She shook her head. “Bodyguard.”
Inside, the house always smelled the same. Stale fried things and bait. It slammed her back through all the years and all the visits. The time he taught her to fish. The time she finished his jigsaw puzzle.
She looked to the corner now, saw the card table was right where it always was. A half-finished puzzle covered the surface.
“You don’t change much, do you, Harley?” It was one of the things she liked about him. He was constant. A steady orb around which her crazy world spun.
“Should I?” He put an arm around her shoulder. Squeezed. “How about a beer?”
She nodded, and he disappeared into the kitchen. While he was gone, she took stock of the rest of the room. The beat-up brown couch with its puffy pillows sat across the way. An indentation on the left cushion showed where Harley liked to sit. In front of the sofa was the same battered coffee table that had been there for years. On top of the table, like always, was the deep, white Dillard’s box.
Her heart lurched when she saw it, just as it always did. And as always, she tried hard to repress the flutter. Glanced out the window toward the lake and the serene water.
Harley came back with two bottles. Ray refused his, but Gillian twisted the cap off hers.
She and Harley clinked bottles. Drank. “Time was, I’d be offering you a Coke,” Harley said.
Gillian smiled. “Time was, I’d be sneaking the beer.”
Harley laughed good-naturedly, and Ray peeked out one of the windows.
“I’m going to have a look around.” He eyed Harley. “You okay in here?”
Harley shot him an amused but tolerant glance. “I think I can handle it.”
Ray slipped out the door, and Harley watched him go.
“Those boys don’t like an unfamiliar setting,” he said. He seemed to ponder that for a moment. Pondering Ray, she suspected, and the choices he’d made.
Then, as if he couldn’t figure it out and wouldn’t try, he sighed. Eased into the couch. Patted the cushion beside him. “So, baby girl. Catch me up.” He nodded toward the door Ray had just exited. “You in trouble again?”
Harley didn’t take the paper, and he didn’t have a television. The radio was always tuned to music, jazz mostly. Not much for the news anymore, he always said. Privileges of rank, or lack thereof. So Gillian had to recount for him the assault at the museum and the replicant murder.
“It’s him,” she said, the beer forgotten, her voice low and unwavering. “He’s out there. He’s doing it again.”
Harley held up his hands. “Now hold on. Let’s not jump to conclusions.”
She pulled the Dillard’s box toward her. “There has to be something we missed. Something that would help catch him.”
Harley sighed. “Honey, you’ve been saying that for over twenty years.” He looked away. “I know I failed you,” he said softly, “failed your family, but after all this time I don’t think—”
She shook her head wildly, as if the movement could block out the sound of his words. “No, don’t say it.”
Harley laid a hand over the top of the box. “Can’t we skip this part of the visit? Just this once? It’s so hurtful to you. Breaks my heart to watch. And it ain’t going to change anything.”
Gillian thought about it. Her heart was already thumping, the sickness she’d feel when she opened the box was just below the surface, waiting to spring. What a relief not to look. Not to deal. Not to remember.
Then the image of the recently murdered woman crowded out her own pain. “Sorry, Harley.”
Slowly she lifted the top off the box.
20
When Ray returned, he found Gillian and Harley on the couch, huddled over a mess of papers. The top of an empty gift box lay forgotten on the floor; the box itself sat askew on the couch next to Gillian.
The two made a cozy picture with their heads bent. The old man, like a big, fat teddy bear, and in the shadow of his rotund form, the sprite of a woman.
Ray felt reasonably comfortable that they were safe here. The cabin was isolated enough, and he had seen no tracks leading in or out except their own. He’d hear a boat coming easy. Hear any kind of vehicle. Worse came to worst, he’d mapped out an escape route through the woods, then moved the truck to make it more accessible. But he wanted to get going before dark. Carlson had sent someone over to the hotel, and while Ray was outside, he’d received the security checklist on his BlackBerry. Everything looked good, but he wouldn’t feel right until he’d checked it out himself.
“How much longer—” He stopped short when Gillian looked up from the paper she held in her hand. His benign first impression vanished. Tears streaked her pretty angel face. She looked broken. Tortured.
“What the—” He turned on Harley. “What’s going on?” He freed the thing from Gillian’s fingers.
“It’s okay.” She scraped at her face. But the words and movement came from a distance because all he could see was the photograph in his hand.
The crime-scene photograph.
The kitchen, the body on the floor. The blood.
It was a lousy picture. A black-and-white photocopy, much used. The upper right-hand corner was missing, and the whole thing looked like it had been crumpled then smoothed out again.
But there was no mistaking what it was.
The kitchen was less perfect, less pristine. An ordinary room with a spotted linoleum floor. No strange, eerie light came through an unseen window. The victim wasn’t a schoolgirl, but she was young enough, even in death.
He tore his gaze away and looked at Harley. Harley stared right back at him, no apology in his eyes.
“You were the lead?” Ray asked.
“That’s right.”
Ray picked through scattered papers. Saw familiar forms, reports. “You got the whole file here? All the casework?”
“Every last note, statement, evidence report.”
Ray swallowed panic. He glanced at Gillian’s haunted face and knew there was nothing he could do to fix it.
He turned on Harley. “Are you crazy?”
“Shut up, Ray,” Gillian said. “You can’t talk to him like that.”
“He has no business showing this stuff to you.”
“No business? Who the hell’s business is it if not mine?”
“It’s tearing you apart.”
“So what? The price of justice.”
But it wasn’t a price he was easy about paying. Especially if it meant he had to watch. “Let’s go. We’re leaving.”
She stood her ground. “Like hell we are.”
Harley stepped between them. “Hey, baby girl, why don’t you take your walk around the lake? Me and Ray can have a few words.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Gillian said.
“She can’t go walking alone out there,” Ray said.
At which, her face set, her chin hardened. “I can do whatever I damn well please.” And despite her declaration to the contrary, she pivoted and charged out.
“Hey!” Ray took off after her, but Harley got in his way.
“Let her go. You can keep an eye on her through the kitchen window.”
“Christ,” Ray muttered. But Harley was right. He could see her clearly. At least, the back view. Spine straight, shoulders rigid. She looked lost in front of the wide expanse of lake. Dwarfed by the trees.
“Don’t be so hard on her,” Harley said softly.
Hard on her? The man should crawl inside his skull and look around. All Ray wanted to do was race out there and make it right. Do whatever it took to make the bad stuff go away. The urge crept over him like a cold sweat. That’s all he ever wanted to do. When would he learn he was no good at it? He could keep someone alive, but making them happy was magic he could never work.
“No one should have to see pictures of her own mother’s murder,” he said.
“Better than pretending it never happened.”
“Pretending? What do you mean? That woman doesn�
�t know how to pretend.”
“But the cold bitch up at the Gray house does.” Harley shoved his hands in his pockets. Rocked a bit. “After the funeral, it was like her daughter had never lived, let alone died. Subject closed with a big ole padlock.”
Ray shook his head. “I’ve seen Mrs. Gray. Even the sight of a uniform gets her going. She’s neither forgiven nor forgotten.”
“Maybe. But she don’t talk about it neither.” Harley raised a questioning brow. “You ever hear her mention her daughter? Mention the murder? Even say the word?”
Ray thought back. Slowly shook his head.
“Gillian came to me when she was, oh, maybe thirteen. A pure mess. Little bottle of rage all stoppered up. You ever see what fury can do if it don’t have a way of exploding? You were a cop. You saw the drugs, shoplifting, the joy rides and vandalism.”
Ray nodded. Everyone who rode a patrol car saw kids out of control.
“What happens if you don’t do any of those things? Where does the anger go? She had no one to talk to about what had happened. Family wouldn’t even send her to counseling. Refused to admit there was anything wrong. But she’s had problems, son . . . you couldn’t begin to imagine.”
Ray didn’t have to. Whatever it was, he could sense it coming off her like an aura. It’s what drew him and repelled him at the same time. Torn souls in need of mending.
“So I let her come to me,” the older man said. “She needed a friend.” He looked out the window to where Gillian stood at the shore. She took something from her pocket. A camera. A tiny camera. “She needed the truth. I gave it to her. I do it every time she comes home.”
Ray sank against the refrigerator. The cold metal burned into his back.
“She tell you about the new murder?”
“She did.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
“I think it’s mighty strange. But a connection after all these years? I don’t know.”
Somehow Ray was still holding on to the crime-scene photograph. He looked down at it. Holland Gray’s body was twisted at the waist, as though half of her had tried to get away. She wore a dress with some kind of design—in the rumpled black-and-white photocopy he couldn’t tell the color or discern the pattern. The best view would have been the bodice, but the chest wounds had bled out and covered the front of her dress with blood. A lot of blood.
He couldn’t help recalling her face as it had been on the cover of Vogue. Sultry and mysterious, with a hint of mischief in her smile. Lively, vibrant. All of which was absent from the death’s-head he gazed at now, with its bloodless pallor and vacant stare.
“Cause of death?”
“Two stab wounds to the chest. Sicko used a kitchen knife. We wondered if maybe she tried to defend herself, and he took it away from her.”
“Rape?”
“With a vengeance. She was all tore up inside.”
“She know her attacker?”
Harley shook his head. “No signs of a break-in, but we couldn’t find a single link to anyone she knew. She hadn’t gone to school here and so didn’t have a whole lot of friends. Didn’t bar hop, do the party scene. House was a little isolated thing in southwest Nashville off Highway
100. She lived quiet with her kid.”
“What about back in New York? Or LA? Success always breeds jealousy.”
He shrugged. “Everyone had solid alibis. Couldn’t find a motive for a paid contract. Never looked like a pro anyway. Looked like someone took advantage of a lone woman, then lost control and killed her.”
“Random?”
“That’s my bet, though we couldn’t prove it. And not for lack of trying. We pulled in the exterminator, the meter reader, the garbage collectors. Deliverymen. Repairmen. Anyone we knew of who had business at the house.”
“What about DNA?”
“We did that later, when it became available. Couldn’t track down every last one, but those we did weren’t a match.”
Ray thought it over. The conclusion seemed clear. “Maybe someone left town and just came back.”
Harley nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe. Mighty big coincidence, though.”
Ray looked down at the picture of Holland Gray, then back up at Harley. Coincidence wasn’t something that sat easy with him either.
“The thing is, that little girl out there”—Harley nodded toward the lake and Gillian—“she’s counting on it. And I mean with every breath. I were you, I’d find this guy quick. Or she will. And that’s not something I want to see.”
21
Gillian heard the screen door slam, but she didn’t need the sound to tell her Ray had stepped outside. Without turning around, she could feel his weighted presence behind her, hovering, shielding. Thick and close. Closer than she wanted anyone to come.
“It’s pretty out here,” he said, and moved up beside her.
She looked through the tiny Canon she’d slipped into her pocket before she left. Now she fixed her shot on the lake. It was wide and deep, the water calm. Bowled above it, the sky was perfectly blue and peaceful. It set her teeth on edge.
“Ever seen a drowning victim?” She lowered the digital camera. Felt his big body beside her but didn’t look at him.
A moment of silence, then, “No.”
“I haven’t done a drowned woman.” She calculated what it would be like to have your head held under water. The choking panic, the fire in the lungs, the inevitable gulp for air that killed. The water looked so inviting yet could be so deadly.
“What do you think?” She held up the camera, scrolled through the pictures she’d shot. Watched him examine them. When he finally looked away, there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. “I think you can’t handle pretty. Not without turning it into something else.”
“Something real, you mean.”
“Something ugly.” He looked out over the landscape. “It’s just a lake, Gillian. Water. Trees. The only death here is what you bring to it.”
She respected his innocence, misplaced though it was. He’d been a cop. He should know better. “There’s death everywhere. Even in the pretty places.”
“Only if you’re looking for it.”
“Or it’s looking for you.” She held his gaze a moment, but only just. There was something in his face, a wanting, a caring, that sadness again. Sudden tears welled up, and she averted her eyes, horrified that he might see.
But once again he was kind. Kinder than she expected. He neither laughed nor sympathized with her emotion. Gave no indication that he’d witnessed it.
“You know what?” He exhaled. A deep breath as though getting rid of that intense moment between them. “You think too much. You should get a real job. Pick tobacco. Haul bricks. You’d be too tired to think.”
She shot him a small, wry smile. “Lucky me, I’m rich. I don’t need a real job.”
He murmured a resigned sigh. “Well, come on, rich girl. We gotta go.”
He indicated for her to precede him, and they walked to the pickup.
Harley met them outside. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said to her.
“See ya around.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. And then Ray made sure she got inside the truck before taking his place behind the wheel. He turned the engine over, she waved once to Harley, and they were gone.
Another trip over. Another visit to the shrine ended.
She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. She could sleep for a week. A month.
It always hit her like this. The huge black dread on the way there, like an anvil over her head. Then the massive black hole on the way back. Drained. Empty.
“You talk to Harley about the new murder?”
“We talked.”
“And?”
“We didn’t solve anything if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You agree with him that there’s no connection?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She turned her head. Looked over at him. God, she needed an ally ri
ght now. “Then you think there could be a link?”
“I didn’t say that either.” He shot her a glance, and whatever hope she’d been brewing vaporized fast. “Doesn’t matter anyway.” He gazed back on the road. “I’m here to keep you in one piece, not to catch the bad guy. That’s someone else’s job.”
“It used to be yours.”
“Past tense, short stack.”
Carefully, she said, “Do you miss it?”
He thought it over. “Sometimes.” He shot her a glance, and she could tell he was debating how much to admit. He shrugged. “Yeah, I miss it.”
“So why not go back?”
He was silent a little too long. “It’s complicated.”
“What isn’t?”
He shrugged.
“Are we talking circumstances again?”
Another shrug.
“The same circumstances that brought you to Nashville?”
He gave her a short, tight smile. “You asking for my life story?”
“You know mine.”
Music suddenly erupted in the truck. Gillian dove for her purse to the strains of the Clash singing “I fought the law, and the law won,” and found her cell phone. It was Maddie.
“Still fishing?” she asked.
“On our way home,” Gillian told her.
“Still alive?”
“Bullets bounce off me.”
“It’s not bullets I’m worried about. It’s the memories.”
Gillian looked out at the passing landscape. “Yeah, okay, so maybe they dig a little deeper. But I’ll manage.”
“Well, I got something to ease your pain.”
“Shot of Novocain?”
“Bag of Cheetos.”
“Yum. Cream sodas, too?”
“Would I let you down?”
“Only if a man’s involved.”
“Speaking of which—Lassie still with you?”
Gillian looked over at Ray. “Still here.”
“Tell him to bark for me.”
Gillian laughed. Turned to Ray. “It’s Maddie,” she said. “Wants you to bark for her.”
He raised a single disbelieving, disapproving brow, then returned to concentrating on the road.
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