Dead Shot (33 page)

“I’m sure it is.” He settled in for however long it took.

An irritated sigh. “She didn’t bother to inform me,” Genevra said tartly, “but I suspect she’s at the museum. Seeing to the packing of her photographs.”

“Thank you.” He swung his legs down, stood, and was almost out the door when she stopped him.

“Mr. Pearce. Ray.”

He turned. She was still sitting at the desk. Still looking at her book.

“You hurt my child, you’ll answer to me.”

“Me hurt her?” Ruefully, he shook his head. “You know her better than that. More like the other way around.”

The dizzying trip on the pallet ended, leaving Gillian facing the wall that had been behind her. She went cold at the sight of the set in front of her. Not because it was a perfect reproduction of the kitchen in her photograph, but because it wasn’t.

The kitchen in her photograph had a black-and-white tile floor. She’d chosen it to better outline the body. But the kitchen here had a strip of linoleum in front of the counter. Linoleum like in the house. Her mother’s house. In her photograph, she’d used pink-and-green curtains to update and exaggerate the banality of the space. But here, they were thick, old-fashioned Venetian blinds. With a familiar red-and-white-checked valance across the top. A green wine bottle sat on a windowsill, with three yellow daisies in it.

In the center of the room, between her and the set, stood a camera on a tripod. Bile rose up her throat.

“Like it?” Aubrey asked softly.

Her lungs clogged. Her brain screamed. How did he know? How did he know?

“Who—who are you?” she choked out.

“I’m Aubrey, Miss Gillian.” He stroked her hair the way you would a child. Or a pet. “You remember Aubrey, don’t you? I used to come to your house with my daddy when he mowed the lawn. Or fixed the fence. That fence was always getting broke, d’you remember? I’d sit out in the truck because he told me to, and ain’t no one didn’t listen to my daddy and live. I’d sit out there when it was so cold I could see my breath or so hot I couldn’t breathe at all. And I’d watch you through the window. You’d be out there playing. All twirling and laughing. Prettiest thing I ever saw in my entire life, you and your momma. I loved watching you.”

The handyman? Aubrey belonged to the handyman? Nausea swirled in the pit of her stomach. She thought back, desperate for a single memory of the child he’d been, and came up blank.

“I’d sit out there and watch through the truck window and a feeling would wind up inside me. Like a snake. Like a rattlesnake, all snarly and mean. I didn’t have no pretty momma, no house with green grass. I had nothing but my daddy. Oh, and his momma. Can’t forget Grandma. Who prayed and prayed and never did nothing to stop him. And that didn’t seem fair, Miss Gillian. Do you think it’s fair?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.” He gripped her hair, pulled back on it. “I told you not to lie to me.”

“If you”—she gritted her teeth at the pain—“if you stayed in the truck, how did you ever see inside the house?”

“Oh, that was your momma’s doing.” As if the mention of her mother was a call to gentler things, he released her. “Once, when my daddy was fixing the fence out back, she saw me in the truck. Felt sorry for me, I guess, because it was close to suffocating in there. She opened the door and took my hand and took me inside. I just about didn’t believe my own eyes. Pictures and rugs. Everything neat and colorful. Like a fairyland. Like my own private Disney World.” He paused, gazing out at the kitchen. “She gave me a can of Coke,” he said dreamily, and smiled at the memory. “Best can of Coke I ever had.” He sighed. “Sure was sorry about what happened to her.”

He said the last in a funny, intimate kind of way. Gillian went rigid. Had he watched? Had he seen? He couldn’t have been but ten or eleven. But his father . . .

“Was it . . .” She swallowed. Fear and anticipation mingled. Hope for an answer to the biggest question of her life. “Did your father—”

“Do her? Hell no. He was sleeping off a two-day drunk that morning.”

Disappointment crashed into her. “Then what do you know about it?”

“Well, now, I know some.” He knelt again, stroked the back of a finger down her cheek. “I know what it’s like to steal someone’s breath. To have them struggle beneath my hands. Their body go limp. The light in their eyes go out. I know more than you, Miss Gillian.”

“Things I wouldn’t want to know.”

“That why you did all those pictures? Because you didn’t want to know?” His finger traced her mouth, her neck, and she stiffened against his touch. “You’re lying again. Don’t think I can’t see it. You’re desperate to know.” He ran his tongue up the side of her face to her ear. “What’s it like to draw that last pinch of air? What’s it like to know you’ll never laugh again, never twirl again. Never see another second of misery, and wanting to more than anything.” He tilted her head, his mouth an inch from her jugular. He held her there, like a vampire staring at the vein. “You think that little window in the camera keeps you safe? Underneath the phony rags and the New York galleries and the papers writing your name, you’re just aching to know, Miss Gillian.” His hand wrapped around her throat. He leaned in close and tight, whispered in her ear. “And I’m going to show you.”

She struggled to keep from pulling away, to keep the terror at bay, to keep him from seeing how close he’d come.

“That’s
my
work,” he said, and flourished a hand toward the set. “My art.”

She looked toward the faithful reproduction in front of her. She would die there. On the floor, like her doomed mother. Gillian had always known it. She would die at the hands of the monster. Call it fate. Destiny. Luck of the draw.

She flicked a glance at Aubrey’s wet eyes and smiling mouth. The pride and glee she saw chilled and horrified. Was this what her mother had seen? Was this the last sight her eyes beheld?

No, not ten-year-old Aubrey. He was her monster, not her mother’s. And if that was different, everything else could be, too.

Or maybe they were all the same. Every monster the same monster. Evil returning in a thousand disguises, but at heart all one.

She thought about Ray. About his pain and sympathy when he’d seen the scars on her arms. If he were here, he wouldn’t hesitate to shield her. Protect her. Save her. If he were here, would she give him the next thousand years of her life? Would she promise her love, her hope if he saved her?

Wasn’t anyone looking out for you?
Ray had asked.

Only herself.

“Are you ready, Miss Gillian? Are you ready to find what you so desperately seek?”

Panic spiked, sharp as a spear. Not yet. Too soon. She needed another hour. A day, a week. A year. Please. Just a little more time.

Did everyone haggle like this? Was every death scene set in a market stall? So, she thought, not so easy to die after all.

She struggled against the tape. It held her tight, helpless. She had no options. He’d given her none. And no time.

Ahead of her, he was waiting, eagerness in his face.

But there was always a choice. Always. It may be a tiny crack in the void, but slim was better than none.

So, she stopped struggling and turned from him. Deliberate, indifferent. Scornful.

“What are you going to do, Aubrey”—she mocked his name—“put a plastic bag over my head like all the others? Strangle me, suffocate me? Put me on the floor of my own kitchen?” She snorted. “Make another copy of a Gillian Gray photograph?”

His eyes narrowed, and the bottom fell out of her stomach, but she plowed on. “You’re not an artist, Aubrey, you’re a copier. A little Xerox machine.”

He slapped her. Her head snapped back, her eyes watered.

“I do what you don’t have the guts to do,” he said.

“You want to talk about guts? Guts is facing the abyss and shaping it instead of falling in. Guts is a point of view. A single, original idea. And that’s something you’ve never had.”

He raised his hand again.

“But I can help you,” she said quickly. “I can show you how to do what’s never been done.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “And why would you do that, Miss Gillian?”

“Because I never do the same thing twice. No true artist does. Because if you’re going to kill me, and I know you are, I want a hand in it.” She flexed her tired wrists, ignored the ache, and dug her nails into her palms. “Because you’re right, Aubrey.” She laughed hysterically and giddily, the tears so close she could taste them. “You are so right.” She met his lethal, empty eyes. “I do want to know.”

51

Ray pulled into the museum lot. The paper had announced the removal of the Gray photographs, and the long lines were gone.

He took the steps two at a time, eager to get inside, eager to get this over with. One last chance to talk Gillian into something he still hadn’t talked himself into.

When he got inside, he found the exhibit blanketed with drapes and a sign that said “under construction.” He tracked down a docent, explained why he’d come, and was directed to the design rooms, where the photographs were being crated.

He took the elevator up, hoping when the doors opened the madness that had rooted inside his brain would be over, and he could turn around, go back down, and never have to put his soul in the hands of Gillian Gray.

But the doors opened, and he stepped out of them, heading toward the firing squad or whatever else she had in mind. But Gillian wasn’t there, and when he asked, no one had seen her yet. One of the staff members told him she’d be with the curator, so he took the elevator up two floors to Stephanie Bower’s office.

Bower was polite and told him with a smile that Gillian was in the design room.

He blinked. “No, she isn’t. I was just there.”

Stephanie looked puzzled. “Well, she made arrangements to oversee the packing. I told her we’d begin this morning, and I was under the impression she wanted to be here.”

“You haven’t seen her?”

“Not yet. But we got an early start. The call was for seven. I’m sure she’s just running late.”

Ray left, stifling instinctive panic. According to Mrs. Gray, Gillian was supposed to be there. No, Mrs. Gray
thought
her granddaughter was there.

But Mrs. Gray was also unhappy about his interest in Gillian. And he was more than familiar with the games the Grays played.

He punched a number into his cell phone, waited with a mere scrap of calm for the call to be answered.

“This is Ray Pearce, Mrs. Gray. Where’s Gillian?”

There was a moment’s hesitation. Surprise or more games? “I told you—”

“No, Mrs. Gray, you didn’t. And I don’t appreciate being toyed with and lied to.”

“Well, we are blunt this morning.”

“I don’t have time for polite. I’m going to find her. It’s just a matter of how long it takes.”

“As I believe I mentioned, she’s at the museum.”

“No, she isn’t. Do you know where else she might be?”

“No, I don’t.” Worry crept into her voice. “Are you sure she isn’t at the museum?”

An uneasy feeling crawled over him. “What time did she leave?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“Did someone drive her?”

“She borrowed a car. Drove herself. Why? Has something happened?” The swift fear in her voice said more about her truth telling than anything else. He took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator, hammering down them.

He remembered the squad car. “Get one of the maids to run outside and ask Carter when she left. That’s the cop watching the gates. And find out what kind of car she took.”

“What kind of—? Why? What’s wrong?”

He didn’t want to jump to conclusions—Gillian could be anywhere—but he didn’t want to be stupid either. “I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing. But I won’t know until you do what I ask.”

“All . . . all right. Hold on.” She returned a few agonizing minutes later, sounding breathless. Had she run outside herself? “She left around six-forty-five. The”—she took a moment to catch her breath—“the gray BMW. The sedan.”

“License plate?”

“The license plate? I—”

“Mrs. Gray. I need the license plate on the car. Now.”

She put him on hold again, and he reached the ground floor, ran down the slope of exterior steps, and sprinted across the drop-off drive to the parking lot. The museum had opened fifteen minutes ago, and the lot was half-full. He stopped short. There must be dozens of cars there. And Gillian’s might not even be one.

But if she had been there by seven, hours before the museum opened, there would only have been a few cars parked at the time. She would probably have chosen a space close to the entrance. He dashed up the closest row, hoping he wouldn’t find a gray BMW. “Come on, Genevra,” he muttered into the phone.

He found three gray BMW sedans before Genevra came back and gave him the license number in a quavering voice.

“Thanks,” Ray said, scanning cars.

“Wait! Mr. Pearce. Please. Do you mind if I stay on the line?”

And suddenly, he remembered that moment in the hotel ballroom, that brief, soft, loving moment between two flinty women, and he couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. “Fine.”