Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

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.'"

Jake studied his brother, trying to interpret the expression on his face. All their lives, he'd been able to tell when Sam had good news to share. He hoped to detect that gleam in Sam's eye now.

Finding the cookbook had convinced Jake that he was on the right path with the Argentine connection, but Vito Pasquarelli had been unimpressed. "Hogaarth liked Argentine food-so what? My wife's got The Great Wall Cookbook, but she doesn't know anyone in China."

Now Jake desperately needed his brother to have turned up something useful in his research on the attendees at Nixon's speech. Maybe then Pasquarelli would take his theory seriously. Without Vito's support, it would be hard to reinterview all the Vampire's early victims, looking for an Argentine connection. But hoping didn't make it so. His brother appeared disappointingly straight-faced.

"There's good news and there's bad news," Sam began. "The good news is, it was surprisingly easy to track down most of the people on this list with a simple Internet search. They're all fairly prominent in their respective fields, so they leave a public record that's easy to follow."

"So what's the bad news?" Manny asked. "You think that because these people are solid professionals, one of them can't possibly be our Vampire?"

"Not necessarily. I'll present the evidence; you be the judge." Sam picked up the list of attendees. Jake could see that each name on the list had a color-coded check mark.

"Three people have died since they attended Nixon's lecture. Of natural causes," he said, heading off Jake's question. "Thirty-four are journalists, most of them foreign correspondents posted overseas. Only one lives in the metro New York area-Phillip Reiser."

"That name sounds familiar," Jake said.

"Assistant managing editor of the New York Times," Manny said. "I've met him a few times. Very smart, very charming, insanely busy. I'm willing to concede he's not the Vampire."

"Next come the academics," Sam continued. "Sixty-two college professors, none of whom works at a school in the New York area."

"But professors are always going on sabbatical," Manny said. "Any of those people might have taken off a semester and come to New York to carry out these attacks."

"Gold star to Ms. Manfreda," Sam said. "It turns out three of them are on sabbatical right now. One's in Thailand, one's at Berkeley, and one is right here at Columbia. Wilford Munley. He's a sociologist, not an historian."

"Sociologists sometimes do laboratory experiments," Jake interjected. "He might have experience working with lab animals."

"I thought of that. When I spoke to him on the phone, he sounded so cagey and evasive that I headed up to campus to check him out."

"And…" Jake leaned forward in excitement.

"Paralyzed. Uses a motorized chair."

"He could have an able-bodied collaborator," Jake said.

Manny brushed him off. "So that leaves the ones who work for the government. If you ask me, they're the most likely suspects anyway."

Sam smiled. "Yes, Manny, I know you'd find that convenient, but I checked out these remaining twenty-one names, and I don't think any of them could be our man… or woman. First, they all live and work in D.C."

"Two hours by Metroliner-it can take that long to commute to Jersey some days."

"Train travel isn't as anonymous as it used to be. The Metro-liner requires a reservation, and none of these people shows up as a regular passenger around the dates of the attacks."

"You can drive the distance in four hours," Manny insisted.

"Yes, but some of the attacks occurred during the workday, and Fortes was tortured over a period of days. None of the remaining people on the list was away from his or her office on all of the days in question. So, unless there's a conspiracy among the attendees at Nixon's speech, I don't think your killer is anyone on this list."

Jake jumped up and paced around the room. "And yet the mug had to have come from that conference. No other fingerprints were on it. Almost certainly, someone picked it up and preserved it as a souvenir."

"eBay."

Jake and Sam turned to Manny. "Huh?" they said simultaneously.

"eBay is the single best place to buy and sell collectibles." Manny turned to Jake. "You've seen my collection of porcelain shoes. I used to have to dig through flea markets and garage sales looking for that stuff. Now I do all my collecting online."

"Have I entered into some sort of parallel universe?" Jake asked. "I thought we were talking about the Vampire and Nixon's coffee mug, not your latest shopping addiction."

"One and the same." Manny dragged Jake's laptop across the table and started typing. "Let's just do a little search. Presidential collectibles. You see-that brings it right up."

Sam looked over her shoulder. "Herbert Hoover campaign buttons, Eisenhower cuff links. Three hundred and ninety-five dollars for a blanket from Air Force One? You gotta be kidding me."

"The bidding has just started on that one; it'll go much higher." Manny continued to scroll through the pages. "Most of this is souvenir stuff given away by candidates or the White House. What we're looking for is stuff owned by the presidents. Ah, see-here's one. Gerald Ford's nine iron."

"Only three hundred dollars," Jake said. "I bet his ski poles would be more valuable than his golf clubs."