The Body Reader Read Free Page A

got his attention. “Fontaine? You sure?”
    Shrug. “I’m just the messenger.”
    “Escort her to my desk.”
    Returning with the woman trailing behind her, Myra said, “She was armed with a Smith & Wesson.”
    Uriah had never met Fontaine, but he’d seen photos and enough media coverage to know the person standing in front of him wasn’t the missing detective who was presumed dead. “This is not Detective Fontaine,” Uriah said.
    Fontaine would have been close to his age, around thirty-five or so by now. This woman had to be much older, and her hair was white, not brown.
    A homeless person, then. Someone who was mentally unstable, and since this particular unstable person had tried to enter the building armed . . . “Put her in Holding,” he said. “Get her food and a blanket. I’ll deal with her later.” It would take further questioning to determine whether she should be booked, and the Hennepin County Jail was at capacity—a new situation for the city, a by-product of the power outages. And God knew that over half the people in custody really needed to be under psychiatric care and not in jail, but thanks to the closing of state mental institutions years ago, that wasn’t going to happen.
    Myra pulled the woman’s arms behind her back, slapped handcuffs around her wrists. The woman seemed oblivious as she stared at Uriah. “Did you replace me?” she asked.
    With one twirling finger, Uriah motioned for Myra to take her away. Enough raving lunatics outside to deal with. Reports were coming in of neighborhoods being torched, far more than their fire department could handle. It was now a question of which houses should be allowed to burn to the ground. A story that had become too familiar.
    “Wait.” It was common knowledge that kidnapping victims, hostages, could change drastically. When they returned to civilization, they no longer looked like themselves and sometimes even family couldn’t ID them. “Bring her back.”
    Myra turned the woman around and pushed her forward.
    “Where was your desk?” Uriah asked. “Show me.”
    She strode past him in boots that thumped and dragged.
    The chief’s office was private, as private as an office of glass could be. The rest of the department amounted to a scattering of desks throughout the room. Open, no cubicles. On a sunny day, light poured in from the row of windows that overlooked the city street below, and if a person had a green thumb, plants could do well. A couple of officers even grew herbs alongside the typical array of framed photos.
    Nodding to a tidy desk that held no pictures and no framed photos, she said, “Grant Vang, my partner.” Nodding the other direction, “Jenny Carlisle.” Kept going, stopped. “Right there.”
    The desk belonged to Detective Caroline McIntosh. She was fairly new, a single mom, someone they probably wouldn’t have hired if they hadn’t been desperate. After Uriah’s partner had retired, the chief suggested Caroline step in, but Uriah had declined. Caroline’s head wasn’t in the game. She was actively dating, often late for work. He couldn’t deal with her undependability. Sometimes he suspected she was flirting with him. He couldn’t deal with that either.
    “Have you met anybody new yet?” his mother was always asking whenever they spoke on the phone. A relationship was the last thing on his mind.
    A homeless person off the street wouldn’t have been able to point out Fontaine’s desk. Uriah stared at the woman in front of him, looking closer, his mind putting together another scenario as he took in her ill-fitting coat and boots, along with her filth and smell. God, did she smell. Like that sour-sweet stench of a person who hadn’t bathed . . . in years .
    The eyes. Hollow and defeated. Shut off. Dead inside.
    “Remove the handcuffs.”
    The woman glanced at him in surprise, and he got the sense she’d picked up on the hint of emotion in his voice, but that was ridiculous. He was good at