The Body Counter

by Anne Frasier

  But when he was back in his room, drinking soda, eating food brought to him on a tray, and watching TV, his mother and father watching with him, he thought about what Jude had said earlier, about caring about him. Sure, she’d wrapped it up to include his parents, but she’d said it, and she never said anything lightly.

  And it occurred to him that he was the one person who might be indispensable to her. She might actually need him.

  CHAPTER 40

  It was late when Jude emerged from her house. The house. Two hours ago, she’d sworn she’d only stop for ten minutes. But she was like an addict who couldn’t stay away, who kept telling herself “once more” and “just a little longer.” She didn’t have time for this, so she’d tricked herself, saying the house was on the way to her apartment and she’d drive past, make sure nothing suspicious was going on. But she’d stopped, shut off her bike, gone inside. Into the cell, closed the door. Shut out the world and embraced the person she’d been when she was there. No yesterday or tomorrow. No murders.

  No dying Uriah.

  Now she straddled her bike and called him.

  “Any news?” Would he even let her know if that news was bad?

  “Nothing. Hopefully they’ll tell me everything is fine in the morning and release me.” They talked about the day, then he asked her where she was.

  “Home.” Not really a lie, but he would think she meant her apartment.

  “Good. Get some sleep.”

  He disconnected and she sucked in a shaky breath, put on her helmet, and rode back to Powderhorn, the sky dark above her, lights from cafés and shops giving the streets a magical promise that would be gone once the harsh sunlight returned. At home, she entered her apartment building, helmet tucked under her arm. She checked her mailbox, then paused in front of Elliot’s door.

  Outwardly, she’d downplayed his appearance at the crime scene when she’d seen the photo of him. But there was a reason she’d been wary of him to begin with; only the disappearance of her cat had prompted her to lower her guard. Now she felt the need to find out if he was who he said he was.

  She listened at his door, then knocked lightly. There was no answer, no music playing. She considered talking the caretaker into letting her in, but that would require time, and questions she didn’t want to answer. The locks on the doors were old enough that a credit card might work. She pulled one from her billfold and slid it between the door and frame, angling the card down. Slowly but firmly, she pulled it toward her while turning the handle. The plastic slid between the mechanism and the frame. With the card holding the retracted bolt in place, she pushed the door open and whispered Elliot’s name.

  No one answered, and she closed the door behind her and turned on the overhead light. Books. Dirty plate on the coffee table. Cat hitting the floor to come rub against her leg. She petted him, then stepped deeper into the apartment.

  This time she was better able to examine the books on the table. Psychology. Sociology. A couple of photography books. And math.

  She’d never been past the living room. She put her helmet on the couch and strode into the bedroom. Unmade full-size bed shoved in one corner. Beside it was a broom. The broom, used to wake her up. Some cheap plastic thing. Funny, she’d always pictured it as an old-school straw one with a wooden handle. She imagined swapping it out for one of better quality—either her brain’s attempt at something humorous, or proof of her questionable mental state.

  The rest of the space had been designed as a work area, and the windowless walls were covered in photos. At least a hundred, maybe more. Most of them were three-by-five images, but some were as large as five by seven. The real deal, printed on photo paper. Anybody else would have let out a gasp, but she felt no surprise, only disappointment, to find that a man was once again taking photos of her and tacking them to the wall of his bedroom.

  She heard a key in the lock, followed by footsteps. The cat meowed and Elliot replied. Jude stayed where she was, arms crossed, legs wide, staring at the images of herself. Even though she couldn’t see him, she knew Elliot was right behind her in the bedroom doorway. He always smelled like soap he probably bought at the organic shop down the street.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said.

  “You don’t know what I think.”

  “I can guess.”

  “Try.”

  “You think I’m a stalker. A creeper.”

  “Continue.”

  “You think I moved here to follow you.”

  “I’m a hundred percent sure you moved here to follow me.” She probably shouldn’t have been standing with her back to him, but a feeling of defeat had immobilized her. She finally forced herself to turn around.

  That made him more nervous. “Well, yeah.” He stammered, nodded. “Yeah, but . . . yeah.” He struggled to explain something he wasn’t going to be able to explain. “But it’s the why of it. I don’t have some crazy obsession with you.”

  “I’ve heard that before. It didn’t end well for the other person. In fact, I killed him.”

  He swallowed. His nervousness was telling. He was no pro, and unless he was a helluva good actor, he probably wasn’t an immediate threat. But that didn’t stop her from reaching for her belt and the snap on her holster. He saw the movement and began talking fast.

  “I’m a freelancer.” He held up his hands, palms out. “I’m just doing a job.”

  “So you’re saying somebody hired you to spy on me?”

  “Well . . .” He was trying to formulate a lie or half truth. So transparent.

  “All that cat stuff,” she said. “Feeble.”

  “I wanted a cat. And it seemed like a good way to open up a conversation with you.”

  She laughed. Not a real laugh, but a sarcastic one. “That went well too.”

  “I’m an investigative journalist.”

  Her first suspicion had been right. She’d allowed herself to be charmed by him. Shameful. “Not a student.”

  “That was my cover.”

  “I knew you were lying about something.”

  “I’m writing a book.”

  “About me.”

  “Kind of. Yes. You’ve turned down requests for biographies, so I pitched an idea to a publishing house. The Detective in the Apartment Upstairs. Told from my point of view. No need for an interview. They liked it, so here I am.”

  “An unauthorized biography.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s pathetic.”

  “People want to know about you. You’re a part of our culture.”

  “Nobody owns me and I don’t owe anybody anything.” She let her leather jacket fall closed, and turned her back to him again while keeping her ears tuned for any sudden movement. “I’ve been interviewed.”

  “Nothing in depth. I suspect the short interviews I read were meant to satisfy people and keep the press away. Instead, they just made people more curious.” She heard him shift, imagined uneasy foot movement. “I like to write with photos, because they help me visualize my story while keeping accurate track of events,” he said.

  It was true. Everything on the wall was dated and followed a progressive timeline. Many were exteriors of crime scenes. There were several photos of her house, including ones taken the day of the auction. So he’d been there. Interesting.

  “I’m going to have it torn down,” she said, not knowing if she could really go through with it. “The house. I’m just not sure when.”

  “See, I could document that too.”

  She moved to stare at more photos of her. Some looked as if they’d been taken with a telephoto lens from the roof of their building. In one, she was walking down the sidewalk. Another, on her motorcycle. Her initial sense of defeat had been replaced by anger. Now she was so mad she shook inside while remaining cool on the outside. “You’re never going to get your deposit back,” she told him, her voice aloof.

  “I’ve heard you can put toothpaste in the holes left by the tacks and nails.”

 
“They make something called spackling.”

  “Here’s what I’m thinking.” He took a step closer, then stopped when she turned to give him a hard look. He’d dropped his hands. “I can help you.”

  “Really.” The word was loaded with disdain.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve been to every crime scene. And as you can see, I’ve taken a ton of photos. I didn’t get as many of you as I would have liked, because you’re so vigilant and aware of your surroundings.”

  “I think you have plenty of me.”

  “Can I come closer? You aren’t going to shoot me, are you?”

  He didn’t seem like a physical threat. Just an idiot. She jerked her head, letting him know he could step all the way into the room.

  “I want to show you something. And you probably aren’t going to believe this, but I was going to come clean to you. I really was.”

  Maybe. Maybe not. It didn’t really matter at this point. He’d lied to her. That was what mattered.

  “I think I have something that might be of help in your investigation. Look at this image.” He pointed. “See anything strange about it?”

  The photo, about a foot above her head, was an external shot of the burned-out house at Lake of the Isles where the five people had been killed. He tended to take a lot of crowd photos, and this was no exception. Maybe twenty people, all staring at the house cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape.

  “Onlookers. Gawkers,” she said. “They always come out for these things.”

  “Do any of them look familiar?”

  “Too far away.”

  He seemed disappointed. “Okay.” He ducked out, then returned with his laptop. He clicked some keys and scrolled through digital photos, finally stopping on the one he was looking for. A few more key clicks and the image was enlarged. Cradling the laptop in one arm, he pointed to a female on the screen. “It’s her, right? The girl who survived the massacre yesterday.”

  Jude looked closer, then grabbed him by the arm and pushed him into the living room, where she felt less threatened. “It does look like her.”

  “I think it is. I’m pretty sure it is.”

  He pulled up shots of Iris Roth he’d apparently screen-grabbed from the internet. Pointed back and forth. “It’s her.”

  “I’m not a hundred percent convinced,” Jude said. But she was ninety-five. And if it was Iris Roth, what was the significance? “It might not mean anything. Just a weird coincidence. The whole city is following this case.”

  “I was thinking you could ask her. See what she says. See if she lies, or if she acts funny. I mean, you can kind of read people, right? I’ve heard that about you.”

  She didn’t tell him Iris was already acting funny. Not his business. “That’s an exaggeration. I’m no better than any good detective. I can tell you came from an outdoor café. Probably had a cup of coffee there. You sat under a tree. The only nearby coffee shop with trees along the sidewalk is Common Ground.”

  He was watching her like a kid who’d just been handed a quarter pulled from his ear. “How’d you do that?”

  “Your breath smells like coffee, your shirt smells like fresh air and secondhand smoke, and you have a small leaf in your hair. It’s not that hard.”

  “But you knew something was going on with me. From the first day we ran into each other at the mailboxes.”

  “What’s your full name, real name?”

  “Elliot Kaplan. I swear.”

  She snatched his laptop from his hands, Googled him. Several images verified his claim. He had a few journalistic credits, a couple for big magazines. She returned the laptop.

  “So, are we going to work together?”

  Back in the bedroom, she began pulling photos from the wall, ripping holes in the tops where the tacks were.

  “Hey, hey!”

  “We’re not working together, and I’m confiscating these photos as possible evidence.”

  “You can’t do that. You need a warrant.”

  “So what?”

  “I can help you. I can blend.”

  “I’m not really crazy about the idea of working with someone who’s writing an unauthorized biography on me.”

  “Understandable.” He nodded. “Completely understandable. Forget about that. Let’s shift gears. I could see this turning into an In Cold Blood thing. The Fibonacci killings are a big story, and I’ve been here from the start.”

  “I doubt I’ll be able to forget that you deliberately moved to Minneapolis to stalk me.”

  “It’s not stalking. I’m not stalking you.”

  He didn’t deny the move. She looked at the photo of the girl again. “I call it stalking.” It did look like Iris. But more interesting? She was standing next to a girl with long blond hair and a partially obscured face. And she hated to say it, but his idea of asking Iris if she’d been there might be a good approach.

  “Are we okay?” he asked. “I can be beneficial.”

  “Like a beneficial parasite?”

  He ignored that comment. The bite and humor and speed of her response held an echo of her old self that she kind of liked. It was exactly something she would have said years ago. And people would have laughed.

  “If you don’t want me helping with the case, I can feed your cat. And I swear I won’t write about the other night when you tried to have sex with me.”

  “Is this blackmail now?”

  “No!”

  “You really need to stop talking. You just keep digging yourself in deeper.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want all these photos. Every one of them.”

  “I don’t have to give them to you.”

  She stared at him.

  “But I will,” he said quickly. “Just because I’m a good guy and I want to help.” He started pulling out tacks, tossing them on the floor, grabbing photos.

  It took five minutes. When he was done, he stuffed the pile into Jude’s hands. “I still have the digital files, you know. And I’m not going to delete them. And don’t get the idea to take my laptop, because I use cloud storage.”

  Clutching the stack of photos, she scooped up her helmet from the couch and walked out. Upstairs in her apartment, she fed the cat, gave him fresh water, opened the freezer, and stuck a frozen dinner in the microwave. While it cooked, she sat down on the couch with Elliot’s photos in front of her and sifted through them.

  Roof Cat jumped on her lap. He’d parked himself next to her head a couple of times, but he’d never attempted to sit on her. She leaned back, both hands braced on the couch as he walked back and forth on her legs, purring faintly. She slowly brought one hand up and let him sniff it. Then she touched him on the head, a light stroke. When that didn’t spook him, she gave him a few short, harder strokes. “Maybe we might actually become friends,” she whispered.

  The microwave dinged. The cat jumped, hissed, attacked her hand, all in a fraction of a second, then skidded around the corner to vanish into the bedroom, probably to hide in the burrow hole he’d created in the box spring. In the adjoining kitchen, she grabbed a paper towel and dabbed at the blood on her hand, then used a hot pad to pull the nasty-looking dinner from the microwave. Seeing the congealed mess, she hoped the stomachache it gave her would be over by tomorrow morning when she confronted Iris and checked in on Uriah.

  CHAPTER 41

  Early the next morning, Jude went directly to the hospital to confront Iris. “Is this you?” she asked, holding up the photo she’d taken from Elliot’s wall.

  Iris leaned close, so close her face was hidden by long sheets of dark brown hair. When she finally looked up, her eyes were blank. Her breathing tube was gone, but she wasn’t supposed to speak. She shook her head.

  “You sure?”

  Iris grabbed a tablet and wrote angrily,

  Not Me! I Wasn’t There!

  She was such a terrible actor. “What about this person?” Jude pointed. “The girl with blond hair. She’s been spotted at two of the crime scenes. Does sh
e look at all familiar?”

  This time Iris didn’t even glance at the photo. She just shook her head vigorously. A tell.

  Jude tucked the photo away. She’d been told Iris could be released as early as tomorrow.

  “Where are you going to stay?” Jude asked. “We want to make sure you’re safe once you’re out of the hospital.”

  With my aunt. She’ll be here soon.

  “Where does she live?” For the sake of the investigation, Jude hoped Iris stayed in town, but care would have to be taken. And they couldn’t force her to remain nearby.

  Saint Paul.

  As if she’d been waiting in the wings, someone rapped on the door and a woman with a dark shoulder-length bob and red glasses stepped into the room. Crisp jeans, pale-blue T-shirt, and white sneakers. She introduced herself as Iris’s aunt. “I just wanted to bring some clothes and a phone.”

  After getting the woman’s address and both of their numbers, Jude told Iris she’d check in with her later, then headed down the corridor. Moments later, she heard hurried footsteps behind her. “Detective Fontaine. Can I speak with you?” The aunt glanced over her shoulder, toward Iris’s room. “There’s a little alcove down the hall where we can talk.”

  Once they were in the private area, she pressed her hands together in a nervous gesture. “Iris is not coming home with us. She thinks she is, but she can’t stay in my house. I have children, and their safety is more important to me than making sure Iris has a place to stay.”

  “I understand.” Jude did understand. She might make the same choice under similar circumstances. And the truth was, Iris herself might be a danger.

  “It’s not like we were ever close,” the woman said. “In fact, my kids are scared of her. She teases them.” She leaned closer. “Iris is not a nice person. She accused her own brother of molesting her. And he was the sweetest kid.” Her eyes teared up. “She caused so much trouble for that family, and now this . . .”