Precious Blood

by Jonathan Hayes

  “You’re sure now?”

  She leaned back. “Just about as sure as I can be. That’s the man I saw.”

  Rad made a note on the photo and had Ana sign and date it. “Thanks. The DA will need to speak with you once we find him.”

  She nodded.

  “And we’ll find him soon. Every cop on the eastern sea-board is on the lookout for this son of a bitch. Don’t you worry, we’ll get him.”

  He stood. “C’mon, Joe, we gotta go.”

  “Okay. Seeya, Ana. Seeya, Jenner.”

  Ana started tidying again as soon as they were out the door. Jenner gently grabbed her wrist.

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  “Let’s talk.”

  “Let me finish cleaning first.”

  “Cleaning can wait. Sit down and talk with me.”

  She stood. “No.”

  He looked up at her. “I’m worried about you. I thought you were doing really well, but I’m not so sure.”

  “Deal with it. I’m dealing with the things I have to deal with. This is how I deal.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “Why not, Jenner? Because I’m not crying and holding on to you and making you the hero? I’m okay. You want to talk because you want to be the hero. And I don’t want to talk because I don’t need a hero—I hate you feeding off me like that.”

  She spoke so quickly and vehemently that he was stunned.

  “Have you been waiting a long time to say that?”

  Her lip quivered, and her eyes shone wetly. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve done for me—I do, I appreciate it so much! And I’m so grateful for the way you’ve thrown yourself into this and worked to catch this . . . man.”

  She half-folded the dishtowel in her hand, then tossed it onto the coffee table, saying, “I just need to work through it myself. I need time without everyone asking me if I’m all right, if I feel okay, if there’s anything they can do for me. I just need a break from being the victim all the time.”

  “Okay. I can understand that. But I just want you to know that if you need help . . .”

  Her mouth set as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She picked up the dishtowel.

  “Message received, hero.”

  She took the tray and left the room.

  sunday,

  december 15

  He woke early and alone; Ana had slept on the daybed.

  He was stiff, every joint locked, every muscle knotted tight. Worse, in the bathroom cabinet, he couldn’t find the Vicodin tablets he thought he had left over from his back injury. He made do with a couple of Tylenol and a long soak in a hot bath.

  When he got out of the tub, he changed into his sweats and did some stretching excercises. Then he peered out into the loft. She was still asleep, clutching a pillow under her head, another wedged between her thighs.

  He wanted to talk to her, but after the night before, he didn’t think she’d want to talk like that. And some of what she had said was right.

  The TV was still on, still on CNN Headline News. David Green’s face filled the screen, and then the image cut away to a shot of NYPD patrol cars on a dark tree-lined street, their turret lights casting red shadows across the big lawns and old oaks. He turned the volume up a little.

  “. . . in the early hours of this morning. The doctor, primary suspect in New York’s Inquisitor murders, was arrested after an anonymous tip led police to the New York suburb of Cos Cob, where he was found hiding in the hot tub enclosure at a house belonging to his ex-wife.”

  They cut to a bedraggled Green being led away by two Emergency Service Unit cops, his hands cuffed behind his back; as the camera tracked him into the cop car, it looked like he was crying. News helicopters followed Green as he was transported back into the city, the flashing lights of the four-car motorcade glimmering rubies in the predawn gray.

  Jenner looked at his watch. A little after 11:00 a.m.; Green would have been processed by now. He changed the channel; the local stations were broadcasting live from in front of the 258

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  DA’s office. He called Rad’s cell, but got dumped into voice mail. The same with Roggetti. Maybe they were interviewing Green.

  He called Manhattan South Homicide. When someone finally answered, he could hear they were watching the same station as him. He was told to hold for Garcia, then the receiver was put down on a desktop with a loud clatter.

  The task force office sounded like a gospel service, call-and-response shouting at the TV and occasional applause.

  Roggetti picked up, ebullient. “Jenner! Top of the morning to you, my Irish friend!”

  “I’m not Irish. Celebrating, Joey?”

  “Yes, Doc, indeed we are. You heard we got Green, right?”

  “Yes. I’m watching the news now. I still don’t think he’s the guy.”

  “New witness.”

  “What?”

  “We got a new witness. A lawyer who lives on the uptown side of Tompkins Square Park puts him running across the park that night.”

  “He sure?”

  “She. It’s a female. And she’s sure it’s him.”

  “Huh.”

  “Wait—I’m handing you over to Rad. Take care, Doc!”

  “You too, Joey.”

  Rad came on the line. “Hey, Jenner. So what do you make of this?”

  “Is this new witness credible?”

  “Far as I can tell. Corporate lawyer, dresses well, talks well. Coming home from her office, sees the guy running through the park. Runs right past her. Timing makes sense, too.”

  “I guess I was wrong.” He paused. “What’s Green saying?”

  “He’s not talking. He’s waiting for his lawyer.”

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  “Yeah, figures.”

  Another whoop went up in the background.

  “Okay, Rad, well, congratulations, I guess. Let me know if anything new happens.”

  “You got it. Nice work, Jenner. We did good.”

  She was still asleep. He switched the TV off, then put a note that read “watch the news!” against the coffee jar. He dressed slowly, hoping she’d wake; when she didn’t, he went across the hall, where Jun and Kimi were about to go out for dim sum. He walked with them, quiet as they chatted.

  The thing had ended, they’d crossed the finish line, but there was no feeling of victory. It wasn’t so much that he’d been wrong about Green—he’d been wrong before. But now everything was coming to a close, and things between him and Ana were completely fucked up.

  They went to Jing Fong in Chinatown. It didn’t look like much from the street, but a long escalator ride landed them in a vast dining hall, like some of the mega-restaurants Jenner had seen in Hong Kong. After lunch, they walked in Chinatown for a while. Then Jenner excused himself, leaving Jun and Kimi to watch old Chinese women doing tai chi in the park behind the city jail. He walked up to Houston Street, and ended up at the Landmark cinema, where he watched a slight French movie.

  When he got home, she was waiting for him at the door.

  She kissed him, murmuring, “I’m sorry,” into his ear as she held him hard. Her skin was hot against his.

  She pulled away and took his wrist.

  “I got you something!”

  She made him sit at the table, then put a box with white tissue wrapping paper and a red bow in front of him.

  “Open it!”

  It was a cell phone. He smiled.

  She sat on his lap and put an arm around his neck, and 260

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  launched into an animated description of everything she’d done after she’d seen the news. Shopping, mostly. Phone calls. Lunch with friends at Dojo on St. Marks. Bought him a phone at Mondo Kim’s.

  The buzzer rang.

  “That’ll be our dinner.”

  “What did you order?”

  “Chinese.”

  “
I had Chinese for lunch!”

  “Shaddup! The Chinese have it breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day!”

  He handed her his wallet and headed for the bathroom.

  She’d put his pajamas out on the granite counter. He took a quick shower and dried off, then dressed again.

  She’d set two places at the table, and had put all of the food into serving bowls. There were lit candles, and next to a white bowl of persimmons in the center of the table, his new phone was charging in its dock.

  There was no sign of her.

  He called her name. No answer.

  He went to the TV room, knocked on the door, then pushed it open. The room was empty.

  He called down to Douggie’s apartment, and hung up when he got the machine.

  He checked the toilet, and the walk-in closet.

  Heart pounding, he left his apartment and rapped on Jun’s door. No answer.

  He went in.

  She was sprawled on Jun’s big white couch, eyes closed.

  He stepped quickly to her, and she sat up dopily.

  “What is it?”

  “Sorry. I got worried because I lost you.”

  “I just came over to Jun’s to get a bottle of champagne. I must have fallen asleep.”

  “Apparently. Do you still feel like eating?”

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  She sighed and said slowly, “Yes. I’m a bit washed out, but I want to have dinner with you. Let’s go.”

  But she didn’t eat, just poked at the food with her chop-sticks. She was subdued and taciturn; Jenner hadn’t understood until now just how emotionally exhausted she was.

  After dinner, she wanted to watch a movie, but after choosing Battle Royale, a violent Japanese action movie, she stretched out next to him and promptly fell asleep. She slept for the length of the film, through the gunfire and the explosions, and when it finished, he didn’t have the heart to wake her.

  He draped the blanket over her and went to bed alone.

  monday,

  december 16

  He’d been asleep for only a few minutes when she woke him, standing naked by the bed, holding a candle. He smiled up at her and lifted the covers.

  “Hey. Come in, you’ll get cold.”

  “First, look.” She gestured toward her stomach. “I’m all healed now.”

  The wounds on her stomach were now clean red scars, like a triplet note on a piece of sheet music.

  “You know, they’re actually kind of cute. They’ll be pale in a few months. Now get in.”

  She had one knee on the bed when she dropped the candle, spattering hot wax onto the blanket. She clumsily put out the flame with her hands before the blanket burned.

  “Oops.”

  Jenner sat up. Gouts of dark wax were crusting on the blanket surface.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. “Just cold. Let me in.”

  She slid in next to him, curled up against him, and fell fast asleep almost instantly.

  He stroked her shoulder, then slipped his hand down her flank, let his fingers stroke across her stomach. And then stopped.

  He reached to the bedside table and turned the light on, lifting up the sheets to look at her. Drying wax was spattered across her belly and thighs, her skin under the rinds of set wax angry and red.

  She had burned herself, and hadn’t even noticed.

  “Wake up.”

  He forced her up into a sitting position, half asleep, her slack body sliding back to the mattress.

  “Ana! Wake the fuck up.”

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  He shook her. Her eyes flickered slowly.

  “What? I’m up, Jenner.”

  He turned on the light.

  “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  She kept her eyes shut, so he held her head steady and opened her lids with his thumbs; under the lids, her eyes were moving, the pupils tiny little dots in the blue of her irises.

  He let her back down, slowly.

  “Oh, Jesus, Ana. You’re doing heroin, aren’t you?”

  Her head was on the pillow again, her eyes closed.

  “No, Jenner, I’m not. Swear to God . . .”

  “You can’t even keep your fucking eyes open.”

  She was half asleep again.

  He threw the blanket back, pulled her arm toward the light, looking for injection marks. She resisted feebly. Both arms were clean. He moved her lips as if he were handling a rag doll, examining the rest of her body—her inner thighs, the backs of her knees, her feet. He breathed out again. No needle marks.

  He went into the bathroom, grabbed the little steel trash pail, and tipped it into the sink. An old toothbrush, pieces of dental floss, a toothpaste box from Fresh. Then he found it: tucked into the toothpaste box was a translucent paper envelope the size of a postage stamp. A smudged blue ink imprint on the front read “Steppin’ Razor.”

  He emptied the medicine cabinet, placing the contents neatly onto the countertop. The Vicodin was gone, as was his Ambien.

  He went to the kitchen, opened the wine cupboard, and didn’t need to count—it was clearly depleted.

  It was barely past midnight; Jun would still be up.

  He knocked on the door. Jun answered in a ratty T-shirt and sweats.

  “What’s up, Jenner?”

  “Ana has a problem.”

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  Jun opened the door wider and gestured to the couch.

  “What do you mean?”

  They sat, and Jenner said, “I think she’s been doing heroin.”

  Jun nodded slowly. “Probably.”

  “You knew?”

  “Well, not heroin. But I know she’s been drinking a lot, and I think there’s stuff missing from my medicine cabinet.

  Anything to get numb, I figured.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I mean, I wasn’t even sure about the medicine cabinet, but it all makes sense.” Jun leaned back.

  “Where do you think she got it?”

  “I don’t know. She was in the East Village yesterday . . .”

  It wasn’t like the 1980s, when there was a dealer on every corner, but over on Avenue D, if you knew where to go, people still sold heroin hand to hand.

  He thought back over the last two weeks. Everything was coming together. When did it begin? Wine, first. Vicodin and Ambien, all laid out right in front of her. She’d had plenty of time alone, when he was out running around like a boy scout. But the heroin?

  Then he knew: Thursday night, the club. That was why she suddenly wanted to go out. And that guy Perry in the club—when she’d reached under the table, it wasn’t to touch him, it was to cop.

  He shook his head. “I should have talked with her, made her see a shrink or something.”

  “Her choice, Jenner.” He stood up. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Later, he sat at the foot of the bed and watched her sleep.

  Everything was finished, all the work was done. The cops were putting the last touches on the paperwork and turning back to more routine crimes, the girls were dead and buried, 268

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  the families getting on with their grieving. Everyone had a role to play, and knew how to play it. Except him.

  What was he supposed to do about Ana?

  The man closed the Post and looked at the front page again.

  Inquisitor Interrogated. An unflattering close-up of his old client, the usually dapper Dr. Green in filthy khakis and a stained sweatshirt, looking like some bum scraped off a heating grate. Green wouldn’t like that—he was always such a little fashion prince.

  He was surprised that he felt no jealousy, no anger at the misplaced credit. His calm was an epiphany, of sorts: it meant that he was actively evolving, operating above the level of ego in a kind of rarefied space only accessed by those who had o
btained pure and esoteric knowledges.

  Credit was unimportant. All that mattered was that he was doing the work, transfiguring the Saints, creating the beautiful shrines. That his work was immediately torn apart by the police was irrelevant: the important thing was that they had existed, that he had created moments of transcendence, of radiance, of perfect grace. Ecstatic moments where flawed women had been reborn in sainthood, wherein he himself had been cleansed and purified.

  They’d realize soon enough that Green was as capable of doing this work as a puppy was of sinking a battleship. Particularly when they saw his next project.

  He powered up his laptop and modem, dialed in on the stolen phone signal with a free starter AOL account, then reached his destination. He’d created a camouflaged virtual server on the Hutchins Museum of Military History server, tucked away behind the firewall he’d designed for the college. Today his signal seemed stable. An FMedbase administrator screen came up. He tabbed down to his gateway into Green’s clinic, and hit the Access button.

  Nothing happened.

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  He hit it again.

  Again, nothing.

  He ran the diagnostics program. Error message: “No Such Server.”

  Ah, of course. The police would have impounded the office computer, and were busy sieving it for kiddie porn, or whatever Green’s particular thrill might be. The New Hope Clinic had automatic remote backups to a data storage facility somewhere in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, but he didn’t have a chance in hell of hacking his way through their security.

  He had an instant of unfamiliar panic. What would he do? Those were the women he’d chosen, whores whose threadbare integrity allowed them to sell off the fruits of their womb, to scrape sacred life out of their harlot bellies in return for blood money. They barely deserved the redemption he offered, the rebirth through suffering in the radiant image of pious, glorious martyrs.

  He went to his washbasin. In the mirror fragment, his temples were atrophied now, his face gaunt. He picked up the shard, angling it down at his torso; the muscles now seemed bound to a brittle armature of eroded bone, the muscles thickening as the scaffolding on which they hung wasted.

  But it was an illusion caused by his weight loss. Inside his skin, he could feel his strength surging. The muscle and sinew were rock hard, the bone underneath strong as marble.

  So. One more. One more shrine. He was to do one more.