The Body Reader (20 page)

CHAPTER 44

Y
our father isn’t pressing charges.” Uriah had followed the squad car to the underground booking area of Hennepin County Jail, figuring Jude would at the very least get a reprimand from the judge and be sent home. But her father had pulled strings, and she was being released without charge.

In the basement loading and unloading area, the handcuffs were removed. Uriah grabbed her by the elbow and steered her toward his car. With Jude in the passenger seat, he took the exit ramp. When the automatic door opened, he turned onto Fourth Avenue.

“Of course he’s not pressing charges,” Jude said. “Pressing charges would mean media attention. He doesn’t want this getting out. You don’t believe me, but he was lying.”

“Because you know him so well.”

“I do.”

“Really? You haven’t lived with him or had anything to do with him since you were sixteen.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t know him.”

“Okay, say he was lying,” he said, deciding to humor her. “What do you think he’s covering up?”

“He knows something about Octavia Germaine. He did not react like an innocent man.” She gave him a hard look. “Did you just roll your eyes?”

“Yes. Because you’ve got it in for your father. When you were a kid, you mistakenly decided he killed your mother, and now he’s Mr. Evil. You’re seeing guilt where there is none. And if the guy’s acting weird, why wouldn’t he? He’s being questioned by the daughter who accused him of murder and damaged his reputation when he has aspirations of running for Senate. I’m sure he’s worrying about what you might decide to say to the press. A few sentences could ruin every chance he has of being elected.”

“Are you siding with him?”

“There are no sides. You need to let go of the past. Not easy. Believe me, I know, but it’s clouding your thinking. If every case that comes along leads you to him, then—” He cut himself off.

“Then what?” she asked.

“Never mind.”

“I’ll say it for you. Then I’d better quit Homicide. That’s what you were going to say, right?”

Eyes on the road and traffic, he asked, “Would you have killed him?”

“Are you asking as a detective?”

“Off the record. Completely off the record.”

A long silence, then, “I don’t know.”

Uriah turned onto the lower level of the Washington Avenue Bridge. Once they crossed the Mississippi River, the bridge dumped them out on campus, the Frank Gehry–designed Weisman Art Museum on the right, ultramodern light-rail train on the left. Students crossed the street in front of traffic as if they were strolling through a park.

“Where are we going?” She’d unfortunately realized they weren’t heading toward her apartment or the police station.

He hit the “Safety” button, locking all doors and windows. “I have orders to put you under a seventy-two-hour mental-health hold.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I couldn’t be more serious.” Minutes later he pulled into the emergency entrance of the University of Minnesota Medical Center. He parked in patient loading and unloading, dove from the car, circled, and opened her door. “Get out.”

“Were those my father’s orders?”

“Chief Ortega’s. And you won’t be coming back to the department once you’re released. I’m sorry, Jude. You weren’t ready for this. Today was proof of that. And honestly, I don’t think you would have ever been ready.”

“You son of a bitch.”

He was prepared for her to bolt. She didn’t. Inside, she signed the forms put in front of her, and she let a nurse lead her down a hall to a thick door that locked behind her.

Maybe she knew this was for the best.

Uriah watched, wondering if she’d look back. She didn’t. No, he didn’t suppose she’d give him that satisfaction. Along with her father, he was now the enemy.

Back in the car, he pulled out his phone and called Chief Ortega. “It’s done.”

CHAPTER 45

J
ude left the mental-health unit of the University of Minnesota clutching a white paper bag containing her medication, along with several sheets of instructions and contact numbers.

During the seventy-two hours, they’d given her some heavy-duty meds to reset her brain. Jude thought of it more as shutting her off. And that was okay. More than okay. But now, with the medication singing in her veins and pressing her to the ground, she had to get home. Once there, she’d crawl into bed. But how to get home? Her motorcycle was still in the police-department parking garage. That left a cab, or Uber, or light-rail. All seemed impossibly hard.

Someone called her name.

She turned her head and the world swam. A hand caught her arm, and a young voice said, “You okay?”

She blinked the scene into focus. In front of her, with concerned eyes, stood a college student. Curly hair, beard. She nodded. He let go, then strode away, back to campus and student life.

She hadn’t liked the feeling of a stranger touching her, but the fact that he’d stopped and voiced his concern made her throat burn. Kindness still existed. She had to remember that. It was important. It was the thing she’d preached to Uriah, the thing she’d lost track of in her return to police work.

Good people still existed.

Not everybody was evil.

The voice she’d heard moments earlier repeated her name.

She turned her head in the direction of the call, slower this time, with only a slight amount of dizziness, zooming in on a man leaning against a car, arms and ankles crossed.

Grant Vang.

She’d expected Uriah. She couldn’t have dealt with him right now. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to deal with him ever again. And she wouldn’t have to. Chief Ortega had stopped by the hospital yesterday . . . or had it been the day before? Whatever the day, Ortega had reiterated what Uriah had already told her.

“We’re letting you go,” Ortega had said. She’d gone on to explain that they’d arrange for Jude to receive a medical pension. “I take full blame for what happened. You should have never come back and should have gone on disability to begin with. We’ll get it straightened out, and you’ll be taken care of. If you live modestly, you should be fine.”

Jude had wanted to ask what would happen if she lived immodestly.

Grant was waving now, and Jude moved toward him. In her mind, she saw herself shuffling along, and she would have laughed at the image she conjured up if she’d had the energy.

He opened the passenger door. “Hop in,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride back to your apartment.”

She got in. Grant slammed the door, rounded the car, and settled himself beside her.

“Seat belt,” he reminded her as he pulled away from the curb.

She managed to fasten herself in. Outside her window, students moved up and down the wide sidewalk, heading to class or dorms. That life seemed so remote and alien, yet so comforting. She could understand how some people remained lifelong students. It was an insular world. How could that not be wonderful?

“I heard you were getting out this afternoon,” Grant said, “and figured you might need a ride since your bike is still in the parking garage. And, well, you shouldn’t be riding it right now anyway.”

“No.”

Her brain kept stopping—at least that’s what it felt like. Or maybe it was more like floating away, because she’d suddenly find herself back in reality, in the car, riding down the street.

At her apartment building, they took the elevator to the fourth floor, where she unlocked and opened her door. In the living room, in the center of the coffee table, was a cardboard box full of things she recognized from her desk at work. She regretted not getting that plant.

“The building manager let me in so I could drop off your stuff,” Grant explained. “I figured you might not feel like going back there.” He crossed the room and opened the refrigerator. “And I got you a few things.” Like Vanna White, he gestured at the shelves. “Milk, juice, eggs.” He let the door close, then opened the cupboard above the sink. “Cereal and bread here. Sorry, but your laptop is gone. Police-department issue, so I had to collect and return it.”

“Thanks for everything.” She put down the bag of medication and unzipped her purse.

“You don’t have to pay me back,” he said, seeing what she was about to do. “It was no big deal. I wanted to help.”

“You’re a good guy.”

“Yeah, well.” He smiled. “I try.” He glanced around. “Want me to stay awhile? I can.”

“I’d like to be alone.”

He nodded. “If you need anything, just call or text. You have my number.”

“Okay.”

Once he left, she remembered the cat.

From the cupboard, she retrieved a can of cat food and filled a small jug with water. Then, even though her body and mind wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed, she forced herself to leave the apartment and climb the narrow, steep stairs to the roof.

Someone was already there, standing near the edge, looking down at the street. At the sound of movement, he turned, and she recognized Will Sebastian, the building manager. “Glad to see you’re back,” he said. “I fed your cat while you were gone.”

Both the food and water bowls had been replenished. “Not my cat.”

“Whoever it belongs to—I fed it.”

She put the can of food and jug of water on the table. “I’ve never seen you here before.” Although the cigarette butts had been evidence of his visits.

“I usually come up during the day, not at night like you.”

He probably knew she slept on the deck. That wouldn’t be happening tonight. Setting up camp would be too much work.

Will crossed the roof to come closer. “When I got out of jail,” he told her, “I couldn’t stand small spaces. But some guys can’t stand to be in the open. Up here? They’d freak.”

Feeling dizzy again, she said, “I gotta go. I gotta lie down.” She reached for the heavy metal door, tugged. Above her head, Will held it open, joining her in the stairwell, the door slamming behind them.

She didn’t like that sound.

On her floor, he followed her into her apartment, spotting the white paper bag with the pharmacy logo. “What do they have you on?”

Was it that obvious? She picked up the bag, ripped through the staples, and handed him three prescription bottles. Who was she kidding? Of course it was obvious.

He read the labels and passed them back. “That’s some serious stuff. That’s the kind of cocktail they give people in mental wards.”

An antipsychotic, a tranquilizer, and sleeping pills. “If the shoe fits . . .”

“I’ve taken the tranquilizer,” he told her. “Maybe half that amount, and I was a vegetable. Almost catatonic. Took time to adjust. Not that I’m trying to tell you not to take it,” he said, seeming to realize his comment wasn’t the best thing to say to someone in her situation. He passed the bottles back. “Didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Just saying you might have trouble functioning for a while.”

“I don’t have anything to do anyway.” She dropped to the couch. With a sluggish gesture, she slammed the prescription bottles down on the table. “I’ve been fired.”

“Oh, man. Sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll still be able to pay rent.”

“I’m not worried. Half this building is empty anyway.”

“I need to sleep, so . . .”

“I’m gonna watch out for you until you’re back on your feet,” he said. “Just a friend looking out for a friend. Whatever you need, day or night, give me a shout. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Once Will was gone, she shook a pill into her palm, popped it, and washed it down. It hit fast. Minutes later, she was flat on her back on the couch, beginning to experience the catatonia Will had mentioned. Her cell phone rang. It took forever to retrieve it from her back pocket.

She stared at the name on the screen:
Uriah Ashby
. As she watched, the phone finally stopped ringing and the name finally vanished. Moments later she heard a text tone. Ignoring it, she tossed the device aside and closed her eyes, waiting for blackness to engulf her.

CHAPTER 46

E
verything was better. That’s what Jude decided almost a week after her release from the hospital as she wandered through the farmers’ market near her apartment on a bright Sunday morning.

She didn’t even care that she hadn’t answered Uriah’s calls or texts. He was a part of her old life, her life as a cop, as a detective. That was no longer relevant. That person was gone, and the brief period she’d spent investigating murders now seemed like a dream.

What had she been thinking? To go back there?

What had
they
been thinking, to allow her to return?

She stopped to examine some particularly red tomatoes. “How much?” she asked, lifting the green cardboard container.

“Five dollars.”

Jude reached into the messenger bag slung across her chest, opened a small zip purse, pulled out a five, and passed it to the woman behind the table, who tucked it into her yellow apron pocket. Dirt-caked nails dumped the tomatoes into a bag and handed the bag to Jude.

She hadn’t been ready to go back. She would never have been ready, she thought as she weaved her way through the crush of shoppers.

Now, whenever she turned on the tiny television she’d picked up at a thrift store, when she saw the report about another homicide, any homicide, she knew it had nothing to do with her. Even when the press got hold of the most recent chapter of her own story, along with photos taken the day of her release from the hospital—close-ups of her clutching her white prescription bag—even then she didn’t care.

She didn’t even mind sleeping inside anymore. That was an improvement, right? When she thought back to her nights on the roof, she recognized it for what it was: the behavior of a crazy person.

She still went up there once a day to feed the cat, but that was it. She put the food in the cat’s bowl and dashed back down the stairs, afraid if she stayed too long she might revert to the person who thought it was okay to sleep on a roof.

But seeing press about her father still bugged her. She hadn’t moved past that. The nasty event at his place had only succeeded in making him more popular. Afterward, with no mention of the gun she’d pulled, only that she’d flipped out, he’d held a news conference in his office and explained that his daughter had problems and that she’d had problems for years, but her abduction had intensified them. She wasn’t to blame. Maybe the mental-health system was to blame. And maybe society was to blame for the way they shamed people with mental-health issues. But if anything, what happened had helped shine a light on the issue. And he promised to make mental health a top priority in his political career.

People applauded.

The public loved him.

As Jude had watched his face on the TV screen, she’d found herself wanting to love him too. She remembered how she
had
loved him at one time.

Before leaving the farmers’ market, she bought a bouquet of freesia from a Hmong child in a print dress and white flip-flops. Jude lifted the blossoms to her nose and inhaled their sweet scent—and felt nothing.

This was what women did. Bought flowers in the market to take home and put on the table. Tomorrow she would go to a book-club meeting at the library. Tonight she would watch more knitting tutorials on YouTube. And maybe Will would stop by with food, or maybe he’d ask if she wanted to go to a concert in the park or take a stroll around the lake.

And she would go. Because it was normal.

At the corner, she pushed the “Walk” button and waited for the light to change.

“Detective Fontaine!”

Jude turned to see a blond woman in jeans and a turquoise hoodie hurrying toward her. When the woman got close, Jude felt her stomach drop.
Ava Germaine.

The grieving mother had left maybe twenty voice mails. Jude hadn’t responded, and after the first three she’d begun deleting them without listening.

The light turned, and the green walk icon appeared, along with the numbers counting down the seconds. Jude ignored the woman and stepped from the curb, moving quickly.

Ava Germaine ran to catch up, a white shoebox with a pink print wedged under her arm like a football. Halfway across the street, she fell into step beside Jude. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you,” she said breathlessly. “I left messages.”

Three seconds remained when they reached the opposite sidewalk. Jude’s apartment was only blocks away. She didn’t want Ava to follow her there, but it seemed apparent the woman wasn’t going to give up. Jude took a deep breath, turned, and faced her.

She looked different from the last time. Not as disheveled, and maybe her hair had been cut. She was wearing makeup.

“I’m not a cop anymore. And you’ve probably seen the news. I should never have gone back to work.”

“You’re the only person to contact me in two years,” Ava said. “You’re the only person who gave me hope.”

False hope
was what Jude thought, but didn’t say. She felt very little anymore, but she felt bad about the false hope. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You need to talk to someone in Missing Persons.”

“I have! They nod and act like they’re taking notes that I’m sure they throw away as soon as I leave. They
don’t care
.”

“I don’t think that’s it . . .” The truth was, they’d done all they could do.

“Can’t you keep looking?” Ava asked. “Even though you aren’t a cop, you can keep looking, right?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t have much money, but I can pay you a little.”

“It’s not the money.”

Ava was acting as if Jude were someone who could fix her life, who could save her, who could bring her daughter back. Jude horrifyingly caught herself almost asking the grieving mother if she’d thought about taking up knitting. Instead, she thrust the flowers at her. “Here.”

Maybe they would help. Maybe giving them to her would somehow absolve Jude of the wrong she’d done in contacting her. But in reality, if anything, the cloying scent would probably forever embed this moment into both their brains, marking the day Jude finally and fully grasped just how messed up she was, and the day Ava Germaine realized nothing and nobody was going to do anything more to help her. What Ava didn’t know, and what she’d probably never admit to herself, was that her daughter was dead.

All the cops knew that.

Forty-eight hours unfound, and the abductee had most likely been murdered. Three and a half years?

Jude was the rare exception. Jude’s very existence had given the poor woman hope in more ways than one. By visiting her and making promises she could never keep. By merely breathing.

“Take this.” Ava shoved the box into Jude’s hands. “It might help you find Octavia.” She turned and ran away, leaving Jude standing in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at the shoebox while church bells rang in the distance.