Skeleton Justice (17 page)

“I gotta pee,” Deanie announced after finishing off her second glass of soda.

“Manny, go with her,” Jake instructed.

They had found Deanie’s high-heeled mules on the way out of the storeroom, and Deanie now clumped down the hall to the restroom, with Manny following. Making small talk seemed ridiculous, so Manny kept her mouth shut.

She opened the door for her charge and followed her in. The Club E ladies’ room was as big, dim, and uninviting as the rest of the place. A grimy-looking divan stood against one wall. Not caring to dwell on the types of activities that might take place on it in the course of the average evening, Manny stood guard by the sinks as Deanie went into the last stall. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, Manny pulled out her brush and lipstick and began to repair the damage of the morning’s excitement. In a few minutes, she heard the toilet flush. She put away her makeup and waited for Deanie’s stall door to open.

It stayed shut.

“Deanie? Are you okay in there?”

No answer.

“Deanie?” Manny strode across the bathroom and rattled the stall door. “Open up!”

Only then did it strike Manny that the stall doors came all the way down to the floor and were at least six feet high, the better to protect their clubgoing occupants from prying eyes as they got high or got screwed.

Heart pounding, Manny went into the adjacent stall and jumped up on the toilet. Propping one leg on the toilet back, she pulled herself up far enough to look over the top of the stall divider.

Deanie’s stall was empty. A small window facing the parking lot was open.

Jake patted Manny on the shoulder. “Don’t beat yourself up. This may actually work to our advantage.”

She eyed him suspiciously. It wasn’t like Jake to humor her. She had screwed up and she fully expected to catch hell for it.

“How do you figure?” Manny asked.

“Sam and I were talking strategy while you were gone. There’s no way we can avoid reporting this to the police and turning over the evidence, and we were both concerned about how this implicates Sam. But with Deanie temporarily out of the picture, we can bend the truth a little regarding how you and I came to be at Club E, and leave Sam out of the equation.”

Manny nodded. “So we tell them what? That I got an anonymous call to come here and brought you along?”

“Yes,” Jake said. “And that after we freed her, she immediately needed to use the bathroom. It never dawned on us to guard the victim, and she ran away. We called nine-one-one immediately. We don’t know who the victim was.”

“That’ll work. But wait—they’ll want to see my cell phone to trace the call. All it shows is a call from Sam at ten this morning.”

Sam grinned. “A call I made from a pay phone at Penn Station. I couldn’t get a cell signal in there today.”

Jake clapped his brother on the back. “Man, you travel under a lucky star. Get rid of any signs that we were in this bar area. Wrap up the glass that Deanie used and take it with you, then disappear. Manny, give me five minutes, then call nine-one-one.”

“Where are you going?” Manny asked.

“Back to the storeroom. I plan to borrow one small piece of evidence.”

“You wanna know what?”

Pasquarelli’s voice came through the phone line loudly enough to make Jake move the receiver away from his ear. He and the detective had spoken only briefly since Manny had reported the incident at Club E to the police in Hoboken. Jake knew his friend was frazzled, but he needed his help. “I want to know who published the cookbook I found hidden in Ms. Hogaarth’s kitchen,” Jake repeated.

“Cut me a break, will ya. I got my hands full here. I thought once we discovered the link between the Vampire and the Judge Brueninger bombing, the mayor would finally let the FBI have this case. But no, he still wants to keep a hand in it, even though the feds are the ones with a database full of information on Islamic terror groups that they won’t let me see.”

“Look, Vito, if the Vampire and the Preppy Terrorist cases are really tied to Islamic terrorism, then you’re right—you don’t stand a chance of solving them,” Jake said. “You might as well lie low, shuffle papers, and wait for the feds to clear it up. But if my hunch is correct, something entirely different is behind these cases. If you work on my leads, maybe you’ll have a chance to score the coup the mayor’s looking for.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then you’re screwed,” Jake admitted cheerfully. “But you’re screwed right now anyway. Seems to me you’ve got nothing to lose.”

A long silence filled the phone line.

“Talk,” Vito said finally.

“I want to find out where the Spanish-language cookbook we found in Ms. Hogaarth’s apartment was published. I suspect it was Argentina. Argentina could be the link that ties all the victims together.”

“Did I miss something here? There is no link between the victims—they’re totally random. And none of them is Argentinean. Number three was Chilean, but that’s as close to Spanish as we get.”

“We may not see the link between the victims yet,” Jake said. “But it’s there. We have to keep digging.”

“Nixon made a speech about the place more than twenty-five years ago, and you think that’s the key to our Vampire? C’mon, Jake, get real.”

“Nixon’s speech and the fact that the Sandovals are Argentinean. If it turns out that Hogaarth’s Spanish-language cookbook was published in Argentina, that would be three links in the chain. Then we could ask the other vics if they have any connection in their lives to Argentina.”

“You think these people are all withholding information from us?” Vito asked. “No way. I interviewed them. They’re scared, freaked-out by the fact that they were randomly targeted by this nut. You can’t fake that five times.”

“No, I don’t necessarily think they’re hiding information. The victims themselves may not be aware of the significance. You didn’t ask any of them if they had ties to Argentina.”

“You can ask. As for Hogaarth’s cookbook, the apartment’s been released as a crime scene. We had no reason to keep the cookbook. It’s all part of her estate. If you want access to it, you’ll have to contact her lawyer yourself. Frankly, I think this case might be easier if the Vampire is a terrorist.”

“The Vampire is a terrorist all right, but not an Islamic one,” Jake said. “And just like Osama or the Taliban or the Palestinians, he’s trying to get publicity for his cause. He’s trying to lead us toward something. I’m sure of it. And somehow, Argentina is part of the puzzle.”

Jake pressed against the eyepieces of his microscope and studied the pattern of the long, thin single hair with a central nonpigmented line, dye-stained for two-thirds its length. This long blond strand, which he’d retrieved from the tape used to bind Deanie’s eyes, was almost certainly hers. Jake had found it on the end of the tape, near where it had touched her hairline. The tape was also filled with skin cells, but it showed no fingerprints. Deanie had never been able to touch it, as the tape had gone on after her hands were tied, and the Vampire had obviously worn gloves when applying it.

Jake had left the other piece of tape for the Hoboken police, so they, too, had bits of Deanie’s DNA. Not that it would do them much good, as it was unlikely that the young woman’s DNA would be on file in any criminal database. But the tape held one other tantalizing piece of DNA evidence. Jake changed slides under the microscope and looked at this prize: a very short dark curly hair with a prominent central medulla line. DNA could be extracted from the hair root. Jake knew this couldn’t be Deanie’s hair. Her skin was quite fair, her arm hair light and downy. He suspected that the highly sticky duct tape had brushed against the Vampire’s arm as he bound his victim, pulling out an arm hair. Even the most careful criminal leaves behind traces of his presence.

So he probably had a piece of the Vampire’s DNA. But what good would it do him in the short run? It would take days even for an expedited DNA analysis, and if the Vampire’s DNA wasn’t on file, the sample wouldn’t bring him into their sights. In the meantime, Travis was out there somewhere under the control of this killer. More than a killer—someone who didn’t hesitate to use torture to achieve his ends. Jake sighed and prepared the sample to be sent to the lab. They couldn’t afford to sit back and wait for results or count on the feds to find Travis soon. After all, they hadn’t been able to find a nearly seven-foot-man in a turban for years. Nor would the feds protect Travis. As far as they were concerned, he was another defendant who had violated house arrest. It was up to Manny and him to keep pursuing every possible lead.

Jake stared at the phone, commanding it to ring. He’d called Ms. Hogaarth’s attorney earlier that morning to see if he could get access to the cookbook, but when did any lawyer ever accept a call on the first try? Jake grabbed the phone and dialed again. If he made himself annoying enough, eventually the lawyer would have to answer.

“Achoo!” Manny dabbed at her nose with the crumpled remains of her last tissue. “The cloud of mold spores hanging over this place is visible to the naked eye. Tell me again why we have to be here instead of out looking for Travis?”

“This
is
looking for Travis,” Jake replied as he pawed through a box of decaying books.

“I had in mind something a little more action-oriented,” Manny said. “I’m really worried. The Vampire could be doing something awful to that kid right now, and we’re here poking through this mountain of crap.” Manny shoved past an ancient department store mannequin and started in on the next table of books.

“We have no solid leads on Travis’s whereabouts,” Jake said. “Until we do, this is as good a use of our time as any.” Before she could object, he continued. “Hey, look at this—
Principles of Modern Microbiology
, circa 1932. Can you believe this diagram of the swine flu bug?” Jake chuckled and shook his head. “That’s what it looked like many generations ago in the swine population before it morphed into the influenza A subtypes that exist now.”

“Oh, those wacky Depression-era biologists. Always good for a few laughs.” Manny looked in disgust at her dust-blackened fingers and surveyed the tables and tables of books they still had to search through. “Put that down, Jake. We’re looking for a cookbook, remember.”

As executor of her estate, Amanda Hogaarth’s lawyer had packed up the contents of her apartment and shipped them off to the St. Anselm’s Altar Society Thrift Shop in Chelsea. Jake and Manny had followed the stuff here. The church-lady volunteers at the counter had informed them that the delivered items had been sorted and put out for sale just the day before, so Jake was positive the cookbook would still be here. Finding it, however, wasn’t proving easy. Ms. Hogaarth had hidden the book in her apartment, but it was much more effectively concealed here, an old book among thousands of others just like it.

Manny moved down the crowded aisle, starting on her third table of books. The smell of this place made her eager to find what they were looking for and get out. Forgotten lives, discarded objects, mementos that held no value for the people who’d inherited them—St. Anselm’s was the last stop before the landfill and it smelled only marginally better. Manny’s eyes scanned quickly, pausing to read titles only when the book met the physical description Jake had provided: thick, blue, no dust jacket.

Jake worked his way toward her from the other end of the book room, but he wasn’t moving anywhere near as fast. When Manny paused and looked up, she saw Jake with a slender red book in his hands. “Asking you to search a used-book sale is like asking Emeril to search a farmers’ market. Stop reading!”

“I can’t help it—‘The Cask of Amontillado’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ in a special illustrated edition. Look at the detail in this picture of the dungeon; it’s like the artist was inside Poe’s head.”

“The cookbook, Jake. Look for the cookbook.”

Jake tucked the Poe volume under his arm with the
Principles of Modern Microbiology
and resumed the search.

“You’re buying those?” Manny asked.

“Yes. I thought you’d be pleased. You’re always suggesting we go shopping together.”

“For clothes, Jake. To replace the pants and shirts you bought during the Reagan administration.”

“I tell you what: Once we find the cookbook, you can pick me out a new sports coat.”

Manny brightened. Banishing the peat moss-colored tweed sack with the baggy elbows that passed for Jake’s formal attire was her heart’s desire. “Really? Barneys is not that far from here. We could choose something in half an hour flat.”

“I’ll give you ten minutes. Better find something here on that rack near the front door. There’s a nice lime green one that caught my eye when we came in.”

“Great motivation,” Manny grumbled. “Seriously, what are we going to do if we find the cookbook and it really is Argentinean?”

“Then we start contacting victims,” Jake said. “I want to start with Annabelle Fiore. You remember I visited her in the hospital after she was attacked.”

“She was the opera singer who the Vampire used too much ether on, right?”

“Yes.” Jake kept his head down and searched in earnest as he spoke. “At the time, I assumed it was unintentional—after all, it’s hard to deliver an accurate dose of anesthesia on a rag. But in retrospect, Fiore may have been the first escalation. Before her, the victims weren’t harmed. After her, Hogaarth and Fortes were murdered.”

“You may be—ah!”

Jake’s head snapped up. “What?”

Manny held a thick blue book aloft. “This is it!
Recetas Favoritas
.” Manny stood motionless with the heavy volume in her hands. She had started to feel like she was on a quest for a legendary object, and now she felt too stunned at holding the Holy Grail to open it.

Jake crossed to her side and took the book from her, turning quickly to the title page. He read aloud,
“‘Publicado en 1967. Buenos Aires, Republica Argentina
.’”