He gave her a long, thoughtful look, then swung around and left.
She turned off the overhead light and switched on the lamp by the bed. The soft light was easier on the eyes. Reaching back, she unzipped the dress and peeled it off. Threw it in the same corner as the pillows. God, she never wanted to see that dress again.
She opened a dresser drawer, took out a ratty olive tank, and pulled it over her head. She kept a closetful of clothes here, most from high school, most shredded or frayed or washed to death, but that still fit. Gaining weight had never been her problem, and using the clothes here kept the luggage at a minimum. Little or no luggage meant she could pretend the trip home would be over almost before it had begun.
She slithered into bed, mindful of the soft pull of the six-hundred-thread count cotton Genevra always insisted on. She reached over to turn off the lamp, and in the yellow glow, her scars seemed angrier than usual. She snapped off the light and lay in bed, rubbing the raised edges of the weird shapes that danced up and down her arms.
14
Jimmy Burke was on his way home when the police band radio barked a 10-64. Dead Body. His shift was over, and a beer called from the fridge, but that and the Today Show were all he had waiting for him.
So he detoured left, thinking about it. A few more minutes with the guys wouldn’t kill him, and besides, he was curious. The crazy at the museum was down for the count, and nothing much else of interest had happened that night. Except maybe seeing Ray again.
Which wasn’t exactly on his Top Forty Things of Interest anyway. He could do without another sighting of Saint Ray. Ray of the Sacrificing Husbands.
He shook off the mood. He should go home. Grab a few hours sleep.
But he wasn’t tired.
He’d stopped for dinner at Krispy Kreme, chomped down two hot ones and gulped three cups of coffee. Between the sugar and the caffeine, he was pretty wired.
And truth was, he didn’t like going home much. Too quiet. The weekends when Scott was there were better, because a six-year-old can really tear the place up. But Scott was with his mother now, and Jimmy’s apartment was empty.
So he headed south, passing used car lot after used car lot. Seventy-seven in a single seven-mile stretch, a good portion with Spanish names and Spanish signs.
He’d lived in Nashville all his life, and he still remembered when Nolensville Road was staunchly redneck, covered in used furniture stores like Oldhams, with its hanging cribs and naked mattresses outside the door. Now you’d think the Rio Grande was south of the city and the whole of Mexico had waded over. Oldhams was now Garcia’s, though the mattresses still hung there. A place shouting POLLO ASADO had replaced the Dairy Queen. Strange grocery stores advertised PAN DULCE and Mexican beer. Taquerias dotted both sides of the street. It made him uncomfortable.
“The trouble with you, Jimmy, is you don’t like change.” His ex-wife’s voice screeched in his head, a little dose of whatever she’d heard lately from Dr. Phil. “Well, get used to it, because nothing and no one stays the same forever.”
The woman wasn’t the smartest, but she was right about that. Even the sign for the H&R Block office had SE HABLA ESPAÑNOL spelled out in black letters.
Jimmy pulled into the strip of blacktop that served as a parking area in front of the store. It was already filled with patrol cars, their lights flashing in the morning. The area around the office had been blocked off, and a couple of uniforms were standing around making sure no unauthorized people got too close.
Jimmy ducked beneath the yellow police line tape and nodded to the uniform outside the office door. “Hey, Shelby, who’s the DRT?” DRT meant Dead Right There, and whoever it was, they had died inside. Through the plate-glass window he saw a group of men milling around, jotting down notes, glancing at the walls, jotting more stuff down. Triangulating the body position, looked like.
“Female, midforties. Two stab wounds.”
That was interesting. “Who caught it?”
“Mills.”
The uniform nodded and let Jimmy pass. He stopped to slip a pair of paper covers over his shoes.
Inside, several desks had been pushed aside to clear room. In the middle of the empty space lay the body of a woman wearing a plaid skirt and a white blouse. Three bloody wounds danced down the front of it. The woman lay peacefully, her eyes closed. A knife lay just out of reach of her open hand.
“Hey, Burke!” Mills waved him over. “What are you doing here?”
“Caught the code on my way home. Thought I’d stop by, check it out.” He looked down at the dead woman. “Robbery?”
“Not unless they took tax forms.”
He gave the body a full 360. Her skirt was unzipped. “Rape?”
“Don’t know yet. ME still has to do the kit. Maybe.”
Burke looked around, taking in the scene. A man hudd led in the far corner, head in his hands. Suited up for the day, prim and proper. Only the curve of his back and the droop of his head belied his true state. Burke nodded in his direction. “Who’s that?”
“Neeley. Victim’s boss. Found the body.”
Burke knew most murders were carried out by those who knew the victim. He eyed the man closely. “He tell you a story?”
“Not much of a one.” Mills flipped through pages of a pocket notebook. “Deceased was still here when he left around seven. Stopped at Bar-b-Cutie for a pound of pork and coleslaw. Home around eight. Dinner with the wife and kids. There all night.”
“You got a time of death?”
“Approximate. Maybe ten, eleven last night.”
Burke looked at the body again. Something tugged at him. “I’ve seen this before.”
Mills laughed. “What? A dead body?”
“No, this dead body.”
“Go home, Burke. You’re tired.”
“No, there’s something . . .” Burke wagged his finger at the air, thinking about it. He glanced around the room. A figurine on one of the desks caught his eye. He pointed to it. “What’s that?”
“Cookie jar. Killer placed it on a plant stand above the body. Winnie the Pooh.” Mills shook his head. “We got us a strange one.”
Burke headed over. Didn’t touch it. Didn’t need to.
Benton James smoothed the front page of the morning’s Tennessean across his desk and admired the point size of his headline: DEATH DIVA DAMAGED. Better than the lead, the story was spread over the coveted strip, the section just below the paper’s name.
Around him, the features department was a ghost town and would be until later this afternoon. If he had any sense, he’d be home in bed, too. But he couldn’t resist coming in and crowing just the teensiest little bit. After all, he’d stayed up half the night writing the story. Larson, the night managing editor, had wanted to bring in a crime reporter, but Benton was already there. An eyewitness.
Benton enjoyed being the town arbiter of good taste, but the sad truth was, there wasn’t much art to critique in Nashville. One opera, once a year. The symphony. A few galleries scattered around. The occasional piece of nonprofessional theater. And the road shows.
That gave him enough to do, but it wasn’t as if he was somewhere where art mattered. “Now, Benton,” the angel voice in his head said, “where else could it matter more than in a place where there’s so little of it?”
Not to be outdone, the devil voice countered, “Yes, but wouldn’t it be delicious to spread a wider net?”
Benton smoothed his mustache and almost cackled as he reread what he’d written the night before. World-class artist, attacked at home. Protesters. Violence. God, could it get any better? Maybe if he was lucky, the wire services would pick it up. Maybe the New York Times would call.
He did cackle then, and the sound echoed in the all-but-silent space of empty cubicles. He was good. God, he was good.
He turned on his monitor and logged on. Thought about the headline as the machine warmed up. The night editor wanted to go with something simple, like ARTIST ATTACKED. Benton had
talked him into something a tad more inflammatory.
While he was remembering their argument, he checked his e-mail. He ran down the list: nothing, nothing, later, nothing . . . he paused. The last entry was titled “Something to Interest You” and was from MAPulley@hrblock .com. Who the hell was MAPulley? He started to hit the delete button, but his curiosity got the better of him. He moved his mouse and clicked on the entry.
The message was a picture. He watched as it downloaded. Saw immediately what it was. The Gillian Gray photograph that had been spattered with blood last night. Well, phooey. What the hell good was that going to do him?
He closed the picture, and just as it disappeared, something caught his eye. Quickly, he reopened it. Gasped.
The dead girl in the picture was no girl. And it was definitely not Gillian Gray.
15
The morning after the museum fiasco, Gillian thought she’d sleep until noon. But when she opened her eyes, the sun outside her window was low in a blue sky, and her Nikon called to her. She threw on some clothes, grabbed her camera bag, and slung the camera around her neck.
She’d had the 35 mm since she was seventeen. It was her first camera, an aging relic that was already twenty years old when her art teacher had placed it in her hands. She remembered the first time she looked through the viewfinder. The way it sliced the world into a fraction that was both closer than the eye and more distant because the lens created a barrier between them. A barrier behind which she was safe. Behind which she could carve the world into as many segments as she wanted. Create her own borders, her own universe. A place where she, and she alone, was in control.
Outside, the air had a newly washed feel, and she tramped over the grass to the north side of the grounds where a group of flowering trees formed a small meadow. The redbuds were fading, their pink fuzz wilting like the tattered gown of an impoverished Southern belle, but the dogwoods were out in force. Oyster white and salmon pink blooms cupped upward as though welcoming strangers. From a distance they appeared benign, even friendly. But when she took a closer look, she saw that each flower consisted of four distinct petals. And each petal culminated in a clear, spiked point.
She didn’t usually respond to the physical landscape, but something about the rich morning light caught her. As she framed her shots, she wondered what it would be like to place a body there among those deceiving petals. A small, thin, hanging girl, her feet bare, her hands tied, her neck broken.
Lost in the view, both inside and outside her head, she didn’t hear anyone coming.
“I thought I told you not to go anywhere without me.”
The masculine voice burst into the silence of the glade, and she whirled to find Ray Pearce approaching. She’d forgotten how big he was, broad-shouldered and towering. Solid against the delicate branches of buds and baby leaves. In a dark suit and tie, he looked competent and strong, but incongruous. Agent Smith among the flowers.
He stopped a few yards away as though he knew she was working and respected that. The branches of a half-pink redbud crept over his shoulder like tentacles.
She raised her camera, manually focused the lens. “I thought you didn’t keep diva hours.” She pressed the shutter button, committing the picture to film. Moved to grab another angle.
“I thought you weren’t getting up early.”
“Well, I surprised myself. But I haven’t gone anywhere.” She raised the camera again, found another shot, but in two steps he broke the invisible wall separating them.
“Leaving the house is going somewhere.” Gently, he pushed the camera aside.
“Don’t like your picture taken?”
“Not here to model.”
“So you say.” But she left him alone and turned back to the woods. For a moment, the scene from the night before flashed back—the chill of the blood, the thunk of ribs as Ray bodychecked her, the stony floor, unyielding as she hit the deck. “But Ruth is in custody, and Matthew Dobie hasn’t set up shop at the front gates.”
“He made the morning news, though.”
She lowered the camera so it hung between her breasts on a leather strap. “Really?” She rarely watched the news.
“Matt Lauer and all.”
A shiver hit her. She found herself clutching the camera as if it were an anchor in a roiling sea. But national news was good, wasn’t it? Maybe he’d hear. Maybe he’d come for her. “Not much I can do about that,” she said, reaching for calm and not quite achieving it.
“You can stay inside until I get here.”
“All right. All right.” She was as much irritated with the necessity of his presence as she was with his insistence upon it.
He held up protesting hands. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“Fine. Whatever. Just stand over there so you’re not in the light.”
She spent the next hour absorbed by the glen and its denizens. Ray watched her work, a blond urchin in ancient overalls that were ripped at the knees, a black T-shirt whose long sleeves ended in frayed edges, and a paint-stained gray sweatshirt that was wrapped around her waist. Rags and tatters. Poor little rich girl.
Not that she looked like she cared much. She snapped pictures of the trees, often contorting into weird shapes to get the angle she wanted, sloshing in mud if she had to, and crouching low to get shots of things that looked like weeds to him.
He liked the way the work absorbed her. He’d had moments like that on the ice, pure, focused moments when the stick became an extension of his arm and connected with the puck like it was destiny.
He reached for that concentration now, sharpening his hearing and sight, reaching outward to maintain an uneasy vigil. No way could he preserve a secure perimeter with the wide swathe of open ground around them. He’d have needed at least three other men for that, but Chip Gray had weighed the limits of his granddaughter’s patience and settled for one. In Ray’s opinion it would have been overkill anyway. Unpleasant as the assault had been the night before, it was intended to hurt feelings and make a point rather than maim. But anything was possible, so he kept a keen eye on the surroundings.
A large part of executive protection was common sense. Keep the client away from crowds, in a small, manageable space. Control the environment, and you reduce the threat. Unfortunately, you couldn’t keep people locked up. They lived in a certain place, worked in a certain place. And most would only go so far to change their routine unless the danger was life-threatening and imminent. Neither one applied in this case.
So here they were. Outdoors. The small vulnerable blonde looking perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and him, towering over her, protecting her from the trees.
“Ridiculous” didn’t even begin to describe it.
Until the sound of footsteps crashed through the undergrowth.
In a second, Ray’s heartbeat skyrocketed and he leaped. Gillian was hunched over, aiming the camera up through branches to the sky. In one great stride, he pulled her up.
She unbalanced and screeched in surprise.
“Quiet.” He looked wildly around. No place to make a clean stance—they were open on all sides—so he shoved her against a tree and blocked her view from the intruder.
She pushed against his spine. “What is it?”
“Gillian!” A shout came at a distance. “Where are you? Gillian!”
A woman’s voice.
“It’s Maddie.” Again, she put a fist in his back. “Let me go. It’s just Maddie!”
The Crane woman came flying out of the woods, black hair streaming, a witch’s raven in black slacks and a black top.
“What is it?” he demanded. Behind him, Gillian was struggling, and he held her back with some effort. Something had terrified Maddie Crane, and he had no intention of letting Gillian go until he understood what. “What happened?”
Maddie bent over, braced her hands on her knees and panted. “Dead,” she said finally. “Someone’s . . . dead.”
16
“It’s a fake,” Madd
ie said, referring to the photograph Detective Jimmy Burke had placed in the center of the ornate marble coffee table in the Grays’ spacious living room. Maddie was standing over it. She reached out and touched the picture with a long, curved nail painted a purple so deep it was almost black. The picture moved slightly, and she stood back, studying the thing as if it were an insect under glass.
Silk drapes framed the windows on the east side of the house. A warm apricot color, they magnified the morning light. Ray stood in front of the window, the sun beating against his back. Across from him, Genevra Gray sat in a cream armchair. She looked plucked and drawn. It wasn’t just the thin neck and sharp chin that gave her the appearance of a chicken about to be slaughtered. It was the hard stare that was both resigned and defiant.
What she was staring at was Burke. Not the photograph that lay there among them like a little grenade waiting to explode.
“It’s not Gillian’s,” Maddie said.
Burke nodded. “We know. It’s been Photoshopped.” He had that line on his forehead. The one that meant he would single-mindedly pursue this no matter what. Ray looked at the white faces around the room, saw the withdrawal, and hoped Jimmy would notice and step softly. But he used to leave the deft touch to Ray. “Body’s real enough,” he said.
The words seemed to freeze the air even further.
Ray and Burke exchanged glances. Burke seemed to be saying, “What’s wrong with these people?” and, silently, Ray told him to go slow. It was a familiar moment made uncomfortable by that familiarity. Ray looked away, and Jimmy pushed the picture toward Gillian.
“Recognize her?”
Gillian glanced at the abomination. Saw what should have been her. Was always supposed to be her.
“Miss Gray?” Burke repeated. “Have you seen this woman before?”
“Of course she hasn’t,” Maddie said.
Burke sent her a sharp look. “Why don’t we let Miss Gray speak for herself. I think she’s a big enough girl.” He turned to Gillian. “Miss Gray?”
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