Precious Blood by Jonathan Hayes Page B

had waited for an appropriate length of time, Delore stood, terminated his conversation, closed his laptop, and joined them. A tall man with gray hair and dark eyebrows, he was wearing a navy suit, a blue shirt with crisp white collar, and a dark tie. Rather than sit next to his wife on the couch, he drew over another chair, positioning himself so that the three of them sat in a triangle.
    “Sorry, Dr. Jenner. Just talking with your district attorney, making sure he’s keeping some pressure on the police.”
    He leaned over and shook Jenner’s hand perfunctorily. “We know each other a little bit from the National Governors Association meetings.”
    He opened a clipboard and laid it on the table, placed a pen neatly across it, then said, “Now. DA Klein tells me you went to the scene of . . .” He flushed, reached up to tug at his tie. “Yes, that you’ve been to the scene where . . .”
    He closed his eyes, then tilted his head down, his lip working as he began to cry.
    His wife stood and put a hand on his shoulder; he tried to wave her away, but she caught his hand and stayed. She pulled him to her and stroked his head as he wept.
    Jenner said, “Mr. Delore, I can’t imagine how hard this day has been for you. Perhaps it would be better if we spoke a little later.”
    Delore, sobbing, tried to shake his head, but his wife said,
    “I think that would be best, Doctor. We have your telephone number. When he’s had a chance to get some rest, my husband will call you.” She nodded to Jenner, grateful.
    Jenner stood as she helped her husband to his feet, then put an arm around him and led him from the room.
    Jenner let himself out.
    Ana was still in his bed when he got home. She got up quickly and made a feeble show of tidying the bedroom.
    He shooed her into the TV room and ordered pizza.
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    They ate at the kitchen table, both too tired to speak. After dinner, she took a long bath. She tried to make him take the bed, arguing that he was much taller than she was, and that she felt really guilty, him being uncomfortable on the couch. But he wouldn’t hear of it, and insisted that she keep the bed.
    It wasn’t a wholly altruistic act, he realized: at some level, he liked her gratitude. Still, at six-foot-two, for him the couch was an uncomfortable prospect; it was just as well he was exhausted.
    But he couldn’t sleep—the day wouldn’t leave him alone.
    The girl on the wall. Whittaker. Tony Delore weeping in his plush hotel suite. And now Ana, in his space, in his bed.
    He was wired; he needed to come down, to feel himself again. He got up and went to his desk. He opened up a mahogany case and took out a double-sealed bottle of tincturing alcohol, a glass laboratory flask, and several dark vials of floral and herbal extracts.
    After the whole 9/11 thing, when he finally admitted to himself that he was coping poorly, Julie bullied him into seeing one of the government-funded therapists. Dr. Rother had said it might help him to get the collection of essential oils. Jenner, amused, had bought the set, only to be amazed at how wonderful he found the small library of scents. He later explained slightly sheepishly to Rother that the oils hadn’t helped him in an aromatherapy way, but had helped him get out of his head and back into his body. Working with the oils was a purely sensual pastime, with no goal beyond experiencing the scents. Learning to spot the different aromas, experimenting with blending extracts, observing how the scent changed as the perfume met the air, provided Jenner with an almost Zen immersion in a natural, real thing: a fleeting moment of pure sensation that couldn’t be touched by burning fires or collapsing buildings, by radiation or by weaponized bacteria.
    At first, he’d struggled to tell ylang-ylang from jasmine, 50
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    but soon he could easily separate the sweetness of jasmine grandiflorum from the heady, erotic perfume of night-blooming jasmine