The Body Reader Read Online Free Page A

gun, along with the coat, hat, and boots she’d arrived in, had been sent to the crime lab. Uriah was hoping for a print or DNA match. “The man—are you sure you killed him?”
    “I’m sure.” But her eyes clouded in doubt. “It was dark.”
    Uriah once again had the urge to close the curtain. The sun was too bright. It revealed too much, from her sharp chest bones to her transparent skin to the bald spot on one side of her head—either she’d pulled out her own hair or someone else had done it.
    She could be wrong about her captor being dead. The moment would have been highly charged and had probably felt unreal. She would have been terrified and in flight mode.
    “Would you recognize the house if you saw it?” he asked.
    She didn’t look at him but instead concentrated on something in her mind. Digging. Trying to remember. “No. I never saw the outside of the house. I have no idea what it looked like.”
    “And you walked straight to the police station.”
    She faltered. They always faltered somewhere in the story. Here it came. The lie. He’d been interrogating people long enough to see it forming. But to her credit, he saw her toss the lie aside to settle for what he hoped was somewhat the truth.
    “I went home.”
    “Home.” He frowned, trying to understand, filling in the blanks with what he knew of her personal history. Single, but she’d had a boyfriend when she’d vanished. “What happened when you went home?”
    She swallowed. “I’d rather not talk about that right now.”
    “Okay, we’ll save it for later.” He recalled the doctor’s warning about pushing her too hard too soon. “How about we start at the beginning? The day you vanished?”
    That seemed to be something she was willing to discuss.
    “I don’t remember the abduction,” she said.
    Understandable. Emotional trauma aside, she might have suffered one of the concussions that day.
    “The first thing I was aware of was coming to on a basement floor, in a room with no windows. Not big enough to lie down in. I had to curl up to sleep. I never saw anybody but the man I killed last night. And I’d never seen him before that moment when he opened the cell door three years ago.” She paused, and he could see they’d reached another place she didn’t want to go. But he’d eventually have to get a full statement of what happened in that basement so the man who’d held her against her will could be prosecuted if still alive.
    “I’m going to send a sketch artist to see you today. Are you okay with that?”
    “Yes.”
    She was tough, but his short visit had worn her out. He’d get more when she was fresh. “Let’s finish this tomorrow.” In the meantime, he’d talk to her ex-boyfriend and get cops on door-to-door canvassing of areas she might have walked through, even though the chance of anyone having seen her seemed remote considering the blackout. Relevant case information would be pushed to the entire Minneapolis Police Department. Maybe a neighbor heard shots fired. Maybe the sketch artist would be able to give them something to go on.
    Now that the questioning was over, at least temporarily, her body relaxed.
    “If you’d rather talk to a female detective about the details of your ordeal, I can arrange that.”
    “You’ll see my official statement anyway, right?”
    “Correct.”
    “And you’ll be handling the case?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I’d rather talk to you.”
    He put the chair back and was turning to leave when someone rapped at the door.
    Uriah was surprised to see a man he recognized from local media stories. Adam Schilling. Expensive leather jacket. Slacks that cost a month’s salary, glowing skin, and a deliberate five-o’clock shadow, along with plucked and sculpted brows. He was a playboy and one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. Then Uriah remembered what he’d somehow forgotten in all this. Jude Fontaine was Governor Phillip Schilling’s daughter, and this guy was her