The Mephisto Club (7 page)

Quite the opposite of an angel.

She turned and immediately crossed to the window, where she peered out through dusty glass at passersby.
He’s here,
she thought.
He’s found me in Siena.

“He’ll come back,
cara mia.
Just be patient,” said Giorgio.

And when he does, I can’t be here.

She snatched up her backpack. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not feeling well.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I think I shouldn’t have eaten that fish last night. It’s not agreeing with me. I need to go home.”

“Paolo will walk you there.”

“No! No.” She yanked open the door, setting off a violent jangle of the bell. “I’ll be fine.” She fled the shop and did not glance back, for fear that Paolo would try to run after her, would insist on playing the gentleman and escort. She couldn’t afford to let him slow her down. Haste was everything now.

She took a circuitous route back to her flat, avoiding crowded piazzas and major streets. Instead she cut through tiny alleys, scrambled up narrow steps between medieval walls, steadily circling toward the Fontebranda neighborhood. It would take her only five minutes to pack. She had learned to be mobile, to move at an instant’s notice, and all she had to do was toss her clothes and toilet case into the suitcase and grab the stash of Euros from its hiding place behind the dresser. These past three months, Giorgio had paid her under the table in cash, knowing full well that she had no work permit. She’d collected a nice nest egg to tide her over between jobs, enough to last her till she settled into a new town. She should grab the cash and suitcase and just go. Straight to the bus station.

No. No, on second thought, that’s where he’d expect her to go. A taxi would be better. Costly, yes, but if she used it only to get out of town, maybe as far as San Gimignano, she could catch a train to Florence. There, among the teeming crowds, she could disappear.

She did not enter her building through the piazzetta; instead, she approached through the shadowy side street, past rubbish cans and locked bicycles, and climbed the back stairs. Music was blaring in one of the other flats, spilling out an open doorway into the hall. It was that sullen teenager next door. Tito and his damn radio. She caught a glimpse of the boy, slouched like a zombie on the couch. She continued past his flat, toward hers. She was just taking out her keys when she spotted the torn matchstick and froze.

It was no longer wedged in the doorjamb; it had fallen to the floor.

Her heart pounded as she backed away. As she retreated past Tito’s doorway, the boy looked up from the couch and waved. Of all the inconvenient times for him to start being friendly.
Don’t say a word to me,
she silently pleaded.
Don’t you dare say a word.

“You’re not at work today?” he called out in Italian.

She turned and ran down the stairs. Almost tripped over the bicycles as she fled into the alley.
I’m too fucking late,
she thought as she hurtled around the corner and scrambled up a short flight of steps. Ducking into an overgrown garden, she crouched behind a crumbling wall and froze there, scarcely daring to breathe. Five minutes, ten. She heard no footsteps, no sounds of pursuit.

Maybe the matchstick fell by itself. Maybe I can still get my suitcase. My money.

Risking a glance over the wall, she stared up the alley. No one.

Do I chance it? Do I dare?

She slipped into the alley again. Made her way down a series of narrow streets until she reached the outskirts of the piazzetta. But she did not step into the open; instead she edged toward the corner of a building and peered up at the window of her own flat. The wooden shutters were open, as she’d left them. Through the gathering twilight, she saw something move in that window. A silhouette, just for a second, framed by the shutters.

She jerked back behind the building. Shit.
Shit.

She unzipped her backpack and rifled through her wallet. Forty-eight Euros. Enough for a few meals and a bus ticket. Maybe enough for a cab ride to San Gimignano, but not much more. She had an ATM card, but she dared not use it except in large cities, where she could easily slip straight into a crowd. The last time she’d used it was in Florence, on a Saturday night, when the streets were thronged.

Not here,
she thought.
Not in Siena.

She left the piazzetta and headed deep into the back alleys of the Fontebranda. Here was the neighborhood she knew best; here she could elude anyone. She found her way to a tiny coffee bar that she’d discovered weeks ago, frequented only by locals. Inside, it was gloomy as a cave and thick with cigarette smoke. She settled at a corner table, ordered a cheese and tomato sandwich and an espresso. Then, as the evening passed, another espresso. And another. Tonight, she would not be sleeping. She could walk to Florence. It was only—what, twenty, twenty-five miles? She’d slept in the fields before. She’d stolen peaches, plucked grapes in the dark. She could do it again.

She devoured her sandwich, swept every last crumb into her mouth. No telling when she’d eat again. By the time she stepped out of the coffee bar, night had fallen and she could move through dark streets with little fear of being recognized. There was one other option. It was risky, but it would save her from a twenty-five-mile hike.

And Giorgio would do it for her. He would drive her to Florence.

She walked and walked, giving the busy Campo a wide berth, sticking to the side streets. By the time she reached Giorgio’s residence, her calves were aching, her feet sore from the uneven cobblestones. She paused in the cover of darkness, gazing at the window. Giorgio’s wife had died years ago, and father and son now shared the flat. The lights were on inside, but she saw no movement on the first floor.

She was not foolhardy enough to knock at the front door. Instead she circled around to the small garden in back, let herself in through the gate, and brushed past fragrant thyme and lavender to knock at the kitchen door.

No one answered.

She strained to hear if the TV was on, thinking that perhaps they couldn’t hear her, but she heard only the muted sounds of traffic from the street.

She tried the knob; the door swung open.

One look was all it took. One glimpse of blood, of splayed arms and ruined faces. Of Giorgio and Paolo, tangled together in a last embrace.

She backed away, hand clapped to her mouth, her vision blurred in a wash of tears.
My fault. This is all my fault. They were killed because of me.

Stumbling backward through lavender, she collided with the wooden gate. The jolt snapped her back to her senses.

Go. Run.

She scrambled out of the garden, not bothering to latch the gate behind her, and fled down the street, her sandals slapping against the cobblestones.

She did not slow her pace until she reached the outskirts of Siena.

NINE

“Are we absolutely certain there
is
a second victim?” asked Lieutenant Marquette. “We don’t have DNA confirmation yet.”

“But we do have two different blood types,” said Jane. “The amputated hand belonged to someone with O positive blood. Lori-Ann Tucker is A positive. So Dr. Isles was absolutely correct.”

There was a long silence in the conference room.

Dr. Zucker said softly, “This is getting very interesting.”

Jane looked across the table at him. Forensic psychologist Dr. Lawrence Zucker’s intent stare had always made her uncomfortable. He looked at her now as though she were the sole focus of his curiosity, and she could almost feel his gaze tunneling into her brain. They had worked together during the Surgeon investigation two and a half years ago, and Zucker knew just how haunted she’d been in the aftermath. He knew about her nightmares, her panic attacks. He’d seen the way she used to rub incessantly at the scars on her palms, as though to massage away the memories. Since then, the nightmares of Warren Hoyt had faded. But when Zucker looked at her this way, she felt exposed, because he knew just how vulnerable she’d once been. And she resented him for it.

She broke off her gaze and focused instead on the other two detectives, Barry Frost and Eve Kassovitz. Adding Kassovitz to the team had been a mistake. The woman’s very public barfing into the snowbank was now common knowledge in the unit, and Jane could have predicted the practical jokes that followed. The day after Christmas, a giant plastic bucket, labeled with Kassovitz’s name, had mysteriously appeared on the unit’s reception desk. The woman should have just laughed it off, or maybe gotten pissed about it. Instead she looked as beaten down as a clubbed seal, and she sat slumped in her chair, too demoralized to say much. No way was Kassovitz going to survive this boys’ club if she didn’t learn to punch back.

“So we have a killer who not only dismembers his victims,” said Zucker, “but he also transfers body parts between his crime scenes. Do you have a photo of the hand?”

“We have lots of photos,” said Jane. She passed the autopsy file to Zucker. “By its appearance, we’re pretty sure the hand is a female’s.”

The images were gruesome enough to turn anyone’s stomach, but Zucker’s face betrayed no shock, no disgust, as he flipped through them. Only keen curiosity. Or was that eagerness she saw in his eyes? Did he enjoy the view of atrocities visited on a young woman’s body?

He paused over the photo of the hand. “No nail polish, but the fingers definitely look manicured. Yes, I agree it looks like a woman’s.” He glanced at Jane, his pale eyes peering at her over wire-rim glasses. “What do you have back on these fingerprints?”

“The owner of that hand has no criminal record. No military service. Nothing in NCIC.”

“She’s not in any database?”

“Not her fingerprints, anyway.”

“And this hand isn’t medical waste? A hospital amputation, maybe?”

Frost said, “I checked with every medical center in the greater Boston area. In the past two weeks, there’ve been two hand amps, one at Mass Gen, another at Pilgrim Hospital. Both were the result of trauma. The first was a chain saw accident. The second was a dog attack. In both cases, the hands were so badly mangled they couldn’t be reattached. And the first case was a man’s.”

“This hand was not dug up out of hospital waste,” said Jane. “And it wasn’t mangled. It was sliced off with a very sharp, serrated blade. Also, it wasn’t done with any particular surgical skill. The tip of the radius was sheared off, with no apparent attempt at controlling blood loss. No tied-off vessels, no dissection of skin layers. Just a clean cut.”

“Do we have any missing persons it might match?”

“Not in Massachusetts,” said Frost. “We’re widening the net. Any white female. She can’t have gone missing too long ago, since the hand looks pretty fresh.”

“It could have been frozen,” said Marquette.

“No,” said Jane. “There’s no cellular damage under the microscope. That’s what Dr. Isles said. When you freeze tissue, the expansion of water ruptures cells, and she didn’t find that. The hand may have been refrigerated, or packed in ice water, like they do to transport harvested organs. But it wasn’t frozen. So we think the owner of that hand was probably killed no more than a few days ago.”

“If she was killed,” said Zucker.

They all stared at him. The terrible implication of his words made them all pause.

“You think she could still be
alive
?” said Frost.

“Amputations in and of themselves aren’t fatal.”

“Oh, man,” said Frost. “Cut off her hand without killing her…”

Zucker flipped through the rest of the autopsy photos, pausing over each one with the concentration of a jeweler peering through his loupe. At last he set them down. “There are two possible reasons why a killer would cut up a body. The first is purely practical. He needs to dispose of it. These are killers who are self-aware and goal-directed. They understand the need to dispose of forensic evidence and hide their crimes.”

“Organized killers,” said Frost.

“If dismemberment is followed by the scattering or concealment of body parts, that would imply planning. A cognitive killer.”

“These parts weren’t in any way concealed,” said Jane. “They were left around the house, in places where he knew they’d be found.” She handed another stack of photos to Zucker. “Those are from the crime scene.”

He opened the folder and paused, staring at the first image. “This gets even more interesting,” he murmured.

He looks at a severed hand on a dinner plate, and that’s the word that comes to mind?

“Who set the table?” He looked up at her. “Who laid out the dishes, the silverware, the wineglasses?”

“We believe the perp did.”

“Why?”

“Who the hell knows why?”

“I mean, why do you assume
he
was the one who did it?”

“Because there was a smear of blood under one of the plates, where he handled it.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Unfortunately, no. He wore gloves.”

“Evidence of advance planning. Forethought.” Zucker directed his gaze, once again, at the photo. “This is a setting for four. Is that significant?”

“Your guess is as good as ours. There were eight plates in the cabinet, so he could have put down more. But he chose to use only four.”

Lieutenant Marquette asked, “What do you think we’re dealing with here, Dr. Zucker?”

The psychologist didn’t answer. He paged slowly through the photos, pausing at the image of the severed arm in the bathtub. Then he flipped to the photo of the kitchen, and he stopped. There was a very long silence as he stared at the melted candles, at the circle drawn on the floor. At what sat at the center of that circle.

“It looked like some kind of a weird ritual setup to us,” said Frost. “The chalk circle, the burned candles.”

“This certainly appears ritualistic.” Zucker looked up, and the glitter in his eyes made a chill wash up the back of Jane’s neck. “Did the perp draw this circle?”

Jane hesitated, startled by his question. “You mean—as opposed to the victim?”

“I’m not making any assumptions here. I hope you don’t either. What makes you so certain the victim didn’t draw this circle? That she didn’t start off as a willing participant in the ritual?”

Jane felt like laughing.
Yeah, I’d volunteer to get my head cut off, too.
She said, “It had to be the killer who drew that circle and lit those candles. Because we found no pieces of chalk in the house. After he used it to draw on that kitchen floor, he took it with him.”

Zucker leaned back in his chair, thinking. “So this killer dismembers, but doesn’t conceal the body parts. He doesn’t disfigure the face. He leaves little in the way of forensic evidence, indicating an awareness of law enforcement. Yet he hands us—so to speak—the biggest clue of all: the body part of another victim.” He paused. “Was there semen left behind?”

“None was detected in the victim’s body.”

“And the crime scene?”

“CSU went all over that house with UV. The CrimeScope picked up hairs too numerous to count, but no semen.”

“Again, characteristic of cognitive behavior. He leaves no evidence of sexual activity. If he is indeed a sexual killer, then he’s controlled enough to wait until it’s safe to enjoy his release.”

“And if he’s not a sexual killer?” asked Marquette.

“Then I’m not entirely sure what all of this represents,” said Zucker. “But the dismemberment, the display of body parts. The candles, the chalk circle.” He looked around the table. “I’m sure we’re all thinking the same thing. Satanic rituals.”

“It was Christmas Eve,” added Marquette. “The holiest of nights.”

“And our killer isn’t there to honor the Prince of Peace,” said Zucker. “No, he’s trying to summon the Prince of Darkness.”

“There’s one other photo you should look at,” said Jane, pointing to the stack of images that Zucker hadn’t yet seen. “There was some writing, left on the wall. Drawn in the victim’s blood.”

Zucker found the photo. “Three upside-down crosses,” he said. “These could well have satanic meanings. But what are these symbols beneath the crosses?”

“It’s a word.”

“I don’t see it.”

“It’s a reverse image. You can read it if you hold it up to a mirror.”

Zucker’s eyebrow lifted. “You do know, don’t you, the significance of mirror writing?”

“No. What’s the significance?”

“When the Devil makes a deal to buy your soul, the pact is drawn up and signed in mirror writing.” He frowned at the word. “So what does it say?”

“
Peccavi.
It’s Latin. It means: ‘I have sinned.’”

“A confession?” suggested Marquette.

“Or a boast,” said Zucker. “Announcing to Satan, ‘I’ve done your bidding, Master.’” He gazed at all the photos laid out on the table. “I would love to get this killer into an interview room. There’s so much symbolism here. Why did he arrange the body parts in just this way? What’s the meaning of the hand on the plate? The four place settings on the dining table?”

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Detective Kassovitz said softly. It was one of the few times she’d spoken during the meeting.

“Why do you suggest that?” asked Zucker.

“We’re talking about Satan. About sin.” Kassovitz cleared her throat, seemed to gain her voice as she sat straighter. “These are biblical themes.”

“The four place settings could also mean he has three invisible friends who are joining him for a midnight snack,” said Jane.

“You don’t buy into the biblical theme?” said Zucker.

“I know it
looks
like Satanism,” said Jane. “I mean, we’ve got it all here—the circle and the candles. The mirror writing, the upside down crosses. It’s like we’re
supposed
to come to that conclusion.”

“You think it was merely staged this way?”

“Maybe to hide the real reason Lori-Ann Tucker was killed.”

“What motives would there be? Did she have romantic problems?”

“She’s divorced, but her ex-husband lives in New Mexico. They apparently had an amicable parting. She moved to Boston only three months ago. There seem to be no boyfriends.”

“She had a job?”

Eve Kassovitz said, “I interviewed her supervisor over at the Science Museum. Lori-Ann worked in the gift shop. No one knew of any conflicts or any problems.”

Zucker asked, “Are we absolutely sure about that?” He directed his question at Jane, not Kassovitz, a snub that made Kassovitz flush. It was yet another blow to her already battered self-esteem.

“Detective Kassovitz just told you what we know,” said Jane, backing up her teammate.

“Okay,” said Zucker. “Then why was this woman killed? Why stage it to
look
like Satanism, if it really isn’t?”

“To make it interesting. To draw attention.”

Zucker laughed. “As if it wouldn’t already draw our attention?”

“Not ours. The attention of someone who’s much more important to this perp.”

“You’re talking about Dr. O’Donnell, aren’t you?”

“We know the killer called O’Donnell, but she claims she wasn’t home.”

“You don’t believe her?”

“We can’t confirm it, since she erased any phone message. She said it was a hang-up call.”

“What makes you think that’s not the truth?”

“You know who she is, don’t you?”

He regarded her for a moment. “I know you two have had conflicts. That her friendship with Warren Hoyt bothers you.”

“This isn’t about me and O’Donnell—”

“But it is. She maintains a friendship with the man who almost killed you, the man whose most deeply held fantasy is to complete that job.”

Jane leaned forward, every muscle suddenly taut. “Don’t go there, Dr. Zucker,” she said quietly.

He stared at her, and something he saw in her eyes made him slowly lean back in retreat. “You consider O’Donnell a suspect?” he said.

“I don’t trust her. She’s a gunslinger for the bad guys. Pay her enough to testify, and she’ll walk into court and defend just about any killer. She’ll claim he’s neurologically damaged and not responsible for his actions. That he belongs in a hospital, not a jail.”

Marquette added, “She’s not popular with law enforcement, Dr. Zucker. Anywhere.”

“Look, even if we
loved
her,” said Jane, “we’re still left with unanswered questions. Why did the killer call her from the crime scene? Why wasn’t she at home? Why won’t she tell us where she was?”

“Because she knows you’re already hostile.”

She has no idea how hostile I can get.

“Detective Rizzoli, are you implying that Dr. O’Donnell had something to do with this crime?”

“No. But she’s not above exploiting it. Feeding off it. Whether she meant to or not, she inspired it.”

“How?”

“You know how a pet cat will sometimes kill a mouse and bring it home to its master as sort of an offering? A token of affection?”

“You think our killer is trying to impress O’Donnell.”

“That’s why he called her. That’s why he set up this elaborate death scene, to pique her interest. Then, to make sure his work gets noticed, he calls nine-one-one. And a few hours later, while we’re standing in the kitchen, he calls the victim’s house from a pay phone, just to make sure we’re there. This perp is reeling us all in. Law enforcement. And O’Donnell.”