The Mephisto Club

have to look forward to?”
    “So we’ve got a number of unanswered questions,” said Sansone. “Who unlocked the front door? Why did the victim drive up here in the first place?”
    “The house is for sale,” said Maura. “Maybe she saw the realty sign. Maybe she drove up out of curiosity.”
    “Look, it’s all speculation,” said Jurevich. “We’ve talked and talked about this, and we just don’t know why she came up here.”
    “Tell us more about Sarah Parmley,” said Sansone.
    “She grew up in Purity. Graduated from the local high school. But like too many other kids, she couldn’t find anything to keep her here, so she moved out to California and stayed. The only reason she came back to town was because her aunt died.”
    “From what?” asked Sansone.
    “Oh, it was an accident. Took a tumble down the stairs and broke her neck. So Sarah flew back for the memorial service. She stayed at a motel near town and checked out the day after the funeral. And that’s the last time anyone saw her. Until Saturday, when the caretaker found her car here.” He looked up at the stairs. “I’ll show you the room.”
    Jurevich led the way. Halfway up the stairs, he halted and pointed to the wall. “This is the first one we noticed,” he said. “This cross, here. It’s the same symbol he cut all over her body. Looks like it’s drawn in some kind of red chalk.”
    Maura stared at the symbol and her fingers went numb inside her gloves. “This cross is upside down.”
    “There are more of them upstairs,” said Jurevich. “A lot more.” As they continued toward the second-floor landing, other crosses appeared on the wall. At first it was just a sparse scattering of them. Then, in the gloomy upstairs hallway, the crosses multiplied like an angry infestation massing along the corridor, swarming toward a doorway.
    “In here, it gets bad,” said Jurevich.
    His warning made Maura hesitate outside the room. Even after the others had walked through, she paused on the threshold, bracing herself for whatever awaited her on the other side of the doorway.
    She stepped through, into a chamber of horrors.
    It was not the dried lake of blood on the floor that captured her gaze; it was the handprints covering every wall, as though a multitude of lost souls had left their bloody testament as they’d passed through this room.
    “These prints were all made with the same hand,” said Jurevich. “Identical palm prints and ridge lines. I don’t think our killer was stupid enough to leave his own.” He looked at Jane. “I’m willing to bet these were all made with Sarah Parmley’s severed hand. The one that turned up at your crime scene.”
    “Jesus,” murmured Jane. “He used her hand like some kind of rubber stamp.”
    With blood as his ink,
thought Maura, her gaze traveling the walls. How many hours did he spend in this room, dipping the hand in that pool of blood, pressing it to the wall like a child with a stamp kit? Then her gaze focused on the nearest wall, on writing that had been obscured by the overlying handprints. She moved closer, staring at the words that tracked across the wall. It was Latin, and the same three words were repeated again and again. She followed the text as it circled the room in an unbroken line, continuing through corners, like a serpent coiling ever more tightly around them.
    Abyssus abyssum invocat abyssus abyssum invocat abyssus abyssum invocat…
    Their meaning suddenly dawned on her and she took a step back, chilled to the marrow.
    “
Hell calls to Hell,
” Sansone murmured. She had not noticed that he’d moved right beside her.
    “Is that what it means?” asked Jane.
    “That’s the literal meaning. It also has another.”
    “
Hell calls to Hell
sounds ominous enough.”
    “
Abyssus abyssum invocat
is a saying that dates back at least a thousand years. It means, ‘
One evil deed leads to another
.’”
    Maura stared at the words. “He’s telling us this is only the beginning. He’s just getting started.”
    “And these crosses”—Sansone pointed to a hornet’s nest of them, clustered on one wall, as though massing for attack—“they’re all upside down. It’s a mockery of Christianity, a rejection of the church.”
    “Yeah. We’ve been told it’s a satanic symbol,” said Jurevich.
    “These words and crosses were written here first,” said Maura, her gaze on the rivulets of blood that had trickled down the wall, partly obscuring the stream of