Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

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.
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