Her son was like a young Rad, the same easy burliness and gentle manner. Crossing himself, he slipped onto the chair next to the bed, leaned forward to grip one of his father’s hands, then began to pray silently, his lips moving quickly as his forehead sunk to his dad’s hand.
It was Jenner who broke the silence. “I’m so sorry, Dulcie.
I just talked with the surgeons, and they say he’s doing great, that everything should be fine. They’re taking out the trach tube tomorrow.”
She nodded, distracted. “They told me.”
“How are you holding up?”
She was quiet for a while, watching her son plead with God for the life of his father. When she finally spoke, it was with sadness and reluctance.
“You know, I’m not one of those cop wives who spends every second of every day worrying about where her man is, and if he’s okay. I know Rad doesn’t take unnecessary risks. I know he’s careful, he won’t make a dangerous move without backup. When he started on the job, he promised me he’d always play by the rules, and I was okay with that; you play by the rules, you don’t get hurt, because your buddies always got your back. And he kept his bargain, and he always played by the rules.”
She was choosing her words carefully.
“But he’s been working with you. He likes you, you know?
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makes him a better cop. And I like you, too, Jenner. I like you because you make my husband feel good, and I like you because you seem like a nice guy. And we were so sorry for you after all you went through.”
He was touched. “You know I feel the same way about him.”
She held up a hand to stop his interruption. “But, the fact is, you’re not a cop. You’re a nice guy, but you’re not a cop.
You don’t think like us, you don’t look like us, you don’t work like us, and in the end, you can’t do what we can do.
And one of the things cops do is protect each other. We watch out for each other.
“And I know part of why Rad likes you so much is that you’re not a cop, but it’s also why I always worried about you. I knew you’d make him play by different rules, and I worried.
“So now he’s played your way, and this is what’s happened.
Joey’s dead, Rad’s half dead. I’m not saying it’s your fault . . .
No, wait, I am saying that. That’s just what I’m saying. I think Joey and Rad got into trouble because they were playing by your rules, running around, chasing your leads, no backup, no safety net. And that’s why they got hurt.”
He looked at the blanket on his lap. “None of us . . . I had no idea that something like this was going to happen.”
“No, of course not, Jenner. You couldn’t. You just follow the clues, wherever they go. And once you were . . . seeing that girl, you didn’t look around, you didn’t watch out, you just ran after the clues. You shouldn’t have been involved, and you shouldn’t have dragged Rad in, and you shouldn’t have dragged Joey in.”
She looked down at him.
“I need you to stay away from Rad. Let him get better.
Don’t make him think about this stuff. He needs some time, time to stay with his family, time to get well again. Please.
You owe him that.”
Jenner nodded, then turned his wheelchair and headed Precious Blood
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toward the elevator bank, behind him the rhythmic peeping of monitors and the whispered words of the boy’s prayer.
Something inside her was slowly tearing. Twisting, clawing at her guts, trying to rip its way out. She lay there pulling herself into a ball, her cuffed hands awkwardly rubbing her belly for relief. She’d chewed the collar of her T-shirt until it was thick with spit, desperate not to cry out, terrified that he might come back in. She couldn’t stop herself from retching, and had to use the bucket repeatedly.
Afterward, she lay there on the floor, crying and shivering. Wishing she had just a taste of heroin, wishing she were warm and high.
She couldn’t lie to herself anymore: she was in withdrawal.
How long had it been now? Two days without heroin? She squinted at her watch through puffy eyes. A day and a half, almost two. Her skin, hot and flushed hours ago, was now cold and clammy. There was no heat left in her body at all, her skin pale blue, her lips dark and dried. Already dead.
Jenner. What would he do? She screwed her eyes tight, imagined him lying in his TV room watching Japanese movies, that cat sleeping by his side. Maybe ordering dinner.
Or having some of the Weetabix from Dean & Deluca.
No, wait. He was in the fucking hospital, maybe on life support. If he was alive at all. He’d been so weak on the loading dock. Maybe he was dead, or paralyzed.
She rubbed the goose bumps on her arms and tried to scrunch herself into a ball, but the heat just poured out of her; she imagined it as a spreading puddle draining out of her onto the floor.
Everyone was leaving her, one by one. First her parents, and now Jenner. Her uncle. The cops. And they’d just been trying to help her. Really, she should have just stayed and waited for him in the backyard, let him climb down the trellis and kill her after he’d finished butchering Andie. Then 312
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they would all have been fine. Jenner, Joey, Rad Garcia.
And what difference would it have made? She’d have lost two weeks, two lousy weeks in which she managed to hook up with Perry and start doing H again, this time kind of seriously. You go, girl!
The candle had rolled under her; touching it, she felt a sudden desire for light. She felt around her for the matches, but had the shivers so bad she couldn’t strike the match.
She rolled back down to the floor and cried until the cramping started getting really bad. She needed to use the bucket, but she was afraid he’d come in, so she put it off, and put it off. Then she could wait no longer, and clumsily tore her jeans down with her cuffed hands to squat in the dark corner, crying from pain and humiliation and self-pity, crying because she didn’t want to die, crying because no one would come to find her.
friday,
december 20
Dr. Khan squinted at the grid of CT images on the viewing box.
“You see here, Doctor?” he said to Jenner, tapping one of the scans with the tip of a gold-cased mechanical pencil. “Your spleen. See how it isn’t all the same shade? It may be nothing, but there may be some bleeding in here.
You got a good kick or two in the ribs, there, and that’s a great location to pound on if you want a splenic injury.”
Jenner nodded. “I’ve seen sudden death due to delayed splenic rupture a few times—guy sent home as okay after a fight, then slowly bleeds into the spleen until it finally ruptures and he quickly bleeds out. The CT is equivocal?”
Khan nodded. “It might be nothing. I just can’t tell without doing serial scans, and even then there’d have to be some time between scans for me to be comfortable to make a reliable diagnosis.”
“Are you keeping me in here?”
“Oh, I don’t think that the management would go for that.
You’re a doctor—physician monitor thyself, eh? Go home, come back in three days or so for a follow-up. By then it should be pretty clear whether it’s growing or not. How are you walking?”
“Slowly. My chest hurts a bit, so does my side. My stomach wound feels okay, though. The chest tube site itches a bit, but that’s it.”
“Par for the course. You feel ready to go home?”
“I’ve felt ready to go home since I first woke up in Bellevue.”
“Good, good. That makes two of us! Ha ha. Come see me in outpatient clinic Monday afternoon; let’s get a repeat CT
first. The ward secretary will set it up.”
They shook hands.
Khan turned to go, but stopped and turned back to Jenner, holding up an admonishing finger.
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“I want to make this crystal clear: if you’ve got a slow bleed into your spleen, even slight pressure can make it worse, or even burst it. Strictly bed rest until you see me Monday, eh?
And even if the Monday scan looks good, minimal activity for the next couple of weeks. Check your blood pressure every four hours or so; blood pressure goes down, pulse goes up, worsening pain in your abdomen or flank, call 911 and come in by ambulance. Got it?”
Jenner nodded.
Khan smiled again.
“Okay, Doctor. Liberty beckons . . .”
Jenner thanked him again, then dialed the Ninth Precinct one more time to see if there’d been any news of Ana.
Jun brought him clothes; the ones he’d been wearing had been impounded by the crime lab. They walked slowly together through the corridors, went down in the elevator, and out into the cold air. It had snowed all night, and Jenner was surprised to see the scrappy hospital lawn blanketed in white.
At the curb, Kimi was waiting in Jun’s Lexus, the inside lights on, the car glowing as if radioactive. He opened the passenger door, and “Baby One More Time” boomed out.
Kimi yelped when she saw Jenner, then her face wrinkled and her eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. “Jenner!
How do you feel?”
He smiled at her. “Good.”
Dabbing her eyes, she turned to Jun and spoke in Japanese for a few seconds.
“She’s going to ride in the back with you while I drive.
We’ll get you up now, then you can go onto the seat yourself.
Go slow, eh?”
They helped him in, then Kimi climbed in next to him and gave him a careful hug. “Oh, so good to see you, Jenner!”
she said, squeezing his hand and holding it in her lap. She wiped away her tears, then leaned forward to tell Jun to skip Precious Blood
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ahead to “Oops! I Did It Again!” and sang along, clutching Jenner’s hand tight all the way home.
There were vases with flowers outside his front door, and cards leaning against a lit devotional candle. Behind them, the front door and inside frame were sooty with fingerprint powder. Inside, though, the apartment was spotless.
Crime Scene had been all over it. They’d taken the bathroom door, which had been torn off its runners: Ana had been able to make it to the bathroom, which was presum-ably where she’d called him from. Then the man had broken through—it was probably over in seconds.
“We called your housekeeper to come by and clean after the cops left. She didn’t want to be paid, but I insisted.”
“Thanks, Jun. I’ll pay you back.”
He nodded, then put the bag of Jenner’s pain meds on the coffee table, along with the crime lab receipt for Jenner’s vouchered clothes.
Jenner eased himself into the big chair. Jun set a glass of water on the coffee table nearby, then stood awkwardly.
“You want Kimi and me to hang out with you? Or maybe come over to my place—we’re going to get sandwiches from Balthazar and watch Alien Resurrection.”
Jenner smiled. “Thanks, Jun. I just want to chill here.”
“Sure, Jenner. I understand.” He turned. “Call if you need anything.” He closed the door softly behind him.
Jenner listened for the sound of Jun’s front door closing, then pulled himself to his feet. He walked stiffly to his desk and went through the stacks of books until he found Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. He opened to the Anastasia entry, and read; he needed to know what would happen to her if he didn’t find her before the twenty-fifth.
National said they wouldn’t have a car for him until 11:00
a.m.
saturday,
december 21
He woke at 6:00 a.m., and soaked in the bath in the dark, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports playing softly.
He felt the muscles in his left side loosen in the hot water, but they knotted up again when he stood to get out of the bath, a harsh stabbing pain radiating along his flank.
He sat at the table and inflated the cuff around his arm, his eyes on the dial as he deflated it. He pressed his fingers to his right wrist and counted for fifteen seconds. His blood pressure and pulse were okay.
He looked at his chest in the mirror. He’d taken off the dressing before getting into the bath; now his torso looked like sunset fighting a storm, pale pink and red stripes over his ribs livid against the glowering purple bruise that was his left side.
It hurt more when he looked at it, so he quickly dressed the chest tube site and shrugged his shirt on. He buttoned it gingerly, looked at himself in the mirror, and said out loud,
“Good as new!”
It didn’t work. He took a Tylenol Number 3, brushed his teeth, then finished dressing. He had some cereal, then packed an overnight bag.
He sat in the armchair to rest, and watched TV. Outside a church in Queens, several hundred cops in dress blues were getting into formation, lining up along the procession route.
They were several deep along the path to the front door, where the body would be carried. There was a large civilian turnout; he tried to spot anyone who might be one of Joey’s relatives, but it began to drizzle, and he couldn’t see faces after the umbrellas came out; they were probably inside. He turned off the TV when the mayor arrived, a little before 10:00 a.m.
He couldn’t do anything for Joey, other than nail the man who’d killed him. But maybe he could still do something 322
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for Ana. He couldn’t let himself slow down now, couldn’t stop to wallow. No more thinking about victims, no more thinking about loss, no more thinking about the days ticking away, counting down to the twenty-fifth, the feast of Saint Anastasia.
He e-mailed Jun to say that he was going out of town for a couple days, and not to worry, that he’d be careful. He tried to say thanks, but the more he tried to express, the slower he got, so he deleted it all and wrote, “Thanks. For everything.”
Then, just for the hell of it, he called the Ninth Precinct.
He left a message on Pat Mullins’s voice mail that he was going to Pennsylvania to see if he could get any more information about the text, and could Pat call him if they found anything. He read the number of his new cell phone, squinting as he struggled to decode Ana’s scrawl.
He carefully pulled his coat on, checked to make sure he’d packed his painkillers, and went down to find a cab.
It was a long shot, he knew, but it was the only lead he had.
The police had already made inquiries, and reached a dead end. But, at the time the detectives had called around, the theft of an old manuscript from a college in the middle of nowhere had hardly seemed critical; no one had gone out to the location to ask in person.
Interstate 78 was a long crawl from the Delaware River Bridge until well after the Hamburg exit. Traffic finally eased when he got onto the westbound I-76, but the sky was dark before he reached Deene’s College.
The school was on the border of Somerset County, pretty as a picture, with hills and valleys blanketed with handsome old-growth forests. The local joke was that it was a beautiful place to be dirt poor; the cool climate made for miserly farmlands where backbreaking work produced heartbreaking yields.
At the front gates, a worn white billboard with uneven Precious Blood
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black lettering announced “deene’s college, founded 1978, Achievement Through Excellence,” lack of ambition passed off as lack of pretense.
Behind the sign was a small tan-brick building that did double duty as security post and information center. He couldn’t see anyone inside, but the lights were on, so he tapped on the window; he was answered by the sound of a flushing toilet. A beefy young man with a pink face emerged.
He wore gray pants and a white shirt labeled “Wharton-Somerset Private Security,” and was hurriedly wiping his hands with ragged paper towels.
“You caught me off guard.”<
br />
“Sorry to bother you.”
He eyed Jenner up and down.
“The school is closed until January seventh.”
“I’m looking for the Security Service,” Jenner said, flashing his shield, wondering if he was breaking the law.
The man looked at the brass badge and murmured, “New York City . . .” He straightened up, suddenly helpful. “Well, you got me tonight. How can I help you?”
“About fifteen years ago, you had a theft from the collection of ancient manuscripts. A fairly valuable document was stolen. You ever heard of that?”
“Can’t say that I have—fifteen years is a while ago.
Mostly we just deal with drunken freshmen vandalizing Mr.
Deene’s statue during rush week, the occasional mopey girl who takes a few too many pills, stuff like that.”
Jenner pointed toward the green computer screen in the room.
“Would it be on there?”
The man laid his palm softly on the monitor. “Nope. This only goes back about five years, six tops. Wouldn’t be in it.”
“Okay. How about security officers? Anyone been working here long enough that they might remember it?”
The guard put his hand to his chin, his expression clouded 324
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with doubt.
“Naah . . . fifteen years is a long time to stay at Deene’s . . .”
“No one at all?”
The man shook his head.
“How about your boss?”
He brightened.
“No! But he got the job after his brother retired, and his brother lives real close.”
He thought the guard was reaching for a pen to write down the man’s phone number, but the man surprised Jenner by grabbing his jacket and coming out of the booth.
“C’mon. I’ll take you to him,” he said, jiggling the door handle to make sure the booth was locked.
Jenner thanked him, and unlocked the passenger side of his car.
The guard thrust out his hand and said, “Tommy Anderson.”
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