The Body Counter (Detective Jude Fontaine Mysteries Book 2)

by Anne Frasier

She ducked away, vanished into the crowd, and managed to catch a bus seconds before it pulled from the curb. Dropping into the nearest vacant seat, she looked out the window, heart pounding as she wondered what she was going to do with the house now that she had it.

  Thirty minutes later, she was downtown at the Minneapolis Police Department, knit cap and glasses stashed in her bag. News of the sale had beaten her to the office.

  “I hear the house sold,” McIntosh told her. “Whoever bought it has to be crazy.”

  Jude might have mumbled in agreement.

  CHAPTER 13

  Jude was a proud homeowner.

  The next day, with the key in her pocket and the paperwork for the sale in the messenger bag strapped across her chest, the property deed to follow, she eased her bike up the driveway of weeds and broken concrete that flanked the house where she’d been tortured. Straddling the machine, she cut the engine and secured it on the stand.

  It was impossible for her to comprehend her compulsion to buy the house. She imagined putting her feelings in a jar and holding that jar up to the light in hopes of finally understanding herself. Truth was, she didn’t know why she’d made the purchase. Was it to keep others from exploiting it? Maybe, but that seemed unlikely. Her story had been paraded across the globe so many times she’d begun to think of the main character as someone separate from herself. It was an interesting tale, but the public narrative was not even a snapshot of what had really taken place. The story had been tweaked and embellished and edited so many times there was little left of pure truth. And even pure truth was always shifting, depending upon the perspective and the moments and years that had passed.

  Maybe if she’d agreed to in-depth interviews after her escape, it would have been different, but she’d been through enough. She didn’t care to share more of herself with the world. She didn’t owe anybody anything. And if the public got a sanitized or sensationalized version of what had happened, and if they enjoyed it, that was fine. It was all entertainment masquerading as news anyway.

  She removed her helmet and hung it on the handlebar of her Honda, then dismounted to hike the crumbling steps to the door. Inside the kitchen, the smell of death still lingered. She’d killed her captor too. Most people left that out of her story when they brought up her father and brother. She was a killing machine.

  The odor of death inside wasn’t the overpowering stench that was typically so pervasive early on. This was the other one, the one that came after a body had rotted, after the fat had melted into a greasy puddle that never went away. Along with the remnants of death, there were other odors. Nicotine and fried food, mildew and urine. She’d never forget that alchemy. If she didn’t smell it again for thirty years, she’d recognize it.

  Home sweet home.

  Months after her escape, the kitchen sink was still piled high with dishes. A layer of dust and grime covered everything. But there was also evidence of squatters: the kitchen table was strewn with clear-plastic food containers, empty now, and a black insulated mug with the First Ave logo. The mug, from the downtown music venue made famous by Prince, told her the squatters might be young.

  Just past the kitchen was a short hall that led to a bedroom and a filthy mattress littered with more food wrappers. On the floor was shattered glass from a broken window—evidence of the entry point. She hated to lock someone out, but she’d have to make arrangements for plywood to be put over the windows.

  Life on the street was hard for anybody, but it was especially brutal for young people. They were attacked and raped, and a high percentage became drug addicts and prostitutes. She saw no signs of drug use here, and no condoms on the floor that might indicate prostitution, but the fact that someone would even consider staying here spoke of desperation.

  She tested a couple of switches, not surprised to find the power off.

  The house was small, hardly more than six hundred square feet. Back in the kitchen, she eyed the basement steps, heart racing. She pulled out her iPhone and turned on the flashlight, giving the beam a pass across the blood-spattered walls of the stairwell, stains left from that night when she’d killed her captor and escaped into the blackout. Hand on the railing, she descended, shifting the phone to illuminate a tiny room not big enough to lie down in, built in the center of the basement, ceiling to floor, the walls thick. Hanging from the ceiling was a single bare lightbulb. The image had been used in many a horror movie, and for good reason. It was a chilling visual. At the bottom of the steps was the grease spot left by her captor’s body as he’d decomposed. She completed her descent, sidestepping the stain on the floor.

  The cell door was ajar. Inside were the soundproof walls she’d written on with her fingernails. Scratching and scraping until she bled, trying to document her story. I was here. This happened to me. But she’d written in the dark, and the scratches weren’t legible. They never had been. Years and layers of words, one on top of the other. Even if a person could peel the layers off one at a time, would it make any sense? She doubted it.

  She felt an unsettling urge to go inside and pull the door shut behind her. Curl into a ball. Deep down in some dark corner of her soul, she could admit the emptiness she’d been feeling lately was due to a different and disturbing and surprising kind of loss. Her darkness of soul came from missing this place, the place she’d called home for three years.

  And there it was. The reason behind her purchase.

  Shocked by that realization, she turned and ran up the stairs. Outside, heart slamming, a cold sweat on her body, she locked the door, pocketed the key. Before getting on her bike, she searched online for a repairman, called a guy named Joe the Handyman, and told him she needed the house secured.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’ll send you a bill when I’m done.”

  She hung up, wondering if it would really happen. Repairmen didn’t have a reputation for showing up. Then she put on her helmet, strapping it under her chin, turned the key to her motorcycle, and headed for the police department.

  CHAPTER 14

  An hour later, Jude sat in lotus position in a meeting room at the Minneapolis Police Department. Chairs had been pushed aside, lights dimmed.

  Even though she’d balked when Ortega brought up meditation, Jude had nothing against it. She might have been more open if not for having to do it with other people at an inconvenient time. Apparently, the idea was to have a shared experience. Being home by herself, following along on YouTube, was her preference.

  The instructor, a woman with gray hair and a well-toned body, exuded calm confidence. Even her voice was soothing.

  “Close your eyes and cleanse your mind. Push away all of those unwelcome thoughts. Imagine balloons that you bat away. Go away, thoughts. Go away. Once those bad thoughts are gone, I want you to concentrate on the space between your breaths . . .”

  It was all about a rest for the troubled mind and stressed soul. A few minutes of respite from disturbing cases. But the moment Jude let herself go, let herself drift, she felt a nervous flutter in her chest, along with a deep thud of terror.

  Dark memories lived in the spaces between those breaths, and the more she tried to give in to the meditation, the worse those memories and thoughts became. As if the act of extreme relaxation was a conduit for the dark things she normally kept at bay.

  She’d fought him at first. Her abductor. She didn’t know for how long, because time in the cell had been skewed. Sometimes it seemed she’d been there weeks, not months and years. Other times it had felt like most of her life.

  But she had fought him. That’s why he’d started wearing the Taser on his hip. He’d zap her and rape her. So it made sense that she finally quit fighting him, right? She hoped she’d fought him for weeks, even months, but she didn’t know. It might have only been days. She hoped it was longer.

  She’d started playing a game of pretend. Pretending he was someone else, pretending he wasn’t loathsome. It made it easier. Less painful. And if the cell was the rest of her life, what did it ma
tter if she turned him into someone she could care about? And a worse thought: maybe she missed the unwelcome touch of the man who’d tortured her.

  “Breathe in . . . breathe out. In. Out.”

  The instructor’s voice pulled her back to the room and the feel of the floor beneath her. Soft music played as the woman continued to guide their journey. Jude heard a ticking clock—which sounded ominous—and nearby breathing, probably Uriah’s. Along with all that, she continued to feel the deep panic of her heart. Hands that were supposed to be resting on her knees were curled into fists so tight her nails dug into her palms. She swiped a sleeve against the sweat on her face.

  “You should give it a chance.”

  She jerked a little and opened her eyes. Uriah beside her, legs crossed, eyes closed, lotus pose. “If we have to do this anyway.”

  “I’m trying.” She unclenched her fists, then quickly closed them again to hide the crescents of blood.

  “Your breathing’s uneven,” he whispered. “You’re going to hyperventilate. Do it like this.” He inhaled slowly and deeply, then exhaled just as slowly. In the background, the instructor’s voice was saying something about letting go of the past, that today was the very first day of the rest of your life.

  Finally it was over, and people began to shift in preparation to leave.

  “Just ten minutes a day,” the instructor said.

  Uriah jumped to his feet, rolling his shoulders. “That wasn’t bad.” His tie was undone and he was barefoot. Hair a mess. “I actually liked it.” Earlier, she’d caught him eyeing her with a mix of curiosity and concern. He was probably picking up on her unease about her new purchase. Soon she was going to have to tell him, before he heard it from someone else—McIntosh, for instance. Jude had requested anonymity from the auction house, but that kind of thing had a way of getting out. Salacious news was hard to contain.

  Her cell phone rang.

  “You left your phone on?” Uriah asked.

  “I’m a rebel.” She answered. It was a security officer from the front desk.

  “There’s someone down here who claims to have important information. Says he needs to talk to Detective Fontaine. Nobody but you. I can send him on his way, but I wanted to double-check with you first. Pretty sure you’re too busy.”

  Right now Jude welcomed any diversion. And there was something in the guard’s voice that hinted of things he didn’t want to say with the person standing in front of him.

  “No,” Jude said. She’d been in the same position not long ago, standing at the security checkpoint, trying to convince the officer she was Jude Fontaine, the detective who’d gone missing three years earlier. She often wondered what would have happened if Uriah hadn’t been on duty that night. Would she have turned around and wandered back into the cold with no clothes and nowhere to go? “Have someone escort him up.”

  CHAPTER 15

  He wore a dark suit and a wide burgundy tie that was out of date by about twenty years. Not that Jude knew much about men’s fashion anymore, but it was easy to tell the clothes were old—and might not have been cleaned much in that twenty years. They gave off an odor of sweat baked into the fibers by body heat, along with a mustiness and a hint of mothballs. His age was probably around fifty. He had light brown hair, thin on top, hand-smoothed to one side, the strands having a suspicious shine that added to the overall impression of unwashed and lack of awareness.

  She told him to sit down in the chair next to her desk. He did, thin fingers fiddling, groping at the air almost as if he were playing a piano. Now she understood the guard’s reluctance to send him up. This would go nowhere, but nonetheless she was interested in his personal story—who he was, who was caring for him, and if she could help in any way.

  She pulled a tablet closer. Pen poised, she asked, “How do you spell your name?”

  “M-A-S-U-C-C-I. Professor Masucci. Everybody always spells it wrong. First name Albert.”

  “It is an unusual name. Why exactly are you here, Professor Masucci?”

  “I’ve solved your case.” The sentence was spoken with assurance.

  Solved the case. It wasn’t the direction she’d expected this to go so quickly. “Could you excuse me one moment?” She shifted slightly in her chair. From where he sat, he couldn’t see her monitor screen. She typed his name in the search engine and pulled up pages of articles about him, going back . . . yep, twenty years. He’d been a math professor at the University of Minnesota. Jude glanced at the clock on the wall, painfully aware of how precious their time was and wishing she’d taken the guard’s advice.

  Uriah appeared and dropped a stack of files in front of his chair, shot her a questioning face, glanced at the guy, then finished up with a look of sympathy.

  Uriah’s station was near hers, but not close enough for him to easily overhear the conversation. The position of her desk had been Uriah’s deliberate statement of her unworthiness, back when she’d first returned to work and he’d been unhappy about having her assigned as his partner. Since then, he’d suggested she move closer, but she’d declined. She was used to her spot, and it provided more sunlight for her plant.

  Jude turned back to Professor Masucci. “Tell me what you know.”

  “It’s all about numbers.” He blinked several times, as if trying to hide behind his eyelids.

  “We think the killings are somewhat opportunistic,” she told him, without going into the planning that must have been involved in the latest event. Not for him to know.

  He shook his head in agitation. “The killer is using the Fibonacci sequence.” He went on to talk about spirals and harmonics and asymmetry and something called Benford’s law.

  She held up one hand. “I’m not that great at math.”

  Despite the distance, Uriah had managed to listen in, and now he rolled his chair closer. “It’s the sequence of ever-increasing numbers found in nature. You know. Sunflowers, shells, leaves, dragonfly wings. The Fibonacci sequence can even be found in fingerprints.”

  “Yes.” Professor Masucci leaned forward, relaxing a little, eager to explain more. “The beginning numbers are 0, 1, 1, 2, 3. And you’ve had four crime scenes with body counts that follow that sequence.” He leaned back. “Fibonacci.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jude said, “but we’ve had three murder scenes with the same MO.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but I realized this morning that you’ve had four. And if I’m right, the next time you’ll have five bodies.”

  Jude glanced at Uriah, giving him a small and frustrated shake of her head. She gathered up her tablet, clutching it to her chest. “I’m going to have to go. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Someone can escort you back downstairs.”

  “What about the campers in Wisconsin?” he asked.

  Jude hesitated. She’d heard about them, but with the MPD’s own cases keeping her busy, she hadn’t had time to follow up on crimes in a bordering state. And if she recalled correctly, it had been reported as a crime of passion.

  “The prime suspect is an ex-husband,” the professor said.

  “That’s all very interesting,” she told the man. “We’ll look into it. Leave your contact information in case we want to reach you. Do you need transportation? I could call a cab for you, my treat.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll catch the light rail. It goes to campus.”

  The article had said he no longer taught there. Maybe he’d been rehired, or maybe he was a substitute.

  Once he was gone, Uriah and Jude looked at each other. “It’s the request for public input,” Uriah said with a resigned shrug. “These people go with the territory.” But they also knew that the public was their greatest ally.

  Jude searched for articles about the Wisconsin murders. It was like Professor Masucci had said: an ex-husband was the prime suspect. But the killings hadn’t garnered much media coverage, and states didn’t share information. Counties didn’t even share information. Minnesota was working on changing that with sy
stems like CISA (Criminal Information Sharing and Analysis) and MRIC (Metro Regional Information Collaboration). But even at that, reports often went out as a weekly bulletin. Not daily. Not hourly.

  “We really don’t have much in the way of leads right now,” Jude said. They’d found no personal connections between the three theater victims, and none of the prints lifted from the crime scene matched any criminals in their databases. She clicked a few keys, found the number she was looking for, and picked up her desk phone. In response to Uriah’s raised eyebrows, she said, “I’m going to get in touch with the person handling the Wisconsin case.”

  “Thinking of a field trip?”

  “Yep.” She made the call, tracked down the sheriff in charge of the investigation, and arranged to meet him in his office that afternoon.

  CHAPTER 16

  Jude drove.

  Minneapolis to Saint Croix Falls, Wisconsin, was a little over an hour if the traffic wasn’t heavy. They took Interstate 35 North, exiting at Highway 8. From there, it was a straight stretch of narrow two-lane. Their uninterrupted time in the car was well spent. They tossed theories back and forth and discussed a strategy for the following twenty-four hours. Sixty minutes into their trip, they hit the Saint Croix River valley, where the speed limit dropped to thirty-five and the road began to wind and descend—water in the distance, giant slabs of black basalt-lava rock erupting from a backdrop of orange and red trees. It was an area popular with city dwellers because of the proximity to the Twin Cities.

  The little town of Taylors Falls was perched on a low bluff overlooking the river. As they drew nearer, Uriah grew noticeably silent, possibly taking in the breathtaking beauty.

  Luckily today wasn’t a weekend, and the typical fall congestion wasn’t bad. After a quick stop for caffeine at a place called Coffee Talk, they drove across the river into Wisconsin and the town of Saint Croix Falls, where the county sheriff’s office was located steps away from the dam and hydropower plant.