Precious Blood (20 page)

She breathlessly pressed her new cell phone into his hand.

“Take this, okay?”

“It’s okay. I can use Rad’s.”

“No. I want you to have
mine
.”

Her eyes were so earnest that he gave in, slipping the phone into his coat pocket with a grin. He leaned to kiss her, but she pushed him away.

“
Whoa!
What do you think
you’re
doing? I’m still pissed at you!”

She gave Garcia a nod, then looked down Crosby toward Chinatown, and back up toward Houston. Her face was serious. Jenner smiled and said, “New York City, just like you always imagined it?”

“Not funny, Jenner. It’s weird to be out.”

“Good weird?”

“Weird weird.” She shivered, and looked back at the building. “I should go in.” She gave him a peck on the cheek, started to pull away, then kissed him hard.

He stepped back, pushing her toward the doorway.

“Enough!” he said. “I told you:
Never in front of the cops!
”

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She walked back up the stairs, then slipped past Pete into the entry foyer.

He got into the car. Rad sat there, eyes straight ahead, face straining to look innocent. He put the car into gear.

“You know, Jenner, there may just be hope for you yet.”

As they drove up Crosby, they passed a white van parked across the street from the Lightbulb Factory. A man sat quietly behind the wheel, a large digital camera on the seat next to him.

They made good time to Romen. It was a different car, a beige Crown Vic that still smelled of the factory. Rad drove, keeping the radio low as he brought Jenner up to date on the progress of the investigation.

There had been little: if Father Sheehan’s epiphany had made the killings comprehensible as a series, the task force hadn’t been able to develop much practical information. Worse, every lead had crumbled the moment it was nudged. The curator of the Parler Collection was fairly new, and her predecessor had died a couple of years previously.

The Deene’s Ridge police department had never solved the manuscript theft, chalking it up to a prank that had gone too far. Detectives on the Inquisitor squad at South Homicide had quietly started looking into Hutchins’s Comparative Religion Department, both faculty and students, and at that moment, Father Sheehan and Joey Roggetti were charting a calendar of upcoming feast days of martyrs.

The night before, Jenner had stopped by the Barnes & Noble in Union Square and picked up books on martyrdom and saints. The color illustrations reveled in pain and spilled blood, celebrating the saints’ suffering as much as their faith. The methods of torture and execution had an abstract ingenuity that was almost playful, as if thought up by twelve-year-old boys.

Jenner had been astonished by the sheer number of saints.

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On any given day, there were a good dozen to be honored, both familiar canonical names as well as a vast litany of obscure saints. Many had been martyrs; Jenner told Garcia he’d figured that four or five martyrs were celebrated each day of the year.

Rad shrugged at Jenner’s statistic, and fiddled with the radio dial until he found some eighties rock.

“I’m Cuban, Jenner. That’s nothing! We’ve got all those saints,
plus
we’ve got Santeria stuff, you know, the
orishas
, our sacred spirits—Oshun, Chango, that whole deal.”

“You think Chango knows you listen to Foreigner?”

“Chango?
Coño
, Chango
loves
Foreigner! Rush, too.”

They drove in silence for twenty miles, then Rad said,

“What do you think he chooses first, Jenner? Victim or saint?”

“Saint. You’ve seen how prepared he is. The tool he used to cut Sunday Smith open? The peacock feathers? He plans it out a long, long time ahead. He
designs
them, collects and makes his props. He’s like some kind of director, putting together a play.”

Rad nodded. “But how is he choosing them?”

Jenner shook his head. He looked out of the window, silent. The sun was up, and much of the snow on the fields had melted and then refrozen, leaving patchy sheets of ice shimmering amid the winter stubble. He watched his breath frost the glass.

When Rad spoke again, his voice was hesitant.

“So, I was wondering . . . How are you doing with all this shit? How you holding up?”

Rad had never talked about emotional issues before, but different New York, different NYPD. And now Rad Garcia, one of the toughest guys he’d ever met, wanted to talk about
feelings
.

Jenner, despite himself, was touched. “I’m okay. It felt strange at first, but I’m remembering that this is something I know how to do, something I used to be good at.” He paused
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for a second. “And I guess I’m not surprised Whittaker’s screwed me. He’s playing the game, making his move for the chief’s job. He wants credit, so he took mine.”

“Maybe so, Jenner. But the guy is an asshole.”

Jenner grinned back at him. “Yeah. He’s an asswipe.”

“He’s an ass
clown
.”

Steve Miller’s “Rockin’ Me” came on the radio, and Rad cranked it up.

She sat on the bed and watched Pyke pack, then she made coffee in the kitchen as they waited for the car service to take him to Newark.

“Where is Bhutan? You really have the best job ever.”

“It’s just work,” Pyke said. “You know I’d stay here if I could, but the photo editor has been setting up this project for years now, and I can’t suddenly pull the plug.”

She shook her head and told him she was fine. “I’ve got Jenner and half of the New York Police Department guarding me. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Pyke muttered, “Well, it’s the ‘Jenner and half of the New York Police Department’ part that’s worrying me . . .”

Smiling, she put a hand on his shoulder and said, “He’s a decent guy. I know you don’t believe it, but I think he really wants what’s best for me.”

Pyke said, “No, I believe that’s what he wants . . . but the guy’s a mess. I don’t want him to take you down as collateral damage.” He was quiet for a second, then said, “He really is a good person. And you need someone to be with you right now, and I’m running off and deserting you. Just be careful with him—for both of your sakes.”

“Well, first off, I think I’ve been good for Jenner. I think he’s doing better. And second: you’re deserting me to work so that I can have this great place to stay in!”

The intercom sounded. They hugged, and she waited at his window and watched as he walked out onto Crosby. Pyke’s
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assistant was waiting there, a tall young black guy with thin arms who fitted Pyke’s bags neatly into the grid of aluminum camera equipment cases. Pyke did a quick inventory, then turned and looked up. He saw her, smiled and waved, then got into the car and was gone.

She turned to face the loft. It was so clinical, with its white walls and stacked white enamel filing cabinets, and techno-fetish-y stuff. Jenner’s apartment was warm and soft by comparison, with wood and fabric and pale, natural colors.

She’d go up there and hang out, maybe draw.

She opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of wine, then put it back and took the last of the whisky instead. She lifted the bottle to eye level and sloshed the whisky around.

It wasn’t enough. It was never enough anymore.

The Smith farm sat in its own shadowy little valley. Though the sun was still bright on the surrounding high ground, the valley was a good ten degrees colder, and snow drifted deep in the sloping hollows behind the farmhouse.

The driveway dipped steeply down to the house, and hadn’t been plowed since the last snowfall. As Rad inched the car slowly down the drive, a thin young man in a white short-sleeved dress shirt and a green hunting cap with earflaps came out of the house and watched from the porch.

They stepped through the snow to the house; Rad, his hand outstretched, said, “Mr. Smith? I’m Lieutenant Garcia, this is Dr. Jenner. I hope this isn’t a bad time for you.”

The boy shook his head. “Not really doing much of anything. My parents left this morning; I’m staying behind to close up the house and sort out the rest of Katie’s stuff before I go on to meet up with my folks.”

His eyes were pale blue, his skin dark tan. He wore a black name tag, elder james smith. Jenner had seen the Mormons in the countryside in Thailand; he imagined the boy ped-Precious Blood

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aling his bicycle through villages and rice paddies on his mission, a satchelful of tracts tucked under the neatly folded black jacket strapped to the rear mudguard rack.

He was about twenty. Standing straight, he seemed crumpled and careworn beyond his years. Beneath the tan, he was drawn, and, though he stood in front of his own home, he looked more than a little lost.

“Must be hard, all this,” said Garcia.

The boy nodded, then turned and walked into the house.

They followed him into the living room. The furniture was cheap and battered, and the floor was covered with thick shag carpeting; there was a faint smell of mold. In front of the cold fireplace was an old rocking chair draped with an ugly crocheted blanket; on the floor by the chair, Jenner saw a near-empty half-pint bottle of Mr. Boston vodka.

“So ask me your questions. Me, my mom, and my dad have been near Ban Long, Cambodia, since last November; my dad’s mission president. We were away when Katie died.

Sarah probably knows more than I do.”

He gestured toward a small alcove with a table, where a girl with pale, waxy skin and lank blond hair sat, hands folded, shoulders hunched. Even with her head down, Jenner could see her eyes were swollen and red behind her glasses.

“That’s Sarah. She was my intended up until about a week ago.”

Rad suggested they talk in another room.

Elder Smith smiled thinly and said, “Well, sir, we got the living room, the hallway, the breakfast nook, and then we got the kitchen. I mean, we could go in the kitchen if that’s what you want. I mean, if that’s what you really want; Sarah and her family cleaned up in there, cleaned it up so nice you can barely even tell.”

He looked at the girl balefully. “They washed it real good, but you can still smell it. You can’t get the smell of blood out . . .”

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He was tilting slowly backward, and Jenner saw he was drunk. Rad quickly stepped behind him, bracing for a fall, but the kid listed forward again and kept talking.

He was mumbling now. “Swear to God, I can smell it in my bed. The whole damned house. My sister’s blood.”

The girl was sobbing, listening to him. He looked at her, angry and confused.

Rad put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Son? You been drinking?”

“Yep. I have. First time ever! And you know what? It takes the edge off. It really does.”

Rad turned to the girl. “Miss, maybe you could take the doctor into the kitchen while I talk with your friend.”

She nodded and stood, then stepped past him, avoiding looking at the boy. Rad steered him toward the alcove table.

“Come on, son. We’re going to sit down and talk.”

In the hallway with Jenner, Sarah said firmly, “I’m not going in the kitchen. We can talk here, or upstairs, but, mister, there’s no way I’m going in there.”

Jenner nodded. “Upstairs.”

She hugged her arms across her bony chest as she led him briskly up the stairs.

“This is Kate’s room, here—” She pointed to the left at the top of the landing. “That’s the parents’ room, and over there is Jimmy’s.” Her voice softened as she looked at his door.

“Did you know Kate well?”

“We were the only two LDS kids in our class at high school, so we kind of ended up hanging out all the time. We were different. She said all the right things, and she dressed modest, but she got on better with non-Mormons than me. I didn’t see it coming, though—all along she was planning to leave the church and move to New York for college. I think maybe her uncle helped her out. Her mother’s brother—Mrs.

Smith used to be a Lutheran, she joined the church when she met Mr. Smith.”

“Did you stay in touch when she moved to New York?”

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“No. When she got in to Hutchins, she started acting different, like a gentile. Changed her name, started wearing different clothes, not so modest. After she got her tongue pierced, my folks wouldn’t let me hang out with her. Which was hard, because that was the only way I could see Jimmy.”

She started to sniffle again, her narrow chest shuddering under the thin cardigan.

“It’s really hard. I love him, but he’s been gone a year, and soon he’s going to be gone for another year. You know I only spoke with him one time while he was away? I know it’s not his fault—you only get to call home twice a year when you’re on mission. It’s supposed to be to their folks, but President Smith let him use his Christmas call to call me. He writes a lot, too. But then I met a good man in Provo when I was at the Missionary Training Center, and I fell in love with him. I prayed on it, and I had to be true to my heart.”

She wiped her face with her arm.

“I was going to tell Jimmy, but I couldn’t do it in a letter or an e-mail. And then Kate died. It took them forever to reach the Smiths. The sheriff let my dad and my cousins clean up before they came home and saw it. They wouldn’t tell me about it.”

She began weeping convulsively. Jenner heard movement below, and the boy’s head poked into the stairwell.

“Sarah . . . you all right?” His tone was protective, almost belligerent.

She pulled herself together and told him she was just sad.

Rad appeared behind the boy. Behind the girl’s back, Jenner nodded at his raised eyebrow.

“I think I’ve asked enough questions for now. Thank you both. Miss, if you’d like to come down here, Dr. Jenner and I need to have a look in Ms. Smith’s room.”