The Mephisto Club

the only one who’s miserable.”
    She sat perfectly still as air hissed from the vents. She kept her gaze focused straight ahead, on the windshield now fogged with condensation, but all her other senses were painfully focused on him. Even if she were blind and deaf, she’d still know he was there, so attuned was she to every aspect of his presence. Attuned, as well, to her own pounding heart, to the sizzling of her nerves. She’d felt a perverse thrill from his declaration of unhappiness. At least she was not the only one suffering, not the only one who lay sleepless at night. In affairs of the heart, misery yearns for company.
    There was a loud rapping on her window. Startled, she turned to see a ghostly silhouette peering in through the fogged glass. She lowered her window and stared into the face of a Boston PD cop.
    “Dr. Isles? The morgue van just arrived.”
    “Thank you. I’ll be right there.” Her window hummed shut again, leaving the glass streaked with watery lines. She shut off the car engine and looked at Daniel. “We have a choice,” she said. “We can both be miserable. Or we can move on with our lives. I’m choosing to move on.” She stepped out of the car and closed the door. She took one breath of air so cold it seemed to sear her throat. But it also swept any last indecision from her brain, leaving it clearer and focused with laser intensity on what she had to do next. She left her car and did not look back. Once again, she headed up the sidewalk, moving from pool to pool of light as she passed beneath streetlamps. Daniel was behind her now; ahead waited a dead woman. And all these cops, standing around. What were they waiting for? Answers that she might not be able to give them?
    She pulled her coat tighter, as though to ward off their stares, thinking of Christmas Eve and another death scene. Of Eve Kassovitz, who’d lingered on the street that night, emptying her stomach into the snowbank. Had Kassovitz experienced even a flicker of a premonition that she would be the next object of Maura’s attention?
    The cops all gathered in silence near the house as the morgue team wheeled Eve Kassovitz along the side yard. When the stretcher bearing the shrouded corpse emerged through the iron gate, they stood with heads bared in the frigid wind, a solemn blue line honoring one of their own. Even after the stretcher had disappeared into the vehicle and the doors had swung shut, they did not break ranks. Only when the taillights winked away into the darkness did the hats go back on, and they began to drift back to their cruisers.
    Maura, too, was about to walk to her car when the front door of the residence opened. She looked up as warm light spilled out and saw the silhouette of a man standing there, looking at her.
    “Excuse me. Are you Dr. Isles?” he asked.
    “Yes?”
    “Mr. Sansone would like to invite you to step inside the house. It’s a great deal warmer in here, and I’ve just made a fresh pot of coffee.”
    She hesitated at the foot of the steps, looking up at the warm glow that framed the manservant. He stood very straight, watching her with an eerie stillness that made her think of a life-size statue she’d once seen in a gag store, a papier-mâché butler holding a tray of fake drinks. She glanced down the street toward her car. Daniel had already left, and she had nothing to look forward to but a lonely drive home and an empty house.
    “Thank you,” she said, and started up the steps. “I could use a cup of coffee.”

TWELVE
    She stepped into the warmth of the front parlor. Her face was still numb from the bite of the wind. Only as she stood before the fireplace, waiting for the butler to notify Mr. Sansone, did sensation slowly creep back into her cheeks; she felt the pleasant sting of reawakened nerves, of flushing skin. She could hear the murmur of conversation in another room—Detective Crowe’s voice, pointed with questioning, answered by a softer response, barely audible. A woman’s. In the fireplace, sparks popped and smoke puffed up, and she realized these were real logs burning, that it was not the fake gas fireplace she’d assumed it was. The medieval oil painting that hung above the hearth might well be authentic as well. It was a portrait of a man wearing robes of wine-red velvet, with a gold crucifix around his neck. Though he was not young, and his dark hair was woven with silver, his eyes burned with a youthful fire. In that room’s flickering light,