The Mephisto Club

“Someone else must know what you did. Someone who saw you that night, or heard about it. Someone who’s now having fun tormenting you.”

Lily shook her head. “Only Dominic would have sent that postcard.”

“But he’s dead. How could he?”

Lily fell silent for a moment, knowing that what she was about to say would surely sound absurd to this coldly logical woman. “Do you believe in an afterlife, Detective?” she asked.

As Lily could have predicted, Jane gave a snort. “I believe we get one shot at life. So you can’t afford to screw it up.”

“The ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife. They believed that everyone has a Ba, which they depicted as a bird with a human face. The Ba is your soul. After you die, it’s released, and can fly back to the world of the living.”

“What’s this Egyptian stuff have to do with your cousin?”

“Egypt is where he was born. He had books and books from his mother, some of them quite old, with incantations from Egyptian coffin texts, magical spells to shepherd the Ba back to life. I think he found a way.”

“Are you talking about resurrection?”

“No. Possession.”

The silence lasted for what seemed like forever.

“You mean demonic possession?” Jane finally asked.

“Yes,” said Lily softly. “The Ba finds another home.”

“It takes over some other guy’s body? Makes him do the killing?”

“The soul has no physical form. It needs to command real flesh and blood. The concept of demonic possession isn’t new. The Catholic Church has always known about it, and they have documented cases. They have rites of exorcism.”

“You’re saying that your cousin’s Ba has hijacked a body, and that’s how he’s managed to come after you, how he’s managed to kill your two friends?”

Lily heard the skepticism in Jane’s voice, and she sighed. “There’s no point in talking about this. You don’t believe any of it.”

“Do you? I mean, really?”

“Twelve years ago, I didn’t,” said Lily softly. She looked at Jane. “But I do now.”

Twelve years underwater, thought Jane. She stood shivering at the edge of the quarry as engines rumbled and the cable groaned taut, tugging against the weight of the long-submerged car. What happens to flesh that’s been steeped in water through the algal blooms of twelve summers, through the freeze and thaw of twelve winters? The other people standing beside her were grimly silent, no doubt dreading, as she did, their first glimpse of Dominic Saul’s body. The county medical examiner, Dr. Kibbie, lifted his collar and pulled his scarf over his face, as though he wanted to disappear into his coat, wanted to be anywhere else but here. In the trees above, a trio of crows cawed, as though eager for a glimpse, a taste, of carrion. Let there not be any flesh left, thought Jane. Clean bones she could deal with. Skeletons were merely Halloween decorations, like clattering plastic. Not human at all.

She glanced at Lily, who stood beside her. It must be even worse for you. You knew him. You killed him. But Lily did not turn away; she remained at Jane’s side, her gaze fixed on the quarry below.

The cable strained, lifting its burden from the black waters, where chunks of fractured ice bobbed. Already a diver had been down to confirm the car was there, but the water had been too murky, the swirling sediment too thick to clearly view the interior. Now the water seemed to boil, and the vehicle surfaced. The air in the tires had caused it to flip upside down when it had fallen in, and the underside emerged first, water streaming off rusted metal. Like a whale breaching, the rear bumper broke the surface, the license plate obscured by a decade’s worth of algae and sediment. The crane’s engine revved harder, the piercing whine of machinery drilling straight into Jane’s skull. She felt Lily cringe against her and thought that the young woman would now surely turn and retreat to Jane’s car. But Lily managed to hold her ground as the crane swung its burden away from the quarry and gently lowered it onto the snow.

A workman released the cable. Another rev of the engines, a nudge from the crane, and the car rolled right side up. Water streamed from the vehicle, staining the snow a dirty brown.

For a moment, no one approached it. They let it sit there, draining water. Then Dr. Kibbie pulled on gloves and trudged across the now-muddy snow to the driver’s door. He gave it a tug, but it would not open. He circled to the passenger side and yanked on the handle. He jumped back as the door swung open, releasing a sudden rush of water that drenched his boots and trousers.

He glanced at the others, then focused again on the open door, which continued to drip. He took a breath, steeling himself against the view, and leaned inside the car. For a long moment he held that pose, his body bent at the waist, his rump poking out of the vehicle. Abruptly he straightened and turned to the others.

“There’s nothing in here,” he said.

“What?” asked Jane.

“It’s empty.”

“You don’t see any remains?”

Dr. Kibbie shook his head. “There’s no body in this car.”

“The divers came up with nothing, Lily. No body, no skeleton. No evidence at all that your cousin was ever in that water.”

They sat in Jane’s parked car as flakes of falling snow gently settled on the windshield in an ever-thickening veil of lace.

“I didn’t dream it,” Lily said. “I know it happened.” She looked at Jane with haunted eyes. “Why would I make it up? Why would I confess to killing him if it wasn’t true?”

“We have confirmed it’s your mother’s car. The registration hasn’t been renewed in twelve years. The keys are still in the ignition.”

“I told you they would be. I told you exactly where you’d find the car.”

“Yes, everything you said has checked out, except for that one small detail. There’s no body.”

“It could have rotted away.”

“There should still be a skeleton. But there’s nothing. No clothing, no bones.” Jane paused. “You know what that means.”

Lily swallowed and stared at the windshield, now blanketed in snow. “He’s alive.”

“You haven’t been running from a ghost or an evil spirit. He’s still living flesh and blood, and I’d guess he’s pretty damn pissed at you for trying to kill him. That’s what this is all about, Lily. Revenge. Twelve years ago, he was only a kid. But now he’s a man, and he can finally get his payback. Last August, he lost your trail in Italy and had no idea how to find you. So he went after Sarah and Lori-Ann for information. But they didn’t know where you were, either; they were useless to him. He had to figure out another way to locate you.”

“The Mephisto Foundation,” Lily murmured.

“If Mephisto’s as well regarded as Sansone claims, then its reputation has probably spread beyond law enforcement. Clearly, Dominic’s heard about them, too. He certainly knew how to entice them. That phone call to Joyce O’Donnell. The Latin words, the seashell, the satanic symbols-it made Mephisto think they were finally tracking Satan. But I think they were being played.”

“Dominic used them to find me.”

“And they did a good job, didn’t they? In just ten days, Mephisto found you.”

Lily thought about this for a moment. She said, “There’s no body. You can’t charge me with any crime now. You can’t hold me any longer.”

Jane stared into eyes glittering with fear and thought: She wants to run.

“I’m free to go, right?”

“Free?” Jane laughed. “You call it freedom, to live like a scared rabbit?”

“I’ve survived, haven’t I?”

“And when are you going to fight back? When are you going to take a stand? This isn’t the Devil we’re talking