The Body Reader (3 page)

Jude Fontaine didn’t seem the type to welcome help from anybody, let alone an estranged family member. The one thing Uriah could do was make sure they found the bastard—dead or alive—who’d done this to her. He could make sure they didn’t fail her again.

CHAPTER 4

T
he detective returned to her hospital room the next day, and this time he brought clothes.

“I heard they’re releasing you tomorrow,” he said. “Figured you’d need something to wear. I just guessed the size.”

As Jude looked up from the hospital bed, Detective Ashby placed a white plastic shopping bag on one of the chairs that lined the wall, then sat down next to her and pulled out pen and paper, along with a digital recorder.

He was dressed in a suit and tie, his dark, curly hair messy and on the long side. Jude figured him for late thirties, but it was hard to tell in this business. Crime aged a person, that she knew full well. Maybe he was twelve.

Three years in solitary might have chewed up her brain, but she still had a sense of humor.

“Odors are so strong,” she said.

He frowned, attempting to understand. Thick brows over deep-brown eyes.

“I can smell everything,” she explained. “The fabric of your jacket. The coffee you’ve been drinking. The plastic bags. Food down the hall. It’s like I’ve never smelled anything before. Isn’t that weird?” She didn’t add that he was giving off a faint scent of the alcohol he’d consumed last night or even this morning, along with something else—maybe soap—she couldn’t identify.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. “Isolation will do that.”

And not only odors. She couldn’t stare hard enough, and she made no apology for visually examining every pore on his face and every hair on his head, every curve of every eyelash, even when he shifted uncomfortably.

The interview took maybe an hour. Not that long considering she was relating the past three years of her life, but she could have been reciting a grocery list, for all the impact the sharing of events had on her. At some point in the past three years, something inside her had shut down, shut off. If that hadn’t happened, she probably would have lost her mind, but now she was left with a person who could relate atrocities without emotion. Finished, she looked up and saw that his face was pale. And that wasn’t all . . .

“Your hand,” she said.

He glanced down, made some small sound of dismay, and clicked the pen, the motion effectively stopping his shaking.

She didn’t like witnessing his reaction. She didn’t know what to do with it, and in some odd way, seeing his shock made her feel dirty. It occurred to her that what she’d been through had somehow robbed her of her humanity, made her feel subhuman. Maybe that’s why women often didn’t report abuse. Forget about their fear of retaliation or their fear of tomorrow or their fear of being alone or their love of their abuser. Once it was out there, once the facts were hung on the line for the world to see, that abuse robbed the victim of dignity and the victim suffered twice. Once at the hands of the abuser, and once at the hands of the world.

Ashby shut off his recorder. “What about tomorrow?” he asked, closing his notebook.

He’d listen to her statement again once he left. She was sure of it. For a moment she thought about grabbing the recorder and smashing it.

“What
about
tomorrow?” she asked.

“Do you have anywhere to go?”

“I’ll find a place.”

“How about money? Do you have money?”

“Chief Ortega was here earlier and brought a check. She claimed it was backpay.” Jude suspected the check had been pushed through by Ortega in order to make sure she had enough to live on, at least temporarily. Ortega had come on board six months before Jude’s kidnapping, hardly enough time to have established much of a working relationship, but long enough for Jude to get a solid sense of her caring nature.

“And I called my bank. Apparently I still have an active account. I had a little saved up”—
before I died.
Wait. That wasn’t right. Not died. But it had been like a death, the past three years, and now she was a ghost, moving through the familiar and unfamiliar terrain of a new life, complete with a new cast of characters. No home, no boyfriend, no job. “Not much, but it will get me by for a while.”

Ashby seemed pleased to hear that she wasn’t broke. “I can pick you up, and if you feel strong enough, we can drive around and see if anything looks or feels familiar to you. See if you can spot the house where you were held captive.”

She nodded. “Okay.” A lie.

“And I can help you find a place to stay. Get you set up with a phone. Whatever you need.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

“Ortega’s orders.”

“Thanks.”

The afternoon was exhausting. The sketch artist arrived with her charcoal and her tablet. Once she was done, Jude lay back against the pillows in relief. She’d spoken more in the past two days than she’d spoken in three years. For so long she’d wanted to see another face other than the face of the man the artist had drawn, but now she wanted everybody to leave her alone. Just for a while. So she could adjust. So she could enjoy her freedom.

Even though she was tired, it was hard to rest with the bright lights and the strange odors and all the noise. The building itself had a heartbeat of motors and blowers and gears and pulleys, and she swore it almost seemed to breathe. When someone knocked on the open door, she kept her eyes closed. No more talking. No more questions. But then she smelled coffee and had to look.

Detective Grant Vang stood in the doorway, a white paper bag in one hand, carryout coffee container in the other. “Vanilla latte and a cranberry scone,” he announced, holding the bag high.

Grant was a few inches under six feet, slim, muscular, dressed in a dark suit, his straight black hair swept across his forehead. More alarming than his unannounced visit was how little he’d changed. His lack of change seemed unfair, and yet what had she expected?

Maybe an older version of Grant. Maybe a few gray hairs and stress lines. He was proof that three years was forever when you were being tortured but not long when you were just living your life.

She wondered if he was seeing anyone, wondered if he was still single. Wondered if he still liked her like that. Hoped he didn’t. It hadn’t been easy working side by side after he’d confessed his feelings for her and she’d rejected him.

“You should see the circus outside,” he said, entering the room. “There must be a hundred newspeople near the front doors hoping to get a scoop on you.”

Too soon.

Seeing someone from her old life, especially someone she’d worked with so closely at one time, threatened to shut down her brain. She struggled to stay in the scene as he placed the coffee and bag on the patient table, rolling it close. Then he looked at her for too long, and she knew he was trying to match the hideous person in the bed with the somewhat-attractive woman he used to know.

“I looked for you.” His eyes were pleading. “I want you to know that. For months.”

Everybody wanted forgiveness. Once again she found herself in the role of making someone else feel okay about her capture. Once again she was the one doing the comforting, the reassuring. “It’s okay,” she told him.

“I asked to be put on your case.” He pulled a chair close and sat down, a potpourri of scents mingling with cotton fabric and hospital food. “But Ortega seems to think you’ll be more comfortable talking to Ashby.”

“That’s true” was all she said. All she needed to say.

He nodded, looked down at his hands. “Do you remember anything? About the day you were abducted?”

She felt trapped, smothered by the room and his presence and all the things he wanted from her, ranging from simple conversation to an emotional connection. She didn’t even know how to tell him she needed to be alone.

Too soon.

“No. Nothing.” She turned her face toward the wall, and feigned sleep until he left.

The next morning Jude got dressed. The clothes Detective Ashby had brought the day before fit fairly well, mainly because they were sweatpants, black, along with a hooded sweatshirt and a puffy blue coat that smelled like Target, a scent so established she could recall it three years later. She pressed the coat to her nose, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. She tried to imagine the detective shopping for her—someone he didn’t even know.

She slipped into the coat, stuck her hands in the pockets, and found gloves and a stocking cap, also a nice shade of blue, everything clean and new. Her luck ran out with the shoes. Serviceable brown ankle boots that were a little too tight, but they would do for now.

“Ready to go?” asked a nurse holding a clipboard.

“Yes.”

“Is someone picking you up?”

“I’ll catch a cab.”

“Just sign this release form.” The nurse passed the clipboard, and Jude signed her name.

She tried not to appear in too much of a hurry even though she was anxious to get away before Detective Ashby showed up. She didn’t want to see the pity in his eyes, and she especially didn’t want to read the expression on his face and know he’d listened to her statement again.

The elevator took her to street level and the Eighth Street entrance, and then she was out the automatic doors and standing on the wide walkway in the patient drop-off area. The cold stung her eyes, and the sky—it was
so blue
.

Cabs were lined up and waiting. A WCCO van was parked in a prime metered spot, and people who were obviously part of news crews stood in hunched clusters, clutching their Caribou coffee and waiting to broadcast any bit of information that might come their way. She’d seen them from her hospital window, but now that she was yards away, no one even recognized her. How could they? She didn’t even recognize herself.

The television in her private room had been full of her story, running on local stations along with national outlets, but her photo had been pulled from the police-department profile. Along with her old picture, they were blasting the image drawn by the sketch artist.

Did it look like him? Maybe. On the surface. Eyes and nose and mouth. The hair, the beard. But no drawing could capture him, not the real him, the him he’d shown her every day. That him looked nothing like the sketch. That him would have been too frightening for anyone to gaze upon, let alone see from the safety of a living room.

But that was over now.

She took a deep breath of fresh winter air, tucked her hands in the pockets of her puffy Target jacket, turned in the opposite direction, and began walking.

Nobody tried to stop her. By simply doing nothing, she was incognito.

Jude didn’t give the newspeople another thought. She didn’t think about where she was heading, or where she was going to live, or how she would survive, or if the man she shot was dead, or if she’d ever find the house where she’d spent the past three years. Right now she just wanted to walk in the cold, under a blue, blue sky.

CHAPTER 5

T
wo blocks into her freedom walk, Jude spotted the logo for her bank, along with the digitally displayed time and a temperature of thirty degrees. Balmy for winter in Minnesota. This particular branch wasn’t one she’d ever visited, but she figured they’d have her thumbprint ID on file.

In the end, it didn’t really matter. The personal banker recognized her name due to the media coverage. She seemed both uncomfortable and starstruck. Weird to think that being abducted turned a person into a celebrity.

Jude deposited the check from Ortega and withdrew several hundred in cash, stuffed the envelope in her jacket pocket, and began walking again, stopping at a café on South Tenth Street, one she’d visited many times. Inside, her plan to order a latte was derailed by the dessert display.

She felt more human than she had a couple of days ago. A fluid IV and nutritious food could do wonders, but her senses were still in overdrive, at times feeling so finely tuned that it seemed she could almost hear the melody of the blood moving through her veins. Was this the way the world was for animals, especially dogs? She noticed everything around her, from the dark cracks in the polished cement floor to the ornate ceiling. Beneath the hiss of the espresso machine and a Dylan song, she heard the ticking of a wall clock and individual sentences buried in a blanket of conversation.

The warm café smelled of coffee and chocolate, of the cold that people carried on their clothes, of fabric and winter and skin both young and old.

“What’s that?” She pointed.

The kid behind the counter peered into the case. “Caramel cheesecake brownie.” He straightened, looking faintly curious about the overstuffed white plastic hospital bag in her hand. Her tangle of matted hair was covered with the stocking cap, but there was nothing she could do about her face. She’d seen herself in the mirror and knew she could still easily pass for a street person. But her sunken cheeks and the dark circles under her eyes hadn’t been the biggest shock. She’d never been especially vain, but her hair was something people had always complimented her on—the thickness and shine and richness of the color. There would be no compliments now.

She shifted her finger. “And that?”

“Rum and coconut.”

“That?”

Seeing she might never be able to decide, the kid said, “You wanna know what I like? The raspberry dark-chocolate brownie. It has a little bit of cayenne pepper in it.”

“That sounds unbelievable.” She ordered his suggestion, along with a latte. While waiting, she grabbed a copy of
City Pages
, the Twin Cities’ free weekly paper. Before she reached the want ads, her order was announced at the end of the counter.

“How’s your day going?” the barista asked. “Got any big plans?”

The question had no doubt been part of her training, so it wasn’t the girl’s fault. But the delivery came with the prepackaged assumption that there was no suffering in the world. Maybe that’s what coffee shops sold. The idea that everything was okay, at least here, in this moment. It kinda worked.

Jude picked up her cup in its paper sleeve. “My big plan is to drink this latte and eat this brownie.”

For some reason, her response evoked a flicker of interest before the girl moved on to prepare the next drink and ask the next person about plans.

Jude found an empty table near a plant-filled window and opened the paper to the back pages.

Bringing the forkful of brownie to her mouth held all the majesty of a spiritual awakening, and when the dessert made contact with her tongue, she felt the release of endorphins.

How could certain foods make a person feel better? Instantly better?

While savoring the brownie, she perused apartment rentals. Borrowing a pen from the cash-register counter, she circled a few prospects.

Like a regular person. Was it that easy? To return to real life?

One of the ads stuck out.
No background check. No references.
Located on Chicago Avenue South, two blocks from Powderhorn Park.

She returned the pen and asked about a pay phone.

The kid at the register stared at her. “I think I saw one in a movie once.”

That got a slow smile out of Jude. It might have been her first smile since her escape, maybe her first smile in years, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it.

He noticed the
City Pages
in her hand, folded to the circled ads. “Here.” He pulled out his cell phone. You can borrow this.”

She put the paper down on the counter, made the call, set up a time, handed the phone back. “Thanks.”

“Have I seen you somewhere?”

It would be like this for a while. Her face must have been plastered everywhere at one time, and with her recent escape making local and national news . . . “It’s possible” was all she said.

He pushed the paper toward her. “Powderhorn? You don’t wanna go there.”

“Why not?” She’d always liked the Powderhorn area. It was one of those neighborhoods that had spent years fighting a bad reputation, deserving and undeserving.

“That place was rough before the increase in crime, but now? Businesses have folded, and a lot of the houses are empty. Vandals cleaned everything out. Like gutted the homes, stripped them to the studs to get the copper wire. You should be looking in Tangletown. Or maybe around Lake Harriet. Uptown is still okay too.”

Both Tangletown and Lake Harriet would most likely be out of her price range, and Uptown was too hip, too noisy, too claustrophobic. “Thanks for the warning. And thanks for the phone.”

A few blocks away, she caught a city bus to Powderhorn and the apartment where she’d arranged to meet the building manager.

The kid at the coffee shop had been right. As the bus chugged down familiar streets, past record stores and cafés and vintage shops, evidence of neglect was everywhere. Some of the windows were covered in plywood, graffiti, and band posters, and many of the spaces looked empty. Even the four-story brick apartment building, when Jude found it, gave off a deserted vibe.

“Washer and dryer in the basement.” The building manager, a guy named Will Sebastian, stood with muscular arms crossed, watching her examine the advertised space. He had long hair tied back in a ponytail, a leather vest, a beard, and tinted aviator glasses. He was big and burly, with tattoos on his neck and fingers that looked prison grade. He smelled like old sweat and cigarettes, his body odor having taken on that heavy stench that came with winter.

As advertised, the apartment was on the top floor. Nobody would be dancing above her head. One bedroom, the living room and kitchen combination separated by a breakfast counter and three stools. A lot of sunshine pouring in, and shades that could be pulled down at night. Radiator heat, hardwood floors, crown molding. Bathroom with a claw-foot tub and subway tile that had probably been there from day one. It was easy to feel the hundred years of living that had occurred there, ranging from bright and promising when the place was new to hard and downtrodden in recent decades.

“Previous occupants moved without taking their stuff,” Will said. “Three months behind on rent and they skipped town. Just left it. Even the dishes, but I can haul anything out you don’t want.”

“I could use all of it.” Vintage orange couch and an oval coffee table. Braid rug. On the wall was a poster of the Grain Belt beer sign done by a local artist whose name escaped her.

“Now for the best part.” He led her from the apartment, down a dark hallway, and up a narrow flight of metal stairs.

Jude would be lying if she didn’t admit to feeling uneasy. The tightness of the space, the darkness, even the smell of old building and damp brick. For a moment she considered turning and running, even calculating how far she’d get if he came after her and brought her down like a lion bringing down a gazelle.

In her condition, she wouldn’t make it far. She could already feel weakness invading the legs that had gotten little use over the past three years.

At the top of the stairs, the manager threw open a door.

The transition from darkness to brilliant sunlight almost blinded her, but she had no trouble following him through the door to the roof.

Flat, covered in tar paper and gravel and surrounded by a two-foot brick wall typical of a lot of old apartment buildings. The black tar paper had soaked up heat from the sun, making the day feel a lot warmer than the thirty degrees posted earlier on the bank sign. But it wasn’t just a tar-paper roof. There was a small area where a raised wooden deck had been added, along with cheap plastic lawn chairs and a small glass-topped outdoor table. In the center of the table was an ashtray overflowing with butts. When Jude stepped close enough, she recognized the odor of the cigarettes as the same odor that was embedded in the manager’s clothing, an odor she associated with gas stations and greasy food. Then she realized why the smell was so familiar. Her captor had smoked the same brand.

“What kind of cigarettes do you smoke?” she asked.

“What’s that?”

“Cigarettes.”

Confused, he fumbled inside his leather vest and pulled out a crushed white pack of smokes, holding them up for her to see. “Whatever’s on sale. These are the ones I get the most.”

Brand X. That’s what they were actually called. Brand X.

He gave the pack a shake; a few staggered butts shot out for the picking as he offered her one.

She shook her head. “No thanks.”

“Too cheap?”

“I don’t smoke.”

Puzzled, he grabbed a protruding cigarette with his lips, lit it with a plastic giveaway lighter. Then, with a smooth motion that came from years of practice, he returned the pack and lighter to his shirt pocket. “We’re running a special deal,” he told her, cigarette bobbing. “No deposit. Two hundred bucks off your first month’s rent.”

So obviously desperate.

She’d seen the rooftop—he no longer had to sell her on anything, but he continued his pitch. “Building was built in 1930, if you’re into that kind of stuff. They don’t make them like this anymore. Parking garage below for an extra hundred. Secure. That’s the big plus in this neighborhood. You don’t have to leave your car on the street. And a room on the fourth floor is as safe as anywhere in the city.”

“I don’t have a car. At least not yet.”

“Recently get out of prison? You kinda have that look about you.”

“Something like that.”

“Hey, I get it. I did time too. Drugs, but I’ve been clean for five years. I like to be up front with people about my prison days. Don’t want you to find out later and freak.”

This would have been the time to share her recent history, but she suddenly felt too tired to get into it, and she figured he’d find out soon enough. “Do you know anybody with a car to sell? I can’t afford much.”

“I got a motorcycle I’m trying to unload, but it’s a bad time for that. Winter and all. Who the hell buys a motorcycle this time of the year in Minnesota?”

She’d never ridden a motorcycle. Well, she’d ridden
on
one, but she’d never been the one in control. “I might be interested, but I don’t know how to ride.”

“It’s not that hard. I could teach you, or you could take a motorcycle-safety course. That’s what I’d recommend.” He sucked on the cigarette, then blew out a cloud of smoke. “Here’s a deal. Buy the motorcycle, move in here, and I’ll keep the bike running for you.”

Three years ago, she would never have considered a motorcycle. How odd that she was thinking about it now.

Downstairs, in a garage that was dark and damp, the cement floor caked with white road salt brought in by car tires, she met the bike. It was pretty. Yellow, with shiny chrome.

“It’s a ’76 Honda 550,” Will said. “You don’t see many around here in this shape.”

“How much?”

He shot her a price. They haggled a little. He gave up some ground.

“I’ll take it,” she said.