Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

"Good idea."

Manny used the interminable minutes waiting for the super's arrival to befriend Mrs. Castigliore. Compliments on the aroma of her soup got the old lady talking. At her age, she welcomed the opportunity to talk to anyone about anything and wasn't too particular about the reason she was being asked.

Yes, she had heard the door of 4E open and close a couple of times these past few days. She had assumed it was contractors. No, she hadn't actually seen them. But wait, once she had seen a man go in. Yes, a young man. Oh, no, not eighteen; more like thirty, thirty-five. No, she hadn't heard any talking-no noise at all.

Now the super arrived, a small Hispanic man with a mop of dark hair and the requisite large bunch of keys. Despite the fact that Mrs. C. had called to report the door being open, he stood in front of the apartment with his head cocked and his eyes narrowed, obviously very puzzled to see that the door was indeed open. Manny's uneasiness returned.

"So, have there been workmen here the last few days?"

"No, no guys yet. The boss, he say they coming miercoles, Wednesday." Cautiously, the super stepped into the apartment. Manny and Mrs. C. trailed behind him. Manny was all prepared with a story of how her sister was moving to New York and needed an apartment, but no one thought to ask why she was there.

The front door opened directly into a large living room. Scratches on the floor showed where the furniture had been, but the room was empty except for a child's partially deflated ball. They proceeded in a line across the room to a hallway leading to the bedrooms. The wood trim around the first bedroom door was deeply scratched. The super shook his head and muttered, "El gato." Inside the room lay a crumpled sleeping bag.

"Did Maria leave that?" Manny asked.

Mrs. C. shook her head. "I went over to say good-bye the day she moved. I see her check every room. She no leave this behind."

They peeked in the bathroom-a paper cup, a flattened tube of toothpaste, and a dirty towel.

"No," Mrs. C. said. "Maria leave-a the place clean. Someone been staying here."

Manny's eyes darted back and forth, searching for a sign that the someone had been Travis. There were no papers or clothing out in the open. Could she press her luck and start opening closets?

Now the super and Mrs. C. moved into the tiny kitchen. At the doorway, the old lady stopped short. Manny, following, bumped into her. The room erupted into a Tower of Babel, cascades of Spanish pouring from the super, a competing torrent of Italian from Mrs. C. Manny elbowed her way past them and added her own contribution to the mix.

"Oh, dear God!"

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 Hermes." 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.