The Mephisto Club

whole night? Were you and Brophy sitting there, talking?”
    Maura heaved out a breath. “No. The lights…they were off.”
    “The house was dark.”
    “Yes.”
    “And someone standing outside, watching your windows, would have to assume—”
    “You know what the hell they’d assume.”
    “Would they be right?”
    Maura met her gaze. “I was freaked out last night, Jane! Daniel was there for me. He’s always been there for me. We didn’t plan for this to happen. It’s the only time—the one time—” Her voice faded. “I didn’t want to be alone.”
    Jane sat down at the kitchen table as well. “You know, those words take on new meaning.
I have sinned.
”
    “We’ve all sinned,” shot back Maura. “Each and every damn one of us.”
    “I’m not criticizing you, okay?”
    “Yes you are. You think I can’t hear it in your voice?”
    “If you’re feeling guilty, Doc, it’s not because of anything I said.”
    Maura stared back at Jane’s unrelenting gaze and thought,
She’s right, of course. My guilt is all my own.
    “We will have to talk to Father Brophy about this, you know. About what happened last night.”
    Maura gave a resigned sigh. “Please, when you do talk to him, just keep it discreet.”
    “I’m not exactly bringing in the TV cameras, okay?”
    “Detective Frost doesn’t have to know about this.”
    “Of course he has to know. He’s my partner.”
    Maura dropped her head in her hands. “Oh, God.”
    “This is relevant to the case, and you know it. If I didn’t tell Frost, he’d have every right to cry foul.”
    So I won’t be able to look at Frost again without seeing a reflection of my own guilt,
thought Maura, cringing at the thought of Frost’s reaction. One’s reputation was such a fragile thing; one tiny crack and it disintegrates. For two years, they had regarded her as the queen of the dead, the unflappable medical examiner who could gaze without flinching at sights that turned the stomachs of even the most seasoned investigators. Now they’d look at her and see the weaknesses, the flaws of a lonely woman.
    Footsteps thumped on the front porch. It was Frost, coming back into the house. She did not want to be present when he learned the tawdry truth. Uptight, upright Barry Frost would be shocked to hear who’d been sleeping in her bed.
    But he was not the only person who’d just stepped into the house. Maura heard voices talking, and she looked up in sudden recognition as Anthony Sansone swept into the kitchen, followed by Frost.
    “Are you all right?” Sansone asked her.
    Jane said, “This really isn’t a good time for a visit, Mr. Sansone. Would you mind stepping outside?”
    He ignored Jane; his gaze stayed on Maura. He was not dressed in black today, but in shades of gray. A tweed jacket, an ash-colored shirt. So different from Daniel, she thought; this man I cannot read, and he makes me uncomfortable.
    “I just saw the markings on your door,” he said. “When did that happen?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometime last night.”
    “I should have driven you home myself.”
    Jane cut in. “I really think you should leave now.”
    “Wait,” said Frost. “You need to hear what he says, about what’s on the door. What it might mean.”
    “
I have sinned
? I think the meaning is pretty obvious.”
    “Not the words,” said Sansone. “The symbols beneath them.”
    “We’ve already heard about the all-seeing eye. Your friend Oliver Stark explained it.”
    “He may have been mistaken.”
    “You don’t agree that it’s the eye of Horus?”
    “I think it may represent something else entirely.” He looked at Maura. “Come outside and I’ll explain it to you.”
    Maura had no wish to once again confront those accusing words on her door, but his sense of urgency forced her to follow him. Stepping outside onto the porch, she paused, blinking against the sun’s glare. It was such a beautiful Sunday morning, a morning to linger over coffee and the newspaper. Instead she was afraid to sit in her own house, afraid to look at her own front door.
    She took a breath and turned to confront what had been drawn in ocher that was the color of dried blood. The words
I have sinned
screamed at her, an accusation that made her want to shrink, to hide her guilty face.
    But it was not the words that Sansone focused on. He pointed to the two symbols drawn below them. The larger one they had seen before, on his garden door.
    “That looks exactly