He was calmer. What had he been thinking? He mustn’t damage her badly, not yet.
He could tell from the scent that there was not a lot of blood; he didn’t think he’d inflicted a mortal wound. But he could have, and that would have been bad. What if she’d died before he could kill her properly? He cursed his childish rush to instant gratification.
He rolled over to peer into the hole. There was nothing visible beneath it, and he could hear nothing. There was just the smell of blood.
He rolled onto his back, feeling a heat spreading over his
Precious Blood
413
middle. It appealed to him tremendously, her being trapped underfoot. He wanted to play with her a bit longer while she was down there. Eventually he’d winkle her out of her little hidey-hole, and then turn her out in ways she couldn’t imagine, not even in her worst nightmares in her cell.
Over on his workbench, he could see the silhouette of his nail gun. If he could get the nail gun underneath the floor . . .
As long as he avoided her head, it would be fun. The gas-powered compressor was old and noisy, and the noise coming from a supposedly abandoned building might draw attention. Still, tonight the risk seemed pretty low, and if there were a more worthy project, he couldn’t imagine it.
He ran his finger over the tip of the pole, touching the traces of the girl’s blood. He rubbed some onto his upper lip, felt the intake of his breath draw her smell up into his nose, into his sinuses, warming it, making the little molecules of blood dance in the inner chambers of his head. Under closed lids, his eyeballs fluttered up inside their sockets.
Jenner stood looking down to the water. There was nothing.
The street was dead, the buildings still in use—legit auto body shops to full-on chop shops, Jenner figured—closed down tight as a drum, the abandoned buildings all dilapidated beyond the point of habitation. No movement, no light, no heat.
They stood by the lot, against the fence, its base plastered with trapped scraps of newspaper and fluttering plastic bags.
The light from their flashlights played across the field, a blighted wasteland of illegally dumped trash, covered with a spotty layer of grimy snow and punctuated by the shells of old appliances.
He could hear Jun’s teeth chattering; the guilt he felt angered him.
He’d dragged Jun out for nothing. He’d been wrong about
414
j o n at h a n h ay e s
the street—no, not wrong about the street, it was certainly the street in Farrar’s picture, but he’d made the jump to believing that this was where Farrar would have the girl, and then another to thinking that he would just walk down the street, find the girl, and save her.
He’d read too many books, seen too many movies. Who was he kidding? This was real life, and there was no sign of Farrar, no sign of Ana. Even if there had been, Farrar would have killed them before they got anywhere near the girl, would have cut him in two without blinking an eye; Jenner would never forget how the man had moved on the loading dock on Crosby Street.
Why had he even thought he had a chance against him?
Not in this world, not in the real world.
They walked down to the waterfront, in front of the vast factory. At some point, a fire had stained the brick around the windows with thick smears of soot, and through the empty ground-floor windows Jenner could make out much of the collapsed roof, snow-mounded piles of rubble and broken joists.
He realized how tired he was. This was pointless.
“We’ll go down nearer the river, and if we don’t see anything else, we’ll head home and . . . figure out our next step.”
Jun nodded. They moved in silence, neither really focusing on the buildings around them anymore, the last walk a glum gesture, a symbol of what they’d tried to do for her.
They walked the high fencing and razor wire the entire length of the ruined factory, all the way to the waterfront.
The fencing ran out over the water along a concrete jetty; at the end of the jetty, one side of the pier sagged into the water.
Across the river in the mist, the buildings of Manhattan were spangled in light, below them the cars on the FDR a glimmering necklace.
Across the street, a crane sat among the heaps of crushed
Precious Blood
415
brick and metal and glass in the Cortland Iron Building lot.
The views from the condos that would go up here would be amazing. Large Dumpsters sat on each side of the gate, resting like barges on mud turned pink from brick dust. The brick mud flowed out of the entranceway all the way to their feet, a river of pulverized building.
Jun looked down and cursed. “Great! These are Prada. I paid four hundred dollars last week at the SoHo store—I’ll stick to Payless in future.”
He leaned against a fence pole and began wiping brick mud from his shoes. Jenner, watching, straightened.
“Jun. I wasn’t wrong. This is the place . . .”
“What?”
“When she was talking about the night her roommate died, Ana told Rad the man had pink mud on his boots.
We’re standing in it.”
Jun pointed his flashlight at their feet.
“Jenner, it looks a little pink, maybe, but there’s nothing around here. It’s dead.”
They stood there in silence. Maybe Jun was right—there was crushed brick around the entire city.
Then, from somewhere far behind them in the dark heart of the ruined factory, they heard a gas engine start up.
“So, what do we do?”
Jenner said, “We . . . we have to get a closer look. If it’s anything, we’ll call the police, okay?”
Jun pulled out his cell phone, flicked it open. “On what?
We still don’t have reception.”
“Maybe you should wait here. I’ll go check it out, and signal you if we need to get the police.”
“Jenner, what is this, Boy Scout camp? ‘Signal’ me? I’ll come with you. If we actually find something, then I’ll go for the police.”
Jenner nodded.
416
j o n at h a n h ay e s
“I think we can get past the fence over there on the pier.”
Out on the concrete jetty, the engine was louder across the water.
The factory was much larger than they’d imagined: the burned-out brick shell that ran along Callyer’s Slip was just the southernmost wing of a larger complex. Behind the boarded-up waterfront facade, they could make out an old loading dock under a high archway, and beyond the dock a central courtyard, piled high with bricks and refuse.
The chain-link fence in front of the warehouse ran along the jetty for some yards. Jenner grabbed the fencing and tugged it hard; the mesh rattled, slightly loose against the uprights, leaving enough space to wedge a foot underneath onto the concrete. There was room for them to move along the fence on the water side all the way back to the riv-erbank. They made their way along the pier, clinging to the slippery fence with aching fingers. Jun made it to land first, and stood, stretching out a hand to Jenner. The mesh recoiled with a tinny spring as Jenner stepped onto the hard ground.
Jun said, “There’s got to be another way. I can’t believe he’s been getting in and out along that fence, climbing along the pier every time.”
Jenner looked into the dark ruins and muttered, “We should keep it quiet. Who knows if he’s watching out.”
Jun shrugged. “Who knows if it’s even him.”
They looked up at the hulking factory. The building was actually four huge wings around a central quadrangle. Caked black soot from the fire surrounded almost all of the windows; none had glass. Part of the facade along the waterfront had collapsed, and much of the roofing was gone. The boat slip ahead was under a broad Roman arch, its width spanned near the top by a rusted iron gantry, the loading dock and landings beneath sheathed in shadow.
They made their way along the narrow embankment, the path overgrown from years of neglect. They kept their flash-Precious Blood
417
lights off, the walkway barely visible in the dim light of the damp night.
They turned the corner and moved toward the dock area.
Under the big arch, the sound of the engine grew louder, rattling around the damp walls. The path ahead disappeared into the dark recesses of the slip. Jenner wrapped the flashlight in his scarf to dim it, and shone the faint beam in front of them; it was better than nothing. They moved toward the sound, toward the center of the factory.
Jenner came to a stop.
“Fuck.”
On the far side of the gantry, the walkway was blocked by a ten-foot-tall fence, the top heavily garlanded with razor wire. The fencing looked new, probably put up when they’d fenced off the waterfront for demolition and new construction. It ran several feet out over the water to an upright that had also been wound with razor wire. There was no give to the fence when he pulled on it, and in the light of Jenner’s flashlight, there was not enough room to get under.
Jun nudged his elbow and murmured, “Look.”
Jenner followed the beam of Jun’s flashlight in front of them. Jun slid the light along the upright for the gantry. He was right: it looked climbable.
Farrar was ready: time to make things a little more interesting.
He dragged the rattling compressor over to the big windows, careful not to burn himself on the hot engine. It was an ancient Rol Air, the housing battered and the thick rubber air hose chewed up and frayed. He’d soldered the safety lock so that he no longer had to press the nail gun against a surface to fire it: now it was point-and-click.
Smirking at his own geeky joke, he glanced around the room. The floor was now pocked with gaping holes; using the sharpened bar and his hatchet, he’d enlarged many of
418
j o n at h a n h ay e s
them so that he could get his nail gun down into the crawlspace. In the far corner, working under cover of the noise and vibration of the compressor, he’d pried up several floorboards to create the hole through which he’d eventually extract her.
He fought the urge to whistle.
The compressor had probably done its job by now. It took a little while for the old machine to build up a head of pressure, but once it had, the gun could fire a three-and-a-half-inch roofing nail right out the other side of a two-by-four.
He knew very well where she was—over by the two big windows at the end of the long room, opposite where he needed her to go.
He hefted the nail gun, the hose draping over his arm like a python. It felt good, an extension of his hand, the tubing one of his arteries blasting air down to the gun in his fist.
He would take one shot at close range, just the one, for fun; the chance that he’d hit anything vital was small. One close-range, then after that he’d take his time, herd her toward the exit hole with more distant shots, wounds meant to puncture, to goad, not to kill or maim. But the first one, that was a freebie, that was just for kicks.
With the compressor roaring away near her head, she wouldn’t hear him coming; even so, he stepped softly as he walked across the floor. The surprise would be part of the fun, her discovering he knew exactly where she was.
Standing by the engine, he picked up the nail gun. He studied the floor in front of him, tried to visualize her lying underneath his feet. After a few seconds, he bent over and pressed the muzzle of the nail gun to the wood.
He breathed in deeply, closed his eyes, and held his breath.
Then he squeezed the trigger.
There was a surprisingly loud bang as the nail shot right through the rotten floorboard, and an immediate yelp of pain.
On his knees now, he listened excitedly for her movements,
Precious Blood
419
trying to figure out which way she was moving, but he could hear nothing but the noise of the compressor. Swearing, he grabbed the machine and quickly dragged it to the other side of the room. He dropped to his belly and crept across the floor as slowly and quietly as he could.
He could hear her under the floorboards, snuffling and gasping. She was moving away from the stairway, he thought, moving along the window wall, dragging herself through the crawlspace, whimpering like a bitch as she crawled.
He pressed his face to the floor, his ear over one of the holes, trying to get a sense of how far she’d moved.
A bit farther, she’d moved a bit farther.
He crawled forward, nail gun in his left hand, the stiff hose scraping the floor as it dragged behind him. He moved toward the far wall and placed his ear over the nearest hole.
It was silent. She was holding her breath, the bitch was holding her breath!
Or dead, it occurred to him. She could be dead. The thought unsettled him, the idea that after all his planning, his building, the wooden cross ready for her body, his beautifully chosen site, after all that, her pointless attempt to get away might spoil his project. He had such little respect for her now that he could just
spit
.
He listened, holding his own breath, like a doctor being careful not to mistake his own pulse for that of his patient.
Silence.
Then there was a quiet rustle, the faintest sound of fabric brushing wood. She was alive!
He closed his eyes tight to listen, pressing his head down against the floor, trying to seal his ear against the hole.
The corkscrew drove right through his cheek, goring the roof of his mouth as she punched it into his head, ripped it back downward, hooked his face down against the dark hole.
Howling in pain and shock, he tried to push himself up, but she fought him, twisting her fist away from him. He finally jerked to his feet, tearing his cheek wide open.
420
j o n at h a n h ay e s
He staggered through the room in agony, his fingers struggling to press the torn flap against his face, his wrist already slippery with blood.
He ran back to where she was, stood over her body, and stomped the floor with his boots, screaming wetly at her, telling her how he’d open her up and show her her insides, how he would let the rats eat her guts until she begged him to kill her, his bloody spit spraying onto the floor.