Skeleton Justice

by Michael Baden

  “Don’t let them move the body,” Jake said, already out of his chair. “I want to see it in situ.”

  “But the Passaic County ME will be handling this case,” Sam said.

  “I don’t care who has jurisdiction. Just don’t let them move the body until I get there.” As Jake swiveled his chair to leave, the phone rang again. Caller ID blocked—a Pederson trademark. Damn it—he had to take this call.

  Elena knelt at Manny’s feet and started untying her legs. A surge of hope energized Manny. If they were to be moved, she might have an opportunity to escape. Then Manny realized what was really going on and the hope fizzled out. Elena wanted them to be able to run from the dog—it would make for a better show.

  Manny watched Elena work and considered her options. She could wait until Elena was untying Travis, then kick her hard in the head. If she could knock Elena unconscious, she might stand a chance of reasoning with Dr. Costello. It was a long shot, but—

  A sensation of being watched made Manny look up. Dr. Costello had his gun trained on her. Amazing how that small black object drained the strength from her legs.

  With Travis’s feet untied, Elena pulled out a cell phone and dialed. “Dr. Rosen? Are you sitting in front of your computer?”

  Manny could feel her heart rate kick up a notch. To hear Jake’s name spoken, to know he was on the other end of that phone. “Jake!” she screamed.

  Elena waved at her in annoyance, like a mother hushing her clamoring children. “Never mind who this is,” she said into the phone. “You need to go to this Web site: www.the-disappeared-dot-com. You will be interested in what you see there.”

  Manny looked up at the camera. Could Jake see her now? Hear her?

  “Dr. Rosen?” Elena coughed, then continued. “Do you see what I see? Good. Then you also see the list of other people you must get to tune into this Web site, starting with Lucinda Bettis and the others, as well as the Sandovals. And expect your phone to start ringing. Because we’ve sent an e-mail from the Vampire to every news outlet in the city. And we’ve given your phone number as the contact person. Only you can explain why this is happening.”

  Elena paused for a moment as Jake responded to her, careful to stay out of range of the camera. “Well, I think you understand why I can’t tell you where they are, Dr. Rosen. But you’re a clever man. That’s why we chose you. I’m sure you’ll rescue them … eventually.”

  Then Elena grabbed her husband by the arm and pulled him out of the room.

  The door to safety slammed shut.

  They were alone with the pit bull.

  Jake cradled the phone to his ear, all the while staring at his computer screen. This must be what it’s like to suffer from visual agnosia, that rare condition in which your visual acuity is perfectly good but you can’t make sense of what you’re seeing.

  He had first thought the voice directing him to this Web site was pulling a hoax, but he had checked it out just to be safe. And now, instead of the blank screen or porn site he had expected, he saw with horrifying clarity the woman he loved and her client, hands tied behind them, in an empty room with a large cage that had some kind of animal in it.

  And this was apparently a live feed. When Manny shook her head on the screen, that meant that at the very same moment she was shaking her head in a room where he could see her but not find her. When she had looked up and stared directly into the camera, straight into his eyes, her terror had been as immediate as if she were sitting across the desk from him. His heart felt crushed by it. He slammed down the phone as if that would end Manny’s fear.

  Jake couldn’t bear to look at Manny and couldn’t bear to look away. But there were words on the screen, too, running in a column beside the streaming video. He dragged his eyes there to read the text. As he read, the bile rose in the back of his throat. The Vampire was planning on torturing Manny and Travis and broadcasting this live over the Internet for all the world to see. And this monster expected him to participate in the spectacle, provide the color commentary for an act of madness. Well, forget that.

  He’d see to it that this live feed was blocked and deprive the Vampire of the publicity he craved. He’d shut down this Web site, and then he’d find Manny. Jake reached for his phone again, but before he could lift the receiver, it rang.

  It was the same woman. “Hello, Dr. Rosen. By now you understand what is happening here.”

  “I understand, and I’m not participating in your madness.”

  “Don’t make that decision until you know all the ramifications, Doctor.”

  A knot of dread tightened in Jake’s gut. “What do you mean?”

  “You have one hour in which to contact each of the Vampire’s victims. Tell them to log on to the site. Your friend the detective can help you with all the phone numbers you need. Once there, they must click the ‘Contact’ button to send an e-mail that verifies their presence. Do the same for the Sandoval family. Once everyone is watching, the show begins.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then Ms. Manfreda and Travis Heaton will be executed with a single shot to the head before your eyes. You have sixty minutes from the end of this call.”

  The phone clicked off.

  Manny could see Travis’s arms trembling, his eyes wide with fear. He went into another spasm of coughing. Her own throat was raw and she felt like crying, too, but she couldn’t. She had to remain calm, make a plan. Hysteria wouldn’t help them.

  Manny glanced up at the camera. Jake was watching, but so was Elena. Even if she couldn’t think her way out of this mess, Manny wouldn’t give that woman the satisfaction of seeing her fall apart.

  Could Jake see what was in the cage? Did he know what was happening here? Or would he not understand until the timer released the door and the dog charged out? She looked down at her bare legs and arms. Now she understood why Elena had made her wear this ugly dress. She was totally exposed, totally vulnerable.

  “What are we going to do?” Travis asked in a soft voice. “Are we just going to stand here and wait for the door to open?”

  “Don’t panic. That’s the most important thing.” Manny tried to speak with confidence, but inside she was shaking. Being attacked by an animal, eaten alive. It was as if Dr. Costello had sensed her worst fear. Couldn’t he have chosen something else to make his point?

  She looked around the room. Surely the door must be locked, and there was only the one window, heavily barred. And absolutely nothing to use as a weapon. Except maybe the cage itself. Could they use it to bludgeon the creature, even if they couldn’t force it back inside? Did she have it in her to kill a dog, even one that was trying to kill her? In a way, the dog was a victim, too. Some say pit bulls aren’t inherently vicious. But there was no mistaking that this dog had been crossbred to be bigger, and trained to kill. It had been mistreated and punished from birth to turn it into a crazed fighter. She felt sorry for it, but she couldn’t undo the damage.

  “Why did they untie our legs but not our hands?” Travis asked.

  “They want us to be able to run from that thing, even though there’s no place to hide, no way to escape. It’ll provide more excitement.” Manny twisted her hands. The rope was definitely loose. It was as if they had been tied to hold them still just long enough for the Costellos to get away and the cage to open. Everything had been planned for maximum drama.

  “If we could get these ropes off quickly, we might be able to use them to tie the cage shut before the timer springs the lock.” Manny’s voice sounded choked and uneven to her own ears, like it had years ago at her first trial. What she wouldn’t give now to have her terror inspired by a two-hundred-pound man in black robes instead of an eighty-pound dog with teeth so big, they jutted out of its mouth.

  She’d seen bigger dogs, but she’d never seen an angrier one. Lean and muscular, the dog circled endlessly in the cage. It probably hadn’t been out in days. Mycroft went bonkers whenever he was cooped up on a long car trip. Imagine what this much bigger b
reed, which craved exercise as much as food and water, must be feeling. It wanted out, and when it got out, nothing would stop it from venting its manic energy.

  The look on the dog’s face drove every rational thought out of Manny’s mind.

  “Do you think we can gang up on it?” Travis asked.

  Manny glanced over at him, and for a terrible, selfish moment she was glad that Dr. Costello hadn’t taken her plea seriously and released the boy. A terrified, weakened kid wasn’t going to offer much defense, but it was reassuring not to be facing this thing alone.

  Manny thought about what Travis had said. “If one of us can distract him, the other might be able to subdue him. But whatever we do, we can’t run. Running will just incite his instinct to hunt.”

  “So if we just stay still, it’ll leave us alone?”

  Travis sounded pathetically hopeful, the way she used to when she begged her father to promise lightning could never strike their house. Just say it and make it so, Daddy.

  Her father used to tell the reassuring lie. Manny couldn’t. “Let’s work on getting our hands untied.”

  They backed up to each other and Manny worked by touch to pick open Travis’s bindings. As she struggled, they talked.

  “Why did you circumvent your electronic bracelet, Travis? Where did you go when you left your apartment?”

  “I went to meet Paco. We weren’t supposed to talk at school or phone each other, but I knew he had information he needed to tell me. I managed to pass him a note at school and told him where to meet me—a Laundromat down the block. I never made it there. Elena and Frederic grabbed me.”

  “Why did they want you?”

  “From what I could figure out, they were still working out the details of the Webcam.” Travis looked up at the camera lens, which captured their every move. “I didn’t understand what they were planning, but I heard the word camera over and over again. I think they were afraid that if the police and the FBI kept interrogating me, they’d figure out the bombing was linked to the Vampire too soon. They had to buy time until they got this”—he gestured to the cage—“set up.”

  “I wish you hadn’t been so loyal to Paco, Travis. I could have helped you if you’d told me the whole truth.” Travis let out a quiet sob, and Manny regretted her words. This was no time for recriminations. “How many minutes have passed?” she asked as she unraveled another knot.

  “About five, I think.”

  They paused in their conversation. The only sound was the steady tick of the timer.

  And the click of the pacing dog’s sharpened nails.

  With the help of the police and the FBI, Jake met the Vampire’s demands. The audience was tuned in. Manny and Travis would not be executed.

  Vito had also mobilized a crew of computer geeks to track the transmission and see who owned the Web site, but Jake had little hope that they would be able to work fast enough to do Manny any good. Anyone clever enough to come up with this scheme would know how to cover his electronic tracks. The experts might be able to suss him out eventually, but they didn’t have days to rescue Manny and Travis; they had only minutes.

  Jake had never felt so helpless, so close to panic. He couldn’t let fear get the upper hand, or he would be of no use to Manny whatsoever. He used the only resource available to steady himself: scientific method.

  He called Sam and updated him. “I can’t leave my office and go to Paterson now. I need you to be my eyes and hands. That body may contain evidence that will help us find Manny.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Sam asked.

  Jake felt a swell of gratitude for his brother. They could sit around for hours arguing for sport, but in a crisis, Sam followed orders without question. “Look at his clothes and skin. Describe any foreign material you see there.”

  “Well, he’s wearing destruction jeans and a T-shirt, and the jeans have a lot of white dust on them from the knees down. Like he knelt in something, or walked through it.”

  “Collect some of that and bring it back to me.”

  “Jake, I don’t happen to have sterile specimen-collection envelopes on me.”

  “Improvise. Scrape it onto a clean sheet of paper and fold it up. It doesn’t have to be sterile.”

  “Okay, I’m using a receipt from my pocket. Got a sample. What else?”

  “Take a crisp dollar bill and use the edge to scrape out some of the material from under his nails,” Jake directed.

  “Done. That it?”

  Jake sighed. That body might be a treasure trove of information, but he could use only what could be analyzed quickly. “Yes. Get back over to my office as fast as possible.”

  Knowing that the Sandovals and the Vampire’s other victims were also watching, Jake sat in front of his computer screen and waited to see what would happen next. He clung to the hope that, having their undivided attention, the Vampire might be satisfied with just delivering a message.

  Manny was untying Travis’s hands. He wished she would have had the kid untie her first; she would be most useful free. He could hear the low murmur of their voices, but the audio quality was poor. He figured the microphone must not be near them. He wished he could shout encouragement or directions, but of course they could not hear him.

  He studied the narrow field of vision displayed by the camera, looking for clues. He could see one large, dirty window, covered with a heavy grille. An old unvarnished wood floor. No furniture.

  Manny was still working on freeing Travis’s hands. Her work was interrupted when the boy’s shoulders hunched, his torso shook, and his face turned red. He was coughing hard, although the sound reached Jake as a distant rustle.

  Suddenly, a loud sound filled his office. Harsh, piercing, violent. Jake jumped and saw Manny and Travis do the same. The dog had barked. The microphone was on his collar. So even if the dog and his prey moved out of the camera’s range, the witnesses would always be able to hear the barks and growls of his attack. And the screams of his victims.

  He watched as Manny’s and Travis’s heads turned.

  Manny looked directly into the camera. Her mouth was open, too. He didn’t need the audio to know what she was yelling.

  “Jake!”

  “What do you see?”

  Jake’s head hunched over his microscope. He could hear the impatience in his brother’s voice, but he needed to study this sample carefully He sought certainty, not conjecture.

  “There are two types of fibers in the dust you found on Freak’s body. One has a very distinctive shape—thin and needlelike.” Jake looked up. “It’s asbestos, and it’s in this sample in a very high concentration.”

  “And the other fiber?” Sam asked.

  “Cotton. Simple cotton.”

  “I don’t see how that helps us,” Sam said. “We don’t know that Freak picked it up from the place where Travis and Manny are being held.”

  “True, we can’t be certain. But Freak was the dog handler. And a pit bull is there with Manny, so it stands to reason Freak took it there. I’m sure he was once where Manny is now.”

  “Yes, but he may have picked up the dust elsewhere,” Sam argued.

  “I would be more willing to accept that if it weren’t for the fact that Travis has been coughing steadily since he appeared on camera. Elena Costello also coughed when she spoke to me on the phone. Asbestos is tremendously irritating to the lungs. In these concentrations, the exposure would be enough to provoke coughing in a day or less.”

  Sam twisted a pencil in his long fingers. The computer terminal had been angled so both men could watch the screen, but neither could bear to keep their eyes on it for long. Manny still struggled with Travis’s bindings. The dog had barked twice more.

  “Okay, so they’re in a place contaminated by asbestos. There must be thousands of locations in metro New York that fill that bill. Asbestos was a commonly used building material—it’s in old linoleum, insulation, all kinds of stuff. Seems like every time a building gets remodeled, they have to call in t
he guys in the white moon suits to clean it up.”

  “Yes, but these fibers aren’t from linoleum or insulation,” Jake said. “There are no other building materials mixed in. Just asbestos and cotton.”

  “What’s the significance of that?”

  Jake crossed to another computer. “Time for a little research.”

  “I’ll help,” Sam offered.

  Jake eyed him. Sam had been notorious for completing term papers in a hurry by making up any missing information.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I want to help. It’ll go faster with two.”

  “Okay, search ‘asbestos in clothing.’ Let’s see what we come up with.”

  Manny finally freed Travis of his ropes.

  “Wow, thanks. Now let me untie you.”

  Manny hesitated. “Maybe it would be better if you used your piece of rope to tie the cage shut before you untie me.”

  Slowly, Travis bent to pick up the short piece of rope. He took two steps toward the cage, as if he were fighting against a strong gravitational pull from the opposite direction.

  The dog barked and flung himself against the metal bars.

  Travis leaped back.

  “Never mind,” Manny said. “Untie me quick and I’ll go.” As Travis untied her, Manny studied the bars on the cage, wondering if she could sprint across, thread the rope through the bars, and tie it tightly enough to hold that powerful beast in once the lock released.

  Hours—days—seemed to have passed in getting themselves untied. She had no idea how much time she had left until the lock sprang open, or if she could work on the bars while keeping her fingers away from those jagged teeth.

  When the rope finally fell off her wrists, Manny grabbed it and ran straight at the cage. She slid to her knees in front of it, inches away from the dog’s rolling eyes and snapping jaws. He barked furiously, lunging so hard at her against the bars that the entire cage rocked.

  Manny fumbled with the rope. She had acted so quickly, she didn’t have time to notice that her arms and fingers were numb from being tied behind her for so long. Clumsily, she threaded the short length of rope through the bars. The dog snapped at her fingers, but she pulled them back in time. The rope dropped and she started again.