Dead Shot (3 page)
“Never mind.” Genevra Gray turned her back with a steely-eyed look and waited for Chip to take her fur. Underneath, a cream-colored floor-length gown clung to her frame. She looked all bone and sinew, as though she’d spent a lifetime on half rations and hard labor.
Ray waited for the business with the coats to finish so he could escort the group to the reception. The adrenaline had receded, and he felt the chill of the night and the pull of that red neon exit sign. Meanwhile, Chip was piling his wife’s fur on Will, along with Maddie’s coat, and Will was turning to Gillian, quirking a questioning eyebrow at her.
“No coat.” Gillian raised her arms as if he couldn’t see what was obvious.
“Ah, must be all that New York air.” Will released one arm from around the coats to make a muscle. “Thickened your blood.”
“It’s not my blood, Wilson; it’s my cold, cold heart.”
Ray’s glance swiveled to her. A sudden awareness, keen and interested. She’d surprised him again.
Davenport just chuckled. But it was an embarrassed, did-I-hear-that-right kind of laugh. He cleared his throat. “Call me Will, please.”
“All right . . . Will.”
“Well . . .” He lifted the outerwear as if that were the signal to move, then left, presumably to stash them in the coatroom.
“What a night,” Chip said to no one in particular.
“Mr. Gray.” Carlson stuck out his hand. “Ron Carlson. Carleco Security. The museum hired us to beef up security tonight.”
Chip Gray shook Carlson’s hand. “Thank you for the rescue out there.”
“No problem. We’ve got everything under control inside. Museum security guards at all the entrances—they’re the ones in uniform. My own people are plainclothes and will be floating, mixing with the crowd. And, of course, the metal detector. I’m afraid you’ll have to go through it like the rest.”
“Of course,” Chip said. “My wife, Genevra.” He turned to the other two women. “My granddaughter, Gillian, and her assistant, Madeleine Crane.”
Carlson acknowledged the two women with a nod, and Gillian extended a long-fingered, delicate hand, the one that had beckoned in the photograph. The sight of the fingers, now moving and alive, sent an unnatural shiver through Ray.
“You’ve met Ray,” Carlson said.
She glanced at him, swift but intense. A reading more than a glance. “Yes,” she said.
Will returned from stashing the coats, and Genevra Gray turned her hard, pointed gaze on him. “Will, can’t you do something about that mob outside?”
Will looked embarrassed. “The police are out there. Can’t do much more than that. Freedom of speech and all.”
Genevra sniffed.
Gillian leaned over to Will. “My grandmother isn’t a big fan of the Constitution.”
“I heard that,” Genevra snapped.
“Never mind.” Will clapped his hands and smiled, though Ray thought he still looked uneasy. Well, why wouldn’t he? He had a lot riding on the night. “You’re here; you’re safe.” He winked. “And the champagne is suitably chilled.” He gestured for them to precede him. “Shall we?”
The group moved away, and Ray followed, watching intently but from a discreet distance. He wasn’t part of the show, just the watchdog.
The Grays ignored him, but their companion hung back.
“Hey, good-looking. You gonna follow us around?”
He spared a fast look at the assistant, then returned his gaze to Gillian and her entourage. “That’s what they pay me for.”
She slid an arm through his. “Good. I like those decorative touches.”
He disengaged himself, but if she recognized the hint, she didn’t take it.
“I’m Crane. Madeleine Crane. Maddie.”
“Nice to meet you, Maddie.” He was professionally polite. No point in alienating anyone until he had to.
He followed Gillian to the party area. Davenport snagged glasses, handed them around. Word quickly spread, and soon the Grays were surrounded by a small crowd again. But it was made up of overfed men with golf course tans and their brittle wives, so he wasn’t nearly as anxious as he’d been outside. He took up a post where he could keep an eye on Gillian’s admirers.
“Drink?” Maddie grabbed two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and held one out to him. He saw it out of the corner of his eye, his gaze solid on the crowd.
“No, thanks.”
She shrugged, sipped one, held on to the other.
“Name?”
“Ray.”
“Not much for the small talk, are you, Ray?”
He didn’t answer.
“But you’re cute. You know that, don’t you? All dressed up in your little monkey suit with your earpiece and gun.”
He slid a sideways glance over to her. She was laughing at him. Well, at least this one didn’t look like she’d fall apart if he breathed on her. She looked like she’d survive a gale-force wind.
“Down, girl. I’m working.”
“You know what they say about work . . . and dullness.”
He didn’t respond, hoping silence would send her away.
She threw him a sly, knowing look. “Well, I guess there’s plenty of time to swap stories.” She ran a finger down his arm by way of good-bye, then drifted toward Gillian.
Maddie slunk into the circle beside her friend. She was a head taller than Gray and had to lean over to whisper in her ear. Gillian looked up, her eyes landing square on him. She laughed.
He didn’t move. Just met her gaze head-on.
Come and get me, she’d said.
Not on his watch.
The Gray Visual Arts Center was built around a glassed-in central lobby that was marble-floored and softly lit. A high ceiling gave it a cool, lofty feel, and a wide marble staircase leading up to the second floor gave it sweep and depth. Exhibit rooms branched off the lobby’s outer rim, each with discreet gold labels: the
WINSTON PARKER SCULPTURE GARDEN
; the
DAVID AND ANNETTE MILLMAN CONTEMPORARY WING
. Above the contemporary wing a banner touted
VIOLENCE AND MEDIA: WE ARE WHAT WE WATCH
. Works by five artists were listed, along with
Dead Shots
by Gillian Gray.
A half circle of people had formed in the exhibit room, with Gillian in the center. Around them, nine of Gillian’s huge photographs showed grisly death in a variety of guises, all located in what critics were fond of calling “jarring banality.” Over her shoulder,
Kitchen in Subur-bia
hung potent and threatening, though the women surrounding her didn’t seem to notice.
“Your work is so . . . interesting,” a woman in red satin said.
“Fascinating,” said someone in gold.
The various shades of the evening gowns blurred like a rainbow on an oil slick, and a picture framed itself in Gillian’s head: the group scattered, movement distorting the shapes into streaks of color.
Gillian smiled, egging them on. “Unpleasant . . . but in a nice way.”
“Exactly,” the woman in gray said eagerly.
The embarrassed silence that followed was interrupted by a server with a tray of champagne. The group helped themselves, and the waitress, a young woman, sidled close to Gillian.
“We’re not supposed to talk to the guests,” she said softly. “I hope you don’t mind.” Her brown hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, stretching the skin on her forehead like a botched Botox job. She looked like she was in her late twenties, maybe a little younger. Gillian’s age.
“Of course not,” Gillian said, relieved to talk to someone real.
“I’m a huge admirer of your work.”
“Thank you. Fellow photographer?”
She blushed. Shook her head. “An artist in my own small way.”
“Good for you,” Gillian said. “And good luck.”
“Thanks.” She hefted the tray. “Better get rid of these.” She moved off, and Gillian looked for a way to retreat.
But she was trapped by the evening gowns. The hair-spray and the perfume. Lips mouthing the same questions she’d heard a thousand times. “How does such a small, feminine woman come up with such awful things?” “How do you manage all the details?” “Where do you get your ideas?”
She pulled out her stock answers.
“I don’t know how I think of these things.”
“I hire people to manage the details.”
“I don’t know where my ideas come from.”
But of course, that was the public lie. She knew exactly how she could think of awful things. They’d been in her head since she was seven and found the bloodied, battered body of her mother. She glanced at the faces around her, but
his
face wasn’t there. In the crowd, she didn’t hear his voice. But in her head, it was always there.
Tell, and I’ll do the same to you.
He was a gorilla in her imagination. Big, dark, hovering. He growled low in his throat. “
Don’t tell.
” The words came out of his mouth like snakes and frogs in the fairy tale. They boomed in her memory, deep and ominous and distorted. “Don’t tell,” they snarled, “or I’ll come back and do the same to you.”
His face was always obscured, a black shadow surrounded by mountains of shoulders. But his hands, those she could see. She was small, and his hands were close to her face. They were smeared with red. With blood.
He’d cast a spell on her, a wicked, evil spell. Her throat had dried up tight. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Then, in all that silence and stillness, his massive arm had shifted like a turnstile and pushed her out of the way. She fell. Tumbled like Alice, down, down, down. And he lumbered away, a thick, giant beast.
The memory took hold of her now, making the museum and the reception disappear into a mist. She let it come. Took the rest of the journey.
Watched in her mind as the intruder left. Suddenly, she was free. Free to run toward her house. To scream for the one person who meant safety and shelter.
Mommy!!! Mommy!!!
The screen door slammed as she pounded inside.
Mommy!
The sound of her heart was huge in her ears, the hammering frightening.
How funny for Mommy to be lying on the kitchen floor. Not funny ha-ha, but scary funny. She was on her back. The floor was wet all around her. Red and dark and wet. A knife lay in the muck. Her mother’s eyes were wide-open, but she didn’t see her little girl. She didn’t turn her head when Gillian shook her. Her pretty dress with the pink flowers and the green ribbon was pushed to her waist. She had no panties on. Gillian felt shaky and strange to see what her mommy looked like down there. She lowered the dress. Her hands were now red, too.
Gillian never remembered screaming, although stories said she did. They found her wandering down Highway 100 in west Nashville, bloodstained and crying. She didn’t remember that, but at some point someone gave her a sedative, and time blurred. Memory blurred.
And twenty years later she still believed that she, too, would die on a floor somewhere. Pointless, random. Too soon.
Stay in the limelight. How else to catch the bastard?
Her best hope. Her worst nightmare.
Come and get me.
Around her people were fawning, their voices less real than the ones in her head. She was breathing too hard and too fast. She clutched the metal strap of the evening bag Genevra had thrust on her as they were leaving home, felt it bite into her skin until she was no longer gasping for air. Until she was back, back in the present, the museum, the party.
Eyes hounded her. She glanced over the heads of the group to the tall man who’d been staring at her ever since she arrived. Museum security, someone had called him.
Maddie had tested him, then whispered in her ear, calling him “fine,” “steady,” “undistractable.” Gillian called him what he was. Watchdog.
She should be grateful.
But if a watchdog was around, how would
he
get to her?
She excused herself from the group but had only taken a few steps when she heard a shout, then a bloodcurdling scream.
She whirled. A blur of movement raced across the room toward her.
“You want to bleed?” a crazed voice screamed. “I’ll make you bleed!”
Gillian froze, and the server from earlier tossed something at her.
Before it could hit, someone pushed Gillian out of the way. Tackled her. She went down with a thud. A body landed on top. Her head cracked against the marble floor. Something cold and liquid splattered over her. Blood. Oh, God, there was blood everywhere.
A moment of stunned silence, then shouts and screams ricocheted around her.
When she could focus again, she saw the security man— what was his name? Ray something or other—pinning her down. Her arms were flung out; Genevra’s purse lay a few feet away.
“What happened?” She pushed against him. Tried to get up.
“Stay down.”
“There’s blood!” The image of another body, another pool of blood invaded her thoughts. “There’s blood all over!” She fought to get away, but he was so strong.
“It’s not blood. It’s someone’s idea of a joke. Stay still.”