The Mephisto Club

Kassovitz.”
    Jane couldn’t speak. She stood with her fingers growing numb around the telephone, thinking,
I saw her only a few hours ago.
    “Rizzoli?”
    She cleared her throat. “Give me the address.”
    When she hung up, she found that Gabriel had taken Regina into the other room, and Angela was now sitting with shoulders slumped, her arms sadly empty. “I’m sorry, Mom,” said Jane. “I have to go out.”
    Angela gave a demoralized shrug. “Of course. You go.”
    “We’ll talk when I get back.” She bent to kiss her mom’s cheek and saw up close Angela’s sagging skin, her drooping eyes.
When did my mother get so old?
    She buckled on her weapon and pulled her coat out of the closet. As she buttoned up, she heard Gabriel say, “This is pretty bad timing.”
    She turned to look at him.
What happens when I get old, like my mom? Will you leave me for a younger woman, too?
“I could be gone awhile,” she said. “Don’t wait up.”

ELEVEN
    Maura stepped out of her Lexus and her boots crunched on rime-glazed pavement, cracking through ice as brittle as glass. Snow that had melted during the warmer daylight hours had been flash-frozen again in the brutally cold wind that had kicked up at nightfall, and in the multiple flashes from cruiser lights, every surface gleamed, slick and dangerous. She saw a cop skate his way along the sidewalk, arms windmilling for balance, and saw the CSU van skid sideways as it braked, barely kissing the rear bumper of a parked cruiser.
    “Watch your step there, Doc,” a patrolman called out from across the street. “Already had one officer go down on the ice tonight. Think he mighta broke his wrist.”
    “Someone should salt this road.”
    “Yeah.” He gave a grunt. “
Someone
should. Since the city sure ain’t keeping up with the job tonight.”
    “Where’s Detective Crowe?”
    The cop waved a gloved hand toward the row of elegant town homes. “Number forty-one. It’s a few houses up the street. I can walk you there.”
    “No, I’m fine. Thank you.” She paused as another cruiser rounded the corner and skidded up against the curb. She counted at least eight parked cruisers already clogging the narrow street.
    “We’re going to need room for the morgue van to get through,” she said. “Do all these patrol cars really need to be here?”
    “Yeah, they do,” the cop said. The tone of his voice made her turn to look at him. Lit by the strobe flashes of rack lights, his face was carved in bleak shadows. “We all need to be here. We owe it to her.”
    Maura thought about the death scene on Christmas Eve, when Eve Kassovitz had stood doubled over in the street, retching into a snowbank. She remembered, too, how the patrol officers had snickered about the barfing girl detective. Now that detective was dead, and the snickers were silent, replaced by the grim respect due every police officer who has fallen.
    The cop’s breath came out in an angry rush. “Her boyfriend, he’s one, too.”
    “Another police officer?”
    “Yeah. Help us get this perp, Doc.”
    She nodded. “We will.” She started up the sidewalk, aware, suddenly, of all the eyes that must be watching her progress, all the officers who had surely taken note of her arrival. They knew her car; they all knew who she was. She saw nods of recognition among the shadowy figures who stood huddled together, their breaths steaming, like smokers gathered for a furtive round of cigarettes. They knew the grim purpose of her visit, just as they knew that any one of them might someday be the unfortunate object of her attention.
    The wind suddenly kicked up a cloud of snow, and she squinted, lowering her head against the sting. When she raised it again she found herself staring at someone she had not expected to see here. Across the street stood Father Daniel Brophy, talking softly to a young police officer who had sagged backward against a Boston PD cruiser, as though too weak to stand on his own feet. Brophy put his arm around the other man’s shoulder to comfort him, and the officer collapsed against him, sobbing, as Brophy wrapped both arms around him. Other cops stood nearby in awkward silence, boots shuffling, their gazes to the ground, clearly uncomfortable with this display of raw grief. Although Maura could not hear the words Brophy murmured, she saw the young cop nod, heard him force out a tear-choked response.
    I could never do what Daniel does,
she thought. It was far easier to cut dead flesh