Skeleton justice mm-2

by Michael Baden

  Manny shook her head slightly, as if she'd already considered this but rejected it. "No, no more clandestine operations now that our cover's been blown. But I feel that if I could just get Paco alone and talk to him, really talk to him, he'd tell me something valuable."

  "Why should he?" Jake demanded. "If it would endanger his family?"

  "Because now it has to be clear to Paco that he's put Travis in danger. Paco's not a bad kid-he must feel guilty about what he's done to his friend."

  "What do you know about Paco's character? You've spent all of five minutes with the kid, and half of that time you were on his back, literally."

  "You'd be surprised the insights gained by jumping on a person." Manny grinned, poised to pounce. "Want me to demonstrate?"

  Jake squirmed in his seat. Why did working with Manny always give him this precarious feeling, like he was riding in a ski lift without the safety bar down?

  It was only nine-fifteen-too early to succumb to temptation. Jake knew he could easily put in three or four more hours here, digging for clues, reviewing the case files to look for significant details. He met Manny's teasing glance cautiously. "Hold that thought," he said, and waited for a storm or a sulk.

  But Manny merely laughed. "Don't worry-I won't forget." She pivoted and looked around the office. "Say, as much as I love bonding with you by sharing this computer, don't you think we'd get to our reward a little faster if we were to divide and conquer? Isn't there another computer here I can use so we can both look things up?"

  "Sure. You can use Dave's." He pointed to a desk just outside his office door.

  "All right. Yell if you find anything interesting. I'm going to dig up more information on this grandmother's organization that does the protests, Asociacion Civil Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo."

  Regret mingled with relief as Jake watched her retreating figure. He could certainly focus better when he wasn't breathing in Manny's perfume or brushing against her soft skin. But he liked knowing she was nearby, close enough to shout out an idea or ask an opinion.

  He turned back to his own work. Forsaking the computer for the time being, Jake again pulled out the case files on the Vampire's victims. He'd already gone over them countless times, but it wouldn't hurt to look at them once more, bearing in mind his new knowledge of General Cintron and the Dirty War.

  He had already tried to recontact each of the first four victims-the ones before Annabelle Fiore, whose blood had been taken but who had not been injured-to ask about a connection to Argentina in their lives. Victim number four, Jorge Arguelles, a tourist from Chile, seemed to have the closest connection, but he had already returned home, and Jake had not yet been able to reach him to ask if he had recently visited neighboring Argentina or had friends there.

  Jake had not had the time to visit each victim personally, as he had with Annabelle. In his telephone conversations with the first three victims, each one had claimed to have no connection to Argentina. Now he wished he had made the effort to interview them in person, so he could have observed their eyes and hands as they spoke, listened to their breathing and vocal pitch, tracking any signs of deception.

  Jake reread his notes. Victim number one, Lucinda Bettis, stood out. The other victims had thoughtfully considered his question about Argentina but had ultimately claimed no connection. Mrs. Bettis had replied in the negative almost before the question about Argentina had left Jake's mouth. Then she had rushed to get off the phone, saying she needed to get back to her children. Given that the other victims he had reached had answered in the negative, her response hadn't raised a red flag at the time, but now Jake studied her file more closely.

  Born in 1977, married, mother of two. She had been attacked in her Upper West Side apartment in the middle of the day while the kids were at nursery school. No sign of forced entry; she said she'd answered the knock at the door because she was expecting her neighbor, who had agreed to pick up a dozen eggs for her at the market.

  Again, he compared her file with the others, searching for some significant detail, something that either set her apart from the others or joined them all together. It eluded him.

  From the other room came the sound of Manny's outrage. "Oh my God! This is horrible!"

  Manny pulled two sheets of paper from the printer and entered Jake's office, reading aloud. "Listen to this: 'The junta led by Videla until 1981, then by Roberto Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, was responsible for the illegal arrest, torturing, killing, or forced disappearance of citizens who voiced opposition to the government. Critics claim there are documents showing Argentina's brutal policies were known by the U.S. State Department, led by Henry Kissinger under both the Nixon and Gerald Ford presidencies.'"

  Manny looked up. "Isn't that outrageous? Nixon and Kissinger's foreign policy extended long after the impeachment. And there's more." Manny continued reading aloud, her voice rising with indignation at every ghastly detail-secret imprisonment, torture, mutilation, murder-of the Argentine government's brutality.

  "Say that again." Jake suddenly cut her off in mid-sentence.

  "'Some of the bodies were never found because they were taken far offshore and disposed of in the ocean,'" Manny repeated.

  "No, not that. What you said before."

  Manny flipped back to the first page she'd printed out. "'The government claims that about nine thousand people were victims of forced disappearances, but the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo estimate that nearly thirty thousand dissidents, students, and ordinary citizens disappeared between 1976 and 1983. The higher number includes children who disappeared with their parents, and pregnant women who may have given birth while in captivity.'"

  Jake lowered his head and scrambled through the file folders on his desk, checking each one quickly and moving on to the next.

  "What? What is it?"

  Jake looked up and met Manny's eyes. "Victims one, three, and four were all born during the Dirty War. Victim two was born two years earlier. That's it. That's the connection. These victims-they're all children of the Desaparecidos."

  "What are you thinking?" Manny asked. She and Jake were lying in her Murphy bed, with Mycroft curled at their feet. They didn't often spend the night at her place, even though Jake praised the coziness of her five-hundred-square-foot apartment: "Makes me feel like I'm sleeping in a casket."

  Manny rolled over on the six-hundred-thread-count sheets and ran her finger down Jake's sinewy arm. Turning corpses over on a daily basis is good for the muscles, Manny thought. She read the deep recessed lines documenting Jake's thoughts. "I'm sure you're only thinking about how fabulous it is to be here with me, naked and alone."

  "I was thinking about the blood." It never occurred to Jake to utter a judicious lie.

  Manny flopped onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. "I love it when you ply me with romantic pillow talk. What blood?"

  "The blood the Vampire takes. He went to all the trouble of collecting those samples, then abandoned them in that apartment in Brooklyn."

  "He must be done with them," Manny said. "Because if he still needed them, it wouldn't have been hard to take them along when he left that place."

  "Exactly. So if he was testing the blood samples, as I've always suspected, he now has his results. What's his next move? What's he going to do with this information?"

  "I don't know. The note he left with Deanie told us to await instructions. He must be planning something."

  Jake unexpectedly sat up and slammed his fist so hard onto the down comforter that three feathers shot into the air. "Well, I'm not waiting for him to act. I want to be one jump ahead, anticipating him."

  Manny had been about ready to drift into blissful and much-needed sleep, but being in the presence of Jake when he was so excited was the equivalent of drinking three cups of double espresso-and infectious.

  She sat up, too, and faced him across the rumpled covers. "But even with what we know now, or what we suspect, we still aren't any closer to understanding the Vampire's motivation.
And without that, how can we anticipate his next move?"

  Jake said nothing, eyes focused on the seemingly nondescript pattern of her new white-on-white silk comforter.

  "Jake?"

  No answer.

  "Jake! You know something that you haven't told me."

  He started, as if he just noticed that he wasn't alone in the bed. "Not that I haven't told you. It's something that just clicked." He grabbed Manny's hands. "If victims one through four are children of Los Desaparecidos, but the ones I talked to claimed no connection with Argentina, then how did three of them get here to New York? Even the businessman tourist from Chile claimed he was born in Chile. So, who took them out of their country? Who raised them?"

  "They're all adopted," Manny said, catching his excitement and building on it. "But they don't know one another… They probably don't even know that they're adopted. Their adoptive parents concealed their true heritage-didn't want them to know their biological parents had been murdered."

  "Maybe because-" Jake's grip on Manny's hands tightened.

  Her eyes widened. "Because the people who adopted them were responsible for the parents' deaths. Were part of the junta. Why else keep the adoptions secret, when today everyone's so open about the process?"

  "Adoption," Jake said. "We've just found where another of our puzzle pieces fits."

  "The Family Builders adoption agency. They must have facilitated these adoptions. That's why Ms. Hogaarth left them money in her will."

  "We have to talk to the director." Jake glanced around for Manny's phone.

  She reached out and pulled him back. "It's three-thirty in the morning, Jake. We have to wait a few hours."

  He flung himself back on the pillows and yanked the covers up to his chin. "I hate waiting."

  Manny snuggled up beside him. "So do I."

  Ten minutes passed in silence. The only light in the room came from the reflected glow of streetlamps far below. Mycroft snored gently.

  "Are you asleep?" Manny asked.

  "No."

  "My mind's racing."

  "Mine, too."

  "There's really only one cure for this," Manny said.

  Jake slid one leg over the edge of the bed. "You're right. I may as well get up and go to the office."

  Manny twined her arms around his neck and yanked him back. "No! Not that!"

  "Oh," he said, catching on. "Yeah, that works, too."

  "Isn't that what you're always telling me?" Manny murmured. "Keep your mind open to all the possibilities."

  "We have never handled international adoptions," Lydia Martinette said.

  Jake sat across from the director of the Family Builders adoption agency, surrounded by the relentless good cheer of her office's happy family photos and precious children's drawings. Not liking the answer he'd received, he posed his question again. "This would have been late 1970s, early 1980s. Argentina." He was certain that Family Builders had brought the children of the Desaparecidos to New York. All he needed to do was make Mrs. Martinette comprehend.

  "I understand the time frame, Dr. Rosen. You mentioned it before. But I'm telling you, this agency has never handled international adoptions. In fact, bringing foreign-born babies to the United States for adoption is antithetical to everything we stand for." When Jake had called the director at home at 8:55 that morning, demanding an interview at her office, Mrs. Martinette had been polite and helpful, but now her voice took on an edge.

  But Jake was not deterred. "These names, Mrs. Martinette." He read the list of victims one through four. "Do they sound familiar? Did you place any of these children?"

  "I'm sure we didn't, but if it will set your mind at rest, I'll look them up." She took the list from him and tapped the names into a database on her computer. After each search, she shook her head. "Not here."

  Jake felt a rising tide of desperation. There just had to be a connection. Yet he believed Mrs. Martinette. He looked at a photo of a kid with stumps for arms surrounded by his new family. She found homes for kids like that. Her agency's reputation was stellar. He couldn't doubt her sincerity or her honesty. Still, he persisted. "How about Dr. Raymond Fortes. He's an OB-GYN specializing in fertility. Have you ever worked with him?"

  "No." Seeing his distress, Mrs. Martinette's attitude softened a bit. "Look, I can give you the names of agencies that do handle foreign adoptions, but honestly, Argentina isn't a common source of infants. Guatemala, Colombia, Peru-those are the Central and South American countries that American couples most frequently turn to when they're looking to adopt." Her usually smiling mouth turned down in disapproval.

  He'd been so focused on his own agenda that he hadn't been paying attention to the signals Mrs. Martinette was sending. He stopped trying to drag her where she didn't want to go and allowed her to give him the information she wanted to share. "Why don't you approve of international adoptions, Mrs. Martinette?"

  She came out from behind her desk and sat next to Jake. "I don't disapprove in all cases. People want the experience of raising an infant from birth, I understand that. It can be difficult for some to adopt an infant in this country. But I resent all these celebrities traipsing off to Africa and India and Cambodia to 'rescue' children when there are thousands, tens of thousands, of children in America who need good adoptive homes. And the ramifications of culture shock for older children taken away from their countries of origin can be considerable."

  Jake watched Mrs. Martinette as she spoke, noting the way she leaned forward, the way she looked into his eyes, the way her voice shook with intensity. In her he saw a kindred spirit, a woman who cared as deeply about her work as he cared about his own. She didn't happen to have the information that he had come here seeking, but he thought she could be useful to him anyway.

  "Tell me, Mrs. Martinette," he said. "Is it ever justifiable to conceal a child's origins from him, to never tell him he's adopted because of the circumstances of his birth?"

  "We often place children who are the products of rape, and we don't recommend telling the child that detail, but we never say that a child shouldn't know he's adopted."

  "What about reuniting children with their birth parents? If an adult child comes here wanting to know the identity of his or her birth parents, do you tell that person?"

  Mrs. Martinette brushed a strand of glistening white hair away from her face. "Magazines and TV are filled with heartwarming stories of birth parents and children being joyfully reunited, but the truth is more complicated than that. Both parties have to want the reunification. Many times, the birth parents don't want to be found; they've separated from the baby they gave up and they don't want to reopen that wound."

  She spread her hands out on her lap. "And many children have no interest in meeting the parents who surrendered them. Their adoptive parents are the only parents they want in their lives. We have to respect that, although it's very distressing when one party wants the reunification and the other doesn't."

  "So what do you do in those cases?" Jake asked.

  "We have to honor the wishes of the party who wants privacy. We provide any information on health and well-being that would be reassuring, but we don't reveal the identity."

  "And do people ever have… er… violent reactions to that decision?"

  Mrs. Martinette cocked her head. "What an odd question. Sometimes there are tears and pleading. If I feel the person is having serious trouble adjusting to the idea that he'll never be reunited, I have a few therapists I can recommend."

  "Hmm." Jake stared down at the pale blue carpet beneath his tattered loafers.

  "Dr. Rosen? Is that all?"

  "Huh?" Jake pushed himself out of his chair with a jolt. "Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Thank you for your time, Mrs. Martinette." He shook her hand and walked toward the door.

  With his hand on the knob, Jake paused and looked back. "Ma'am, aren't you at all curious about why Ms. Hogaarth left Family Builders all that money?"

  The older woman fingered a strand of beads around
her neck before she spoke. "I gave up looking for reasons years ago, Doctor. I used to want to know why a father would beat his crying infant so hard that the child would never be able to form words again. I used to want to know why a mother would drop her toddler in a scalding bath because she wet the bed. I don't ask why about those things anymore, so I sure don't ask why when something good comes my way."

  Manny sat on a park bench a few blocks south of the Central Park Zoo, Mycroft curled at her side. A jaded New Yorker, Mycroft found little of interest in the passing tide. Squirrels and pigeons were beneath his contempt; joggers, bladers, and skateboarders didn't merit a second glance. A four-foot-tall Afghan hound provoked a low growl; a strolling incense vendor prompted a sneeze. Only a toddler with a tenuous grip on a hot dog got the poodle to sit up and tense for a spring into action.

  Manny tugged his leash. "Don't even think about it. I've got something better." She glanced at her watch. "You don't have much longer to wait." Her other hand rested inside her purse, fingers already curled around a tin of bacon and liver strips. Mycroft wouldn't perform for just any treat. He scoffed at Milk Bones, ignored Snausages. While he wouldn't eat Fortune Snookies, he'd do just about anything for fusion cuisine from the China Grill, but it really wouldn't be practical to toss a handful of lobster pancakes onto the path when her prey came into sight. But like his mother, Mycroft could be a bundle of contradictions. He'd also kill for a dirty-water hot dog from any street vendor in New York.

  So Manny watched for Paco, armed with organic bacon-and-liver-infused dog snacks ordered from Canine Gourmet and a hungry, bored pet. Although the sun was long past its peak, she wore large dark glasses and had stuffed her red hair under a bucket hat.

  She knew the Ultimate Frisbee game Paco played with his friends every Sunday afternoon in the park must have ended by now. Paco lived farthest downtown, so the other friends would have peeled off for their homes by the time he reached this point on the path.

  Manny watched the bend in the path to see who would come along next. Two black women pushing white babies in strollers-Haitian nannies taking their charges home; a middle-aged man talking on his cell phone; three old biddies clutching one another's arms for support.