The Body Reader (Detective Jude Fontaine Mysteries, #1)

by Anne Frasier

He crossed the room and reached for the curtains. “Don’t.” He paused, arm in the air. “Leave them open.” “The sun’s in your eyes.” “I want it in my eyes.” He let the full meaning of that sink in. Of course. Judging by her pallor, she probably hadn’t seen natural light in a long time.

“The first thing I was aware of was coming to on a basement floor, in a room with no windows. Not big enough to lie down in. I had to curl up to sleep. I never saw anybody but the man I killed last night. And I’d never seen him before that moment when he opened the cell door three years ago.”

How messed up would that be, to get out of the place you’d been held captive for three years, go home, only to find another woman in your house?

“Just the two of us. I’m four years older. Our mother died in a gun accident when Jude was eight and I was twelve. Jude didn’t see it happen, but she was on site, staying in the family cabin up north. She saw the aftermath. Everybody freaking. My dad out of his mind. I’m sure seeing adults lose it like that, seeing her own father fall apart, had to be tough on a kid. I think that’s when she started getting weird. Understandable, right? Shortly after that, she became paranoid. Delusional. She started saying our father killed our mother. She just wouldn’t let it go.”

Schilling read the card, then pocketed it. “Keep an eye on her, will you? Regardless of what she might think about me, I believe in watching out for family. If I can help, even under the radar, let me know.” He gestured vaguely. “Money, whatever she needs.”

Was he involved?

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.

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.

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

“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.”

“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.

Not worth it

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.

“Sleeping together?” She looked up at him. “That has nothing to do with anything.” “It might. I always thought it curious that Vang never mentioned having a relationship with you.” “That’s because we didn’t have a relationship. It’s none of your business.” Yep. Slept together. Never a good idea in any work situation, but cops . . . Bad.

“I wonder why we always feel disdain for our old selves,” Uriah said. “We should feel thankful. We should appreciate the people we used to be rather than being ashamed of them.”

But then, delivered in her deadpan way, she said something that killed him. Killed him. “I’ve been in a box. Don’t put me back in one.”

“I’m not going to go home and take up knitting,” she told him. “I’m going to go to the firing range and work on my shooting skills. I’m going to take a refresher in self-defense. And”—pause—“I’m going to learn to drive a motorcycle.” He was far from being sexist, but he realized that’s how he’d come across. Telling her to take up a hobby. “I didn’t mean to imply that you should go home and keep your mouth shut.” “Really?” she asked. “Because that’s exactly what it seems like to me. But don’t worry. In a few months I’ll return. Not to bug you about the cases you might or might not be looking into, but to get my job back.”

She got the feeling that where she chose to live wasn’t his biggest gripe. He expected her to fail. He expected her to be out of there in a few days, and he thought the harder he pushed, the more quickly it would happen. “I have no plans to die soon, and I don’t have to prove anything to you. As you pointed out, after being held prisoner for three years I still had the resourcefulness to escape. I’d say that’s all the résumé you need from me.

Their first hour of partnership was getting off to a rocky start. “I don’t think this is a suicide,” Jude said.

“I think it was meant to look like a suicide.” Now Jude looked at him, gauging his reaction. “And how, after a two-minute cursory exam, did you arrive at this theory?” “She’s telling me things.” “My God.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t say that kind of nonsense out loud. She’s dead,” he said. “Dead.” “Yes, but what she was feeling before she died is written on her face and in her muscles. It’s still here. I see it. I can read her.”

“It’s not as crazy as it sounds,” she finally explained, deciding she would share a little bit with him, but only a little. “I didn’t read her dead mind. It’s not anything psychic. I spent three years in solitary confinement. I had no books, no music, no movies, no color. The only thing I had was one evil man’s face and body, and reading him became my entire existence. I lived for his visits, for the stimulation. Every line, every nuance, every muscle contraction, every flicker of thought—I read him. And I can read this girl even though she’s dead. I know that sounds weird, but echoes of her experience are frozen in her face and in her muscles.”

She didn’t think it wise to mention that she’d read him moments earlier when the first responder had spoken the word suicide. Jude had seen the quake that Uriah quickly hid. She didn’t tell him she’d read him every time she’d met with him at the police station. She didn’t tell him she knew he was feeling sorry for her all over again right this minute because the full impact of what she’d been through was slowly and continuously sinking in. And maybe that was part of his reluctance to have her around. She was a constant reminder of unspeakable acts and unspeakable pain, all wrapped up in his failure to find her or close the case.

Captives learned the art of no reaction in order to remove the cause and effect of torture, the joy experienced by the torturer.

“So she drowned, or was drowned, most likely in a swimming pool,” he said. “That’s correct. There’s no freshwater in her lungs. She was dead before she was put in the lake.”

She’d seemed so happy. That’s what got him. The department psychologist tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault. That Ellen was ultimately responsible for the choice she’d made. What really drove him crazy was that he’d never seen it coming. Not a hint. Not a fucking hint. What kind of husband didn’t know his wife was in pain?

The professional drinkers were the ones who often seemed more sober than anybody else in the room.

“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.”

So you found yourself needing to go back there to touch the place, see the place. Not to reassure yourself that it was real and that it had occurred, but to observe it from the distance of a safe mind, to marvel that this thing happened to you and you survived.

She used to find it frustrating when victims refused to press charges against a person who deserved to be put away. Now she understood their thinking. Acknowledgment brought it back. It meant there was no walking away. No starting over.

“It’s kind of unnerving to think about how we’re shaped by the darkness in our lives,”

Some philosopher said the darkest place you ever live will be etched forever in your soul and you will look back on those days with a twisted sort of fondness.

True.

“I’m not someone who wakes up very fast. Explorer Roald Amundsen called it morning peevishness.”