The Body Keeper

by Anne Frasier

  A sudden barrage of fireworks lit up the sky, and skaters and people on the sidewalk cheered. Midnight. Jude wondered if Alice was still awake.

  The area turned almost as bright as day, giving them a clearer view. Jude crouched down. Another large detonation, this one over the lake. Elliot shifted the glare of his flashlight.

  Staring up at Jude was indeed a face.

  The eyes were open, the mouth wide. It looked like a child, but it was hard to tell. The body lay maybe six inches below the surface, the ice itself cloudy and discolored. Was it a drowning victim? Had someone fallen through the ice when it wasn’t yet safe to walk or skate on? People lost their lives every year in lakes all over the state. Her next thought was that it might not be a real body at all. Given the location, such a public place, it could very well be a hoax perpetrated by some talented students from a nearby art school.

  Jude pulled out her phone. Even though there was zero proof they were dealing with a homicide or even a human, she called her partner. Uriah answered on the second ring.

  She told him about the body. “The age of the possible victim appears to be anywhere from ten to fourteen. But it’s hard to get a decent visual with the cloudy ice.”

  “Could it be a prank?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering. If so, someone is very talented.”

  “I’ll be right there.” She was about to disconnect when he asked, “How was the evening at Ortega’s?”

  “I had to play something called Apples to Apples, and Pictionary.”

  He laughed. She wouldn’t even mention the child climbing onto her lap.

  “Hold off calling anybody else,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

  After disconnecting, she broke the news to Ava and Octavia. The women took it well. She was afraid nothing could deeply shock them anymore. Jude had this unfounded theory that once something unusual happened in your life, you became a magnet for more. There was no escaping it. That’s what Elliot didn’t understand. They were past shielding.

  Uriah arrived fifteen minutes later, dressed for cold weather in a hip-length wool coat, gray scarf around his neck, and a gray knit cap pulled down over his dark curly hair. New accessories—possibly Christmas gifts, Jude noted.

  She met him on the sidewalk, handing him the coffee she’d purchased from a nearby vendor as they moved toward the possible crime scene. Fireworks were still going off, but they were no longer part of the city display. These were private citizens shooting rockets from backyards and apartment balconies, some just as impressive as the ones she’d seen earlier. Jude hated the noise of fireworks, especially the mortars that created deep thuds in her chest, thuds that felt too close to fear, but she liked the visual displays.

  “We’re taking off,” Elliot said. Ava and Octavia were walking away, side by side, Ava’s arm around her daughter. “They’re both a little freaked out, understandably.”

  Maybe they weren’t immune after all.

  The fewer people at the scene, the better. Right now there were no spectators nearby, but that could change if their actions drew too much curiosity. Jude nodded, thinking she’d question Elliot tomorrow about his intentions when it came to the two women. Set him straight if she had to. Warn them if she had to.

  Uriah pulled out a Maglite and crouched over the body. He had the same problem with glare. It was like shining a light at a window. It just bounced back. And the brighter the light, the worse the bounce. By holding it at an angle, he was able to bring the white face into murky focus, enough to make out eyes that were opaque, a phenomenon sometimes seen postmortem. He finally clicked off the light and got to his feet.

  Their actions were drawing attention. Uriah pulled out his phone and called Dispatch. “I’m going to need a couple of officers to guard a potential crime scene until morning,” he said. “Make sure they’re dressed warm. They’re going to be outside. Detective Fontaine and I are waiting. Location: middle of Loring Park.” To Jude he said, “What’s this called? Loring Park Lake?”

  “Loring Lake, but some people call it Loring Pond.” It was big, but smaller than many of the other city lakes. Or maybe someone had simply thought pond sounded quainter than lake.

  Uriah passed the info to the dispatcher. “That’s right. Tell them to drive their vehicles across the sidewalk and onto the ice. They’ll see us.”

  He pocketed his phone and took a drink of coffee. “What was your Pictionary word?”

  “Horse.”

  “That should have been easy.”

  “It wasn’t. The big guess was monkey.”

  He laughed discreetly. She waited for him to tell her why he hadn’t come to the party, but he didn’t.

  He’d been sick not that long ago, and it had scared her. It had caused that sonic boom in her chest, that drop in her belly. She hoped his absence had nothing to do with his health, but it wasn’t her business. Maybe he’d had a date. That new scarf . . .

  Two police cars pulled across the frozen surface.

  Yellow tape went up, marking a small perimeter, while Uriah gave the officers instructions. Then, to Jude, he said, “Let’s call it a night. Tomorrow we’ll contract with an ice cutter. We’ll get the crime-scene team here, although there will be little for them to do but document the location. Once the body’s in the morgue, once we find out what we’re dealing with, we can continue with evidence collection if need be.”

  Jude planned to be out at first light. Maybe she could pick up on something then. She was good at reading body language, sometimes even the body language of the dead.

  CHAPTER 4

  The ice cutters arrived early in a convoy of heavy-duty trucks and a semi, streetlights glowing as snow began to fall. An hour ago, when Jude checked her weather app, she’d been dismayed to see a blizzard in the forecast, the brunt of it expected to hit tomorrow and continue over a period of days. There was a slight chance the front could work its way south, missing them, but since snow was already coming down, she wasn’t feeling optimistic.

  She and Uriah had arrived at approximately the same time, getting out of their cars, collars turned up against the flurries hitting the backs of their necks, and huddling under a streetlamp as if it could offer some warmth while they avoided eye contact with the press already on site with their cables and vans equipped with satellite dishes. The press were generally helpful in an investigation, but Jude had nothing to offer them right now other than what they already knew, social media having sounded the alert: a body in the ice that might or might not be a real person and that might or might not be a homicide. Everything was speculation at this point.

  A man in brown canvas bib overalls and a red flannel shirt approached. Strapped to his insulated boots were metal crampons that rang out against the sidewalk. He was small, energetic, and introduced himself as Jerry “the Ice Man.” “Third-generation ice harvester,” he said. “Been doing it my whole life, and I’ve found a lot of weird things. Dogs, deer, a wallet once, but a body is a first for me.”

  He was excited.

  Jude had looked him up before leaving home. His company cut ice all winter, their biggest client being the Saint Paul Winter Carnival, where they harvested cubes from a lake up north and hauled them to the city for engineers, construction workers, and designers to build castles. It was a beautiful event, the magical combination of lights and clear ice something everyone should witness at least once.

  Behind him, his crew waited inside idling diesel trucks. The semi was loaded with a single giant machine that looked something like a forklift with large tractor tires and a telescoping arm. It was strapped to the trailer bed, held down with chains as big around as an arm. Last night’s celebration was over, and people had left behind a surprisingly small amount of trash that was already being collected by the event crew, who’d probably clocked in early to beat the storm.

  The three of them walked across the ice, Jerry at an advantage due to the grip of the crampons, Jude and Uriah taking care with each step. The cops on site moved back,
ready to leave after the long night but reluctant to miss the extraction.

  Without the glare of flashlights, it was easier to see the face today, but the surface was still cloudy. Jerry let out a low whistle and said, “I can polish that up with a blowtorch once we get the block cut out.” Seeing their skepticism, he followed up with, “So you can get a better look at what’s inside. That’s how we make ice for the castles transparent. It’s like cleaning a foggy windshield.”

  He signaled for one of his crew to join him with a truck. From the bed, Jerry pulled out an auger, started the gas engine, and used the cutting tool to test the thickness of the ice. “Twenty-two inches,” he announced, pleased. “That should hold the Lull.” He pointed to the machine with the telescopic arm on the back of the semi, made a call to the crew onshore, and moments later the chains Jude had spotted earlier were clanging as they prepared to unload.

  “Should?” Uriah asked.

  “It usually stays onshore, so we’re in untested territory.”

  Crime-scene investigators arrived. It was pretty obvious they thought their presence unnecessary, and it probably was. They’d rather be home, or in a coffee shop preparing for their day, but they couldn’t relax protocol until they knew what they were dealing with.

  Orange earplugs in, protective eyewear on, Jerry cranked up a small machine his boys had also unloaded. This one looked like a large tiller with a round blade. It took him a few tries to get it going. It coughed and spit black smoke before settling into a smooth rumble. Jerry worked alone, carefully and steadily cutting far from the body. Ice flew, mixing with the snow that was falling harder now. As he worked, smaller blocks were removed to free up space around the larger block while Uriah watched like a nervous grandmother. They needed to remove enough to get the actual lifting mechanism into the water.

  The initial blocks were small enough for his crew to remove with giant metal tongs, two men grabbing and heaving them from the water, sliding the cubes across the ice. Once they had an opening slightly larger than a car, it was time for the star of the show, the Lull forklift waiting on the shore.

  It crept across the ice, stopping a good ten feet from where the solid ice had been cut out to expose water. The hydraulic arm whined and telescoped, the operator inside the cab working the controls while Jerry used hand signals on the ground, the men pausing often to evaluate the position.

  The phone in Jude’s pocket vibrated. It was Elliot. Busy as she was, she answered.

  “I’m over here, and there’s a cop who won’t let me come to the scene.”

  She turned and eyed the shoreline, spotting Elliot giving her a big wave, mittens on his hands, a uniformed cop standing next to him. He was a civilian, but he’d found the body. “Give him your phone.” He did, and she told the cop to let him pass. A moment later, Elliot was ducking under yellow tape and moving awkwardly across the ice, camera around his neck.

  The snow was coming down probably an inch an hour, making the ice even slicker. When Elliot reached her side, he tugged off his mittens with his teeth before uncapping his lens. She frowned, wondering where this photo would end up, and considered telling him he couldn’t take pictures, but he was a good photographer and his images might be helpful.

  He saw her looking at his camera. “I’m not going to sell them.”

  The machine was revving up again, the arm bobbing. She held her breath as it dipped into the square of open water. Jerry had calculated well, but it was close. With agonizingly slow speed, the giant metal arm sank into the darkness. Jerry shouted and held up a hand, then the fork moved forward, slid under the cube encasing the body, and scooped it out. The operator reversed until the ice block was no longer over open water. A cheer went up, including people waiting behind the police tape.

  The operator lowered the fork, and Jerry produced the blowtorch he’d mentioned earlier. Using a small flint igniter that he pulled from a front pocket of his overalls, he lit the torch, adjusted the flame, and gave the top of the ice a delicate blast, melting away a thin layer of opaque ice. Shutting off the torch, he wiped the surface with his jacket sleeve, made a sound of quiet surprise, and stepped back so Jude and Uriah could move closer.

  White eyes, like a fish with freezer burn, looked up at them. She was certain he was real. A boy, probably a few years older than Joseph, Vivian Ortega’s son. Jude sensed a dismay in Uriah that mirrored her own. All death was hard, but the death of a child was especially demanding, and they had to hide their reactions and emotions from the watching public.

  Jerry’s trick of polishing the surface of the ice had helped clarify the face. Jude stared, trying to read something, anything from it. Maybe how much the boy had suffered, or how aware he’d been of dying . . .

  “What’s it telling you?” The voice was full of sarcasm.

  Jude felt a jolt of surprise and looked up to see a man with a press pass clipped to his coat. She wasn’t sure why the press had it in for her. Maybe because she hadn’t granted interviews after she’d saved Octavia’s life five months ago. Behind him, an assistant braced a handheld camera on one shoulder. This would be on the evening news. Somehow, maybe when all eyes had been on the block of ice being lifted from the lake, the two of them had gotten past the perimeter.

  In the early days, Uriah had tried to protect her, cautioning that she keep her observations about the dead to herself. But things like that got out. Maybe someone had caught a whiff of her unconventional skill at a crime scene, or maybe one or more cops had witnessed it and shared the story with others, possibly laughing about it. Some reporters had even gone so far as to call her the “Body Reader,” which was another kind of nonsense. She had no skill other than acute observation, and even that could fail her—and certainly had failed her and continued to fail her, especially when it came to socialization and relationships. But lately she’d found the lore of it could come in handy during interrogations. It made suspects nervous, so she didn’t openly dispute it.

  Ignoring the falling snow, she looked directly into the camera. With no expression that might hint at what was going on inside her head, she said, “We’ll be holding a press conference once we have information to give you. Until then, I hope you’ll refrain from sensationalism and speculation. And we’d like you to move back behind the barrier.”

  The guy stepped in the direction of the yellow tape, pausing for one last complaint. “He’s not even press.” He pointed to Elliot, who was snapping away, maneuvering around the block of ice, crouching, getting images from the side and top. Not a bad thing. And because he lived one floor down from her, his photos would be easier to confiscate as evidence if she had to. She and Uriah would take their own, but Elliot’s would be better.

  The wind increased, snow stinging her face, the sudden gale bringing a sense of urgency to the retrieval and transport. Jerry gave another of his hand signals that all looked the same to Jude. The forklift revved, the back-up alarm beeped, and the machine began a slow and careful crawl across the ice, returning to shore. Deep down, she’d expected a prank. But now she knew the forklift held something precious, most likely somebody’s child.

  The rest of the process went quickly. The block of ice was deposited carefully on the back of the flatbed, then attached with nylon straps and ratcheted tight.

  “I’ll follow it to the morgue,” Uriah said with a somber tone.

  Jude cast a glance around, spotted Elliot, waved for him to wait for her. “Go ahead,” she told Uriah. “I’ll meet you back at the office.”

  They broke apart.

  News cameras were rolling, most focused on the departing trucks, but a couple zoomed in on Jude. She pulled her collar higher, shoved her hands in her pockets, and caught up with Elliot, who stood below the overhang of the small stone cottage, not in use today, where skaters warmed up. Park workers were unloading orange barricades and cones, placing them around the gaping hole left by the Lull. The remaining ice blocks stood in a semicircle, creating a strange alienscape. If the cold weather continu
ed, the hole would be safe to skate on in a week or so.

  “I’d like to see the photos you took,” she said.

  Elliot leaned over his camera to protect it from the falling snow and turned the viewing screen toward her.

  “That one.” She pointed to the clearest image of the face. “Send it to me right away so I can run it through our facial-recognition programs.” She hoped to get a hit from Minnesota Missing and Unidentified Persons Clearinghouse or NamUs, the national database. “Also, I want to talk to you about Ava.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss. I like her. And I think she likes me.” He closed his camera and tucked it back in the case. “I’m not using them, if that’s what you think.”

  It was, or at least it was her concern. “You aren’t going to write about her?”

  “I can’t promise that. Not if I have her consent. But I wouldn’t do it without giving her a chance to read it first and give me her okay.”

  That was at least something. Maybe she’d overreacted. Maybe seeing them all skating around, looking like a family, had hit her wrong. “Don’t forget to email the photo to me.”

  Her mind shifted back to the man with the press pass—and she realized she’d gotten no sense of anything when looking at the body trapped in the ice. Nothing.

  At Headquarters, Jude checked her email. The image she’d told Elliot to send was there, along with several others he’d taken. She opened, then dragged, the clearest photo of the face into the Minnesota missing persons facial-recognition database. California had the highest number of unsolved missing children cases, over six hundred last she’d looked. Minnesota was somewhere in the middle of national statistics. Two minutes in and she had a hit. Not a solid match, but a lead. Sixty-five percent. Once a hundred percent match couldn’t be found, the software began searching for similar features. Add an unclear photo to the mix, and results could be even more unpredictable.