The motel walls were paper-thin. Lying in bed, Maura could hear Jane talking on the phone in the next room. How nice it must be, she thought, to call your husband and laugh out loud together. To share a public kiss, a hug, without first having to glance around, looking for anyone who might know you, and disapprove. Her own call to Daniel had been brief and furtive. There’d been other people talking in the background, others in the room listening to him, which was why he’d sounded so reserved. Was this how it would always be? Their private lives cut off from their public lives, and never an intersection between them? Here were the real wages of sin. Not hellfire and damnation, but heartbreak.
In the next room, Jane ended her call. A moment later, the TV came on, and then Maura heard the sound of running water in the shower. Only a wall separated them, but the barrier between them was far more formidable than wood and plaster. They’d said hardly a word since Binghamton, and now, just the sound of Jane’s TV was an escalating annoyance. Maura pulled a pillow over her head to shut out the noise, but it could not muffle the whispers of doubt in her mind. Even when Jane’s room finally fell silent, Maura lay awake and aware of the minutes, then the hours, ticking by.
It was not yet seven the next morning when she finally climbed out of bed, exhausted from her restless night, and looked out the window. The sky was a claustrophobic gray. Snow had fallen overnight, and the cars in the parking lot were blanketed in white. She wanted to go home. To hell with the bastard who wrote on her door. She wanted the comfort of her own bed, her own kitchen. But a long day still stretched ahead of her, another day of resentful silences and disapproving jibes from Jane. Just grit your teeth and get through it.
It took two cups of coffee before she felt ready to face the day. Fueled by a stale cheese Danish, compliments of the motel’s continental breakfast, she carried her overnight bag to the parking lot, where Jane already had the engine running.
“Jurevich will meet us at the house,” said Jane.
“You know how to find it?”
“He gave me directions.” Jane frowned at Maura. “Man, you look wiped out.”
“I didn’t sleep well.”
“Mattress was pretty bad, huh?”
“Among other things.” Maura tossed her bag onto the backseat and pulled her door shut. They sat without speaking for a moment, the heater blowing at their knees.
“You’re still pissed at me,” said Jane.
“I’m not feeling really chatty right now.”
“I’m just trying to be a friend, okay? If I see a friend’s life going off the rails, I think it’s my duty to say something about it.”
“And I heard you.” Maura snapped on her seat belt. “Can we get going now?”
They left the town of Norwich and headed northwest, along roads slippery with newly fallen snow. Thick clouds threatened yet more snow today, and the view that Maura saw from her window was smudged in shades of gray. The cheese Danish sat like a lump of concrete in her stomach, and she leaned back, eyes closed against the nausea.
She startled awake what seemed like only moments later, to find that they were now struggling along an unplowed road, Jane’s tires churning through snow. Dense woods pressed in on both sides, and the clouds had darkened since Maura had fallen asleep.
“How much farther to Purity?” she asked.
“We already passed through the village. You didn’t miss anything.”
“You sure this is the right road?”
“These were his directions.”
“Jane, we’re going to get stuck.”
“I’ve got all-wheel drive, okay? And we can always call a tow truck.”
Maura took out her cell phone. “No signal. Good luck.”
“Here. This has got to be the turnoff,” said Jane, pointing to a realty sign that was half-buried in snow. “The house is for sale, remember?” She gunned the engine and the Subaru fishtailed, then the tires found purchase and they surged up the road, which now began to climb. The trees parted, giving way to a view of the house that stood on the knoll.
Jane pulled into the driveway and gazed up at a three-story Victorian towering above them. “Wow,” she murmured. “This is a pretty big place.”
Crime-scene tape fluttered on the railings of a broad covered porch. Although the clapboards were badly in need of paint, the signs of neglect could not disguise the fact that this was once a handsome home, with a view to match. They climbed out of the car and flying snow stung their faces as they mounted the steps to the porch. Peering through a window, Maura could see ghostly shapes of sheet-covered furniture but little else in the shadowy interior.
“Door’s locked,” said Jane.
“What time’s he supposed to meet us?”
“Fifteen minutes ago.”
Maura huffed out a cloudy breath. “This wind is freezing. How long are we supposed to wait?”
“Let me see if I can get a signal.” Jane frowned at her cell phone. “One bar. That might do it.”
“I’m going to sit in the car.” Maura went down the steps and was just about to open the door when she heard Jane say, “There he is now.”
Turning, Maura saw a red Jeep Cherokee driving up the road. Following right behind it was a black Mercedes. The Cherokee parked next to Jane’s Subaru and a man with crew-cut hair stepped out, dressed for the weather in a voluminous down jacket and heavy boots. He held out a gloved hand to Maura, and she saw a humorless face, chilly gray eyes.
“Detective Rizzoli?” he asked.
“No, I’m Dr. Isles. You must be Detective Jurevich.”
He nodded as they shook hands. “I’m with the Chenango County Sheriff’s Office.” He glanced at Jane, who was coming down the porch steps to meet him. “You’re Rizzoli?”
“Yeah. We just got here a few minutes…” Jane stopped, her gaze suddenly freezing on the black Mercedes, on the man who had just stepped out of it. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“He predicted you’d react that way,” said Jurevich.
Anthony Sansone strode toward them, black coat flapping in the wind. He nodded to Jane, a curt greeting that acknowledged the obvious: that she did not welcome him. Then his gaze fixed on Maura. “You’ve already seen the body?”
She nodded. “Last night.”
“Do you think we’re dealing with the same killer?”
“What’s with this word we?” Jane cut in. “I wasn’t aware you worked in law enforcement, Mr. Sansone.”
Unruffled, he turned to face her. “I won’t get in your way.”
“This is a crime scene. You shouldn’t even be here.”
“I don’t believe Chenango County is in your jurisdiction. This is up to Detective Jurevich.”
Jane looked at Jurevich. “You’re giving him access?”
Jurevich gave a shrug. “Our crime scene unit’s already processed this house. There’s no reason he can’t walk through it with us.”
“So now it’s a public tour.”
“This has been cleared through the sheriff’s office, by special request.”
“Whose request?”
Jurevich glanced at Sansone, whose face revealed nothing.
“We’re wasting time out here,” said Sansone. “I’m sure we’d all like to get out of this wind.”
“Detective?” pressed Jane.
“If you have any objections,” said Jurevich, clearly unhappy at being caught in the middle, “you can take it up with the Department of Justice. Now, why don’t we get inside before we all freeze?” He climbed the steps to the porch, with Sansone right behind him.
Jane stared after them and said softly, “What’s his pull, anyway?”
“Maybe you should just ask him,” said Maura, and she started up the steps. Jurevich had already unlocked the front door, and she followed the men into the house. Inside, she found it scarcely warmer, but at least they were now sheltered from the wind. Jane came in behind her and closed the door. After the glare of the snow, it took a moment for Maura’s eyes to adjust to the interior gloom. Looking through a doorway into the front parlor, she saw sheet-draped furniture and the dull gleam of wood floors. Pale winter light shone in through the windows, casting the room in shades of gray.
Jurevich pointed to the bottom of the stairs. “You can’t see them, but Luminol turned up lots of bloody smears on these steps and in this foyer. Looks like he wiped up after himself as he left the house, so any footwear evidence is pretty indistinct.”
“You went over the whole house with Luminol?” asked Jane.
“Luminol, UV, alternate light source. We checked every room. There’s a kitchen and dining room through that doorway. And a study beyond the parlor. Except for the shoe prints here in the foyer, nothing very interesting turned up on the first floor.” He faced the stairway. “All the action took place upstairs.”
“You said this house was vacant,” said Sansone. “How did the killer get in? Was there any sign of forced entry?”
“No, sir. Windows were shut tight. And the realtor swears she always locks the front door when she leaves.”
“Who has a key?”
“Well, she does. And she says it never leaves her office.”
“How old is the lock?”
“Ah, geez, I don’t know. It’s probably twenty years old.”
“I assume the owner has a key, too.”
“She hasn’t been back to Purity in years. I hear she’s living somewhere in Europe. We haven’t been able to reach her.” Jurevich nodded at the sheet-draped furniture. “There’s a thick layer of dust on everything. You can see no one’s lived here for a while. Damn shame, too. A house this solidly built was meant to last a century, and this one just sits here empty. The caretaker comes up once a month to check on it. That’s how he found the body. He saw Sarah Parmley’s rental car parked out front, and then he found the front door unlocked.”
“Have you checked out the caretaker?” asked Jane.
“He’s not a suspect.”
“Why not?”
“Well, to start off with, he’s seventy-one years old. And he just got out of the hospital three weeks ago. Prostate surgery.” Jurevich looked at Sansone. “See what men 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 Latin. She read the splatters, saw the arcing droplets left by arterial spray. “Before he killed her, before he slashed her neck, he took the time to decorate these walls.”
“The question is,” said Jurevich, “did he write these words while she was lying here, waiting to die? Or was the room already prepared as a killing place before the victim even arrived?”
“And then he lured her here?”
“There’s clearly evidence of preparation.” Jurevich pointed to the wooden floor, where blood had dried in a frozen pool. “You see the nails there? He came equipped with a hammer and nylon cord. That’s how he immobilized her. He tied the cord around her wrists and ankles. Nailed the knots to the floor. Once she was restrained, he could have taken his time.”
Maura thought of what had been carved into Sarah Parmley’s flesh. Then she looked up at the same symbols drawn on the walls in red ocher. A crucifix, turned upside down. Lucifer’s cross.
Sansone said, “But how would he lure her up here? What could possibly have drawn her to this house?”
“We know that a call came in, to her motel room,” said Jurevich. “It was the day she checked out. The motel desk clerk transferred it to her room.”
“You didn’t mention that,” said Jane.
“Because we’re not sure it’s significant. I mean, Sarah Parmley grew up in this town. She probably knew a lot of people here, people who’d call her after her aunt’s funeral.”
“Was it a local call?”
“Gas station pay phone, in Binghamton.”
“That’s a few hours away.”
“Right. Which is one reason we discount it as coming from the killer.”
“Is there another reason?”
“Yes. The caller was a woman.”
“The motel clerk’s sure about that? It was two weeks ago.”
“She doesn’t budge. We’ve asked her several times.”
Sansone said, “Evil has no gender.”
“And what are the chances that a woman did this?” said Jane, pointing to the wall, to the bloody handprints.
“I wouldn’t automatically reject the possibility it’s a woman,” said Sansone. “We have no usable footprints here.”
“I don’t reject anything. I’m just going with the odds.”
“That’s all they are. Odds.”
“How many killers have you tracked down?” shot back Jane.
He regarded her with an unflinching stare. “I think the answer would surprise you, Detective.”
Maura turned to Jurevich. “The killer must have spent hours here, in this house. He must have left hair, fibers.”
“Our crime-scene unit went over all these rooms with ALS.”
“They couldn’t have come up empty.”
“Oh, they came up with plenty. This is an old house, and it’s been occupied on and off for the last seventy years. We turned up hairs and fibers all over these rooms. Found something that surprised us. Let me show you the rest of the house.”
They went back into the hallway, and Jurevich pointed through a doorway. “Another bedroom in there. Lot of dust, plus a few cat hairs, but otherwise nothing that caught our interest.” He continued down the hall, past another bedroom, past a bathroom with black-and-white tiles, giving the rooms only dismissive waves. They came to the last doorway. “Here,” he said. “This turned out to be a very interesting room.”
Maura heard the ominous note in his voice, but when she stepped into the bedroom, she saw nothing at all alarming, just a space devoid of all furniture, with blank walls. The wood floor here was in far better shape than in the rest of the house, its boards recently refinished. Two bare windows looked out over the knoll’s wooded slope, which swept down to the frozen lake below.
“So what makes this room interesting?” asked Jane.
“It’s what we found on the floor.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“It showed up when we sprayed it with Luminol. The crime-scene unit surveyed the whole house, to see where our killer might have tracked blood. Whether he left traces that we couldn’t see in other rooms. We found his footprints in the hallway, on the stairs, and in the foyer, all of them invisible to the naked eye. So we know he did try to clean up as he exited the house. But you can’t really hide blood. Spray it with Luminol, and it’ll light right up.” Jurevich looked down at the floor. “It sure as hell lit up in here.”
“More shoe prints?” asked Jane.
“Not just shoe prints. It was like a wave of blood had washed through this room, splashed on the wall. You could see it in the cracks between the floorboards, where it seeped into the molding. That wall there, there were big swipes of it, where someone tried to wash it away. But they couldn’t erase it. Even though you can’t see it now, it was all over the place. We stood here, looking at this whole damn room glowing, and it freaked the hell out of us, I can tell you. Because when we turned on our lights, it looked just the way it does now. Nothing. Not a trace of blood visible to the naked eye.”
Sansone stared at the walls, as though trying to see those shocking echoes of death. He looked down at the floor, its boards sanded smooth. “This can’t be fresh blood,” he murmured. “Something else happened in this house.”
Maura remembered the FOR SALE sign, half-buried in snow, posted at the bottom of the knoll. She thought of the weathered clapboards, the peeling paint. Why was such a handsome home abandoned to years of neglect? “That’s why no one will buy it,” she said.
Jurevich nodded. “It happened about twelve years ago, just before I moved to this area. I only found out about it when the realtor told me. It’s not something she likes to advertise, since the house is on the market, but it’s a matter of disclosure. A little detail that every potential buyer would want to know. And it pretty much sends them running in the other direction.”
Maura looked down at the floor, at seams and cracks harboring blood that she could not see. “Who died in here?”
“In this room, it was a suicide. But when you think about everything else that happened in this house, it’s like the whole damn building is bad luck.”
“There were other deaths?”
Jurevich nodded. “There was a family living here at the time. A doctor and his wife, a son and daughter. Plus a nephew staying with them for the summer. From what everyone says, the Sauls were good people. Close family, lots of friends.”
Nothing is exactly what it seems, thought Maura. Nothing ever is.
“Their eleven-year-old son died first. It was a heartbreaking accident. Kid headed down to the lake to go fishing, and he didn’t come home. They figure he must have fallen into the water and panicked. They found his body the next day. From there, it just got worse for the family. A week later, the mother takes a tumble down the stairs and snaps her neck. She’d been taking some sedatives, and they figure she just lost her balance.”
“That’s an interesting coincidence,” said Sansone.
“What?”
“Isn’t that how Sarah Parmley’s aunt died? A fall down the stairs? A broken neck?”
Jurevich paused. “Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it. That is a coincidence, isn’t it?”
Jane said, “You haven’t told us about the suicide.”
Jurevich nodded. “It was the husband. Think about it-what he’d just suffered through. First his son drowns. Then his wife falls down the stairs. So two days later, he takes out his gun, sits here in his bedroom, and blows off his own head.” Jurevich looked at the floor. “It’s his blood on the floor. Think about it. A whole family, practically wiped out within a few weeks.”
“What happened to the daughter?” asked Jane.
“She moved in with friends. Graduated from high school a year later, and left town.”
“She’s the one who owns this house?”
“Yeah. It’s still in her name. She’s been trying to unload it all these years. Realtor says there’ve been a few lookers, but then they hear what happened, and they walk away. Would you live in this house? You couldn’t pay me enough. It’s a bad-luck place. You can almost feel it when you walk in that front door.”
Maura looked around at the walls and gave a shudder. “If there’s such a thing as a haunted house, this would be it.”
“Abyssus abyssum invocat,” said Sansone quietly. “It takes on a different meaning, now.”
They all looked at him. “What?” said Jurevich.
“That’s why he chose this for his killing place. He knew the history of this house. He knew what happened here, and he was attracted to it. You can call it a doorway to another dimension. Or a vortex. But there are dark places in this world, foul places that can only be called cursed.”
Jane gave an uneasy laugh. “You really believe that?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter. But if our killer believes it, then he chose this house because it called to him. Hell calls to Hell.”
“Oh man,” said Jurevich, “you’re giving me goose bumps.” He looked around at the blank walls and shuddered, as though feeling a chill wind. “You know what I think? They should just burn this place. Burn it right down to the ground. No one in his right mind will ever buy it.”
“You said it was a doctor’s family living here,” said Jane.
“That’s right. The Sauls.”
“And they had a nephew staying with them that summer.”
Jurevich nodded. “Fifteen-year-old kid.”
“What happened to that boy? After the tragedies?”
“The realtor says the kid left Purity a short time later. His mother came and got him.”
“Do you know anything else about him?”
“Remember, it was twelve years ago. No one knew him very well. And he was only here for that summer.” Jurevich paused. “I know what you’re thinking. The kid would be twenty-seven right now. And he’d know all about what happened here.”
“He might also have a key to the front door,” said Jane. “How can we find out more about him?”
“His cousin, I assume. The woman who owns this house, Lily Saul.”
“But you don’t know how to find her, either.”
“The realtor’s been trying.”
Jane said, “I’d like to see the police reports on the Saul family. I assume the deaths were all investigated.”
“I’ll call my office, have the files copied for you. You can pick them up on your way out of town. Are you driving back to Boston tonight?”
“We planned to, right after lunch.”
“Then I’ll try to have them ready by then. You might want to head over to Roxanne’s Café. Great turkey club sandwiches. And it’s right across the street from our office.”
“Will that give you enough time to copy everything?”
“There’s not much to the files beyond the autopsies and sheriff’s reports. In all three cases, the manner and cause of death were pretty apparent.”
Sansone had been standing at the window, gazing outside. Now he turned to Jurevich. “What’s the name of your local newspaper here?”
“All of Chenango County’s pretty much covered by the Evening Sun. Their office is in Norwich.” Jurevich looked at his watch. “There’s really nothing else to show you here.”
Back outside, they stood in the biting wind as Jurevich locked the front door and gave it a hard rattle to make sure it was secure. “If we make any headway on our end,” he said to Jane, “I’ll give you a call. But I think this killer’s going to be your catch.” He zipped up his jacket and pulled on his gloves. “He’s playing in your neighborhood, now.”