Dead Shot (2 page)
Maddie had held the pink message slip between two fingers. Waved it like the devil offering temptation to a sinner. “Yeah, but think how much you could rock their world.”
Gillian stared at her friend. Maddie’s lips had twitched, not a smile exactly, but the smug suggestion of one.
Gillian had snatched the message out of Maddie’s hand.
Rock their world.
It sure to hell was rocking now.
And this was only the VIP party; the show hadn’t even opened yet. What would happen on Friday?
A thud. Someone with a sign flung himself at the slow-moving vehicle. On the seat opposite, her grandmother, Genevra, gasped and clutched at her fur-encased throat. It was early April, but she still wore the silver mink, more out of status than a need for warmth, although she did always complain about the cold. Not enough fat on those patrician bones. Above the stole’s rim, Genevra’s throat rose tall and tapered, the cords stretched tight in her too-thin neck. She stared in horror at the half word “obsceni,” which hung on the window, then slipped out of sight as a cop dragged whoever it was away.
“It’s all right,” Gillian’s grandfather said grimly. He squeezed his wife’s other hand, curled tightly in her lap. His own was beefy, his fingers squat and well manicured.
“Of course it is,” Genevra said through tight lips, pretending, as she always did.
Of course it was.
They made a handsome couple. The college quarterback and his homecoming queen. Growing up it seemed no surprise to Gillian that their only child had become an icon of beauty. At least to everyone with a subscription to
Vogue.
Not much of an icon to her own parents, however, but that was an old story.
Gillian turned, pressed her forehead against the glass like she was seven again.
“Get away from the window,” Genevra snapped.
Gillian ignored her. She peered into the face of the furies. Was he out there? Watching her? Would he come for her, too?
“Gillian!” Genevra’s voice grated into the hum of silence inside the car.
“Is your glass empty, Genevra? Let me take that from you.” Maddie’s voice behind her. Smooth interference. “Wouldn’t want to ruin that beautiful mink with spilled gin.”
“Thank you,” Genevra said, the words a sniff of stoicism, a warble of concealment, a disguise.
“Vintage?” Maddie asked, and like that she distracted Genevra into a discussion of fur and color and shape.
And Gillian could stare out the window at the faces. Would she see his face? The face of the man who’d killed her beautiful and famous mother? Was he out there, watching?
Be careful what you wish for.
Ray Pearce stared hard at the enormous photograph mounted on the museum wall. At the strange light coming in from a window, making the ordinary kitchen with its pink-and-green floral curtains and Winnie the Pooh cookie jar look ominous, even without the body on the floor.
But there was a body. A dead girl lay on her back. School uniform mussed, book bag lying beside her as though she’d been surprised and dropped it. An algebra text and a notebook with a mottled black-and-white cover spilled out of it. The girl, eyes wide and glazed in a bloodless face, stared unseeing at something beyond him. Her attacker? The viewer? He’d seen plenty of crime-scene photographs, but this one made him shift his feet and step back.
Not that moving away lessened the impact. Wider than Ray was tall, the huge picture pulled you in, making it impossible to ignore the girl’s plaid skirt, which lay crumpled above her knees. Or her thighs, which were parted and blood-streaked. A shirt embroidered with a school crest was untucked and unbuttoned. Three red splotches marred the once-crisp white cotton. The blood had soaked through as she bled out, fuzzing the edges of the wound marks. A suspicion of lace beneath hinted at her virginal white bra.
Close to her outstretched arm lay a bloodied knife. The fingers of her hand curled outward toward it as though beckoning: Come closer, they seemed to be saying. See me. That hand, that tender, fragile hand made him feel like the voyeur he was.
“What do you think?”
The voice of Carlson, his boss, and head of Carleco Security, broke the photograph’s eerie hold. “One sick puppy,” Ray said, and reminded himself to keep as far away as possible from her.
Carlson shrugged. “Well, let’s make sure she stays that way.”
Carlson nodded toward the exhibit entrance and beyond, where men in black tie and women in little black dresses sipped champagne. “They’re here.”
Ray followed Carlson out of the exhibit and into the reception area. Amid the black-coated waiters who mingled with trays of wineglasses and hors d’oeuvres, stood a tall, gangly man with black-rimmed glasses that matched his shock of black hair: Wilson Davenport, director of the museum.
Ray nodded, shook hands, filed his face away under “friendly.” At least, for now.
They left the reception and moved out into the hallway that led to the entrance. Once away from the crowd, the museum’s marble floors echoed with their footsteps. It was cold in the empty hallway. Cold the way a room is when all the people have gone.
Ray hunched inward, the collar of the tuxedo shirt tight around his neck. He never liked wearing the things, but babysitting the rich and famous meant blending in. And after three years of it, he had the money to buy all the trappings.
They turned a corner, passed the glass wall that skirted the closed and lifeless gift shop, past the unmanned information desk, and bore down on the metal detector at the other end of the long passageway. The museum had balked at installing it, but Carlson had insisted. Given the tumult outside, Ray guessed Davenport and his crew were glad they’d acquiesced.
Beyond the metal detector, the museum’s front door beckoned. For half a second, Ray imagined what it would be like to keep going. Walk into the night, get in his truck, and drive, baby, drive.
The lines from the Dylan song reverbed in his head:
with no direction home. Like a complete unknown. Like a rolling stone.
Soon he’d make his plans. Pack his bags. Clip the guide wires and float free.
Tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after that. Soon.
He nodded at the uniformed officer manning the security station, and they all passed through. The little group planted itself just inside the museum’s front door and waited.
Exterior lights illuminated the center’s imposing front entrance. A columned portico. A slope of long, graceful steps. At the bottom, a black limousine was disgorging four people.
Beyond the four, the distant crowd still seethed. Fisted arms shook in the air and ugly, twisted mouths shouted slogans Ray couldn’t hear. He could hardly blame them for being incensed. Gillian Gray and her friends could call it art, but the photographs he’d seen were rightly labeled obscene, and if it had been up to him, they’d meet the woodpile. All of them. With a nice hot flame. No one but his former colleagues in homicide should have to look at those nightmares.
But it wasn’t up to him. He was no art expert; he was simply the guy who would escort Ms. Gray and her entourage to her party, then stand around while they ate stuffed mushrooms and drank champagne until they all got back in that limo and drove away to her granddaddy’s mansion.
Away. Far away.
The words played in his head as he watched the four ascend, the patriarch in front.
Although he was past seventy, Charles “Chip” Gray still had a broad, ex-footballer’s frame, though golf carts and country-club meals had turned it into paunch. Red-faced and huffing, he blocked Ray’s view of Gillian and her companion. Chip’s wife, Genevra, held his arm with one hand while the other clutched closed her silver fur as though it were armor. Ray knew who they were because most people in Nashville knew who they were. The Grays were local royalty, founders of an insurance conglomerate worth billions. Their name graced the front of the museum they were climbing toward.
The Gray Visual Arts Center was a cultural landmark for Nashville. For years the arts community had lobbied for an art museum of national standing. The Gray millions had finally made it possible, and a year ago the museum had opened to great fanfare. What better way to celebrate than to bring one of their own back for the first anniversary festivities?
He shot a sideways glance at the museum rep—what was his name? William? No, Wilson. Had it been his idea to bring Gillian Gray back to town? He’d bet Willy boy was regretting it now.
The group below hadn’t gone five steps when the swarm attacked. Swelled with national press and tabloids, a herd of reporters and paparazzi descended from both sides, surrounding the Grays. Now he couldn’t see any of them.
One glance at Carlson, and they both burst through the doors and raced down the steps. Elbowed to get through. Voices screamed questions as they got closer.
“Given community anger, will you withdraw from the exhibit?”
“How do you feel about public reaction to your work?”
A sea of faces, voices, and microphones buffeted the group. Cameras flashed, and the lights of news cameras shone in their eyes.
“Gentlemen! Ladies! Let us through!” Chip Gray pushed relentlessly through the thick sea of bodies and dismembered voices.
“Does your work contribute to violence?”
“Are you violent yourself?”
“Don’t respond,” Genevra Gray said. “Don’t say a word. Just one foot in front of the other. Forward.”
“Do you expect the museum to cancel the show?”
“What will you do if the museum cancels?”
Ray reached them first. He pulled the elder Grays through and handed them to Carlson, who threaded a path for them. Chip and Genevra plowed through, and Ray caught his first glimpse of their granddaughter alongside a tall, black-haired woman.
If he had to pick which of the two was the photographer, he would have guessed the dark one. There was an amused, cynical cast to her long, witchy face. It was a hard face, with a tough, brittle beauty that seemed more capable of handling a corpse than her companion’s.
But the brunette wasn’t the main attraction in the photographs. All the victims were incarnations of the angelic blonde beside her. And it was the angel, the small, slight angel, whose work was mounted on the museum’s walls and whose name was reviled by the protesters below.
The night was cool, but Gillian Gray wore no coat or shawl. No mink stole of any kind.
Only a pale violet dress that skimmed her shoulders and floated down her arms, as delicate as the dead child she pretended to be in the photo. She was older than the photograph; then again, she would be—she wasn’t pretending to be a schoolgirl now.
And yet her adult face and body had the same fragility as the dead girl’s. Wispy fair hair piled on her head. Big eyes that stared out from an elfin face with childlike innocence.
If Ray had let them, they would have pulled him in like her photographs. But he didn’t. He zeroed in on her. Linked an arm around her shoulder and another around the black-haired one. Pushed through. The pack continued shouting questions.
“You found your mother in the kitchen. Is that why you like kitchens?”
“Are you obsessed with death?”
“Ever killed anyone?”
“Let’s go,” Ray said, shoving the two women through.
“If they found him, what would you say to the man who killed your mother?”
He felt Gillian stiffen.
“Not now.” He tightened his grip on her. “Keep moving.”
But like a barge hitting ice, she ground to a halt. Turned back. “What would I say?”
The pack of reporters leaped closer, mad dogs salivating over the sound bite. They jostled Ray, and he swayed but didn’t let go of the women.
“What would you tell your mother’s murderer?” another reporter shouted.
Ray tensed, braced to keep his stance. Kept a roving gaze on the encroaching crowd. The last thing he needed was an incident before she even got inside the museum.
But the blonde didn’t seem to care. “What would I tell my mother’s killer?” She smiled sweetly as the pack closed in. “I’d tell him to come and get me.”
Ray couldn’t believe it. If she wanted to set them off, Gillian Gray couldn’t have given a better response. Follow-up questions came so fast they blended together in a screeching, shouted racket.
Gillian swiveled to face the museum entrance again, a poised, confident move. No helpless little girl here. “I’m ready now,” she said, and without his help, shoved her way through, leaving the mob screaming behind her.
Ray was sweating beneath his bow tie by the time they reached the door, but the woman beside him seemed revved up, excited. As if she’d faced down a challenge and won. There was a sharpness in her eyes as she greeted Davenport, who met them inside.
“Are you all right?” He took her arm. “Wilson Davenport, the museum’s director.”
“Ah.” Gillian’s smile could have cut glass. “The money man.”
Will escorted her into the museum’s foyer. “I am so sorry about all that outside.”
“Oh, don’t bother, Will.” Chip eyed his granddaughter balefully. “She likes being in the thick of things.” He shrugged out of his topcoat and dumped it on Will. “My God, a bunch of rabble.”