The Body Reader (19 page)

CHAPTER 42

U
riah looked up from his computer monitor to see Jude striding toward him, a stack of papers in her hand. She slammed them down on his desk so hard he felt a blast of air against his face. “All missing persons,” she announced, hand on hip, prepared for a confrontation. “All girls.” There was fire in her eyes. He didn’t see that very often, and never here, never when talking about a case.

“I thought you went to the dentist.”

“I lied,” she said. “I drove to Saint Paul for a visit with Ava Germaine, Octavia Germaine’s mother.”

Jesus. He knew she’d gone behind his back to talk to Ortega about investigating the missing girl, and he knew Ortega had said no. That was before Jude left for the “dentist.”

“We need to look into this,” she said.

He reached for the stack of papers. “I’ll pass it along to Missing Persons.”

She flattened her hand on the pile. “No.”

“You might have forgotten, but you found a severed head in your helmet, and, before that, we had a dead girl floating in the lake. We can’t go running off after cold Missing Persons cases.”

“You know what I think?” she asked.

“I can never begin to guess what you think, so you’re going to have to tell me.”

Jude grabbed a chair, placed it close to Uriah’s, and sat down, her eyes drilling into his. “What if there
is
a connection?”

He had no new response for her, nothing he hadn’t already said more than once.

“Between the unsolved Missing Persons cases and these new cases,” she said.

She was reaching. It could happen when someone was too close to an investigation. Things became screwed up in your head. “I doubt the Missing Persons cases are connected, let alone the Missing Persons cases
and
the recent murders.”

“I’m just speculating. We’re thinking of the crimes as isolated, but what if they aren’t? What if some, or even all, are related? We can’t afford not to consider everything and follow every lead.”

“You’re trying to connect dots that don’t even exist. On top of that, we don’t have the manpower. We have to be selective and focused.”

“Okay, what about this girl?” Jude shuffled the papers, then tapped the top sheet, a printout that included a photo of a pretty teenager. “She was declared a suicide,” Jude said.

“People commit suicide.” He managed those words with no emotion. It was as if they’d exchanged roles.

“And you know how it happened? Rocks in her pockets. And you know what else? I contacted the facility where the autopsy was performed. No lake water was found in her lungs.”

Now she had his attention.

His desk phone rang. “Leave everything here,” he told Jude. “I’ll look at it. I promise.” He picked up the receiver. The call was from Trent, their audiovisual specialist.

“Those wall sconces you wondered about?” Trent said. “You’re not going to believe this. They were custom made for the governor’s mansion.”

Uriah was acutely aware of Jude still sitting a foot away, a question in her eyes. Jesus Christ, the governor. Was the video part of a smear campaign? It wouldn’t be the first time a reporter had tried to dig up dirt on a politician. And maybe Caldwell had contacted Jude because she was Schilling’s daughter and he’d known she had an ax to grind.

“More good news,” Trent said. “Digital Forensics was able to lift a creation date.” Even though Uriah felt no shift in his expression as Trent shared the news, Jude stood up abruptly, his reaction to the call raising her hypervigilance several notches despite his poker face.

“What’s going on?” she asked the second Uriah hung up.

He told her about the sconces at the governor’s mansion. He watched her process the information.

“What else? That’s not all.”

“Forensics came up with a creation date for the video you found.” She was picking up on his reluctance to share the rest of the news, and he knew she’d put her own personal spin on the date, read too much into it. “It was made a week before Octavia Germaine’s disappearance.”

CHAPTER 43

T
hree hours later, Jude and Uriah pulled up in front of the governor’s mansion, located on the tree-lined boulevard of Summit Avenue, an area of Saint Paul known for beautiful stone houses that most people could only dream of owning. Luckily, Jude had never lived there. That would make it easier since it would hold no painful memories. She vaguely wondered if her father still owned the house they’d occupied as a family in Minneapolis, and then she decided she didn’t want to know.

Her father.

All of the things Jude had tried hard to bury had been brought to the surface by that one phone call identifying the sconces in the video.

Her father.

Death brought denial and blame. She’d seen it again and again in her work as a homicide detective. Denial followed by blame were almost always the first two reactions. Lack of denial could often be the “tell” in someone who was guilty. So as a cop, she understood what she’d gone through as a child and understood what had possibly been her own misguided conviction, something to cling to and believe in, something to rage at and focus on, nothing more. But now . . .

The sconces, the creation date of the video, Ian Caldwell reaching out to her when he could have contacted anybody else—why? Because she would have
believed
him. She might have been the
only
person to believe him. Now, despite the tenuous clues, she was convinced her father knew something about the disappearance of Octavia Germaine. And, if so, Jude might be the only person with enough resolve to dig the answer out of him—and she was willing to risk whatever it took to get to the truth.

As they approached the front door, she thought about the day her mother died, remembered her father’s white face and the blood on his shirt and hands before he reached for Jude, sobbing, choking out the horrible news. But before he’d buried his face in her hair, she’d seen his eyes, and later, she’d seen the smile on his lips when he thought no one was looking.

The bell was answered by a tall, austere woman who led them down a hallway to a large library that also served as an office. It was what Jude would have expected of the governor’s mansion. Dark wood, ceiling to floor. Bookcases packed with books; most, she suspected, had come with the house. Her father was a reader, but she didn’t recall his ever reading what would be considered literature—the likes of which covered one wall. These books were meant to impress. Her dad, at least when she’d known him, had been a fan of commercial fiction, mostly of what she called guy fiction, like Tom Clancy.

Her father got up from a desk big enough to land a jet on. He came at her, arms extended, smile on his face.

She took a step back and held up her hands to ward him off. “There are no media cameras here. You can drop the father act.” Without missing a beat, she pulled an eight-by-ten from a folder and presented it to him. “Have you ever seen this girl?”

Uriah gave her a secret glare. Oh, yeah. He’d tried to talk her out of coming. Once he’d given in, his plan had been to run the show and do the talking while Jude gauged her father’s reaction to the photos. To be fair, her objection to the plan was something she’d failed to mention on the ride over.

The governor accepted the photo of Katherine Nelson, the girl whose death had been ruled a suicide, held it in his hand a few seconds, then passed it back. “It’s possible we met, but I meet so many people. I do seem to recall when she went missing. It got a lot of media attention.” He shook his head. “A sad situation.”

Jude went for the folder again. When her father saw she wasn’t done, he waved them toward two deep leather chairs. “Sit down, please.”

Uriah sat in one of the chairs. Jude preferred to stand since it was a power position, but she reluctantly joined her partner while her father took a seat on the other side of the desk. This time she produced a photo of Octavia Germaine. Because the desk was so big, she shoved it at him. “How about this? Does this girl look familiar?”

His breathing changed almost imperceptibly. Jude glanced at Uriah to see if he noticed. No reaction.

A knock, then the office door opened and the woman who’d led them down the hall stuck her head inside. “The car is leaving in five minutes,” she announced.

The governor’s relief wasn’t hard to miss, and Jude wondered if he’d given his secretary instructions to interrupt them.

Probably.

“The photo?” Uriah said, pointing.

“Oh, yes.” The governor scrutinized it, then put it down with another shake of his head. His forehead was beginning to shine with a hint of perspiration. “I don’t know. What’s this about?”

“It’s about a girl who disappeared over three years ago.” Jude leaned forward. “A girl who was here a few days before she vanished. She attended a pool party.”

His camera face faded. “More than once, aides were found to be having parties at the mansion when I was away at my cabin. That’s common knowledge, because the press caught wind of it. Yes, it’s entirely possible the young woman was here.” He looked at Uriah. “Jude has been trying to blame me for her mother’s death for years. And now it sounds like she wants to blame me for some missing girl. My daughter is unstable. You realize that, don’t you?” Still looking at Uriah. “I feel heartsick about what happened to her, to us, and I’ve kept quiet about her problems out of respect for my deceased wife, but don’t force me to make my daughter’s mental health public knowledge.”

“I seriously doubt you’d do that,” Jude said. “Whether people believe it or not, it will reflect poorly on you. Publicly humiliating your own daughter. And I’ve heard rumors you might try for a Senate seat.”

“If you keep pushing me, if you don’t let these . . . these delusions drop, I’ll call a press conference and put everything out there. You won’t have a job, and you won’t be able to show your face on the streets of Minneapolis or Saint Paul.”

During the governor’s tirade, Uriah had gotten to his feet. “Jude. Come on. We’re done here.”

He was mad. At her. There was also something else about him, something new. Her father had managed to plant fresh seeds of doubt when it came to her sanity. Maybe even more than doubt.

She’d seen it before. Phillip Schilling had the ability to make anyone believe anything, but she was surprised Uriah had been taken in by him.

She collected the photos, watched her father stand. He reached into his suit and tugged at his vest. Even though he gave off the aura of cool, she could smell his nervous sweat. He was afraid, and he was hiding something.

Jude had a final card to play, a card that would probably seal her own fate rather than his. “You’re right. I’m unstable.” Standing, she reached to her belt, unsnapped her holster, and pulled her gun free.

Was it possible she’d planned this confrontation long ago? Before they got the call about the video? It felt so scripted, so deliberate. Had she thought about it while on the roof staring up at the sky? Or thought about it when she was in the box in the basement? Maybe. She wasn’t sure. That possibility alone made her wonder about herself. Was her father right? Was this all just the delusion of a crazy child, now a crazy woman?

Every second felt like ten. She had time to thumb off the safety, time to cradle the weapon in two hands and aim it at her father’s chest. “Tell me what really happened that day in the woods.”

Uriah’s speed seemed too fast for the slow and heavy thickness of the room. His arm drove her hands skyward at the same time his body propelled her to the floor.

A gunshot exploded. As she and Uriah fell in slow motion, she had time to wonder where the bullet had lodged. Probably not in her father. Maybe in a wall, or in a book, or in the ceiling.

She hoped it hadn’t hurt anybody. The only person she wanted to hurt was the man standing behind the desk with a ridiculous expression on his face. She almost laughed. She might have laughed for real if the air hadn’t been driven from her lungs as she hit the ground, Uriah on top of her.

She wanted to tell him that she wouldn’t have killed the governor. It was just a threat to make him talk, make him finally confess to killing her mother or knowing something about a missing girl, or both. But in truth, she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have shot him.

Uriah was looking at her, his face very close. She felt the need to say something. “Where’s a grassy knoll when a girl needs one?”

He closed his eyes, then reopened them. Did he almost laugh? No.

Someone removed the gun from her hand—Uriah, maybe. And then he did something unexpected. He smoothed back her hair, and spoke words just for her: “It’s okay.”

But he was wrong. It would never be okay. Never. Those were the thoughts she transmitted to him while she looked into his eyes. She saw compassion there, and pity.

“I’m sorry this happened to you.” He was blaming himself.

“He’s lying about Octavia Germaine,” she whispered.

“How do you know?”

“I can read him.”

“You can’t read people, Jude. You can’t read dead girls, and you can’t read living people.”

From somewhere came the sound of pounding feet.

Uriah rolled off her, and once the weight of his body was gone, hands grabbed her arms and she was jerked to her feet. Her father’s staff had mobilized. She was surprised to see that one of the men holding her was her brother, Adam.

She held his gaze for a few long minutes, waiting for him to say something. When he didn’t, she looked down at the eight-by-ten of the missing girl where it had escaped the folder and now lay faceup on the floor.

Uriah cuffed her as sirens drew near.

“Have you seen that girl?” she asked Adam, pointing her chin toward the photo.

He blew air through his nose, ignored her question, and turned to Uriah.
What did I tell you?

After passing her to a police officer, Uriah gathered up the prints, folder, and Jude’s gun. As she was led away to a squad car, she spared one final look at her father and brother, who stood watching from the front door of the stone mansion.

Maybe she
was
crazy. Maybe she’d always been wrong about what had happened to her mother. But it was too late to change her mind, and too late to let go of the conviction she’d carried two-thirds of her life.

She smiled, feeling calmer than she’d felt in years. A firm hand touched her head, and she was pushed into the caged backseat of the squad car.