The Mephisto Club

TWENTY-NINE

“Detective Rizzoli didn’t look too happy when you took me up on my offer,” Sansone said.

“She’s unhappy about a lot of things these days,” said Maura, staring out at fields covered in a snowy white skin. Although the last light of day had faded, the moon was rising, and its reflection was bright as a lantern on the snow. “Me included.”

“I noticed the tension between you two.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“She doesn’t try to hide much, does she?” He shot her a glance in the dark car. “You two couldn’t be more different.”

“I’m finding that out more and more.”

“You’ve known each other long?”

“About two years. Since I took the job in Boston.”

“Has it always been this edgy between you?”

“No. It’s only because…” She fell silent. Because she disapproves of me. Because she’s on her moral high horse, and I’m not allowed to be human. I’m not allowed to fall in love. “This has been a stressful few weeks” was how she finished the sentence.

“I’m glad we have this chance to talk in private,” he said. “Because what I’m about to tell you is going to sound absurd. And she’d dismiss it without a second thought.” Again he glanced at her. “I’m hoping you’ll be more willing to listen.”

“Because you think I’m less of a skeptic than she is? Don’t bet on it.”

“What did you think about the death scene today? What did it tell you about the killer?”

“I saw evidence of a severely disturbed mind.”

“That’s one possibility.”

“What’s your interpretation?”

“That there’s real intelligence behind this. Not just some nutcase getting his jollies by torturing women. This is someone with a focused and logical motive.”

“Your mythical demons, again.”

“I know you don’t accept their existence. But you saw that news article, about the barn that was defaced twelve years ago. Did anything else in that report stand out for you?”

“You mean, aside from the crosses carved in the barn?”

“The missing goat. There were four goats released from the barn, and the farmer recovered only three of them. What happened to the fourth?”

“Maybe it escaped. Maybe it got lost in the woods.”

“In Leviticus, chapter sixteen, another name for Azazel is ‘the scapegoat.’ He who assumes all the sins, all the evils, of mankind. By tradition, the chosen animal is led into the wilderness, taking humanity’s sins with it. And there it’s released.”

“We’re back to your symbol of Azazel again.”

“A drawing of his head appeared on your door. You can’t have forgotten that.”

No, I haven’t. How could I forget that my door bears the mark of a killer?

“I know you’re skeptical,” he said. “I know you think this will turn out to be like so many other investigations. That it will lead to some rather ordinary, even pitiful character who lives quietly alone. Another Jeffrey Dahmer, or another Son of Sam. Maybe this killer hears voices. Maybe he’s read Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible a few too many times and taken it to heart. But consider another possibility, something far more frightening.” He looked at her. “That Nephilim-the Watchers-really exist. That they’ve always existed, and they still live among us.”

“The children of fallen angels?”

“That’s merely the biblical interpretation.”

“This is all biblical. And you know I don’t believe.”

“The Old Testament is not the only place where these creatures are mentioned. They appear in the myths of earlier cultures.”

“Every civilization has its mythical evil spirits.”

“I’m not talking about spirits, but flesh and blood, with human faces. A parallel species of predators who’ve evolved right alongside us. Interbred with us.”

“Wouldn’t we know of their existence by now?”

“We know them by the evil they commit. But we don’t recognize them for what they really are. We call them sociopaths or tyrants. Or Vlad the Impaler. They charm and seduce their way into positions of power and authority. They thrive on war, on revolution, on disorder. And we never realize they’re different from the rest of us. Different in a fundamental way that goes right to our genetic codes. They’re born predators, and the whole world is their hunting ground.”

“Is this what the Mephisto Foundation is all about? A search for these mythical creatures?” She laughed. “You might as well hunt for unicorns.”

“There are many of us who believe.”

“And what will you do when you actually find one? Shoot him and mount his head as a trophy?”

“We’re purely a research group. Our role is to identify and study. And advise.”

“Advise whom?”

“Law enforcement. We provide them with information and analysis. And they use what we give them.”

“Law enforcement agencies actually care what you have to say?” she asked, with an unmistakable note of disbelief.

“Yes. We are listened to” was all he said. The calm statement of a man so sure of his claims, he saw no need to defend them.

She considered how easily he had accessed confidential details of the investigation. Thought of how Jane’s inquiries about Sansone had met with silence from the FBI and Interpol and the Department of Justice. They are all protecting him.

“Our work has not gone unnoticed,” he said, and added softly, “unfortunately.”

“I thought that was the point. To have your work noticed.”

“Not by the wrong people. Somehow, they’ve discovered us. They know who we are, and what we do.” He paused. “And they think you’re one of us.”

“I don’t even believe they exist.”

“They’ve marked your door. They’ve identified you.”

She gazed out at moonlit snow, its whiteness startling in the night. It was almost as bright as day. No cover, no darkness. A prey’s every movement would be seen in that merciless landscape. “I’m not a member of your club,” she said.

“You might as well be. You’ve been seen at my home. You’ve been seen with me.”

“I’ve also visited all three crime scenes. I’ve only been doing my job. The killer could have spotted me on any one of those nights.”

“That’s what I thought at first. That you just happened to cross his line of vision, as incidental prey. It’s what I thought about Eve Kassovitz as well-that maybe he spotted her at the first crime scene on Christmas Eve, and she attracted his interest.”

“You no longer think that’s what happened?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“The seashell. If I’d known about it earlier, we all would have taken precautions. And Joyce might still be alive.”

“You think that seashell was a message meant for you?”

“For centuries, Sansone men have marched into battle under the banner of the seashell. This was a taunt, a challenge aimed at the foundation. A warning of what’s to come.”

“What would that be?”

“Our extermination.” He said it quietly, as though just speaking those two words aloud would bring the sword down on his neck. But she heard no fear in his voice, only resignation that this was the fate he’d been dealt. She could think of nothing to say in response. This conversation had strayed into alien territory, and she could not find her bearings. His universe was such a bleak landscape of nightmares that just sitting with him, in his car, altered her view of the world. Changed it to an unfamiliar country where monsters walked. Daniel, she thought, I need you now. I need your touch and your hope and your faith in the world. This man is all darkness, and you are the light.

“Do you know how my father died?” he asked.

She frowned at him, startled by the question. “I’m sorry?”

“Believe me, it’s relevant. My whole family history is relevant. I tried to walk away from it. I spent thirteen years teaching at Boston College, thinking I could live a normal life like everyone else, convinced that my father was just a cranky eccentric, like his father, that all the bizarre stories he told me when I was growing up were quaint family lore.” He glanced at her. “I believed it about as much as you do right now, which is to say, not at all.”

He sounds so rational. Yet he isn’t. He can’t be.

“I taught history, so I’m familiar with the ancient myths,” he said. “But you’ll never convince me that there were once satyrs or mermaids or flying horses. Why should I believe my father’s stories about Nephilim?”

“What changed your mind?”

“Oh, I knew some of what he told me was true. The death of Isabella, for instance. In Venice, I was able to find the record of her imprisonment and death in church documents. She was burned alive. She did give birth to a son, just prior to her execution. Not everything that was passed down in Sansone family lore was fantasy.”

“And the part about your ancestors being demon hunters?”

“My father believed it.”

“Do you?”

“I believe there are hostile forces who would bring down the Mephisto Foundation. And now they’ve found us. The way they found my father.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to explain.

“Eight years ago,” said Sansone, “he flew out to Naples. He was going to meet an old friend, a man he’d known since his college days in New Haven. Both of them were widowers. Both of them shared a passion for ancient history. They planned to visit the National Archaeological Museum there and catch up on each other’s lives. My father was quite excited about the visit. It was the first time I’d heard any animation in his voice since my mother died. But when he got to Naples, his friend wasn’t there at the airport. Or at the hotel. He called me, told me that something was terribly wrong, and he planned to return home the next day. I could hear he was upset, but he wouldn’t say much more about it. I think he believed our conversation was being monitored.”

“He actually thought the phone was tapped?”

“You see? You have the same reaction I did. That it was just dear eccentric old Dad imagining his goblins again. The last thing he said to me was, ‘They’ve found me, Anthony. They know who I am.’”

“They?”

“I knew exactly what he was talking about. It was the same nonsense I’d been hearing since I was a kid. Sinister forces in government. A worldwide conspiracy of Nephilim, helping one another into positions of power. And once they assume political control, they’re able to hunt to their hearts’ content, without any fear of punishment. The way they hunted in Kosovo. And Cambodia. And Rwanda. They thrive on war and disorder and bloodshed. They feed off it. That’s what Armageddon means to them: a hunter’s paradise. It’s why they can’t wait to make it happen, why they look forward to it.”

“That sounds like the ultimate paranoid delusion.”

“It’s also a way to explain the unexplainable: how people can do such terrible things to one another.”

“Your father believed all that?”

“He wanted me to believe it. But it took his death to convince me.”

“What happened to your father?”

“It could easily have been taken for a simple robbery gone wrong. Naples is a gritty place, and tourists do have to be careful there. But my father was on Via Partenope, alongside the Gulf of Naples, a street almost always crowded with tourists. Even so, it happened so quickly, he had no time to call for help. He simply collapsed. No one saw his assailant. No one saw what happened. But there was my father, bleeding to death on the street. The blade entered just beneath his sternum, sliced through the pericardium, and pierced the right ventricle.”

“The way Eve Kassovitz died,” she said softly. A brutally efficient killing.

“The worst part for me,” he said, “is that he died thinking I’d never believe him. After our last phone call, I hung up and said to one of my colleagues, ‘The old man’s finally ready for Thorazine.’”

“But you believe him now.”

“Even after I got to Naples, a few days later, I still thought it was a random act of violence. An unlucky tourist, in the wrong place at the wrong time. But while I was at the police station, waiting for a copy of their report, an older gentleman stepped into the room and introduced himself. I’d heard my father mention his name before. I never knew that Gottfried Baum worked for Interpol.”

“Why do I know that name?”

“He was one of my dinner guests the night that Eve Kassovitz was killed.”

“The man who left for the airport?”

“He had a flight to catch that night. To Brussels.”

“He’s a member of Mephisto?”

Sansone nodded. “He’s the one who made me listen, made me believe. All the stories my father told me, all his crazy theories about the Nephilim-Baum repeated every one.”

“Folie à deux,” said Maura. “A shared delusion.”

“I wish it was a delusion. I wish I could shrug it off the way you do. But you haven’t seen and heard the things I have, what Gottfried and others have. Mephisto is fighting for its life. After four centuries, we’re the last ones.” He paused. “And I’m the last of Isabella’s line.”

“The last demon hunter,” she said.

“I haven’t made an inch of headway with you, have I?”

“Here’s what I don’t understand. It’s not that hard to kill someone. If you’re the target, why don’t they just eliminate you? You’re not in hiding. All it takes is a gunshot through your window, a bomb in your car. Why play stupid games with seashells? What’s the point of warning you that you’re in their sights?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can see that it’s not logical.”

“Yes.”

“Yet you still think these murders revolve around Mephisto.”

He gave a sigh. “I won’t even try to convince you. I just want you to consider the possibility that what I’ve told you is true.”

“That there’s a worldwide brotherhood of Nephilim? That the Mephisto Foundation, and no one else, is even aware of this vast conspiracy?”

“Our voice is starting to be heard.”

“What are you going to do to protect yourselves? Load silver bullets in your gun?”

“I’m going to find Lily Saul.”

She frowned at him. “The daughter?”

“Don’t you find it strange that no one knows where she is? That no one can locate her?” He looked at Maura. “Lily knows something.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because she doesn’t want to be found.”

“I think I should go inside with you,” he said, “just to be sure everything’s all right.”

They were parked outside her house, and through the living room curtains Maura could see lights shining, the lamps turned on by her automatic timer. Before she’d left yesterday, she had scrubbed off the markings on her door. Staring through the gloom, she wondered if there were new ones scrawled there that she couldn’t see, new threats concealed in the shadows.

“I think I’d feel better if you came in with me, too,” she admitted.

He reached into his glove compartment for a flashlight, and they both stepped out of the car. Neither of them spoke; they were focused instead on their surroundings: the dark street, the distant hiss of traffic. Sansone paused there on the sidewalk, as though trying to catch the scent of something he could not yet see. They climbed to the porch, and he turned on the flashlight to examine her door.

It was clean.

Inside her house, the phone was ringing. Daniel? She unlocked the front door and stepped inside. It took her only seconds to punch her code on the keypad and disarm the security system, but by the time she reached the telephone, it had fallen silent. Pressing the call history button, she recognized his cell phone number on caller ID, and she itched to pick up the receiver and call him back. But Sansone was now standing right beside her in the living room.

“Does everything seem all right to you?”

She gave a tight nod. “Everything’s fine.”

“Why don’t you have a look around first before I leave?”

“Of course,” she said, and headed up the hallway. As he followed her, she could feel his gaze on her back. Did he see it in her face? Did he recognize the look of a lovesick woman? She went from room to room, checking windows, rattling doors. Everything was secure. As a simple matter of hospitality, she should have offered him a cup of coffee and invited him to stay for a few minutes, after he’d been kind enough to drive her home. But she was not in a hospitable mood.

To her relief, he didn’t linger, but turned to leave. “I’ll check in with you in the morning,” he said.

“I’ll be fine.”

“You need to be careful, Maura. We all do.”

But I’m not one of you, she thought. I never wanted to be.

The doorbell rang. They looked at each other.

He said, quietly, “Why don’t you see who it is?”

She took a breath and stepped into the foyer. She took one glance through the window and immediately opened the door. Even the blast of cold air could not drive the flush of heat from her cheeks as Daniel stepped inside, his arms already reaching for her. Then he saw the other man in the hallway, and he froze in place.

Sansone smoothly stepped into the silence. “You must be Father Brophy,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Anthony Sansone. I saw you at Dr. O’Donnell’s house the other night, when you came to pick up Maura.”

Daniel nodded. “I’ve heard about you.”

The two men shook hands, a stiff and wary greeting. Then Sansone had the good sense to make a quick exit. “Arm your security system,” he reminded Maura.

“I will.”

Before he stepped out the front door, he shot one last speculative look at Brophy. Sansone was neither blind nor stupid; he could probably guess what this priest was doing in her house. “Good night,” he said, and walked out.

She locked the door. “I missed you,” she said, and stepped into Daniel’s arms.

“It felt like such a long day,” he murmured.

“All I could think of was coming home. Being with you.”

“That’s all I could think of, too. I’m sorry to just show up and take you by surprise. But I had to stop by.”

“It’s the kind of surprise I like.”

“I thought you’d be home much earlier.”

“We stopped on the road, for dinner.”

“It worried me, you know. That you were driving home with him.”

“You had absolutely nothing to worry about.” She stepped back, smiling. “Let me take your coat.”

But he made no move to remove it. “What have you learned about him, since you’ve spent the whole day together?”

“I think he’s just an eccentric man with a lot of money. And a very strange hobby.”

“Seeking all things satanic? That goes a little beyond what I think of as strange.”

“The truly strange part is that he’s managed to gather a circle of friends who all believe the same thing.”

“Doesn’t it worry you? That he’s so completely focused on the dark side? That he’s actually searching for the Devil? You know the saying. ‘When you look long into the abyss…’”

“‘The abyss also looks into you.’ Yes, I know the quote.”

“It’s worth remembering, Maura. How easily darkness can draw us in.”

She laughed. “This sounds like something from one of your Sunday sermons.”

“I’m serious. You don’t know enough about this man.”

I know he worries you. I know he’s making you jealous.

She touched his face. “Let’s stop talking about him. He doesn’t matter. Come on, let me take your coat.”

He made no move to unbutton it. Only then did she understand.

“You’re not staying tonight,” she said.

He sighed. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“I told you, I was worried. I wanted to make sure he got you home safely.”

“You can’t stay, even for a few hours?”

“I wish I could. But at the last minute, they asked me to attend a conference in Providence. I have to drive down there tonight.”

They. She had no claim to him. The church, of course, directed his life. They owned him.

He wrapped his arms around her, his breath warming her hair. “Let’s go away sometime,” he murmured. “Somewhere out of town.”

Where no one knows us.

As he walked to his car, she stood with her door wide open, the cold streaming around her, into the house. Even after he drove away, she remained in the doorway, heedless of the cruel sting of the wind. It was her just punishment for wanting him. This was what his church demanded of them. Separate beds, separate lives. Could the Devil Himself be any crueler?

If I could sell my soul to Satan for your love, I think I would.