The Mephisto Club Read Free Page B

four.
    One of the plates had a linen napkin draped over it, the fabric spattered with blood.
    Gingerly she reached for the napkin. Lifting it up by the corner, she took one look at what lay underneath it, on the plate. Instantly she dropped the napkin and stumbled backward, gasping.
    “I see you found the left hand,” a voice said.
    Maura spun around. “You scared the shit out of me.”
    “You want some seriously scary shit?” said Detective Jane Rizzoli. “Just follow me.” She turned and led Maura up a hallway. Like Frost, Jane looked as if she had just rolled out of bed. Her slacks were wrinkled, her dark hair a wiry tangle. Unlike Frost, she moved fearlessly, her paper-covered shoes whishing across the floor. Of all the detectives who regularly showed up in the autopsy room, Jane was the one most likely to push right up to the table, to lean in for a closer look, and she betrayed no hesitation now as she moved along the hall. It was Maura who lagged behind, her gaze drawn downward to the drips of blood on the floor.
    “Stay along this side,” said Jane. “We’ve got some indistinct footprints here, going in both directions. Some kind of athletic shoe. They’re pretty much dry now, but I don’t want to smear anything.”
    “Who called in the report?”
    “It was a nine-one-one call. Came in just after midnight.”
    “From where?”
    “This residence.”
    Maura frowned. “The victim? Did she try to get help?”
    “No voice on the line. Someone just dialed the emergency operator and left the phone off the hook. First cruiser got here ten minutes after the call. Patrolman found the door unlocked, came into the bedroom, and freaked out.” Jane paused at a doorway and glanced over her shoulder at Maura. A warning look. “Here’s where it gets hairy.”
    The severed hand was bad enough.
    Jane moved aside to let Maura gaze into the bedroom. She did not see the victim; all she saw was the blood. The average human body contains perhaps five liters of it. The same volume of red paint, splashed around a small room, could splatter every surface. What her stunned eyes encountered, as she stared through the doorway, were just such extravagant splatters, like bright streamers flung by boisterous hands across white walls, across furniture and linen.
    “Arterial,” said Rizzoli.
    Maura could only nod, silent, as her gaze followed the arcs of spray, reading the horror story written in red on these walls. As a fourth-year medical student serving a clerkship rotation in the ER, she had once watched a gunshot victim exsanguinate on the trauma table. With the blood pressure crashing, the surgery resident in desperation had performed an emergency laparotomy, hoping to control the internal bleeding. He’d sliced open the belly, releasing a fountain of arterial blood that gushed out of the torn aorta, splashing doctors’ gowns and faces. In the final frantic seconds, as they’d suctioned and packed in sterile towels, all Maura could focus on was that blood. Its brilliant gloss, its meaty smell. She’d reached into the open abdomen to grab a retractor, and the warmth that had soaked through the sleeves of her gown had felt as soothing as a bath. That day, in the operating room, Maura had seen the alarming spurt that even a weak arterial pressure can generate.
    Now, as she gazed at the walls of the bedroom, it was once again the blood that held her focus, that recorded the story of the victim’s final seconds.
When the first cut was made, the victim’s heart was still beating, still generating a blood pressure.
There, above the bed, was where the first machine-gun splatter hit, arcing high onto the wall. After a few vigorous pulses, the arcs began to decay. The body would try to compensate for the falling pressure, the arteries clamping down, the pulse quickening. But with every heartbeat, it would drain itself, accelerating its own demise. When at last the pressure faded and the heart stopped, there would be no more