The Body Keeper

by Anne Frasier

  Jude was afraid the streets might be even worse by morning. She was so panicked at the thought of the child staying with her all night that she started thinking of ridiculous ways to get rid of him sooner. Someone could come on a snowmobile. Or a horse.

  “We can start a file in the morning,” the woman said, “but it’ll be sparse until we’re able to gather more information. If you can keep him tonight, hopefully someone can take him off your hands tomorrow. But I have to also say that our foster families are booked solid.”

  “I can’t keep him any longer than overnight.”

  “We’ll figure something out.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

  Next, Jude contacted someone in the local Missing Persons department. She didn’t need the boy in front of her for specifics like hair and eye color, but she returned to the living room to take a photo and question him about his age.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  The boy shrugged and smiled.

  “Do you like birthdays?” Elliot said. “I’ll bet you do. When you eat cake.”

  “I like cake.”

  Jude gave the man at the other end of the line what information she could, got his secure email address so she could send him the photo of the child, told him she’d contact him again tomorrow, and disconnected. Back in the bedroom, she dug out dry socks that would be too big, grabbed a blanket off her bed, and towels from the bathroom.

  “Nobody was expecting him.” Elliot held up his phone with the replies to his message, then put the device on the table and asked the boy, “You hungry?”

  She hadn’t even thought about feeding him. That’s how good she was when it came to kids.

  “I like pancakes.”

  “His feet are warm and have color.” Elliot looked up at Jude. “His hands are warm too. He must not have been out there too long.”

  “It’s going to be difficult to find anybody who saw anything.” Jude wondered if she had ingredients to make pancakes. Unlikely. She checked the refrigerator. “Grilled cheese. Do you like grilled cheese sandwiches?”

  “Nana makes that for me sometimes.”

  That must mean he could at least tolerate them. “That’s what we’ll have, then.”

  “Any more news about the”—Elliot mouthed the word body—“in the lake?”

  “We might have a lead, but I can’t elaborate on it. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” But he looked a little hurt. He’d helped with a previous case, and he had this grand idea that he was now an honorary detective and part of the team. He’d even talked about opening his own detective agency. She was trying to discourage that simply because he didn’t know anything about it and seemed to feel proximity to her made him more than a novice and gave him cred.

  Elliot cooked three sandwiches while Jude focused on the child. No real name, no age, no birthday, no mother, just someone he called Nana. And no socks. She didn’t know why that bothered her so much. Just demonstrated the level of neglect, she supposed. And now that he was beginning to warm up, he was emitting a strong odor of unwashed body.

  “This is kind of nice,” Elliot said, putting three plates of sandwiches on the coffee table. Pan of water pushed to the side, socks on his feet, blanket around his shoulders, the boy sat on the couch, legs dangling, eating a grilled cheese and drinking milk from a glass that was too big for his hands while Elliot perched on the opposite end of the couch and Jude stood leaning against a wall, ignoring her sandwich, still trying to solve at least a little of the mystery of this child.

  “Do you go to school?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “What kind of TV shows do you like to watch?”

  “Thomas the Tank Engine.”

  “What kind of games do you like to play?”

  “Cards. Nana plays cards with me.”

  The lights flickered, and the boy dropped his sandwich, seeming more startled than scared.

  Elliot whipped out his phone and turned on the flashlight app. Glancing up at Jude, he asked, “Got anything for emergencies?”

  She was already moving toward the kitchen to return with three half-melted candles that had also been in the apartment when she’d moved in. The lights were back and weren’t flickering, but for how long?

  The boy’s attention shifted when Roof Cat came slinking past, trying to race through the living room to the kitchen, where his dry food was waiting and where he was normally served canned cat food every evening.

  “Kitty!” the boy shrieked in excitement.

  Roof Cat jumped and gave up any attempt to sneak around the corner. He hissed and skidded back into the bedroom and probably into the box springs that had become his safe haven.

  “He needs a bath,” Jude said.

  “I agree.” Elliot waved a hand in front of his nose as he carried his plate to the kitchen. “I’m going to check out the family on the second floor. They’ve got a couple of kids. I’ll see if they have any clothes we can borrow for him. Then I’ve got an article to finish before the power goes out completely.”

  “Maybe you can come back when you’re done.” Normally good at keeping her expression neutral, her unease at being left alone with a child must have shown.

  Elliot smiled and glanced at the boy, who was looking sleepy, then back at Jude. “And here I thought you were fearless.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Uriah was at his desk in Homicide. The lights had automatically dimmed for the night shift, courtesy of their new timer-controlled system that was supposed to be circadian-friendly. Along with that, Chief Ortega encouraged detectives to make their desks feel more like home. Many were decorated with plants, some a few feet tall, and photos. Uriah’s even had a lamp with an amber shade, now casting a glow that reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city street below. He’d gotten sucked down the rabbit hole known as Missing Persons, and now too much time had passed for him to make it home easily and safely. The roads had gotten so bad that the light rail had shut down, and he couldn’t recall that ever happening. A few night-shift officers sat at desks or moved back and forth in the room, shuffling papers, clicking keyboards. He liked Homicide at night.

  Everyone was operating under the assumption that the child in the morgue was Shaun Ford due to Gail Ford’s visual ID. Uriah was careful not to accept that until they had more information. People sometimes needed something so badly they could trick themselves into seeing what they wanted to see. Not that Ford wanted her son dead, but she wanted something, some connection to him.

  Uriah planned to wait for solid confirmation, but none of his doubt had stopped him from looking up the case of the boy who’d gone missing twenty years ago. And as always with an investigation, that case led to similar cases and before he knew it, a couple of hours had passed as he followed virtual trails leading far from the Twin Cities.

  Databases had improved over the past twenty years. Previously isolated counties were now connected to a bigger network instead of working independently. Information wasn’t hoarded; it was shared. And what he was finding was interesting as well as disconcerting. He’d started by focusing on missing children in the state of Minnesota, then expanded to the bordering states of Wisconsin, Iowa, and South Dakota. He was especially interested in missing young white males about the same age as their John Doe.

  The overheads and the amber lamp on his desk flickered. His monitor went blank, then just as quickly came back online. The building had emergency generators, but with the city’s recent history, flickering lights made him uneasy. The blackouts had changed the people of Minneapolis. They now understood what detectives had always known. That the world, while beautiful and full of good, was also made of opportunists and predators. Not an easy thing for anybody to swallow, not even a homicide detective who saw the worst of humanity. Before the blackouts, Uriah had told himself he worked in a bubble of badness, and his job was to keep that bubble and badness from spreading and hurting innocent people. The bubble had pop
ped.

  His cell phone rang. He checked the screen and groaned. His doctor. He got up from his desk, found a quiet and private corner, and answered.

  “Just calling to remind you about your appointment tomorrow.”

  “I know you’re a busy man, but have you looked outside?” As Uriah asked the question, he did just that, glancing past his own reflection, through the window, to the street two stories below. Not a single car was moving, and not a single person was out. The wind was blowing so hard signs were wobbling. From where he stood, he could see drifts close to three feet deep. “I’m not sure I’m going to make it.”

  “You have to stick to protocol. Each of the three treatments needs to be a week apart. Are you having more issues?”

  “The anti-nausea medication seems to be helping part of the time, but last night was rough.” And today at the morgue. The lights, the body in the ice, and Gail Ford’s emotional response had brought on a wave of queasiness.

  “Are you at work? You shouldn’t be working. We talked about your high-stress job and what could possibly happen.”

  A vessel in his brain could rupture, and he could bleed out. That was it in a nutshell. During a case they called the Fibonacci murders, he’d started getting migraines that had increased in frequency and intensity. At first, he’d thought his childhood leukemia might have returned. It hadn’t. That was the good news. But an MRI revealed a benign brain tumor. It seemed to be growing slowly. The real danger? A hemorrhage. So the idea was to shrink and remove it, but unfortunately shrinking required a few rounds of chemo. Uriah wished he’d never started the treatment, especially now. It might not shrink enough for surgery. Without surgery, he might die. But he might not. He might be fine.

  “Have you told anybody yet?”

  “No.”

  He thought Jude suspected something, that she hadn’t been convinced by his claim that his MRIs had been clean and the migraines had just been exacerbated by overwork and dehydration. But she hadn’t pressed him about it yet. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of having a health issue. He just didn’t like to be fussed over, which his parents would do, so he hadn’t told them the truth either. And he didn’t want his health to distract from any ongoing investigations. He’d planned to tell Jude once things slowed down, but it didn’t look like slowing down was going to happen anytime soon.

  “It’s not my business, but as your doctor I think this would go a lot more smoothly if you had a support group. I met your parents. I feel they would be more than willing to help. And they’ll find out eventually anyway.”

  Not if he stopped the treatment. Not if he didn’t go in tomorrow.

  “Is it the hair? You have a great head of hair. I wish I had that hair. Is that it? It’ll grow back. And with the chemo we’ve got you on, you might not even lose it.”

  “It’s not the hair. I’ll deal with that if it happens.” But to be honest, it kinda was the hair, along with everything else.

  “Tomorrow. Next day at the very latest. Then I want you to go home and rest.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.”

  Uriah ended the call, stuck the phone in his pocket, and looked out at the snow again. The beauty of it almost took his breath away, but the rapid arrival of deep winter also reminded him of the passage of time and a dark date creeping steadily closer—the two-year anniversary of his wife’s death. The day she chose to end her life.

  A minute later, he was back at his desk, going through the database, creating a spreadsheet of kidnap location, race, age, plus eye and hair color of male children who’d gone missing as far back as twenty-five years.

  CHAPTER 11

  Elliot had been right. Jude didn’t like being alone with the boy.

  He was warm and fed now, and didn’t seem to have any kind of lasting damage to his fingers or toes. But he still smelled.

  “Let’s get you into the tub,” she said.

  “No bath.”

  “It’ll be fine.” She reached for him. “Come on.”

  He slipped his hand in hers and reluctantly came along, dragging his feet and looking down at the floor. The bathroom was toasty, hot steam gurgling through the pipes, the finned radiator putting out more heat than the small space required. His demeanor changed when he spotted the claw-foot tub.

  He laughed and pointed. “Feet.”

  “It does have feet.”

  “And painted toenails. That’s funny.”

  They were red. Maybe even done with polish. Not applied very well, and Jude had always imagined some young woman doing her nails, then deciding to give the claws a manicure.

  She filled the tub with about ten inches of water, felt it to make sure it wasn’t too hot, and put a towel on the hexagon-tile floor so his feet wouldn’t get cold. “Can you undress yourself?”

  “No bath.”

  Crouching in front of him, she said, “You really need one.” She wrinkled her nose. “And the tub has feet. It’ll protect you.”

  He hung his head. “Okay.” His bottom lip trembled.

  She wondered if he’d had a bad experience in a tub. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. “You know what? Why don’t we forget the bath? Not a big deal. We’ll just wash you up a little, and you won’t have to even get in.” The tub seemed to be what was really worrying him.

  But he’d accepted his fate. “Take a bath.” He began worming his way out of his long-sleeved shirt. He got his head caught, and she pulled the fabric free. Under such bright light, she could see that his skin was very pale, with no lines to indicate he’d ever been in the sun.

  She touched a raised area on his collarbone. She knew a healed fracture when she saw one but asked anyway. “What’s this?”

  “Nana calls it my wing.”

  “Hmm.” He had more old injuries. A forearm that had been broken and maybe set at home. Scars that were as bad as the ones she had on her body. She felt a combination of fury at the person or persons who’d done this, and overwhelming sadness for the boy.

  Off came his pants and underpants and socks. The tub was too tall for him to get in by himself, so she lifted him over the edge. When his toes hit the water, she asked, “Does that feel okay?”

  He nodded, and she lowered him the rest of the way.

  “Do you have toys?” he asked.

  He was still trying to be brave as he looked up at her with glistening eyes. Brave and terrified. Maybe he’d been hit for crying. Maybe he’d been beaten for not taking a bath or taking a bath or just being alive. She was sorry she’d ever suggested the tub but hoped she could somehow turn it around and make it something not scary.

  “Let me look.” She opened a cupboard, dug in the back, and pulled out a couple of pet toys Roof Cat hadn’t had any interest in. A pink plastic worm attached to a string, and a goldfish that she squeaked. She tossed it in the water and handed him the worm wand. “You can go fishing.”

  He laughed and bobbed the worm in the water. “Hi, fish.”

  His current behavior was so normal . . .

  A knock sounded on the bathroom door. She opened it a few inches so the heat wouldn’t escape, and Elliot passed in a pair of gray jogging pants, underwear, and a striped shirt.

  “Thanks.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Her eyes burned, her throat tightened. She pressed her lips together and shook her head, meaning she’d tell him later. About the boy’s “wing” and the other signs of breaks that hadn’t been attended, and scars that told a horrible story. An hour earlier, she’d wanted to get rid of the boy as quickly as possible, but now she wanted to keep him until she was sure he would be safe and live an unharmed life. Such a horrible thing to find yourself wishing for something every child deserved no matter who they were or where they came from or what color their skin was.

  An unharmed life.

  “We’re fine.” The boy was talking to the fish, giving it a narrative, not paying attention to the adults. She whispered to Elliot, “He’s so trusting. It’s like he’s a wild animal
who’s never been around strangers and doesn’t know they can be dangerous.”

  “Poor guy.” Elliot gave her a sad smile. “I’ll be downstairs. Holler if you need anything.”

  “Maybe you should stay and help him take a bath.”

  “You’re doing fine.” He paused as if trying to decide whether he wanted to share something. “You understand people. He’s a kid, but he’s still people. I know some say you read bodies, but I don’t believe that.” He seemed to search for his next words. “You know how when you sneeze, guitar strings can vibrate from across the room?”

  She shook her head. She’d never owned a guitar.

  “It’s called sympathetic resonance. You have it. I think because of what you went through, you almost get into the skin of certain people. You feel what others are feeling even if you aren’t aware of it.”

  She wasn’t sure about that. She’d misread his signals early on. “Are you trying to—” She pointed from him to her.

  He glanced toward the living room and back. “Oh, hell no.”

  Behind her, the boy said “Hell no!” to the fish.

  “Sorry.” Elliot grimaced, started to leave, then returned to cling to the doorframe. “I meant what I said about Ava. I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but I like her. It’s nice that you look out for everybody, but you don’t have to worry about her where I’m concerned. I know she and Octavia have been through a lot, and I know they’re both important to you.”

  “Okay.” She believed him.

  Sometimes it felt like she was supporting everybody else when she could hardly support herself. She wasn’t blind. There was something going on with Uriah. He hadn’t seemed well lately, he’d missed the New Year’s Eve party, and at the morgue earlier he’d looked ready to pass out.

  “I’ve got to get to work.” Elliot slapped his hand against the doorframe. “You’ll be fine. You always are.”

  He left.

  Behind her, the boy was still lost in his world of play, and the fish and worm on a string were having a great adventure. Jude rubbed a wet washcloth with a bar of soap, building up a lather, and tried to pass the cloth to him.