by Anne Frasier
CHAPTER 43
Peeking from behind a massive tree, Elliot spoke softly into his handheld recorder. “Fall in the Twin Cities is beautiful,” he whispered. “The sun is warm on my back, and every slight breeze dislodges red and orange leaves, adding to the colorful carpet at my feet. And the smell. I’ve never smelled anything like this. Fall in Texas will make me long for Minnesota once I’m back home.”
Movement in the distance had him tucking the recorder into the pocket of his hoodie and lifting the camera around his neck. The sound of car doors echoed across the hush of the cemetery. He spotted Uriah Ashby. Beside him was Jude, her hard-to-hide white hair partially covered with a black cap. Next to her was the girl with long brown hair, Iris Roth. She was staying with Jude and had arrived yesterday. Handy for him.
He adjusted his telephoto lens, set the camera for “Burst,” and pressed the shutter release, knocking out a series of shots.
Now that Jude knew the student angle was a cover, he was working diligently to document everything he could, wrapping up his spec job in what he hoped would result in some serious cash. He was broke. He’d even gone to a free pantry for cat food. Getting a cat had been a dumb idea, considering his financial situation, but he’d really wanted one. It hadn’t just been a ploy to engage Jude in conversation.
Jude had suffered a lot. He knew that, but suffering could sometimes blind people to the pain others were experiencing. Like him, for instance. He’d recently lost a father. Friends tried to cheer him up by telling him he was lucky to have barely known the guy. Nobody to really miss. They didn’t understand that the loss he felt was for the relationship that might have eventually been. That hope was gone. And his father hadn’t completely abandoned him. He wasn’t a deadbeat. He’d sent money over the years, and he’d paid for Elliot’s college education.
Elliot wished he could get closer to the crowd. Did he dare? If Jude spotted him, what would she do? Probably nothing, at least until later. Then she’d storm into his apartment and demand the image files.
It was a sad situation, to be the only one left after the murder of a family. As someone who’d grown up with a single mom, he might not completely understand how it would feel, but he’d experienced enough loss to at least empathize. That didn’t stop him from taking more photos.
The day was bright. Too bright for black clothes and deep sorrow. Oh, that was good. Juggling his equipment, he pulled out his recorder and mumbled the words into the mic.
He wasn’t the only lurker. The burial had drawn a ton of media. Attendees were scattered around, positioned at various vantage points, clicking away. Too much competition here, but photos would round out his story, even though the funeral would be old news by the time his project went to press or book or whatever.
He spotted a girl with long blond hair, lifted his camera again, adjusted the aperture to bring her into sharp focus. She looked like the person in the photo he’d pointed out to Jude. “Turn around,” he whispered.
She didn’t. Instead, she vanished into the crowd.
He moved the lens to Iris Roth. Snapped a few images. He was surprised to note that even in grief, she managed to maintain that kind of spoiled look you couldn’t quite source or get a lock on. It wasn’t her hair or her clothes, and he didn’t even think it was her expression. It was just there. He clicked away, then moved to Jude’s face.
Jude.
She was interesting and intimidating. If she told him to lie down on the ground and do fifty push-ups, he wouldn’t even ask why. He’d just drop and do it. Yes, ma’am. His heart began to pound as he thought about finding her in his apartment. He’d been scared shitless even though she’d been the one violating his space.
Right now, her face was blank. She did that well. The blank thing. Being a journalist, he’d learned to read people over the years. Jude Fontaine was impossible to read. Did she even have any emotions? He wasn’t sure.
At least not when she was awake.
And then there was her partner, Ashby. Nice-looking guy, and another puzzle. Wasn’t your typical cop. There was something too soft about him, too beta male for his line of work, but maybe he was the best kind of partner for Jude.
Elliot fumbled and whispered that into his mic. Ashby turned, and it almost seemed as if he was looking at him. But no, he was checking the crowd for possible suspects. He bent his head and whispered something to Jude. She scanned the crowd too. Elliot moved his camera, searching for the blond girl, and spotted her walking quickly away from the burial site, heading his direction. And now he could see her face. It was the girl in the photo. He was pretty sure of it. And shit. She was heading straight for him. Too late to try to hide.
He fired off a couple of quick shots, then lowered the camera and pretended to fiddle with the settings. She walked right past him, so close that her arm almost brushed his. Close enough for him to catch a whiff of her hair. It smelled like cookies.
He waited until she had a good head start, then he followed. Five minutes in, he lost her. He took the likeliest path, which led out through the cemetery gates to on-street parking, but after searching for another ten minutes, he gave up. He’d gotten enough shots. Instead of returning to the funeral, he sprinted for his car and headed to a place nearby, a place where he’d taken photos Jude hadn’t seen. Of her entering and leaving the house where she’d been held captive. Later, he’d review the photos of the blond girl and send JPEGs to Jude, but now, while she was occupied with Iris Roth and the funeral, he took the opportunity to expand his journalistic investigation.
Rather than parking in the driveway or the street in front of the house, where his car would be seen, he pulled into the alley, edging his vehicle off the blacktop, tall weeds and shrubs scraping the panels. The car wouldn’t be hidden, but there were no houses on the opposite side of the lane. Just a couple of abandoned buildings that might have been storage facilities, or maybe even small factories at one time. A high fence, broken windows, and a lot of graffiti advertised them as vacant.
Out of the car, camera around his neck, he popped the trunk and grabbed a crowbar. This time he planned to get inside the house. He thought of it as a place of history that needed to be documented for the world. One day Jude might thank him for it.
He climbed the chain-link fence, clutching his camera to his chest, and dropped to the ground on the other side. A glance around, and then, head down, bent at the waist, he moved quickly across the backyard, slipping into an alcove where a set of crumbling stairs met the back of the building. The house had been boarded up, and even though there were still signs of a traditional basement having existed in a previous life, at some point the windows had been removed and filled with cement. That kind of a basement treatment was suspicious and often typical of meth labs, but he had to wonder if the windows had been filled in with Jude’s capture in mind.
Using the crowbar, he pried at a piece of plywood. The squeaking nails were bent in more than one spot, a sign the board had been removed and replaced at least a couple of times. It was harder than it looked to free, because the window was high. The last nail finally came loose, and he tossed the board aside. Most of the glass was gone, but not all of it. He took off his sweatshirt and draped it over the sill, covering any possible remaining sharp pieces. He wasn’t the most athletic person in the world, but once he lowered his camera inside and let go of the strap, he was a hundred percent committed. It took a couple of failed running jumps before his belly was balanced on the sill. He wiggled and inched his way in, careful not to fall on his camera when he dropped to the other side.
Because of the plywood over the rest of the windows, the interior was murky. Sitting on the floor, he pulled out his cell phone and opened the flashlight app, letting out a sound of irritation at the appearance of the red battery icon. Not a huge issue. With the flash on his camera, he didn’t really need the phone.
He’d landed in a bedroom with a bed and dresser and desk. Out of breath, he pushed himself to his feet, shook the glass fro
m his sweatshirt, put it on, and reslung his camera.
He photographed everything he felt needed documenting. The stains on the mattress, the opened dresser drawers. A flyer for pizza someone had dropped. In the kitchen, the sink was overflowing with so many dishes it looked like a cartoon. Those dishes were covered in dust. He took flash photos of them.
He’d been in the house once before, when he’d followed Jude inside before freaking out and running off, but it was still strange to think of her imprisoned here, and even stranger to think she might have eaten off the chipped plates in the sink. Behind him, the kitchen table was littered with more-recent items. Empty food wrappers, plastic soda bottles, a lighter, and cigarette butts put out right on the table.
The odor in the house was oppressive. There was the stuffy house stench. Along with that were the odors of old cigarettes and beer, combined with a lingering scent of food that had gone bad long ago. He had another thought. The man who’d died here had rotted before his body was found. Yeah, that was what it was. The odor was embedded in the walls.
He’d saved the best or worst for last, depending on one’s perspective. The best for him, worst for Jude. The basement.
He took several photos of what he guessed were bloodstains on the walls. This was where she’d shot her captor. She’d found his gun in the kitchen. It had been darker than this, pitch black, he’d read. She’d aimed at the sound of movement, pulling the trigger in total darkness.
“He tumbled down the stairs,” she’d said in one account.
Hence the blood.
His heart was pounding and he tried to tell himself it wasn’t in excitement, because this was the scene of some horrific events, but he was standing in the center of history and in the center of a place where a person’s life had changed forever, and another had died.
He moved down the steps. To his left was a green garden hose.
“He used to hose me down with cold water.”
And there it was. The cell.
“I screamed for days, but it was so well insulated no one heard me. I was only screaming to myself.”
He took several photos of the hose and floor drain.
He had trouble with the cell door and ended up hanging his camera on a nail so he could grab the door handle with both hands. It was a tight fit, and it dragged and shuddered against the framework.
The cell was even smaller than he’d imagined. Too small to lie down in unless a person curled up. She’d said that in the interview, but he’d always figured it was an exaggeration. Jude was tall, probably five foot eight or nine. Elliot was five ten. By looking at the doorjamb, he confirmed that the walls were almost ten inches thick and layered with soundproofing material. There were three external deadbolts.
His heart pounding, he stepped inside, and with shoulders hunched he passed the light over the walls. Someone, Jude most likely, had scratched words everywhere. Every inch of space was covered, much unreadable because she’d been writing in the dark, and most or all of it had been written over many times.
He sank to his knees and curled into a ball on the cold concrete floor, trying to imagine what it had been like for her.
In here for years. Years.
He got brave and pulled the door shut, but not all the way. He wasn’t that brave. He left it cracked an inch. His phone went dead then, plunging the room into darkness.
This is what it was like.
The silence. Total darkness.
He became aware of the sound of the house, like it was a living and breathing thing. Had that brought Jude comfort? The sound of the house?
A pop now and then of wood expanding or contracting, of something settling. From somewhere came a faint scurrying, maybe of a mouse or even a rat. Yes, because he heard movement in the walls. Digging, something falling.
Okay. Enough.
He was unfolding himself from the cramped position when his ears picked up a new noise. A shuffling, like something sliding against wood. Then, through the slightly ajar door, he heard footsteps. Real, human footsteps.
Jude?
The footfall changed in tempo. Jude, it must have been Jude, running now, down the steps. She hurled herself at the cell door and it closed completely.
The room went soundless.
He pushed back against the door. Not that hard at first, but then he threw his shoulder into it. Inside, there was no handle. “Hey!” he shouted, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. “Let me out!”
He tried to turn his phone back on, but it was dead. He reached for his camera, but remembered he’d hung it outside the cell.
Locked in, Elliot continued to shout and bang.
CHAPTER 44
Several hours after the Roth funeral, Jude stepped from her bedroom, wearing a long strapless black gown. She’d even put on a little mascara and red lipstick. Iris seemed to be coping okay, mostly lying on the couch, playing video games on her phone, so Jude had decided to attend the Crisis Center fund-raiser and gala. She was more concerned with keeping an eye on Uriah than on Iris. And as long as the young woman didn’t do anything stupid, she’d be fine by herself in Jude’s apartment.
Iris glanced up. “Nice,” she whispered, admiring Jude’s outfit. That single word was a broken croak. The doctor had said her vocal cords had been damaged but they’d heal. She wasn’t supposed to speak, but it was reassuring to know she could. She could call 911, and she could probably even scream if she had to.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
Iris shook her head. Understandable.
Jude didn’t trust her. Not for a second. Was she capable of murder? That was the question. Was her life in danger? Maybe. The building was secure, and the door to Jude’s apartment was solid wood, with three locks. The windows looked down four stories to the ground. It would be almost impossible for anybody to get inside. If Iris kept her head, she’d be fine.
Iris wasn’t a child and shouldn’t need to hear the obvious. Jude laid it out anyway. “Don’t leave the apartment. Lock the door once I’m gone. There’s ice cream and Popsicles in the freezer. Juice and Jell-O in the refrigerator, soup in the cupboard.” All liquid-diet items Jude had grabbed yesterday before picking Iris up from the hospital. “Sorry I don’t have a television. Call or text if you need me.”
Iris nodded, then scribbled on the tablet she’d used at the hospital.
Thank you.
It was strange to have someone staying in the apartment with her. One night so far, with Iris sleeping on the couch. Jude valued her privacy, and it had been hard to keep from going to the roof. Instead, she’d forced herself to stay in her bedroom, staring into the dark, listening to Roof Cat purring inside the box spring. One night. How many to go?
Her phone rang. She checked the screen, surprised to see Professor Masucci’s name.
“I have something important to show you,” he said when she answered. “Please come by my apartment immediately.”
If it had been anybody else, she would have asked what he was calling about. With the professor, every question risked redirecting his thoughts or shutting him down completely. “I’ll be right there.” She hung up and got in touch with Uriah to tell him she’d be late, hoping the professor didn’t forget why he’d called by the time she arrived at his place. Then she grabbed her messenger bag and leather jacket, told Iris good-bye, and hurried out the door. But no matter how little time had passed between the professor’s phone call and Jude’s arrival at his door, he still acted surprised to see her. And he liked her dress.
As she followed him through the maze of his apartment, she told him about the Crisis Center fund-raiser and gala. In the kitchen, he suggested she sit down. Since she didn’t want to do anything that might cause him to withdraw, she sat. “You had something you wanted to show me?”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” He opened a cupboard and caught a landslide of papers and pill containers, shoved them back, and found what he was looking for. “It was a gift.” He opened a box that co
ntained a variety of tea and placed it on the table, then turned on the burner below a red kettle. This was not going to be the quick stop she’d hoped for. And her bigger worry—was this just a ploy for company?
She chose something called Spiced Ginger Plum. The tea came in little cloth bags. “It’s shaped like a pyramid,” she noted, holding one up.
He seemed delighted by that. Probably a math thing.
It seemed like forever before the kettle began to whistle. He preferred his tea with milk. Jude decided adding cold liquid to hot might speed things along. She poured a large amount of milk from the plastic jug. “Why did you call me, Professor Masucci?”
He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper ripped from a notebook. “Sometimes answers come to me in dreams, especially things I can’t remember when I’m awake.” He pushed the paper at her.
Fibonacci = death.
Under that was a name.
Leo Pisa.
“I don’t understand.”
“I used to have a student who was obsessed with the Fibonacci sequence. One day he seemed to have an epiphany and started writing what he thought was an equation, filling the chalkboard in the front of the room. Nobody understood, not even me. But the gist was that Fibonacci equals death.”
“And this Pisa person was that student?” She tapped the paper.
“Yes. I suspect he had his name legally changed.”
He’d mentioned a dream. It was possible none of what the professor said had occurred in real life. She took a sip of tea, wondering how many sips it would take before she could politely slip away. The tea wasn’t bad. She might start using milk herself. “Pisa,” she said. “Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Another drink. A glance at the clock. If she hurried, she could get to the TV studio before the telethon began.
“Pisa, Italy, is where the great mathematician Fibonacci was born.”
Poor man. He was looking for vague connections where there were none. If Uriah had been there, they’d have been out the door by now.
