Michael Baden
Skeleton justice
(Manny Manfreda – 2)

The harsh buzz of the doorbell shocked the knife out of Annabelle Fiore's hand.

She jumped back to avoid being nicked by the blade as it clattered to the floor. Just what I need right now… chop off my own toe.

As Annabelle put the knife safely on the counter, the microwave clock rolled to 7:00. The Linggs were unfashionably punctual. She had been counting on their tardiness to give her time to finish making the salad.

But Rosemarie and David weren't expecting to be entertained. Her friends were here to distract her from pre-opening-night jitters, relax her-they'd be happy to sit in the kitchen while she cooked. Annabelle crossed the foyer and opened the door of her Greenwich Village brownstone. The final aria from Tosca, piped through her high-end sound system, tumbled into the rain-darkened street.

"Welco-"

A person dressed in black-not Rosemarie, not David-pushed Annabelle backward. A hand, gloved despite the balmy night, grasped her forearm. A steel-toed boot kicked the door closed.

Annabelle opened her mouth. The quick intake of breath needed to scream accelerated her downfall. A cloying, harsh scent burned her nose and mouth as a thick square of damp cloth pressed into her face. The bold tones of the Roger Selden abstract paintings on the foyer wall faded into the distance. Annabelle's knees buckled, and the gloved hand released its grip.

Falling, she glimpsed a flash of metal.

Her attacker's fist opened, revealing a small glass vial. Annabelle's last coherent thought formed. Why me, dear God, why me?

Get back where you belong.

Dr. Jake Rosen could hear his boss saying it as he looked down at Annabelle Fiore. The opera singer's olive skin had blanched to white; her arms lay stiffly at her sides. Jake reached out to touch her wrist. Her eyelids fluttered.

The living are not your concern.

That's what Pederson would say if he knew his leading forensic pathologist was at St. Vincent's Hospital conducting a physical exam of a living victim. As deputy chief medical examiner of the City of New York, Jake spent most of his working hours at crime scenes or in the autopsy suite of the morgue. The chief ME, Charles Pederson, frowned on unauthorized field trips.

Gently, Jake turned Fiore's right arm to examine the inner side. There, in the crook of her elbow, was a tiny puncture where a needle had been inserted to draw blood. He studied it closely. No multiple attempts, not even much bruising around the site.

The emergency room physicians and residents who had treated Fiore the night before wouldn't have noticed this. They had saved the opera singer's life by evaluating her injuries from a medical standpoint. To them, the lack of trauma at the blood-extraction site was good news: no treatment required, so they could focus all their attention on her compromised central nervous system. To Jake, that tiny, perfect puncture was significant.

Whoever had attacked Fiore knew how to extract blood from a vein. This was not the work of an amateur. Not a random act of violence.

His gaze traveled down the length of her arm. There, near the wrist, were three distinct bruises. Her assailant had gripped her arm tightly and held her until she stopped struggling. Just as with the first four victims.

Jake hadn't examined them, but he'd been briefed by Vito Pasquarelli, lead detective on the case. The first attack had occurred over a month ago. A young mother on the Upper West Side had responded to a knock on her door in the middle of the day. The next thing she remembered was waking up groggy from ether-induced unconsciousness. She, and the police, had assumed the attacker had come to rob her. Except nothing was missing from her home.

It wasn't until hours later that she noticed the tiny needle mark in the crook of her arm. The police shrugged it off. She hadn't been harmed. It was weird, but weird was status quo in New York. File a report and move on.

Then it happened again. A teacher in the Bronx, an investment banker in Battery Park City, a foreign tourist attending a pharmaceutical conference in midtown. None of them seriously hurt, all of them thoroughly freaked-out. It didn't help that somewhere along the line the tabloids started calling the stalker "the Vampire."

Although Jake didn't subscribe to the media melodrama, he did understand the public's fear. New Yorkers, blase about drive-by shootings and shoves onto subway tracks, were terrified by a guy with a needle. He'd seen it often enough in his medical training-hulking football players who stoically endured compound fractures, then passed out when the nurse arrived to give them a tetanus shot; gang members who survived knife fights, only to whimper when it was time to be sewn up. Needles were scary.

And now the Vampire had nearly killed someone, a famous someone, not with his needle, but with an overdose of ether. Jake pulled a stethoscope from his pocket. He'd had to search to find one; it wasn't an instrument he had much use for in the normal course of his day. Fiore stirred slightly as he listened to her heart. The beat was steady, but the rate was slow, consistent with having been drugged into unconsciousness. This is where the Vampire analogy fell apart. Vampires, the kind who lived in Transylvania and flapped around in black capes, didn't anesthetize their victims. And apparently, New York's vampire wasn't too adept at it.

Of course, even a trained anesthesiologist could easily make a mistake with ether. That's why it wasn't used much anymore. And if you were administering the drug via a soaked rag, getting the dosage right became even more problematic. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that an overdose hadn't happened until Fiore, the fifth victim.

Annabelle Fiore's central nervous system had been seriously depressed. She would have died had her friends not arrived shortly after the attack. The effects still hadn't worn off. Jake would have liked to ask her some questions, but although she stirred slightly as he examined her, she was only semi-conscious. An interview would have to wait.

Jake turned away from the hospital bed just as a short, rumpled man entered the room.

"Hey, you made it!" Detective Vito Pasquarelli shook Jake's hand enthusiastically. "Thanks for coming. Have you looked at her?"

"Yes. It's hard to draw much of a conclusion, given that I didn't get to examine the others. But if their blood-draw sites were as perfect as Ms. Fiore's, I'd say you're dealing with someone with some medical training."

Pasquarelli nodded. "What about the ether?"

"Hard to know if the overdose was accidental or intentional. He seems to have given her quite a bit more than the others." Jake ran his hand through his hair, moving his style further along the scale from casually wild to unkempt. "But here's a thought that occurred to me. I know you said none of the victims is acquainted with any of the others. But you might want to ask them if they have any ties to a person who works around laboratory animals."

"You mean like rats and mice? Why?"

"When researchers conduct experiments on animals and then have to autopsy them, they often kill them with an overdose of ether. That's the most common use for the drug these days."

Vito perked up as they walked toward the elevator. "And a medical researcher would know how to draw blood, right?"

Jake nodded. "And how to test it. Which is what I'd like to do."

"Our CSI guys already did that. No trace of drugs in any of them. Nothing hinky."

Jake grinned. "Funkiness is in the eye of the beholder. Send the samples over to me. I'd like to run my own tests."

"You got it." The packed elevator arrived and the men descended in silence.

"What do you think he does with it?" Vito asked as the impatient crowd pushed past them into the lobby.

"I think he tests it, just like I'm going to do with it," Jake said.

The detective looked relieved.

Jake raised his hand in a mock toast. "Unless he drinks it."

Manny studied herself in the full-length mirror and heard her mother's voice echoing in her head. Philomena Manfreda, you are not leaving the house like that.

Sighing, she pulled off yet another outfit and tossed it onto the growing pile on her bed. As a solo practitioner with her own civil rights practice, Manny had a closet that was stuffed with suits for every lawyering occasion: suits to help convey her erudition to judges, suits to charm juries, suits to woo new clients. Plenty of cocktail dresses, too-opera, theater, five-hundred-dollar-a-plate charity bashes-all pressed and ready to go. But ask her to come up with the perfect outfit to wear to share a plate of antipasto with a man who dissected bodies all day, and she was utterly at a loss.

Manny reached for one more hanger in her overstuffed closet. Vogue had devoted three pages to gushing about this dress. If it didn't work, she was giving up. Slipping on the purported miracle garment, she turned to face the bed.

"Well, what do you think?"

The mound of clothing quivered slightly. A small spot of auburn emerged, followed by two big brown eyes: her toy red poodle, Mycroft. The dog surveyed her latest attempt, then laid his head between his paws and whined.

"You're absolutely right." She studied her reflection in the mirror. "Too… contrived."

She returned to the closet and yanked out her favorite black slacks. Why make such a big production about getting dressed to meet Jake anyway? The man was oblivious. She could appear in a muumuu from Wal-Mart or any couture outfit and he wouldn't notice because his eye would be plastered up against a microscope.

They had met in the line of duty, the last time working together to bring justice to the long-dead victims of a killer who had preyed on defenseless patients in an upstate psychiatric hospital. They'd flirted over dead bodies in the morgue and bonded by escaping attempts on their lives. The Lyons case was solved and now they were… what? Having a rendezvous? That implied romantic getaways to inns in the Berkshires or beach houses in the Hamptons. Dating? No, that would require regular phone calls and invitations to movies or concerts.

Instead, Manny spent hours in Jake's laboratory looking at gruesome crime-scene photos, peering at slides of poisoned-tissue samples, comparing exit-wound patterns. Then, for a nightcap, they would discuss the autopsies he had performed that day, before falling into bed under the watchful eye of a taxidermied raven-his honorarium for speaking about murder to the local Edgar Allan Poe club.

But whatever she had going with Jake Rosen, it sure beat the hell out of attending the annual Bar Association dinner dance with Evan Pennington III or going to Knicks games with that yahoo bond trader, Troy what's his name.

So why was she agonizing over what to wear? Maybe because, for once, Jake had actually called her up and invited her to have dinner in a charming little Italian trattoria. No sharing pepperoni pizza on a stainless steel morgue gurney tonight-this was a real dinner date. The place had great food, but it wasn't pretentious-fancy. She didn't want to arrive overdressed, showing how thrilled she was to be out with him.

Why is my confidence so undercut? This guy spends his days dissecting people's brains, and now he's messing with my head.

Manny zipped the pants, pulled on a pink silk knit sweater, slipped her feet into fuchsia snakeskin Manolo slingbacks, and checked her reflection. The look was chic, classy, but casual. Not bad. Not bad at all.

When she reached for Mycroft's Goyard carrier, monogrammed with the initials MM, the little dog shot off the bed and jumped in.

"That's right, Mikey, we're going on a date. And you're the chaperone."

Jake looked up from the case folder he'd brought with him to Il Postino in time to see Manny crossing the street toward his sidewalk table. Red hair flying, hips swaying, high heels tapping, Manny made quite a few heads turn as she strode through the early-evening crowd. It pleased him that she didn't seem to notice the effect she had.

Now she caught sight of him and waved. He rose to greet her and she kissed him lightly before settling Mycroft under the table.

"Where are your groupies?" Manny asked.

"Huh?"

"You're quite a celebrity-front page of the New York Post." Manny grinned as she took the newspaper from her bag and read the headline aloud, "'ME Enters Vampire Investigation.' That must've really pissed Pederson off."

Jake stared at her.

"Your jaw's dropping. You want to be careful of that, eating outside in New York. Flies, you know."

Jake started to laugh. Why did it surprise him that Manny had immediately grasped the trouble that trip to St. Vincent's had brought him? No sooner had he exited the hospital than he'd been besieged by a horde of TV and print reporters. His natural reaction was to answer their questions briefly but honestly. Stupid-when would he ever learn? Somehow, they had managed to spin his responses into lead stories, and their flashing cameras had splashed his startled face across all three New York dailies and the evening news.

"I wish you'd've been with me yesterday," Jake said. "You would've known to throw a jacket over my head and 'No comment' me out of there."

"How did Pederson react?"

"Let's just say I thought I was going to have an opportunity to brush up on my CPR."

The post-Fiore lecture had gone on and on: "violating jurisdictional boundaries;" "no regard for chain of command;" "no understanding of limited resources…" For Pederson, work was all about protecting his turf, hoarding his budget, and ramping up his media coverage. With one unauthorized trip, Jake had managed to score a trifecta of violations.

"You know he thinks you're angling for his job." Manny tapped the newspaper. "He sees this as grandstanding."

"I didn't know they'd be lying in wait for me," Jake protested. "And I don't want to be chief ME. Balancing budgets and sitting through endless meetings-no thanks."

"I know you like nothing better than being elbow-deep in an abdominal cavity, looking for signs of unnatural death." Manny reached for his hand resting on the table. "You have to remember that not everyone understands the appeal."

The soft touch of Manny's fingers took the sting out of her words. Her ability to go straight to the crux of a problem had caught his attention the moment he'd met her; her beauty had dawned on him a little later.

"Yeah, this little escapade of mine has had unintended consequences. Pederson has explicitly warned me off the Vampire case."

"So you're dropping it?" Manny's eyes opened wide, then, as she caught sight of the blue case folder beside his plate, crinkled into a smile. "You scared me there for a minute-thought you were going soft."

The waiter approached the table, introduced himself as Luigi, and rattled off the specials.

"I'll have the wild prawns," Manny said without hesitation.

Jake continued to scan the menu. "Do you know that shrimp are scavengers? I once autopsied a pilot whose plane crashed into the ocean. Had to take half a dozen off his body. Funny, too, because the poor guy had shrimp in his stomach-his last meal. Gave new meaning to the word payback."

The waiter looked pale. Manny's stomach grumbled loudly. "You know, I may just go vegan tonight. I'll start with a large salad…"

"Careful, E. coli gives leafy greens serial-killer potential," Jake whispered.

Manny shuddered. "If I had your job, I wouldn't be able to stomach anything more than applesauce and dry toast."

"I'll get you a position as a morgue assistant." He slipped his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder. "The Diener Diet! The newest way to lose weight. I bet you could get on Oprah with that."

Her flimsy shoe, which had been tracing a delicate pattern up and down his calf, crashed down on his instep like a guillotine. He grinned. The pain was worth it.

After the waiter finally left with an uncontroversial order of salad, appetizer, pasta, and steak, Jake set about making amends.

"I was hoping you'd help me brainstorm." Jake edged the case folder toward Manny, and caught her glancing at the label. "Will you take a look for me?"

Manny twisted around to face him and flipped the folder open. "Other men seduce women by telling them they're beautiful and sexy. You do it by whispering pathology reports in my ear."

Jake grinned. "I admire you too much to take such a hackneyed approach. Look at this."

Manny and Jake began to sort through the paperwork, focusing on the test results from Vampire victims that he had brought with him. Jake stared at the jumble of numbers and medical terminology. What was it the Vampire was looking for in this blood? None of the toxicology reports showed substances normally associated with drug abuse, so the victims weren't linked through a shared drug habit. Another door closed.

By the time the appetizer arrived, the waiter had to struggle to find a paper-free spot on the table to set Jake's calamari.

Manny stared at the reports. "No motive?"

"None. Pasquarelli thinks he's a nut. But there's more here. These are organized blood draws. They don't have the characteristics of a disorganized mind. The victims didn't know what happened to them until they woke up and saw the holes in their skin or the blood droplets on their clothes, the swelling, the beginnings of black-and-blue marks. Hallmarks of neat, precise, and carefully plotted attacks."

"The Devil Bat," Manny muttered.

Jake gulped from his glass of ice water and waited. Manny was usually very analytical, yet totally open to every possibility, able to see connections a more cautious mind would overlook. That passion, that lightning response, had attracted him in the first place. But sometimes her sudden reversals, the wild leaps in her thought process, left his relentlessly logical mind floundering.

"A forties horror movie with Bela Lugosi," she explained. "Used to watch the reruns with my father when I was growing up."

Signs of a misspent youth, he thought, but he didn't say it aloud, or else the spike of her heel would be in his calf, rather than massaging it.

"The movie's villain was a beloved town doctor who killed to seek revenge for wrongs he perceived had been committed against him."

"You have something against doctors?"

"I'm a lawyer, remember. A mixed marriage between the two professions would never work. Like the Hatfields and McCoys."

"Or Romeo and Juliet."

"They committed suicide. I rest my case."

Jake shuffled his papers to bring Manny back to the here and now.

"Blood is what the guy is after, so somehow these people must be linked by their blood," she said. "Do they share a common disease?"

"None of them is HIV-positive. Two are diabetic. One must be an alcoholic-terrible liver function." Jake rattled off the facts, tapping the pertinent data with the tip of his pencil. "But those are the results of running standard blood work. We can't test for every obscure disease in the book-it would take forever. We have to have some idea of what to look for, then run the test to prove or disprove the theory. Otherwise, you're searching for a needle in a haystack."

"So they could all be linked by having some rare disease, but you just don't know which one?"

"Possible, but unlikely. The police CSI team interviewed them all. No one has any unusual symptoms or medical history."

"What about the DNA profile?"

"The results have come back on only the first three. We're still waiting on the two latest. But these people are not related. And no genetic anomalies."

Manny chewed a zucchini flower and thought for a long moment before speaking. "Do you know how much blood he draws?"

"It's impossible to know the precise amount, but the victims were all checked out after the attacks and they had normal blood volume, so he's probably taking a vial at most."

"All right." Manny gestured with a forkful of draped arugula. "My knowledge of bizarre satanic rituals is admittedly small, but it seems to me if he were taking the blood for some kinky reason, he'd want more of it, yes?"

"I agree," Jake said. "I think he's doing what we're doing-testing it."

"Himself, or sending it to a lab?"

"Certain basic tests he could do himself with the right materials, or he could send the blood out to a lab. There are hundreds on the East Coast alone. We'd never be able to check them all."

"But not for DNA testing," Manny prompted. "You can't do that on your kitchen table. And because of the backlog, it usually takes months to get DNA results back. Believe me, my innocent clients know how behind those labs are."

"Those are the labs accredited to do forensic DNA testing. There are private labs, too, like the ones you see ads for on the subway-places that do paternity testing for civil cases."

"I wouldn't know. I haven't been underground in New York City since the St. James class trip to the Museum of Natural History."

Jake let her comment pass. Every once in a while, Manny's Jersey girl bridge and tunnel gene reared its head. He preferred not to dwell on the fact that when she had been puzzling over Dick and Jane in her green plaid Catholic school uniform, he had been a senior at City College. He waggled his pen at her. "But why go to all the trouble of collecting blood if all you want is a DNA match? He could get that much more easily by collecting a few hairs or picking up a cigarette butt from his targets. What he's looking for has to be something you can find only in blood."

"So tell Pasquarelli to start subpoenaing every blood lab in the metro area till he finds the one that worked on these samples."

Jake massaged his temples at the thought of the massive paperwork this would entail. "Pasquarelli's already thought of that. He was hoping I could come up with something a little less labor-intensive. But I guess the Vampire will stay on the front page of the papers for another week. The mayor won't be happy."

"Pasquarelli may be in luck there," Manny replied. "I was listening to the evening news while I was getting dressed tonight. The Vampire's been pushed aside by the Preppy Terrorists."

"And who, pray tell, are the Preppy Terrorists?" Jake dug into his steak, trying to ignore the sensation of Manny's gaze boring into him. It was like eating while Mycroft watched every bite travel from plate to mouth. "Did you want to try some of this?"

"Certainly not! This hand-rolled fettucine is just delicious." Manny slowly sucked a strand between her lips to prove her point, then continued. "The Preppy Terrorists are a couple of kids from the Monet Academy who got it in their heads that it would be a fun science experiment to put a small incendiary device under a U.S. mailbox in Hoboken."

"That's pushing the Vampire off the front page? We used to put firecrackers in old man Isbrantsen's mailbox whenever he'd confiscate our kickball."

"Was a federal judge ever strolling by when you did it? Because that's what happened in Hoboken. Judge Patrick Brueninger took a piece of twisted metal in the throat."

"Brueninger. That name sounds familiar. Wait-wasn't he the federal judge who presided over the Iqbar case?"

"You got it."

Jake drained the last of his Chianti. "These kids tried to take him down? Why?"

"Too soon to know," Manny said. "There are certainly quite a few Muslims who don't think the mullah got a fair trial. They swear that Iqbar really was just running a nice friendly mosque in Jersey City."

Jake snorted. "Right. Not laundering millions to finance the Taliban in Afghanistan. But these prep school boys aren't Muslims, right? Why would they want to off the judge?"

"Exactly-no motive whatsoever. My guess is it's just a prank gone terribly wrong. But with 9/11 and anthrax and the shoe bomber, the FBI's talking about prosecuting these kids to the fullest extent of the law, just to prove that they don't go after only dark-haired guys in turbans. These kids are toast. They're going to be-"

Manny was interrupted by a tinny rendition of the opening strains of George Thorogood's "Bad to the Bone" emanating from somewhere under the table. She dived down, resurfaced with her Fendi bag from the designer's newest collection, and answered her cell phone before George could utter another note of his trademark tune.

Sorry, she mouthed silently at Jake. "Hi, Kenneth," she trilled into the phone. "What's up?"

Jake's eyebrows lowered. He still was a tad suspect of Manny's paralegal assistant, Kenneth, a former client whose knowledge of the law stemmed from the two times he'd been arrested. Kenneth consulted with Manny at least twenty times a day on items ranging from the latest gossip on the Web page of the New York Social Diary to the advantages of arguing stare decisis in a brief submitted to the federal second circuit court of appeals.

"Of course you were right to call. This is very important. Hang on just a minute." Manny rose from her chair and moved to the edge of the canopy, out of earshot. Jake stabbed at his peas.

In less than ten minutes, Manny returned to the table, but Jake kept his eyes focused on his plate.

"Guess why Kenneth was calling?"

"Special three-hour sale at Saks."

"Very funny. Actually, it was a sale at T.J. Maxx. I can restrain myself sometimes."

"Manny, I know your relationship is diff-well, special, that he honors you as his savior and you view him as your Eliza Doolittle, but…"

"But what? He's a talented kid who was born poor. Just because he's a diva doesn't mean he can't appreciate honest, hard work."

Manny had been assigned by the local court to represent Kenneth Medianos Boyd pro bono on charges of conspiracy to destroy evidence-drugs-by flushing it away. Then there was the time when he was nabbed for a wardrobe malfunction during the annual Greenwich Village Halloween parade. His alter ego, formerly a waitress and now the chanteuse Princess Calypso, lost some strategically placed plumage taken from turkeys dispatched the Thanksgiving before.

Manny immediately appreciated Kenneth's worth: a keenly dramatic fashion sense coupled with a paralegal certification obtained while behind bars before his drag reincarnation. Kenneth adored Manny because she treated him as a person with skill and brains. They cemented the bond while shopping at the TSE cashmere outlet; she offered him a job as her legal assistant.

"I know, I know, and he watches out for your backside. But does he have to call you so many times a day? What's the point of having an assistant if he's always ringing you? Kind of defeats the purpose of easing your workload."

"You're just jealous of the other men in my life." She glanced down at Mycroft to hide both her annoyance and her smile.

"'Men'? Last week, Kenneth wore heat-sensitive nail polish when he delivered those documents to my home. Started talking to me with pink nails, which became royal blue by the time he handed me the manila envelope. And let's not forget he was in a full-length evening dress."

"He's just a girl making an honest living as a chanteuse in downtown clubs, when he's not running my law office, writing my motions, collecting my bills, and keeping my clients happy on the phone so I can go off gallivanting to help with your cases."

Manny paused for breath, then continued. "Kenneth was calling because the mother of one of the Preppy Terrorists just phoned to say she wants to retain me as his defense attorney."

"I thought you said those kids were toast? Why would you want the case?"

"First, these kids are being railroaded to make them examples so that the government can say 'Look what we're doing to protect you from terrorism.'"

"Railroaded!" Jake pointed his fork at her. "You can't say that. All you know about this case is what you heard on the news. And we both know how inaccurate that is."

Manny pushed the accusatory fork away. "I know from experience how prosecutors work. Besides, this case is huge. When I show the government this kid is not guilty, I'll have more credibility in the future on other cases."

"Manny, so far you've dealt mainly with civil rights cases and nonviolent offenders," Jake said. "Are you prepared to tangle with terrorists and the federal government? This case is awfully risky."

"I'm prepared for anything. Gotta run. Sorry." Manny pushed away from the table, sloshing water out of the glasses on the table.

She paused to deliver a parting jab. "What about when you nearly got blown up trying to find Pete Harrigan's killer? It's okay for you to take risks but not me. Showing your age, aren't you?"

Jake winced. All he wanted was to shield her from harm. He struggled to keep the protective edge out of his voice. "Just be careful."

His calm words were like a gust of wind on a brush fire. Manny pivoted. "Don't talk to me like you're my keeper, Jake. We don't have any commitments to each other, remember? I'll call you tomorrow after I meet with the client." She was halfway across the street with Mycroft in tow before Jake could flag down the waiter for the check.

Tossing some crumpled twenties on the table, Jake set off in pursuit. With her cascade of red hair and electric pink sweater, Manny was as easy to track as a microburst. What he would do when he caught up with her, Jake wasn't sure. Vulcan mind meld maybe.

That might be the only way to make her see how irrational she was being. It was one thing to be a champion of the oppressed, quite another to be a sucker for some crackpot sob story. And how would she handle all the work this case would entail? The big-time criminal lawyers had a whole team to back them up; Manny had a drag queen paralegal.

Jake felt a sensation over his heart not caused by Manny's behavior. His cell phone vibrated. The display indicated it was his office. What timing.

"Rosen," snapped Pederson. "Get over to Fourteen West Fifty-third. Looks like the Vampire has struck again. And this time, he's left you a body."

Jake began working the moment his cab pulled up to the curb. As deputy chief medical examiner, his duties were coldly delineated by the chief medical examiner: Confirm the identity of the victim, what happened, where it happened, when it happened, and how it happened.

But he saw the scope of his work as larger than that. To him, every victim told a far more complex story than the blood spatter surrounding the body or the fibers and hairs clinging to it. The why and whodunit were often intricately woven into the historical fabric of the victim's life. Life merged with death.

Amanda Hogaarth's story began here on the spotless sidewalk outside the very expensive building where she had lived. Jake noted the shaken expression of the doorman who admitted him, and the rigid bearing of the concierge standing behind his desk. Somehow, these two had let a killer into what was supposed to be an enclave of safety.

Jake glanced around the marble-floored lobby with its plush but impersonal furnishings. Co-op, condo, or high-end rental? Co-ops, even large ones like this building, tended to be clubbier. The neighbors knew one another, at least in passing, from all the endless wrangling of the board of directors. In a condo or rental, Amanda Hogaarth would more likely have lived in anonymity.

Jake took the elevator of this pre-World War I relic to the thirteenth floor, where the door slid open on a maelstrom of activity. The police were conducting a door-to-door inquiry, interviewing the immediate neighbors. The crime scene techs had arrived with all their equipment. As he walked toward the open door of 13C, repeated flashes of light told him the police photographer was at work.

Jake met Detective Pasquarelli in the hall. "Can I look around the apartment?"

The detective nodded. "Give it another few minutes and the techs will be done."

Jake glanced at the front door. "Any sign of forced entry?"

"No. He pushed his way in, or she let him in. The doorman claims he didn't send anyone up to her apartment, so our guy must've gotten in the building by requesting someone else, or he came in through the service entrance. Luckily, this place is guarded like Fort Knox. There are security cameras trained on all doors, and in the elevators. We'll need a few hours tomorrow to review the tapes."

"Maybe we'll get lucky."

Pasquarelli grinned. "Don't count on it, Doc. I never do."

"Who found her?" Jake asked.

"Maintenance man came up here just before five p.m. Last call of the day. Bet he wishes he'd knocked off early." Pasquarelli tugged on his already-crooked tie. "Apparently, Ms. Hogaarth called yesterday to say her air-conditioning unit was making a rattling noise. Since it wasn't an emergency, the guy didn't make it up here till today. Opened the door with a passkey when she didn't answer. Called nine-one-one at four-forty-eight p.m."

Jake glanced at his watch: 9:35 p.m. "What took you so long to call me?"

"The responding officers thought it was a natural death," Pasquarelli explained. "The tour doc from the ME's office came. He's the one who noticed the needle mark in her arm, and a few other suspicious things. Said if this was related to the Vampire, we'd better bring you in."

Jake's expression flickered between a smile and a scowl. His subordinates knew how interested he was in the Vampire case; he was surprised Pederson had been willing to let him have it after that display of authority in his office yesterday.

Stepping past Pasquarelli directly into the living room of the apartment, Jake recognized it instantly-the faint but distinctive smell of ether. That's why he never followed OSHA guidelines by wearing a face mask-the possibility of missing such transient evidence was too great. And once overlooked, it was gone forever. Now he could be certain he was dealing with the Vampire.

Ms. Hogaarth appeared to have preserved her dignity, dying a tidy death in what had been a very tidy home. Jake glanced around. The overwhelming impression was beigeness. Off-white walls, thick cream carpeting, matching light tan sofa and love seat. The only contrast came from mournful streaks of black fingerprint powder as the crime scene investigators went about their work, which destroyed the cleanliness Ms. Hogaarth had obviously held dear.

The body was stretched out on the middle of the living room floor. Jake nodded at his colleague from the office, Todd Galvin, who jumped from a crouch beside the body and rushed over to him.

Only two years out of his pathology residency, Todd was the youngest member of the ME's staff, and eager to show what he had learned. "I found a needle mark," he began, gesturing Jake toward the body. But Jake turned away.

"Remember what I've been teaching you, Todd. Let's look through the crime scene first to see what that tells us about the victim, before we get distracted by her body. She's not going anywhere."

Jake headed straight for the bathroom. The medicine cabinet revealed the usual lineup of over-the-counter remedies, but just one prescription: Lasix for high blood pressure. Other than that, Ms. Hogaarth had been quite healthy. He opened a drawer and found a shabby stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. "Interesting-maybe she had been a nurse and used her old gear to monitor her own blood pressure."

Todd nodded. "Possibly. A layman would be more likely to use one of those new blood pressure monitoring kits they sell at the drugstore."

The young man peeped behind the shower curtain. "Sure is clean in here. This lady wouldn't have liked to see my bathroom."

They moved on to the bedroom, a room of almost monastic simplicity. Jake looked at the tautly drawn bedspread and lifted up the bottom. Just as he suspected-hospital corners on the sheets. In the closet, the shoes stood in military rows; the clothes all were hanging in the same direction. Nightstand: lamp, clock, one issue of Reader's Digest. Dresser: comb, brush, lavender talcum powder. Bedspread, curtains, carpet-all beige. Jake made a 360-degree rotation-not a single photograph, picture, or knick-knack. "What kind of woman makes it into her sixth decade of life without acquiring a single tchotchke, a photo of grandchildren, nieces, or old friends?"

"Yeah, it's like a hotel room," Todd agreed. "Kinda creepy."

Jake led the way to the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator. "The contents of the refrigerator can also help you establish the time of death." Jake smiled at Todd and shook a carton. "The milk expiration date is your friend."

Todd peered over Jake's shoulder. "Jeez, there's even less food in her fridge than in mine. English muffins, low-fat margarine, juice, and milk. She must've eaten out a lot."

Jake glanced into the garbage can-empty. Dishwasher-cleaner than a showroom model. "The killer didn't leave anything behind in here."

The living room revealed nothing more than it had on first glance-no clutter, no photos, no soul. Looking down at the coffee table, Jake's eye was drawn to a single round clean spot, where no fingerprint powder had fallen. The CSIs must've removed something from here, he thought, a mug or a glass. In the average home, he wouldn't have thought anything of it, but in Amanda Hogaarth's home, it seemed extraordinary.

Now Jake moved toward the body. Amanda Hogaarth lay on her back, her knees slightly bent to the right, her arms splayed to either side. A brown tweed skirt covered her stocky legs to mid-calf; a beige sweater met the skirt demurely, leaving no flesh exposed. She had the stiff Margaret Thatcher-like hairstyle typical of a woman in her late sixties, and not a hair had been disturbed as she fell.

Todd crouched down beside the body. "Look at this," he said as Jake joined him. He pointed to a tiny needle mark and a speck of dried blood inside the elbow joint of the victim where blood had obviously been drawn.

That alone was not suspicious. The woman might simply have been to the doctor's and had blood drawn for tests the day she died.

"And," Todd continued with rising excitement, "look at her mouth."

Ms. Hogaarth's perfect white top teeth were false, and the denture had been knocked askew in her mouth, giving her a slightly grotesque expression. Around the corners of her lips were tiny abrasions.

"She was gagged," Jake observed. He glanced down. Her legs were bare, and her feet, contorted with the bunions and calluses of old age, lay uncovered on the rug. He had been in her home for only ten minutes, but Jake felt strongly that this was not a woman who would have padded around barefoot. "Have you found her panty hose?" he asked Todd.

"I told the criminalists to look for it, but I doubt they'll find it. The killer probably took that with him.

"Rigor is receding," Todd continued. "She's been dead about twenty-four hours."

"Maybe more, Todd. The algor mortis will provide more information. Check her core body temperature, and take the ambient air temperature, too. That may have prevented some decomposition."

"The air conditioner has been running on high. It's sixty-five degrees in here," Todd reported.

"Yes, her body temperature would have dropped more rapidly in this cool room," Jake explained, "making it seem that she's been dead longer than she really has been."

"Her livor mortis is fixed." Todd pressed his thumb against the maroon pooling of blood on her back and could not produce a white pallor. "There's no doubt she's been dead for more than eight or nine hours at least, and she hasn't been moved at all since she died."

"Good work, Todd." Jake rose and signaled to the two morgue workers lounging by the door. "Go ahead and take the body to the morgue. And keep her in this same position, or you'll destroy any trace evidence on her back. I'll do the autopsy first thing tomorrow morning. If you want to assist, Todd, be there by eight a.m."

Jake watched as they transferred the body, the extremities still partially stiffened with rigor, onto a gurney. If this was truly the work of the Vampire, why had his methods changed? Why had he found it necessary to kill this victim, when he hadn't seriously harmed the others? The case had morphed. What had been a fascinating academic puzzle for him to decode had escalated to murder. He'd gotten what he wanted-the chance to work on the Vampire case-but it had come at the cost of Amanda Hogaarth's life.

"Have you contacted the next of kin?" Jake asked the detective.

"Doesn't seem to be anybody. Her apartment application lists a lawyer as the person to contact in an emergency. Least I don't have to break the news to some heartbroken daughter or sister." Pasquarelli grunted thanks to a passing stream of CSIs.

"We didn't get much," the oldest one said. "Cleanest apartment I ever saw."

Jake thrust his hands deep into his pockets. "Something's here, Vito. We have to look with our eyes wide open. I'm going to nose around again."

"Be my guest."

Jake did the roundabout again, but if anything, the apartment seemed even more nondescript than before. Then in the kitchen, amid the spotless cabinets and appliances, Jake found it. There, pushed back behind the gleaming pots, was one clue that Amanda Hogaarth had lived a real life and knew someone else on the planet-a battered book with a faded cover and spidery handwritten notations in the margins: Recetas Favoritas.

Jake cradled it in his hands. A cookbook, a Spanish-language cookbook, not placed on a shelf for easy reference, but hidden away. Like love letters, Jake thought. Or pornography. He gently put it down.

Manny stormed up the steps of the federal building in Newark, New Jersey, her heels rapping out a battle cry. Tossing her red leather tote on the conveyor belt to be x-rayed, Manny charged through the metal detector, which immediately began hooting out a warning.

"Step back out, ma'am," the marshal instructed. "Any keys or change in your pockets?"

"Of course not," she snapped. Her sea green Donatella Versace suit didn't even have pockets, and if it did, she certainly wouldn't destroy its sleek lines by carrying around lumps of keys.

"Unbutton your jacket."

Manny did as she was told. "Whoops! I forgot I was wearing that." She undid the vintage double-link chain belt from her waist, dropped it in the guard's basket, and stepped through the metal detector without incident.

On the other side, the guard was holding the belt, calling for a tape measure.

"C'mon, give that back," Manny commanded. "I'm in a hurry. I've got an urgent meeting with a client."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but security regulations prohibit lengths of chain longer than four feet. Can't let metal belts longer than forty-eight inches into the building. Same regulations as on a plane."

"That accessory set me back a few hundred dollars. Do you honestly think I'd use it to chain a federal prosecutor to his desk?"

"I need to measure it first," the guard insisted. "I gotta find a tape."

Manny opened her mouth to howl in protest at the absurd delay. But before a word escaped, she stopped, grinned, and held open her suit jacket. "Look, Xavier," she said, reading the guard's name tag, "you're insulting me here. I know I'm not a size two, but does it look like I need four feet of chain to go around this waist?"

Xavier flushed as he studied her hourglass figure. "Um, I guess not. Sorry, ma'am. Here you go."

"This terrorism stuff is getting ridiculous," Manny fumed to the man riding the elevator with her. "They spend all their resources hassling average citizens, and there are probably Al Qaeda operatives camped out a mile from the Pentagon."

The man said nothing, but he took a step away from her as she pounded the button for the seventh floor yet again. When the elevator finally delivered her, Manny was in a fine state, and woe be unto the federal prosecutor who crossed her.

"Philomena Manfreda here to see Brian Lisnek," she told the receptionist ensconced behind the bulletproof glass window.

The young woman started to gesture toward a chair in the waiting area, but one look at the set of Manny's jaw changed her mind and she buzzed Lisnek immediately. "You'll have to sign in. And wear this tag at all times." She spoke as if she carried a gun.

Lisnek, a stocky sandy-haired man in a rumpled gray suit, opened the secured door. Manny soon found herself seated with him in a typical government office-windowless, crammed with unfiled papers, furnished with a metal desk and old scarred wood chairs, and equipped with a computer whose screen dissolved into the American bald eagle.

"Where is my client, Travis Heaton? I want to talk to him before I talk to you."

"He's in a holding cell downstairs with one of our agents. I'll have the guard take him to a lawyer's window. His mother is in the waiting area down there, in case she's needed."

"You mean in case she's needed to sign a statement giving her son permission to confess to a crime he didn't commit. Well, there will be no statement. Tell your homeboy not to question him any longer. My client is exercising his Fifth Amendment rights."

Lisnek seemed unperturbed, as if this was just another day in his life dealing with a run-of-the-mill defense attorney. Manny didn't care for the look of smug self-confidence on the prosecutor's round face. "What are the charges against him?"

"Terrorist attack on U.S. government property. There will be a number of charges of violation of Title 18, then double that for violations of the U.S. postal code. And, of course, attempted murder. Assume twenty, thirty main charges, a few related subsidiary charges, a number of conspiracy charges, and maybe a racketeering charge, give or take a few."

"Oh, come on. Whoever did this, you know it was just a prank with a regrettable unintended injury."

"Ms. Manfreda, the attempted assassination of a federal judge is not a 'regrettable unintended injury.' And there are no pranks in the metropolitan area these days." • • • "Thank God you're here!"

Manny would not have pegged the woman who greeted her in the visitors' area as the mother of a Monet Academy student. Slightly overweight, with deeply etched worry lines in her forehead, she wore a plain gold band on her right ring finger, indicating she was a widow, and jeans and a sweatshirt that she must've thrown on when she got the call that her son was in jail. No diamonds, no Cartier, no tightly Botoxed skin. Mrs. Maureen Heaton looked too normal, and too hardworking, to be the kind of mother who could produce the money and the connections necessary to get her son into the city's most exclusive prep school.

Manny extended her hand. "Philomena Manfreda, Mrs. Heaton. I'd like to sit down with your son and find out exactly what's going on. But it's hard here. We have to talk through a wired-glass window by phone. And now, under the Patriot Act, even my conversations can be monitored if they think I am passing messages on to his accomplices."

"But that's only if he's guilty," Mrs. Heaton protested. "My Travis is a good boy. You've got to get him out of this place. They can't keep him here. And you can't let them take him to a prison. He's only a child. Please."

"How old is Travis, ma'am?"

"He just turned eighteen, in his senior year at Monet. He's always been small for his age, and a little immature, but very bright."

Inwardly, Manny winced. Eighteen was bad-the kid would be charged as an adult, and if she didn't manage to get him off, he'd face a prison term and a criminal record that would follow him all his life. A really bad trade-off for the momentary thrill of watching a mailbox explode.

Manny checked her watch. "They'll be bringing Travis in any minute, Mrs. Heaton. You'd better step out into the hall."

"What? I want to see my son. I need to be with him when you talk to him."

"That's not possible, Mrs. Heaton. It would violate attorney-client privilege."

"But I'm his mother," Maureen Heaton wailed.

"Even so, now that Travis has turned eighteen, he's considered an adult. The government could call you as a witness against your son."

"I've been working my hospital job during the day and doing private-duty nursing at night to keep him in school. Do you understand? He's my child."

Manny felt her own eyes well with tears, but she blinked them back furiously. Getting emotionally involved with a client and his family did no one any good. Travis would be best served if she kept her emotions in check. "I'll make sure he's okay. I promise." Manny turned her impulse to hug into a brief pat on the shoulder and gently urged Travis's mother toward the dispassionate uniformed guard waiting to escort her out.

Another guard led Manny to a folding chair outside one of the confessional-like booths lining the wall of the narrow room. The door behind the Plexiglas partition opened and Manny watched a guard escort a thin, hunched young man with the makings of a scraggly beard up to the window.

He stared at Manny, managing to convey both belligerence and sullenness. From the dark rings under his eyes, he must have been awake all night.

This was one of the Preppy Terrorists?

Even if you replaced the orange prison jumpsuit with a navy blazer and club tie, this kid was not going to be appearing in a Brooks Brothers ad anytime soon. Where was the air of nonchalant entitlement? Where was the cocksure self-confidence? That's what parents sent their sons to places like the Monet Academy to acquire. Algebra and biology you could get at lesser institutions; Monet prepared boys to be masters of the universe. Travis might have been a straight-A student academically, but he hadn't acquired that Monet panache.

Manny picked up the telephone receiver, which would allow them to talk with limited privacy, while keeping her eye on the glowering guard by the door. She gestured for Travis to pick up his receiver.

He held it gingerly an inch or two from his ear, as if he suspected her of being able to transmit poison through the line.

"Travis, I'm a lawyer. My name is Manny Manfreda and your mom has asked me to represent you."

At the mention of his mother, Travis's shoulders slumped even more and he looked down at the floor.

"You need to answer my questions truthfully, or I won't be any help to you at all," Manny said. "Do you understand?"

Travis nodded, but he still wouldn't make eye contact.

The first thing Manny wanted to know was how much damage her new client had done to himself. "Have you been talking to the police and the FBI since you were brought in? Did they advise you of your rights?"

Travis nodded. "A police car came around the corner right after the explosion. They must've been patrolling right around there. The cops stopped us and said they just wanted to get some information from us down at the station. We went because we didn't want them calling our parents. We weren't even supposed to be out that night."

"So they didn't arrest you at the scene, but you agreed to go with them to the police station." Manny leaned forward. "This is important, Travis. Did they threaten you?"

The boy shrugged. "No, but they're cops, ya know. You do what they tell you to do. Besides, I didn't do anything wrong, so I figured I didn't have anything to worry about."

Manny tried not to think about how many wrongfully convicted people had spoken those words before being hauled off for long prison terms. Before she could ask her next question, Travis asked her one.

"When the cops were driving away with us, I saw an ambulance pull up. Did someone get hurt when the mailbox exploded? Later, the cops kept asking me about some man with a dog."

Manny studied her client. For the first time since they had started talking, he met her eye. Was he being sincere? Was he really not aware that the explosion had nearly killed a federal judge? The subtle cues you got when you spoke to a client face-to-face were hard to read when his face was obscured by scratched Plexiglas, his voice distorted by a primitive sound system.

"The man walking the dog was Judge Patrick Brueninger. He was seriously injured by a flying piece of metal."

Manny watched as Travis absorbed this news. His face didn't register any of the emotions she would have expected: shock and fear if he were innocent, or if he really had intended to kill the judge, elation at having hit his target, disappointment at not having killed him. Instead, Travis seemed just mildly concerned.

"What about the dog?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"The dog-did it get hurt in the explosion?"

"Uh, not that I'm aware." Manny looked down and made some notes on her pad to give herself a moment to think. Her new client seemed utterly unfazed by being involved in an incident that had nearly killed a judge, but he was worried about the victim's dog. She had no experience representing juveniles-would a jury believe he was screwy or that he merely had his priorities straight?

She resumed the interview. "Do you know who Patrick Brueninger is?"

Travis shrugged. "No. Why would I?"

The truth or a lie? Manny couldn't be sure. That bored teenage demeanor was so hard to read. For a newshound like her, Brueninger's name was instantly recognizable. But teenagers, even smart ones, were famously self-absorbed. Maybe Travis really didn't have a clue about the prominence of the man who'd been injured by this stunt. She moved on. "How many kids in your group?"

"It was just Paco and me from Monet. We met these four other guys at the club. They were a little older. They bought us some beers." Travis's voice got softer and Manny had to strain to hear. "After the music was over, we all went to the deli for some food. We passed the mailbox, and one of the guys bent down, like he'd dropped something. The next thing you know, everyone was running, so Paco and I ran, too. And then the mailbox exploded, the cops came, and here I am."

"And you never saw these guys before you met them at the club?"

Travis shook his head.

"What were their names?"

Travis shrugged. "One was named Jack, and there was one they all called Boo. And Gordie and Zeke, or Deke or Freak or something. It was so loud in there, I couldn't hear what they were saying."

"And they came down to the police station, too?"

"Paco and I got into one police car." Travis twisted the edge of his cuff as he spoke. "The other guys were standing out on the sidewalk, talking to the cops. We couldn't hear what they were saying, except they kept shaking their heads. And finally they all showed the cops their driver's licenses and the cops wrote stuff down, and then they let them go."

Manny rubbed her temples. Clearly, "Freak" and "Boo" knew a bit more about dealing with law enforcement than this little rabbit. The older guys had simply declined to make the trip to the station, and the cops, not having enough to arrest them, had let them go after checking their IDs. God only knew if the IDs were real.

"And what about Paco?"

"They put us in separate rooms when we got here, and I haven't seen him since."

"How much did you tell the cops once you got here?"

"Just what I told you. That Paco and I were supposed to be sleeping over at his house but came over to Hoboken to check out this club and met those guys. One of the guys dropped something by the mailbox; then we all ran. That's it."

"Which guy dropped something?"

"The guy whose name I didn't catch. Zeke… whatever."

Travis sounded impatient. Manny guessed he was tired of telling his story. Well, too damn bad. He'd tell it until she understood every detail. No wonder the cops were holding on to him. This was the oldest cover-up in the book-a version of the old "The drugs aren't mine; I was holding them for a friend" routine.

"There's nothing else? You stuck to this story?"

Travis bristled. "It's not a story; it's the truth!" Then he glanced over his shoulder at the guard. "I thought they were going to let me go, until they opened my backpack and found the book."

"What book?"

"A book on Islam that I'm reading for my comparative religion class. That's when they really started coming down on me. How did I know how to build a bomb? Was this the first one I'd ever set off? They wouldn't let up. That's when they read me that Miranda thing, just like on TV That's when I knew I had to call my mom. Those cops think I'm some kind of terrorist, don't they?"

Manny didn't want to tell Travis what the newspapers were calling him. She honed in on something Travis had said earlier. This could be her salvation. "You said they searched your backpack. Did they do that without your consent?"

"No. They asked permission and I said okay. I figured they were looking for drugs and I knew I was clean. I forgot all about the book being in there."

Shit! So far the cops had done everything by the book. This case was looking worse and worse. But she plastered a smile on her face for her client's sake. "Okay, Travis. That's all for now. In a little while, I should have you out of here."

"You'll explain to them that this is all a mistake?"

"I'm afraid it's a little more complicated than that. But we'll try to get you out on bail." Manny watched Travis shuffle forlornly to the door. He turned once to look at her; then he was gone.

Maureen Heaton sat in the waiting room, her back pressed against the pea green plastic chair, her fingers picking at a frayed thread on her canvas purse. Manny greeted her, careful to banish all signs of worry from her face. "All right, ma'am, first things first. He was with a group of boys who may have done something. But he says he is innocent, and I believe him. Let's arrange to get Travis out of here. Then we'll work on our strategy for his defense."

Mrs. Heaton twisted her dulled wedding band on her right ring finger continuously, as if trying to conjure up some genie who would make this nightmare go away. "Defense! But he's innocent. It's obvious those other boys set the bomb."

"Yes, but the police don't have those other boys; they have Travis. And a suspect in custody is worth four on the streets. We may have to hire our own investigator to track them down."

"Investigator? I'm a widow; I work two jobs. Where do you think I'm going to get all this money?" Mrs. Heaton groped in her purse for a tissue. Manny could see billable hours evaporating before her eyes. She patted Mrs. Heaton on the shoulder. "Don't worry. I know someone with some time on his hands who may be able to help us." This was the perfect chore for Sam, Jake's perpetually unemployed brother.

Mrs. Heaton gazed at her with brown eyes full of pathetic hope and Manny could feel the burden of worry shift from the mother's shoulders to her own. She hoped she was strong enough to carry the load.

"We're opposing bail." Lisnek leaned back in his desk chair, straining the blue oxford cloth of his shirt over his belly. "We want him in custody until his trial."

Manny was thunderstruck. "The kid's never been in trouble before. He's from a hardworking family with limited financial resources. He poses no flight risk. Why would you oppose bail?"

"We suspect he's part of a larger conspiracy. We found this in his backpack." Lisnek held up a dog-eared paperback book-Understanding the Koran by Imam Abu Rezi.

"Required reading for the comparative religion class he's taking at Monet," Manny explained.

Lisnek shrugged. "Students have been known to be unduly influenced by their subject matter. The police just called with the results of their search of Travis's home. They found a whole shelf of books on Muslim theology, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, et cetera. I rather doubt that prep schools delve into the topic that deeply."

Manny jumped up. "That's absurd. Even in these crazy times, no judge in the District of New Jersey is going to deny bail based solely on the suspect's reading material." But even as she said those words aloud, she felt a worm of doubt wiggling within. Why would a Christian teenager possess so many books on Islam? Did Travis have some political agenda he wasn't revealing to her or to his mother?

"Don't jump to conclusions, Ms. Manfreda. I never said that's all we had. Mr. Heaton has been linked to the crime with a piece of solid forensic evidence. A bite mark in an apple."

"A bite mark in an apple proves my client is a terrorist? Was it a McIntosh or a Red Delicious? Am I missing something here?"

"We have an eyewitness, Mr. Park Sung Ho, counterman at the Happy Garden all-night market on Washington Street. Mr. Heaton and his friends went in and bought sodas and snacks. They gave Mr. Park a hard time, tossing money back and forth, trying to confuse him with the change. He watched them carefully as they left and saw Mr. Heaton take an apple from a display by the door. By the time Mr. Park got out from behind the counter to chase them, the boys were down at the corner by the mailbox. He saw the one with the apple take a bite out of it and toss it in the gutter. Then the kid crouched down, placed something under the mailbox, and they all ran. A few seconds later, the mailbox blew up."

Manny kept her face impassive, but inside she was seething. Travis had conveniently forgotten to mention this forbidden fruit. "And you recovered the apple."

"We did. And we intend to prove it has Mr. Heaton's bite mark in it."

Manny was puzzled. Why would they be focusing on the bite pattern? Anything that a person had bitten into would retain traces of his saliva, which could be tested for DNA. A DNA match was infallible, while the forensics of bite comparisons was wildly speculative. She began to feel a flicker of hope.

"You're testing the apple for my client's DNA, of course?"

Lisnek looked down at his scuffed penny loafers. "Uh… it's been sent out."

Manny detected something squirrelly in his response. They'd probably mishandled the evidence. She didn't let the smile she felt inside touch her lips. This chump had nothing, and he knew it.

Manny forced Lisnek to meet her gaze and held it for a long moment. Lisnek was the first to look away.

As she left the U.S. attorney's office, Manny turned to ask one more question. "So where is the other kid you brought in? Who's representing him?"

"Paco Sandoval has been released."

"Released? How come he gets out and my client's still here?"

"Because Paco Sandoval is the son of Enrique Sandoval, ambassador to the UN for Argentina. He has diplomatic immunity."

"Shall we begin?"

Jake Rosen; Todd Galvin; their diener, a Croatian emigre named Dragon; and Detective Pasquarelli stood around the autopsy table at 8:01 a.m. Before them lay the fully clothed body of Amanda Hogaarth.

Todd and Jake performed the first routine tasks: Using an alternate light source, they searched for traces of microscopic evidence on Amanda Hogaarth's clothing. Finding nothing, they photographed her in her clothing, front and back. Jake then carefully removed each of the garments and photographed them completely, even inside out.

Even without her tweed skirt and sensible undergarments, Ms. Hogaarth managed to project an air of quiet dignity. Jake was sure this woman would have been very surprised to know she had ended up here. The other seven autopsy tables held drunks and drug addicts and street punks. They had led hard, violent lives, so it was no surprise that they had met hard, violent ends. Amanda Hogaarth seemed to have led a blameless, soft, rather dull life. Yet she, too, had wound up under the probing tools of the medical examiner.

Then Jake stepped up to examine the victim's skin closely. Her body was covered with the fine wrinkles, freckles, and age spots that plagued the fair-skinned, but there were no wounds. On her left wrist, Jake noted four evenly spaced bruises. He pointed them out to Todd and Pasquarelli. "The attacker grabbed her here and held her arm steady while he drew the blood." Jake's gaze traveled up the woman's arm until he found the tiny hole left by the assailant's needle. He instructed Dragon to photograph both areas, then turned the victim's hands over and looked at the palms. On each palm were four half-moon impressions. Amanda Hogaarth had clenched her hands so tightly that her own fingernails had pierced her skin.

Gently, Jake opened the victim's mouth. Dragon photographed the abrasions he and Todd had noted the night before at the corners of her mouth. Using a magnifying glass, Jake searched for fibers there, but he found none, supporting his hypothesis that nylon stockings had been used for the gag. Sometimes, gagged victims choked on their own vomit, but that was not the cause of death here. Amanda Hogaarth's throat and windpipe were clear.

After removing her top denture, Jake looked at the fillings in her bottom teeth. "You don't see that type of dental work here. I don't think this work was done by an American dentist."

The neck and torso revealed nothing unusual, but the thighs, large, cushioned with a thick layer of adipose tissue, showed two distinct bruises above the knees. "Looks like he knelt on her to hold her down," Todd commented.

"Correct." Jake directed a light to shine on Ms. Hogaarth's vulva area. "Let's look for signs of sexual attack."

"Why do that, Doc? She was dressed when the detective here found her." Todd was quizzical.

"Because many times crime scenes are staged. Plus, if you look at her panties under a light source, there appears to be a slight stain… maybe blood."

"As I thought, there are definite signs of violent penetration. Tears in the vagina but no semen present."

"He wore a condom?" Todd asked.

"No, he didn't rape her. She was violated by a hard object shoved into her vagina. Look at this." Jake stepped aside so that Todd and the detective could get a closer look.

The younger doctor's brow furrowed. "What…"

"See the labia? That tissue is burned. The margins of the burned area look like electrical burns. Do a frozen section," Jake told Todd. "We'll verify it under the microscope."

Pasquarelli recoiled. Dragon muttered something. It wasn't necessary to speak Croatian to catch his meaning.

"Would that be enough to kill her?" the detective asked. "Did she die of electrocution?"

"No, if she'd been electrocuted, we'd see an exit burn somewhere else on her body. It's time to look inside." They worked with quiet efficiency, making a Y-shaped incision from each shoulder to the lower part of the breastbone, then down to the pubic bones. In one smooth movement that produced a faint zipping sound, Jake pulled the skin back from the rib cage, exposing the ribs and the abdominal organs.

Pasquarelli winced and looked away.

"Come on, Detective." Jake elbowed the cop. "You must've seen that procedure scores of times."

"Seen it. Doesn't mean I have to like it. Some cops barf every time they have to do this. Me, I got a cast-iron stomach. What bothers me more than the blood and the smell are the sounds, especially when you guys fire up that saw." The detective reached into his pocket and pulled out two tiny earplugs. "Okay, I'm ready."

Jake used the saw to cut through the ribs near the breastbone and removed the breastplate, exposing the heart and lungs. "The heart weighs five hundred and fifty grams, twice as big as it should be," Jake commented as he worked. "There's narrowing of the arteries, and an enlarged left ventricle, indicative of high blood pressure. Both lungs are filled with frothy fluid."

Jake straightened. "Cause of death: hypertensive and arteriosclerotic heart disease with congestive heart failure, along with a fatal cardiac arrhythmia, while being held down."

"English, please," Pasquarelli requested.

"Heart failure induced by torture."

Jake stepped through the door of his town house and slid on a pile of mail that had been shoved through the slot onto the parquet floor hours earlier. Scooping it up, he tossed it on a table so full of unopened bills and unanswered invitations that its fine Empire lines were utterly obscured.

When he had bought this dilapidated brownstone in the mid-eighties, the bus ride from his office at Thirtieth Street to his home north of Ninety-sixth Street had been an exercise in urban survival. He had needed to stay constantly alert to sidestep roving packs of teenagers who hopped on the bus looking for pockets to pick, staggering panhandlers shaking their paper cups of change under the noses of riders, and assorted drunks and crazies. Reading, or even daydreaming, was done at your peril. These days, the ride on the clean air-conditioned bus was so uneventful, you could go into a Zen-induced trance and still emerge unscathed at your stop. And his neighborhood, once populated by dealers and pimps, had sprouted a Starbucks and a Gap-not necessarily improvements, in his view.

All in all, coming home was less stressful but also less exciting than it used to be. And, since his divorce nearly two years ago, less organized. Still, the five-story house, packed with forensic specimens, haphazardly furnished, partially remodeled, was his personal sanctuary. The place where he could go to lick his wounds and gather strength for another round of battle. And today, after the disturbing evidence gathered at the Hogaarth autopsy, and the strain of explaining to Pederson why it still hadn't brought them any closer to catching the Vampire, Jake deeply craved the restorative peace of his home.

"Your girlfriend called me today."

The voice-deep, amused, irreverent-emerged from somewhere in the shadowy front parlor.

"Why are you sitting there in the dark? And she's not my girlfriend."

"Companion, lover, significant other-what's the politically correct term you prefer?"

What was Manny to him? At the moment, pain in the ass or thorn in the side seemed the most fitting description. Jake walked toward the sound of his brother Sam's voice, only to crash into a randomly placed display case.

"Ow! Would you turn on the damn lights!"

Sam reached out a long arm and flicked on a lamp, revealing himself, prematurely gray ponytail and all, sprawled on a wing chair and ottoman, and the astonishing clutter of Jake's living room.

"I find this room more habitable when it's only illuminated by that neon sign across the street," Sam said.

"No one asked you to inhabit it." Jake found his brother's tendency of popping in unannounced for extended stays both infuriating and entertaining, especially since he had his own rent-stabilized apartment in Greenwich Village. Today, infuriating had the upper hand.

"Come, come, big brother. No need to snap at me just because you're in the doghouse with Manny."

Heading for the chair across from Sam, Jake moved a box of disarticulated bear bones that some less experienced ME had sent him, thinking they were human, and sat down. "She called you to complain about me?" He could feel his heart rate rising. How juvenile!

"No, she called to offer me a job, and in the course of describing said job, she-quite inadvertently, I'm sure-revealed her frustration with you."

Jake looked at his younger brother's teasing grin and felt the same overwhelming need to jump on top of him and twist his arm that he had felt when they were twelve and five, respectively. "A job? What kind of job-bag carrier for one of her shoe-shopping swings through Bloomies?"

"You underestimate me, bro. I'm temporarily employed by her as a trial-prep resource-doing a little investigation work on a case. Tracking down four kids who were in the company of the Preppy Terrorists and who have since vanished."

"Last time I checked, you weren't licensed for that."

Sam brushed off this concern as if it were one of the cobwebs hanging off the replica of the Maltese falcon in the corner. "Anyone can ask a few discreet questions. I'm just assisting Manny with her inquiries, so to speak." Sam sat up straight, took his feet off the ottoman, and leaned forward to look his brother in the eye. "I hear you think she's not up to handling this case."

Jake kicked the box he'd just moved. "I never said that! I just cautioned her not to eagerly accept what may turn out to be an unwinnable case for anyone."

"Ah, caution. You're good at that, aren't you, Jake? As I recall, you cautioned me against traveling cross-country on my motorcycle, climbing Mount McKinley, and touring the world with the Pacifists for Peace Rugby Club."

"I didn't want you to get hurt. And I hoped you would focus."

"OMmmmmmmmm." Sam started to chant, drowning out Jake's paternal explanations before launching into his response. "I didn't get hurt. I succeeded, and I had a hell of a good time along the way. And I learned. So will Manny. Trust me. Trust her."

Jake opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. Sam had never been married, had never even had a serious relationship, at least not with anyone he'd ever bothered to introduce to his family, but he felt free to dispense love advice like a regular Dr. Phil. And yet his brother, as feckless and carefree as he seemed to be, had a core of common sense, a rock-solid emotional stability that Jake envied. It seemed he'd always been that way, maybe because Sam had been too young to remember when their father abandoned them, while seven-year-old Jake had reacted so uncontrollably that their mother had finally sought help from a Jewish charity. Jake had been sent to a reform school for troubled kids, until he learned that the surest way out was to repress his emotions and pour all the energy required for anger into the study of science.

Jake extracted a Thai take-out menu from the clutter on an end table and tossed it to Sam. "Order us some dinner. I'll go call Manny." Half an hour later, the pork with basil sauce and the lemongrass chicken had arrived, and Jake, Sam, Manny, and Mycroft sat around (and under) the dining room table, dissecting the case between fiery bites. Jake had been unable to bring himself to actually apologize for warning Manny off the Preppy Terrorist case, so he had simply issued the invitation to dinner as if nothing had happened. Manny had accepted readily enough, but it wasn't lost on Jake that she had breezed right past him when he opened the front door, heading straight for Sam and the food.

"Apparently, Travis Heaton is a brainiac kid with no street smarts whatsoever and an inconvenient interest in Islamic culture." Manny waved her fork for emphasis, sending a piece of chicken sailing off the tines. Mycroft leaped and caught it in midair. "Did you see that? Good dog, Mikey!"

"Have you ever heard of teaching your dog manners?"

"Have you ever heard of Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Clifford the Big Red Dog? That was a trick Mycroft learned after hours of study."

"Is he earning a graduate degree at that doggy day-care place you send him to every day?" Jake asked.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jake wished he could have reeled them back in. A few days ago, he'd been teasing Manny about enrolling Mycroft in some goofy place called Little Paws, but that was before the blowup in the restaurant. He saw her smile replaced by a scowl and knew he'd just dug himself deeper into a hole.

"Actually, Mycroft is no longer attending Little Paws. He was"-she paused for a breath-"expelled."

Even Jake knew better than to laugh, and he kicked Sam sharply to head off any hilarity from that side of the table. "Expelled?"

Manny dismissed his inquiry with a wave. "It's too complicated to get into now. I want to tell you about Travis. Where was I?"

"Smart but no street smarts, studying Islam," Sam prompted.

"Right. He's at Monet on a scholarship," Manny continued. "His mom is a widow who works as a nurse at New York-Presbyterian. She knocked herself out getting him into private school because she thought the public schools were too dangerous for him. Now she's finding out kids can fall into bad company no matter how much tuition you pay."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, at Boys High School, where Jake and I went, all we had to worry about was pot and the occasional knife fight. Prep school exposes you to designer drugs and international terrorism. A much better class of criminal."

Jake refilled all the wineglasses. "So, do you think your client's telling you the complete truth about what happened that night?"

"No. Criminal clients always lie to you about something. Travis already lied about the apple by not telling me the whole story. And he said the book in his backpack was for a class, conveniently forgetting about the shelfful of books on Islam he had at home. Maybe he thinks leaving things out is not really lying, but I think it shows a certain amount of cunning."

"So you do think he tried to kill the judge?" Sam asked.

Manny shook her head. "My gut feeling is that he's telling me the truth about his lack of involvement in blowing up the mailbox. When I went back to ask him about the apple, he claimed that he and this Zeke character both swiped apples on the way out of the deli, and that it was Zeke the deli man saw take a bite and toss the rest. But Travis can't remember what happened to his apple."

"What about the books?" Sam asked.

"His mother claims it's just a phase he's going through. Apparently, he's always had a compulsive streak. When he was four, it was trains; seven, dinosaurs; ten, medieval weaponry. He's just that kind of-"

"Dweeb," Sam said, completing the sentence as he handed his brother a beer. "Jake was like that when he was a kid. Remember your obsession with asteroids and meteors?"

Jake laughed. "I had our great-aunt Flo so worried about rocks falling out of the sky, she carried an umbrella everywhere she went."

"Yeah, and he wouldn't shut up on the subject," Sam said. "As I recall, we got excluded from the Passover seder that year because no one in the family wanted to listen to you."

Manny picked up Mycroft and held him on her lap. "That's a small price to pay for pursuing your passions. I'm afraid Travis is truly being persecuted for having this interest. We have to prove he wasn't involved in a conspiracy with those other guys."

She turned to Sam. "That's why it's vital that we find them. They definitely have something to do with this, but I can't tell if Travis knew them before or not."

"What about Paco, the diplomat's kid?" Jake asked.

"I'm trying to get hold of him, but the school and his family and the embassy have closed ranks around him. I can't wait for Paco; I'm requesting a reconsideration of bail, so I can tear apart the forensic evidence on this apple."

Jake paused with a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. "But I thought you just said you weren't sure whether or not your client was telling you the truth about the apple?"

Manny shook her head pityingly. "You're such a scientist, always worrying about what's 'true,' so sure that true and false can always be quantified. I worry about what's just. And an eighteen-year-old kid with no criminal record being held without bail for a crime in which the state can't prove a link between the suspect and the victim is not just. An eighteen-year-old kid who, at the very worst, pulled a stupid stunt on a dare being held as a terrorist so the Department of Homeland Security can hold a press conference announcing how effectively they're protecting us is not just. And the fact that the government is using a freakin' apple to make its case is even more unjust." Manny raked her slender fingers through her hair as she talked, ruining all the effort she put into keeping her wild red mane under control. "So, yes, Jake, I'm going to go into court and argue against that apple even if my client did bite into it. You got a problem with that?"

Jake's eyes hadn't left Manny since she started talking. When he saw her like this-eyes shining, hands waving, hair flying-his heart started pounding, and he sincerely wished his brother wasn't sitting at the same table. He got up, put his hands on her shoulders, and buried his face in the hair next to her ear, breathing in the scent of very expensive shampoo. "No, I don't have a problem with that."

Manny twisted around to look him in the eye. "Oh, fine. You're forgiven. You'd think a man with such an exalted vocabulary would be familiar with the words I'm sorry, but apparently not."

"He didn't know them when he was a kid, either, Manny," Sam chimed in. "I don't know how he managed to get such a high score on his SATs."

"I hope you two are enjoying yourselves." Jake massaged Manny's shoulders.

"I am." She leaned back and smiled. "Now, tell us what's happening with your case. Is this woman who was murdered in midtown really a victim of the Vampire?"

Jake's elation at being back in Manny's good graces evaporated as soon as she mentioned the Vampire. He dropped his hands from her shoulders and rubbed his eyes. "I don't know. The MO is totally different. No sign that he pushed into the apartment-she appears to have let him in. And then the torture-why has he suddenly turned so violent? I don't think it's a copycat. The only link is the puncture on her arm, where blood was obviously drawn, and the use of ether."

"What was the time of death?"

"Sometime between noon and five yesterday."

"Middle of the afternoon and no one saw or heard anything?" "The police spent all day reviewing the security tapes. There's only one person who entered the building during that time frame who can't be accounted for. A woman wearing oversize sunglasses and a baseball cap, carrying a big purse. The concierge remembers that she spoke with an accent of some kind. He said he announced her to apartment 50E. The lady in 50E says she approved the visitor because she was expecting her masseuse. But then no one showed at her door. She was just getting ready to call down when the concierge buzzed her again, and the masseuse arrived. She thought it was a little screwy at the time, but she didn't complain."

"So this mystery woman is obviously your Vampire! Can they get a good description of her by studying the tape?"

Jake shook his head. "Hat, glasses, and coat cover every identifiable feature. She could be any medium-height woman-or man, for that matter-in the city. This is not a woman's crime. A woman doesn't sexually torture an old lady. It just doesn't add up."

"So what's your next step?"

Sam and Manny were looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat. He knew they wouldn't be impressed with what he had to offer.

"Research. I plan to spend tomorrow calling colleagues here and abroad and trolling through databases and medical journal articles until I figure out just what caused that unique burn pattern. If I know what the Vampire used, maybe I can figure out why he-or she-used it."

Sam parked Manny's Porsche Cabriolet at the curb, pulling in between a jacked-up Trans Am and an ancient Honda Accord. His drive down Wilkens Street, on the west side of Kearny, New Jersey, had been monitored by two slavering pit bulls behind a chain-link fence and several gimlet-eyed statues of the Virgin Mary in front-yard shrines. Glancing at the small yellow house fortified with wrought-iron window grates overlooking his parking spot, he noticed a curtain flick back into place. Alert, alert! Stranger spotted on the street!

As Manny had predicted, the IDs produced by the remaining young men who had been with Travis and Paco on the night of the bombing bore the addresses of nonexistent buildings or unknown streets in the metropolitan area. The fact that these guys had been carrying fake IDs raised no suspicions among the police. No sir, they had their bomber, Travis Andrew Heaton, and damned if they were going to let suspicious behavior by the other people present that night get in the way of their case. So, no need to track them down, uh-uh.

That was Sam's job. The previous night, after Jake and Manny had slunk off to the bedroom to kiss and make up, he had headed across the river to hang out at Club Epoch. Despite being fifteen years older than most of the people on the dance floor, Sam had managed to insinuate himself in a group of regulars. It had taken him until nearly four o'clock in the morning to tease out the identity and possible location of one Benjamin "Boo" Hravek, thought to reside in Kearny, known to hang out at Big Mike's Gateway Inn in that fair city.

After returning to Jake's brownstone and encountering Manny and Jake at the breakfast table, both dressed in business suits and sporting disapproving stares, Sam had crawled into bed for a few hours' sleep, and then pulled into Kearny in time to have a late lunch at the Gateway Inn.

He strolled down the block, heading for a windowless building covered in gray asphalt shingles. Nowhere did the name Big Mike's or Gateway Inn appear. If you had to ask, you weren't welcome. But his search of liquor licenses held in Kearny had revealed that the license granted for 440 Wilkens Street was held by Lawrence M. Egli, DBA the Gateway Inn.

As he drew closer, Sam revised his approach. "Lookin' for Boo Hravek, an old buddy of mine" would never fly here. In Kearny, everyone knew one another from the moment of conception-old friends didn't appear out of the woodwork.

He thought about the girl who had told him last night, after five Cosmos, where to find Boo. Today, if she was able to remember their conversation, she would be regretting it. Telling strangers about the neighborhood boys was not the done thing, not even when the stranger was nicer than you were used to.

Sam took a second to get the appropriate expression fixed on his face, then opened the door to the Gateway Inn. Momentarily blinded by the sudden switch from the bright sunshine of the sidewalk to the dim interior illuminated only by the glow of the TV above the bar, Sam paused on the threshold.

"Shut the fuckin' door," a disembodied voice rang out.

Fresh air was clearly not a welcome commodity here; it diluted the rarefied scent of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Smoking in New Jersey bars was now illegal, but Sam figured the law must be routinely flouted at the Gateway. Either that or so many cigarettes had been smoked here that it was going to take decades for the place to air out. Sam made his way toward the bar, feeling the soles of his shoes sticking to the residue of last night's spilled beer.

The bartender, a guy in his fifties in a short-sleeved white shirt, made fleeting eye contact. Sam interpreted that as the Kearny equivalent of "Hi, what can I get you?"

"Give me a beer and the fried fish plate." He didn't need a menu to know that the deep-fat fryer was the only method of cooking available in the Gateway kitchen. But Sam had eaten stewed monkey in Bangkok and grilled locusts in Ghana-he enjoyed going native.

The bartender plonked Sam's beer down and returned to polishing glasses at the far end of the bar. The only other customer, the guy who had shouted for the door to be closed, sat a few stools away, resolutely studying the pattern of foam in his glass. Sam also sat in silence. Eventually, the bartender approached with silverware and the steaming plate of fish and fries.

"Lookin' for someone to do a little work for me." Sam directed his comments to the food, not the man carrying it. "Guy in the city said Boo Hravek might be right for the job. Know where I can find him?"

The bartender stared at him for a long moment without responding. Then he moved away, methodically wiping the already-clean bar as he went. When he got halfway down its length, he said, "What kind of work?"

"The kind of work he's good at."

"Who'd you say sent you?"

"I didn't."

The man nursing his beer suddenly roused himself. "Boo don't work for just anyone."

"I know." Sam dunked his french fry in catsup and held it suspended over his plate. "That's why I want him." He watched the two men exchange a glance. Apparently, he'd given a good response. He pressed his luck a little further. "There's good money in it." He didn't want to name a price, since he didn't know what Boo customarily received for doing whatever dirty deeds he specialized in.

"Boo'll be here in a little while. Sit tight." The bartender disappeared into the kitchen.

Sam returned to the mound of food before him. Not too bad, really-the cod was flaky and fresh, and that carefully aged grease gave it a nice tang. He ate and drank and watched drag racing on ESPN, waiting for Boo. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon. This working for Manny wasn't too bad.

Ten minutes later, the door of the bar flew open and crashed against the wall. Two men-very big men-stood outlined by the bright sunlight at their backs. The bartender and the other patron vaporized.

Boo had arrived.

Carefully, Sam wiped his hands and his mouth and placed the napkin on the bar. He did not like to meet new people with grease on his fingers or catsup on his lip. Standing down from the bar stool, he nodded to the punks who had entered. "Sam Rosen."

The larger of the two men, early twenties but already toting a big beer belly, stepped forward and shoved Sam against the bar. "Last night, you were messin' with Deanie. What the fuck's up with that? What kinda bullshit you tryin' to pull?"

Deanie? Had that been the name of his informant at Club Epoch? Sam thought she'd been referring to herself as Teeny, which, given the size of her boobs, he'd assumed was a nickname bestowed upon her ironically. Good to have that clarified.

Ignoring the man who had pushed him, Sam stepped away from the bar and faced his companion. From the description of Boo Hravek provided by Travis via Manny, he was pretty sure that the quieter guy was the man himself and the other one was just along for some fun-fun that Sam hoped could be avoided.

Unlike the blockhead bodyguard, Boo Hravek had a gleam of intelligence in his eye as well as a set of pectorals that any man would envy. He was Sam's height, but a good fifty pounds of solid muscle heavier. Sam extended his hand. "Nice to meet you, Boo. Deanie speaks very highly of you."

"The bitch should learn to keep her mouth shut," the bodyguard said. Boo remained silent but took Sam's hand and crushed it in his grip.

Sam smiled, ignoring the pain shooting up his right arm. He watched as Boo relaxed, having established his alpha male status. It was important to Sam that his opponents not feel threatened by him. He wanted them cocksure and careless.

If he'd thought he and Boo could have their conversation in a civilized manner, Sam certainly would have pursued that route. But Boo had seen fit to bring the goon with him, and Sam could tell that rational discussion was out of the question in that quarter. So the only alternative was to neutralize the bodyguard and bring Boo into a position where he valued the opportunity to talk. It was doable-not easy, but doable.

"Have a seat." Sam gestured Boo toward the bar's empty tables and chairs as if he owned the place. When he saw Boo start to lower himself, Sam turned toward the goon and, without a blink of warning, rammed his head directly into the big man's soft gut. The bodyguard staggered, and Sam used that unbalanced moment to hook his foot around his opponent's ankles. The huge kid crashed down so quickly, he had no chance to put out his hands to break his fall. He landed flat on his prominent nose, which cracked with an audible snap. A blossom of red unfurled-dripping from his white polo shirt onto the floor next to his shoulder.

His bodyguard's collapse had come so suddenly that Boo was just beginning to rise from his chair when Sam pivoted and upended the heavy table, pinning the young man momentarily. The goon still lay on the floor, stunned that the blood pooling around him was his own.

"Broken nose makes a hell of a mess, doesn't it?" Sam reached down and compressed the carotid arteries on both sides of the goon's neck. Within eight seconds, he had passed out.

Sam returned his attention to Boo, who was now standing, warily keeping the table between them. When Boo spoke, his voice emerged incongruously high-pitched for a man with a steroid-thickened eighteen-inch-round neck. "You killed him. Why did you have to kill him?"

"Nah, that's just the Mr. Spock trick from Star Trek. Except I do it correctly-both sides of the neck. I could have killed him, but I chose not to." Sam straightened his shirt, which had come partially untucked in all the commotion. "Choice is a good thing, wouldn't you agree, Boo?"

Boo said nothing, his eyes darting from the main entrance to the kitchen door, neither of which promised any help or easy escape.

"Now you have a choice," Sam continued. "You can sit and have a little talk with me, or you can join your friend there."

Boo sat.

"Good. Deanie said you were a smart guy, and I see she was right." Sam remained standing and smiled down at his companion.

"Who are you?" Boo asked.

"Uh, uh, uh-I'm the one asking the questions here. Tell me about the other night at Club Epoch."

Boo's eyes narrowed. "You're a cop. Why don't you just arrest me, then?"

"You insult me, Boo." Sam extended one long, skinny foot. "You ever see a cop in Bruno Magli loafers and a Hugo Boss blazer?"

Boo, a brand-sensitive thug, looked even more puzzled and uneasy. "Why you wanna know about Club Epoch?"

"Because a friend of mine is taking the fall for that bomb. I want to know who set him up."

"It wasn't me. I swear to God I didn't know what was going to go down. When that mailbox blew, I nearly shit myself."

"Boo, I'm losing respect for your intelligence. That's not even close to being a convincing lie."

Boo sat forward in his chair. "No, man, seriously-I didn't know about the bomb. All I was supposed to do was get this rich kid into Club E, buy him some drinks, then invite him to go to this after-hours club. We were on our way there when the whole mailbox thing went down."

"Boo, you're forgetting one little detail. It was one of your friends who put the bomb under the box. A guy named Zeke, or Freak or something. Maybe you have a reason for wanting to get rid of a federal judge."

"No, Freak wasn't one of our guys. He showed up at the club. Was hangin' around, talkin' to the boys. Knew a lot about music. When we all left, he came, too. I coulda run him off, but what did it matter? I was just supposed to take the kid to the after-hours place. If he wanted to come along, so what?"

"Did you see him put the bomb under the mailbox?"

Boo shook his head. "We were walking in a big group. I was in the lead with Paco. Suddenly, someone shouted 'Run' and everyone raced past us, so we started running, too. When the bomb blew, we were at the corner and we stopped to look back. Right away, the police showed up and started askin' questions. That's when I noticed Freak wasn't with us anymore."

"Did you tell the cops about him?"

Boo nodded. "They didn't seem all that interested. They talked to the Korean guy in the market, came back and talked to us some more, then said we could go. That's all I cared about. We split."

Sam studied Boo. A fine sheen of sweat clung to the punk's forehead. Systematically, he cracked all the knuckles on one big paw, then went to work on the other hand. Sam had the sinking feeling that this yahoo was telling the truth. And that meant Manny's case was even more complicated than they'd suspected. "So, who asked you to get Paco into the club?"

Boo squirmed in his seat like a kid in the principal's office. "See, that's the part you're going to have a hard time believing."

"Try me."

"I got this call and a guy with a funny accent offered me five hundred bucks to get Paco into the club, get him some drinks, and take him out after closing. He was actin' all mysterious, said he'd leave the money in a paper bag at the playground." Boo shook his head. "It was like he watched too many movies, yanno?

"I thought someone was messin' with me. I went to the playground expecting some kind of scam. But the bag was there with the money, just like he said. So I figured, what the hell. It's no skin off my nose. We go to Club E all the time anyway."

"You didn't ask who he was, why he contacted you for this job?"

"He had my cell number. He had to have been referred by a friend."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "Some friend. Let's see your cell phone. Is this guy's number still in the calls received?"

"I already tried that. After the bomb went off and the cops came, I was pissed. We talked our way outta there, but I coulda been in big trouble. So I called the number back to ask what the fuck was going on, and the phone just rang and rang. Finally, some guy who sounded like a drunk answered and said it was a pay phone at Penn Station. I heard a train announcement in the background, so I knew he was telling the truth."

"All right, give me your cell number. We may need to talk again." Sam looked down at the congealing blood on the floor. "And I don't think we're going to be welcome here."

Boo rattled off a number and Sam stored it in his own phone, then pressed the call button just to make sure he hadn't been given the number for the Monmouth Park Racetrack. A shriek that passed for music emanated from Boo's pocket.

"Answer that and save the number," Sam directed. "Your mysterious friend calls again, let me know."

Manny raced from the parking lot toward federal court, feeling like she'd just been presented with a white-ribboned robin's egg blue box from Tiffany's. God bless Sam-he'd uncovered just the information she needed to clinch this bail hearing. And just in case, she had her usual small piece of red cloth pinned to the inside of her suit jacket to ward off the evil eye, just like her mother and her mother's mother had taught her. Can never be too careful, after all. Manny was a third-generation Scorpio, her generational DNA included an allele for the belief in the super natural.

"By the time I'm done with Brian Lisnek, that prosecutor is going to be so covered with egg, you could make an omelette out of him," Manny crowed to Kenneth, who matched her stride for stride past the cement barriers protecting the massive new building across from the old post office.

"The last omelette you made for me was dry and rubbery," Kenneth complained. "Don't get overconfident."

Manny waved his warning off with a laugh, realizing as she did that if Jake had said the same thing to her, she would've been highly insulted. But Kenneth could get away with a lot of things that Jake wouldn't dare try, including, but not limited to, singing "Over the Rainbow" or anything Cher while wearing a vintage Dior sheath.

Jake had been impressed when she told him the judge had granted her the opportunity to examine the government's so-called forensic expert as well as their eyewitness at the bail hearing. That was highly unusual, but the Preppy Terrorist case was generating so much publicity that the judge had reluctantly agreed.

Now with the information Sam had provided and the research she had done on the shaky science of identifying bite marks through forensic odontology, Manny felt sure that she'd have Travis Heaton out on bail by the end of the day.

Sailing through the security check without setting off any alarms, Manny entered Judge Freeman's courtroom and took her place at the defense table. Lisnek was already at the prosecutor's table with a whole phalanx of assistants. "How many federal prosecutors does it take to change a lightbulb?" she muttered to Kenneth.

"You mean, to screw in a lightbulb. And the answer is none. Prosecutors only screw defendants."

Manny paused from unloading her briefcase. "Did you just make that up, or have you been reading joke e-mails when you're supposed to be working?"

"Keeping you amused is part of my job description, remember?"

Manny grinned. It was true that with Kenneth by her side she felt much more relaxed than she would have if she were assisted by some navy blue pinstriped-clad minion with an Ivy League law degree. Today, Kenneth had dressed to match the dark green marble that heralded the floors and walls of the imposing house of justice. He wore a slightly used Oscar de la Renta suit he had purchased on eBay, and two-toned green-and-ivory shoes with matching green horned-rimmed glasses. She slid some files across the table to him. "Here. Organize this for me. I don't want to be fumbling for notes when I have their so-called expert on the stand."

She sat down and watched Lisnek for a while. He was so busy conferring with his assistants, he didn't even notice her. Her client was escorted in by a muscular federal marshal and seated next to her. He wore the clothes he had been arrested in-big baggy pants and a black cotton shirt. The bailiff entered the courtroom and Lisnek snapped to attention, finally glancing her way. She smiled sweetly. The assistant U.S. attorney looked away.

"All rise," the bailiff intoned.

Showtime.

Manny and Lisnek danced through the opening procedures like Fred and Ginger, so familiar with the steps that they didn't even have to think about what they were doing. Then Lisnek rose to make his argument for why Travis should remain in jail without bail. "An act of terrorism against the federal government… possible coconspirators, so the accused must be kept in isolation… a matter of national security…" On and on he went.

Manny could feel her adrenaline surge and her stomach churn. This is what being a trial lawyer was all about-face-to-face combat with the enemy. Honestly, how could Lisnek say all this with a straight face? The man was shameless in his pursuit of publicity. She'd defended clients against bogus, trumped-up charges before, but this case beat all.

The judge was also tiring of Lisnek. With a slight elevation of the hand, he cut the prosecutor off in mid-speech. "Very eloquent, Mr. Lisnek, but this isn't a dress rehearsal for the opening argument of the trial. I believe Ms. Manfreda has some issues with the quality of your supporting evidence, so let's move directly to the expert testimony."

The witness, Dr. Eugene Olivo, forensic odontologist, was called and sworn in. In a jury trial, Manny would spend considerable time establishing the expert's qualifications or lack thereof, because juries tended to believe every word coming from the mouth of anyone who called himself a doctor or scientist. Judge Freeman, thankfully, was not so gullible. He had been a federal judge for more than four decades, handling all the hard cases: Mafia killings, an Aryan gang prison trial, massive drug cartel trials. Freeman was now on senior status, a form of hardworking retirement that allowed him to pick and choose his cases. Not impressed with the pretentiousness of office or enamored with the trappings of power, he no longer wore a robe on the bench. But make no mistake: He was a highly respected jurist, one you weren't late for unless you were dead, who mandated preparedness and honesty.

"So in other words, Doctor," the judge said, addressing the expert witness, "for the laypeople in the audience, what you are saying is that a forensic odontologist is a fancy word for… dentist?"

"Well, it's from the Greek, Your Honor."

"I see." A cross between a snort and a chuckle emanated from the bench. "Do you get to charge the government more in Greek?"

Touche. Old, retired, on senior status, Freeman took the words right out of her mouth.

Satisfied that Judge Freeman was going to give her fair latitude in cross-examination, Manny sat back and let Lisnek walk the witness through his evidence. "The average set of permanent teeth in an adult numbers thirty-two, including the four wisdom teeth," Olivo informed them.

Yada yada yada. She forced herself to listen to every word and make careful notes, only daydreaming for a split second about the Carramia case, where she had cross-examined Jake. Jake had been a charismatic expert witness in a geeky, scientific kind of way. Almost sexy, talking about vomit and death. His brown hair, interspersed with gray strands, complemented his big frame and professorial tone. Olivo was no Jake. Thank God for that.

"In short," Olivo finally opined, "the gap between the upper right lateral incisor and the adjoining canine tooth, also called a cuspid, along with the snagglelike characteristics of that canine tooth, establishes within a reasonable degree of medical scientific certainty that the impression in the apple is consistent with the bite dentition of Travis Heaton." He demonstrated his testimony with digital pictures of the subject apple.

Olivo sat back in the witness chair and folded his hands over his paunch. Manny smiled. How nice to see a witness so confident and comfortable.

She rose and walked toward the witness stand. Today's hairstyle, red mane caught back in a tortoiseshell clip, left the strand of pearls at her neck and the simple pearl studs in her ears exposed. She looked younger than her nearly thirty years, and too demure to cause trouble for a respected scientist.

Pompous old fart.

"Good morning, Dr. Olivo." She beamed at him. "Thank you for that fascinating information."

He nodded. "I've been at this a long time." He left the "Not like you, girlie," unsaid.

"Tell me: Were you present at the crime scene after the explosion?"

"No, of course not." I'm too important for that, you stupid twit.

Manny smiled. Maybe the government's witness was so well rehearsed he would know the chain of custody of the oh-so-important piece of forensic evidence he wanted to use to damn her client to hell.

"So, who collected the apple?" she continued. "Was it the FBI's crime scene technicians?"

"No."

"Perhaps it was the CSI team from the Hoboken Police Department?"

"No."

"Then it must have been a tristate terrorist response unit?"

"Uh, no."

"So, who did pick up the apple, Dr. Olivo?"

"Uhm, I believe it was a police detective who returned to the scene later to look for it."

"And what did he do with it? Did he put it in a brown paper bag so that moisture wouldn't collect and bacteria wouldn't grow on it?"

Olivo shifted in his seat and straightened his triclub tie. "No, it was in a plastic Baggie when I got it."

"I see. Do you know what the temperature was on the night in question, Doctor?"

"I don't know the exact temperature," he snapped.

Manny walked back to the defense table and accepted a sheet of paper from Kenneth. "National Weather Service records show that at one a.m. on May seventeenth, the temperature at the monitoring station in Hoboken, New Jersey, was seventy-five degrees. Pretty warm for May, huh?"

"Yes." Olivo stared straight ahead.

"Did you examine the evidence that night, sir?"

"No."

"When did you get the evidence?"

"Let me look at my notes." As the page flipped, the doctor grabbed for the small plastic cup of water nearby.

Manny pretended not to notice how he gulped it down. She was making him squirm.

"The day after the bombing. I received the specimen at my office in Manhattan at one-forty-three in the afternoon."

"The apple had been refrigerated during the period of time since its collection, had it, Doctor?" Manny asked.

He hesitated.

Come on, give it up, Mr Know-It-All expert witness. I already know the answer, or I wouldn't have asked the question.

"No."

Manny could tell he thought he knew where she was headed, but Lisnek looked impatient. She smiled at him in passing and returned to stand in front of the witness. "You know, Dr. Olivo, my Italian immigrant grandma grew up during the Depression and she hated to waste food. When I was a little girl, it would drive her crazy when I took a few bites out of an apple and then couldn't finish it. You know what she'd do? She'd wrap it up in plastic and put it on the counter and try to get me to eat it the next day. I never would. You know why?"

Lisnek jumped up. "Objection. We'll be here all day if we have to listen to Ms. Manfreda's reminiscences about her family heritage, Your Honor."

But Judge Freeman was grinning. "Tell us why you wouldn't eat it, counselor."

"Because by the next day, a bitten apple wrapped in plastic in a warm kitchen was all brown and mushy. Decay had set in. Yes, decay had completely broken down the exposed surface of the apple." Manny whipped around to take possession of something from Kenneth, keeping her back to everyone in the well of the courtroom. Murmurs began to rumble from the spectator pews. Manny turned to Olivo with the flare of a Miss Universe contestant whipping around a bathing-suit pareu on the turn toward the judges to show off her wares.

She held up an apple-a discolored, drying, decayed, smelly brownish red apple. "Let me represent to you that this is a Delicious apple, sir."

"Objection! Objection," bellowed Lisnek.

She ignored him. Judge Freeman was laughing too hard to rule on the objection.

"How can you say with scientific certainty that the bite marks in that apple were those of my client when the apple had been rotting away for over twelve hours under improper storage conditions?"

"Overruled," came the belated decision from the bench, allowing Manny to officially proceed. She looked over at Lisnek. He really needed to get shirts with collars that weren't so tight. His head looked like it was about to pop off his neck.

Olivo sputtered and offered some qualified justification, buttressed with technical jargon. "Scientific certainty only means it is more likely than not."

Ah, the dirty little secret of experts reared its head. Their opinion was nothing more than a game of chance.

"Are you telling this courtroom that your opinion, one that would incarcerate my eighteen-year-old client without bail, disrupt his schooling, prevent his graduation, and-"

"Objection," Lisnek again bellowed, his voice echoing through the courtroom doors and reverberating into the hall.

The recovered Judge Freeman turned to her. "Okay, enough with the sob story, Ms. Manfreda. Get on with the question."

"-is based on a mere possibility about a degraded apple?"

Manny continued to hammer him, rebutting his claims about the reliability of bite-mark evidence with quotes from articles on forensic odontology, and the language in recent court decisions where bite-mark testimony had wrongfully imprisoned innocent people.

Before she concluded her inquisition, she made a few final thrusts.

"Did you bring the apple with you today?"

"No."

"Did the prosecutor tell you to leave it in the city?"

"No."

Manny smelled something wrong, and it wasn't just her one piece of forbidden fruit. This ordinarily talkative expert had become a one-word-answer witness.

"Where is your apple now?"

"It's been discarded. Once we documented the impressions with photographs, there was no reason to keep it any longer."

A hush came over the journalists listening to the proceeding. She thought she heard Mrs. Heaton gasp. Her client reached out and grabbed Manny's hand.

"Your Honor, I move the whole case be thrown out also. The assistant U.S. attorney has specifically withheld this material fact from the court. Spoliation of evidence, Your Honor, is cause for dismissal."

Lisnek tried to respond. Judge Freeman interrupted the proceedings. "There is no need to deal with that issue today."

Lisnek preened. His smugness was short-lived.

Judge Freeman had listened to it all attentively, but it was clear that in the end he was most impressed with the unintended scientific study of Granny Manfreda. "Your rotten apple is out as evidence, Mr. Lisnek. I'll issue my written opinion next week. What else do you have?"

"We have an eyewitness who saw Mr. Heaton place the bomb, sir." Lisnek spoke in a firm, steady voice, but Manny noticed him gripping his government-issued pen until his knuckles turned white.

Manny took a deep breath as Mr. Park Sung Ho was sworn in. The cross-examination of Dr. Olivo had gone very well, but she wasn't out of the woods yet.

Mr. Park was a delicate man with the bright, watchful eyes of a songbird. He took his duty seriously, both as an employee of the Happy Garden deli and as a witness in federal court. Juries automatically liked earnest, hardworking people like him. Even though there was no jury present today, Manny felt she had to be careful. It had been okay to make that pompous ass Olivo look like a fool; it wouldn't do to humiliate Mr. Park.

Manny tuned in as Lisnek took the witness through the preliminaries. No, he didn't own the deli; his cousin did. Yes, he had been working alone there on the night of May 17. He worked every night. "Cousin only trust me to work overnight shift," Mr. Park said.

Six young men had come in together that night; Mr. Park's eyebrows drew down as he recalled what had happened. "They try trick me. They give twenty-dollar bill. They take back, give ten. They add candy bar, take away chips, switching, switching. Try confuse so not have to pay for everything."

Manny glanced over at Travis, who had slid down in his seat. So far, Mr. Park's memory was accurate. This man had the power to send her client to prison for a long time, but Manny found herself sympathizing with him. An immigrant, struggling to make it in a tough town, protecting his family's assets-who couldn't feel for the little man as he was hassled by a group of kids?

"On way out the door, that boy"-Mr. Park pointed at Travis with assurance-"take apple from bin. No pay."

With ever-increasing confidence, Lisnek led Mr. Park through his testimony about the explosion. Did Mr. Park get to the door of the store in time to see the boys reach the mailbox? Yes. Did Mr. Park see the boy who had stolen the apple take a bite and then throw the apple in the gutter? Yes. Did that same boy then bend down and place a package under the mailbox? Yes, most emphatically. Did the mailbox then explode? Yes, yes, yes.

"No further questions." Lisnek turned his back on the Korean store clerk and strode back to his seat.

Manny rose and smiled at the witness. "Good morning, Mr. Park. Thank you for that account. You're obviously a very observant person."

Mr. Park nodded, pleased that Manny recognized his good qualities.

"Mr. Park, did you see one of the other boys also take an apple from the bin?"

"No, just that boy."

"Were all six boys at the cash register at the same time?"

"No. Come and go."

"So one of the other boys could have taken an apple while you were busy with the ones who were paying."

"I watch all customer. Make sure no one steal."

"I'm sure you do, Mr. Park. But while some of the boys were trying to trick you as they paid, maybe another also took an apple. Is that possible?"

He shrugged reluctantly. "Maybe."

"When you followed the boys out onto the sidewalk, did you see the face of the one who put the package under the mailbox?"

"No. See boy who took apple bite it, then throw down. He one who put package."

"What was the boy wearing?"

"Blue jean. T-shirt."

"What color T-shirt?"

Mr. Park hesitated. "Dark."

"What were the other boys wearing?"

"Same. Blue jean, dark T-shirt," the witness replied promptly.

Poor Mr. Park. He was so eager to be honest and do a good job that he didn't even realize how he had undermined his own evidence. This was why eyewitness testimony was so unreliable, especially cross-racial identification. Most people didn't lie intentionally. They said what they were sure they saw. But there were so many variables, so many subtle differences that could create the same reality.

Manny looked Mr. Park in the eye and spoke without any hint of accusation. "So, if all the boys were dressed similarly, and you couldn't see their faces from where you were standing, and it's possible one of the other boys also took an apple, isn't it possible that the person you saw eating the apple and placing the bomb was not my client, Travis Heaton, but one of the others?"

Mr. Park's eyes darted from Lisnek to the judge and back to Manny, searching for some guidance. The courtroom was silent.

"Mr. Park, please answer the question," Judge Freeman said. "Is it possible that the person you saw placing the bomb was not Travis Heaton?"

Mr. Park seemed to have shrunk inside the cheap black suit he'd put on for this important occasion.

"Possible," he whispered.

"Mr. Park, after the explosion, when all the boys ran, did you notice if one of them ran in a different direction?"

"Yes. One run down Washington Street, turn up Eleventh. Go toward hill, Sinatra Drive. Others stop on corner. Then police come."

"Did you see if the one you thought placed the bomb ran straight or turned down Eleventh Street?"

Mr. Park bit his lower lip and lowered his eyes, concentrating. Then he looked up at Manny. "Cannot say for sure. Explosion big bright light, everyone running. Then one boy turn, others go straight. Not sure which." Mr. Park was the soul of honesty. Yes, you had to like this man.

"Thank you, Mr. Park."

Mr. Park looked around the courtroom, expecting praise from every corner. Judge Freeman smiled benevolently. Manny beamed. Brian Lisnek's lips were compressed in a thin line, his eyes focused resolutely on the yellow pad before him. He never looked up as the Korean grocer exited the courtroom.

"Well, you've certainly established reasonable doubt, Ms. Manfreda." The glance Judge Freeman cast at Lisnek implied he thought the prosecutor better get busy improving his case. And that was the risk of this bail hearing-it gave Lisnek an advance look at her defense, allowing him to prepare for her best shots. The information Sam had provided was her ace in the hole. Would she have to use it?

"I'm inclined to grant Ms. Manfreda's request for bail," the judge continued. "My only concern is the implication that this bombing is part of some larger conspiracy. What evidence do you have to support that, Mr. Lisnek?"

Lisnek turned to the other lawyers on his team. A lot of low murmuring and head shaking ensued. Finally, the assistant U.S. attorney rose.

"We would prefer not to reveal that information at this time, Your Honor."

Manny's eyes narrowed. Did that mean he had nothing to back up his claim, or did he really have information that she should know but didn't?

"We will agree to the bail of five hundred thousand dollars, cosigned by his mother," Lisnek continued.

"Five hundred thousand!" Manny protested. "It might as well be ten million. My client can't make that!"

"We're not releasing a terrorist on his own recognizance." Now Lisnek was up and shouting, too.

Manny turned to Judge Freeman, trying to tap into the sympathy she'd felt coming from him. "Your Honor, what is accomplished by holding this young man in prison with truly violent rapists and murderers? It's like a death sentence before he's even convicted of any crime."

"No need for melodrama, Ms. Manfreda. We'll hold him in protective custody," the judge said.

Manny's heart rate kicked up a notch. Protective custody was just another word for solitary confinement-more punishment, not less. The government could drag its feet for months on this case. By the time they got to trial, Travis would be a total head case from spending twenty-three hours a day alone in an eight-by-ten cell. But Judge Freeman wouldn't be moved by that argument. Manny aimed below the belt.

"Protective custody didn't help Roberto Vallardo."

Manny saw the judge flinch. Vallardo, awaiting trial for molesting his young stepdaughter, had been killed by other inmates while supposedly being kept in protective custody. Two days later, DNA evidence proved that someone else had raped the child.

Judge Freeman tapped his pen and studied Travis. Manny kept her mouth shut, letting her client's scrawny arms and hunched shoulders do the talking.

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."

Pasquarelli twisted his head around again. Jake thought he would have rotated it 360 degrees if that were biologically possible. "I'm to report to Twenty-six Federal Plaza tomorrow to discuss that print with none other than the assistant director in charge of the FBI, David Conroy. He's flying in from Washington, D.C., especially for this meeting."

Sam sat at his brother's dining room table, reading the New York Times, a cup of steaming coffee before him. Things sure had improved around here since Jake started seeing Manny. Now there was always French-roast coffee and toast made with Portuguese sweet bread in the kitchen, not to mention toilet paper in the bathroom. Ah, the civilizing influence of women! He glared at his brother, also engrossed in the Times, across the table. One thing hadn't changed. There was only one copy of the paper delivered, and he, as the uninvited guest, had to content himself with the sections Jake cast off. He'd already read the Arts and Dining Out sections, and he had no interest whatsoever in Business. That left Metro, since Jake was selfishly hogging both Sports and the main section. He picked it up unenthusiastically.

MAYOR VOWS TO RAISE CITY READING SCORES. Yeah, yeah, they kept that story on file and had been rerunning it every year since he'd been in kindergarten; CITY TO ALLOW PEOPLE TO CHOOSE SEX ON THEIR BIRTH CERTIFICATES-only in New York. Sam turned the page. LONG ISLAND POLITICO ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION, like that was news. He glanced over at his brother, who appeared deeply engrossed in the op-ed page. Then why couldn't he have Sports? Sam casually extended his long fingers and slowly drew the Yankees coverage closer.

Slap!

Sports was snatched back.

"C'mon, Jake, you can't read two sections at once. Just let me check the standings."

"No, I won't get it back. I want to read the paper in peace before I leave for work. You have all day to read it. Wait."

Sam sighed and returned to the Metro section. No new stories on the Vampire or the Preppy Terrorist. It really was a slow news day. He turned to the third page of the section and scanned the "Metro Briefs," stories so minor that they didn't merit a bylined article. A fire in Westchester, a hit-and-run in Connecticut… His gaze slid down the column in boredom, then stopped, riveted.