The Keepsake

FOURTEEN

On Saturday night, Daniel finally came to her.

At the last minute, before he arrived, Maura rushed out to the local market where she bought kalamata olives and French cheeses and a far-too-extravagant bottle of wine. This is the way I’ll woo a lover, she thought as she handed over her credit card. With smiles and kisses and glasses of Pinot Noir. I will win him over with perfect evenings that he’ll never forget, never stop craving. And someday, maybe, he’ll make his choice. He’ll choose me.

When she got home, he was already waiting for her in her house.

As the garage door rolled open, she saw his car parked inside where the neighbors wouldn’t see it, where it would cause no raised eyebrows, no lascivious gossip. She pulled in beside it and quickly closed the garage door again, shutting off any view of the blatant evidence that she was not alone tonight. Keeping secrets so easily becomes second nature, and it was automatic for her now to close the garage door, to draw the curtains and smoothly fend off the innocent queries from colleagues and neighbors. Are you seeing someone? Would you like to come to dinner? Would you like to meet this nice man I know? Over the months, she’d declined so many such invitations that few were now offered. Had everyone simply given up on her, or had they guessed the reason for her disinterest, for her unsociability?

That reason was standing in the doorway, waiting for her.

She stepped into the house, into Daniel Brophy’s arms. It had been ten days since they’d last been together, ten days of ever-deepening longing that was now so gnawing she could not wait to satisfy it. The groceries were still in the car, and she had dinner to cook, but food was the last thing on her mind as their lips met. Daniel was all she wanted to devour, and she feasted on him as they kissed their way into her bedroom, guilty kisses made all the more delicious because they were illicit. How many new sins will we commit this evening, she wondered as she watched him unbutton his shirt. Tonight he did not wear his clerical collar; tonight he came to her as a lover, not a man of God.

Months ago he had broken the vows that bound him to his church. She was the one responsible; she had caused his fall from grace, a fall that once again brought him into her bed, into her arms. It was a destination so familiar to him now that he knew exactly what she wanted, what would make her clutch him and cry out.

When at last she fell back with a satisfied shudder, they lay together as they always did, with arms and legs wrapped around each other, two lovers who knew each other’s bodies well.

“It feels like it’s been forever since you were here,” she whispered.

“I would have come Thursday, but that workshop went on forever.”

“Which workshop?”

“Couples counseling.” He gave a sad, ironic laugh. “As if I’m the person who can tell them how to heal their marriages. There’s so much anger and pain, Maura. It was an ordeal just sitting in the same room with those people. I wanted to tell them, It will never work, you’ll never be happy with each other. You married the wrong person! ”

“That might be the best advice you could have given them.”

“It would have been an act of mercy.” Gently he brushed the hair from her face, and his hand lingered on her cheek. “It would have been so much kinder to give them permission to leave. To find someone who would make them happy. The way you make me happy.”

She smiled. “And you make me hungry.” She sat up, and the scent of their lovemaking wafted up from the rumpled sheets. The animal smells of warm bodies and desire. “I promised you dinner.”

“I feel guilty that you’re always feeding me.” He, too, sat up and reached for his clothes. “Tell me what I can do.”

“I left the wine in the car. Why don’t you get the bottle and open it? I’ll put the chicken in the oven.”

In her kitchen they sipped wine as the chicken roasted, as she sliced the potatoes and he made the salad. Like any married couple, they cooked and they touched and they kissed. But we’re not married, she thought, glancing sideways at his striking profile, his graying temples. Every moment together was a stolen one, a furtive one, and although they laughed together, sometimes she heard a desperate note in that laughter, as though they were trying to convince themselves that they were happy, damn it, yes they were, despite the guilt and the deceptions and the many nights apart. But she was beginning to see the emotional toll in his face. In just the past few months, his hair had gone noticeably grayer. When it’s completely white, she thought, will we still be meeting with the curtains closed?

And what changes does he see in my face?

It was after midnight when he left her house. She had fallen asleep in his arms and did not hear him rise from the bed. When she awakened he was gone, and the sheet beside her was already cold.

That morning she drank her coffee alone, cooked pancakes alone. Her best memories of her otherwise disastrous and brief marriage to Victor were of Sunday mornings together, rising late from bed to lounge on the couch, where they’d spend half the day reading the newspaper. She would never enjoy such a Sunday with Daniel. While she dozed in her bathrobe with the pages of The Boston Globe spread out all around her, Father Daniel Brophy would be ministering to his flock in the church of Our Lady of Divine Light, a flock whose shepherd had himself gone terribly astray.

The sound of her doorbell startled her awake. Groggy from her nap, she sat up on the couch and saw that it was already two in the afternoon. That could be Daniel at the door.

Scattered newspapers crackled beneath her bare feet as she hurried across the living room. When she opened the door and saw the man who stood on her porch, she suddenly regretted not combing her hair or changing out of the bathrobe.

“I’m sorry I’m a little late,” said Anthony Sansone. “I hope it’s not inconvenient.”

“Late? I’m sorry, but I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Didn’t you get my message? I left it on your answering machine yesterday afternoon. About coming by to see you today.”

“Oh. I guess I forget to check the machine last night.” I was otherwise occupied. She stepped back. “Come in.”

He walked into the living room and stopped, gazing at the scattered newspapers, the empty coffee cup. It had been months since she’d seen him, and she was struck yet again by his stillness, by the way he always seemed to be testing the air, searching for the one detail he’d missed. Unlike Daniel, who was quick to reach out even to strangers, Anthony Sansone was a man surrounded by walls, a man who could stand in a crowded room yet seem coolly apart and self-contained. She wondered what he was thinking as he looked at the clutter of her wasted Sunday. Not all of us have butlers, she thought. Not all of us live the way you do, in a Beacon Hill mansion.

“I’m sorry for bothering you at home,” he said. “But I didn’t want this to be an official visit to the ME.” He turned to look at her. “And I did want to find out how you’ve been, Maura. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I’m fine. It’s been busy.”

“The Mephisto Society’s resumed our weekly dinners in my house. We could certainly use your perspective, and we’d love to have you join us again some evening.”

“To talk about crime? I deal with that subject quite enough at my own job, thank you.”

“Not in the way we approach it. You only look at its final effect; we’re concerned with the reason for its existence.”

She began picking up newspapers and stacking them into a pile. “I don’t really fit in with your group. I don’t accept your theories.”

“Even after what we both experienced? Those murders must have made you wonder. They must have raised the possibility in your mind.”

“That there’s a unified theory of evil to be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls?” She shook her head. “I’m a scientist. I read religious texts for historical insights, not for literal truths. Not to explain the unexplainable.”

“You were trapped with us on the mountain that night. You saw the evidence.”

On the night he spoke of, a night in January, they had almost lost their lives. That much they could agree on, because the evidence was as real as the blood left in the aftermath. But there was so much about that night that they would never agree on, and their most fundamental disagreement was about the nature of the monster who had trapped them on that mountain.

“What I saw was a serial murderer, like too many others in this world,” she said. “I don’t need any biblical theories to explain him. Talk to me about science, not fables about ancient demonic bloodlines.” She set the stack of newspapers on the coffee table. “Evil just is. People can be brutal and some of them kill. We’d all like an explanation for it.”

“Does science explain why a killer would mummify a woman’s body? Why he’d shrink a woman’s head and deposit another woman in the trunk of a car?”

Startled, she turned to look at him. “You already know about those cases?”

But of course he would know. Anthony Sansone’s ties to law enforcement reached the highest levels, into the office of the police commissioner himself. A case as unusual as that of Madam X would certainly catch his attention. And it would stir interest within the secretive Mephisto Society, which had its own bizarre theories about crime and how to combat it.

“There are details even you may not be aware of,” he said.

“Details I think you should be acquainted with.”

“Before we talk about this any further,” she said, “I’m going to get dressed. If you’ll excuse me.”

She retreated to her bedroom. There she pulled on jeans and a button-down shirt, casual attire that was perfectly appropriate for a Sunday afternoon, but she felt underdressed for her distinguished visitor. She didn’t bother with makeup, but simply washed her face and brushed the tangles from her hair. Staring at herself in the mirror, she saw puffy eyes and new strands of gray that she hadn’t noticed before. Well, this is who I am, she thought. A woman who’ll never see forty again. I can’t hide my age and I won’t even try to.

By the time she came out of the bedroom, the smell of brewing coffee was permeating the house. She followed the scent to the kitchen, where Sansone had already pulled two mugs from the cabinet.

“I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of making a fresh pot.”

She watched as he picked up the carafe and poured, his broad back turned to her. He looked perfectly at home in her kitchen, and it annoyed her how effortlessly he had invaded her house. He had the knack of walking into any room, in any house, and just by his presence laying claim to the territory.

He handed her a cup, and to her surprise he’d added just the right amount of sugar and cream, exactly as she liked it. It was a detail she hadn’t expected him to remember.

“It’s time to talk about Madam X,” he said. “And what you may really be dealing with.”

“How much do you know?”

“I know you have three linked deaths.”

“We don’t know they’re linked.”

“Three victims, all preserved in grotesque ways? That’s a rather unique signature.”

“I haven’t done the autopsy on the third victim, so I can’t tell you anything about her. Not even how she was preserved.”

“I’m told it wasn’t a classic mummification.”

“If by classic you mean salted, dried, and wrapped, no, it wasn’t.”

“Her features are relatively intact?”

“Yes. Remarkably so. But her tissues still retain moisture. I’ve never autopsied a body like this one. I’m not even sure how to keep her preserved in her current state.”

“What about the owner of the car? She’s an archaeologist, isn’t she? Does she have any idea how the body was preserved?”

“I didn’t speak to her. From what Jane told me, the woman was pretty shaken up.”

He set down his coffee cup and his gaze was so direct it almost felt like an assault. “What do you know about Dr. Pulcillo?”

“Why are you asking about her?”

“Because she works for them, Maura.”

“Them?”

“The Crispin Museum.”

“You make it sound like a malevolent institution.”

“You agreed to view the CT scan. You were part of that media circus they organized around Madam X. You must have known what you were getting into.”

“The curator invited me to observe. He didn’t tell me there would be a media circus. He just thought I’d be interested in watching the scan, and of course I was.”

“And you didn’t know anything about the museum when you agreed to participate?”

“I visited the Crispin a few years ago. It’s a quirky collection but it’s worth seeing. It’s not that different from a number of other private museums I’ve visited, founded by wealthy families who want to show off their collections.”

“The Crispins are something of a special family.”

“What makes them special?”

He sat down in the chair across from her so their gazes were level. “The fact that no one really knows where they came from.”

“Does it matter?”

“It’s a bit curious, don’t you think? The first Crispin on record was Cornelius, who surfaced in Boston in 1850. He claimed to be a titled Englishman.”

“You’re implying it wasn’t true.”

“There’s no record of him in England. Or anywhere else, for that matter. He simply materialized on the scene one day, and was said to be a handsome man of great charm. He married well and proceeded to build his wealth. He and his descendants were collectors and tireless travelers, and they brought home curiosities from every continent. There were the usual items-carvings and burial goods and animal specimens. But what Cornelius and his family seemed especially interested in were weapons. Every variety of weapon used by armies around the world. It was an appropriate interest of theirs, considering how their fortune was made.”

“How?”

“Wars, Maura. Ever since Cornelius, they’ve been profiteers. He became wealthy during the Civil War, running weapons to the South. His descendants continued the tradition, profiting from conflicts all over the world, from Africa to Asia to the Middle East. They made a secret pact with Hitler to provide weapons for his troops, and simultaneously armed the Allied forces. In China, they supplied both the Nationalist and the Communist armies. Their merchandise ended up in Algiers and Lebanon and the Belgian Congo. It didn’t matter who was fighting whom. They didn’t take sides; they just took the money. As long as blood was being shed somewhere, they stood to make a profit.”

“How is this relevant to the investigation?”

“I just want you to understand the background of this institution, and what kind of legacy it carries. The Crispin Museum was paid for with blood. When you walk through that building, every gold coin you see, every piece of pottery, was paid for by a war somewhere. It’s a foul place, Maura, built by a family that hid its past. A family whose roots we’ll never know.”

“I know where you’re going with this. You’re going to tell me the Crispins have a demonic bloodline. That they’re descended from the biblical Nephilim.” She shook her head and laughed.

“Please. Not the Dead Sea Scrolls again.”

“Why do you think Madam X ended up in that museum?”

“I’m sure you have an answer.”

“I have a theory. I think she was a form of tribute. So was the shrunken head. They were donated by an admirer who understands exactly what the Crispin family represents.”

“The third victim wasn’t found in the museum. The body was placed in Dr. Pulcillo’s car.”

“She works for the museum.”

“And she’s now terrified. Her keys were stolen and someone sent her one hell of a gruesome gift.”

“Because she was an obvious go-between for the intended recipient, Simon Crispin.”

“No, I think Dr. Pulcillo is the intended recipient. She’s a strikingly pretty woman and she’s caught a killer’s eye. That’s what Jane believes as well.” She paused. “Why aren’t you talking to her about this? She’s the investigator. Why come to me?”

“Detective Rizzoli’s mind is closed to alternative theories.”

“Meaning she’s firmly grounded in reality.” Maura rose to her feet. “So am I.”

“Before you dismiss this out of hand, maybe you should know one more thing about the Crispin collection. The part of the collection that no one ever saw. It was kept hidden away.”

“Why?”

“Because it was so grotesque, so upsetting, that the family couldn’t afford to let the public know about it.”

“How do you know about this?”

“For years, there were rumors about it in the antiquities market. About six years ago, Simon Crispin put it up for private auction. It seems he’s been quite the spendthrift and he’s managed to go through what was left of his family’s fortune. He needed to raise cash. He also needed to dispose of embarrassing and possibly illegal items. The truly disturbing part is, he actually found a buyer, whose name remains anonymous.”

“What did Crispin sell?”

“War trophies. I don’t mean army medals and rusty bayonets. I’m talking about rattles made with human teeth from Africa and severed ears from Japanese soldiers. A necklace strung with fingers and a jar with women’s…” He stopped. “It was a horrifying collection. The point is, I’m not the only one who knew about the Crispin family’s interest in grotesque souvenirs. Maybe this archaeology killer did, too. And he thought he’d contribute to their collection.”

“You believe they were gifts.”

“Tokens of admiration from some collector who donated a few of his own keepsakes to the museum. Where they’ve been sitting, forgotten.”

“Until now.”

Sansone nodded. “I think this mysterious donor has decided to resurface. He’s letting the world know that he’s still alive.” He added, quietly: “There may be more such gifts coming, Maura.”

Her kitchen telephone rang, shattering the silence. Startled, she felt her pulse give a kick as she rose from the chair. How easily Sansone was able to rattle her belief in a logical world. How quickly he could cast a shadow over a bright summer day. His paranoia was contagious, and she heard an ominous note to that ringing telephone, a warning that this call would bring unwelcome news.

But the voice that greeted her on the line was both familiar and pleasant. “Dr. Isles, this is Carter from the lab. I have some interesting GC-MS results.”

“On what?”

“Those tissue samples you sent us on Thursday.”

“From the body in the trunk? You’ve already done the gas chromatography?”

“I got a call to come into the lab for a weekend expedite. I thought you ordered it.”

“No, I didn’t.” She glanced over her shoulder at Sansone, who was watching her so closely that she felt compelled to turn away.

“Go on,” she said into the phone.

“I did a flash pyrolysis on the tissue sample, and I found ample presence of both collagenous and noncollagenous proteins when we examined it with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. Whatever its age, this tissue is really well preserved.”

“I also requested a screen for tanning agents. Did you find any?”

“There aren’t any benzenediols present. That eliminates most known tanning agents. But it did detect a chemical called four-isopropenylphenol.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“I had to do some research myself. That chemical turns out to be a characteristic pyrolysis product of sphagnum moss.”

“Moss?”

“Yeah. Does that help you at all?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I think it does.” It tells me exactly what I need to know. She hung up and stood staring at the phone, stunned by the lab results. This was now beyond her sphere of knowledge, beyond anything she’d ever dealt with in the autopsy room, and she did not want to proceed without technical guidance.

“Maura?”

She turned to Sansone. “Can we continue this discussion another time? I need to make some phone calls.”

“May I make a suggestion before I leave? I know a gentleman you might want to contact. A Dr. Pieter Vandenbrink. I can put you in touch with him.”

“Why are you telling me about him?”

“You’ll find his name well represented on the Internet. Look up his curriculum vitae, and you’ll understand why.”