The Body Reader (10 page)

CHAPTER 17

H
is girl
.

In the beginning, her journals contained stories of rescue. German shepherds on black leashes leading policemen through the woods to her hiding place. They would break open the door, and she would shield her eyes from the unaccustomed light. Hands would pull her outside, where she would breathe deeply. A female officer would appear and tell her everything was going to be okay. Someone would hand her a phone, and she would hear her mother’s voice.

And they would both cry.

But she didn’t have those dreams anymore.

She now understood how easy it was for a person to adapt. Whatever was thrown at her, she made a mental adjustment. No matter how unbearable and how impossible a situation, her brain learned to accept it as normal.

She’d heard of Stockholm syndrome. She’d heard of beaten and humiliated women who didn’t leave their husbands. People talked about how they had no place to go, but she wondered if anybody ever talked about how the brain made staying okay. How the brain accepted the abuse and made it okay.

Turn the darkness into light.

So in her head and in her dreams, the cops with dogs no longer came. Instead, she waited for him. For the man who brought her food and made love to her in the dark.

And while she waited, she spent her time creating a world beyond the walls of her room. Sometimes she imagined herself deep in the heart of Minneapolis, maybe in some massive, abandoned warehouse. Other times, she was on the tallest floor of a skyscraper, her room surrounded by clouds. Other times she was deep in the woods.

Her mind kept her company because she’d long ago decided nobody was coming for her. She no longer remembered what her parents looked like, and she no longer remembered what the sun felt like or what snow felt like. All she knew was one man. He was her world.

CHAPTER 18

E
motionally wiped after the funeral and a day of dodging the media, Jude shot out of the police-department parking garage. Darkness came late in Minnesota this time of the year. It was after eight, and dusk hadn’t yet hit as the mood on the street continued its transition from work to play. She liked this time of day, the golden hour, when she and Eric used to stroll around the lakes.

Weaving up and down residential neighborhoods in her habitual search, she added a new section of streets to her grid as she moved methodically west.

Today felt different. Today she found herself slowing down, found her eyes drawn to a one-and-a-half-story stucco house on a tree-lined street that looked like it had gone to hell long before the blackouts.

She pulled to a stop and straddled the bike.

The house had a broken window in the attic and a yard that had been neglected, complete with a plastic trash bag stuck to a tall weed, but the property didn’t stand out as being much worse than any other on the block. And yet . . .

Her heart slammed in her chest and her senses shot into overdrive as she took in details: cracks in the sidewalk, limbs cut by the power company, rust on the chain-link fence, street trash blown and trapped in corners against the crumbling foundation, plus the sweet scent of a neighbor’s flower garden.

It was said that those bad places, places where you’d been the most miserable—those places called to you. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was simply that the bad memories were covered in a protective layer and tucked away so deep that they no longer seemed your own life but something you might have read or a movie you might have seen. So you found yourself needing to go back there to touch the place, see the place. Not to reassure yourself that it was real and that it had occurred, but to observe it from the distance of a safe mind, to marvel that this thing happened to you and you survived.

Her memory of her time in the basement had changed over the past few months, morphing into a combination of real and unreal, but that protective mental distance didn’t keep her from wanting to revisit her past long enough to find a dead body on the floor. Or, at the very least, a grease spot where a dead body had been.

She shut off the bike, secured it on the stand, and swung her leg over the seat to walk across the lawn and stand in front of the house. She checked to make sure her belt was around her waist and her weapon in place.

With a pounding heart, she approached the front door and knocked. When no one answered, she circled to the side of the house, where three cement steps led to a back door. She remembered just such steps covered in packed snow. She knocked before peering through the murky glass, hand shading her eyes in an attempt to see inside.

Then she tested the knob.

It turned.

Holding her breath, she pushed open the door with her shoulder and entered the kitchen. The basement steps were directly in front of her. “Hello?”

Her gaze tracked nervously until she spotted the Taser on the table where she’d left it. On the floor were the spent shell casings that had bounced around her bare feet. And the smell . . . Death, yes, certainly death, but the other odors were still there, embedded in the walls, ceiling, and floor. Nicotine and fried food, mildew and urine. She’d never forget the smell. If she didn’t smell it again for thirty years, she’d recognize it.

Home sweet home.

Robotically, she pulled out her phone and called Uriah.

He answered after two rings.

She might have said something. She must have said something, because he responded with “What’s going on?” There was no missing the concern in his voice.

“I found the house,” she told him with no further betrayal of emotion. No need to explain
what
house.

“Don’t go inside. Give me the address.”

“I’m
already
inside.”

“Then get the hell out of there.”

“Everything’s covered in dust. Nobody’s been in or out for a long time.”

“Damn it, Jude. Where are you? What’s the address?”

She’d been unprofessional and unaware. “I don’t even know the street.”

He made an exasperated sound. “If you aren’t going to leave, at least stay on the line.”

She knew she shouldn’t have come here by herself, and yet she couldn’t imagine coming here with another person. She had to see it alone, with no one watching, no one listening.

“Jude?”

The basement door was open, just like she’d left it. “I’m going downstairs.”

“Listen. Get out of there. Go outside, go to the front of the house, figure out the address, give it to me.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“Jude!”

“I have to go.” She disconnected.

The light switch at the top of the stairs did nothing even though she flipped it twice. She resorted to using the flashlight app on her phone. Hand on the railing, she descended. Each step seemed to erase more of her bravado; each step took her closer to the person she never wanted to be again.

She was shaking now. Not a little, but a lot.

Halfway down, her phone rang. She jumped, then checked the screen:
Uriah
. She didn’t answer. Instead, she refocused the app.

There it was. The single bare lightbulb.

In the center of the room was the cell where she’d spent three years of her life. More important, near the bottom of the steps was a body, or what was left of a body after months of decay.

She was only distantly aware of the overpowering stench. Her focus was the flannel of his shirt, and how the fabric had felt under her fingertips those times when she’d both fought him off and begged him to stay. Beneath the odor of rot, she detected the cigarettes he smoked, and she remembered the way his beard had felt against her neck in the darkness.

She completed her descent, sidestepping the remains. The cell door was open. Inside, she could see a filthy blanket. A chipped ceramic plate. She stared at the rose pattern, recalled it, recalled thinking how curious for someone so cruel and evil to have a plate with a delicate rose pattern.

She turned and left.

Without examining the rest of the residence, she walked back up the stairs, walked out the side door, and circled to the front of the house to locate the faded numbers above the entry. A glance at the nearest street sign, then she pulled out her phone and called Uriah, who answered on the first ring.

“Did you find a body?” he asked, his voice tense.

“Yes.” She gave him the address. “It’s in the basement. Call the BCA. Get a crime-scene team here.”

“Good work.” A pause. “You okay?”

She should have felt relief. Hope for this moment had kept her going. She hadn’t realized that until now. This moment, recognized or unrecognized, had been the driving force of her days. Find the house. Find the man.

But instead of relief, all she felt was horror, along with a sick compulsion to go back downstairs and rub her face against the flannel of the dead man’s shirt.

That
would be certifiable.

She’d gotten away. She’d escaped. Why couldn’t she have left it at that? Why couldn’t that have been enough? Why hadn’t she let it go, the way Uriah had suggested? Her captor was dead. He’d been dead for months. And proof of his death changed nothing.
Nothing.
It didn’t erase the brutality she’d suffered. Instead, finding the body brought her suffering back with a clarity that was cruel beyond cruel.

Now . . .
now
he was alive again. Even though he was lying down there in a puddle of grease and bones, he seemed more alive right now than he’d seemed since her escape. It was as if she’d dug him up, breathed life into him, and brought him back to her.

She used to find it frustrating when victims refused to press charges against a person who deserved to be put away. Now she understood their thinking. Acknowledgment brought it back. It meant there was no walking away. No starting over.

Part of her wanted to run home. Not even get on her bike—just run. Just feel the sidewalk under her feet, feel her arms pumping and her lungs burning. Another part of her wanted to circle the house, go back inside, return to the basement, and lock herself in the cell.

Of the two choices, returning to the basement seemed the most appealing.

“Jude? Talk to me. Are you okay?”

She’d forgotten about the live phone in her hand. Uriah repeated his question. She wanted to tell him how she was feeling, but it was too hard to explain, and she wondered if putting the words out there, sharing her feelings with someone else, would bring with it another level of real. She couldn’t take any more real right now.

She thought about leaving. Wondered if she should stay. How long before the crime-scene team got there? She should talk to them. She didn’t want to talk to them. She didn’t want to see their reaction to the house. She didn’t want to see their reaction to the place she’d lived for three years. From now on, whenever they saw her, talked to her, they would imagine her here, and their very awareness would further imprint this place on her, stamping it into her very marrow.

“I’m fine,” she told him, and disconnected.

CHAPTER 19

U
riah pulled to the curb behind Jude’s motorcycle, shut off the car, grabbed a small flashlight, and got out. He was the first to arrive on the scene.

The house was typical of Midtown Phillips, a neighborhood located north of Powderhorn and east of Whittier. Red trim, cream stucco, one and a half stories. In need of repair. Rotten wood, chipped paint. The lawn had been mowed maybe two weeks earlier, and Uriah recognized the city’s yard-maintenance bill stuck to the front door. Somebody had apparently complained about the grass. A surprise, since most area residents probably wouldn’t care about the criminal or weirdass next door, let alone tall grass.

He’d expected to find Jude waiting outside, but after a quick perusal of the exterior and no Jude, he took the crumbled cement steps to the kitchen and eased his way inside.

The smell of death permeated the building. Not that overpowering stench that developed soon after, but the other one, the one that came after a body rotted, after the fat melted into a puddle that never went away. That odor was every bit as bad as the other. No one would ever be able to live in the house again.

A few steps to the right were the kitchen and a doorway that led to a short hall and probably bedrooms and a bathroom. Sink piled high with dishes. A layer of dust and grime on everything. He tested a couple of switches. No power—another sign that nobody had been there recently.

Directly in front of the back door and entry area were the basement steps. Was she down there? Or had she left the house? Was she walking up the street, gulping in fresh air until the crime-scene team showed up? That’s what he’d do.

“Jude?” He didn’t shout. Just a conversational tone. He sure as hell didn’t want to startle her.

“Down here.” No emotion.

He pulled out the Maglite. Clicked it on and gave the beam a pass across the blood-spattered walls of the stairwell. He paused halfway down the steps, the glow illuminating his partner.

She stood with her back to him, dressed in black pants and leather jacket, one hand on her hip, elbow out, legs spread, looking down at a pile of fabric and melting flesh at her feet. As if she were making sure it didn’t move.

“Is it him?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

Her voice sounded oddly untroubled. Like somebody answering a question about whether she thought it might rain. “Maybe. Maybe not.” She held her phone in her hand. The flashlight app was open, and the beam moved with her comments. “Nothing really distinguishing about the clothing. Jeans, boots, flannel shirt. Hair—not sure about that. Not with all the decay, but it looks about the right color.”

“We’ve got the gun you shot him with, so ballistics should produce a match. And we’ll run his prints, if we can lift any, and DNA through the database.” He heard the sound of a siren. Why the hell were they using sirens? “Sure you don’t want to go outside? Let us handle this?”

“I’ll stay.”

This wouldn’t be easy for her.

“It feels like I never left.” She turned, and he directed the flashlight beam toward the floor so the light wouldn’t blind her. “I can’t explain it,” she said. “And I know this will sound crazy, but it’s kind of like coming home.” Her voice cracked a little on the last word. She was struggling more than he’d thought.

“You were here a long time,” he said quietly.

“Sometimes it seems like days, and at other times it seems like I was here forever. Like I was never anywhere else.” Her expression turned inward as she tried to examine what she was feeling. “There’s a part of me that regrets killing this monster. He owned me, and life was simple then. Just the nothing of it. Isn’t that
weird
?” She looked at him, really looked at him, something she didn’t often do. In communication rather than examination. “I know it’s wrong,” she said. “I know it’s crazy. I know he was an evil bastard. I know he should be dead, but part of me . . . part of me wants to crawl into that box.” She broke eye contact and moved her light to illuminate a tiny room built in the center of the basement, ceiling to floor, the walls thick and soundproofed. “Part of me wants to crawl in there and close the door behind me.”

He swallowed. “Conditioned response.”

“Part of me misses
that
me.” She pointed to the box. “That me was all I had at one time. That me got me through this.”

He thought about the things she’d told him in the hospital. It had shaken him then, and it shook him now—being in the space where she’d been tortured
for so long
. The length of time it had gone on was especially heinous. Add to that the fact that he felt guilty for assuming her dead . . .

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “It’s all right.”

“Don’t comfort
me
. I’m not the one who deserves comforting.”

“You’re the one in pain.”

He blew out a breath and shook his head. She’d been broken, and somehow, on her own, she’d put herself together again. And this new person was both weaker and stronger than the old one. “My pain is nothing.”

They stared at each other, both reacting at the same time upon hearing sounds of activity near the house.

Leaving Jude in the basement, Uriah turned and went upstairs and outside to brief the crime-scene crew. “No electricity,” he said. “Somebody needs to call the power company and get the juice back on. In the meantime, bring some portable lighting inside.”

Yellow tape was already going up around the perimeter of the property, strung by a crew wearing navy-blue jackets with the letters
BCA
across the back. The tape would be there a long time. The yard would be vacuumed. Once that was done, the soil would be probed, and if anything suspicious turned up, the ground would be turned over. The house itself would be combed top to bottom.

“I want video footage of everything, especially the cell in the basement,” Uriah told the tech in charge. “The shell casings on the kitchen floor? Get them to ballistics. Tell them to see if they match the gun we took off Jude Fontaine the night she escaped.”

Grant Vang burst through the cluster of people, jacket flapping, out of breath, face tense. “I got here as fast as I could,” he said. “Where’s Jude?”

A team member emerged from the house, an uncomfortable expression on his face. “Should she be in there?” He nodded over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen and the basement, where Jude was probably still standing over the body.

Uriah looked at Grant. “Let’s see what we can do.”