Skeleton Justice (3 page)

“Of course you were right to call. This is very important. Hang on just a minute.” Manny rose from her chair and moved to the edge of the canopy, out of earshot. Jake stabbed at his peas.

In less than ten minutes, Manny returned to the table, but Jake kept his eyes focused on his plate.

“Guess why Kenneth was calling?”

“Special three-hour sale at Saks.”

“Very funny. Actually, it was a sale at T.J. Maxx. I can restrain myself sometimes.”

“Manny, I know your relationship is diff—well, special, that he honors you as his savior and you view him as your Eliza Doolittle, but. …”

“But what? He’s a talented kid who was born poor. Just because he’s a diva doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate honest, hard work.”

Manny had been assigned by the local court to represent Kenneth Medianos Boyd pro bono on charges of conspiracy to destroy evidence—drugs—by flushing it away. Then there was the time when he was nabbed for a wardrobe malfunction during the annual Greenwich Village Halloween parade. His alter ego, formerly a waitress and now the chanteuse Princess Calypso, lost some strategically placed plumage taken from turkeys dispatched the Thanksgiving before.

Manny immediately appreciated Kenneth’s worth: a keenly dramatic fashion sense coupled with a paralegal certification obtained while behind bars before his drag reincarnation. Kenneth adored Manny because she treated him as a person with skill and brains. They cemented the bond while shopping at the TSE cashmere outlet; she offered him a job as her legal assistant.

“I know, I know, and he watches out for your backside. But does he have to call you so many times a day? What’s the point of having an assistant if he’s always ringing you? Kind of defeats the purpose of easing your workload.”

“You’re just jealous of the other men in my life.” She glanced down at Mycroft to hide both her annoyance and her smile.

“‘Men’? Last week, Kenneth wore heat-sensitive nail polish when he delivered those documents to my home. Started talking to me with pink nails, which became royal blue by the time he handed me the manila envelope. And let’s not forget he was in a full-length evening dress.”

“He’s just a
girl
making an honest living as a chanteuse in downtown clubs, when he’s not running my law office, writing my motions, collecting my bills, and keeping my clients happy on the phone so I can go off gallivanting to help with
your
cases.”

Manny paused for breath, then continued. “Kenneth was calling because the mother of one of the Preppy Terrorists just phoned to say she wants to retain me as his defense attorney.”

“I thought you said those kids were toast? Why would you want the case?”

“First, these kids are being railroaded to make them examples so that the government can say ‘Look what we’re doing to protect you from terrorism.’”

“Railroaded!”
Jake pointed his fork at her. “You can’t say that. All you know about this case is what you heard on the news. And we both know how inaccurate that is.”

Manny pushed the accusatory fork away. “I know from experience how prosecutors work. Besides, this case is huge. When I show the government this kid is not guilty, I’ll have more credibility in the future on other cases.”

“Manny, so far you’ve dealt mainly with civil rights cases and nonviolent offenders,” Jake said. “Are you prepared to tangle with terrorists and the federal government? This case is awfully risky.”

“I’m prepared for anything. Gotta run. Sorry.” Manny pushed away from the table, sloshing water out of the glasses on the table.

She paused to deliver a parting jab. “What about when
you
nearly got blown up trying to find Pete Harrigan’s killer? It’s okay for you to take risks but not me. Showing your age, aren’t you?”

Jake winced. All he wanted was to shield her from harm. He struggled to keep the protective edge out of his voice. “Just be careful.”

His calm words were like a gust of wind on a brush fire. Manny pivoted. “Don’t talk to me like you’re my keeper, Jake. We don’t have any commitments to each other, remember? I’ll call you tomorrow after I meet with the client.” She was halfway across the street with Mycroft in tow before Jake could flag down the waiter for the check.

Tossing some crumpled twenties on the table, Jake set off in pursuit. With her cascade of red hair and electric pink sweater, Manny was as easy to track as a microburst. What he would do when he caught up with her, Jake wasn’t sure. Vulcan mind meld maybe.

That might be the only way to make her see how irrational she was being. It was one thing to be a champion of the oppressed, quite another to be a sucker for some crackpot sob story. And how would she handle all the work this case would entail? The big-time criminal lawyers had a whole team to back them up; Manny had a drag queen paralegal.

Jake felt a sensation over his heart not caused by Manny’s behavior. His cell phone vibrated. The display indicated it was his office. What timing.

“Rosen,” snapped Pederson. “Get over to Fourteen West Fifty-third. Looks like the Vampire has struck again. And this time, he’s left you a body.”

Jake began working the moment his cab pulled up to the curb. As deputy chief medical examiner, his duties were coldly delineated by the chief medical examiner: Confirm the identity of the victim, what happened, where it happened, when it happened, and how it happened.

But he saw the scope of his work as larger than that. To him, every victim told a far more complex story than the blood spatter surrounding the body or the fibers and hairs clinging to it. The why and whodunit were often intricately woven into the historical fabric of the victim’s life. Life merged with death.

Amanda Hogaarth’s story began here on the spotless sidewalk outside the very expensive building where she had lived. Jake noted the shaken expression of the doorman who admitted him, and the rigid bearing of the concierge standing behind his desk. Somehow, these two had let a killer into what was supposed to be an enclave of safety.

Jake glanced around the marble-floored lobby with its plush but impersonal furnishings. Co-op, condo, or high-end rental? Co-ops, even large ones like this building, tended to be clubbier. The neighbors knew one another, at least in passing, from all the endless wrangling of the board of directors. In a condo or rental, Amanda Hogaarth would more likely have lived in anonymity.

Jake took the elevator of this pre-World War I relic to the thirteenth floor, where the door slid open on a maelstrom of activity. The police were conducting a door-to-door inquiry, interviewing the immediate neighbors. The crime scene techs had arrived with all their equipment. As he walked toward the open door of 13C, repeated flashes of light told him the police photographer was at work.

Jake met Detective Pasquarelli in the hall. “Can I look around the apartment?”

The detective nodded. “Give it another few minutes and the techs will be done.”

Jake glanced at the front door. “Any sign of forced entry?”

“No. He pushed his way in, or she let him in. The doorman claims he didn’t send anyone up to her apartment, so our guy must’ve gotten in the building by requesting someone else, or he came in through the service entrance. Luckily, this place is guarded like Fort Knox. There are security cameras trained on all doors, and in the elevators. We’ll need a few hours tomorrow to review the tapes.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Pasquarelli grinned. “Don’t count on it, Doc. I never do.”

“Who found her?” Jake asked.

“Maintenance man came up here just before five p.m. Last call of the day. Bet he wishes he’d knocked off early.” Pasquarelli tugged on his already-crooked tie. “Apparently, Ms. Hogaarth called yesterday to say her air-conditioning unit was making a rattling noise. Since it wasn’t an emergency, the guy didn’t make it up here till today. Opened the door with a passkey when she didn’t answer. Called nine-one-one at four-forty-eight p.m.”

Jake glanced at his watch: 9:35 p.m. “What took you so long to call me?”

“The responding officers thought it was a natural death,” Pasquarelli explained. “The tour doc from the ME’s office came. He’s the one who noticed the needle mark in her arm, and a few other suspicious things. Said if this was related to the Vampire, we’d better bring you in.”

Jake’s expression flickered between a smile and a scowl. His subordinates knew how interested he was in the Vampire case; he was surprised Pederson had been willing to let him have it after that display of authority in his office yesterday.

Stepping past Pasquarelli directly into the living room of the apartment, Jake recognized it instantly—the faint but distinctive smell of ether. That’s why he never followed OSHA guidelines by wearing a face mask—the possibility of missing such transient evidence was too great. And once overlooked, it was gone forever. Now he could be certain he was dealing with the Vampire.

Ms. Hogaarth appeared to have preserved her dignity, dying a tidy death in what had been a very tidy home. Jake glanced around. The overwhelming impression was beigeness. Off-white walls, thick cream carpeting, matching light tan sofa and love seat. The only contrast came from mournful streaks of black fingerprint powder as the crime scene investigators went about their work, which destroyed the cleanliness Ms. Hogaarth had obviously held dear.

The body was stretched out on the middle of the living room floor. Jake nodded at his colleague from the office, Todd Galvin, who jumped from a crouch beside the body and rushed over to him.

Only two years out of his pathology residency, Todd was the youngest member of the ME’s staff, and eager to show what he had learned. “I found a needle mark,” he began, gesturing Jake toward the body. But Jake turned away.

“Remember what I’ve been teaching you, Todd. Let’s look through the crime scene first to see what that tells us about the victim, before we get distracted by her body. She’s not going anywhere.”

Jake headed straight for the bathroom. The medicine cabinet revealed the usual lineup of over-the-counter remedies, but just one prescription: Lasix for high blood pressure. Other than that, Ms. Hogaarth had been quite healthy. He opened a drawer and found a shabby stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. “Interesting—maybe she had been a nurse and used her old gear to monitor her own blood pressure.”

Todd nodded. “Possibly. A layman would be more likely to use one of those new blood pressure monitoring kits they sell at the drugstore.”

The young man peeped behind the shower curtain. “Sure is clean in here. This lady wouldn’t have liked to see my bathroom.”

They moved on to the bedroom, a room of almost monastic simplicity. Jake looked at the tautly drawn bedspread and lifted up the bottom. Just as he suspected—hospital corners on the sheets. In the closet, the shoes stood in military rows; the clothes all were hanging in the same direction. Nightstand: lamp, clock, one issue
of Reader’s Digest
. Dresser: comb, brush, lavender talcum powder. Bedspread, curtains, carpet—all beige. Jake made a 360-degree rotation—not a single photograph, picture, or knick-knack. “What kind of woman makes it into her sixth decade of life without acquiring a single tchotchke, a photo of grandchildren, nieces, or old friends?”

“Yeah, it’s like a hotel room,” Todd agreed. “Kinda creepy.”

Jake led the way to the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator. “The contents of the refrigerator can also help you establish the time of death.” Jake smiled at Todd and shook a carton. “The milk expiration date is your friend.”

Todd peered over Jake’s shoulder. “Jeez, there’s even less food in her fridge than in mine. English muffins, low-fat margarine, juice, and milk. She must’ve eaten out a lot.”

Jake glanced into the garbage can—empty. Dishwasher—cleaner than a showroom model. “The killer didn’t leave anything behind in here.”

The living room revealed nothing more than it had on first glance—no clutter, no photos, no soul. Looking down at the coffee table, Jake’s eye was drawn to a single round clean spot, where no fingerprint powder had fallen. The CSIs must’ve removed something from here, he thought, a mug or a glass. In the average home, he wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but in Amanda Hogaarth’s home, it seemed extraordinary.

Now Jake moved toward the body. Amanda Hogaarth lay on her back, her knees slightly bent to the right, her arms splayed to either side. A brown tweed skirt covered her stocky legs to mid-calf; a beige sweater met the skirt demurely, leaving no flesh exposed. She had the stiff Margaret Thatcher-like hairstyle typical of a woman in her late sixties, and not a hair had been disturbed as she fell.

Todd crouched down beside the body. “Look at this,” he said as Jake joined him. He pointed to a tiny needle mark and a speck of dried blood inside the elbow joint of the victim where blood had obviously been drawn.

That alone was not suspicious. The woman might simply have been to the doctor’s and had blood drawn for tests the day she died.

“And,” Todd continued with rising excitement, “look at her mouth.”

Ms. Hogaarth’s perfect white top teeth were false, and the denture had been knocked askew in her mouth, giving her a slightly grotesque expression. Around the corners of her lips were tiny abrasions.

“She was gagged,” Jake observed. He glanced down. Her legs were bare, and her feet, contorted with the bunions and calluses of old age, lay uncovered on the rug. He had been in her home for only ten minutes, but Jake felt strongly that this was not a woman who would have padded around barefoot. “Have you found her panty hose?” he asked Todd.

“I told the criminalists to look for it, but I doubt they’ll find it. The killer probably took that with him.

“Rigor is receding,” Todd continued. “She’s been dead about twenty-four hours.”

“Maybe more, Todd. The algor mortis will provide more information. Check her core body temperature, and take the ambient air temperature, too. That may have prevented some decomposition.”

“The air conditioner has been running on high. It’s sixty-five degrees in here,” Todd reported.

“Yes, her body temperature would have dropped more rapidly in this cool room,” Jake explained, “making it seem that she’s been dead longer than she really has been.”

“Her livor mortis is fixed.” Todd pressed his thumb against the maroon pooling of blood on her back and could not produce a white pallor. “There’s no doubt she’s been dead for more than eight or nine hours at least, and she hasn’t been moved at all since she died.”

“Good work, Todd.” Jake rose and signaled to the two morgue workers lounging by the door. “Go ahead and take the body to the morgue. And keep her in this same position, or you’ll destroy any trace evidence on her back. I’ll do the autopsy first thing tomorrow morning. If you want to assist, Todd, be there by eight a.m.”

Jake watched as they transferred the body, the extremities still partially stiffened with rigor, onto a gurney. If this was truly the work of the Vampire, why had his methods changed? Why had he found it necessary to kill this victim, when he hadn’t seriously harmed the others? The case had morphed. What had been a fascinating academic puzzle for him to decode had escalated to murder. He’d gotten what he wanted—the chance to work on the Vampire case—but it had come at the cost of Amanda Hogaarth’s life.

“Have you contacted the next of kin?” Jake asked the detective.

“Doesn’t seem to be anybody. Her apartment application lists a lawyer as the person to contact in an emergency. Least I don’t have to break the news to some heartbroken daughter or sister.” Pasquarelli grunted thanks to a passing stream of CSIs.

“We didn’t get much,” the oldest one said. “Cleanest apartment I ever saw.”

Jake thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “Something’s here, Vito. We have to look with our eyes wide open. I’m going to nose around again.”

“Be my guest.”

Jake did the roundabout again, but if anything, the apartment seemed even more nondescript than before. Then in the kitchen, amid the spotless cabinets and appliances, Jake found it. There, pushed back behind the gleaming pots, was one clue that Amanda Hogaarth had lived a real life and knew someone else on the planet—a battered book with a faded cover and spidery handwritten notations in the margins:
Recetas Favoritas
.

Jake cradled it in his hands. A cookbook, a Spanish-language cookbook, not placed on a shelf for easy reference, but hidden away. Like love letters, Jake thought. Or pornography. He gently put it down.