Tess Gerritsen - The Mephisto Club

“Let’s see it, then,” he said, and eagerly snatched the ziplock bag that she held out to him. “You say you found this at a crime scene?”

She hesitated, then said, merely, yes. Rammed down the throat of a dead woman was what she didn’t say.

“Why do you think it’s significant?”

“I’m hoping you can tell me.”

“May I handle it?”

“If you really need to.”

He opened the bag and, with arthritic fingers, he removed the seashell. “Oh yes,” he murmured as he squeezed behind his desk and settled into a creaking chair. He turned on a gooseneck lamp and pulled out a magnifying glass and a ruler. “Yes, it’s what I thought. Looks like about, oh, twenty-one millimeters long. Not a particularly nice specimen. These striations aren’t all that pretty, and it’s got a few chips here, you see? Could be an old shell that’s been tumbled around in some hobbyist’s collection box.” He looked up, blue eyes watery behind spectacles. “Pisania maculosa.”

“Is that its name?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

He set down the magnifying lens with a thud and stood up. “You don’t trust me?” he snapped. “Come on, then.”

“I’m not saying I don’t trust-”

“Of course that’s what you’re saying.” Von Schiller scuttled out of his office, moving with a speed she had not known he was capable of. Annoyed and in a hurry to defend himself, he shuffled through gallery after gallery, leading Jane deep into a gloomy maze of specimen cabinets, past the stares of countless dead eyes, and down a row of display cases tucked into the farthest corner of the building. Clearly, this was not a well-visited section of the museum. Typed display labels were yellowed with age, and dust filmed the glass cases. Von Schiller squeezed down a narrow corridor between cabinets, pulled open a drawer, and took out a specimen box.

“Here,” he said, opening the box. He took out a handful of shells and placed them, one by one, on top of a glass case. “ Pisania maculosa. And here’s another, and another. And here’s yours. ” He looked at her with the indignation of an insulted academic. “Well?”

Jane scanned the array of seashells, all of them with the same graceful curves, the same spiraling striations. “They do look alike.”

“Of course they do! They’re the same species! I know what I’m talking about. This is my field, Detective.”

And what a really useful field it is, she thought as she took out her notebook. “What’s the species name again?”

“Here, give that to me.” He snatched away her notebook and she watched him write down the name, scowling as he did it. This was not a nice old guy. No wonder they hid him away in a broom closet.

He handed back the notebook. “There. Properly spelled.”

“So what does this mean?”

“It’s the name.”

“No, I mean what’s the significance of this particular shell?”

“Is it supposed to mean something? You’re Homo sapiens sapiens, this is Pisania maculosa. That’s just the way it is.”

“This shell, is it rare?”

“Not at all. You can easily buy them over the Internet, from any number of dealers.”

Which made the shell little more than useless as a way to track a killer. With a sigh, she put away her notebook.

“They’re quite common in the Mediterranean,” he said.

She looked up. “The Mediterranean?”

“And the Azores.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not really clear exactly where the Azores are.”

He gave her a sour look of disbelief. Then he waved her over to one of the cases, where dozens of shells were displayed, along with a faded map of the Mediterranean. “There,” he said, pointing. “It’s these islands here, to the west of Spain. Pisania maculosa ranges throughout this area, from the Azores to the Mediterranean.”

“And nowhere else? The Americas?”

“I’ve just told you its range. Those shells I brought out to show you-they were all collected in Italy.”

She was silent a moment, her gaze still on the case. She could not remember the last time she’d really studied a map of the Mediterranean. Her world, after all, was Boston; crossing the state line was the equivalent of a foreign trip. Why a seashell? Why this particular seashell?

Her eyes then focused on the eastern corner of the Mediterranean. On the island of Cyprus.

Red ocher. Seashells. What is the killer trying to tell us?

“Oh,” said Von Schiller. “I didn’t know anyone else was here.”

Jane had not heard any footsteps, even on the creaking wood floors. She turned to see a young man looming right behind her. Most likely a graduate student, judging by his rumpled shirt and blue jeans. He certainly looked like a scholar, with heavy black-framed glasses, his face washed out to a wintry pallor. He stood so silent that Jane wondered if the man could speak.

Then the words came out, his stuttering so tortured that it was painful to hear. “P-p-professor Von Schiller. It’s t-t-time to c-c-close.”

“We’re just finishing up here, Malcolm. I wanted to show Detective Rizzoli some examples of Pisania. ” Von Schiller placed the shells back in their box. “I’ll lock up.”

“B-b-but it’s my-”

“I know, I know. Just because I’ve gotten on in years, no one trusts me to turn one stupid key anymore. Look, I’ve still got papers on my desk that I need to sort through. Why don’t you show the detective out? I promise I’ll lock the door when I leave.”

The young man hesitated, as though trying to come up with the words to protest. Then he simply sighed and nodded.

Jane slipped the evidence bag containing the shell back into her pocket. “Thank you for your help, Dr. Von Schiller,” she said. But the old man was already shuffling away to return the box of shells to its drawer.

The young man said nothing as he led Jane through the gloomy exhibit halls, past animals trapped behind glass, his sneakers setting off barely a creak on the wood floors. This was hardly the place a young man should be spending a Sunday evening, she thought. Keeping company with fossils and pierced butterflies.

Outside, through the gloom of early evening, Jane trudged back toward the parking lot, her shoes crunching across gritty snow. Halfway there she slowed, stopped. Turning, she scanned the darkened buildings, the pools of light cast by streetlamps. No one, nothing, moved.

On the night she died, did Eve Kassovitz see her killer coming?

She quickened her pace, her keys already in hand, and crossed to her car, which now sat alone in the lot. Only after she’d slid inside and locked the door did she let down her guard. This case is freaking me out, she thought. I can’t even walk across a parking lot without feeling like the Devil’s at my back.

And closing in.

August 1. Phase of the moon: Full.

Last night my mother spoke to me in my dreams. A scolding. A reminder that I have been undisciplined. “I have taught you all the ancient rituals, and for what?” she asked. “So that you will ignore them? Remember who you are. You are the chosen one.”

I have not forgotten. How could I? Since my earliest years, she has recited the tales of our ancestors, about whom Manetho of Sebennytos, in the age of Ptolemy the Second, wrote, “They set our towns on fire. They caused the people to suffer every brutality. They waged war, desiring to exterminate the race.”

In my veins runs the sacred blood of hunters.

These are secrets that even my distracted and oblivious father did not know. Between my parents, the ties were merely practical. But between my mother and me, the bonds reach across time, across continents, into my very dreams. She is displeased with me.