Tess Gerritsen - The Mephisto Club

There was a silence. In the other room, a phone began to ring.

Edwina suddenly laughed. “She’s one step ahead of you, Anthony.”

“How did you know about the foundation?” he asked, looking at Maura. Then he gave a knowing sigh. “Detective Rizzoli, of course. I hear she’s been asking questions.”

“She’s paid to ask questions,” said Maura.

“Is she finally satisfied that we’re not suspects?”

“It’s just that she doesn’t like mysteries. And your group is very mysterious.”

“And that’s why you accepted my invitation tonight. To find out who we are.”

“I think I have found out,” said Maura. “And I think I’ve heard enough to make a decision.” She set down her glass. “Metaphysics doesn’t interest me. I know there’s evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don’t need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves.”

“You aren’t in the least bit interested in joining the foundation?” asked Edwina.

“I wouldn’t belong here. And I think I should leave now.” She turned to find Jeremy standing in the doorway.

“Mr. Sansone?” The manservant was holding a portable phone. “Mr. Stark just called. He’s quite concerned.”

“About what?”

“Dr. O’Donnell was supposed to pick him up, but she hasn’t appeared yet.”

“When was she supposed to be at his house?”

“Forty-five minutes ago. He’s been calling, but she doesn’t answer either her home phone or her cell.”

“Let me try her number.” Sansone took the phone and dialed, drumming the table as he waited. He disconnected, dialed again, his fingers tapping faster. No one in the room spoke; they were all watching him, listening to the accelerating rhythm of his fingers. The night Eve Kassovitz died, these people had sat in this very room, not realizing that Death was right outside. That it had found its way into their garden, and had left its strange symbols on their door. This house had been marked.

Perhaps the people inside it were marked as well.

Sansone hung up.

“Shouldn’t you call the police?” asked Maura.

“Oh, Joyce may simply have forgotten,” said Edwina. “It seems a little premature to ask the police to rush in.”

Jeremy said, “Would you like me to drive over and check Dr. O’Donnell’s house?”

Sansone stared for a moment at the phone. “No,” he finally said. “I’ll go. I’d rather you stayed here, just in case Joyce calls.”

Maura followed him into the parlor, where he grabbed his overcoat from the closet. She, too, pulled on her coat.

“Please stay and have dinner,” he said, reaching for his car keys. “There’s no need for you to rush home.”

“I’m not going home,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”

Joyce O’Donnell’s porch light was on, but no one answered the door.

Sansone tried the knob. “It’s locked,” he said, and took out his cell phone. “Let me try calling her one more time.”

As he dialed, Maura backed away from the porch and stood on the walkway, gazing up at O’Donnell’s house, at a second-floor window that cast its cheery glow into the night. Faintly, she heard a phone ringing inside. Then, once again, silence.

Sansone disconnected. “Her answering machine picked up.”

“I think it’s time to call Rizzoli.”

“Not yet.” He produced a flashlight and headed along the shoveled walkway toward the side of the house.

“Where are you going?”

He continued toward the driveway, black coat melting into the shadows. The beam of his light skimmed across flagstones and disappeared around the corner.

She stood alone in the front yard, listening to the rattle of dead leaves in the branches above her. “Sansone?” she called out. He didn’t answer. She heard only the pounding of her own heart. She followed him around the corner of the house. There she halted in the deserted driveway, the shadow of the garage looming before her. She started to call his name again, but something silenced her: the creeping awareness of another presence watching her, tracking her. She turned and quickly scanned the street. She saw a scrap of windblown paper tumble down the road like a fluttering wraith.

A hand closed around her arm.

Gasping, she stumbled away. She found herself staring at Sansone, who had silently materialized right behind her.

“Her car’s still in the garage,” he said.

“Then where is she?”

“I’m going around to the back.”

This time she did not let him leave her sight, but followed right at his heels as he moved through the side yard, tramping through deep and unbroken snow alongside the garage. By the time they emerged in the backyard, her trousers were soaked, and melted snow had seeped into her shoes, chilling her feet. His flashlight beam skittered across shrubs and deck chairs, all covered in a velvety blanket of white. No footprints, no disturbed snow. A vine-covered wall enclosed the yard, a private space completely hidden from the neighbors. And she was here alone, with a man she scarcely knew.

But he was not focused on her. His attention was on the kitchen door, which he could not get open. For a moment he stared at it, debating his next move. Then he looked at Maura.

“You know Detective Rizzoli’s number?” he asked. “Call her.”

She pulled out her cell phone and moved toward the kitchen window for more light. She was about to dial when her gaze suddenly focused on the kitchen sink, just inside the window.

“Sansone,” she whispered.

“What?”

“There’s blood-near the drain.”

He took one glance, and his next move shocked her. He grabbed one of the deck chairs and hurled it against the window. Glass shattered, shards exploding into the kitchen. He scrambled inside, and seconds later the door swung open.

“There’s blood down here on the floor, too,” he said.

She looked down at smears of red on the cream tiles. He ran out of the kitchen, his black coat flapping behind him like a cape, moving so fast that when she reached the foot of the stairs, he was already on the second-floor landing. She stared down at more blood, swipes of it on the oak steps, along the baseboard, as though a battered limb had scraped against the wall as the body was dragged upstairs.

“ Maura! ” yelled Sansone.

She sprinted up the stairs, reached the second-floor landing, and saw more blood, like glistening ski marks down the hallway. And she heard the sound, like water gurgling in a snorkel. Even before she stepped into the bedroom, she knew what she was about to confront: not a dead victim, but one desperately fighting to live.

Joyce O’Donnell lay on her back on the floor, eyes wide open in mortal panic, a gout of red spurting from her neck. She wheezed in air, blood rattling in her lungs, and coughed. Bright red spray exploded from her throat, spattering Sansone’s face as he crouched over her.

“I’ll take over! Call nine-one-one!” Maura ordered as she dropped to her knees and pressed bare fingers to the slash wound. She was used to the touch of dead flesh, not living, and the blood that dribbled onto her hands was shockingly warm. ABC, she thought. Those were the first rules of life support: airway, breathing, circulation. But with one brutal slash across the throat, the attacker had compromised all three. I’m a doctor, but there’s so little I can do to save her.

Sansone finished his call. “The ambulance is on its way. What can I do?”

“Get me some towels. I need to stop the bleeding!”

O’Donnell’s hand suddenly closed around Maura’s wrist, clenching it with the force of panic. The skin was so slick, Maura’s fingers slipped off the wound, releasing a fresh spurt. Another wheeze, another cough, sent spray from the incised trachea. O’Donnell was drowning. With every breath, she inhaled her own blood. It gurgled in her airway, frothed in her alveoli. Maura had examined the incised lungs of other victims whose throats had been cut; she knew the mechanism of death.