The Mephisto Club

was a smart boy. But there’s a note in the file, says the kid didn’t seem to have any friends.”

Jane watched as Mrs. Bongers soothed the goats. She was huddled close to them, cooing to them in the same shadowy barn where, twelve years ago, someone had carved strange symbols on the wall, someone who could very well have moved on to carving women.

“Okay, here’s the interesting part,” said Frost. “I’m looking at the boy’s school admission forms right now.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s this section his father filled out, about any special concerns he might have. And the dad writes that this is Dominic’s first experience at an American school. Because he’d lived abroad most of his life.”

“Abroad?” She felt her pulse suddenly kick into a faster tempo. “Where?”

“Egypt and Turkey.” Frost paused, and added, significantly, “And Cyprus.”

Her gaze turned back to the barn wall, to what had been carved there: RXX-VII. “Where are you right now?” she asked.

“I’m at home.”

“You got a Bible there?”

“Why?”

“I want you to look up something for me.”

“Let me ask Alice where it is.” She heard him call out to his wife, then heard footsteps, and then Frost said, “Is the King James version okay?”

“If that’s what you’ve got. Now look at the contents. Tell me which sections start with the letter R.”

“Old or New Testament?”

“Both.”

Over the phone, she heard pages flipping. “There’s the Book of Ruth. Romans. And there’s Revelation.”

“For each of the books, read me the passages for chapter twenty, verse seven.”

“Okay, let’s see. Book of Ruth doesn’t have a chapter twenty. It only goes to four.”

“Romans?”

“Romans ends at chapter sixteen.”

“What about Revelation?”

“Hold on.” More pages rustling. “Here it is. Revelation, chapter twenty, verse seven. ‘And when the thousand years are expired, Satan’”-Frost paused. His voice softened to a hush.-“‘Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.’”

Jane could feel the pounding of her own heart. She stared at the barn wall, at the carving of the stick figure wielding the sword. It’s not a sword. It’s a scythe.

“Rizzoli?” said Frost.

She said, “I think we know our killer’s name.”

THIRTY-ONE

Beneath the Basilica di San Clemente, the sound of rushing water echoed from the blackness. Lily shone her flashlight through the iron grate that barred the way into the tunnel, her beam revealing ancient brick walls and the faint glimmer of moving water far below.

“There’s a subterranean lake under this basilica,” she said. “And you can see the underground river here, which never stops flowing. Beneath Rome is another world, a vast underworld of tunnels and catacombs.” She gazed at the rapt faces staring at her through the gloom. “When you return to the surface, when you walk the streets, think about that, about all the dark and secret places that lie right beneath your feet.”

“Can I get a closer look at the river?” one of the women asked.

“Yes, of course. Here, I’ll hold the light while you each get a peek through the grate.”

One by one, the people in her tour group took turns squeezing in beside Lily to peer into the tunnel. There was nothing much to see, really. But when you travel all the way to Rome, for perhaps your once-in-a-lifetime visit, it’s a tourist’s duty to look. Today, Lily had only six on the tour, two Americans, two Brits, and a pair of Germans. Not such a good haul; she wouldn’t be taking home much in the way of tips. But what could one expect on a chilly Thursday in January? The tourists in Lily’s group were the only visitors in the labyrinth at the moment, and she allowed them to take their time as they each pressed against the metal grate, their crackling raincoats brushing against her. Damp air whooshed up from the tunnel, musty with the smell of mold and wet stone: the scent of ages long past.

“What were these walls, originally?” asked the German man. Lily had pegged him as a businessman. In his sixties, he spoke excellent English and wore an expensive Burberry coat. But his wife, Lily suspected, was not so fluent in English, as the woman had said scarcely a word all morning.

“These are the foundations of homes that were here in Nero’s time,” said Lily. “The great fire of A.D. 64 reduced this neighborhood to charred rubble.”

“Is that the fire when Nero fiddled while Rome burned?” the American man asked.

Lily smiled, for she’d heard that question dozens of times before and could almost always predict who in the group would ask it. “Actually, Nero didn’t fiddle. The violin wasn’t invented yet. While Rome burned, he was said to have played the lyre and sung.”

“And then he blamed the fire on the Christians,” the man’s wife added.

Lily shut off the flashlight. “Come, let’s move on. There’s a lot more to see.”

She led the way into the shadowy labyrinth. Aboveground, traffic was roaring on busy streets, and vendors were selling postcards and trinkets to tourists wandering the ruins of the Coliseum. But here, beneath the basilica, there was only the sound of the eternally rushing water and the rustle of their coats as they moved down the gloomy tunnel.

“This type of construction is called opus reticulatum,” said Lily, pointing to the walls. “It’s masonry work that alternates bricks with tufa.”

“Two-fer?” It was the American man again. The stupid questions were always his. “Is that, like, stronger than one-fer?” Only his wife laughed, a high, annoying whinny.

“Tufa,” said the Englishman, “is actually compacted volcanic ash.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what it is,” said Lily. “It was used quite often as a building block in Roman homes.”

“How come we never heard of this tufa stuff before?” the American woman asked her husband, implying that, since they did not know about it, it could not possibly exist.

Even in the gloom, Lily could see the Englishman’s eyes roll upward. She responded with an amused shrug.

“You’re American, right?” the woman asked Lily. “Miss?”

Lily paused. She did not like this personal question. “Actually,” she lied, “I’m Canadian.”

“Did you know what tufa was before you became a guide? Or is that, like, just a European word?”

“Many Americans aren’t familiar with the word,” Lily said.

“Well okay, then. It’s just a European thing,” the woman said, satisfied. If Americans didn’t know it, it couldn’t possibly be important.

“What you’re seeing here,” said Lily, quickly moving on with the tour, “is what’s left of the villa of Titus Flavius Clemens. In the first century A.D., this was a secret meeting place for Christians, before they were openly accepted. It was still an early cult then, just gaining popularity among the wives of noblemen.” She turned on her flashlight again, using the beam to direct their attention. “Now, we’re moving into the most interesting section of these ruins. This part was uncovered only in 1870. Here we’ll see a secret temple for pagan rituals.”

They crossed the passageway, and Corinthian columns loomed ahead in the shadows. It was the temple antechamber, lined with stone benches, decorated with ancient frescoes and stucco. They wandered deeper into the sanctuary, past two shadowy niches, the site of initiation rites. In the world above, the passing centuries had altered streets and skylines, but in this ancient grotto, time had frozen. Here, still, was the carving of the god