Precious Blood

by Jonathan Hayes

“Yes, I think he is.” The priest paused. “After the khi ro, the text is purely hagiographic. The first killing, the line reads ‘Katherine of Alexandria, in her wisdom, in her nobility, in her purity.’ ”

  “The second is truncated, but it begins, ‘Andrew, fisher-man.’ Saint Andrew was one of the original ‘fishers of men,’

  Jesus’ twelve apostles.”

  “And on Barbara Wexler’s back?”

  “I’m still translating this, but it’s an extensive passage 172

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  from a source similar to the previous two. There are a couple of things that are quite striking about it, though.”

  He paused.

  “First off, this text gives us the most information about the writer, since it’s the longest. I don’t think the person who wrote it is genuinely versed in Coptic. The symbols are poorly formed, but they are consistent: I think he’s copying from another text.

  “Students of alphabets often practice by copying older texts, but I think I can be more specific in this instance. It’s not a very big world, the world of ancient manuscripts—ev-eryone knows everyone else—and I remember, about fifteen years back, a theft at the Parler Collection. This was before I was at Yardley.

  “The Parler Collection is owned by the library at Deene’s College, in southern Pennsylvania. It stuck in my mind because of the accusations made by the Ancient Languages Department at the time. It was sad—it’s not a top-tier school, forgive me for saying so, and that collection was a source of pride.

  “Only a single manuscript was stolen, which was odd, particularly because it was hardly their most valuable.

  They had pieces going back to the fourteenth century, but the stolen manuscript was less than two hundred years old, a minor Napoleonic-era transcription of a now lost Coptic hagiography. The department head claimed that it had been transcribed by Jean-François Champollion himself—one of the original translators of the Rosetta stone—but the claim was ultimately discredited.”

  “What was the other thing, Father?”

  “I’m not finished with the translation, but there’s one thing that’s really odd: the last two lines of the text are not Coptic at all, but Cyrillic.”

  “As in Russian?” Jenner asked.

  “Well, most likely Russian. I don’t speak the language, but I did recognize one of the words. Skoptsi.”

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  “What does that mean?”

  The priest paused.

  “It’s bizarre, Dr. Jenner. The Skoptsi were a nineteenth-century Russian mystical sect. The members castrated themselves as an act of self-mortification and a symbol of their commitment to God.”

  It was dark again.

  It happened so quickly now, the brief gasp of daylight, muffled in early winter haze, suffocated before earth or skin had time to warm. The days were getting shorter. His days were getting shorter.

  From the windows of the old factory, the man watched the bow lights of a tugboat passing soundlessly down the center channel of the East River. The crew had draped a snaggle-toothed string of Christmas lights along the cabin, and he could make out the silhouette of a Christmas tree.

  On the far bank, heavy traffic on the FDR was a glimmering ribbon of white and flickering red lights. It was almost pretty.

  A sharp pain shot up from his right hand, and, lifting it up, he saw blood flowing freely from his fingers; in the dim light of the window, the blood was dark and thick, like black-strap molasses. He’d been distractedly kneading the window ledge, and now, looking down in the half-light, he saw the night reflected in small glass shards on the sill.

  He licked his fingers, and then blotted them on his pants.

  The whole room smelled of rust, of rotting iron, of his blood.

  His sense of smell was growing stronger. Or, at least, his sense of blood.

  For a long while, he watched the cars on the expressway across the river, the traffic on the river.

  In his workshop, he had books on forensic science. He’d read chapters—entire books—on the subject of blood spatter; he found the literature facile and lifeless, not animated 174

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  by any real feeling for blood. He had insights no forty-year veteran criminalist could understand; they prided themselves on their scientific method, but it was he who was the real empiricist.

  It amused him, pleased him, that now they were studying him, examining what he’d done, trying to understand what he would do next. Right now, in some crime lab, scientists in white Tyvek jumpsuits with masks and eye shields would be scrutinizing the arrows, maybe fuming them to find fingerprints, poring over the crime scene photographs, trying to interpret the blood spatter he had released. They were his archivists, a team of experts whose sole purpose was to bear witness to his work.

  The newspapers were even better. The Post was the best—

  he was headline news now, big red New York Post headlines, his exploits splashed on the front page every day. In the Post, off-the-record comments from unnamed police sources gave reporters license for graphic descriptions of what he’d done.

  Their columnists railed about the cops, and called him a

  “fiend,” and insisted that he was too smart to be insane, and that the only punishment for a “sicko” like him was death.

  They’d even given him a name—“the Inquisitor”; he didn’t much care for it, but was proud to have earned a title. He was considering sending them a letter, maybe fill them in a bit on some of his earlier work.

  He pulled his coat tighter around himself against the cold.

  The first one he’d killed in New York was the son of a man who owned a bodega only a few blocks from the factory. The man had come across him on the path along the waterfront as he was walking back to the warehouse the day Dr. Zenker had told him he was dying (when he heard the prognosis, relief had washed over him, his fear replaced by a sense of clarity; even the knobs of tumor rotting his liver seemed to bother him less).

  He was halfway to the factory when he saw a fat Mexican kid, maybe sixteen, dressed like a waiter in white dress shirt Precious Blood

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  and black pants too tight for his girth, smoking a joint as he leaned against a sagging brick building.

  The boy had watched him approach from a distance. The man saw him scan the area, checking to make sure they were alone. The man was immediately intrigued—this might be interesting.

  The path took him within twenty feet of where the boy stood. Curious, he made eye contact, looked at him and nodded.

  The boy straightened up and grinned. He had dewy brown eyes and a barely pubescent mustache.

  “Hi.”

  The man nodded again and kept walking.

  And that would have been it. Except the boy, bored perhaps, with nothing better to do, said, “Hey, mister. You wanna date?”

  The man stopped. He turned to look back at the boy. Encouraged, the boy had smiled again and said, “You wanna date? I suck your cock real good.”

  The man hesitated for only a second. The boy, smiling widely now, gestured him forward. The man walked up to the grinning boy and hit him as hard as he could in the face.

  The boy fell to the ground, gasping, blood pouring from behind hands pressed to his face. The man pulled him up to his feet by his hair, and then marched him toward the pier of his warehouse. The boy was begging and moaning, becoming frantic when the man dragged him past the tall grass, out of sight of the path. He saw the boy was going to start screaming, so he punched him hard in the face again to shut him up.

  Then he pulled him down to the water and held his head under the water until he drowned. The boy’s thrashing churned a thin scum of foam that lasted on the gray water for a while after he stopped, eddying around the boards that blocked access to the pier from the river.

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  Killing him felt good. As he held the boy under, kicking and spla
shing, there was a sudden rushing sensation, like a huge electric current, blasting out of some reservoir in the center of his being. The feeling was extraordinary, roaring out through his hands, a crackling discharge around his victim’s neck. He could feel the boy’s life force gushing back into his own body, replenishing him to overflowing, obliter-ating any fear, any weakness.

  In an instant he knew that if he died with enough of this energy, he would transcend death to live on as some kind of blessed being, a king, a saint, an angel. For a second he saw himself there as if from a distance, from up in the rafter space over the enclosed pier, holding the boy’s neck with both hands, kneeling on his back as he kicked futilely; he could see his own life becoming more vivid as the boy’s life faded away.

  He pushed the body into the water, and the little porker bobbed up, rolling over smoothly so that he was faceup. He was going to walk the body out to the water, push it down underneath the boards, and let it float on down into the harbor—no one would have seen him—but he caught sight of the rusting iron chain wrapped around one of the pillars. The tide was fairly low then, and his feet pressed on a slimy carpet of ooze and brick debris as he towed the boy back, deep under the overhang into the dank ammonia of a thousand rats’ nests.

  He arranged him with his back against the pillar, hooking the arms around the chain; as the water lapped up against the building supports, the boy rose and slipped, rose and slipped. It looked like the boy kept standing to say something and then changing his mind, over and over. It was good to see, but he realized the body needed more support, so he came back later and secured it with telephone cable. That had worked nicely. He didn’t want the boy to drift away, he wanted to watch him change, just as any parent wants to see his child grow.

  When he finally went back inside, he was aroused, and his Precious Blood

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  mouth and fingertips were tingling. It was a new sensation, and he wanted to see his face and fingers, so he went to the mirror by the sink. He didn’t look any different, really.

  Face blotchy from the effort and the excitement, hair damp against his scalp.

  The calendar from St. Anthony and St. Alphonsus hung from a nail by the mirror, and as he wiped his face with a dishtowel he saw it was the feast day of Saint Florian.

  He stank of stagnant river water, of the pier under the warehouse, of rotting mud and diesel oil, of soap scum and rat piss. He stole his water from the fruit packers by Manhattan Bridge (a long walk back, in the dark, a fifty-pound tank of water over one shoulder); though water was precious, he needed to wash. He filled a basin and, kneeling down, wiped himself all over with a cool cloth. He did a thorough job of it, even used some of his precious hand soap, collected in an empty Snapple bottle from the men’s room in the Long Island City Costco.

  As he scrubbed himself, his knees burned as they had so many times before, kneeling by the altar, listening to Father Martin give the sermon. He’d grinned at the thought of how shiny and pink he was then, young and full of some kind of potential, and at how different he was now, grown and kneeling naked on the floor, a man who could kill, a man who fed on death.

  The boy probably went to Anthony and Alphonsus; lots of the Mexicans from the area did. He could even have been an altar boy.

  Then, all of a sudden, it had hit him. Saint Florian. Saint Florian, martyred as a young man. Saint Florian, scourged and drowned, chained to a millstone.

  He felt all the tension go from his limbs, and he slumped to the floor facedown, his arms spread. Again he seemed to float above himself, look down on his body. There was a smell of narcissus, and the room filled with white light, irradiating his body, healing his body, cleansing his soul.

  wednesday,

  december 11

  Ana lay across his bed, watching him dress.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to be involved anymore, Jenner.”

  “I’m not.”

  “So why are you going to Pennsylvania? Why don’t you stay here with me?”

  “Because Rad and Joey say the chief of detectives says he wants me to go.”

  “Well, what about Dr. Whittaker?”

  “He’s not invited.”

  “Hmmph. And for that you’re leaving me all alone, all by myself ?”

  She lay back on his bed, languidly stretched her arms up until her sweatshirt rode up to uncover her panties.

  “I have to go.”

  She rolled over fluidly and got up on her knees.

  “Stay, Jenner. Please.”

  He ruffled her hair, then lifted the bag onto his shoulder.

  “I’ll call you from the road.”

  She pouted. “Uncle Douggie was right about you.”

  “You should’ve listened to him.”

  “I did! But I wore him down until he said I had to make my own decisions. You see, he cares about me . . .”

  Jenner shrugged. When he turned to go, she called out,

  “Jenner!”

  She came up to him, slipped her arms around him, and said, “I can’t believe you’re going.”

  He kissed the top of her head. She leaned into his kiss, then pushed him away with a soft punch. “Well, just fuck off and go then.”

  *

  *

  *

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  Rad was leaning on his car in front of the building, all sunglasses and smile, sipping from a Styrofoam coffee cup.

  “Edward! Good to see you!”

  “You’re unpleasantly chipper this morning.” Jenner tossed his bag into the backseat.

  “The kids are with their uncle Ricky this week.” The smile broadened. “You should try the love of a good woman, Jenner. Do you a power of good.”

  Jenner sighed. “Ah, someday, maybe. Someday . . .”

  Garcia climbed into the driver’s seat, adjusted the rearview mirror, then took off his gloves.

  The passenger-side door was still locked; Jenner tapped on the window. Ana suddenly burst out of his building, past the super, down the steps to the sidewalk. Jenner’s sweatshirt came down to the middle of her thigh; her legs were bare underneath. A pair of Jun’s sneakers dwarfed her feet.

  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 comp
rehensible 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.