Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

When the judge spoke again, his tone was softer. "I can't just let him go. He has to realize there are ramifications to his actions."

"Absolutely, Your Honor," Manny said. "I suggest that my client be confined to his home, permitted to leave only to go to school, and monitored by means of an electronic ankle bracelet."

More conferring at the enemy table. "Fine," Lisnek said. "But one transgression with that bracelet and he's behind bars."

Cold beer, greasy food, sassy waitresses-Ian's Pub was the kind of neighborhood joint you used to be able to find every couple of blocks in New York. Now, with sushi and tapas and pinot noir encroaching from every side, the place was an isolated fortress of grit. Jake entered and dodged around some dithering women who apparently thought a maitre d' was going to materialize from somewhere and escort them to a table. They'd be waiting till next Sunday. He strode over to the very last table without guilt-and kept an eye on the door for Pasquarelli.

While he waited, Jake mulled over the information he had gathered on the kind of implement that might have been used to cause the electrical burns on Amanda Hogaarth. He had spoken to several other forensic pathologists, both in the United States and abroad, who specialized in cases of torture. Electrical shocks were a common form of torture, yet the photos of the Hogaarth autopsy that he had sent them by e-mail had not produced any exact matches to the kind of burning experienced by recent victims of repressive regimes in Africa and the Mideast. Most of these people had obvious external burns caused by a cattle prod or similar large instrument. Amanda Hogaarth's burns had been more subtle.

The Vampire's other victims had all reported the assaults committed on them, outraged at their violation. Would Ms. Hogaarth have done the same had she lived? Had the Vampire intended to kill her, or had the torture just gone too far, given her already-weakened heart?

Vito Pasquarelli appeared shortly after the waitress interrupted Jake's reverie by slamming two beer mugs on the table and vanishing for parts unknown. The detective's polyester tie and brown sports coat looked like they were dragging down a drowning man. If clothes could surrender, Vito's would have marched themselves off to Goodwill.

Jake pushed a beer toward Pasquarelli as he collapsed into the booth. "Here. I took the liberty of ordering for you while I had the chance."

"The usual?" Pasquarelli inquired hopefully.

"Is there anything else?"

"Good. This may be the last meal I get today. This case gets weirder by the minute, and the commissioner is all over us to get it solved."

"What have you found out about Amanda Hogaarth?"

Pasquarelli took a long swig from his beer and started to talk. "The woman lived in that apartment for eight years. It seems she just popped up in New York one day. We can't find any trace of where she lived before. No relatives. The emergency contact she listed on her apartment-rental application is her lawyer. Guy says he met her once, eight years ago, to draw up her will. She left all her money-a cool two million-to a place called Family Builders."

"Which is…"

"A nonprofit agency specializing in finding homes for hard-to-adopt kids. Older, disabilities, emotional problems. Folks over there can't believe their luck."

"Let me guess: They've never heard of Amanda Hogaarth."

Pasquarelli nodded. "Not on their mailing list, never applied to adopt a kid, never even sent them ten bucks at Christmas."

"Neighbors, building staff-what do they know?"

"Jackshit. Neighbors say she'd say hello only if you greeted her first; otherwise, she'd walk right by you. Both the doorman and the concierge say they can't ever remember her having a visitor, and the doorman's been there eight years. Went out almost every day around ten a.m., came back around two."

"And she went…"

"Shopping in the neighborhood, lunch every day at a coffee shop on Madison near Sixtieth. Left a good tip, never chatted to the waiters. It's positively creepy the way she never talked to anyone. I mean, how is it possible to live eight years in New York and never say more than 'I'll have the tuna on toast'?"

"She had to have left some financial trail," Jake said.

"No credit cards. Paid cash for everything. Kept about five hundred grand in CDs at Citibank, the rest in a blue-chip stock portfolio. Every few months, she'd cash in a CD, put the money in her checking account, and draw it down. She doesn't show up in the IRS system until eight years ago, when she started paying income tax on the interest earned on her investments. She apparently never worked."

"In this country," Jake added. "Remember the Spanish-language cookbook and the fact that her fillings didn't appear to be American-made. Was she an immigrant? Have you checked INS records?"

"We're doing that now. Their computers have spit out a few Hogaarths in her age range. They're all German, all accounted for. INS is still looking."

The waitress arrived with their food: one-third-pound bacon and Swiss cheeseburgers with french fries and onion rings. Not a scrap of greenery in sight, not even a pickle.

"Ah, myocardial infarction on a plate." Jake sighed.

Pasquarelli prepared to dive in. "Can you believe my daughter says I ought to start eating tofu burgers?"

"That's what you get for sending her to college in Vermont." Jake bit into the pure nirvana of the Ian's burger, greasy and proud. "So what did this elderly woman, who never talked to anyone, know that was worth torturing her for?"

"How the hell can I find out if I can't locate one person who ever had a conversation with her?"

"You have to go back to this Family Builders place," Jake advised. "Why did she choose that charity to leave her money to, not the Cancer Society or the Red Cross or a home for wayward cats? It's not a high-profile group. There has to be some personal connection there."

Pasquarelli waved a french fry in Jake's direction. "They've been very cooperative. Let us go through their mailing list and financial records. The director, Lydia Martinette, assures me no one named Hogaarth ever adopted or applied to adopt through their agency, and no kid with the surname Hogaarth was ever placed through their agency."

"And you believe her?"

"Why shouldn't I? I checked this place out, Jake. Social Services, family court-they all say Family Builders does great work. You should see the pictures in the waiting room-kids in wheelchairs, mentally challenged kids, kids who've been bouncing around foster care for years, and Mrs. Martinette finds them all homes."

"That may well be, but Mrs. Martinette is just looking for the obvious connections; you might be able to find more subtle ones there in the files," Jake said.

"They're confidential adoption records, Jake. No judge is going to give me a subpoena to go on a fishing expedition when I don't have the slightest evidence that I'll find something relative to Amanda Hogaarth's murder."

Jake sighed. Of course Pasquarelli was right. The only clues they had to Amanda Hogaarth's murder were a Spanish-language cookbook, an adoption agency, and a torture method. They needed more data points here. Suddenly, a vision popped into Jake's head: the clean ring on Hogaarth's coffee table left by an object the criminalists had taken away. "Say, did the crime-scene guys find any prints on that thing they took from the vic's apartment-what was it, a cup, a glass?"

Pasquarelli drained his beer and looked around Ian's.

"You want another beer?" Jake raised his hand to signal. "Our waitress is over there."

The detective yanked Jake's hand down. "No! Don't call her." Pasquarelli leaned forward and Jake did the same, straining to hear his friend's suddenly lowered voice over the clamor of the bar crowd. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone this. They lifted a perfect print from a coffee mug. We sent it off to SAFIS, the national fingerprint database, and the next thing you know, I got a call."