Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

Deanie rubbed her face, then, shielding her eyes with her fingers, peeped at her rescuers. Recognizing Sam, she inhaled sharply, but she still did not speak.

"Do you see her shoes?" Jake asked. Manny and Sam looked, but the shoes were nowhere in sight.

"Well, let's get you out of here," Jake said. "I'll carry you over the glass." Putting his right hand under her arms and his left under her knees, he lifted her off the stool. As he did, a slip of paper fluttered to the floor. Manny stepped forward to retrieve it.

"Don't touch it," Jake commanded.

So she crouched over it and read aloud: "'The innocent suffer when the guilty are allowed to go unpunished.'" • • • "What does that mean? Who are you? How did you know I was here?"

Big hair flattened, long acrylic nails snapped off, eye makeup washed away by a river of tears, Deanie was no longer the jaunty Jersey girl who had given up secrets to Sam in a drunken night of dancing at Club E.

"I got a call from your cell phone at nine-thirty this morning asking me to meet you here at eleven," Sam said. They were all four sitting at the deserted bar, watching Deanie drink a big Diet Coke. "How long were you tied up back there?"

She clutched her glass as if it alone were keeping her from keeling over. "Since last night. I got grabbed coming home from work. Someone came up from behind me and put this bad-smelling cloth over my face. When I woke up, I was in that storeroom."

Jake leaned toward her. "What can you tell us about your attacker?"

Deanie edged away, obviously disturbed by the urgency in his voice, and pressed her back against the bar. "Who are you people?" She glanced at Sam, then peered down into her drink, as if eye contact with him scared her. "You got me into this. You killed Boo, didn't you?"

"I know it looks bad that Boo died a few days after talking to me," Sam said, "but believe me, I didn't kill him. We think…" he paused, silenced by his brother's warning glance. "We think Boo was mixed up in something bigger than he realized."

"Well, whatta they want with me? I don't know nuthin about Boo's business." Deanie hugged herself and began to cry.

"Deanie, we don't want you to get hurt again," Jake said. "That's why it's important that you tell us everything you can remember about last night."

Deanie wasn't the brightest crayon in the box under the best of circumstances, and fear, exhaustion, and dehydration weren't helping her reasoning abilities.

"I don't know nuthin," she repeated sullenly. "I didn't see them. When I woke up, that tape was already over my eyes." Compulsively, her right hand stroked her left arm.

"Them? There was more than one?" Jake's eyes lighted up, but he was careful to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

"A man and a woman."

Manny and Jake exchanged glances. They didn't have to speak to know they were thinking the same thought: Maybe this was Tracy, the woman at the nursing home who had recommended Manny to Maureen Heaton.

"Why did they torture you like this, Deanie?" Manny asked. "What were they trying to get you to tell them?"

"They didn't ask me nuthin." Deanie slammed her glass on the bar. "They told me not to try to get away, that there was broken glass all around me. They tied my legs back like that, and when I started to cry, the woman said something. So I thought the guy was going to loosen the rope, but instead he made it tighter and then put the sharp glass underneath the ropes on my skin. They told me not to try to escape, said if I was still and silent, someone would come for me. That's it."

Deanie continued rubbing her hands up and down her bare arms, trying either to stay warm or to massage away the pain of her bondage. Suddenly, she stopped and looked down at the crook of her right arm. "What the fuck? I must have cut myself after all. I'm bleeding!"

Jake reached out for her arm and saw it: the tiny puncture of a blood draw, now oozing some fresh blood. He found a clean napkin and applied pressure. "They drew your blood. Were you aware of that?"

"Drew blood? Why?"

Jake and Manny exchanged a glance. Could Deanie be the only person in the entire metro area unaware of the work of the Vampire? If so, she'd be happier staying in that state of ignorance.

"What did they say to each other?" Jake asked.

"I don't know. They spoke to each other in Spanish."

"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.