Tess Gerritsen - The Mephisto Club

“Who owns that vacant house?” asked Jane.

“A woman who lives out of state now. She inherited it from her parents, and she’s been trying to sell it for years. We haven’t been able to contact her. Even the realtor doesn’t know where she is.” They stepped out of the elevator on the basement level. Kibbie led the way down the hall and pushed through a door, into the morgue anteroom.

“There you are, Dr. Kibbie.” A young blond woman in hospital scrubs set down the paperback romance she’d been reading and stood to greet them. “I was wondering if you were still coming down.”

“Thanks for waiting, Lindsey. These are the two ladies I told you about, from Boston. “Detective Rizzoli and Dr. Isles.”

“You drove all that way to see our gal, huh? Well, let me roll her out for you.” She stepped through double doors into the autopsy lab and flipped the wall switch. Fluorescent lights glared down on the empty table. “Dr. Kibbie, I’ve really got to leave soon. Could you roll her back into the cooler and lock up for me when you’re done? Just pull the hallway door shut when you go.”

“You going to try and catch the rest of the game?” asked Kibbie.

“If I don’t show up, Ian’s never going to talk to me again.”

“Does Ian actually talk?”

Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Dr. Kibbie. Please. ”

“I keep telling you, you should give my nephew a call. He’s premed at Cornell. Some other girl’s going to snap him right up if you aren’t quick.”

She laughed as she pulled open the refrigerator door. “Yeah, like I’d ever want to marry a doctor.”

“I’m truly hurt by that.”

“I mean, I want a guy who’ll be home for dinner.” She tugged on a gurney, wheeling it out of the refrigerator. “You want her on the table?”

“The gurney’s fine. We’re not going to cut.”

“Let me just double-check that I’ve pulled the right one.” She glanced at the attached tag, then reached for the zipper. She betrayed no hesitation, no squeamishness, as she unzipped the bag to expose the corpse’s face. “Yep, this is it,” she said, and straightened, flipping back her blond hair, her face pink with the bloom of youth. A startling contrast to the lifeless face and desiccated eyes that stared up from the opening in the shroud.

“We can take it from here, Lindsey,” said Dr. Kibbie.

The girl gave a wave. “Remember to pull the door shut all the way,” she said cheerfully and walked out, leaving behind an incongruous trace of perfume.

Maura pulled latex gloves from a box on the countertop. Then she crossed to the gurney and unzipped the bag all the way open. As the plastic parted, no one said a word. What lay on that gurney silenced them all.

At four degrees Centigrade, bacterial growth is arrested, decay halted. Despite the passage of at least two weeks, the freezing temperatures of the vacant house had preserved the corpse’s soft tissues, and there was no need for menthol ointment to mask any overwhelming odors. The harsh lights revealed far worse horrors than mere putrefaction. The throat lay open and exposed by a single deep slash that had transected the trachea, slicing all the way to the cervical spine. But that fatal stroke of the blade was not what captured Maura’s gaze; she stared, instead, at the naked torso. At the multitude of crosses that had been carved on the breasts, on the abdomen. Holy symbols cut into the parchment of human skin. Blood encrusted the carvings, and countless rivulets had seeped from shallow incisions and dried in brick-red lines running down the sides of the torso.

Her gaze moved to the right arm, lying at the corpse’s side. She saw the ring of bruises, like a cruel bracelet marking the wrist. She looked up and met Jane’s gaze. For that one moment, all anger between the two women was forgotten, swept aside by the vision of Sarah Parmley’s final moments.

“This was done while she was still alive,” said Maura.

“All these cuts.” Jane swallowed. “It could have taken hours.”

Kibbie said, “When we found her, there was nylon cord around the remaining wrist and both ankles. The knots were nailed to the floor, so she couldn’t move.”

“He didn’t do this to Lori-Ann Tucker,” Maura said.

“That’s the victim in Boston?”

“She was dismembered. But she wasn’t tortured.” Maura circled to the corpse’s left side and stared down at the wrist stump. The incised flesh had dried to a leathery brown, and the soft tissues had contracted to expose the surface of cut bone.

“Maybe he wanted something from this woman,” said Jane. “Maybe there was a reason to torture her.”

“An interrogation?” said Kibbie.

“Or punishment,” said Maura, focusing on the victim’s face. She thought of the words that had been scratched on her own door. On Lori-Ann’s bedroom wall. I have sinned.

Is this the reward?

“These aren’t just random cuts,” said Jane. “These are crosses. Religious symbols.”

“He drew them on the walls, too,” said Kibbie.

Maura looked up at him. “Was there anything else on the walls? Other symbols?”

“Yeah. Lots of weird stuff. I tell you, it gave me the willies just to step in that front door. Joe Jurevich will show you when you go to the house.” He gazed at the body. “This is all there is to see here, really. Enough to tell you we’re dealing with a very sick puppy.”

Maura closed the body bag, zipping the plastic over sunken eyes, over corneas clouded by death. She would not be performing this autopsy, but she did not need a scalpel and probe to tell her how this victim had died; she had seen the answer engraved on the woman’s flesh.

They wheeled the gurney back into the refrigerator and stripped off their gloves. Standing at the sink, washing his hands, Kibbie said, “Ten years ago, when I moved to Chenango County, I thought this was God’s country. Fresh air, rolling hills. Folks who’d wave hello, feed me pie when I made a house call.” He sighed, shut off the faucet. “You can’t get away from it, can you? Big city or small town, husbands still shoot their wives, kids still smash and grab. But I never thought I’d see this kind of sick stuff.” He yanked out a paper towel and dried his hands. “Certainly not in a village like Purity. You’ll see what I mean when you get there.”

“How far is it?”

“Another hour and a half, maybe two hours. Depending on whether you want to risk your lives speeding on back roads.”

“Then we’d better get going,” said Jane, “if we want to find a motel there.”

“A motel?” Kibbie laughed. “If I were you, I’d stop in the town of Norwich instead. You’re not going to find much in Purity.”

“It’s that small?”

He tossed the paper towel into the trash can. “It’s that small.”

The motel walls were paper-thin. Lying in bed, Maura could hear Jane talking on the phone in the next room. How nice it must be, she thought, to call your husband and laugh out loud together. To share a public kiss, a hug, without first having to glance around, looking for anyone who might know you, and disapprove. Her own call to Daniel had been brief and furtive. There’d been other people talking in the background, others in the room listening to him, which was why he’d sounded so reserved. Was this how it would always be? Their private lives cut off from their public lives, and never an intersection between them? Here were the real wages of sin. Not hellfire and damnation, but heartbreak.

In the next room, Jane ended her call. A moment later, the TV came on, and then Maura heard the sound of running water in the shower. Only a wall separated them, but the barrier between them was far more formidable than wood and plaster. They’d said hardly a word since Binghamton, and now, just the sound of Jane’s TV was an escalating annoyance. Maura pulled a pillow over her head to shut out the noise, but it could not muffle the whispers of doubt in her mind. Even when Jane’s room finally fell silent, Maura lay awake and aware of the minutes, then the hours, ticking by.