Michael Baden - Skeleton justice

The driver soon exited onto Central Park South and pulled up at the curb. He held out his hand to Manny. "Ride's over. Forty dollars, please."

Jake had printed the word in block letters on the whiteboard in his office, retraced each letter with bold strokes of his red marker, drawn a box around it, sketched arrows radiating out from it. Still, the word refused to cooperate.

It was like a "Down" answer in a crossword puzzle that fit neatly into the allocated spaces but wouldn't mesh with the "Across" clues.

He tried again. "Just listen to me, Vito. Give me the benefit of the doubt while I work through the evidence." He hadn't seen or spoken to Manny all day. She was his preferred sounding board, but in her absence, Vito would have to do.

Vito Pasquarelli had pushed himself halfway out of the chair in Jake's office, but the plea in his friend's voice made him fall back into his seat. "You've been over it twenty times already. Be careful not to twist the facts to fit the theory."

Jake finished a Coke, which kept him from passing out at his desk, then crushed the can and flung it into the trash. He'd seen plenty of scientists, and plenty of cops, come to grief trying to make evidence support a theory they'd grown too fond of. Is that what he was doing here? he wondered. He started once more to run through the evidence, looking for the one fact that would make all the others come together coherently. Make no judgments; let the facts do the work.

"Victims one, two, and three, and possibly victim four, were children of the Desaparecidos." Of this, Jake was now positive. He'd spoken again to three of the early victims. Numbers two and three had readily admitted to being adopted. Both said they had no knowledge of their birth parents and had never tried to contact them. They assumed their birth parents were American, but when pressed, they admitted they really didn't know.

Victim number one, Lucinda Bettis, had once again reacted differently from the others, shouting "No" and slamming down the phone when Jake asked her if she had been adopted. To him, that was as good as a yes. It was this discovery, at least three of the four early victims linked through adoption, that had reluctantly brought Vito around to discuss the case with Jake again.

Jake stood and made notes on the whiteboard in the corner as he spoke. "Fiore, Hogaarth, Fortes, and Slade, by virtue of their ages, are not children of the Desaparecidos. The first three are too old; Deanie Slade is too young. But three of the four have definite connections to Argentina."

Pasquarelli's only response was to purse his lips into a tight line. He refused to make the leap from adoption to Argentina. He still hadn't completely let go of Islamic terrorists.

"The Vampire takes blood from all of them but tortures only the last three, and kills only Hogaarth and Fortes," Jake said. "Why?"

"Because he's a fuckin' terrorist nut!" Pasquarelli shouted. "Why do they strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up in buses full of innocent people? They're nuts!"

Jake shook his head. "Not a nut. The Vampire's escalating violence may be a sign of increasing mental instability, but when he began this series of attacks, I'm sure he had a very specific purpose in mind."

The pained look returned to Pasquarelli's face, as if he were humoring a temperamental child. "Which is…"

Jake stopped writing on the whiteboard and chewed the end of the marker. "Identification. To be able to match the children of the Desaparecidos with their biological families."

"You just said the last four victims weren't des… des… des… peradoes. Why take their blood?"

"I've gone around and around on this point in my mind. That's the inconsistency I can't resolve. But identification still seems the most likely scenario," Jake said.

"Wait a minute," Vito objected. "Why go to all the trouble to knock them out and draw their blood if all he wants is to prove they're related to someone? He could've just broken into their homes and taken their hairbrushes or toothbrushes. Or followed them until they dropped a Starbucks cup in the trash and then fished it out. Those are much easier ways to get a little DNA."

"That had me puzzled, too," Jake said. "But remember, DNA analysis has only been in use since 1989. Before that, blood-group factors were used to establish paternity. Of course, it wasn't conclusive, but it was the best technology available. Right before I called you, I stumbled across this in all the research I've been gathering about the Dirty War. Take a look."

Jake tossed a journal article into Vito's lap. The detective's eyes glazed over as he scanned the dense columns of type. "Give me the highlights."

"After the right-wing dictatorship collapsed in 1983, parents who suspected their daughters had given birth while in custody, or whose baby grandchildren had been kidnapped along with their parents, began to mobilize to seek reunification between the children of the Desaparecidos and their biological families. They knew it might take years, so they established something in Argentina called the National Genetic Data Bank to collect evidence from the biological families. Nowadays, they preserve dried blood spots for DNA, but when they first began the project in the early eighties, all they could save were meticulous records of the blood-group factors of the grandmothers and grandfathers. ABO, Rh…"

Vito sat staring at a scratch on the front of Jake's desk. Jake could tell he was beginning to pry open a door in his friend's mind. "If any of these grandparents died before 1989, all that would be left as evidence would be their blood-group factors," Vito said. "So you're telling me DNA wouldn't be of any use in that case?"

"Exactly! DNA doesn't show blood-group factors. You'd need actual blood from the grandkids to try to make a match."

Vito held up a restraining hand. "Don't get too excited. Why does the Vampire have to knock them unconscious, steal their blood if he's trying to reunite them with their own grandparents?"

Jake scribbled on the whiteboard, his back to Vito. "Mrs. Martinette and Family Builders helped me understand." He stood aside to reveal the sentence on the board: BOTH PARTIES MUST WANT TO BE REUNITED. "The grandparents want to find the kids, but the kids might not want to be found. They have their lives here; they don't want to know about some awful past in Argentina."

Vito rubbed his eyes. "But that implies the victims were all contacted by this grandparents group and declined to be tested. Don't you think that would have come out when we first interviewed them, searching for connections? Like, wouldn't someone have said, 'Yo, here's something weird-some guy called me last week to tell me my biological mother was an Argentine political prisoner'?"

Jake grinned. God bless Vito. He was such a New Yorker. No chance he'd ever let you get too full of your own brilliance. "Of course you're right. If the victims had all been approached, we would have seen the pattern before now. But here's what I'm speculating. As far as we know, only victim number one, Lucinda Bettis, was openly approached about establishing her biological identity. And she didn't respond positively. And that's what set the Vampire into action."

Vito gnawed his lower lip. "When you talked to this chick, she was really cagey, right?"

"I think she might be more forthcoming in the presence of a New York City police detective."

Vito stood up. "All right, all right. I'll go talk to her."

Jake beamed. Finally, Vito was back in his corner. "I think you'll be glad you did."

"Humpf." Vito paused with his hand on Jake's office door. "Wait a minute-what about the other vics? The Vampire doesn't need their blood to match with grandma's. How do you explain that?"