d all like an explanation for it.”

“Does science explain why a killer would mummify a woman’s body? Why he’d shrink a woman’s head and deposit another woman in the trunk of a car?”

Startled, she turned to look at him. “You already know about those cases?”

But of course he would know. Anthony Sansone’s ties to law enforcement reached the highest levels, into the office of the police commissioner himself. A case as unusual as that of Madam X would certainly catch his attention. And it would stir interest within the secretive Mephisto Society, which had its own bizarre theories about crime and how to combat it.

“There are details even you may not be aware of,” he said.

“Details I think you should be acquainted with.”

“Before we talk about this any further,” she said, “I’m going to get dressed. If you’ll excuse me.”

She retreated to her bedroom. There she pulled on jeans and a button-down shirt, casual attire that was perfectly appropriate for a Sunday afternoon, but she felt underdressed for her distinguished visitor. She didn’t bother with makeup, but simply washed her face and brushed the tangles from her hair. Staring at herself in the mirror, she saw puffy eyes and new strands of gray that she hadn’t noticed before. Well, this is who I am, she thought. A woman who’ll never see forty again. I can’t hide my age and I won’t even try to.