The Body Reader (22 page)

CHAPTER 50

J
ude went cold turkey.

It wasn’t too bad, maybe because she hadn’t been on the medication that long. The only real negative was being unable to sleep, but she faked it when Will came around for his nightly creepy viewings. And she faked a thick tongue, and she faked being disinterested in everything.

“I’m too tired,” she’d tell Will when he asked if she wanted to do anything.

Three days.

That’s what it took to begin thinking clearly.

On the third day, she headed down to the parking garage and her motorcycle, but when she turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. She got off the bike and checked all the places she’d been taught to check.

The spark plug was gone.

It wasn’t something that would just fall out; it took a special ratchet to remove it. And with the bike parked in a secure area, the list of people who might have done such a thing narrowed pretty quickly.

She’d been telling herself she was crazy, telling herself she was indeed paranoid and that her mind had snapped after her years in the basement—or even before that. Here was proof that someone didn’t want her to leave. But maybe it wasn’t connected to anything other than the nutjob who managed her apartment building.

She took the stairs to the first floor, and the first floor to the entry area with the rows of mailboxes embedded in the wall; then she was out through the double doors. To the left and down the street was the beige car.

Footsteps coming up the sidewalk from the other direction, and there was Will striding toward her, a look of concern on his face.

She let her shoulders slump, let her face go lax.

“What’s up?” he asked, reaching over her head to grab the door and hold it open.

“I was going to go out.” She passed a hand over her forehead in what she hoped was a gesture of confusion. “But I don’t think I want to.”

“It’s a great day. We could walk around the lake.”

His words were so harmless.
So harmless!
Once again she began to doubt herself. A walk around the lake would be nice.

But he came into her room at night.

Yes, to check on her.

Was that so wrong? So threatening?

Yes.
Yes!

“I’m too tired,” she said.

He nodded, conveying his understanding.

“I’m going to watch TV, then go to bed.”

“Okay. I’ll be up later to see how you’re doing.”

Of course he would. “Oh, hey.” She pretended to suddenly remember something that wasn’t very important. “I was in the garage checking on my motorcycle, and it wouldn’t start. Maybe you could have a look at it.”

“I should have told you. I pulled out the spark plug because I’m going to replace it. I didn’t say anything because you haven’t been riding it anyway.”

Not a shred of guilt. And it made sense. A new spark plug.

Later, when he showed up at her apartment, she let him do the dishes and feed the cat. She promised to take her pill, but once he was gone she flushed it down the toilet. She pretended to sleep when he came in to watch her. Once he was gone, she bailed out of bed, tugged on her boots, shrugged into a black hooded sweatshirt, grabbed her backpack, and stuffed it with belongings and clothes, along with the shoebox Ava had given her.

Packed, she slipped from her apartment and took the stairs to the roof, pulling the hood over her white hair. A furtive look at the street revealed no surprises: the car was still there, and someone was inside. She spotted the glow of a cigarette.

Keeping her knees bent and head low, she ran to the tree on the opposite side of the building, grabbed a branch, and climbed down, pausing on the lowest limb, high above the alley. She took a deep breath and let go, dropping and rolling to the bricks below.

Bruised but no bones broken, she shoved herself to her feet. Adjusting the straps on her backpack, she stuck to the darker shadows as she moved down the alley, away from the apartment and away from the person in the car.

She headed for the nearest ATM, withdrew all she could in a twenty-four-hour period, pocketed the cash, then pulled out her phone and stared at it a moment before dropping it to the ground and smashing it with her boot heel.

CHAPTER 51

J
ude needed to go north, to the area where the Holt girl’s body had been found. Not far away were the cabin and property where her mother had died. Logically, she understood that the two were very likely unrelated, but the close proximity of the Holt girl’s body to the Schilling property, plus the necklaces that might have come from the nearby Black Bear Station . . . Flimsy clues at best, but still clues. Then again, maybe it was simply a strong desire to go back to the place her mother had loved, the place where her mother had died.

She thought about stealing a car or buying a cheap junker. She thought about hitchhiking or hopping a casino bus going north. In the end, she did something that was maybe more foolish than any of her ideas. She took a city bus to Ava Germaine’s house, careful to keep her hood up and head down.

Under cover of darkness, she knocked softly on the front door until she heard a sound. The porch light came on, and maybe Ava did or didn’t check the peephole.

“Who’s there?”

“Jude Fontaine. Detective Fontaine.”

The door opened and Jude slipped inside, closing the door behind her. “I need your help.”

She didn’t go into detail, because how did any of it make sense, and how did her actions make her seem anything but paranoid? And maybe that’s all they were. Maybe that’s all they’d ever been. “I need to get out of town, and I need a car.”

Fluffy slippers. Gray sweatpants, standing in a house that smelled like cigarette smoke. “What’s happening?” Ava asked. “Where are you going?”

“Northern Minnesota. All I can tell you is that I’m following a lead.”

“About Octavia?”

“Yes.”

Ava pressed a shaking hand to her mouth while staring at Jude with shining eyes. “I want to come with you.”

“You can’t.” No attempt to soften her response.

Seeming to accept that she would get no more information from Jude, Ava rummaged through a jacket that had been tossed on the couch. She retrieved a set of keys, removed two from the ring, and pocketed them before handing what remained to Jude. “You’ll need to get gas. There should be about a third of a tank in it.”

Jude closed her fingers around the keys. “If anybody traces me to your house, say I made you give me the car. And don’t tell them where I went.”

“It’s parked on the street,” Ava said. “The silver Corolla. It was Octavia’s. I kept it in the garage, and then I lost my job and my house and my own car fell apart, so I started driving hers. I hated that. I wanted her to come home and find it how she left it.”

The car represented a mother’s hope. “She’d just gotten her license. She was so proud of that car. Seemed extravagant at the time, but I thought having her own car would keep her safe.” She burst into tears but quickly got herself under control, kept talking. “It seems like it just happened, and it also seems like it happened years ago. And life . . . It’s like I’m moving through somebody else’s dream. Do you know what that feels like?”

“I do.”

“Did you read her journal? Did you see where she said she went to parties up north in the woods? I didn’t even know she went up there until I read about it. And that wasn’t until after she was gone. I had no idea she was so secretive.”

“Most teenagers are.”

“I guess so.” Ava opened the front door and stood aside. “Be careful. And if you don’t find her, I’m still thankful you listened to me. I’m thankful you took action.” She thought of something else. “You’re like Joan of Arc.”

“Wasn’t she insane?”

“That’s what they say.”

Jude surprised herself by laughing. Then she turned and jogged to the car, hitting the “Unlock” button as she approached. She tossed her backpack on the passenger seat, dove in, and took off down the street.

The drive was fast and uneventful. Ninety minutes later she pulled into Black Bear Station, filled the tank, then went inside. The interior lighting was weird the way it always was in the middle of the night—the kind of light that made you feel stoned even when you weren’t. The place was empty except for a clerk behind the counter sitting on a stool, his dark head bent over a comic book.

In the back of the store, Jude found the engraving machine, surprised but not surprised that it was still there. The necklaces looked the same, choices of gold or silver hearts, circles, or ovals.

She fed money into the machine, pressed the correct letters, and watched the device mechanically etch the necklace. When it was finished, she scooped it from the metal cup. She was no forensics expert, and she’d have to compare the two necklaces, but it looked identical to the one she’d found in the shoebox, maybe identical to the one found on Delilah Masters’s body.

And what does that prove?

Nothing.

Slipping the chain around her neck, she attached the clasp. At the counter, she bought water and granola bars, paying cash for everything, including gas. She considered showing the clerk an old photo of Octavia but didn’t want to draw attention to herself, especially given the remoteness of his being of any help on such a cold case.

“Cool name,” the comic-book kid said with a nod to the necklace as he dropped the change into her palm. “Have a good one.”

“You too.”

Thirty minutes later, she turned up the lane that led to her father’s property. Jude was surprised she’d found it so easily, without the help of a GPS. But even though she hadn’t returned in over twenty years, she’d gone back in her mind many times.

The lane was overgrown the way untraveled paths got in the north country, but not so overgrown as to indicate no traffic. The parallel tire paths were dirt; the center strip, tall grass that brushed the undercarriage of the car. The headlight beams bounced as the tires rolled over the uneven surface. She checked the clock on the dashboard. It would be dawn in three hours.

Before reaching the cabin, she cut the headlights and engine. A quick search of the glove compartment turned up a flashlight. She thumbed the switch, grateful to see the battery wasn’t dead.

Out of the car, she closed the door but didn’t latch it. If someone was in the cabin, she didn’t want to announce her arrival with a slam. Flashlight pointed at her boots, backpack straps over her shoulders, she began walking down the lane, noting the lack of fresh vehicle tracks.

Round a turn and there was the cabin. A quick skim of the flashlight beam revealed no vehicles. She approached the building the way she’d approach a crime scene, with care, taking note of the dirt on the wooden steps and porch, along with the lack of shoe scuffing. No one had been there in a while.

The front door was locked. No surprise.

She peered inside the windows for telltale signs of security detectors mounted on framework, or motion sensors in ceiling corners. Not seeing any obvious clues of an alarm system, she grabbed a log from a nearby stack and smashed it against a window, shattering the glass. After pulling out the biggest shards, she tossed her backpack through the window, then climbed in after it. Once inside, she felt for a wall switch, faintly surprised when a table lamp responded.

The cabin was smaller than she remembered, with an extremely low ceiling. The size made her wonder if she was in the right place, but as she moved about she came upon things she recognized, like the “before” picture on the living room wall. How strange that the family photo was still there.

Jude’s father stood behind her, hands on her shoulders. Her mother was there, and Adam.
One happy family.
She looked more closely at her mother.
Had
she been happy the day the photo was taken? Yes. It was in her face, in the way she stood. No matter what had transpired the day she died, she’d been happy in the “before.” That was real.

The cabin was nothing fancy, especially for a governor. She had to give her father credit for not selling it off to buy some fancy, expensive property in one of the more popular areas. Wood interior, built in the fifties, if she remembered correctly. Dark, with a musty odor combined with something organic—probably the septic system. The cabin had a living and dining area, kitchen, and three bedrooms. Directly in front of her was a rustic wooden table that could seat eight. No landline phone, no Internet.

Being there felt surreal, and she had to remind herself of her mission, of the girls with scratches, and the necklace, and her plan to search the area as thoroughly as possible. All so foolish.

The bed in her parents’ room was something that could be found in a lot of northern Minnesota cabins. It had a frame made of logs, and a mattress covered by a plaid quilt. She forced herself in deeper, picked up a pillow, pressed it to her nose, and inhaled. Not her mother’s scent. Relieved and disappointed, she put the pillow back and continued her assessment of the cabin, pausing when she reached what had been her bedroom, with its even lower ceiling and sense of a room that might have once been a porch.

Good God. The spread was the same, pink and purple. How insane was that? It was almost as if the place had gone untouched just to mess with her. For a moment she thought about going back to the car and driving away. Away from Minnesota. Away from her father and the place where her mother had died. Away from reminders of Homicide and the man who watched her when she slept and away from men who attacked women in the street and men who chopped off young girls’ heads.

She hated being a victim. Maybe that’s what this was about. Taking a stand. Breaking a window. Pulling a gun on her father. Badasses weren’t victims.

From somewhere beyond the cabin came the sad and haunting cry of a loon. She hadn’t heard that sound in years.

She left the bedroom and unlocked the back door, stepping through the mudroom and off the porch, moving in the direction of the loon’s cry. The path to the lake was overgrown; the grass brushed her knees and soaked her jeans as she made her way to the water’s edge to stare at the moon the way she had years ago. She remembered standing in the same spot with her hand gripped tightly by her mother’s. Sleepy, in pajamas, wanting to go to bed while at the same time knowing the moment was special.

She passed the flashlight beam around the shoreline. The dock hadn’t been put in the water. Instead, it was waiting nearby, in need of repair, the boat probably long gone. Looking back, she realized their life seemed so scripted, so false.

She returned to the cabin, put her backpack on the table, unloaded the shoebox, and dug out the necklace. After removing the one she’d made at Black Bear, she compared the two.

Identical.

What did it mean, if anything?

She drank a bottle of water and ate a granola bar. Then, exhausted, she dropped across her childhood bed and fell asleep.