The Body Keeper

by Anne Frasier

  Didn’t matter. He was from the flat, dry land of Texas, and Loring Park was as foreign to him as another country. He loved it. His heart swelled whenever he saw the tight streets packed with cars, the combination of narrow three-story Victorians and brownstones with curved entries that started at the sidewalk and ended at wooden doors built in the early 1900s. He even loved the way the tangled lanes of interstate dove into town, dropping into the Lowry Tunnel and its tiled walls, then turning sharply to converge in the no-longer-trendy Uptown.

  This was Elliot’s first real experience with winter. He’d moved to Minneapolis only a few months ago. He’d told his upstairs neighbor he was a student before later admitting he was writing a book about her. The well-known detective Jude Fontaine. Neither of those was the main reason he’d come to town, but while he waited for things to play out, he planned to actually write that book. And not just about Jude.

  Beside him, Ava Germaine was still holding his hand. They were skating fast around the section of the lake that had been cleared of snow. The polished area was lit with torches, the sidewalks bordered by ornate streetlamps. Quaint ones, the kind that had gone up in gentrified areas to give them a sense of order and to fight the taint left from a power-grid issue that had plunged the city into darkness almost two years ago.

  Ava’s blond hair flowed out behind her, and she was smiling at him, the Basilica of Saint Mary at her back, strings of fairy lights in the branches of bare trees, the scent of woodsmoke from a vendor’s grill, fireworks booming and bursting into the sky. Big ones. Purple and white. Ava looked happy. If a stranger noticed her, they’d never guess her history, the terrible things she’d been through.

  Theirs hadn’t been the typical meeting. He’d contacted her about an interview. At first, she’d said no, but he could be charming and relentless—his super strengths—and she’d finally agreed. And now, a month later, here they were. A conflict of interest, some might say. He’d even asked himself if deep down it was really about snagging an exclusive on the mother-and-daughter story. He didn’t think so, but maybe he was just fooling himself. Maybe he was the ass some people accused him of being.

  As Ava watched him, her smile abruptly faded. She shouted his name, her mouth a circle, eyes wide.

  He corrected his course in time to keep from crashing into another couple. He let go of Ava’s hand, and the two of them broke apart, the space between them expanding while their arms remained extended. At first it was poetic, the separation of mittens, especially since his mittens had been knitted by Ava and offered to him shyly, as a Christmas present. He’d given her a gift certificate to a coffee shop because he hadn’t wanted to be too forward. He’d regretted that afterward.

  The poetry ended.

  He let out a yelp as he went airborne, coming down and smacking the ice with teeth-jarring impact. The spectacle didn’t stop there. He shot across the ice like a spinning bowling ball. People shouted and jumped out of the way. It took forever, hours it seemed, but if anybody had clocked it, he’d have guessed seconds. His momentum slowed, and he finally came to a full stop.

  Somewhere in the process of hurtling across the ice, he’d turned belly-down. His wool coat was tangled around his torso, and his bare stomach was pressed against the frozen lake. Behind him, Ava shouted his name again. He heard her skates slicing the ice, heard her pull to a hard hockey stop. That’s how damn good she was.

  “I’m not that great of a skater,” she’d told him earlier.

  And now he wondered about the hand-holding. And her professing to not be a good skater. A ploy? He hoped so.

  Her daughter, Octavia, caught up with them. He could see she was trying not to laugh. He might be hurt. But he understood the urge to laugh. He felt a little like laughing himself.

  Octavia was an amazing kid. Not really a kid, almost twenty now, but she seemed younger. Some arrested development going on, he suspected. She’d been missing for three years, held against her will—a story not dissimilar to Jude’s, except that in Octavia’s case it was Jude’s father who’d abducted her, the same thing he’d done to many other girls. After her rescue, Octavia had dropped back into a pretty normal life, but he knew that Ava, a former psychologist, was concerned she was in denial.

  “You okay?” Ava was bent over him, her voice full of some really nice concern that didn’t take the edge off his embarrassment.

  He let his forehead fall to the ice. “I’m fine.” Breathless, he propped himself on his elbows, hoping the gathering crowd would ungather as he took a few seconds to recover. He glanced at the curious faces, then back down at the ice just under his chin.

  And saw a face looking up at him.

  He blinked and rubbed a mittened fist against the ice, wondering if he’d hit his head during the fiasco, wondering if his breath had created a design on the ice that looked like a face.

  He fumbled in his coat pocket, pulled out his phone, which thankfully had survived his slide across the lake, turned on the flashlight app, and shined it into the frozen ice. He hadn’t imagined it. Someone was trapped in the ice.

  Elliot’s initial urge was to scramble away. Instead, he kept his arms braced over the face, not wanting Ava or Octavia to see it. They didn’t need to add something like this, whatever this was, to mental wounds that were still healing.

  He craned his neck to see mother and daughter standing there. Ava’s hand was extended in an offer to help him up. Beyond her shoulder, a few concerned bystanders still stood, although thankfully most of them had dispersed once they realized he wasn’t injured. He swiveled to sit cross-legged on the ice, covering the face with his ass.

  “Just need to catch my breath.” He worked to make his voice sound confident. He waved his hand at the people behind Octavia. Nothing to see here. The remaining crowd skated away, their conversations drifting behind them.

  “He really hit hard,” someone said. Another person laughed, but it was a laugh of sympathy, or so he hoped.

  But the body.

  The face had looked like it belonged to a child, or at least a young kid. And was it a body at all? Maybe it was just a mask. A dummy. Some sick joke. That would be a pretty good joke, he had to admit.

  Octavia gave him a grin and skated off.

  When it was obvious Ava wasn’t going anywhere, Elliot tried to wave her away too. “I need a moment alone.” Behind her, a particularly impressive firework shot into the night sky. It was white, with trails that exploded into stars and fell to the earth. “Go with Octavia. I’ll be here waiting when you make a round.”

  With a puzzled look on her face, she nodded, turned, and skated away.

  As soon as she was a good distance away, he rolled back to his stomach, engaged his flashlight app, and pointed it at the ice again. The light bounced back at him. He held the phone to one side. Now the face, if it was really a face, was a little more visible. Yes, it looked like a child.

  He had to call Jude, but she didn’t know he’d been hanging around with the Germaines. She might not take it well.

  He called her. When she didn’t answer, he sent a text.

  I think I found a dead body. Loring Park skating rink. Come quick.

  CHAPTER 3

  Three-year-old Alice squirmed on Jude’s lap, rearranging herself for the third time as she struggled to stay awake. Why were kids and animals attracted to people who just wanted to be left alone?

  “She likes you,” Chief Vivian Ortega said with a smile.

  Vivian had dressed up for the evening in a sparkly red dress that looked good with her dark skin and red lipstick. Jude suspected her boss was trying to bring some sense of the ordinary into Jude’s life by inviting her to participate in these family functions. She appreciated the concern, but being in the middle of such tradition made Jude feel even more alienated. This was not her world. She was more comfortable either in her small apartment with her cat, or working a high-priority homicide case. Either shut off or plugged in. There was no in-between for her.

  Small tal
k was excruciating, and exposure to lives that were either lies or would never be for her created a dull, hollow ache in her belly. Better to stay away from reminders of the different path her life could have taken. Worse still were the reminders that people wanted her to have more, wanted to help her heal, reset her somehow. That wasn’t going to happen. Jude had come to terms and wished everybody else would too.

  Her partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, was one of the only people who didn’t try to force her out of her comfort zone. And yet . . . What about tonight? Had he ever really planned to come?

  The evening at the Ortega house was supposed to have included Uriah, but he’d canceled at the last minute, no excuse given. She’d been reluctantly okay with an evening spent with Vivian, Vivian’s husband, two tolerable kids, and two dogs, because Uriah would have been there to take up the bulk of the socialization so she could hang back. She’d seen him around kids. He was great with them. Instead, she’d found herself helping with snacks and playing Pictionary. Jude’s bad drawings had elicited much hilarity. Children liked to laugh. She didn’t remember that about childhood.

  A real Christmas tree with handmade decorations stood in front of the window, a gas fireplace put out heat on one side of the room, and mulled wine and popcorn waited on the table beside Jude’s chair. Eight-year-old Joseph lay on a sleeping bag in the middle of the floor, coloring as he struggled to stay awake for the ball drop. Alice, her small head tucked into the crook of Jude’s arm, smelled like strawberries, probably from the brightly colored bottle of shampoo Jude had noticed on the edge of the tub. She wore pink snowflake-print flannel pajamas and had bare feet, even though Vivian had told her to put her slippers back on.

  Alice patted Jude’s cheek. Her hand was so small and soft. “I like you.”

  Jude’s breath caught, and her muscles tensed. How did a person respond to such a straightforward statement? With the distilled truth? You make me uncomfortable, but I like the smell of your hair? That was probably the best choice.

  Jude looked up to see Vivian waiting raptly for her reaction. Even she knew that her child had pushed too much and too fast. They were all rescued by the vibration of Jude’s phone.

  Thank God.

  Jude checked the screen.

  I think I found a dead body. Loring Park skating rink. Come quick.

  For most people, the word body would have been the star of the text. For Jude, it was the word think, and her downstairs neighbor’s uncertainty about whether he’d found a body. She texted Elliot back, asking for more information. After a couple of minutes with no reply, she slipped Alice off her lap and said, “I’m going to have to go.”

  “You’ll miss midnight!” the child said.

  “That’s okay.” Jude hoped she didn’t appear too relieved. “I’ve seen midnight before.”

  Alice stomped away, then dramatically tumbled onto the couch, arms at her sides.

  Vivian rolled her eyes and walked Jude to the door, retrieving her coat from the closet and handing it to her. Jude slipped into it and tugged her black stocking cap from a pocket.

  “Homicide?” Vivian asked.

  “Not sure.” Jude pulled on a pair of black gloves. “The text was from my neighbor. He thinks he might have found a body in Loring Park.”

  “Might?”

  “My reaction too. I’ll check it out and let you know.”

  “I’m sorry about Alice,” Vivian said. “She’s usually shy and doesn’t have much to do with people she doesn’t know.”

  “Maybe she pegged me as harmless.”

  “Trustworthy, more likely.”

  Not long ago, Vivian had apologized for not trying harder to find Jude when she’d been kidnapped. For three years, everyone had thought she was dead. Jude would have thought the same thing, and she blamed no one. But ever since the apology, she could see Vivian was subtly trying to fix things. It also explained why she’d allowed Jude back on the force so soon after her escape. She’d wanted to make things right, wanted Jude to have some normalcy. But a homicide detective’s existence would never be normal. Vivian tried and was doing a good job with her own life, but she wasn’t working scenes. The crimes weren’t as personal, and that was a good thing.

  Outside in her car, Jude called Elliot rather than attempting another text. He picked up, sounding surprised to hear from her.

  Had his message been a joke? “Are you drunk?” she asked. If so, he’d gotten her out of an uncomfortable evening. She could thank him for that.

  “Nope.”

  When he didn’t elaborate or drop into an explanation, she prodded, “I got your text.”

  “I think I found a dead body.” His voice was low. She imagined him cupping a hand over his cell phone for privacy.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t want Octavia to hear.”

  Octavia? It wasn’t a very common name. “Octavia Germaine?”

  “I’ve been hanging out with Ava.” Talking fast, stammering a little, sounding out of breath. “Both of them. I’ve been hanging out with both of them.”

  “Is this for your book?” She pulled from the curb and began heading in the direction of Loring Park. The car she was driving was over ten years old but new to her. She’d found it listed in a neighborhood Facebook group. Elderly owner, stored in a garage for years. Low mileage, smelled like mothballs, heater wasn’t the greatest, but it had been cheap, and it got her from point A to B. But she missed riding her motorcycle, and she was counting the days until it was warm enough to get it back on the street. “Because I really don’t like that.”

  A long pause. “I’ve interviewed them both.”

  She didn’t know Elliot well, but what she did know wasn’t reassuring. He was an opportunist, and he would lie when it benefited him. She didn’t think he was an evil person, didn’t think he was dangerous, but he always seemed to be working an angle.

  “This has nothing to do with you,” he said. “Not your business.”

  If you boiled it down, he was right, but Jude had saved Octavia’s life, and finding her had cracked open the case against Jude’s father. They had a connection, and Jude didn’t want to see any man take advantage of the girl’s trust again. “It does have to do with me,” she said. “Especially since I’m going to guess you used my name to get a foot in the door. I know they weren’t granting interviews. I even advised them not to.”

  His lack of response was telling.

  She noticed she was coming upon her exit and realized the conversation had sidetracked her. She got his exact location and said, “Be there in five minutes.”

  At Loring Park, she found a spot to leave her car and strode toward the festivities, perusing the area as she walked. Hundreds of people crowded the sidewalks and skating rink. Finally spotting Elliot, Octavia, and Ava, she took a path across the ice that would intercept with theirs; her stride, while awkward on the slick surface, never wavered.

  It struck her that the three of them looked like a family: smiling and talking while skating—the women, gracefully; Elliot a little more awkwardly, in the middle, his dark hair and medium skin tone contrasting with the two blonds. The speed with which he’d infiltrated their world was alarming.

  Jude turned and stood with her legs braced and arms crossed, waiting for them to catch up. Elliot spotted her first, smiled, then flinched. Her face must have reflected more than the blankness she’d perfected during her years of imprisonment, because that flinch caused him to flounder and fall. Now, as he struggled back to his feet, she felt like a bully.

  Beside him, Octavia and Ava cut to a stop, both women making small sounds of dismay at his accident while displaying near giddiness at Jude’s unexpected appearance.

  Her concern about Elliot was justified. He’d spied on her and had even taken secret photos of her, lining his bedroom walls with them, all the while pretending to be a photography student at the University of Minnesota when he was really a journalist working on a book about Jude. He’d planned to call it The
Detective Upstairs or some such thing. Jude didn’t care any longer what he said about her. He could write his story. But she did care what he said about innocent victims.

  “Leave Octavia out of your book.”

  Ava looked at her in confusion, then at Elliot. “I thought you were friends,” she said. To Jude: “He told me you two were friends.”

  Ah, a twist. Ava liked him liked him. That put another spin on things. “We live in the same apartment building.” Jude certainly wouldn’t say they were friends. Then again, she didn’t know if she’d say that about anybody. Was Ava her friend? Octavia? Vivian? Uriah? She wasn’t sure she felt comfortable thinking of any of them that way.

  “Everything okay here?” a man asked, coming up behind them. He had the city logo—the Minneapolis skyline—on his jacket. Probably someone hired for the event. “Do I need to call the cops?”

  Looking away from Elliot, Jude said, “I am the cops.”

  That announcement was followed by a surprised mutter and her name spoken under the man’s breath. She’d been recognized. It happened more than she liked. She was tall, which meant she stood out. Combine that with her short white hair, partially covered with the knit cap at the moment, and a face that had been blasted on television screens around the world, and it was inevitable. Didn’t mean she was okay with it, but she’d learned to block out the whispers and not make eye contact.

  Elliot was struggling to stay in one place. She grabbed his arm, pulling him away from Ava and Octavia until they were out of earshot. “What about your message?”

  He told her what had happened, then skated off, searching for the spot where he’d fallen. Jude followed on foot, feeling skeptical. The ice was dark; the torches around the perimeter of the skating area created a dancing light that confused the eyes.

  She caught up with Elliot as he dropped to his knees and pulled out his phone, turning on the flashlight. “Here.” He motioned Jude closer but told Ava and Octavia, who’d followed in their wake, to stay back. He was trying to protect the two women from seeing what might or might not be something disturbing. Jude would give him points for that.