The Mephisto Club

“The morgue van should be here any minute,” she said, opening the conversation on pure business. “If you could make room for it on the street.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” one of the cops said, and coughed.

Another silence followed, the cops looking off in other directions, everywhere but at her, their feet shuffling on cold pavement.

“Well, thank you,” she said. “I’ll be waiting in my car.” She didn’t cast a glance at Daniel, but simply turned and walked away.

“Maura?”

She glanced back at the sound of his voice, and saw that the cops were still watching. There’s always an audience, she thought. Daniel and I are never alone.

“What do you know so far?” he asked.

She hesitated, aware of all the eyes. “Not much more than anyone else, at this point.”

“Can we talk about it? It might help me comfort Officer Lyall if I knew more about what happened.”

“It’s awkward. I’m not sure…”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t feel comfortable revealing.”

She hesitated. “Let’s sit in my car. It’s right down the street.”

They walked together, hands thrust in pockets, heads bent against icy gusts. She thought of Eve Kassovitz, lying alone in the courtyard, her corpse already chilled, her blood freezing in her veins. On this night, in this wind, no one wanted to keep company with the dead. They reached her car and slid inside. She turned on the engine to run the heater, but the air that puffed through the vents offered no warmth.

“Officer Lyall was her boyfriend?” she asked.

“He’s devastated. I don’t think I was able to offer much comfort.”

“I couldn’t do your job, Daniel. I’m not good at dealing with grief.”

“But you do deal with it. You have to.”

“Not on the level you do, when it’s still so raw, so fresh. I’m the one they expect all the answers from, not the one they call in to give comfort.” She looked at him. In the gloom of her car he was just a silhouette. “The last Boston PD chaplain lasted only two years. I’m sure the stress contributed to his stroke.”

“Father Roy was sixty-five, you know.”

“And he looked eighty the last time I saw him.”

“Well, taking night calls isn’t easy,” he admitted, his breath steaming the window. “It’s not easy for cops, either. Or doctors or firemen. But it’s not all bad,” he added with a soft laugh, “since going to death scenes is the only time I ever get to see you.”

Although she could not read his eyes, she felt his gaze on her face and was grateful for the darkness.

“You used to visit me,” he said. “Why did you stop?”

“I came for midnight Mass, didn’t I?”

He gave a weary laugh. “Everyone shows up at Christmas. Even the ones who don’t believe.”

“But I was there. I wasn’t avoiding you.”

“Have you been, Maura? Avoiding me?”

She said nothing. For a moment they regarded each other in the gloom of her car. The air blowing from the vent had barely warmed and her fingers were still numb, but she could feel heat rise to her cheeks.

“I know what’s going on,” he said quietly.

“You have no idea.”

“I’m just as human as you are, Maura.”

Suddenly she laughed. It was a bitter sound. “Well, this is a cliche. The priest and the woman parishioner.”

“Don’t reduce it to that.”

“But it is a cliche. It’s probably happened a thousand times before. Priests and bored housewives. Priests and lonely widows. Is it the first time for you, Daniel? Because it sure as hell is the first time for me.” Suddenly ashamed that she had turned her anger on him, she looked away. What had he done, really, except offer her his friendship, his attention? I am the architect of my own unhappiness.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he said quietly, “you’re not the only one who’s miserable.”

She sat perfectly still as air hissed from the vents. She kept her gaze focused straight ahead, on the windshield now fogged with condensation, but all her other senses were painfully focused on him. Even if she were blind and deaf, she’d still know he was there, so attuned was she to every aspect of his presence. Attuned, as well, to her own pounding heart, to the sizzling of her nerves. She’d felt a perverse thrill from his declaration of unhappiness. At least she was not the only one suffering, not the only one who lay sleepless at night. In affairs of the heart, misery yearns for company.

There was a loud rapping on her window. Startled, she turned to see a ghostly silhouette peering in through the fogged glass. She lowered her window and stared into the face of a Boston PD cop.

“Dr. Isles? The morgue van just arrived.”

“Thank you. I’ll be right there.” Her window hummed shut again, leaving the glass streaked with watery lines. She shut off the car engine and looked at Daniel. “We have a choice,” she said. “We can both be miserable. Or we can move on with our lives. I’m choosing to move on.” She stepped out of the car and closed the door. She took one breath of air so cold it seemed to sear her throat. But it also swept any last indecision from her brain, leaving it clearer and focused with laser intensity on what she had to do next. She left her car and did not look back. Once again, she headed up the sidewalk, moving from pool to pool of light as she passed beneath streetlamps. Daniel was behind her now; ahead waited a dead woman. And all these cops, standing around. What were they waiting for? Answers that she might not be able to give them?

She pulled her coat tighter, as though to ward off their stares, thinking of Christmas Eve and another death scene. Of Eve Kassovitz, who’d lingered on the street that night, emptying her stomach into the snowbank. Had Kassovitz experienced even a flicker of a premonition that she would be the next object of Maura’s attention?

The cops all gathered in silence near the house as the morgue team wheeled Eve Kassovitz along the side yard. When the stretcher bearing the shrouded corpse emerged through the iron gate, they stood with heads bared in the frigid wind, a solemn blue line honoring one of their own. Even after the stretcher had disappeared into the vehicle and the doors had swung shut, they did not break ranks. Only when the taillights winked away into the darkness did the hats go back on, and they began to drift back to their cruisers.

Maura, too, was about to walk to her car when the front door of the residence opened. She looked up as warm light spilled out and saw the silhouette of a man standing there, looking at her.

“Excuse me. Are you Dr. Isles?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Sansone would like to invite you to step inside the house. It’s a great deal warmer in here, and I’ve just made a fresh pot of coffee.”

She hesitated at the foot of the steps, looking up at the warm glow that framed the manservant. He stood very straight, watching her with an eerie stillness that made her think of a life-size statue she’d once seen in a gag store, a papier-mache butler holding a tray of fake drinks. She glanced down the street toward her car. Daniel had already left, and she had nothing to look forward to but a lonely drive home and an empty house.

“Thank you,” she said, and started up the steps. “I could use a cup of coffee.”

TWELVE

She stepped into the warmth of the front parlor. Her face was still numb from the bite of the wind. Only as she stood before the fireplace, waiting for the butler to notify Mr. Sansone, did sensation slowly creep back into her cheeks; she felt the pleasant sting of reawakened nerves, of flushing skin. She could hear the murmur of conversation in another room-Detective Crowe’s voice, pointed with questioning, answered by a softer response, barely audible. A woman’s. In the fireplace, sparks popped and smoke puffed up, and she realized these were real logs burning, that it was not the fake gas fireplace she’d assumed it was. The medieval oil painting that hung above the hearth might well be authentic as well. It was a portrait of a man wearing robes of wine-red velvet, with