The Mephisto Club

by Tess Gerritsen

  “So we’ve got a number of unanswered questions,” said Sansone. “Who unlocked the front door? Why did the victim drive up here in the first place?”

  “The house is for sale,” said Maura. “Maybe she saw the realty sign. Maybe she drove up out of curiosity.”

  “Look, it’s all speculation,” said Jurevich. “We’ve talked and talked about this, and we just don’t know why she came up here.”

  “Tell us more about Sarah Parmley,” said Sansone.

  “She grew up in Purity. Graduated from the local high school. But like too many other kids, she couldn’t find anything to keep her here, so she moved out to California and stayed. The only reason she came back to town was because her aunt died.”

  “From what?” asked Sansone.

  “Oh, it was an accident. Took a tumble down the stairs and broke her neck. So Sarah flew back for the memorial service. She stayed at a motel near town and checked out the day after the funeral. And that’s the last time anyone saw her. Until Saturday, when the caretaker found her car here.” He looked up at the stairs. “I’ll show you the room.”

  Jurevich led the way. Halfway up the stairs, he halted and pointed to the wall. “This is the first one we noticed,” he said. “This cross, here. It’s the same symbol he cut all over her body. Looks like it’s drawn in some kind of red chalk.”

  Maura stared at the symbol and her fingers went numb inside her gloves. “This cross is upside down.”

  “There are more of them upstairs,” said Jurevich. “A lot more.” As they continued toward the second-floor landing, other crosses appeared on the wall. At first it was just a sparse scattering of them. Then, in the gloomy upstairs hallway, the crosses multiplied like an angry infestation massing along the corridor, swarming toward a doorway.

  “In here, it gets bad,” said Jurevich.

  His warning made Maura hesitate outside the room. Even after the others had walked through, she paused on the threshold, bracing herself for whatever awaited her on the other side of the doorway.

  She stepped through, into a chamber of horrors.

  It was not the dried lake of blood on the floor that captured her gaze; it was the handprints covering every wall, as though a multitude of lost souls had left their bloody testament as they’d passed through this room.

  “These prints were all made with the same hand,” said Jurevich. “Identical palm prints and ridge lines. I don’t think our killer was stupid enough to leave his own.” He looked at Jane. “I’m willing to bet these were all made with Sarah Parmley’s severed hand. The one that turned up at your crime scene.”

  “Jesus,” murmured Jane. “He used her hand like some kind of rubber stamp.”

  With blood as his ink, thought Maura, her gaze traveling the walls. How many hours did he spend in this room, dipping the hand in that pool of blood, pressing it to the wall like a child with a stamp kit? Then her gaze focused on the nearest wall, on writing that had been obscured by the overlying handprints. She moved closer, staring at the words that tracked across the wall. It was Latin, and the same three words were repeated again and again. She followed the text as it circled the room in an unbroken line, continuing through corners, like a serpent coiling ever more tightly around them.

  Abyssus abyssum invocat abyssus abyssum invocat abyssus abyssum invocat…

  Their meaning suddenly dawned on her and she took a step back, chilled to the marrow.

  “Hell calls to Hell,” Sansone murmured. She had not noticed that he’d moved right beside her.

  “Is that what it means?” asked Jane.

  “That’s the literal meaning. It also has another.”

  “Hell calls to Hell sounds ominous enough.”

  “Abyssus abyssum invocat is a saying that dates back at least a thousand years. It means, ‘One evil deed leads to another.’”

  Maura stared at the words. “He’s telling us this is only the beginning. He’s just getting started.”

  “And these crosses”—Sansone pointed to a hornet’s nest of them, clustered on one wall, as though massing for attack—“they’re all upside down. It’s a mockery of Christianity, a rejection of the church.”

  “Yeah. We’ve been told it’s a satanic symbol,” said Jurevich.

  “These words and crosses were written here first,” said Maura, her gaze on the rivulets of blood that had trickled down the wall, partly obscuring the stream of Latin. She read the splatters, saw the arcing droplets left by arterial spray. “Before he killed her, before he slashed her neck, he took the time to decorate these walls.”

  “The question is,” said Jurevich, “did he write these words while she was lying here, waiting to die? Or was the room already prepared as a killing place before the victim even arrived?”

  “And then he lured her here?”

  “There’s clearly evidence of preparation.” Jurevich pointed to the wooden floor, where blood had dried in a frozen pool. “You see the nails there? He came equipped with a hammer and nylon cord. That’s how he immobilized her. He tied the cord around her wrists and ankles. Nailed the knots to the floor. Once she was restrained, he could have taken his time.”

  Maura thought of what had been carved into Sarah Parmley’s flesh. Then she looked up at the same symbols drawn on the walls in red ocher. A crucifix, turned upside down. Lucifer’s cross.

  Sansone said, “But how would he lure her up here? What could possibly have drawn her to this house?”

  “We know that a call came in, to her motel room,” said Jurevich. “It was the day she checked out. The motel desk clerk transferred it to her room.”

  “You didn’t mention that,” said Jane.

  “Because we’re not sure it’s significant. I mean, Sarah Parmley grew up in this town. She probably knew a lot of people here, people who’d call her after her aunt’s funeral.”

  “Was it a local call?”

  “Gas station pay phone, in Binghamton.”

  “That’s a few hours away.”

  “Right. Which is one reason we discount it as coming from the killer.”

  “Is there another reason?”

  “Yes. The caller was a woman.”

  “The motel clerk’s sure about that? It was two weeks ago.”

  “She doesn’t budge. We’ve asked her several times.”

  Sansone said, “Evil has no gender.”

  “And what are the chances that a woman did this?” said Jane, pointing to the wall, to the bloody handprints.

  “I wouldn’t automatically reject the possibility it’s a woman,” said Sansone. “We have no usable footprints here.”

  “I don’t reject anything. I’m just going with the odds.”

  “That’s all they are. Odds.”

  “How many killers have you tracked down?” shot back Jane.

  He regarded her with an unflinching stare. “I think the answer would surprise you, Detective.”

  Maura turned to Jurevich. “The killer must have spent hours here, in this house. He must have left hair, fibers.”

  “Our crime-scene unit went over all these rooms with ALS.”

  “They couldn’t have come up empty.”

  “Oh, they came up with plenty. This is an old house, and it’s been occupied on and off for the last seventy years. We turned up hairs and fibers all over these rooms. Found something that surprised us. Let me show you the rest of the house.”

  They went back into the hallway, and Jurevich pointed through a doorway. “Another bedroom in there. Lot of dust, plus a few cat hairs, but otherwise nothing that caught our interest.” He continued down the hall, past another bedroom, past a bathroom with black-and-white tiles, giving the rooms only dismissive waves. They came to the last doorway. “Here,” he said. “This turned out to be a very interesting room.”

  Maura heard the ominous note in his voice, but when she stepped into the bedroom, she saw nothing at all alarming, just a space devoid of all furniture, with blank walls. The wood floor here was in far better shap
e than in the rest of the house, its boards recently refinished. Two bare windows looked out over the knoll’s wooded slope, which swept down to the frozen lake below.

  “So what makes this room interesting?” asked Jane.

  “It’s what we found on the floor.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “It showed up when we sprayed it with Luminol. The crime-scene unit surveyed the whole house, to see where our killer might have tracked blood. Whether he left traces that we couldn’t see in other rooms. We found his footprints in the hallway, on the stairs, and in the foyer, all of them invisible to the naked eye. So we know he did try to clean up as he exited the house. But you can’t really hide blood. Spray it with Luminol, and it’ll light right up.” Jurevich looked down at the floor. “It sure as hell lit up in here.”

  “More shoe prints?” asked Jane.

  “Not just shoe prints. It was like a wave of blood had washed through this room, splashed on the wall. You could see it in the cracks between the floorboards, where it seeped into the molding. That wall there, there were big swipes of it, where someone tried to wash it away. But they couldn’t erase it. Even though you can’t see it now, it was all over the place. We stood here, looking at this whole damn room glowing, and it freaked the hell out of us, I can tell you. Because when we turned on our lights, it looked just the way it does now. Nothing. Not a trace of blood visible to the naked eye.”

  Sansone stared at the walls, as though trying to see those shocking echoes of death. He looked down at the floor, its boards sanded smooth. “This can’t be fresh blood,” he murmured. “Something else happened in this house.”

  Maura remembered the FOR SALE sign, half-buried in snow, posted at the bottom of the knoll. She thought of the weathered clapboards, the peeling paint. Why was such a handsome home abandoned to years of neglect? “That’s why no one will buy it,” she said.

  Jurevich nodded. “It happened about twelve years ago, just before I moved to this area. I only found out about it when the realtor told me. It’s not something she likes to advertise, since the house is on the market, but it’s a matter of disclosure. A little detail that every potential buyer would want to know. And it pretty much sends them running in the other direction.”

  Maura looked down at the floor, at seams and cracks harboring blood that she could not see. “Who died in here?”

  “In this room, it was a suicide. But when you think about everything else that happened in this house, it’s like the whole damn building is bad luck.”

  “There were other deaths?”

  Jurevich nodded. “There was a family living here at the time. A doctor and his wife, a son and daughter. Plus a nephew staying with them for the summer. From what everyone says, the Sauls were good people. Close family, lots of friends.”

  Nothing is exactly what it seems, thought Maura. Nothing ever is.

  “Their eleven-year-old son died first. It was a heartbreaking accident. Kid headed down to the lake to go fishing, and he didn’t come home. They figure he must have fallen into the water and panicked. They found his body the next day. From there, it just got worse for the family. A week later, the mother takes a tumble down the stairs and snaps her neck. She’d been taking some sedatives, and they figure she just lost her balance.”

  “That’s an interesting coincidence,” said Sansone.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t that how Sarah Parmley’s aunt died? A fall down the stairs? A broken neck?”

  Jurevich paused. “Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it. That is a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  Jane said, “You haven’t told us about the suicide.”

  Jurevich nodded. “It was the husband. Think about it—what he’d just suffered through. First his son drowns. Then his wife falls down the stairs. So two days later, he takes out his gun, sits here in his bedroom, and blows off his own head.” Jurevich looked at the floor. “It’s his blood on the floor. Think about it. A whole family, practically wiped out within a few weeks.”

  “What happened to the daughter?” asked Jane.

  “She moved in with friends. Graduated from high school a year later, and left town.”

  “She’s the one who owns this house?”

  “Yeah. It’s still in her name. She’s been trying to unload it all these years. Realtor says there’ve been a few lookers, but then they hear what happened, and they walk away. Would you live in this house? You couldn’t pay me enough. It’s a bad-luck place. You can almost feel it when you walk in that front door.”

  Maura looked around at the walls and gave a shudder. “If there’s such a thing as a haunted house, this would be it.”

  “Abyssus abyssum invocat,” said Sansone quietly. “It takes on a different meaning, now.”

  They all looked at him. “What?” said Jurevich.

  “That’s why he chose this for his killing place. He knew the history of this house. He knew what happened here, and he was attracted to it. You can call it a doorway to another dimension. Or a vortex. But there are dark places in this world, foul places that can only be called cursed.”

  Jane gave an uneasy laugh. “You really believe that?”

  “What I believe doesn’t matter. But if our killer believes it, then he chose this house because it called to him. Hell calls to Hell.”

  “Oh man,” said Jurevich, “you’re giving me goose bumps.” He looked around at the blank walls and shuddered, as though feeling a chill wind. “You know what I think? They should just burn this place. Burn it right down to the ground. No one in his right mind will ever buy it.”

  “You said it was a doctor’s family living here,” said Jane.

  “That’s right. The Sauls.”

  “And they had a nephew staying with them that summer.”

  Jurevich nodded. “Fifteen-year-old kid.”

  “What happened to that boy? After the tragedies?”

  “The realtor says the kid left Purity a short time later. His mother came and got him.”

  “Do you know anything else about him?”

  “Remember, it was twelve years ago. No one knew him very well. And he was only here for that summer.” Jurevich paused. “I know what you’re thinking. The kid would be twenty-seven right now. And he’d know all about what happened here.”

  “He might also have a key to the front door,” said Jane. “How can we find out more about him?”

  “His cousin, I assume. The woman who owns this house, Lily Saul.”

  “But you don’t know how to find her, either.”

  “The realtor’s been trying.”

  Jane said, “I’d like to see the police reports on the Saul family. I assume the deaths were all investigated.”

  “I’ll call my office, have the files copied for you. You can pick them up on your way out of town. Are you driving back to Boston tonight?”

  “We planned to, right after lunch.”

  “Then I’ll try to have them ready by then. You might want to head over to Roxanne’s Café. Great turkey club sandwiches. And it’s right across the street from our office.”

  “Will that give you enough time to copy everything?”

  “There’s not much to the files beyond the autopsies and sheriff’s reports. In all three cases, the manner and cause of death were pretty apparent.”

  Sansone had been standing at the window, gazing outside. Now he turned to Jurevich. “What’s the name of your local newspaper here?”

  “All of Chenango County’s pretty much covered by the Evening Sun. Their office is in Norwich.” Jurevich looked at his watch. “There’s really nothing else to show you here.”

  Back outside, they stood in the biting wind as Jurevich locked the front door and gave it a hard rattle to make sure it was secure. “If we make any headway on our end,” he said to Jane, “I’ll give you a call. But I think this killer’s going to be your catch.” He zipped up his jacket and pulled on his gloves. “He’s playing in your neighborhood, now.”

  TWENT
Y-EIGHT

  “He shows up in his fancy car and gets invited right into the crime scene,” said Jane, shaking a French fry at Maura. “What’s that all about? Who does Sansone know in Justice? Even Gabriel couldn’t find out.”

  “They must have a reason to trust him.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Jane popped the French fry into her mouth and snatched up another, agitation fueling her appetite. In a matter of minutes, she’d reduced an enormous club sandwich to a few crumbs of toast and bacon, and now she was dragging the last of her fries through a pool of ketchup. “Trust some millionaire with a crime-fighting hobby?”

  “Multimillionaire.”

  “Who does he think he is, Bruce Wayne? Or the guy on that old TV show. The rich man who’s a cop. My mom used to watch it.”

  “I think you’re talking about Burke’s Law.”

  “Yeah. How many rich cops do you know?”

  Maura sighed and picked up her teacup. “Not a one.”

  “Exactly. It’s a fantasy. Some bored guy with money thinks it’d be a kick to play Dirty Harry, except he doesn’t want to actually get down and dirty. He doesn’t want to walk a beat or write up incident reports. He just wants to drive up in his Mercedes and tell us idiots how it should be done. You think I haven’t dealt with people like him before? Everyone thinks they’re smarter than the police.”

  “I don’t think he’s merely an amateur, Jane. I think he’s worth listening to.”

  “Right. A former history professor.” Jane drained her coffee cup and craned her neck around the booth, scanning the busy café for the waitress. “Hey, miss? Could I have a refill over…” She paused. She said to Maura, “Look who just walked in.”

  “Who?”

  “Your friend and mine.”

  Maura turned toward the door, gazing past the dining counter where men in billed caps sat huddled over their coffee and burgers. She spotted Sansone at the same instant he saw her. As he crossed the room, a dozen heads swiveled, gazes fixed on the striking figure with silver hair as he strode past tables and headed toward Maura’s booth.

  “I’m glad you’re still in town,” he said. “May I join you?”