The Body Reader (21 page)

CHAPTER 47

I
nside her apartment, Jude put the shoebox on the coffee table, unsure of what to do with it. Stick it in the closet? Shove it under the couch? Certainly not open it. Even as she had these thoughts, she took note of the brand on the box (Skechers) and the shoe size (six and a half).

She found herself contemplating the physical characteristics of the girls who’d gone missing, thinking about what she knew and what she’d need to know if she were working the case. Thinking about how the missing girls compared to the recently murdered girls.

But she was able to let it go.

She walked to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and downed her medication, taking it a little later in the day than usual, a trick she’d learned when she had something planned for the morning. Once the medication hit her system, it was hard to function for several hours, and half the time she couldn’t remember what she’d done or where she’d gone. The doctor said she’d get used to it, but so far that wasn’t happening.

Now that her brain had been reset, she knew her behavior at the governor’s mansion wasn’t that of a sane person. And whenever she bothered to think about it, she questioned everything she’d done and felt since her mother’s death. Even her behavior after her escape. Going back to Homicide. Claiming she read bodies and people. None of that was going on now, not since starting the medication.

Back in the living area, she dropped to the couch, pillow under her head, intent on riding out the next hour or so on her back. She glanced over at the shoebox. And then she reached for it, placed it on her stomach, and lifted the lid.

She assumed the belongings had been vetted by Ava and not just grabbed and randomly boxed years ago by the missing child. Child. If Octavia were still alive—highly unlikely—she would no longer be a child. She’d be nineteen. Old enough to vote. Old enough to serve in the military.

Jude sifted through the photos. Pretty girl with straight dark-blond hair and a perfect smile. Photos of her with other girls. Photos of her with boys. One particular boy’s face was repeated in several snapshots.

If Jude were working the case, she’d ask Ava about Octavia’s friends, maybe even interview them if they still lived in the area.

In the box, she found a wrist corsage that had crumbled, along with a leather key chain from Black Bear Station. Probably half the teenagers in Minnesota had something from Black Bear. It was a popular stop on the way to the North Shore.

Near the bottom of the box was a journal with butterflies on the cover. Life interrupted.

The box and its meager contents represented that point in a girl’s journey when the world was waiting, when anything and everybody was possible, and love and happiness were inevitable. Sixteen.

Even though Jude’s own life had been a crazy mess at that age, she could still recall the feeling of magic and hope and promise.

She opened the journal.

The handwriting was youthful, round and big, and Jude imagined the dark-blond girl sitting cross-legged in bed, a soft smile on pink lips as she wrote.

Checking the date, she noted that the first entry was about a year before Octavia vanished. She put the shoebox aside and settled in for a read.

Stuff about friends and boys and classes, but mostly friends and boys. Losing her virginity, getting drunk for the first time.

About halfway through the journal, Octavia began talking about sneaking out, along with telling her mother she was staying at a friend’s when she was really going to parties in and out of town.

Up until that point, the journal had felt like a true journal—an outpouring of everything in a young girl’s heart, no secrets. But once Jude reached the halfway point, things seemed to change. Maybe Octavia had gotten tired of journaling, or her life had become too busy, but there seemed to be something evasive about the entries. The references to out-of-town parties were still there, but they contained no details. And boyfriends, previously mentioned by name, were now just an asterisk.

In one entry, she talked about coming home with scratches on her arms and legs from “some kind of thorny bush.” Her mother had questioned her about the scratches, and Octavia had concocted a story about falling into the rosebushes at her friend’s house.

The scratches seemed significant, but maybe it was the drugs. They were saturating Jude’s system, making her body heavy, dulling her mind. She struggled to keep her eyes open, struggled to keep her thoughts on track.

She played this game every day. She didn’t have much time. Before passing out, she grabbed her cell phone, scrolled through the names, and placed a call to Ingrid Stevenson at the medical examiner’s office.

Surprisingly, Dr. Stevenson herself answered.

“I’m following up on the decapitation case,” Jude explained.

Silence, then, “I thought you no longer worked in Homicide.”

Jude lied. “I’m only part-time,” she said. “I’ve been retained to continue with the Masters and Holt investigation. It was decided that it would be better to keep me on rather than bring in new people this late in the game.” Did that make sense? Was she making sense?

She must have sounded convincing, because Dr. Stevenson asked what she could help her with.

“I’m looking through my paperwork.” Jude made a rustling sound with the pages of the journal. “Did Lola Holt’s body have scratches on the arms or legs?”

“Give me a second while I bring up those files.”

Jude heard clicking keys and imagined Ingrid in her office, in front of a monitor.

“Lacerations on parts of her legs that weren’t burned.”

“Care to speculate on them?” Her words were getting a little slurred. She sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. The apartment tilted. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, waiting for the room to stabilize, all the while taking shallow breaths through her mouth.

“My guess is some kind of thorny plant. Possibly buckthorn, which has become a real problem up north.”

They talked a little more; then Jude thanked her and was ready to disconnect, when Ingrid said, “I’m glad to hear you’re still on the case. The news made your story sound pretty dismal.”

“You know how the media likes to exaggerate everything.”

“Right.” The ME laughed. “I can’t recall a single piece about me that was accurate, and yet when I watch the news I find myself accepting what I’m hearing as fact. I have to quit doing that.”

Jude thanked her with only a slightly thick tongue. She was putting the journal back in the box, when a thin chain caught her eye. She pulled out a necklace and held it high.

It was a heart design she’d seen before, this one with the name Octavia engraved on it.
He gives them all engraved necklaces,
she thought, dropping the chain back in the box, slamming the lid, and passing out.

CHAPTER 48

J
ude woke up on the couch, disoriented and sluggish, with only a faint memory of the contents of the journal and her call to the medical examiner. Coffee and a shower didn’t help, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to.

That evening, she recognized the sound of Will’s knock and unlocked the door to let him in.

“Want to go for a motorcycle ride?” He walked to the kitchen and checked to make sure she’d taken the medication from the days-of-the-week container, flipping open a lid, closing it with a snap. While there, he began rinsing dishes. Seeing him puttering around in her apartment didn’t seem at all unusual anymore.

“What did you eat today?” he asked over his shoulder.

“I picked up something at the farmers’ market.” Had she? She couldn’t remember. She’d lost weight, and he was always checking to make sure she’d eaten. It was something she forgot to do—another side effect of the medication.

“What about that motorcycle ride?”

He meant a ride on
his
bike. No way was she alert enough to ride hers, which was back downstairs after Will had picked it up from the police-department garage. She didn’t know if she liked riding with him. Maybe. Maybe not. “I think I’m going to stay in and knit.”

He laughed and shook his head. “You and knitting. That cracks me up.”

“It’s good for me.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“You should try it.” Her weak attempt at light conversation wore her out.

“I’m gonna go for a bike ride. Want me to feed the cat before I leave?”

“I can do it.”

“Don’t forget your sleeping pill.”

“I won’t.”

He approached her, stopping a couple of feet away. Sleeveless denim vest, hair tied back, tattoos. Over six feet tall and over two hundred pounds. It was sort of funny what a mother hen he was. “I’ll check on you tomorrow morning. Call if you need anything. Don’t forget to charge your phone. You keep letting it run down. There’s ice cream in the freezer. Eat some of it before you go to bed. You need the calories.”

She nodded and he left.

Once he was gone, she retrieved a can of cat food from the kitchen cupboard and took the stairs to the roof. With a metal spoon, she emptied the can into a bowl of unknown origin. It had just appeared one day. She figured Will must have picked it up from the pet store.

Done serving up the cat food, she heard a motorcycle leave the building’s underground parking garage. She walked to the edge of the roof and watched Will’s bike pull away and roar down the street. Her gaze tracked to a car she’d first noticed a few days earlier. Department surveillance had been pulled, but the beige vehicle was sitting in the spot where Grant Vang used to park. And somebody was in it.

Probably nothing. Maybe nothing. Hopefully nothing.

Her brief stint back in Homicide seemed like a dream, seemed far away. Even finding the head in her helmet no longer seemed real. Just something she’d seen in a bad movie.

She remembered Uriah. He seemed clearer than everything else, but she couldn’t forgive his betrayal even though she knew he’d just been doing his job. Maybe that was what bugged her.
Just doing his job.
His taking her to the hospital with no attempt to defend her or warn her had underscored his lack of loyalty to his own partner.

Thinking about it, she pulled her cell phone from her jeans and scrolled through the short list of names, stopping when she hit Uriah’s, pausing briefly before deleting him with a single stab of her finger.

The cat didn’t show up to eat.

The stars came out and she didn’t care.

She went back downstairs to the apartment, picked up her knitting needles, and began watching a YouTube tutorial on her phone. Fifteen minutes later, she tossed the needles and yarn aside. Maybe she should take up painting instead.

In the kitchen, she popped open the top of Sunday’s medicine compartment, filled a glass with water, and dumped the sleeping pill into her palm. And it came to her that this life wasn’t all that much better or different than her life in the basement.

From the kitchen, she could see the corner of the shoebox poking out from under the couch. Those scratches . . . Somebody should follow up on those scratches . . . And the necklace. The necklace could be significant.

She should call Uriah. Then she remembered she’d deleted him. And really, would he even care? Did he have time to follow such a flimsy lead?

No.

But she had time.

She carried the sleeping pill to the bathroom, tossed it in the toilet, and flushed.

A lot of time.

A few hours later, she was lying in bed unable to sleep, regretting the flush of the sleeping pill, thinking about getting up to take one from the brown prescription bottle on the kitchen counter, when she heard a key turn in the lock.

Her initial instinct was to reach for a weapon, but her handgun had been taken from her, something that seemed unwise considering the history of people wanting to do her harm. She was poised to slip from the bed to hide, when she caught a whiff of the familiar—an alchemy of exhaust fumes, beer, cheap cigarettes, and male body odor.

Will.

She remained in bed, eyes open just a slit, barely breathing.

She heard the door close, heard soft footfalls as he made his way to her room.

When he reached the doorway, he stood there, a dark silhouette against the lighter darkness that was never completely dark due to streetlights.

A friend, just coming to check on her?

Or something more sinister?

He stood watching for a full five minutes, his breathing heavy; then he left, turning the key in the lock behind him.

She exhaled. Would she ever feel safe anywhere again? Would she always feel victimized? She picked up her phone and thought about calling Grant. Then she remembered the car across the street and put the phone aside. She couldn’t trust anybody. Only herself. And she wasn’t even sure about herself.

CHAPTER 49

H
is girl.

He finally
came. She’d barely dug into the food he’d brought when they ripped off their clothes and fucked the way they used to. In the dark, she tugged the mask from his head so she could kiss him without the knit material in the way. They kept at it for hours, until he couldn’t get it up anymore. That made her mad, because fucking was the only thing in her life, the only thing that broke the monotony. She tried to arouse him, but nothing worked and he passed out on his back on the narrow bed.

He’d never fallen asleep there. Never.

She tiptoed to the lantern, turned it on, and moved silently back to the bed, holding the light high.

She had no idea how long she’d lived in the small room. Judging by the stack of journals, she’d guess years. Most of that time had been spent with a specific mental image of her captor in her head. She’d clutched that image to her, obsessing over him when he was gone, swooning over him when he was with her.

If one of those composite artists had come along, she would have described him down to his last hair. The color of his eyes and the shape of his jaw and lips.

So who the hell was this stranger lying naked on the bed in front of her? Not the man of her dreams.

He looked nothing like her man.
Nothing.

She stared, willing his face and even his body to change. He
had
to change.

Crazy thing, it was a face she recognized. How weird was that? But then, this was her first glimpse of human features in years. Was her mind playing tricks on her?

No, it was him. She was sure of it.

He was asleep. She could leave. What was to stop her from just walking away? Find his keys, find his car, drive off, blow her parents’ minds when she walked in the front door of their house.

She was still trying to figure out a plan when his eyes opened and he stared up at her, his expression going through a series of transformations as he realized the seriousness of the situation.

She could see him.

She could identify him. And then she realized what that meant for her. If he didn’t kill her, it meant he could never let her go. Ever.

“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, hoping to placate him. “I wanted to see you.” She lowered the lantern. The shifting of light and dark made his face change, made him look even scarier. “It’s okay. I’ll never tell anybody. I’ll never say anything.”

“No, you won’t.”

He sat up. And even though it made no sense since she’d already seen him, he grabbed the ski mask and pulled it down over his face.

Like an executioner.

She backed to the wall, accidently knocking over a stack of journals—words that represented her life, her
love
.

Sometimes she thought of herself as an adult, sometimes a kid. While she’d been imprisoned, she’d matured, but she also knew she’d become twisted and stunted. At times, she saw her present life as some sad commentary on the role of women and how men needed to control them. Because was this mess much different than that of many women who
weren’t
kept in small rooms? At other times, she saw the situation as simply a crazy guy doing crazy things.

He came at her, slowly, with purpose, his eyes reflecting the light from the lantern.

When he was close enough, she screamed, ran at him, and swung the lantern at his head, where it connected, taking them both by surprise.

She’d always been so docile.

And she’d loved him. Maybe she still loved him or could love him again, his face, in her mind, already turning back to the face she’d created for him years ago.

The lantern hit the floor and the room went dark. She felt a rush of air, felt his hand hit her, shove her. A foot connected with her stomach, and she went down, landing on her back. Her journals avalanched around her, and she thought about how she’d need to restack them, and it would be such a job. And then she began to wonder if she’d live to restack them. If not, what would happen to them? All those words? Her words? Words of love and hope.

“You’re older than I thought,” she said faintly. Just an observation, more for herself than for him. “Too old for me, anyway.”

Her last comment really fired him up. “If anybody’s too old, it’s you.” He kicked her again, but she was still glad about hitting him. Maybe she’d laugh about it later if she was still alive, especially the sound the lantern had made against his skull.