The Body Reader Read Free

home,” she said by way of explaining something that shouldn’t need explaining. She was gone, and now she was back.
    He glanced at the woman standing next to him.
    Over the weeks and months, she’d learned to read the man in the basement. When his visits were the only stimulation in her life, it became easy to pick up signals from every blink, every breath, every turn of his head. And now, in this instant, she read the man in front of her—not just his expression, but something more, something in his cells. And she understood that the movie she’d played in her head for so long was not going to happen.
    They’re a couple.
    This woman was probably sleeping in Jude’s bed and maybe even wearing her clothes.
    “It didn’t take you long to find someone new.” That’s what Jude said. If she’d been prepared, she might have come up with better dialogue.
    His mouth opened and closed, and he finally choked out the words: “It’s been three years.”
    She blinked, and in her mind she traveled back to the cell. She would have said she’d been there months, not years. He was lying. He had a new girlfriend, so he was trying to cover up his betrayal. “No.” She shook her head, the movement broken, the single word trembling in denial, and she knew in her heart of hearts that he was right and she was wrong.
    His eyes were sad as they glistened in the candlelight. Tears. “Yes.”
    He’d been a good man, a sensitive man. She remembered that about him. “How long did you wait for me?”
    Now he looked ashamed. He looked like he might break down into full-blown sobs. She didn’t want to see that.
    “A year,” he said.
    Because she couldn’t handle his sadness, she tried to find words to comfort him. “That’s okay.” Then she added bluntly, “I never want a man to touch me again anyway.”
    The meaning behind her words shook him even more. “I’m sorry, Jude.”
    Now she saw something more than sadness in his face. A man who’d once looked upon her with love was now looking at her with pity and revulsion.
    The pity she might have been able to take, but not the revulsion.
    “I killed somebody tonight,” she said. “I killed somebody to get back to you.” Then she turned and ran.
    The boyfriend with the name she’d only just remembered called after her, but she kept going. Back into the darkness. And God help her, for a few brief moments she thought about returning to the basement, to the cell, to the dead man she almost wished she hadn’t shot.
    There was only one other place to go, only one other place that felt like home. Locking into a pre-established pattern, she turned the corner and headed in the direction of downtown and the Minneapolis Police Department.

CHAPTER 2
    G ot a woman who insists she works here.” Officer Myra Nettles stood in the doorway of the Minneapolis Police Department, homicide division. “She was trying to get past the front desk.”
    Detective Uriah Ashby didn’t have time to deal with a crazy person. It was like a damn apocalypse out there. Not Uriah’s job to delegate tasks, but Chief Vivian Ortega had left him in charge while every available cop hit the streets. “I think you can handle it,” he told Nettles.
    Emergency lighting had kicked in, the way it had kicked in previous times the city experienced a blackout—blackouts that had begun a year earlier when a major substation exploded and caught fire, leaving them with one less source of power. The ramifications were deep and widespread, the blackouts recurring due to the overtaxed remaining stations, each outage an open invitation to loot and burn. Similar behavior had been seen across the country over the years, the worst being the New York City blackouts of 1977. More recently, New Orleans after Katrina. Darkness brought out the criminal opportunists. For Minneapolis, it wasn’t over yet. The new substation wasn’t expected to be up and running for another six months.
    “Says her name is Jude Fontaine.”
    That