The Body Reader (9 page)

CHAPTER 15

J
ude woke to the smell of food cooking. She unfolded herself from the couch and wandered stiffly to the kitchen. Uriah stood at the counter in front of a small apartment stove, a spatula in his hand as he stirred a skillet of scrambled eggs. “This is nice,” he said without looking at her, a towel tossed casually over his shoulder. “Waking up, cooking eggs for more than one person.”

She crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe. “I’m amazed you’re standing. Your head must be killing you.”

“It’s not too bad, but then, I think there’s a really good chance I’m still drunk.”

She pulled out a vintage chair—metal with red cushions—and sat down, hugging a knee to her chest. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” She heard the wince in his voice.

“They’re getting new locks installed.”

“Good idea.” He continued to focus his attention on the pan in front of him. Embarrassed? Maybe. Probably.

“Plates.” He pointed to the cupboard above the sink.

She got up, pulled out two blue plates, put them on the narrow table, sat back down. With a spatula, he scraped the scrambled eggs from the pan, creating a small mountain on each plate. Then he produced two mugs and filled them with coffee from a french press and sat down across from her.

Uriah had inadvertently created a moment. One of those inexplicable things in life,
real
life, that made everything better. It made her wonder if maybe real life could exist for her in this new world.

They picked up forks and began eating.

A few bites in, Uriah broke the silence: “I don’t remember the couple that well, but I remember riding on your motorcycle; then I woke up here.”

“That’s pretty much what happened.” The cooked meal, simple though it was, tasted surprisingly good, and it was hard for Jude to make herself stop eating long enough to expand on her reply. “I stayed the night because I thought it was a bad idea to leave you alone.”

Uriah finally looked at her,
really
looked at her. Then, without warning, he reached across the table and grabbed her free hand. Just a human response, meant to be a gesture of thanks, but when his fingers made contact with hers, she jerked away—a simple reminder of what had passed when she was in captivity and what wasn’t right about her.

His gaze quickly fell away to focus hard on the food on his plate.

Feeling as if she owed him an explanation, she said, “I don’t like anybody to touch me.”

“I’ll remember that.” Still, he didn’t look at her. They continued with the motions of the meal, living through the awkwardness that had descended.

“My mother collected books too,” she finally said.

“It’s kind of an obsession of mine,” he confessed. “Mostly first editions.” Eye contact. “Why are you looking at me like that? Is it so strange?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just unexpected, that’s all.”

A shift of eyebrows. “You should see my Beanie Baby collection.” When she didn’t respond, he continued: “I’m kidding about the Beanie Babies.”

“Oh.”

“For somebody who claims to be able to read dead bodies, you sure seem off sometimes when it comes to living, breathing people.”

He was right. Her mistake had come from making assumptions about him. “I wonder how much of a person is simply fabricated by others,” she said. “And think about this: None of us see the same person in the exact same way. We bring ourselves into the equation. So an individual is never
really
an individual.”

“This might be a little too deep for a hangover. Are you saying we’re not only a product of our environment; we’re also informed by accurate and inaccurate observations by others? That makes my head hurt even more.”

“One thing I know, before my capture I saw myself through everybody else’s eyes, if that makes any sense. Every single person I engaged with throughout the day. I read their reaction to me and saw what they saw, accurate or inaccurate. That hasn’t happened since my escape. I don’t know if this new me is normal or abnormal, but that skewed reflection no longer exists. It should feel good, but it’s like something is gone.”

You become the person he sees.

At that moment she realized that was what had happened to her. For three years. With nothing and no one to bounce herself off of but a sadistic man, she’d had no choice. Not really. She’d become the person he saw.

How long had it taken for him to break her? Days? Weeks? Months? How long before she’d given up and become the docile and complacent person who’d done whatever he said? And not only done it, but had looked forward to his visits?

Maybe the length of time it had taken to break her didn’t matter. What mattered was that she’d succumbed. She’d quit fighting, quit planning escapes, quit trying to overtake him. That’s where her shame came from. And she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forgive herself for that.

Done eating, she took her plate to the sink and rinsed it under the faucet. “I saw a list of names on the coffee table,” she said over her shoulder. “Classmates of Delilah Masters?”

“I got them off Facebook last night. I say we visit Delilah’s school again today. Interview more kids, along with some teachers. And maybe Lola Holt will be there.”

He’d gotten drunk after spending time on Facebook. Seemed an unusual sequence of events until she decided he’d probably also visited his wife’s page. She shut off the water and turned around. “I used to collect Beanie Babies,” she confessed.

“That’s embarrassing.” He got up, chair scraping the wooden floor. “I had a Teddy Ruxpin talking bear, but that information better never leave this room.”

CHAPTER 16

T
he walking funeral procession for Delilah Masters made its way up Hennepin Avenue, moving in the direction of Lakewood Cemetery. Beginning at the mortuary, a scattering of people lined both sides of the street, some silent, some sobbing, some just there because the murder had been the lead story for the past few days. That kind of media attention drew a crowd. And activists. Just the night before, a group of concerned parents had organized a vigil, launching hundreds of paper boats containing small candles across the still surface of Lake of the Isles.

Visually powerful and newsworthy, especially when combined with parents concerned for their own children’s safety.

Death was always sad, but it was achingly tragic when that death involved a beautiful girl on the cusp of adulthood. The fact that it was a murder disguised as a suicide made it the biggest story in town. Add Jude Fontaine to the mix, and it meant national outlets had picked it up, the feeding frenzy over her name renewed.

Jude and Uriah followed on foot, keeping a respectful distance at the back of the crowd. As they walked, Jude spotted a group of girls watching from the curb. Girls they’d interviewed, but still no sign of Lola Holt. She continued to elude them, but Jude hoped the funeral would flush her out.

Both detectives wore black, Uriah in the suit that seemed a part of him, and Jude in a sleeveless dress she’d picked up at a department store. Dress shoes seemed part of her old life, so she’d decided her black leather boots were a practical choice, while not an aesthetically good one.

Minneapolis was tough to navigate because of the lakes. Major streets ended abruptly, and Hennepin Avenue stopped where the gates to Lakewood Cemetery began. Once inside those gates, the terrain shifted from flat to hilly, with dark valleys and trees so big they cast moving shadows over everything and everyone.

Jude and Uriah weren’t the only cops on site. Several officers, Grant Vang and Caroline McIntosh included, were in the moving crowd, all of them keeping their eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. Killers often attended their victim’s funeral, savoring the sense of anonymous notoriety the event presented. After the burial took place, the grave would be watched for suspicious visitors. But today, unfortunately, the killer could easily blend in.

The procession stopped in a deep valley, giving people a moment to look skyward. Lakewood was located in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul Airport flight path, and planes traveling at various altitudes could be seen leaving white trails across a cloudless sky.

Jude guessed maybe two hundred people were now gathered inside the cemetery gates—scattered on the hillside and clustered around stone monuments of sorrowful angels. The officiating minister opened his Bible. From somewhere in the distance, a flute began to play. The sound of those sweet and haunting notes triggered an unexpected response in Jude. Her eyes welled with tears, and her throat tightened. For a moment, she forgot about her purpose at the funeral. In a cemetery surrounded by death, Jude felt a small spark of life. She didn’t like it. It made her sad and made her feel emotions she didn’t want to feel.

Snapshots of an existence lived and unlived flashed through her brain, clips of days spent in a basement, of a voice and hands and the longing for human contact. And the big question: Could a new life be built now, after everything she’d been through?

At the same time these thoughts rushed through her, Jude was acutely aware of how static her world felt. She no longer sensed that sweet delusional promise of something good, something better, around the corner. Could a person exist without it? Was she forever condemned to the scent of other people’s fires?

The service ended, and funeral attendees wandered toward their homes and cars. The detectives stood at the base of a towering oak tree and watched as the crowd dissipated and gravediggers waited in the shade to cover the coffin.

Jude was thinking about her reaction to the flute, when Uriah whispered, “Look.”

He stood with hands clasped, head bowed, furtively watching the crowd through the curly hair that hung over his forehead. She followed the direction of his gaze, stopping on a young woman with dark, smooth hair wearing a blue dress.

Lola Holt.

The elusive girl moved toward the lane that led to the main gate. In unison, Uriah and Jude fell into step, walking just a notch above normal pace. Maybe it was still too fast, or maybe their urgency somehow broadcast itself to the girl, because she glanced over her shoulder, spotted them, turned, and dove into the mob filing through the gate.

Jude and Uriah ran after her, apologizing to funeral goers as they wove in and out of the crowd.

They raced up the street, legs a blur, arms pumping, after the girl with dark hair.

Lola Holt took an abrupt detour, cutting down an alley. They cut after her.

Another turn and there she was.

“Homicide!” Uriah shouted. “Hold it right there.”

The girl could have squeezed between two brick buildings, but she must have realized the futility of continuing to flee.

She turned and faced them, hands at her side as she gulped in air. “What do you want? Leave me alone!”

Uriah pulled out his badge, introduced himself and Jude, then tucked the badge back in his jacket. “We just want to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know anything.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?” From Uriah.

“You were her friend,” Jude said.

“We used to be friends.”

Lola was an attractive girl. Not beautiful, but she had an interesting face. Dark eyes heavily enhanced with thick black liner, high cheekbones, slashing eyebrows.

“When did you stop being friends?” Jude asked.

Lola shook her head. “I don’t know. Six months ago, maybe.”

“What happened? We’ve seen Delilah’s room. There were pictures of you there. Looks like you were friends for a long time.”

“We grew apart.” She shrugged.

“Could you elaborate on that?” Uriah asked. “How did you grow apart?”

“It wasn’t one thing. Just a lot of little things. You know. It happens. I don’t still run around with my grade-school friends either.”

Uriah pulled out his iPhone, scrolled, stopped, and turned the device toward the girl. “We haven’t found Delilah’s phone, but we were able to access her old texts. Because, well, we’re cops.”

Lola looked at the screen and paled.

“According to this,” Uriah said, “you were in contact with Delilah a week ago.”

“My uncle is a lawyer, and he says I don’t have to talk to you.”

“That’s right, to a point,” Uriah told her. “But we can bring you downtown for questioning.”

“I don’t know anything!”

She might have come across as tough and independent, but it didn’t take advanced perception skills to see that the girl was terrified. “We’re trying to find out the truth,” Jude said calmly. “And if you’re in any danger, we want to protect you. We can’t protect you if we don’t know what’s going on.”

“Aren’t you the cop who was abducted? I saw it on the news. I mean, how can you protect anybody when you can’t even protect yourself?”

Attempting to ignore the sting of those truthful words, Jude pulled out a business card and presented it to the girl, who didn’t budge as she eyeballed the card suspiciously.

“Go on.” Jude held the card closer. “We’re on your side. We’re here to help you. If you’re afraid, if you need to talk to someone, if you feel you’re in danger, call me. Day or night.”

The girl reluctantly took the card. She’d probably throw it away as soon as they were out of sight.

“At least let us walk you to your car,” Uriah said. “We’re not going to leave you alone in an alley.”

Lola muttered something about their being the ones who’d chased her into that alley in the first place. All the same, she grudgingly fell into step beside them as they headed back to civilization.

“You don’t need to walk me to my car,” Lola said once they were on Hennepin Avenue and a sidewalk full of people. Before either detective could comment, she slipped between two parked cars, watched for an opening in traffic, and dashed across the street, neatly ditching them.

“She’s afraid,” Uriah said as he and Jude headed back to their vehicle, parked a few blocks away.

“Afraid would be putting it mildly.” Jude spotted their car and pointed at it. “She’s terrified.”

“I’d like to put a protective watch on her,” Uriah said, “but without any justification, the request would never get approved, especially with our manpower shortage.”

“We made contact,” Jude said. “That’s something.”

At the car, Uriah hit the “Unlock” button on the fob while watching for traffic before circling to the driver’s side.

Jude opened the passenger door. “And maybe we planted a seed of trust,” she added as she slipped inside. “She has my card if she hasn’t already thrown it away. Hopefully she’ll call me.”