Precious Blood

by Jonathan Hayes

  It wasn’t easy, but Jenner was surprised by how much he remembered; it had all happened in two, three minutes at most, from the moment he saw the movement in the garbage bags to when he passed out. He was quite lucid up until the killer put Ana in the van; after that, his recollection was vague.

  By the time he was done answering Mullins’s questions, he was exhausted. He lay there while Mullins finished his notes.

  There was talking in the hall. Jenner saw what looked like a ward round—probably a surgical fellow and a couple of the trauma surgery residents.

  Mullins stood and said, “I’m sorry about all this, Doc.

  Really I am.” He paused. “I’m glad you made it through.”

  He stood there.

  Jenner said, “Pat, is there something else?”

  The detective glanced into the hall.

  “Actually, Doc, there sorta is.”

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  He moved closer to Jenner, and sat down again in the chair by the bed.

  “This is hard for me to say, and I’m guessing it’ll be harder for you to hear. I respect you, Doc, you know I do. And I know you were trying to help. But you can’t be involved in this case anymore.”

  Jenner struggled to pull himself up, wincing as he sat straighter.

  “Pat, I’ve been with this case since the beginning. They’ll be letting me out soon. There must be some way you can use me? I don’t want to help, I need to help.”

  Mullins sighed. “Doc, I’ll level with you. There’s a lot of

  . . . emotion in the department right now. You know how it is after a cop gets killed. And I think what’s happening is, because we don’t have a suspect, and we don’t have clues, a lot of people are blaming you.”

  Jenner lay his head back on the pillow and looked at the ceiling.

  “Now, I know you were only trying to help. But people are saying that if you hadn’t been mixed up in this, if you hadn’t

  . . . hooked up with that girl . . . none of this would have happened. Everyone says that girl should have left town. But she stayed with you.

  “And at the end of the day, a good man is dead, Garcia’s in the ICU breathing through a tube down his throat. And he got the girl.”

  He stood up, picking up his coat and folding it over his arm. “What I’m saying is this: stay away from the case. If you have a good idea, call me or Ruben Santiago. But if you physically get involved, if you show up at a scene, or start questioning witnesses, or stuff like that, the way some of these guys are talking . . .”

  He put on his small porkpie hat, then turned and said, “Seriously, Doc. For your own good.”

  *

  *

  *

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  “Ah . . . Mr. . . . no, Dr. Jenner! I’m Dr. Kahn. How are you feeling?”

  Jenner had been wrong—not just the fellow, but the attending surgeon himself was leading the ward round.

  “A little sore. What do I have?”

  “You’re a medical doctor, right?”

  Jenner nodded.

  “Okay, good. Your ribs on your left side took quite a pounding. Full-thickness fractures with moderate displacement of the ninth and tenth ribs in the anterior axillary line, hairline fractures of eight and maybe even seven. You had a tension pneumothorax; they did a needle thoracostomy in the ambulance—saved your life, probably—and then we put in a chest tube because it didn’t look like you were reexpanding properly.

  “We were a bit worried about your spleen, so we did a minilap—I extended the incision over a bit and got a really good look. Your left chest and abdo wall are just one big he-matoma, with kind of amazing bruising of your peritoneum, but I think we’re okay. We’re going to keep an eye on you for a day or two—you know how easy it can be to miss an intraparenchymal splenic lac. And we don’t want you bleeding out into your abdomen the minute we boot you out of here, eh?”

  He was cheery, dark, with a ruff of jet black hair poking out of his shirt collar.

  “We’ll see how you are tomorrow evening, and if your spleen looks okay on the CT Friday morning, out you go.

  That chest tube can probably come out tonight after a follow-up X-ray. Good enough?”

  Jenner nodded. “Thanks.”

  The surgeon wagged a finger at him.

  “Now, when we kick you out, you take it easy. We don’t want you doing yoga, or going to the gym, or any other physical exertion. Two weeks of rest, in bed or sitting, until we know you’re out of the woods, eh? I’ve been caught by 298

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  surprise by a delayed splenic rupture two weeks after the injury—don’t let that be you, okay, deal?”

  Jenner nodded again. “Thanks, Dr. Kahn.”

  Kahn turned to the second-year resident and said, “Where’s the guy with the liver? How’s his ’crit doing?” and they left.

  A nurse’s aide plugged in Jenner’s phone and searched the bag holding his things for his address book.

  He was about to give up after the sixth ring, when Sheehan answered. “Ancient Languages, Father Patrick Sheehan speaking.”

  “Edward Jenner, Father.”

  There was a brief silence, then the priest said warmly,

  “Oh, Dr. Jenner! It’s good to hear your voice! I’ve been so saddened by everything that’s happened. Truly awful. Detective Roggetti was a man of . . . tremendous character. A colorful figure indeed, with a good heart. And Detective Garcia? How is he doing?”

  “They say he should be okay.”

  “That’s just grand. Grand.”

  They were quiet for a second, and Jenner felt the yawning distance between his room in Bellevue and Sheehan’s in Yardley, two hundred miles of wet highway and snow-covered pasture between him and the book-filled study on the beautiful, wintry quadrangle.

  “And yourself, Edward? How are you feeling?”

  “Ah, a bit . . . beaten, really, Father. I’ll be okay.”

  “Of course you will!”

  “Father, there’s something I need to know.”

  “Yes?”

  “I need to know the first possible date where it’s the saint’s day for Anne, or Ana, or Anna, or anything like that.”

  The priest was silent for a moment. “I was hoping that you’d be able to put this aside for a while. Why not let the Precious Blood

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  police look after things until you get better?”

  “Please, Father. Is there anything you can see that sticks out?”

  The priest sighed. “I looked last night, actually. There is.

  The feast day of Saint Anastasia.”

  “And when is that?”

  “In our calendar, Anastasia’s feast day falls on the twenty-fifth of this month. On Christmas Day, Jenner.”

  The man brought things for her, things she needed to stay locked in the little room. A blanket, a candle and matches, water and bread, an empty pail, some newspaper. When the door opened, she was barely able to see into the gloom of the room beyond, his silhouette a harder shadow against softer ones.

  He said, his voice calm and matter-of-fact as a secretary running through her to-do list, “I’m going to handcuff you.

  Don’t be a stupid little bitch. If you try to kick me, I’ll break an arm. If you try to bite, scratch, or hit, I’ll break both your arms. If anything you try draws blood, I will cut off your right hand with an ax.

  “Understand that I find you intriguing, but you have little actual value to me. You are little more than an afterthought.

  If at any point I suspect that you’re planning something—to escape, to send some kind of message, to injure me, anything—I will kill you immediately. Got it?”

  Fighting the desire to scream, she whispered, “Yes.”

  He moved quickly about her—he obviously knew the room well, and was used to working in the low light. When he moved near, she could smell him, a curtain of mold drawn over a wall of fet
id sweat.

  She made herself not flinch, holding still while he put on the handcuffs and let her slowly down onto the ground.

  He said, “I’m going to cuff your ankle first, then your wrists.

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  So you can put your hands in front for me to recuff them.”

  She nodded.

  “I can’t hear a nod.”

  “Yes. Sir.”

  “Good.”

  She drew a sharp breath at the cold metal against her ankle, then he clipped the handcuff on, squeezing it tight until it was crushing her skin.

  “Please, this hurts a lot.”

  “It’ll stop you from running. As soon as I’ve done your hands, it can come off.”

  “Please, hurry. Sir.”

  He was fast. And very strong—he rolled her over as if he were flicking a pencil across a desktop. He gripped her numb hands, and she felt the cuffs encircle her wrists. Then he popped the cuff off her ankle. The blood flooded back into her foot; she wept from the rush of pain.

  “Your hands are cold; you may have frostbite. I want to see them in the light.”

  He held her wrist loosely.

  “I’m going to light a candle. Close your eyes. If you open them, I’ll stick my thumbnails through your eyeballs.”

  She closed her eyes tightly. She remembered the photos of the girl from Pennsylvania, and knew he would do everything he said he’d do.

  There was the crisp snap and sharp, sulfurous smell of a match strike, and behind her eyelids the world glowed golden brown.

  She felt her hands being moved as if from a thousand miles away.

  “They’re a bit blue, but it’s not frostbite yet. When I leave, you should rub your fingers if you want to keep them.”

  She began to sweat, her heart pounding in her chest, thud-ding freakishly heavily against her breastbone.

  “There’s food, water, and a candle. If you need to go to the bathroom, there’s a bucket, and newspaper for wiping. It’ll Precious Blood

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  be a little tricky at first, but you’ll get the hang of it.

  “You may open your eyes when you hear the door bolted.”

  He was gone.

  In the candlelight, she saw that she’d visualized the room fairly accurately, except it was smaller than she’d imagined.

  The recognition flared in her as a small ray of hope.

  The brick was dirty, slippery with damp and mold, and years of leaks had left puddles all over the floor; in some areas the floorboards were clearly rotten.

  She rolled to her right. There was the door. There was very little light beyond it; he seemed to live in the dark. Or maybe there was no electricity: that would explain the candles.

  What was the time? She felt her right wrist; she was still wearing her watch. She should save the candle. She puffed and blew it out.

  She moved the matchbook nearer, pushing it against the cup that held the candle. Then she lifted her cuffed wrists to her face and pressed the illumination button on her watch; the dim orange glow was a warm sphere of light in the cold shadows.

  Eight p.m.

  The room went dark again.

  In the pitch-black, the cold rushed at her. Her sweat dried quickly, and now she felt her skin prickling, the hairs rising up along her arms.

  She rolled onto her back and lay still, looking up into the dark. As she lay there, she felt pressure against her butt. She tilted her hips, felt it again. There was something in her left back pocket.

  She rocked back and forth, feeling its shape.

  It was the French knife Jenner had given her, with the small blade and corkscrew. She’d become so used to carrying it that she’d forgotten it was even in her pocket.

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  with her hands, but she couldn’t twist far enough, even when she turned her jeans to the right in front to bring the pocket closer. She tucked her knees to her chest, lay on her right side, and wiggled, trying to shake it loose. It was deep in the pocket and wouldn’t come out.

  She felt around with her hands. The floorboards in this area were soft and uneven, with a hole a little less than a foot long; if she could slide the side of her hip against the lip of the hole, she might be able to get some leverage on the knife, force it up and out of the mouth of the pocket.

  It was worth a try.

  She wriggled into position, lying on her left over the hole.

  Pressing her hip into the hole, she dragged herself into a ball position, scraping the pants against the rim as she bent. She could feel the knife, immobile under the fabric, slipping past the rim.

  She tried again, and this time felt it budge.

  Again, and the knife began to loosen in her pocket.

  And again and again, the knife now clearly moving.

  She kept wriggling, heart beating faster, panting from the effort. One more push ought to do it.

  She pressed down firmly, then curled up and, as she did so, felt the knife slip smoothly upward in the pocket. She felt it reach the pocket opening, but instead of sliding out onto the floor, the knife tipped backward and fell through the hole, into the bottomless darkness beneath.

  She rolled onto her back, breathless and in tears. The muscles of her back were locking down, going into agonizing spasm.

  The door flew open, and the man came in quickly.

  “What are you up to?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  In the dark, he walked toward her and kicked her, a glancing blow to her hip.

  “I said, What are you up to?”

  Tears welling, she said, “Nothing, sir.”

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  “Shut your eyes, I’m turning on a flashlight. Same rules—

  you peek, my thumbnails will be the last things you ever see.”

  She closed her eyes, and felt the flashlight beam playing on her face. She was flat on her back, the hole between her shoulder blades.

  She felt his hands on her pants, and tensed. He patted down the front pockets, then turned them out, first the right, then the left. Then pulled her hip up and patted the empty rear pockets. His hand then swept down her back on each side, pausing to rub the catch on her bra strap. There was nothing to find.

  He rolled her back down.

  “I’m watching you all the time. If you do anything, I’ll know it. If you give me a reason to kill you, I’ll do it.”

  He left her lying there, crying, as he slid the bolt into place.

  thursday,

  december 19

  The chest X-ray was fine, his lung fully expanded.

  They removed the chest tube, sutured the tube site closed, and put on a fresh dressing.

  In the early afternoon, a police artist came to his room, and they worked up a composite sketch. There was no point in Jenner looking at the mug books—if his fingerprints weren’t on file, there would be no mug shots.

  Later, they let him take a wheelchair to his repeat CT

  scan. He lay there, breathing and not breathing as instructed, for about twenty minutes. On the way back, the nurse’s aide who’d accompanied him asked if she could stop at the bank in the lobby; he told her he was fine, and that he’d make his own way to the ward.

  As soon as she was out of sight, he wheeled to the express elevator and rode up to the tenth floor. The SICU was an array of individual bays surrounding a central monitoring station, each bed easily curtained off from its neighbors.

  The patients all seemed inert, unresponsive, as nurses and therapists revolved busily around them, their worlds limited by the blue draperies, computer monitors, and equipment stands.

  It was only because of the cluster of uniformed cops gathered around his bay that Jenner was able to recognize Garcia. His face was grotesquely bloated and pale, his lips swollen, his puffy eyelids taped shut. Fine tubes ran from the mesh of sutured wounds and
surgical incisions on the side of his neck out into pear-shaped drain reservoirs half filled with bloody fluid. A pale corrugated hose led from the center of Rad’s neck to a bedside ventilator, his chest rising and falling to the machine’s rhythm.

  When he wheeled closer to the bed, one of the cops, a younger white man with brush-cut hair, his badge number hidden under a black mourning band, stood in his way.

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  Jenner said, “He’s my friend.”

  The cop nodded. “We know who you are.”

  Behind him, Jenner recognized Jimmy Haley, who he’d worked with after 9/11, before he made sergeant.

  “Jimmy, please.”

  Haley looked down at Jenner, shaking his head. “God, Doc. You look like shit.”

  The other uniformed officers looked at Haley. He thought for a second, then said, “Fuck it,” and told them to stand down.

  With the cops looking on, Jenner wheeled his chair to the bedside, stopping next to the ventilator. He sat there watching his friend sleep.

  It was quiet for a while, but eventually the cops started talking again. Cars, mostly, and what the PBA was going to do about the overtime situation. Later, an anesthesiologist in blue and green scrubs stopped by to check the vent settings.

  He looked down at Jenner with interest.

  “Were you the other one?”

  The other one?”

  “The other Inquisitor victim.”

  Jenner lowered his head.

  “How are you doing?”

  “Okay. How’s Detective Garcia doing?”

  “Much better than he looks. Not out of the woods yet, but he should be fine. You guys came to the right place—you get shot or stabbed in New York, Bellevue’s the place to go. The vascular surgeons did a great job on his neck—we’ll get rid of the trach soon.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jenner sat slumped by the bed for a while, watching Rad’s chest rise and fall to the ventilator’s cough and hiss, watching the green trace of his heartbeat march across the monitor, trying to persuade himself it wasn’t his fault as he twisted and burned inside.

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  Behind him, there was the noise of creaking chairs as the cops stood, then quiet murmuring.

  “Dr. Jenner.”

  He turned to see Dulcie Garcia, Rad’s wife, standing with Izzy, her eldest son; he hadn’t seen her since the party when she joined the DA’s squad. In the blue-white glare of the X-ray box, her face was gray and unreadable. He’d never seen her in glasses before; her eyes, distant behind thick lenses, were puffy and red.