Precious Blood (24 page)

j o n at h a n h ay e s

“No problem. I’m just glad you had them. Thanks again.”

He needed to find a phone and let Jun know about the photographs in the
Post
. He nodded at Debashish, and gave a brief nod in Luba Andreyev’s direction before heading to the cash register.

He hoped he’d irritated her.

Green’s offices were in a red brick Greek Revival town house on MacDougal Street, just off Washington Square Park. The waiting room was all taste and money—Danish modern furniture in a neutral palette, the Oxygen network muted on a wall-mounted plasma TV behind the receptionist. It was like something out of a movie. Jenner wondered for a moment what his life would have been like had he gone into clinical medicine. Plusher, at least.

There were a couple of young women filling out forms; they barely glanced up as the two men entered. Each had attached a color photo to the front sheet. Both were college age and attractive, and the blonde wore a sweatshirt in the Hutchins blue and green.

The door to Green’s office opened, and the man himself appeared in the doorway. He hesitated, unaccustomed to seeing men in the waiting room. He was handsome, well built and too tan for winter. The buttons on his immaculate white coat were tight knots of white silk, and his shirt was clearly bespoke, his initials neatly exposed on the left French cuff. The effect was so carefully composed that Jenner wondered if the lab coat, too, was custom-tailored.

The receptionist slipped over to Green and spoke to him in a hushed tone. With a decisive nod and a concerned expression, Green ushered them into his large office. The white desk and brown leather and chrome chairs seemed to float above the thick butterscotch shag carpet. Green sat and motioned to the chairs, but Rad remained standing; Jenner followed his lead.

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“I understand you have some questions that might involve my patients.” Green leaned back in his chair and placed the palms of his hands together, tapping the tips of his slender fingers together one by one, the picture of a contemplative man. “You must understand that there are confidentiality issues, particularly in this type of practice.”

He leaned forward again. “Actually, would you mind showing me some kind of identification?”

Rad wordlessly shifted his jacket from his hip to reveal his shield and holster.

Green nodded slowly. “Now, how may I help you, gentlemen?”

“We’re investigating this series of killings, all students at Hutchins College. We believe that some, maybe all, of the victims had been your patients at some time or another.”

For a fraction of a second, Green looked completely caught by surprise, but almost instantly regained his composure; it was an impressive display.

“I saw something on the news, but I haven’t been paying close attention. You have to understand, I see these girls fairly briefly and in a relatively focused way—I’m not their gynecologist, I don’t really have a doctor-patient relationship with them. I certainly don’t know all of the patients in my practice. Why do you think they were my patients?”

Rad glanced quickly at Jenner. “We’ve learned that at least two were egg donors. We suspect the third was also a donor. We know they got their medications from Astor Place Drug, and we know that you prescribe almost all of that type of medication sold there.”

“My practice is fairly large—I see almost one thousand patients a year, and probably prescribe most of the fertility drugs dispensed in this neighborhood. But certainly not all, not by a long shot.” He paused, thinking hard. “And the pharmacy told you this? They confirmed these were my patients? No, clearly not, or you’d have said so.”

Jenner spoke up.

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“We have Hutchins students injecting a regimen of Lupron and Pergonal, which we know was prescribed at a fertility clinic near the university and then dispensed at a pharmacy near the university. Yours is the most likely office.”

Green, amused, looked at Jenner. “Excellent pronunciation, Detective! Do you have a medical background?”

“I’m a forensic pathologist.”

“Ah.” Green leaned back again, a slight smirk on his face.

“Well, mine is probably the best-known office in the area, but I assure you, Doctor, I have plenty of competition.”

He sat straight now.

“I’d like to help you, but I can’t even confirm the names of these patients—if they were mine—without either permission from the family or a court order,” he said, then added in an aside to Jenner, “I’m sure you understand, Doctor.”

“I understand that that would be a practical approach. But it would save a lot of time if you could just say yes or no.”

Green looked at Jenner. “Doctor, do you think these girls tell their families what they’re doing here?”

“I’d imagine some do, some don’t.”

“No. They almost never do, I think. Almost never.” He leaned forward again and said, “I’m sure it’d only take a short while to reach the families by phone.”

“The family of one of the girls is effectively unreach-able.”

Green spread his hands with a look of helplessness.

Rad touched Jenner’s elbow and told the doctor, “We’ll be back with a court order.”

“Fine,” Green said. “In the meantime, I’ll speak with my lawyer. If you give me the names of the victims, I can have my staff start the search.”

He glanced at his watch, a pink gold Patek-Philippe, then turned to the computer behind him and began to peck at the keyboard.

Rad wrote the names down in his notebook, tore out the page, and slid it across Green’s desk.

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Green didn’t turn around, and said nothing more as they left the room.

It took almost until 4:00 p.m. to push through the subpoena.

Garcia tried to do an oral application for the warrant, but the logistics proved too much, so they went downtown to the courthouse. Pressure on the case was such that testimony in an ongoing buy-and-bust trial was interrupted so that they could appear immediately before the judge.

They were both smiling as they bounded back up the steps to Green’s office, this time with another cop following close behind. The waiting room was quiet, the last student gone, the plasma TV off. The receptionist stepped into Green’s office to notify him of their arrival.

He gave them a curt nod.

“Detective. Doctor.”

Rad said, “Dr. Green, this court order gives us broad search and seizure powers in this office, extending to all computers in this facility, to any personal computers owned by you, to your BlackBerry and any other digital storage medium, including your cell phone, as well as to paper records maintained here or at any other location you do business, including at your home.”

Green’s pitch rose in indignation. “Detective, this is ridiculous! We just needed to ascertain your right for me to confirm the identities of three patients in my practice! Surely this is unnecessary.”

“Well, sir, on discussion with the chief, it was felt that it would be appropriate for us to personally locate and view all documents as needed, since information was judged not immediately forthcoming, and since others in your patient base might be at risk. That’s why we brought Detective Mason from Computer Crimes along for the ride.”

“But it was a confidentiality matter! I had no choice!”

“We have complete respect for your high ethical stan-220

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dards, sir.” He paused for a second to make sure that Green could sense his insincerity. “And we’d like to begin with the computer in your office.”

“This is absurd. This is nothing but a petty act of harassment. You can begin the hand search of the paper files here, but I’m calling my lawyer to review this before you start infringing the privacy of my other clients.”

Garcia handed him the document with a grin.

“Go right ahead.”

Green snatched the paper and stalked off toward his office. Rad called after him, “You have five minutes.” The thick carpeting smothered Green’s attempt at a door slam.

The file room was surprisingly large. Gray enamel shelves filled with color-coded manila folders ran the length of one wall; a workstation with telephone, computer, and X-ray viewing box was set against the other.

Since the file clerk only worked two mornings a week, Angie Buonfiglio, the receptionist, did the database search herself, the door propped open so she could watch the waiting room. Rad spelled out the names as she typed, her long fake nails clattering across the keyboard. Andrea Delore and Sunday Smith (who’d given her first name as Katherine) came up right away; they had to try several different spellings before they located Barbara Wexler’s record.

She jotted down the file numbers on a Post-it, stepped into the stacks, and within a couple of minutes appeared before them again, three folders in her hand.

She hesitated.

“I’m sorry, but I need to confirm it with the doctor before I can give you the records.”

They followed her into the reception area, and Ms. Buonfiglio tapped on Green’s door.

Rad nodded his head back toward the file room, and Jenner followed him. They spoke quietly.

“Jenner, was there anything about these killings to make
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you think they might have been done by someone with medical training?”

Jenner shrugged. “Whenever someone gets dismembered, the cops always say, ‘It’s so clean he must’ve had a medical background, ’ but the anatomy’s not that hard. Someone with a sharp knife could inflict pretty much any set of wounds, if they put their mind to it. Dismembering can’t be that difficult—anyone who’s dressed a deer, even cut up a chicken, could do it. It’s not like we take Dismemberment 101 in med school.”

“No, but it wouldn’t hurt to be familiar with a knife.”

“Sure. But Green is mostly about syringes and hormones and microsurgery.”

“He’s a pretty big guy, though, probably strong enough to take care of them.”

The receptionist was still tapping at the door; Green wasn’t answering. Probably still bleating to his lawyer.

Rad shook Jenner’s shoulder. “C’mon! Wouldn’t it be great if it was this asshole? We nail him now, close down the investigation, you’re a hero, I’m a hero, that obnoxious fuck goes to jail?”

He grinned, looking over at the receptionist by Green’s door. It was taking too long. “Naah, I know, you’re right. He doesn’t really feel right to me, either. He’s too slick. He’s got too much . . .
stuff
.”

Jenner nodded.

Rad looked over at Mason, sprawled awkwardly in a Ja-cobsen Swan chair, then back to Jenner. “I’ll tell you one thing: I’d bet cash money this dude is into something bad.

And I don’t mean just wrong—every fucker walking down Broadway at any given moment has some secret or other jangling away in his pocket. But this guy is doing something nasty. I can just feel it.”

He paused.

“I’m serious, Jenner. I don’t know what he’s into, but I’m
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going to tear this place up until I find it. And if I don’t find it here, I’m going to tear up his house. Then his car, then his boat, and then whatever else that smug fuck owns, until I find it.”

The receptionist was tapping again, saying, “Dr. Green?

Dr. Green?”

Rad turned. “Starting right now—I’ve had enough of this.”

He turned and said, “Mason! Come on, we’re going in.”

“Please step aside,” he said to the receptionist. “Green?

Enough! We’re coming in.”

They waited for Green to answer the door, but there was no response. Rad rolled his eyes, then pounded twice on the door.

“Green!”

Nothing. He turned the handle. Locked.

He pointed at the receptionist and said, “Key.”

She scurried to her desk and brought it. There was a click as the lock opened. Rad quickly turned the handle and pushed open the door into an empty room; Green had disappeared.

They rushed into the office, Rad heading for the door to the right; an empty exam room.

Jenner had taken the door to the left. The sound of running water came from a sink inside.

“Rad! Over here.”

Rad called to Ms. Buonfiglio again. “
Key!
”

She said she didn’t have one, it was the doctor’s private bathroom.

“Not anymore.”

Rad leaned back, lifted his right leg, and slammed his foot against the door by the handle. There was a crash, and a splintering sound, but the door held. He kicked it three more times before it swung open, falling off the upper hinge into the empty bathroom.

The open window, broad and low, looked out over an empty alley behind the building, a black Mercedes SUV

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parked against the rear brick wall under david green md in stenciled white paint.

“Fuck!” He pounded his fist on the sink. “Mason! Call it in. Get the word out.”

The sink had overflowed, and Rad, stepping backward from the window, slipped and almost went down.

“
Fuck!
Jesus, Jenner.”

In the office, Green’s neatly folded white coat sat on a leather daybed. The desk drawers were all closed, and the appointment book Jenner had noticed earlier lay there un-disturbed. Behind the desk, his computer monitor was off.

Jenner saw that the light below the screen was flickering.

“Rad! Behind you! His computer—the monitor’s turned off, but the computer’s on!”

“What?”

Jenner stepped over to the computer and ripped the plug out of the wall. The yellow LED on the front of the CPU

went out.

“What are you doing?”

“I think he’s trying to delete his files.”

Rad looked around the room angrily, as if waiting for Green to tumble out from behind a piece of furniture so he could beat the crap out of him.

“
Fuck!
”

Jenner and Garcia watched Crime Scene processing Green’s Mercedes in the alley. They’d started with Luminol in the cargo area just after dark, and were now vacuuming the front and back passenger wells as well as the cargo space.

There was no evidence of blood; one of the detectives had commented on how immaculate the car had been kept.

Rad shook his head and drew on his stubby cigar. “Have to hand it to him, this guy is pretty cool—the average shit-bird would just take off in the car, but Green remembers the LoJack.” He sighed. “He may be tough to find.”

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Jenner needed a break. He walked out onto the street and crossed over into Washington Square Park. The evening chill and drizzle had left the park unusually quiet; in summer it was a riot of street performers and tourists, dealers and pot-heads. Now it was deserted, save for a few scattered figures making their way through the trees, huddled under umbrellas.

Jenner sat on a damp bench and looked out over the park.

The wet surfaces of the memorial arch at the foot of Fifth Avenue glistened in the floodlights. The cold felt good.

He was surprised at how calm he was. Their first big break. A clear connection between the three victims, leading to a real suspect.

Which, he now had to admit, Green was. Still, as much as he disliked Green, Jenner had a hard time imagining him doing . . . those things. But what had he been expecting—

some deformed half-man with a hook for a hand? The evilest men are often the most ordinary, quiet, average people barely noticed by neighbors, even as they spend their weekends hunting and killing. An English criminal profiler Jenner knew called them “Custard People.”

But Green was completely different, a man with a big ego but with genuine achievements and, doubtless, social skills.

People probably liked him—his patients, his staff for sure.

His receptionist had seemed very close—she’d appeared shocked at his flight, and had resisted releasing the files even after she knew he was gone.

He’d skimmed Green’s files on the three victims; they were unremarkable. There had been few visits—an initial screening visit, a checkup while they were on Lupron, then notes about the coordination of stimulation of egg release and harvest, and a final op note for the egg recovery. Green had located the eggs using transvaginal ultrasound; no incisions were made, and once he’d retrieved the eggs, Green had no reason to see the girls again.

Jenner stood up, his legs stiff and cold. He walked back
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to Green’s office. Rad had left, but Roggetti was at Green’s desk, going through the appointment book.

“Hey, Joey. Can I use the phone?”

Roggetti waved him toward the exam room; Crime Scene was finished in there, and had already dusted the receiver for prints.

Jenner closed the door and sat down on a steel stool. He wiped off the fingerprint powder, then dialed long distance, connecting to the office of the corporate counsel in Massachusetts; better that Delore learned it from him than on CNN.

With a couple of keystrokes, the man deleted the file for his next project from the database. An elaborate precaution, perhaps, but he wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating his enemies. Of course, the police would eventually have access to a remote backup of the woman’s records, but with a bit of luck, they’d never discover the file was missing. He killed the modem signal and stood.

He looked down on his workbench, at all the elements and equipment laid out in a neat row. He’d spent almost an hour honing the curved scalpel blades—much harder than sharpening a straight edge. They were now razor sharp along their entire length, which was important if he was going to scoop out the little spheres cleanly.

He’d refilled a twenty-four-ounce Poland Spring water squeeze bottle with gasoline from the generator, but had a hard time getting the duct tape to stick. He’d ended up wrapping the nozzle with rags, then duct-taping the rags.

Then there was his standard kit—screwdriver, short pry bar, manacles, duct tape, rope. Soldering iron. It was the stuff he always brought, but it still gave him a thrill to see it all laid out like that.

And finally, the sword. He’d found it in an Atlantic Avenue antique store, and it cost far more than he could afford. It
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was a Freemason’s sword; he thought the decorations on the handle made it look gay.

He picked it up, accidentally carving his thumb on the blade. Smiling a little, he sucked the blood off his thumb: with a blade like that, who cared if the handle was a little

. . . flamboyant?

The candle flame guttered and died, and in the dark, he realized he was shivering.

He’d barely been eating, and he’d been rationing his gasoline for days now, trying to make it last as long as possible, only using it to power the generator for his laptop. He could always get more gasoline, but he didn’t want to take the risk of siphoning gas on the street this close to a project.

Standing there hungry, shivering in the cold and the dark, feeling the cancer inside him, he knew he couldn’t go on much longer. How much longer? Months, maybe. A year?

The last time he saw Dr. Zenker, months ago now, the on-cologist had been obviously surprised that he was doing so well. He wondered if he’d be alive in spring, framing the thought in the form of a question: Will I be alive on April 17? Will I be alive on May 1? He wondered if it would rain on the day he died. If it would rain on the day after. Where, exactly, he would die. In this room, vomiting blood on the filthy mattress? Gasping for breath on the loading dock under the gantry, the stench of brackish water and rat nests filling his mouth?

God, he was cold.

He thought about a time when he was nine, when he and his mom had been walking out near the farm and they came across a rabbit, its fur matted with drying blood, shivering under a hedge. His mom said the rabbit had been in a fight, probably with the cat, and that it was dying, and that when you find something dying, and it’s suffering, God says it’s okay to help it stop suffering. She’d reached under the hedge to pull it out, but it had kicked and struggled, and she had accidentally broken its leg. It began to scream, a horrible, whis-Precious Blood

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tling scream, and when she put her hands around its head to wring its neck, it bit her. She had killed it, then thrown the carcass to the ground. She headed back to the house, calling over her shoulder for the boy to bring it for dinner. When she had gone over the top of a hill, he had taken a stick and beaten the little body until the fur came off in clumps.

He wrapped himself in a blanket and lit another candle.

He inspected his kit again, feeling a little warmer in the yellow light, a little clearer as he looked at the shiny tools, glinting, ready to cut, ready to carve, ready to impale.

Yes. He was ready.

Jenner walked home from Green’s office, cutting across Washington Square Park and then down Broadway into SoHo. The cold and drizzling rain felt good; he felt awake and alive. It was close to midnight when he pushed open the door; he was surprised to find the loft in darkness.

There was a sudden orange flare as a match blazed in Ana’s hand. The flame floated between two candles on the table, the glow lighting up two placemats laid side by side.

She slipped her arm around his waist, and laid her head on his shoulder while he looked.

She’d set the table for two. There was a pitcher of orange juice, and on each placemat a bowl of Weetabix waited for milk.

“I made your favorite: breakfast!” She kissed him softly on the cheek, her lips hot on his skin. “Thanks, Jenner.

Thanks for everything.”

She pressed him down into a chair, poured milk on his cereal, then sprinkled it with sugar before sitting down next to him. She moved her chair closer and leaned into him.

He asked her what she had heard.

“On the news it said you found him, that it was that doctor.”

He put his spoon down. “Ana, I’m not sure he’s the guy.”

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“On the news it said he’d been arrested before.”

“What?”

“He was arrested for some kind of sex thing a few years ago.”

Jenner pushed back from the table and turned the TV to CNN just in time to catch the headline summary at the top of the hour; they’d found Green’s old mug shot and captioned it “Inquisitor Suspect.” The story led the broadcast, with a reporter live in front of Green’s office running through the facts. Someone on the Inquisitor squad had discovered that Green had been arrested for sexual assault while at medical school in Mexico. There had been a date rape allegation, the case stalling out when the victim, another medical student, refused to testify.

He turned to her. “Does he look like the guy you saw?”

“Yes. I mean, I didn’t recognize him just looking at his face, but now that I see him again, I think that could be him.

It was dark, and he was . . . bloody.”

Maybe he was wrong. After all, hadn’t he always said that everyone has the capacity to kill?

“You finished? Come and lie down with me, Jenner. I want to lie down now.”

He stood and stretched, and let her lead him to the bed.

friday,

december 13

Jenner and Father Sheehan sat at Green’s desk with Angie Buonfiglio, the receptionist. The priest, clearly bemused to find himself in the office of a gynecologist, was doing his best not to look toward Ms. Buonfiglio, who was wearing the shortest miniskirt Jenner had ever seen over thick wool stockings and high boots.

For her part, Ms. Buonfiglio, who had been brought up in a respectful home off Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, seemed just as uncomfortable sitting next to Sheehan. She did her best to hide her legs under the desk and keep her arms folded across her chest when not typing. When the priest excused himself to visit the bathroom, she took the opportunity to find a lab coat to cover herself, after which things were a little easier.

The plan was Jenner’s; Sheehan, in Manhattan for a doctor’s appointment, had volunteered to come in and help.

They were going to correlate patient names to upcoming saint days. Roggetti had argued it was a waste of time, that Green would be too busy hiding to kill anyone, but Jenner held his ground. They started with the calendar and cross-referenced it to the patient database.

Shortly after 10:00 a.m., the filing clerk, Adeline Calixte, arrived. A serious-looking Haitian woman, she immediately took control, forcing the nonplussed receptionist to one side and creating a new database from scratch in Excel. Her speed was impressive, and as Sheehan spelled out the names of martyrs for each date, the cells onscreen seemed to fill up miraculously with contact names and telephone numbers.

Joey Roggetti arrived, a little bewildered by the mix of people surrounding the monitor. He didn’t do much, just sat and watched, occasionally sneaking glances at Ms. Buonfiglio, then trying to catch Jenner’s eye to do the arched-eyebrows-232

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and-subtle-nod-toward-the-hot-chick thing. Jenner rolled his eyes in response, which seemed to satisfy Roggetti.

They broke for lunch at about 1:00 p.m. Sheehan excused himself and was getting ready to head uptown when Garcia arrived.

“Father, Jenner. Ms. Buonfiglio. Ma’am. How’s it going?”

Sheehan glanced over to the monitor. “The next few days are pretty light as far as concordance goes. No patient/saint name matches for today or tomorrow, one match on Sunday, a couple in the early part of next week.”

“Good. Gives us time to catch up with him—don’t go too far into the calendar. Hopefully we’re not going to need it.”

“We figured we’d stop when we get to one month out.”

Rad nodded in agreement.

Ms. Buonfiglio leaned in and said, “That can’t be right.

You said there’s none for today? That’s got to be a mistake.

Today’s the feast of Santa Lucia—my sister’s saint day.

That’s a fact.”

Sheehan nodded. “Yes, the feast of Santa Lucia. We’ve cross-referenced Lucia, Lucy, Lucie, Lucille, nothing.”

The receptionist was insistent. “No, that’s definitely wrong. I know there’s a Lucy—she was in on Monday to talk about maybe going for a third round. Black hair, said her family’s from Sicily. Pretty name.”

Mrs. Calixte turned and said, “Well, she’s not in the database. Are you certain her name was Lucy?”

“Absolutely. Italian, baptized Lucia, goes by Lucy. I told her about my sister when I met her. She’s got to be there.”

“Well, she’s not.” Mrs. Calixte took her hands off the keyboard.

Angie walked quickly out to the waiting room and began clicking through the appointment calendar on the computer at her desk. There was a triumphant exclamation.

“Here! Here, you see . . . Monday . . . morning appointment . . .” Her voice trailed off. “This just doesn’t make sense! I
know
she was here, Monday morning.”