Skeleton Justice (14 page)

Blood, lots of it—dried, brown, but still unmistakably blood. It had spattered the kitchen counter, dripped down the cabinets, and smeared on the floor. When it had been fresh, someone had stepped in it, leaving a trail of smeary footprints to the refrigerator. Bloody prints marked the fridge handle, a ghoulish version of the sticky smudges the kids who used to live here must have once left.

Manny could feel her own blood surging through her arteries, propelled by a heart beating twice as fast as normal. Was this Travis’s blood? What if he had died because the feds had refused to question the Sandovals?

“We gotta call-a da nine-one-one.” Mrs. C.’s English had come back to her as she backed away from the gruesome scene.

“Yes, call them from your apartment,” Manny said. “We’ll wait here.” She grabbed the super’s elbow, pulling him toward the hall. “We shouldn’t touch anything. The police won’t want us in here.”

“I’m going downstairs,” he said. “I don’t know nothin’ about this anyway, and I don’t like blood. Cops can come see me there.”

Manny was happy to see him go. She knew she should go out in the hall to wait for the cops, but she couldn’t resist looking around a little more. She’d already contaminated the crime scene by walking through each room. Walking through again wouldn’t make matters any worse, would it? She knew how Jake would answer that question, but she shut his voice out of her head.

But as she prowled through the apartment, Jake’s voice continued to follow her.
Don’t touch anything
, it said.

“I won’t, I won’t,” Manny murmured, barely realizing she was speaking aloud. “I’m just going to look in the bathroom again. Isn’t that one of the first places you check out?”

She poked her head in that door again. The toilet seat was up, confirming a man’s presence. She looked in the bowl in case something had been carelessly discarded there, but it was empty. She knew this room could be a trove of fingerprints—you wouldn’t wear gloves in the john. She didn’t want to smudge anything, or add her own prints to the mix. Still, the medicine cabinet tempted her. “Oh, like you wouldn’t open this? I’ll be careful,” she assured her inner Jake.

Rooting through her purse, Manny produced a pencil. Placing the eraser end under the edge of the cabinet door, she clicked it open. Rusty, dusty, and empty, except for two paper-wrapped tubes. Tampons. Left over from Maria’s occupancy, or had there been a woman here, too?

She went back into the bedroom.
Don’t even think of touching that sleeping bag!
Jake’s voice cautioned.

“Don’t worry. I know it’s full of fibers and hairs and skin flakes. I’m just going to peek in the closet.” But the closets in both bedrooms were empty, and Manny felt herself drawn back toward the kitchen. She swore she could feel Jake dragging her back.

She shook him off. “The police will be here any minute. This is my last chance. I’ll be careful.”

Manny stood on the threshold and surveyed the kitchen carnage. She thought of all the hours she had spent with Jake in his lab, reviewing crime-scene photos… all the things he’d taught her about blood-spatter patterns. Low velocity: Large round symmetrical drops meant someone was dripping blood while moving very slowly or standing still. Medium velocity: More elliptical drops with a tail showing the direction the blood drop was traveling. High velocity: usually from a weapon exerting force, a multitude of tiny, fine particles. This blood didn’t seem to fit any of those patterns.

“There’s something weird about this, don’t you think?” she whispered.

Why was most of the blood on the counter, not the floor? She tried to imagine a scenario that would account for this. The victim was shot and fell against the counter? Then where was the bullet hole? And why hadn’t Mrs. C. heard anything? Okay, not shot—knifed. But if the victim fell onto the counter, that would indicate the attacker came at him from the middle of the kitchen. The blood would spurt out and spatter across the kitchen, not drain out the victim’s back onto the counter. And why those perfect drips down the front of the cabinets? If the victim had slumped to the floor, that blood would be smeared.

This pattern looked familiar all right, but not from crime-scene photos. It reminded her of something that had happened in her own kitchen last week. She’d knocked over a glass of orange juice; it had formed a puddle on the counter, then dripped down the cabinets and formed a smaller puddle on the floor. Then Mycroft had come in to sniff, and tracked juice across the floor.

“Look at that, Jake. Doesn’t it seem like that blood has been spilled, literally? Like from a container? But who has a container of blood?”

A tingle pricked Manny’s scalp. Her gaze shifted to the bloody prints on the fridge. “C’mon, Jake, I’ve got to. I can’t
not
open it.” Manny dug through her purse again, this time producing a silk scarf. She sighed. “Oh well, at least it’s not the Hermès.” Wrapping it around her hand and using just two fingers, she opened the refrigerator.

Inside, more blood. Not spilled, but stored neatly in vials. Manny counted seven. One for each of the Vampire’s victims.

Jake and Mycroft surveyed the limp form on the couch. Whimpering, Mycroft licked the slack hand dangling near the floor. Jake massaged the blistered feet.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to send out for food?” he asked.

Manny raised her hand in protest and turned her head. “I’m too exhausted to eat.”

About seventeen hours had passed since Manny and Jake had infiltrated the Sandovals’ apartment. Over fifteen since she had headed to Brooklyn searching for Travis and Jake had been called to the scene of the Vampire’s latest victim. To Jake, it felt like enough had happened to fill three weeks. To Manny, it must have felt more like three lifetimes.

He moved to sit beside her and smoothed the hair away from her brow. “Stop blaming yourself. No one could have anticipated this.”

Manny pushed off his hand and sat up. “You’re right. No one could have anticipated that of all the millions of apartments in New York, Paco Sandoval would send me to look for my client in the one that’s apparently being used by the Vampire.” Manny jumped off the sofa with a jolt of energy that sent Mycroft scampering for cover. “No one could have anticipated that a kid who was already in a ridiculous amount of trouble for being in the vicinity when a mailbox blew up is now in an absolutely mind-boggling amount of trouble for being an escaped federal prisoner and a suspect in the most bizarre murder case New York has seen since the Son of Sam.”

Manny kicked at a pile of magazines that blocked her restless pacing. “You’re absolutely spot-on, dear. Even someone with an imagination as overactive as mine couldn’t have predicted this!”

Jake observed her with mounting concern. The hours of interrogation she had been subjected to by the New York police, the federal prosecutor, and the FBI had taken a toll. Manny was teetering on the edge of total exhaustion.

“You need to sleep. What can I get you to help you relax?”

“How about a rag soaked in ether? That ought to do the trick.” Manny plopped back onto the sofa. “What the hell is going on here? How can it be that your case and my case are related? That completely shatters the limits of coincidence.”

He nodded. He’d been agonizing over the same question ever since Manny had called him from the apartment in Brooklyn to report her discovery. The previous morning, they had been following two distinctly separate paths in pursuit of two very different criminals. Now they were apparently on the same road, searching for what? A killer and his accomplice? Or a killer and his victim? Because Jake didn’t believe for one moment that Travis was the Vampire. No eighteen-year-old, no matter how clever, could have masterminded these attacks.

And what were his and Manny’s roles in this drama? It made sense that he, the most experienced member of the ME’s staff, would be working on the Vampire case. But what was the significance of that stupid argument with Pederson when he seemed to be warning Jake away? And why, of all the criminal lawyers in New York, was the woman he happened to be involved with chosen to represent Travis Heaton? No matter how insulted Manny might be to hear him say it, she wasn’t the obvious first choice to defend the Preppy Terrorist. So how had she gotten the job? Who had recommended her? They needed to get to the bottom of this connection.

Jake walked over to Manny and pulled her gently to her feet. “For some reason that I can’t fathom, someone wants us both on this case. Now we’re going to start figuring out why.”

Manny sat bleary-eyed at the kitchen table, trying to focus on the typewritten words swimming across the piece of paper Jake had set before her. “How can you be so perky at six in the morning? You didn’t get any more sleep than I did.”

“I did my internship at Bellevue. Learning to function on three hours’ sleep was part of the training back then.” Jake placed a mug of coffee in her hands and let her take the first sip before he continued. “These are the questions we need answered by the end of the day. The first two items concern your matter.”

The first half cup of scalding French roast was having its effect. Manny had acquired enough mental clarity to read aloud. “‘Who recommended Manny to represent Travis Heaton?’ You remember … you were there when Kenneth called me to tell me about the case.”

“Yes, but who called Kenneth? Maureen Heaton herself?”

Manny took another gulp of coffee. “No, some friend of hers. But I don’t know who. Kenneth was excited and I was excited. I don’t recall what he told me. He was supposed to type an intake sheet, but he’d just had his nails manicured and …”

“Let’s call him now and disturb his beauty sleep,” Jake said.

“Can’t. He’s gone away for a romantic getaway with a new friend. He told me he wouldn’t be answering his cell for a few days.”

“I’m not walking him down the aisle.” Jake rolled his eyes. “Can you ask Mrs. Heaton directly?”

“I will.” Manny let the paper slip from her fingers. Something floated on the edge of her memory, but she couldn’t quite pin it down.

“What’s the matter?” Jake asked.

“I’m trying to remember. … The day I won that bail hearing in court and got Travis out of jail, Maureen hugged me and said, ‘I’m so glad Tracy sent you to me.’ At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but I don’t know anyone named Tracy, man or woman.”

“You know a million people.” Jake handed Manny the phone. Manny started to dial, then abruptly hung up. “No, I can’t. Maureen’s going to be ballistic with this new development. Since it’s only six a.m., I can’t talk to her yet. What’s second on the list?”

She picked up the paper and read, “‘Follow-up with Jersey police contact re street name Freak.’ Oh, I already did that yesterday morning. I forgot to tell you about it in all the excitement. Apparently, Freak is a rather popular street name. There were three in the database. One was black, and we know our guy is Caucasian. One’s in prison upstate. And one recently completed a short jail term for promoting and participating in dog fights in Paterson.” Manny shuddered. “Slimeball. They should have locked him up and thrown away the key. He could possibly be our guy.”

“You’re not prowling around the back alleys of Paterson looking for dog fights,” Jake warned. “We’ll let Sam handle it. And before he does that, he can translate that letter from Paco’s computer.”

“Sam speaks Spanish?”

“Fluently. Learned in the jungles of Guatemala.”

“What was he doing there?”

Jake shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

For a split second, Manny fantasized that Sam was an undercover CIA mercenary. “Didn’t he spend the night here? I’ll go wake him up.”

“No need, my dear woman.” Sam entered the kitchen, followed by Mycroft, whose leash was trailing behind him. “I dreamed I was being kissed awake by a striking redhead. Turned out it was no dream, just Mycroft having a bladder emergency.”

“Thanks for walking him, Sam.” Manny squinted at him. “You just stayed in the neighborhood, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Last time your brother took Mycroft for a walk, he used him as a pimp,” Manny told Jake. “Took him to Fifty-fourth in front of Manolo Blahnik to pick up well-heeled women. However, I have a way for him to make up for that little indiscretion.”

Manny patted the chair beside her, inviting Sam to sit. “I have a translation job for you. Jake, hand me my purse, please.”

Jake hoisted the large leather Fendi purse from the spot by the door where Manny had dropped it the night before. “Geez, what’s in here? A lead vest in case you encounter plutonium on your daily rounds?”

“Just the bare essentials.” Manny unzipped the bag and began rooting around for the sheets of paper she had printed from Paco’s computer. The bag had multiple compartments, but she was sure she had quickly stuffed the letter in the main one on her way out of the Sandovals’ apartment. In the course of the day, it must have worked its way down to the bottom of the bag. Out from the leathery depths came her BlackBerry, wallet, keys, and checkbook. With the major obstacles cleared, she peered in. There was a glimmer of white! Manny pulled. A receipt for the Chrome Hearts sunglasses she had purchased two months ago.

Jake eyed the total. “Surely the decimal point’s in the wrong place?”

“I’m too law-abiding to buy cheap knockoffs.” Manny kept digging. “Oh hell—I never mailed Aunt Joan’s birthday card.”

Jake shook his head as he poured his brother a cup of coffee. “You might want to scramble yourself some eggs. This could take a while.”

“It must be in the side compartment,” Manny said. Out came her makeup bag, the latest
Vogue
, a bag of dried apricots, and a hairbrush the size of a Ping-Pong paddle.

“Dried apricots?” Sam asked.

“I’m trying to snack healthy. They’re loaded with antioxidants.”

“They’re also unopened.”

“Ah! Here it is.” Manny grinned with relief as she unfolded a bundle of white paper. Then the smile faded away as she read, “‘You are cordially invited to attend a trunk show for Barry Kieselstein-Cord at Bergdorf Goodman.’”

“This is ridiculous. It has to be in here.” Manny undid every zipper and snap on the huge purse, turned it upside down, and shook. Sam snatched up his coffee cup to protect it from the cascade of flotsam and jetsam.

When the dust had settled, the two men surveyed the kitchen table with the awe of archaeologists entering an unsealed tomb.

“A socket wrench?”

“A lacrosse ball?”

“I had to tighten the bolt on Kenneth’s office chair. And that ball came this close to hitting Mycroft—twice. I wouldn’t give it back to those girls in the park.”

With every item in the purse spread out on the table, Manny searched systematically, her panic rising with each dry-cleaning receipt and Chinese take-out menu, none of these items proving to be the missing letter.

Finally, she grabbed the kitchen trash can and swept a pile of junk into it. “The letter’s gone.” She whirled on Jake. “And I did
not
lose it. What goes in the bag stays in the bag. Until it is moved to another bag. Someone stole it.”