The Body Counter (Detective Jude Fontaine Mysteries Book 2)

by Anne Frasier

  The squad dispersed, and his father wandered off while Uriah sat down to go over the paperwork he’d been handed. Minutes later, he looked up to see his father talking to Chief Ortega in her office. Richard Ashby sure knew how to work a room.

  “You’re not completely over the migraine,” Jude said from a few feet away. Her direct and penetrating investigation of his face would never stop making him squirm.

  “How’d you know?”

  “Your eyes.”

  “Bloodshot?” He scooped up a pair of sunglasses from his desk.

  “A little vague.”

  He put on the glasses. “Only you’d come up with that description.” He could see she was worried about him and he appreciated that. “I’ve had these headaches since I was a kid.”

  “You’re getting them a lot more frequently now.” Not the first time she’d pointed that out.

  “We’re under a lot more stress lately.” And yet she never varied, no matter what they were dealing with. Unruffled, calm, her presence bringing a soothing quality to even the most horrendous murder scene.

  “You should see a doctor,” she said.

  “When things slow down.”

  “I’m going to remind you.”

  “Do that.”

  “You won’t go.”

  He redirected the conversation. “Any more news about Iris Roth?”

  “No. I’m heading over there soon. And about Tristan Greer—I don’t think he had anything to do with this, unless he’s an incredible actor. His parents wanted him to meet Iris, two rich kids forced together, and he deliberately didn’t go. His mother sent him a few texts, and he decided to finally make an appearance.”

  He trusted her assessment, but it meant their only lead was no lead. “He’s worth keeping an eye on.”

  “I agree.”

  His dad emerged from Ortega’s office.

  “Let me borrow your car,” he told Uriah.

  “Seen enough here?” Uriah handed him his set of keys. “Why don’t you do the tourist thing today? You could go to the Mall of America, or one of the museums. Maybe walk around a lake. There’s a new Springsteen exhibit at the Weisman that’s supposed to be pretty good.”

  “Let’s all do that together some other time.” His father said. “How about when your mother and I drive up in a few days for the Crisis Center gala? You should come too,” he told Jude.

  Uriah took note of the confusion on her face. Had she thought about music since her escape? He knew she’d been listening to an iPod when she was attacked and kidnapped. “That’s a good idea,” Uriah said, eyebrows raised in question, nonverbally asking Jude if she was game.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “What’s the address of the last crime scene?” his dad asked. “I’m thinking about doing some investigating of my own. That’d be a better use of my time and brain.”

  It wasn’t such a far-fetched idea. His father was no longer a cop, so he could downplay any involvement in the investigation. Just a guy, curious like anybody else.

  “There’s a café near the crime site called the Grind,” Uriah said. “Maybe you could hang out there, have a cup of coffee, listen in.” He and Jude could do the same, but even in plainclothes they gave off an air of authority, and people recognized them from the news, especially Jude.

  “Good idea,” his father said.

  All three took the elevator, with Uriah’s father getting off on the second level and Jude and Uriah continuing to the basement.

  “Is that a good idea?” Jude asked once they were alone. “Sending your father out like that?”

  The elevator doors opened to the dark concrete underground and the echoes of cars they couldn’t see. “He’ll be fine,” Uriah said. “He’s been feeling lost since retirement. This will give him a sense of purpose, at least for a while. And he might just pick up some information.”

  They got in an unmarked car and headed for the hospital for another interview with Iris Roth.

  CHAPTER 36

  Richard Ashby found the house easily by using the GPS app on his phone. Funny how he’d hated the thing at first, but more and more he found himself relying on it.

  The house was a mansion, at least by his standards. He knew nothing about architecture, but the building was made of large gray stones, with a roof of slate and flashing of copper that was now a fine shade of green. The lawn—yes, it was a lawn, not a yard—was manicured and had probably been designed by some fancy guy in a building downtown. The house Uriah and his brother grew up in was a two-story white stucco in a neighborhood so dead Uriah and his friends had played street hockey in front of the house on their Rollerblades. Not all that long ago, but a different time. Citizen awareness of child abduction had been fairly new then. Richard had lectured his kids and others in the neighborhood, but they’d still played unattended and unwatched for hours. Not sure he’d let that happen today even in a small town. One of the state’s most tragic abduction cases had taken place in a rural community.

  The house where the seven murders had occurred was an active crime scene. Tape had been strung everywhere, and news crews were using the structure as a backdrop for the latest update. There were maybe thirty people from the media on the sidewalk and in the street, and probably more to come since the national outlets would be hungry for the story. The rest of the crowd was made up of gawkers. Neighbors. Not-neighbors. Friends. Enemies. The curious. The morbidly curious. And maybe the killer.

  Stacks of flowers were already in place, many resting along the curb, as near to the house as they could get without crossing the yellow tape. Along with the flowers were the requisite candles and photos. Richard noticed there were even photos of the girl who was still alive. And it dawned on him that no information had been released to the public yet. He himself had heard hints of a high body count, but he’d been unaware of details until talking to Uriah.

  Nobody noticed him. Even back when he was a cop and out of uniform, he’d been good at blending. Now that he was older and no longer what his wife still called quietly handsome, he could really go unnoticed. A sixty-year-old guy who was losing his hair and not losing enough weight, moving through the crowd . . . Invisible. It normally bugged him—the invisibility of no badge and getting older. Not today. Today being invisible was a good thing.

  He watched the people leaving flowers and candles. Many were young. One girl with long blond hair caught his eye. Something about the vacancy of her blue eyes, and the paleness of her skin. She looked like a doll.

  She left flowers. Like many there, she stood for a time, staring at the house. He pulled out his phone and tried to grab a discreet image, but she turned and vanished into the crowd.

  He moved slowly through the mob, taking photos, pausing now and then when he caught a drift of conversation that sounded interesting. Occasionally he even broke into that conversation.

  “Did you know the people who lived there?” he asked a woman with a brightly colored scarf wrapped around her head.

  “I used to work for them. Cleaning.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t look sad.

  “They weren’t the best people to work for. They fired me. And their daughter?” She shook her head. “She was a mess.”

  “How so?”

  “Mean. Out of control. I was only there a few months, and she went through two nannies.”

  “Ah, it was a long time ago. I think I heard she was an adult.”

  “If you could call it that. Spoiled brat is what I’d say.” She caught herself. That’s how it was with him. People tended to talk as if he were insignificant, or as if he were a friend. Combine that with the fact that people loved to gossip and loved to connect themselves to the drama, even in a peripheral way, and it was easy to get information without even trying.

  “I’m not glad about what happened,” she said.

  “Of course not. Nobody is.”

  “But that family . . . That girl . . .”

  He moved on.
>
  He talked to a young man with red eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked in a grandfatherly way.

  The young man sniffled and wiped a hand against his nose. Hard, like he wanted to break it. “I went to school with Monroe Roth.”

  “That’s gotta be a shock.”

  “No shit.”

  “Did you hang out with them lately?”

  “No, I’m in college and I only saw them from a distance the past couple of years. I’m just home for a few days.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Richard was walking back to Uriah’s car when he noticed a man with a large camera and a telephoto lens, snapping photos. No visible press ID, and casually dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. He watched him a little while, then headed to the coffee shop Uriah had told him about.

  Inside, everybody was talking about the murders. It turned out Iris Roth had worked there for a short time, and people were whispering about her. As he sipped his coffee, he heard more discussion about how difficult she was.

  “She was fired,” a guy said. “And Josh doesn’t fire anybody. So you know it had to be bad. I think her parents wanted her to have a job even though she didn’t need the money. She resented that.”

  Richard got a text from Uriah letting him know a press conference was going to take place at the Roths’ in under an hour.

  He drank his coffee, bought some carryout, and returned to the house. The guy with the telephoto lens was still there, and now he was taking photos of Uriah and Jude. Probably a freelancer who’d sell the pictures to news outlets. Not unusual. Richard pulled out his cell phone, opened the camera app, and snapped a photo of the guy.

  The press conference got under way. Everybody wanted to know about the survivors.

  “Who was in the ambulance?”

  Uriah shared that information. And he went on to discuss their theory of it being about the Fibonacci sequence.

  In a case like this, the sharing of information had to be weighed. There were negatives to such transparency, because the killer now knew what they knew. But Richard thought Uriah had made the right call. Rumors would have gotten out, and they might not have been factual.

  Press conference over, Richard caught up with Uriah and Jude and convinced them to do something they wouldn’t want to do.

  CHAPTER 37

  Isn’t fall the best season in Minnesota?” Richard asked.

  Jude agreed, but it seemed wrong to be enjoying the beauty of the day. Not only enjoying the smell of leaves, the deep and dark shadows, and sun falling warm on her face, but enjoying it in a park. A damn park. At a picnic table. Kids were playing in the distance, their laughter carrying across the grass. But, as Richard Ashby had pointed out when pressuring them to stop and eat, they needed fuel. And he’d been generous enough to bring them sandwiches. Right now, he was unloading items from a bag.

  “Vegetarian,” he pointed out. “Didn’t know if you ate meat.”

  Jude picked one up and unwrapped the white paper. “Thank you.” She wasn’t sure when she’d last really thought about food, but as soon as she took a bite she realized she was starving. The sandwich was an odd combination of hummus, avocado, and orange marmalade, of all things.

  They’d made it through the press conference and managed to slip away from a few straggling questions. Once it was over, they’d driven to a nearby rose garden and park, Richard behind the wheel of Uriah’s car. It was a serene place. The scent of so many roses, white sails on the lake, people on bicycles and Rollerblades, stacks of canoes, and the skyline of Minneapolis in the distance, jets crisscrossing in the blue sky above. Closer to earth, dragonflies soaring. It was a lovely respite, physically and emotionally.

  Uriah must have been having much the same thoughts. “Thanks for the lunch,” he said. “This was something I needed. Not just the food.” He waved one hand to encompass the peace of their surroundings.

  “How’s the migraine hangover?” Jude asked.

  “Almost gone.”

  Holding his half-eaten sandwich in both hands, elbows on the table, Richard said, “You know, the girl wasn’t very well liked.”

  “Iris?” Uriah asked, coffee in his hand, sunglasses shoved back, hair sticking up over them.

  “It’s kinda strange,” Richard said. “In my experience, everybody likes a victim, even if that victim was a bitch.”

  “They don’t want to talk poorly of the dead,” Jude said.

  “That’s it.” He took a drink from his bottled water. “Well, anyway, people didn’t like her. People she worked with, neighbors.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Uriah asked. “Not-so-nice people can be victims, and they deserve justice.”

  “Not saying they don’t.”

  “Your father’s right,” Jude said. “There’s something wrong.”

  Uriah gave her a sharp look.

  “I don’t know what it is, but something’s off. And she’s holding back. That was pretty easy to see when we talked to her this morning.”

  They hadn’t gotten any new information. Mostly recapped conversation, with Jude watching more closely the second time, still feeling there was a lot of acting going on.

  “I didn’t pick up on anything like that,” Uriah said. “She seemed confused to me. And out of her mind with grief. Are you sure you aren’t projecting?”

  She’d had the same thought. “I don’t know.” She squeezed her sandwich wrapper into a tight ball, surprised she’d eaten so quickly. “Maybe. Hopefully the next interview will give me more to go on.”

  Uriah looked around. “This was one of Ellen’s favorite places.”

  “Oh, kid,” Richard said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. First time I’ve been here since she died. It feels kind of good, actually.”

  His dad was quiet a moment. “I keep telling your mom we should all buy an island somewhere and get rid of our phones and internet and TV. Just swim and catch fish and wash our clothes on rocks every day.”

  “We should do that anyway,” Uriah said. “Not buy an island, but take a trip.” He glanced at Jude. “You could come too.”

  “Somebody’s got to stay home and work.”

  “Maybe just grab a few days. Once this is over.”

  “Come down to our place,” Richard said. “You can fish there.”

  Jude was surprised to find herself warming to the idea. To the visit, anyway, not the fishing. She didn’t think she’d like to fish anymore. “Maybe I will.”

  “He doesn’t even have to come.” He nodded toward his son. “If you have a day off, just drive down.”

  She laughed. Uriah didn’t seem insulted by the idea of being left out. They dropped into a conversation about what kind of island they’d buy. Tropical. Or something where it was always green and foggy and a little cold but never snowed.

  Finally, Uriah lowered his glasses over his eyes, gathered up trash, put it in a paper bag, and asked his father, “Did you see anybody who looked suspicious?”

  “The usual crowd of people. Gawkers, press. Took a few photos.” He pulled out his phone and scrolled through images. “You never know when you’ll see someone again.” With each photo, he turned the phone so Jude and Uriah could see. A woman with a bright scarf, a skinny young man.

  “Old classmate, back home from college for a few days,” Richard said. “Could be a source of info. Could be more than that.”

  With the last image, Jude leaned closer, squinting, then said in surprise, “I think that’s my neighbor.” Shoulder-length dark hair. Army-green backpack.

  Richard looked at the photo. “Oh yeah. That guy. He looked like press, but I didn’t see an ID. He had a fancy camera with a telephoto lens.”

  “He’s a student at the U,” Jude said. “Photography major.”

  Richard closed his photo app and put his phone away. “That’s a fancy camera for a student.”

  “Not for someone serious about photography,” Uriah said. “And this is the biggest story in town right n
ow.”

  Jude extricated herself from the picnic table, but didn’t mention her early suspicion of Elliot. She didn’t want to distract Uriah from the case, and especially didn’t want to point a finger at someone who had just as much right to be there as anybody.

  “We’re going to go through the house one final time,” Uriah said. They needed to get back to the real world. The dark world. “Sorry, but you can’t come inside, Dad.”

  “That’s okay. Chief Ortega offered to give me a tour of the jail,” he said. “I’m especially interested in the booking area. After that, I’m going to Skype with your mother. She’ll want to hear about my day and how you’re doing.”

  Their trip to the park had felt like truancy, but when Jude checked the clock on her phone, it told her they’d only been gone forty minutes. The dead could wait for the living to eat.

  “Your father’s nice,” she said once Richard had dropped them back at the crime scene and she and Uriah were sidestepping through the growing mob of onlookers and press. For such a large number of people, the crowd was surprisingly subdued—a change from the more raucous crime scenes of a couple of months ago. Horrific murders were taking place, but some people were becoming more civil. Jude didn’t know what that said about their city.

  “He took a shine to you. You’d like my mother too. I think I’ve told you I had a fairly normal childhood, all things considered.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “No, but I used to feel guilty about it. Until all of that normal bit me in the ass.”

  She made a sympathetic face.

  Reporters shot questions at them. Photos were taken. Microphones shoved in their faces. The intrusion didn’t stop until they ducked under the yellow tape.

  CHAPTER 38

  Uriah paused just inside the dining room and Jude noted his pallor. The bodies were gone, but it still wasn’t an easy place to be. The only sounds were a ticking clock, the low hum of a refrigerator coming from the kitchen, and the buzz of flies. Flies always found their way in.