Remains Silent mm-1

by Michael Baden

  Jake sat down again. Why didn’t Pederson ask about the other sample, the one taken from Mrs. Alessis? Why does he want me to drop the case? Why shouldn’t I tell Elizabeth? Does he know anything about the bones? He rubbed his tired eyes. I’ve got to go on, even if it costs me my job. But I’m stymied. Without the bones there are no other leads. Without Elizabeth’s cooperation, Pete’s murder will go unsolved.

  He picked up the phone. One last chance. “Elizabeth, it’s Jake. Bad time?”

  “Daniel isn’t here, the kids are doing their homework, I’m relaxing for the first time today after the press frenzy at the office. Yes, it’s a bad time- that is, if you’re calling about Dad.”

  “I hate to do this, and I wouldn’t if it weren’t essential. But I may need your help, and if so I need to tell you the truth. Your dad didn’t die a natural death from cancer. He was poisoned. Murdered. We exhumed the body this morning. The proof is irrefutable.”

  There was a long silence. Only the sound of Elizabeth’s breathing told him she hadn’t hung up. “Maybe you should try living on top of the earth for a while,” she said at last, “instead of below it with the other worms.”

  JAKE CALLED Manny’s cell, told her he was running thirty minutes late, and asked her to meet him on the steps of his house. Her enthusiastic agreement was the only good news he’d had all day.

  She wasn’t there. Shit. He checked his watch. Okay, forty-five minutes late. If she’d really wanted to see me, she’d have waited.

  He threw open the door. Someone was cooking.

  “Manny?” he called, with a burst of glee. “What’s going on?”

  Jake heard the sound of paws scrambling on the hardwood floor. A red-furred dog dressed in designer doggie duds careered down the hall and leaped up to the level of his knees. Manny stuck her head out of the kitchen.

  “Why is he here?” Jake asked, rumpling Mycroft’s head. “What are you doing?”

  “You invited me to dinner, remember?”

  “True, but what are you doing in my kitchen?”

  “Cooking.”

  Sam emerged from behind her, a swipe of something green across his cheek. “Good thing I happened to pass by when she was sitting on your stoop. Philomena’s making us dinner,” he explained.

  “She cooks?” Jake asked.

  “She’s an artist.”

  “Not in my own house,” Manny said. “I only cook in other people’s houses.”

  Jake looked at the two of them through narrowed eyes. He’d never seen Manny so relaxed. “I’m in no mood to play house. I’ve got the headache of a lifetime.”

  “Wine,” said Manny.

  “Aspirin,” Sam said.

  Jake opted for wine. Manny ducked into the kitchen and came back with three glasses and a bottle. “I was telling my mother this morning what a jerk you were to me,” she told Jake. “She said a nice girl wouldn’t fight with a doctor- a doctor!- who performed an autopsy on a friend. For my penance, she said I had to cook you dinner. And say a novena.”

  Am I hallucinating? “How did she know about the autopsy?”

  “I told her.”

  “Okay, how did you know?”

  “Kenneth told me. He was at the Queens courthouse today. Judge Cookson’s secretary told him.”

  “Who’s Kenneth?”

  “Hello,” said a female voice, and a man appeared in full makeup, dressed in a sequined dress with a fish-tail train.

  I am hallucinating.

  “Kenneth is my assistant and my friend,” Manny said. “He’s dressed like that because he’s in a show and because he likes it. He was at Cookson’s chambers today for his legal-secretary education course. One thing you learn in my business is that secretaries talk to secretaries, and-”

  “You mean, us girls talk to us girls,” Kenneth interrupted. Manny continued, unfazed.

  “- and Kenneth told Cookson’s secretary the gossip about me and you-”

  Jake felt his mouth drop open. “Me and you?”

  “- so Cookson’s secretary told Kenneth about the exhumation order you had the DA request from him. It’s that simple.”

  Jake was stupefied, Manny saw. Serves him right. “By the way,” she said, “you can forget about the novena. I’m a retired Catholic. But I’m making linguine with white clam sauce.”

  Jake pushed several days’ worth of The New York Times off a chair and collapsed into it.

  “I tried the sauce,” Sam said. “It’s divine. First she sautйed fresh garlic, Italian parsley, sweet-cream butter, olive oil, and clam juice, and then she added the fresh Manila clams in their shells.”

  Jake scowled at him. “I thought you were keeping kosher.”

  Sam shrugged, ponytail wagging. “Times change.”

  “Got to run now, Manny,” Kenneth said. He stepped in front of Jake to offer his hand. His nails, Jake noticed, were longer, redder, and better manicured than Manny’s. “It’s been heavenly. Soon again.”

  “Charmed,” Jake mumbled, wanting to bite his tongue.

  Kenneth let himself out. Manny served the linguine. They ate standing up. It was, Jake had to admit, fantastic. Mycroft seemed to agree, as he gobbled his own portion.

  “What in the name of God is that animal wearing?” Jake asked. “It looks like he shops on Madison Avenue.”

  Manny favored him with a look. “It’s called a sweater. It’s chilly. Doesn’t he look handsome? And unlike someone in this room, at least he doesn’t shop at a dumptique.”

  “Mycroft’s named after Sherlock Holmes’s older brother,” Sam said, through a full mouth. “You remember, the fat, lazy, smarter one.”

  Manny, who had gone to the kitchen to prepare dessert, stuck her head around the corner, outraged. “He’s not fat. He’s brilliant.”

  “He was talking about the character, not your dog,” Jake said. “The character’s brilliant, too.”

  “Well, Mycroft Manfreda is more brilliant.”

  I’m not only competing with a dog- I’m competing with M amp;M’s, too! Jake thought.

  ***

  After dinner, the mood changed. Sam went home. Mycroft disappeared upstairs to do some exploring on his own, and Jake and Manny, comfortable in overstuffed chairs in the living room, were both feeling the disappointment their earlier chatter had pushed back. Jake told her about the results of the exhumation, his last call to Elizabeth, his suspicions about Pederson, and Pederson’s mysterious remark about Pete.

  “At least we got Judge Bradford to stop the mall,” Manny said. “And maybe we can still find some records at Turner Psychiatric.”

  “If they did hold back some records, they’re not there anymore. The guy who breathed on you will have moved or destroyed them by now.”

  “You’re right.”

  “And if we can’t produce the bones, how long will the stay last?”

  “A week?”

  “If that.”

  “Shit.”

  They looked at each other silently, tongue-tied with longing.

  Here’s her Prince Charming dog back again. Jake gave it a baleful look.

  “Mycroft!” Manny was addressing Mycroft in a childlike, singsong voice normally used when talking to infants. “What have you got there? What has Manny’s little man got in his teeny-tiny mouth? Come on. Give it to Mommy.”

  She held out her hand. Mycroft growled at her. “No,” she said. “We don’t make nasty noises at Mommy. Give it here.” She pulled the object from Mycroft’s mouth and handed it to Jake. “Did he get this out of the garbage?”

  It was a curved piece of bone. He inspected it. “This bone’s human. A mandible.”

  “Human? What kind of pervert leaves human bones in the garbage?”

  “He didn’t get it from the garbage. It’s one of my teaching specimens.”

  “Why do you leave it lying around?”

  “I didn’t. They’re in storage.”

  “What do you call that?” She pointed to a very large bone perched atop a filing cabine
t in the corner.

  “That’s a thighbone from an allosaurus. I got it at a dinosaur bone auction.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “I thought it was cool. Looks like a human femur only much bigger. Not only do our bones look alike but more than ninety percent of our DNA is the same.”

  “I rest my case.” She looked at the bone. “At least it’s not covered in dust. You must have the best housekeeper in Manhattan.”

  “She’s not allowed to touch the specimens. They’re organized to my personal filing system, so I can find what I need when I need it. Everything has educational value. Take the mandible, for instance. I use it to show students how dental records can be used to identify human remains. This one’s female. You can tell because it’s smoother where the muscles attach to the sides. You can see right off she’s had some dental work. Cavities were filled in the first and second molars. And the-”

  “What is it?” Manny asked.

  He was staring at the bone, a wild light in his eyes. “God!” he cried. “God! You were right! The dog’s Mycroft and Sherlock rolled into one.”

  Jake stood and raced up the stairs, Mycroft at his heels.

  “Where are you going?” Manny called, following him.

  “Fourth floor. Specimen room.”

  They entered a room Manny suspected had once been a ladies’ boudoir. It still had hints of elegance: a marble fireplace, stained-glass panels atop the windows, floral-design moldings below the ceiling. But it was a man’s room now- a mad scientist’s room- filled with glass jars containing viscera, boxes of hair, a microscope, and what must have been a dozen cartons of bones, sealed and labeled.

  Jake rushed to the box marked SKULLS. “Thank the Lord,” he breathed.

  “That box is taped shut,” Manny said. “Mycroft couldn’t have gotten the bone from there.”

  “Precisely, my dear Watson.”

  He dashed out of the room and up the stairs to the attic. If the specimen room was organized clutter, here there was chaos. Boxes were strewn about the floor as though washed up after a shipwreck; lawn bags full of paper lined the walls; soil had been tracked across the floor.

  “Mycroft, fetch!” Jake ordered.

  The dog went unerringly to a brown paper bag on the floor and began to scrounge in it. It had been torn open on one side; Manny could see that it was filled with bones.

  “Pete,” Jake said, grinning, “you brilliant old son of a bitch.”

  “What’s in there?” Manny asked.

  “This room contains all the stuff I took from Pete’s house. I haven’t even begun to go through it. And this”- he pointed to the garbage bag-“contains bones we found in the field behind Turner Psychiatric. The important ones, I suspect. Pete must have brought them to his house when he came back from the morgue on the Monday after I left him.”

  Her eyes widened. “The Turner skeletons?”

  He radiated excitement. “The Turner skeletons. What your adorable, mother-loving, brilliant dog brought us was the mandible from Skeleton Four. I guess the label fell off when Mycroft brought it to us.”

  ***

  Jake’s joy was infectious, Manny thought, forgetting for a moment the seriousness of their endeavor. “Why would Harrigan take the bones?” she asked. “Isn’t it against procedure?”

  “Absolutely. So there was a good reason for him to do it. He must have known the bones were evidence of something- though I’m not sure just what. Anyway, that’s why he was murdered. He knew what the bones were evidence of, and he might have revealed it.”

  He picked up the bag, holding his hand over the tear. “Let’s go to my office. There’s an articulated skeleton there, and we can use it to compare the bones in the bag.” He chuckled. “In a former life, Sam used the house for… social engagements. One of his companions took it upon herself to slow-dance with the skeleton. So I decided it would be best if no one, including Sam, entered without my permission.”

  I feel privileged, Manny thought, but why? She felt foolish.

  Jake’s office was a large comfortable room on the second floor. The walls were covered with framed pictures and documents, clearly arranged with care: a warrant signed by President Abraham Lincoln to pardon a deserter if he took an oath of allegiance to the United States; four autographed pictures of Muhammad Ali, sequentially showing a disintegrating signature; an article by Jake on the neurological effects of punches on boxers’ brains. “I think boxing should be banned,” Jake said, seeing her interest. “Its whole purpose is to inflict ten seconds’ worth of brain damage to your opponent.”

  At the end of the room was a massive oak desk, so big Manny couldn’t imagine how it got through the door. In the far corner stood the skeleton. “It’s a real one, from the Ganges River,” Jake explained. “The plastic ones they use in medical school may be adequate, but the weight of the bones is all wrong.” Although one entire wall was lined with shelves displaying more books, bones, and specimens, the desktop was bare.

  Jake set the paper bag on the desk, offering Manny the leather swivel chair. He pulled out samples of hair in separate envelopes, then a thin oval-shaped piece of gray metal.

  “What’s that?” Manny asked.

  “James Lyons had a plate in his skull. Pete found it.”

  He handed it to her. The plate was perforated with tiny holes; she held it up to the light. Manny Manfreda, Private Eye. “There are letters punched into this.” She squinted. “A.V.E.”

  “Probably the initials of the neurosurgeon who inserted it.”

  She suppressed a shudder. “Why would anyone do that? A plate in the head is bad enough- but an autograph?”

  “Skull,” Jake corrected. “It’s not unheard of. The doctor might have done it so he could be located. More probably, it was out of vanity. Some doctors can’t resist playing God. In one of the bodies I autopsied, a surgeon had carved his initials into a lobe of the liver. He was showing off for the operating room nurse.”

  “That’s assault. You guys are weird.”

  “The initials on this plate could come in handy,” Jake continued, ignoring her attack.

  “You think we can use them to identify the other bodies?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping. If we can track down the surgeon, or at least his records, maybe he’d know who else was in those graves.”

  “Why would Lyons have a plate in his head anyway?” Manny asked. “Could he have been in an accident?”

  “Sure, but I’m inclined to think it was a treatment for his trauma-induced epilepsy from a war wound.”

  “By cutting a hole in his head?”

  “There was once a theory that removing part of the skull could prevent seizures by reducing intracranial pressure. Nobody believes it anymore. The practice is barbaric, like frontal lobotomies.” He caressed the metal softly, deep in thought.

  That same gentle touch. I can almost feel it.

  “Must have been done after he was discharged from the army,” Jake went on. “He’d have been rejected otherwise. It’s funny. I thought the treatment stopped in the forties. But Lyons fought in Korea. Maybe the army medics continued to use outdated procedures to save money.” He began to pace.

  When he’s thinking, that’s what he does. So did Sherlock Holmes.

  Jake’s voice was the one he used when he was autopsying Mrs. Alessis. “Lyons didn’t die right after the plate was put in. The cut bone had been healing for some months.”

  “Significant?”

  “I have no idea.” He sat down and took out another bone. “The label’s still on this one. It’s the first and second cervical vertebrae of Skeleton Three. See, the broken edges are irregular- no healing.” Next he pulled out the humerus of Skeleton Two. It looked normal, just like it had the day he and Harrigan had removed it from the ground.

  Once more he reached into the bag and held up his discovery. “Skeleton One, the ulna, the forearm bone. And the metacarpal with the anomaly.”

  “Why would Harrigan save that?”


  “We’ll have to figure it out.”

  “Anything else in there?”

  “Other bones.” He put the remains into a clean banker’s box and rubbed his eyes. “There’s a safe downstairs. I’ll store them overnight.”

  Manny felt a stab of disappointment. I’d been hoping- for what? “Let’s start again in the morning,” Jake said. “I’m due a sick day. Do you have the time to help me?”

  Time? No. “Try and keep me away.”

  “Good. I’ll tell Sam about tonight and ask him to come over, too. You can go over the other stuff from Pete’s house while I get these hair and bone samples to a private lab owned by my friend Hans Galt. I need to take new X-rays, too. Pete never gave me his. And I’ve got to see a dentist about a mandible.”

  Meaning he’ll be gone while I work with Sam. Such is the detective business.

  “How and why could the deaths of four patients at a mental hospital be kept secret for more than forty years?” Manny asked. “Somebody would leak it, no?”

  “Not if they wanted to live,” Jake said, remembering his last conversation with his friend. “That’s the point. Pete knew he was about to die. What was it to him if he knew something he shouldn’t? That’s why he was killed. And why, by knowing him, we’re all in danger.”

  DR. GEOFFREY RENKO was one of the foremost forensic dentists in America. Jake had consulted with him many times on forensic matters and as few times as possible when it came to his own teeth.

  The dentist greeted him warmly. “Sit, sit. You’re not here for your checkup, I take it.”

  “Next month,” Jake said, struck by how a man so big could have such delicate hands. They were seated in Renko’s office. Jake handed him the mandible. “I was wondering if you would take a look at this.”