Read The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein for Free Online

truth when they have to admit to someone close to them that they've been lying. Where are you with her?"

    "Mother works for one of those overnight mail services. TenP.M . to four in the morning, five nights a week. Ex-husband lives in Florida. Angel and her two kid brothers are home alone. Perp is a livery cabdriver who drove Angel to her house from the hospital about a month ago, after she visited her grandmother, who had some serious surgery.

    "Kid says he showed up at the door the other night, forced her up the stairs into her bedroom at knife point, and raped her."

    "Brothers hear anything?"

    "Sleeping in the room right up against her wall. Not a peep."

    "Outcry?" "Immediate. That's on her side. Called 911 a little after midnight, a few minutes after she says he left."

    "Medical exam?"

    "Inconclusive. She says he didn't ejaculate, so there's no semen. No way to do DNA. And she's sexually active. Three partners."

    "Some little angel."

    "Yeah, she's already got chlamydia. Mother doesn't know about that either."

    "Tell me about the perp."

    "He's a real dirtbag. Forty-eight years old, has a bunch of collars for drug possession, boosting cars, doing break-ins. Nothing like this. Nothing violent. Floor of his car full of kiddie-porn magazines and condom wrappers. No knife."

    "He got a story?"

    "Yeah. Starts the same way. Picked her up outside of Metropolitan Hospital. By the time they hit 110th Street, she was sitting in the front seat, writing down her beeper number so he could page her at school the next day. Met her a couple of times after class. Drove her around with her friends. Oral sex once or twice in the backseat. Even did a threesome with Angel and one of the other cherubs in her pack. Says she invited him to come over this past Monday night when her mother left for work."

    "You tell her what he said?"

    "Yeah. She denies it. Says the only way he knew where she lived was because he had driven her home from the hospital that one time. Gave her his card with his cell phone, in case she needed to use him again. That's how we got him. I called and asked him to pick me up in front of the deli next door to our office, and then invited him to step inside to help my clearance rate for the month. Collars for dollars."

    "She understands we're going to get her beeper information and his cell phone records?"

    "I don't think it had the same impact on her as it does when you tell an adult. She didn't seem to grasp that all of this is computerized now. I explained to her that every time he beeped her or she called him, it's just like leaving a fingerprint. Not sure she believes me."

    "Or wants to. Let's give her a go." I turned the door handle and went into my office, where Angel had been waiting for us.

    She smiled at Vandomir as we entered, and closed the small mirrored case in which she had been examining herself, rubbing one last application of a fruity-smelling gloss over her lips. She tugged at the straps of her bright yellow tank top, pulling it into place so the rhinestone letters that formed the wordGangsta stretched from nipple to nipple. "Angel, this is Ms. Cooper, the lawyer I told you about. She's going to be handling your case. She's got some more questions for you."

    "You understand why you're here today, Angel?"

    "Not really. I told him everything that happened." She jerked her head in Vandomir's direction. "I don't know why I have to explain it over again. You just oughtta keep Felix locked up so he don't do this to nobody else."

    "In order for that to happen, we have to find out exactly what he did. I'm going to ask you the same things the detective did, maybe even more questions. And what you say stays in this room, do you understand that? If there's something that went on between you and Felix that you don't want your mother to know about, thenthis is the time and place to let me know about it."

    She lifted her eyes to look at me, without moving her head.

    "What do you mean?"

    "Do you have