Dead Shot

by Annie Solomon

  When the only car for the last five minutes also zoomed by, her shoulders slumped, and he thought she’d given up. But she raised her head, straightened her back, and he lost her as she set off on foot toward Nashville. Quickly, he put his car in gear and eased down the street, out of the subdivision, and onto the highway. Was she going to walk back to town?

  He followed at a sedate distance, pulling off the road when he had to in order to let her get far enough ahead. He was tempted to stop and pick her up, but hell, a long walk in those heels? Served her right. And as long as he kept her in sight she’d be safe.

  Her little Boston Marathon ended at the first gas station she came to. He pulled past, watched her go inside. The store’s interior lights blazed in the night, and through the plate-glass window he saw her speak to the clerk, who nodded to a phone on the counter. She picked up the handset, punched in a number, spoke briefly, and hung up.

  Well, no one said she wasn’t smart. Why walk the miles when she could ride? He turned the car off to wait for the cab to show up. Once it did he was prepared to follow her to Des Moines if that was where she was headed.

  But almost immediately, she left the gas station and started walking.

  Back the way she came.

  What the—

  Quickly, he started the car, followed.

  It took her fifteen minutes longer to make the trip back, and she was limping as she turned into River Bend Estates. He parked a block away and watched as she sneaked into the house the same way she’d sneaked out.

  That made no sense. No sense at all. Which made him very, very nervous.

  It had taken her nearly half an hour to trudge back to the house. Ten minutes after she’d disappeared through the window, cars started arriving. Men with pads, cameras, and microphones tumbled out. Then the TV vans showed up. Reporters and photographers came together in an ominous crowd at the edge of the safe house. Finally someone—he thought he recognized Benton James, the reporter for the Tennessean who’d been at the museum— walked up to the front door and knocked.

  Ray stared in disbelief.

  The phone call. She hadn’t called a cab. She hadn’t called Maddie or her grandparents. She’d called a god-damn press conference.

  When the knock sounded, Gillian marched purposefully into the living room. “I’ll get that.”

  Landowe and the other guy had already drawn their weapons. They leaped to block her way.

  “Take her to the back of the house,” Landowe said to a beefy guy with a Kojak head.

  “Who’s he?” Gillian asked Landowe. “And where’s Ray?”

  “Move! Now!”

  Kojak grabbed her arm and began to haul her away.

  The knock came again. “Miss Gray! Miss Gray, are you in there?”

  She jerked away from her captor. Turned to Landowe. “Open the door,” she said.

  “Are you kidding? We don’t know who’s out there.”

  “Last time I looked, killers don’t knock first.”

  Landowe exchanged a look with the bald guy.

  “Open the goddamn door, or I’ll do it myself.”

  Kojak shrugged, pulled her away from the door’s sight lines, and stepped in front of her. Landowe crossed to the door, stood with his back to one side, reached for the knob, and yanked it open.

  A strobe flashed. Dozens of voices went off with it. Landowe slammed the door shut again.

  “The press,” Kojak said.

  “How the hell did the press find her?”

  Gillian stepped out from behind the shaved head. “I told them.” And before they could say anything else, she ran to reopen the door.

  Closing it behind her, she stood on the stoop in the glow of hot camera lights, raised her hands for quiet. “Gentlemen, I’ll take your questions, but you have to let me hear them.”

  The cacophony subsided to a low din, everyone shouting at once. She pointed to someone in the middle of the pack.

  “You’re participating in an art auction at a charity ball for a local hospital. Given the controversy over your work, will you withdraw?”

  “No.” She pointed to a woman in front.

  “Which Dead Shot are you donating?”

  “None.” She grinned. “Wouldn’t want to scare anyone. It’s a floral landscape. A favorite of my grandmother.”

  She began to worry. If the rest of the questions were as innocuous as this, she’d never make the morning news.

  A man in front looked familiar. She called on him. “Benton James,” he said, “The Tennessean. What do you think about the third murder?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The third murder. How do you feel about it?”

  “The third—” She looked out at the crowd, dread shuddering through her. “I think you made a mistake. There hasn’t been—”

  “No mistake,” he insisted, and glanced down at a small notebook. “Linda Hayes.”

  The words “third” and “murder” were rippling through the assembly, slowly wiping out the noise.

  “Got the photo an hour ago,” the little newspaperman announced with a smug smile. “Kiddie Pool,” he added, referring to one of her photographs.

  The silence exploded into thunder.

  “Do you hold yourself responsible?”

  “What do you want to say to the victims’ families?”

  “What do you say to Matthew Dobie?”

  “Are you going to stop now?”

  The crowd was pushing forward, nearly overwhelming her with the surge and the noise. She was being suffocated, overrun. The picture of the hanging child burst in her head, and she wanted to scream, to run, but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

  “That’s enough. Step back. Step back!” Ray pushed through the swarm, took her elbow. “Press conference is over,” he said, and pushed her toward the door.

  “Miss Gray! Miss Gray!”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  He got the door open, would have shoved her inside despite the clamor. But she wasn’t going to let that slime-ball son of a bitch win.

  She pivoted, wrenched away from Ray’s protective shelter, and turned to the horde. As if on cue, they hushed, salivating like vicious Dobermans waiting to attack. She didn’t care. She stared them down, looked for the TV cameras, let the strobes explode in her face.

  “You tell that bastard where I am,” she said, the words slow and deliberate. “You print it in big fat letters. Show it bold on everyone’s TV screen. I want him to know exactly where I am. You tell him I’m waiting for him.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Do you hear me? Tell him I’m waiting.” Ray wrapped an arm around her waist. “I’m waiting for him!” And dragged her through the door. “I’m waiting!”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “You gonna kill him?”

  “Are you going to kill him, Miss Gray?”

  Ray kicked the door shut.

  “Let me go. Let me go!” She twisted, but Ray held her fast.

  “I’m not letting you go, short stack.” His strong arms wrapped around her. “So stop struggling.” He held her head to his chest, and the flat plane absorbed her moans. “Stop,” he said low and quiet. “Just . . . stop.”

  And as if he knew, as if he’d crawled inside her pathetic brain and tormented heart, and knew what she needed, he held her close. She collapsed against him and sobbed. He shushed and soothed and rocked her while the hard tears fell. And true to his word, he held on.

  39

  The phone woke her at eight the next morning. She was on the bed, fully clothed. A fully clothed Ray was spooned around her. For half a second she was disoriented; then the phone rang again, and the events of the night before rolled over like a heavy stone. Ray stirred, groaned, instinctively pulled her closer, his strong arms around her like a shield, hard and unyielding. A third ring. Ray reached over to the nightstand, where his cell phone—which she’d have given her eyeteeth for last night—sat.

  “Pearce,” he said.
His shirttails hung loose over his khakis, both wrinkled and abused from holding her all night long.

  She closed her eyes. Sat up. Braced her arms against the side of the bed, legs dangling. God, she had to stop this. Stop leaning on him. He’d only get the wrong idea.

  “Yes, sir,” he said into the phone. “She’s here.”

  A tap on her shoulder and the phone was silently passed to her.

  “Gillian?” It was her grandfather. “Are you somewhere where you can talk?”

  She looked around the room, saw Ray watching her in that concerned way, then slide his gaze away as though he knew he shouldn’t. He disappeared into the bathroom, and a few moments later she heard the toilet flush and the water go on.

  “What’s wrong?” she said into the phone.

  Her grandfather paused. “How do you know something is wrong?”

  “No one calls at eight in the morning unless something is wrong.”

  Another hesitation. Gillian thinned her lips, waiting. Had there been a fourth murder? God, no, please. Her whole body went rigid with denial and expectation.

  “I got a call from Tom Petrie an hour ago.”

  She stopped breathing. “The mayor called? Well, aren’t we all lah-di-dah and refined.”

  Chip was better at ignoring her sarcasm than Genevra would have been. “I’m the head of the Board of Trustees at the museum,” he explained levelly.

  “The museum?” She let out a tense breath.

  “He’s asked me to put a motion before the board.”

  She tensed again. Asked cautiously, “What kind of motion?”

  “He wants to close the show, Gillian.”

  She sucked in a breath, stared into the distance. Of course he does.

  “I’ve called an emergency meeting in an hour,” Chip continued. “I just . . . I wanted to let you know.”

  “Are you going to support the motion?”

  The third silence of the morning. Finally, “Yes. I don’t believe we have another choice. Not after last night.”

  Her heart cracked. Three dead. Her fault.

  “I’m sorry, Gillian. We have to think of the larger picture here.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” she said.

  “Gillian—”

  But she didn’t wait to hear whatever else he wanted to say. She snapped the phone closed, ending the call.

  When she looked up, Ray was in the doorway watching her again. “Problem?”

  Somewhere in the back of her head, she remembered him carrying her to the bedroom last night. Her weakness shamed her, her need for him shamed her.

  She schooled her face into neutrality, her voice into unconcern. “No problem.” She got up and pushed past him into the bathroom. Her face was a mess. Last night’s tears had run her mascara, and her eyes were black-rimmed, her cheeks sooty. She turned on the faucet, leaned heavily against the vanity while she waited for the water to heat up. “The mayor just wants the museum to close the show.”

  He turned toward her, brows furrowed. “Can they do that?”

  She soaked a washcloth, ran it over her face. “If the trustees agree, they can. Sure.” She punched off the water, dried her face.

  “But that’s like saying Matthew Dobie is right. Like saying the killings are your fault.”

  Off to the side, she saw a disposable razor. For longer than she should have, she stared at the edge with its small, sharp blades. Her fingers grasped the vanity in a taut, white-knuckled grip. She wanted to bleed. Needed to.

  But another hand closed around the razor, lifted it up and away. She met Ray’s gaze in the mirror.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said to her image. “Not. Your. Fault.”

  “Tell that to Margaret Pullman,” her mouth said back to him. “Or Dawn Farrell. Or Linda Hayes.” She hung her head, away from the sight of herself. “Oh, wait, you can’t. They’re dead.”

  “You’re not responsible for what that maniac does. Not now. Not then.”

  Her head snapped up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know damn well what it means. You were seven. You couldn’t have protected her even if you’d tried.”

  “Now that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “You can’t be on guard every second. People do what they have to. They always find a way.”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Like this?” He held up the razor. “You’re telling me no matter what I do you’re going to cut into yourself?”

  “No, Ray. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t have to. If I want to hurt myself, I take a picture. I take a goddamn picture.”

  She rushed out of the bathroom before the tears could explode. Made it as far as the chair she’d used the night before to escape. Then her knees wobbled, and she sank into it, clinging to the sides because she was trembling.

  Why was it always someone else who died?

  She closed her eyes, despising the tremors coursing through her shoulders.

  “Is there going to be an announcement?” The gentleness was back in Ray’s voice. The quiet strength that always seemed to steady her.

  “At the museum’s board meeting this morning.”

  “We can go. Talk them out of it.”

  She opened her eyes, stared dully at the room. Vaguely, she wondered if Ray, in all his planning and plotting, had brought her a change of clothes.

  “This is going to be devastating for the museum,” she said at last.

  “Bad for them? What about you?”

  “I don’t depend on the kindness of strangers. They do.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re a new museum, Ray, with no permanent collection. They use traveling shows. Censorship is a big crime in the art world, and closing a show is bound to be seen that way. This one in particular was put together by the Brooklyn Museum of Art, one of the most prestigious in the country. It will be hard to get anyone to work with them after this.”

  “Fuck ’em,” Ray said. “They’re fucking you.”

  She cut a glance his way. His callousness surprised her. But when she saw his big, solid frame filling the bathroom doorway, she understood that his heartlessness wasn’t the inbred kind. His anger was for her.

  She turned away. Why couldn’t he be less beautiful? Less available? Less there for her?

  She jerked to her feet, suddenly sick of the grief and the guilt. “You’re right.” She flung open the closet to see if she’d be wearing the clothes she’d slept in to the board meeting. “They are.”

  If anyone was going to be cold-hearted on her behalf, it wasn’t going to be Ray Pearce.

  Chip put down the phone after talking to Gillian and looked out into space, not seeing the room. His chest was heavy.

  Grimly, he thought about another call he should make. That one, too, felt like a stone dragging him down. But it was a familiar weight.

  He felt in his pocket for the number, ran the scrap of paper between his fingers. This time, he wasn’t sure what the right thing was. But he suspected it wouldn’t be the easy thing. Not for Gillian. And certainly not for Genevra.

  Still unsure, he rose and went to find his wife.

  Though she wasn’t attending the board meeting, she was nearly dressed. Impeccably, as always.

  “You shouldn’t have gotten up,” he murmured.

  “I thought we could have breakfast together.” But he knew she didn’t care about coffee and toast, which was all she ate anyway. A bare piece of bread, not even buttered. She wanted to bolster him, make sure he kept his resolve.

  He remembered her when she had a few pounds on her bones. She was born to be soft and curved, a lovely, feminine, pampered creature. But she’d been fired in tragedy, tempered by grief, and now she was a polished bar of iron, gleaming but hard.

  “You’re staring at me, Charles.”

  “Am I?” He ought to look away, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. He felt that paper again, hidden deep in his pocke
t.

  And without him saying a word, she knew. The eyes that should have been soft were suddenly stark. “No,” she said. “Absolutely no.”

  He drew her to the bed, sat down with her on the edge. Wrapped an arm around her. “We have to tell.”

  “I won’t hear of it.”

  “It could be him.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Three murders, Gennie. Three women dead.”

  “He’s weak and foul, but he’d never—”

  “We don’t know that. Not for sure.”

  She went rigid under his arm. Stiff and unyielding. “I will never forgive you, Charles. Never.”

  And he believed her.

  40

  The emergency meeting of the Gray Visual Arts Center’s Board of Trustees began at 9:00 am sharp, a full hour earlier than the usual time. Chip Gray took a deep breath, absorbed the heightened energy of the room. At most meetings, the long conference table was barely half-full, other obligations often keeping members from attending. But today all seats were occupied. Even with extra folding chairs, people were standing.

  In addition to the board members, the museum staff was well represented. Will Davenport, the director, stood next to the head curator, Stephanie Bower. Naturally sandy-haired, she’d appeared this morning as a brunette. When Will had commented on the change of hair color, she’d shrugged.

  “Better safe than sorry,” she’d said.

  Chip looked around. Noted the other women. Not a blonde among them anymore. The realization sent a ripple of dread through him. Dread magnified by the packed room, which had a stuffed, weighty feel he didn’t care for. Bad enough to have to do this at all, let alone in front of a crowd.

  But he hadn’t made millions without knowing how to deliver bad news. He pounded his gavel for attention. “Thank you all for coming.”

  The group he addressed was diverse, comprising those, like himself, who had the income to make things happen, and those, like the teachers and community activists, who had the passion to carry plans out. His circle attended the Swan Ball, the others attended the Swine Ball. But they all had the museum and Nashville arts education in common. “I received a call from Mayor Petrie. In light of the”—he hesitated, not wanting to use the word “murders,”— “tragedies that have befallen our city and their connection to our current exhibit, he’s asked us to close the show and remove the Gillian Gray photographs from view.”