Precious Blood

by Jonathan Hayes

  Garcia said, “And the rest, we know.”

  They were all quiet for a while. Garcia had her describe the man—white, mid-thirties, average height, muscular build.

  Shortish hair, she thought. Clean-shaven. American accent, 30

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  nothing special. That was about it; she’d only seen him briefly, through the rain, a silhouette in the dark window. She didn’t recognize him, had no idea how he knew all about her.

  The detective stood, cell phone in hand. “You’re going to have to make a formal statement at the precinct. And we’re going to need you to look at mug shots.”

  She looked to Jenner, pleading. Jenner said, “Rad, do you think—”

  Rad shook his head. “Jenner, this has to be by the book.”

  Jenner steered him to the door.

  “Sure, she has to make a statement, but does it have to be now? This thing about the shield and the police radio . . .

  Can you keep her out of it for now, at least until you know what’s going on? Maybe take her statement here?”

  Garcia gave a slow shrug. “I don’t know what to do. I feel for the kid, but we both know this piece of garbage is probably faking it, tinning his way in with a fake shield. He’s probably some kind of rent-a-cop or something, some scum-bag with a fake badge, a burglary kit, and a Radio Shack walkie-talkie. She’s a witness, she’s seen him, she’s got to help us.”

  He looked back at her, sitting at the table, watching him decide her fate; his face softened.

  He breathed out wearily. “Okay, I’ll tell you what: when I know what’s going on, I’ll get together with Silver and the bosses, and we’ll have a nice sit-down and decide what to do. I’ll get Internal Affairs on board. She can rest up here for now, but make sure she understands that sooner or later she’s coming in.”

  Rad slipped on his coat, walking toward the door. He turned. “And Jenner? She’s your responsibility now. She doesn’t leave this apartment without me knowing about it.

  Okay?”

  Jenner nodded, and let Garcia out.

  And then he was alone in his apartment with Ana.

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  *

  *

  *

  They looked at each other for a second. He saw the shiver of her thin shoulders in the gray hooded sweatshirt, and then she lifted a hand to her brow in exhaustion, and he saw all the blood again.

  He shook his head. “C’mon. I better have a look at those wounds.”

  She swayed as she stood; he couldn’t tell if it was fatigue or because she was pretty drunk.

  In the light of the bathroom, standing in front of him as he sat on the edge of the tub, she stripped off her sweatshirt and stepped out of her jeans, hiking up her tank top with her good right hand so Jenner could examine her wounds. She looked straight ahead, stiffening as he swabbed her belly with peroxide, clenching her teeth but making no sound.

  The wounds were ragged, but the glass hadn’t gone deep. He cleaned her palm, then did his best to close the injuries with Steri-Strips, wrapping her hand in layers of gauze.

  “Finished,” Jenner said. “I don’t have anything your size, but there’s pajamas in the closet behind you. Just leave your clothes in the tub—later, I can get you something to wear.”

  There was a muffled “Thank you” as he closed the door behind him.

  When she hadn’t come out after fifteen minutes, he tapped on the door and let himself in. She was sitting on the floor in his pajamas, crying. She’d been sick, and Jenner wiped her face with a damp washcloth, and then led her to the bed.

  He sat beside the bed for an hour; she would quiet and then start to cry again as the grief and fear carved through the exhaustion. He finally gave her half an Ativan, and she was asleep before she’d finished her water, slumped against him.

  He let her head down onto the pillow and tugged the sheet up over her chest.

  He went back to the bathroom. He wiped several coat 32

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  hangers down with rubbing alcohol, then carefully hung her clothes to dry. He took three clean paper shopping bags from the kitchen; when the clothing was dry, he’d use them to package it for the crime lab.

  He quickly examined the clothes for hairs or fibers or secretions, but there was so much blood he couldn’t see anything, particularly under the soft glow of his bathroom lighting. The blood on the uppers of her white K-Swiss sneakers looked dry, so he dropped them into a paper bag, crumpled it shut, and put it by the front door.

  Lips drawn tight, Whittaker took the front stairs down into the morgue. The day’s autopsy list had been short, and the techs, having put away the bodies and wiped down the tables, were watching videos in the lounge or smoking in the loading bay. The corridors were deserted save for a couple of empty gurneys, the dull gray metal of one tarnished by broad smears of drying blood.

  He looked down the dingy hallway and sighed. It certainly was a grim place. The pale blue tiling on the walls was dirty and battered, and the linoleum flooring had been patched so many times that it kept catching the brake guards on the gurney wheels, and tearing up even more. The chronic damp had corroded the wiring, and a quarter of the fluorescents along the main corridor were either out or flickering; the only light that worked reliably was the bug zapper.

  Morale was low lately—the chief’s illness, budget cuts, the general debilitation of the institute, all had taken their toll.

  But soon it would be his to put right: the chief would sooner or later have to accept that you just can’t fight pancreatic cancer, that you have to give in, embrace it, and let the world move on.

  The thought soothed him, and he hoisted his shoulders and set off in search of Roundtree, the mortuary director.

  Roundtree could deal with Jenner.

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  *

  *

  *

  Jenner tried Pyke yet again. There were some tinny clicks and a burst of digital static, then the furred buzz of a ring tone. Pyke picked up on the second ring.

  “Jenner?”

  “Yes. I wanted to let you know Ana’s with me.”

  “Thank God. How’s she doing?”

  “Physically, she’s okay. Otherwise, pretty much what you’d expect. I gave her something to help her sleep.”

  “Thanks for looking after her.” Pyke paused, then said,

  “I’m sorry I had to get you involved—I know this is probably the last thing you want. But you’re the only person I know who knows about this stuff.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Jenner, she needs someone with her now, and I’m in Cam-eroon. It’ll take me at least a week to get back to Yaoundé.

  I had to ask.”

  “Douggie, it’s okay,” Jenner said again. Sitting at the table, he finished off Ana’s scotch. “You never mentioned her.”

  “Tell you the truth, I hadn’t thought about her much. Her parents made me her guardian back when we were close.

  When she was about seventeen, I got a call that they’d been killed in a car crash. I went down to Orlando, signed some papers, but since then, pretty much the only contact I’ve had with her has been to okay her expenses. She started college in Florida, then transferred up to New York last year. She’s a sweet kid, but she’s never depended on me.”

  The static burst back in for a second, and when the signal came back, Pyke was saying, “I spoke with Andie Delore’s parents. Her father will be calling you—he’s an attorney in Boston, and he wants an independent expert to keep an eye on the investigation. You’re still doing private forensic work, right?”

  The signal faded out for a second, then swept back in with a roar of distortion.

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  “Jenner?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Tony Delore is going to call the Manhattan DA and set things up with him.”

  “We s
poke this morning, it’s all set.”

  “God, that was fast—when I talked to him, he’d only just found out about his daughter.”

  Jenner said, “He seems the kind of guy who gets what he wants, and fast.”

  The receiver began to buzz; the signal went dead, replaced by a high-pitched electronic chatter. Jenner hung up.

  He checked his watch. Whittaker always hurried his autopsies, dissecting, weighing, and measuring, and closing as quickly as he could; Jenner needed to examine Andie Delore’s body before Whittaker rushed it out.

  He dialed the number almost without thinking.

  “Mortuary.”

  Lester Roundtree, the mortuary director, was, as always, pissed off about being called in to work on a Sunday. He was being his usual passive-aggressive self, sitting in the lime green mortuary office, watching the Giants on a portable TV. He only picked up the phone because the ringing was ruining the color commentary.

  “Hey, Tree. It’s Edward Jenner.”

  “Hey, Doc! How you doing?” He sounded genuinely pleased.

  “Pretty good. You? Dr. Vargas says you’re running all five boroughs.”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s all bullshit, but at least now it’s my bullshit, know what I’m saying?” He let out a rolling guffaw.

  Jenner grinned. “I’m actually calling about business.

  Whittaker has a case today, homicide, white girl, mid-twen-ties, from the East Village. Has he done it yet?”

  “Shit, Doc! Who knows what’s up with that! I thought you were the police calling. The morgue truck went out on the pickup this morning, but Crime Scene sent them away. Cops Precious Blood

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  called back round eleven a.m., but the wagon was stuck way uptown. Figure the body won’t even get here until two p.m.

  Whittaker’s been cursing the DA up and down for making him do the case today. You coming down?”

  “Yes. I’m working for her family.”

  “Yeah, I know. Whittaker came by a while ago, said I was in charge of you. Didn’t look none too happy either.”

  The two laughed, and Tree added, “Just don’t be getting me in trouble, okay?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be a complete professional.” He paused, then added, “Good talking to you.”

  Jenner hung up the phone. He never missed the place, but he sometimes missed the people. Bad pay, terrible hours, even worse conditions, but a great crew. He couldn’t have survived the World Trade Center disaster without them.

  Thinking about 9/11, he felt his mood grow dark again.

  How quickly everything had changed, his old life burning away during the months of recovery and identification work.

  Good-bye contentment, good-bye security.

  The phone rang; he let the machine take it. Tony Delore calling on his cell from somewhere on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, New York–bound. He was glad Jenner was involved; he’d asked around and had heard good things about Jenner. He’d be in New York by 3:00 p.m.; please could Jenner call him at the Waldorf as soon as he’d finished his examination. Delore left the hotel number, then hung up, a businesslike man handling his daughter’s death in a businesslike way.

  Jenner showered quickly, then dressed. He needed someone to watch over Ana, and he was leery of approaching the police. Besides, what did he think they would do? A verbal threat wouldn’t be enough to get them to assign a detail to guard the girl.

  He knocked on Jun’s door; Jun was awake—Jun was always 36

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  awake, writing code, debugging code, watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force on his enormous plasma TV. Jenner outlined the situation, and Jun set a chair in his doorway without a single question: from that position, he could see the elevator and the emergency stairs; if anyone tried to use the freight elevator, he’d hear it. The precaution seemed elaborate, but the killer had made an explicit threat, and Jenner was taking it seriously. And Jenner had no idea how Jun, a Japanese national, had gotten hold of it, but Jun owned a gun.

  He went back to his loft. In his bed, Ana de Jong lay where he’d left her, golden skin against the navy of his pajama top, hair spilling like corn silk onto the mascara-stained pillow.

  He wrote her a note and put it on the bedside table where she was sure to see it. Then he headed out, locking his front door behind him. His retirement was officially over.

  The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City is wedged into the unattractive sprawl of medical buildings on the city’s eastern hip, a blandly ugly stretch of First Avenue running from the Veterans Administration Medical Center at Twenty-third, up past Bellevue’s Victorian brick facades to the glitzy new buildings of the NYU medical complex. The medical examiner’s office on the corner of Thirtieth is classic Failed Mid-Century Modern, completely lacking any architectural grace, a blocky pile clad in Pan Am blue tiling with windows in pitted aluminum frames.

  On most days, the sidewalk in front of the building was a busy mix of white-coated doctors shuttling between the NYU hospitals to the north and Bellevue to the south, black limousines dropping off Upper East Siders for a tummy tuck, homeless men from the shelter on Thirtieth, and frock-coated Orthodox Jews in wide fur hats. But on that gray Sunday afternoon after Thanksgiving, the street had the chilled emptiness of a desert in winter.

  Down the slope in front of him, the East River looked cold Precious Blood

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  and leaden under the dull skies, and across the water, the derelict brick warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront were sunken in thin gray fog. The breeze rattled the flag rope against the pole in front of the office, a gloomy, discordant clinking.

  It was the first time he’d been back. In the days after 9/11, family and friends had crowded the neighborhood, plastering every wall, fence, and tree along the streets near the office with missing flyers, hopeful snapshots of people on vacation, dressed up for parties, in graduation gowns—the people they loved but couldn’t find. Crowds milled in front of the old Bellevue buildings on First Avenue, clutching toothbrushes or combs—any object with a possible trace of DNA from someone they’d lost, anything to know the truth.

  Inside, he waited while his driver’s license was photocopied and administrators were informed of his arrival.

  The lobby hadn’t changed—gray carpet, gray walls, photographs of various New York City street views. It had always bothered Jenner that there were no people visible in any of the photographs.

  The door to the mortuary stairs cracked open, and a young black man in green scrubs asked, “Dr. Jenner? Mr.

  Roundtree asked me to bring you down and get you set up.

  Dr. Whittaker’s still doing the rape kit, so you’ve got a few minutes.”

  Jenner followed the technician down into the basement.

  Bright orange steam pipes kept the stairwell stiflingly hot, but as they entered the mortuary area near the walk-in body coolers, the corridor seemed to be completely without heat.

  He’d never seen the halls so dirty. There was yellow caution tape tacked in an X across the open doorway of the smaller walk-in body cooler, with a piece of paper on which was written doesn’t work! in red marker, along with a smiley face; someone had added tears to the face.

  His escort stopped at the door to the men’s locker room.

  “Door combination’s seven-five-five—Hank Aaron’s home 38

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  run total. There’s scrubs in there. Shoe covers, gowns, caps, and masks are outside the autopsy room. I’ll be in the morgue office if you need me.”

  Jenner changed, then walked down the hall to the autopsy room and stepped into the anteroom.

  Andie Delore’s body would be the only one up; the rest of the day’s cases had already been finished. Jenner looked at the list. Five bodies from Manhattan—a prostitute found naked and strangled, floating in the Harlem Meer in Central Park; the driver and front-seat passenger in an SUV rollover; a heroin addict who’d OD’d in a McDonald’s ba
throom, and an eighty-year-old woman found putrefying in her bathtub.

  A fairly quiet day.

  He put on shoe covers and a flimsy tissue cap, tucked a paper surgical mask into his pocket, and entered the autopsy suite.

  It was a long room, with stained linoleum floors and the same dilapidated blue tile as in the hallways. There were eight autopsy tables, each a bulky steel platform that was little more than a giant sink covered with a heavy metal grid to support the body. Next to each table was a hanging scale and a cutting board for organ dissection. Andie Delore’s body was on the central table, surrounded by a crowd of people.

  They were all there, as if he’d just stepped out of the room for a break a few minutes ago, instead of disappearing for two years. Tommy Bailey, short in stature, shorter in temper, Motorhead tattoos and long, Lemmy-style mustache, slouching against a table waiting for Whittaker to ask to see the girl’s back. Antwon Terry, the morgue photographer, muscular and graceful, speaking softly into his cell phone, trying to talk himself into a gig at a Bed-Stuy social club. There at the head of the table was the day supervisor, Lyddie Diaz, peach lipstick carefully lined with brown pencil, gold Fourteenth Street doorknocker earrings, long peach fake nails, Precious Blood

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  standing blithely with her hands on her hips as if she had no idea that the cops were checking out her world-class ass.

  And in the middle of the room, lit up by the table lamps, Steve Whittaker. Even though Whittaker was bent over, facing away, Jenner spotted him easily: the deputy chief medical examiner was a notoriously heavy sweater. Even on this cool fall day, before the autopsy had begun, before he’d even put on the waterproof plastic gown, surgical mask, and plastic face shield, Whittaker’s scrub top was soaked dark green.

  Detective Roggetti stood near the head of the table, hands in pockets, rocking back and forth on the heels of his loaf-ers; Jenner noticed that his mask was upside down. Seeing Jenner, he perked up. “Hey, Doc!” he said brightly.

  Jenner nodded to him and saw Whittaker stiffen; the deputy chief did not look up. Lyddie Diaz rolled her eyes.