The Body Counter (Detective Jude Fontaine Mysteries Book 2)

by Anne Frasier

  CHAPTER 33

  An average human body contained approximately one and a half gallons of blood. Five bodies in the dining room. At least five gallons of blood on the floor. And the table. And walls. A slaughter, deliberately meant to horrify, Jude decided. On the wall was the affirmation:

  All I seek is already within me.

  And as far as she knew, that message, seen at the last homicide, had never been leaked to the press.

  She hadn’t gone inside her house after all. Maybe the last message from Uriah had done it. She’d heard the tightness in his voice. She hadn’t even shut off the bike. Instead, she’d headed for the crime scene with a heart full of dread. But when she saw Uriah standing there, his body language, even from behind, radiating something close to panic, she was glad she hadn’t given in to her selfish desire to hide.

  Jude had never seen such an elaborately staged scene. She’d heard of them, read about them, but they were rare and almost a thing of fiction. “Have you ever seen a staged murder?” she asked.

  “Nothing like this.”

  All five bodies had not only been stripped of clothing; they’d been posed in various positions.

  “An inside job?” she asked. “It would explain no forced entry.”

  “Possibly. We need to talk to every person who works here and who’s been in this house in the past few weeks. Everybody. Deliveries, anything.”

  “Here’s the lineup of all of the victims.” An officer handed Uriah a sheet of paper. Uriah read off the names.

  Jude not only recognized the homeowners; she actually knew the two guests. The life she’d lived long before she’d become a detective and long before she’d been kidnapped had involved upscale private dinners. At a few of those she’d met the couple here tonight. They’d been considered Minneapolis elite, people her father had courted and fed and probably involved in some of his shady dealings. She couldn’t recall any details about them, so she pulled out her phone and searched Google. “Declan Greer was the chairman, president, and chief executive officer of the biggest power company in the three-state area.” His death was going to cause ripples. “I met them years ago. All four of them were associates of my father’s.” She lowered her voice. “I’m not certain, but I think both men were corrupt.”

  Uriah frowned in thought. “Could this possibly have anything to do with your father?”

  “That’s a stretch. And what about the other people from other crime scenes? As far as I know, none of them knew my family.”

  “Maybe the intention shifted. Maybe the person behind this is feeling guilty but he can’t stop, so he’s looking for justification. He could consider himself a hero.”

  “All killers are the heroes of their own story.”

  An officer came up behind them. “Were they having an orgy when they were killed?”

  Jude shook her head. “It’s meant to humiliate.”

  Blood was spattered across the table, mixed with food and splintered wine glasses. They’d been taken by surprise while eating. “They were killed, stripped, and arranged this way.”

  “This had to take more than one person,” Uriah said. “And probably more than two. Who could hate someone this much?”

  “I don’t know.” She meant she couldn’t understand it. To hate with that kind of fire. She didn’t ever think she could feel that way. When it came to the bad people in her life, she’d simply wanted to stop them, not kill them. And after . . . The regret was almost too big sometimes. This kind of hatred . . . No.

  They’d been arranged in sexual positions. The youngest person, a male who might have been in his late teens or early twenties, was being abused by the adults.

  Jude wanted to cover them up, but as the killers had known, that wasn’t possible. They would stay the way they were until all the evidence had been collected and all the photos had been taken. Those photos would document this event, and they would be used in court once the killers were apprehended. Later, the disturbing images would be filed and stored in the evidence room. Hopefully none of the officers on site had taken any pictures, but it was much more common for digital photos to get leaked to the press today. And disturbing photos of prominent citizens? Those images could be sold for a large amount of money. Everybody knew it was wrong, but cops didn’t make much money, and Jude understood the temptation. Opportunity knocks.

  “This is forever,” Uriah said.

  She wasn’t sure if he meant it would stick in his mind forever, or this was how these people would now be remembered. This sick and cruel tableau.

  Both. Because this kind of visual never left you. Never. Thirty years from now, anybody and everybody who was here today would recall it. At fancy dinners with tapered candles. Whenever someone poured a glass of red wine. All of them would be imprinted with the horror of this scene.

  “We need to figure out who hated these people,” she said.

  “Everybody is hated by someone.” It was almost the opposite of what Elliot had recently told her.

  “This kind of hatred wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.”

  Arteries had been cut and the victims had bled out. Then the killers had dipped their hands in the blood and smeared it on walls that were the color of gray sky.

  “I’d have to say Tristan Greer is our prime suspect,” Uriah said in a low voice intended for her alone.

  Seeing her doubt, he said, “If he’d been here, it would have meant nine bodies. That’s highly suspicious if we’re thinking this is the Fibonacci killer.”

  “Where is he? Tristan Greer.”

  “Downtown for questioning. I think Dominique is interviewing him. And hopefully we can hold him.”

  They went to the kitchen. No poses here, and no nudity. Just sliced throats. More like most of the earlier crime scenes. Cool, calculated.

  The room was getting crowded. They excused themselves and headed upstairs.

  “This place is so damn big,” Uriah said. “Why does anybody need a house this big?” The space had to be over four thousand square feet.

  “If my father were still alive, he might be able to tell you,” Jude said.

  People came and went in the hallway, some silent, some speaking in whispers. Faces were downcast in an attempt to hide the shame of deep emotions. They were professionals. Professionals who were supposed to be able to handle murder and death.

  But should they be? Really?

  Maybe every one of them needed a crying room.

  Without thought, reacting purely from a need to comfort, Jude found herself silently reaching out to touch some of the people moving slowly and awkwardly past. She gently squeezed an arm or patted a shoulder. She nodded in shared sympathy. If eye contact was made, she held it a moment. Even with officers who’d looked askance at her when Chief Ortega had allowed her to come back to work. And the officers who’d put together a petition to remove her from the force, claiming she was unstable, spooky. Those people responded to her presence with a softening of eyes and a slight relaxing of shoulders.

  The victim, the eighth victim, turned out to be the homeowner’s daughter, Iris Roth. Nineteen or twenty, from the looks of her. She was lying on the floor in a bedroom that appeared to be more suited to a high-school girl. Bathed in blood, her face smeared with it by some sick person’s hand. A crime-scene officer took a few photos with a flash, then moved aside and out of the room, leaving the detectives alone with the body.

  Unlike the other family members, the young woman was dressed, lying on the floor next to her bed, where she’d probably run to feel safe. She’d almost made it. To the pile of stuffed animals and the blankets she could have curled up in, feet off the floor and away from the monster in the closet or the monster under the bed or the monster on the stairs. But the monster had caught her before she’d reached safety. Silly thoughts for Jude to have, but she wished the girl had made it to the bed, even though the outcome would have been the same.

  Iris had not been posed. Maybe there hadn’t been time. Dogs were barking, accordin
g to neighbors. Someone was knocking on the front door. Tristan, if his story held up.

  The girl was lying on her back, arms wide, hands like claws. Even from yards away, Jude could see flesh under her nails. Somewhere, someone was running around with deep gouges on his body, hopefully on his face. This was information they could release to the press, and something that could lead to an arrest. One clue could break a case.

  But the girl . . . Back to the girl. Her hair was straight and dark and long, fanning out on the floor in a way that looked deliberate. Like the others, her throat had been cut. In addition, she had a defensive knife wound on her arm.

  Jude knelt beside her. “Left-handed cut,” she noted, presuming, from the position of the body and the pattern of blood spatter, that Iris had been slashed from the front. A wave of sweet sadness washed over her. She’d thought it many times before, and now she was struck by the thought again. Death was beautiful. Even this kind of violent death. She would not say these things aloud. She’d learned her lesson about that.

  While she observed the victim in silence, Uriah moved around the room, looking at photos on the walls, pulling open drawers. If this was the girl’s room, it hadn’t been redecorated since she’d graduated. Maybe she still lived here. Maybe she’d moved out and was just visiting.

  “Nineteen.”

  Jude looked up to see Uriah holding an expired driver’s license.

  “Her childhood room,” Jude said. “It makes sense that she’d run here.”

  It might have been the shadow of Uriah moving between her and the ceiling fixture, but a shift in light made Jude lean closer. “Is a window open?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the girl.

  “No, why?”

  Had she imagined it? Or had she detected a slight flutter of the single strand of hair lying across the victim’s face?

  Focusing on the girl, Jude said, “Iris?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Uriah’s voice was a loud and immediate whisper of annoyance. “Don’t do that. We’ve talked about this before. Don’t hold hands with the dead. And don’t talk to them. I mean it, Jude. If you’re going to do that, then get the hell out of here.”

  Yes. Faint eye movement beneath the lid. Could be a postmortem spasm. It happened. But then one of the girl’s fingers twitched. In a slow, almost drugged movement, the young woman reached for Jude, eyes struggling and failing to open.

  She was alive.

  How long had she been lying there as officers moved through the house? An hour? Two?

  Jude took her hand. Through the latex glove, the girl’s skin felt like ice. Jude wrapped both hands around her fingers, trying to warm them. “Get me a blanket.”

  She sensed Uriah behind her, heard his sound of irritation, followed by a gasp and a shocked curse under his breath. Then he was shouting for paramedics and an ambulance.

  A quilt appeared. “Here,” Uriah said. Then, “How in the hell did this happen? How did somebody miss this?”

  The quilt was pretty. Pink and purple and white. Innocent. Jude released the hand long enough to spread the blanket over the young woman, tucking her cold arm below the fabric.

  The girl’s mouth opened and closed, the action conveying urgency and the need to tell Jude something. That slight movement sent blood spurting from her neck. A major artery had most likely been cut, but not severed. It had somehow clotted enough for the bleeding to stop. Until she’d tried to move. “Don’t talk.” Jude pressed her hand against the wound.

  From behind came sounds of scrambling feet.

  A folded stretcher was placed beside the girl. “I can’t get a vein,” a nervous EMT said. “She’s lost too much blood.”

  “We’re wasting time. Let’s go,” another replied. Three people lifted in unison and placed her on the stretcher. With another synchronized movement, she was raised.

  “You can move away now,” someone said.

  Through it all, Jude had kept her hand on the girl’s throat. She removed it. A thick white cloth replaced her bloody hand.

  “Soft pressure,” Jude said.

  “We know.”

  “What hospital?” Uriah asked.

  “Hennepin County Medical Center.”

  They walked down the hall, then the stairs. Outside, ambulance doors were wide, and the stretcher was slid inside.

  Without hesitation, Jude pulled herself through the door. She wasn’t going to leave the girl alone with strangers.

  “Call me when you know something,” Uriah said from the street.

  She nodded.

  The door was closed firmly. Within a minute, an IV was going. A different tech, a young woman with short dark hair, managed to find a vein as the vehicle careened around corners. A heart monitor beeped, the sensor attached to Iris’s finger, as worried looks were passed around the interior of the brightly lit vehicle.

  Ten minutes later, they roared up to the hospital. The emergency room had been notified of their imminent arrival. Doors were pushed wide and two nurses and a doctor burst out. The stretcher was unloaded. Jude jumped to the ground and the group ran for the building.

  “Surgery’s ready,” a guy in green scrubs said as they busted through the doors.

  The medic who’d found Iris’s vein rattled off details and vitals.

  “We need a blood type stat,” the doctor said. She was ready for surgery, with scrubs and a bright cap. “Make sure the hospital blood bank is well stocked. She might need more than we’ve got. Call around for a backup supply.”

  One of the nurses nodded. Grasping her stethoscope, she hurried away to relay the orders.

  “Relative?” the doctor asked Jude.

  “Homicide.”

  The doctor’s face changed upon recognition. “What about the victim’s family?”

  Jude glanced at the young woman on the stretcher. Her eyes were open a crack. “Not now.”

  Iris surprised Jude by reaching for her hand. Still ice cold, she felt like a corpse. Did she know her parents were dead? And her brother?

  Jude leaned over the stretcher. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

  The girl blinked as they wheeled her away.

  Jude left her phone number with someone at the ER desk. “Call me when she’s out of surgery.” She wanted to stay, but she was needed back at the crime scene. She caught a cab, and on the way she contacted Molly, their information specialist at the police department, and asked her to find everything she could on Iris Roth and her family.

  CHAPTER 34

  Three hours later Iris Roth was out of recovery and in a private room, and Jude was back at the hospital, this time with Uriah. She felt bad about questioning the girl right now, but they didn’t have the luxury of time. On the drive there, they’d decided Jude would go in by herself.

  “She’s obviously responded to you,” Uriah had said.

  “The cut was clean, and the repair went well,” the surgeon told them as they stood in the hospital corridor a few doors from Iris’s room. “She’s breathing through a tracheostomy tube right now. That’ll come out in a few days, but I’m guessing you want to question her right away.” She didn’t look happy about it, but she also understood the urgency of the situation.

  “I’ll try not to tire her too much,” Jude said.

  “She doesn’t know about her family. I thought it would be better for you to handle that. She asked, though. We’re trying to track down an aunt and uncle, but we haven’t been able to reach them. We’ll keep trying.”

  “Is she out of danger?” Jude asked. “From the injury,” she added. The girl’s life might remain in danger as long as the killers were still out there.

  “She’s stable. Lost a lot of blood. I’ve never worked on someone who was that close to dying from blood loss. But we have a good blood bank here, and it’s remarkable how quickly a person responds to transfusions, especially someone so young.” She checked her pager. “I have to go.” She gave them a curt nod and left.

  “Maybe I should question her,” Uriah said,
backpedaling on their earlier decision. The parallels in their traumatic stories weren’t lost on either of them: Iris hadn’t been held captive for years, but she’d been severely traumatized.

  “It’s okay,” Jude said. “I’ll do it. I think she’ll be more comfortable with me.” The girl’s reaction to Jude, a female, could have been the result of male intruders.

  Molly had dug up what she could in the short time she’d had. Iris had recently been a student at MCAD, Minneapolis College of Art and Design. A legitimate school, but probably not the first choice of a wealthy family that could afford any school in the country or beyond. And art focused, not business. Maybe her high-school grades hadn’t been good enough to get her into one of the more elite colleges, or maybe she was rebellious. Detective McIntosh was interviewing Iris’s friends. Right now they still didn’t have a solid picture of who she was.

  Uriah leaned against the wall, hands in pockets, and looked down at his feet. He was trying to hide another of his headaches, but Jude could read the pain in his face. “This is maybe the toughest part of our job,” he said.

  Sharing news of the death of a loved one. It wasn’t easy, but it was best to leave yourself and your own emotions out of the equation. Concentrate on the victim. All victims experienced guilt. All victims blamed themselves. It was how the brain worked. Something I did led to this. Or something I didn’t do. Iris would walk that road too.

  Jude was still learning to tamp down her guilt about the random choices she’d made the day of her capture. If she hadn’t gone jogging that morning on that particular trail, with easy access from a street and the van she’d been stuffed into. If she hadn’t been wearing earbuds, if she’d been more aware of her surroundings.