The Body Reader (11 page)

CHAPTER 20

D
arkness was coming on with more seriousness as Jude straddled her bike in front of the corpse house. As she reached for her helmet, the phone in her pocket vibrated. Uriah and Grant were still in the basement. Since they’d only just convinced her to leave, she doubted either of them would be texting her. She checked the screen:
Lola Holt
.

The text read,
Meet me at Spyhouse. I need to talk to you.

Located in the Whittier neighborhood, Spyhouse Coffee wasn’t that far away. The message served more than one purpose. Jude would finally get that interview with the elusive and uncooperative Lola Holt, and she didn’t have to go home just yet, which meant she could push thoughts of the body in the basement to the back of her mind, at least for now.

She replied to the message:
Be there in ten minutes.

She strapped on her helmet, put the bike in neutral, and gave the kick start a downward thrust of her heel. Engaging the gears and releasing the clutch, she took off up the street.

As Jude headed to the café, her thoughts raced. She replayed her discovery of the house, her opening of the back door, the way the light from her phone had cast deep shadows, giving the blood on the walls the appearance of movement. The smell itself was embedded in her sinuses, now trapped in the claustrophobic helmet she wanted to rip from her head. Minutes passed before she realized she’d gone several blocks with no awareness of her surroundings.

Stopping at a red light, feet planted on each side of the bike, she glanced in her rearview mirror at a black car that had come to an abrupt halt just feet from her back tire. The light changed. She made a right turn. So did the car. Maybe nothing, but just in case, she slowed and made another turn while keeping an eye on the vehicle.

It followed, continuing to ride too close.

She gave the bike gas and shifted into a higher gear. The machine jumped forward just as Jude heard a series of pops that her brain registered as gunshots. At the same time, the bike balked and the back tire pulled hard to the left. She struggled to remain upright but couldn’t maintain control, rider and machine crashing to the pavement. The momentum and the difference in weight separated them until they were moving side by side, finally coming to a full stop at the mouth of an alley.

Dazed, her senses and vision restricted by the helmet, she fumbled for the latch under her chin, released the catch, tossed the helmet aside, and rolled to her feet.

As she tried to get her bearings, a body came out of nowhere, slamming into her, propelling her to the ground. Before she caught a glimpse of a face, an army of feet pounded the ground and a cloth bag was tugged over her head, blinding her while her hands were pinned. She struggled, kicked, attempting moves she’d practiced in self-defense classes, but she was outnumbered.

How many assailants? Two? Three? Maybe four.

Even as she struggled to fight them off, her mind attempted to sort and rank the possible reasons behind the attack. Robbery in an area of town where muggings had become commonplace? Worse—a reason she couldn’t even fully consider—was this another abduction?

One of them punched her. Someone else held her down, knee to her spine, leaning close. A man. She was sure it was a man. She could feel his hot breath reaching her ear through the cloth obliterating her vision. She tried to focus her senses. Was he someone she knew? Someone who knew her? She needed a clue—something tactile, a scent, a voice. But her assailant didn’t say a word as his hand pressed against her trachea, cutting off her oxygen until she blacked out.

CHAPTER 21

U
riah reentered the house after making sure Jude had left to go home. Inside, he found Vang in the bedroom, sifting through the contents of a desk.

“Look at this.” In Vang’s gloved hand were newspaper clippings and eight-by-ten color photos. “The guy was obsessed with her.”

Uriah took a stack and began shuffling through them. Pictures of Jude in various locations. Cafés, getting in and out of her car, jogging near the lake. The photos even marked the change of seasons. Jude in shorts and tank top, Jude in jeans and sweater, Jude in a heavy coat, stocking cap, gloves. “He was spying on her for a long time,” he said.

“Planning and waiting to make his move.”

“What do you think? An isolated obsession? Have you found photos of anyone else?” In particular, anyone who’d been reported missing.

“Not yet, but there’s a lot here.” Vang waved a hand at the desk. “Maybe you could check that bottom-right drawer. I haven’t been there yet.”

It was stuffed tight. Uriah tugged and the drawer finally gave, photos bursting free.

“Taken with an instant camera,” Uriah said. One of the cheap Polaroid knockoffs.

Vang glanced up. “Not a big surprise.”

Uriah scooped up the spilled photos, then froze as his mind struggled to process what he was seeing.

Jude. Of course, Jude.

In every one she was nude. Filthy, hair matted, welts and cuts on her chest, her legs, her back, her hips. Photo after photo of degradation and impossible torture.

My God.

He swallowed.

Was the entire drawer Jude?

“Find anything?” Vang said as he moved to another area of the room.

“Not yet.” Uriah didn’t want Vang to see the photos. He didn’t want anybody to see them. He especially didn’t want Jude to see them. What he really wanted was to take them outside and set them on fire.

And yes, the entire drawer was stuffed with photos of her.

Three years of them, starting at the bottom when she was still healthy and her hair was brown and her eyes were clear. The brutal and progressive wasting of her body and mind had been acutely and systematically documented.

“Christ,” Vang whispered.

Uriah flinched in surprise and looked over his shoulder to see Vang take a half stumble away, an expression of horror on his face before he turned in an attempt to hide his reaction. Keeping his back to Uriah, he said, “You could have warned me, Ashby.”

Uriah thought the thing between Jude and Vang had been nothing, maybe one of those accidents they both quickly regretted, realizing it had been a mistake. Now he wondered if Vang had been serious about Jude at one time. Was he still serious? His reaction didn’t strike Uriah as the reaction of a casual acquaintance, or even that of someone who’d worked with her over three years ago. Of course, Vang had been in charge of the case. The guilt of not finding her was probably eating him up.

“How well did you know her back then?” Uriah asked, fishing.

Vang turned back around but didn’t look at the photos in Uriah’s hand. “She was my partner.” He shrugged. “How well do
you
know her?”

Was he jealous? Upset that Jude was no longer
his
partner? “Pretty hard to get to know the Jude of today.”

“Yeah, she’s changed. A lot.” Vang snapped off his latex gloves. “I kinda thought . . . I don’t know. I mean I knew she’d be messed up, but I didn’t expect her to be so . . . shut off. I didn’t expect her to avoid an old friend.”

“It’s not about you. Or me. She’s doing what she has to do to protect herself.”

“I know.”

“Hand me one of the large evidence boxes,” Uriah said before anybody else happened into the room. “I’ll put the photos inside and seal it. I don’t want Jude to see them or know they exist.”

Vang passed a box to him. “I gotta get some air.”

After Vang left, Uriah boxed everything up and attached an evidence seal. Wondering if he was going to pass out or throw up, he thought about Jude, the Jude he knew today, not the Jude in the photos. He felt reawakened anger toward Ortega for bringing her on board, because how could anyone ever recover from the torture and brutal dehumanization he’d seen in those photos? How in the hell?

CHAPTER 22

J
ude’s return to consciousness was slow and confused.

For a brief moment she thought she was back in the cell. But no. She could hear the sounds of far-off traffic. And weren’t those voices? Outdoor voices? Conversation and laughter?

She tugged off the cloth bag and rolled to her back. Above her were night sky and towering buildings.

Still in the alley.

She turned her head, her vision slow to follow. Blinking the world into focus, her eyes tracked across an expanse of redbrick alleyway, coming to a stop when she spotted her upright bike with her helmet hanging over one handlebar.

It seemed like a mugging, but her bike hadn’t been taken. She patted the pocket of her jacket and felt the shape of her phone, her wallet alongside it. Her gun was still strapped to her waist.

She rolled to her knees and shoved herself upright. The ground tilted, and she put out a foot to steady herself. Every time she moved, the ground shifted. Like someone who’d just blown a .40 on a Breathalyzer test, she aimed for her bike. She managed to straddle the machine and remove the helmet, which was oddly heavy, from the handlebars. And then she noticed that the strap was sticky.

In the light cutting into the alley from the street, she stared at the object in her hand, her brain denying what was in front of her. The pressure in her ears changed, became hollow and thick until the slamming of her heart seemed to come from both her chest and head. Sounds beyond the alley, sounds of nightlife, grew muffled, and lights dimmed.

She let out a gasp and dropped the helmet. It hit the brick of the alley and rolled away, leaving a trail of blood.

She stared at the blood for a long moment, then pulled out her phone.

Broken.

She turned the key on her bike and tried to kick-start it. Nothing but a disheartening click. That’s when she smelled gas.

She got off the bike and picked up the helmet. Carrying it like a basket, she began walking toward the sounds of laughter.

CHAPTER 23

I
t was Friday night in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis. Bars and restaurants were packed, and people strolled and staggered into the streets. The party bus waited to take some of them to another area of town, and couples struggled to find keys, fighting over who would drive and who should call a cab.

“Oh my God. Look at that woman,” Fatima, one of the less inebriated of her bunch said. She’d been reluctant to go out after hearing tales of how the streets were so much more dangerous now, but it was her birthday, and her friends had coaxed her into celebrating. Now her earlier unease was back.

People in her group looked up to see a tall woman with short white hair coming toward them on the sidewalk, her gait weird. Not really a stagger, but faltering. Like she was walking in soft sand, or like she was really, really tired, or really, really drunk.

Her pants were torn. She had a gash above one eye, and blood down one side of her face and neck. Dirty motorcycle jacket, black boots, black helmet in her hand.

She’s been in a wreck,
Fatima thought. She looked down the street, expecting to see flashing lights and maybe smashed cars.

A few girls laughed, and one shouted and clung drunkenly to the guy next to her. “Are we missing the Zombie Pub Crawl?”

The strange woman lurched closer, and the laughter that had erupted with the pub-crawl comment faltered. Fatima went still, and her boyfriend’s arm tightened around her waist.

The woman reached a streetlight and paused.

“Is that blood?” One of Fatima’s friends, the girl who’d talked her into coming out tonight, pointed to the helmet.

It
was
blood, Fatima decided. A lot of it.

Her boyfriend leaned close. “Call the cops,” he whispered.

“That’s fake,” her friend said.

“Where’s the camera?” somebody else added. Nervous laughter moved through the crowd, and Fatima began to hope that this
was
a stunt, and someone was recording it, and it would get a million hits on YouTube tomorrow.

The woman with the white hair heard the comment about calling the cops, and her focus shifted sharply to Fatima and her phone. She began moving toward the young girl.

Fatima slipped free of her boyfriend, pulled out her phone, and made the 911 call. “There’s something weird going on,” she told a male dispatcher. He had a calm, cool voice that made her want to believe everything was going to be fine. “There’s a woman . . .” How did she explain this? “There’s blood, or at least I think it’s blood.”

The woman was closer now, and Fatima took a step back, her heart slamming in her chest. The white-haired woman had brilliant blue eyes, but it wasn’t the color of her eyes that made Fatima’s mouth go dry. It was how direct they were, how intense. Like she was staring right into Fatima’s soul. Or like Fatima was the prey.

Did she look familiar? Had she seen that face somewhere?

“What’s the situation?” the dispatcher asked. “Are you in danger?”

Fatima’s hand shook, and she said faintly, “It’s that girl. The cop who was abducted, then escaped. Jude somebody.” The news had been full of the story, and for a while linked articles kept popping up in her Facebook feed. She tried to remember what she’d read. Something about kidnapping and torture.

The woman lunged and grabbed the phone, tugging it from Fatima’s grip, bringing it to her ear, telling the operator her name.
Jude Fontaine.
That was it. The words
detective
and
homicide
made it to Fatima’s brain as she stared in horror at the woman in front of her.

Detective Jude Fontaine must have felt her fear, because she looked up, made that weird deep eye contact, reached for Fatima, touched her arm, gave it a gentle
it’s okay
squeeze while nodding in a way meant to be reassuring.

Fatima pulled in a shaky breath, relaxed a little, looked down at the helmet in the detective’s hand, and screamed.

Two hours after finding those godforsaken photos, Uriah was finally heading home from the crime scene, trying to forget the images seared in his brain. If he had anything to say about it, Jude would never know the pictures existed. He’d been surprised she’d opened up to him as much as she had, but if being in the house had made her relive her captivity, he couldn’t imagine what seeing the chronological documentation of that captivity would do to her.

With one hand, he autodialed her number on his phone. She’d seemed steady when she left, but trauma could take time to sink in. His call went straight to voice mail. He was thinking about swinging by her place to check on her, when his phone rang.

The call was from a cop named Emanuel who worked in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis.

“Just thought you might want to know that your partner was found walking down the street an hour and a half ago,” he said, “with a severed head in her helmet.”

The cluster of cop cars wasn’t hard to miss even though the processing taking place in front of the popular Minneapolis hangout wasn’t typical of a crime-scene investigation. There was no yellow tape, no team combing the location.

Uriah pulled to the curb, turned off the ignition, and dove from his car. He scanned the area for Jude, didn’t see her but spotted Emanuel, the cop who’d called him.

“Detective Fontaine?” Uriah asked.

“In the portable crime lab.” The officer gave him an over-the-shoulder thumb toward one of the white vans. “She’s a cool one. I think she’s less shaken than anybody here, but I guess after what she’s been through, a severed head might seem like a picnic, know what I mean?”

Uriah made no attempt to hide his annoyance at the guy’s insensitive comment. “I’m pretty sure a severed head would upset anybody. She’s just learned to hide her reaction. And speaking of the head . . .”

An officer wearing latex gloves flipped the lid on the plastic-lined cardboard box she held in her hands. Inside was a bloody motorcycle helmet. Jude’s helmet. And even though Uriah was a homicide detective, even though he’d seen more than his share of death, his mind struggled with the image presented to him. Because for a normal human, pure evil was hard to recognize when you saw it, and even harder to comprehend.

Looking up at Uriah from inside the helmet was the head of a girl with thick eyeliner and shiny dark hair. A girl he’d spoken to that very afternoon.

Nausea washed over him.

“Recognize her?” Emanuel asked.

“Yeah.” Uriah stared even though he wanted to turn away. “Lola Holt.”