The Mephisto Club

fun one.”

“Jesus,” one of the criminalists murmured. “Where’s the rest of the victim?”

“In several rooms. You might want to start with-” She stopped, her body suddenly snapping straight.

The phone on the kitchen counter was ringing.

Frost was standing closest to it. “What do you think?” he asked, glancing at Rizzoli.

“Answer it.”

Gingerly Frost picked up the receiver in his gloved hand. “Hello? Hello?” After a moment he set it down again. “They hung up.”

“What’s Caller ID say?”

Frost pressed the call history button. “It’s a Boston number.”

Jane took out her cell phone and looked at the number on the display. “I’ll try calling it back,” she said, and dialed. Stood listening as it rang. “No answer.”

“Let me see if that number’s called here before,” said Frost. He cycled back through the history, reviewing every call that had come in or gone out on the line. “Okay, here’s that call to nine-one-one. Twelve-ten A.M.”

“Our perp, announcing his handiwork.”

“There’s another call, just before that one. A Cambridge number.” He looked up. “It was at twelve-oh- five.”

“Did our perp make two calls from this phone?”

“If it was our perp.”

Jane stared at the phone. “Let’s think about this. He’s standing here in the kitchen. He’s just killed her and cut her up. Sliced off her hand, her arm. Sets her head right here, on the floor. Why call someone? Does he want to brag about it? And who’s he gonna call?”

“Find out,” said Maura.

Jane once again used her cell phone, this time to call the Cambridge number. “It’s ringing. Okay, I’m getting an answering machine.” She paused, and her gaze suddenly whipped to Maura. “You’re not going to believe who this number belongs to.”

“Who?”

Jane hung up and dialed the number again. Handed Maura the cell phone.

Maura heard it ring four times. Then the answering machine picked up and a recording played. The voice was instantly, chillingly familiar.

You’ve reached Dr. Joyce P. O’Donnell. I do want to hear from you, so please leave a message, and I’ll return your call.

Maura disconnected and met Jane’s equally stunned gaze. “Why would the killer call Joyce O’Donnell?”

“You’re kidding,” said Frost. “It’s her number?”

“Who is she?” one of the criminalists asked.

Jane looked at him. “Joyce O’Donnell,” she said, “is a vampire.”

FOUR

This was not where Jane wanted to be on Christmas morning.

She and Frost sat in her parked Subaru on Brattle Street, gazing at the large white colonial residence. The last time Jane had visited this house, it had been summer, and the front garden had been impeccably groomed. Seeing it now, in a different season, she was once again impressed by how tasteful every detail was, from the slate-gray trim to the handsome wreath on the front door. The wrought-iron gate was decorated with pine boughs and red ribbon, and through the front window she could see the tree, glittering with ornaments. That was a surprise. Even bloodsuckers celebrated Christmas.

“If you don’t want to do this,” said Frost, “I can talk to her.”

“You think I can’t handle this?”

“I think this has gotta be hard for you.”

“What’ll be hard is keeping my hands off her throat.”

“You see? That’s what I mean. Your attitude’s going to get in the way. You two have a history, and that colors everything. You can’t be neutral.”

“No one could be neutral, knowing who she is. What she does.”

“Rizzoli, she just does what she’s paid to do.”

“So do whores.” Except whores don’t hurt anyone, thought Jane, staring at Joyce O’Donnell’s house. A house paid for with the blood of murder victims. Whores don’t waltz into courtrooms in sleek St. John suits and take the witness stand in defense of butchers.

“All I’m saying is, try to keep your cool, okay?” said Frost. “We don’t have to like her. But we can’t afford to piss her off.”

“You think that’s my plan?”

“Look at you. Your claws are already out.”

“Purely in self-defense.” Jane shoved open the car door. “Because I know this bitch is going to try to sink hers in me.” She stepped out, sinking calf-deep into snow, but she scarcely felt the cold seeping through her socks; her deepest chill was not physical. Her focus was on the house, on the encounter to come, with a woman who knew Jane’s secret fears only too well. Who also knew how to exploit those fears.

Frost swung open the gate, and they walked up the shoveled path. The flagstones were icy, and Jane was trying so hard not to slip that by the time she reached the porch steps, she already felt off balance and unsure of her footing. Not the best way to face Joyce O’Donnell. Nor did it help that when the front door opened, O’Donnell was looking her usual elegant self, blond hair cut in a sleek bob, her pink button-down shirt and khaki slacks perfectly tailored to her athletic frame. Jane, in her tired black pantsuit, with her trouser cuffs damp from melted snow, felt like the supplicant at the manor house door. Exactly how she wants me to feel.

O’Donnell gave a cool nod. “Detectives.” She did not immediately step aside, a pause intended to demonstrate that here, on her own territory, she was in command.

“May we come in?” Jane finally asked. Knowing that, of course, they would be allowed in. That the game had already begun.

O’Donnell waved them into the house. “This isn’t how I care to spend Christmas day,” she said.

“It’s not exactly how we want to spend it either,” Jane countered. “And I’m sure it’s not what the victim wanted.”

“As I told you, the recording’s already been erased,” said O’Donnell, leading the way into her living room. “You can listen to it, but there’s nothing to hear.”

Not much had changed since the last time Jane had visited this house. She saw the same abstract paintings on the walls, the same richly hued Oriental carpets. The only new feature was the Christmas tree. The trees of Jane’s childhood had been decorated with haphazard taste, the branches hung with the mismatched assortment of ornaments hardy enough to have survived earlier Rizzoli Christmases. And there’d been tinsel-lots and lots of it. Vegas trees, Jane used to call them.

But on this tree, there was not a single strand of tinsel. No Vegas in this house. Instead, the branches were hung with crystal prisms and silver teardrops, reflecting wintry sunshine on the walls, like dancing chips of light. Even her damn Christmas tree makes me feel inadequate.

O’Donnell crossed to her answering machine. “This is all I have now,” she said, and pressed Play. The digital voice announced: “You have no new messages.” She looked at the detectives. “I’m afraid the recording you asked about is gone. As soon as I got home last night, I played all my messages. Erased them as I went. By the time I got to your message, about preserving the recording, it was too late.”

“How many messages were there?” asked Jane.

“Four. Yours was the last.”

“The call we’re interested in would have come in around twelve-ten.”

“Yes, and the number’s still there, in the electronic log.” O’Donnell pressed a button, cycling back to the 12:10