Skeleton Justice by Michael Baden, Linda Kenney Baden Page A

gently. Then he shuddered and yelped when Manny found the swollen wound hidden in his curls. He’d been bitten by that damn terrier! The nip he’d given Kimo had been in self-defense.
    “Oh, Mikey, I’ve got to get you to the vet. You’re wounded. And unjustly accused, too.”
    Jake peered at slides through a microscope set up on a small side table in his office. While he’d been obsessed with the Vampire, a multitude of work on other cases had piled up. Stacks of case folders and unproofed autopsy reports teetered on his desk. The medical degrees and awards hanging on his walls seemed to mock him as he worked.
    As much as he tried to focus on wrapping up the details of these other cases, thoughts of the Vampire continued to derail his concentration.
    A light tap at the door made him look up. Vito Pasquarelli stood on the threshold of his office, looking as gaunt and nervous as Jake had ever seen him.
    “What’s the matter?”
    Vito stepped into the office, shut the door, and leaned on it. “I had my meeting with the FBI this morning.” His eyes were half-closed as he spoke. “They want to take over the case.”
    “That’s good news, isn’t it?” Jake came out from behind his desk and waved Pasquarelli into a chair beside him. “This Vampire thing has put you in the hot seat. Let them have it.”
    Pasquarelli shook his head. “The mayor’s fighting it. Ever since the FBI fouled up that near-miss subway bombing in Brooklyn and let the conspirators slip away, the mayor never misses a chance to hang the feds out to dry. He says no one does a better job of protecting New Yorkers than the NYPD.”
    Jake grinned. “His confidence in you is touching.”
    “Yeah, yeah, tell me about it. He’s just grandstanding for reelection, and jabbing our congressmen for not getting New York more federal antiterrorism money. That all looks great on the news, but I’m the one who’s gotta figure out how to solve this Vampire thing, and I don’t see how I’m going to do it if the FBI gets its knickers in a twist and refuses to help me.”
    “Why do they want the case? What do they know that you don’t?”
    “They know whose fingerprint was on that coffee mug, but they don’t know how it got there. And neither do I.”
    “It didn’t get there when the person was drinking from the mug?”
    Vito leaned back and stared at the warped and grimy ceiling of Jake’s office. “Well, maybe. But he sure as hell wasn’t having a drink with Ms. Hogaarth.”
    “Why not? Whose print is it?”
    The detective gave up on trying to divine the future by reading the stains in the acoustic tile and met Jake’s eye. He spoke the words as distinctly as if he were calling the person forward to accept an award.
    “The former president of the United States—Richard Milhous Nixon.”

Manny stood on the front stoop of the five-story walk-up on West Ninety-seventh Street and pressed the button next to the faded nameplate reading HEATON . When nothing happened in response, she pressed again.
    She’d managed to squeeze in a visit to Mycroft’s new vet on the way to Travis’s apartment, but the detour made her fifteen minutes late for her client. Dr. Costello had been so accommodating, examining Mycroft right away, bandaging him up, and even placing a call to Little Paws to argue, successfully, for Mycroft’s readmission. Efficient, kind, and handsome, too. But Dr. Frederic Costello was married, to his receptionist, and she had Jake, so enough of that little daydream.
    Manny leaned on the button again and tried shouting into the scratched and dirty speaker. “Mrs. Heaton? It’s me, Manny Manfreda.”
    A window on the second floor opened and a woman in a green-and-orange housecoat leaned out. “Bell don’t work. You gotta call.” The window slammed down.
    Manny sighed and dug out her cell phone. But as she dialed, the buzzer opening the outer door sounded and she was admitted to the building. In the small tiled vestibule, Manny was