Dead Shot

by Annie Solomon

  Ray laughed. “Sure I do. It’s Ray, Sarge, Ray. Remember?”

  The older man looked confused suddenly. “Ray,” he repeated. But the understanding was gone from his face. Once again, Ray was a stranger, the past not even a memory.

  Joseph came in with a tray. Slices of pie on plates, mugs of coffee. They ate together in the den, but recognition didn’t return, and twenty minutes later Ray left.

  “You take care of him,” he said to Joseph, who waved the concern away.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about Mr. Mac. He’s going to be fine. Just fine.”

  Ray nodded, hoping it was true. But whether it was or not, the sarge was no longer his problem.

  The door closed behind him. Ray heard the latch click in place, like the last word in the final chapter of a long book.

  Ray loped down to his truck, got in, and keyed the ignition. But he didn’t go anywhere. He sat and listened to the engine whir. It was like the distant buzz of the past, a constant background noise he could never shake loose.

  He should take the job Carlson offered. Go to the office, catch up on the threat assessment. Figure out where in the hell and beyond of Lewisburg the plant was. Drive out there, scout around.

  But he didn’t want to go to Lewisburg. He knew no one and nothing there.

  So where did that leave him? Shuck the job? Go home? Start packing? And go . . . where?

  He thought about the sarge and his broken memory. What would it be like to be free of your own history? Of those sticky ties that hemmed you in?

  Why was it so hard to cut through them? He was a stranger to his father-in-law. Just as he was a stranger to Nancy and Jimmy. His reasons for staying were long gone. All he was missing was a reason to go.

  He looked out at the street, at the small, neat houses. Not, he thought, like the lives inside. Lives that might have been small but were rarely neat. His own no exception.

  But if he needed a reason, he had one, didn’t he?

  Maybe. Could be. Possible.

  He smiled to himself. Nothing like a little certainty to get a man in gear.

  He jerked the wheel, backed up with a screech, and turned the car around.

  Fuck Lewisburg.

  He headed west. Toward Belle Meade.

  49

  Gillian woke with the sting of pain. A man was bending over her. He was slicing a line into her arm.

  “What the—”

  She grabbed for him but came up short because her feet and hands were bound. Taped down with silver electrical tape. The attempt jerked her body, though, and surprised him. He lost his grip. The blade, a thin X-Acto knife, slipped, creating a jagged cut in her arm.

  She hissed, and the man looked up. Smiled. She saw those gray, dead teeth again.

  “Miss Gillian,” he said. “So glad you’re awake.”

  She eyed him warily. The face of the beast was like nothing she’d expected. Not huge and dark and animallike, but thin, guileless. Empty.

  And young. Too young to have been the cause of her mother’s death.

  He giggled. “You don’t remember me,” he said.

  Her mouth was dry. Funny how that worked. All her life, she lived only for this moment, and when it came, it was like nothing she imagined. Not the monster she’d envisioned. Not the strong going down with the enemy. But weak and bound and with fear enough to suck her dry.

  She licked her lips. “Have we met?”

  Instead of answering, he pointed to the scars on her arms with the bloody blade. “How’d you get those?”

  Second realization. He’d removed her sweater. She was lying in her bra on a dingy pallet blanket. Her jeans were still in place, thank God, but she was in some kind of large, deserted space. From her limited line of sight, she could make out oil or grease stains on the cold, concrete floor. Empty, rotted shelving in a couple of places. An old mechanic’s shop? Factory? She listened for sounds that might help place her location. Traffic noises, air horns, train wheels. Heard nothing but the labored breathing of her captor. And her own heart, huge in her ears.

  “Who did those to you?” he asked again, caressing the bumps on her arms with the knife.

  She tried not to flinch. “I did.”

  He laughed, happy, delighted. “All by yourself?” He chuckled again. “That’s something, that is.”

  She wiggled, trying to get comfortable. But she was lashed tight against something, her hands behind her. The tape cut into her shoulders and belly. “Can you”—she grunted—“can you put my hands in front?”

  He looked her over, thought about it. “Soon,” he said.

  The word promised much more than a change of position. It promised everything to come. Everything anticipated. Everything feared.

  A wave of dizziness rolled over her. Leftover, maybe, from whatever he’d forced her to inhale. Or from dread.

  He rose and wiped the knife on his pants. Stashed it in the tool belt around his waist. A squeegee and a brush both had special pockets. A handle to screw into them. A cloth. A gun.

  Goose bumps rippled across her. “I’m cold.”

  He touched her protruding nipple. “I see.”

  He watched for her reaction, and she bit down on panic. “Who are you?”

  He touched her other nipple. “Aubrey.”

  In their bindings, she clenched her hands, digging her nails into her palm to keep herself perfectly still. “Aubrey, can I please have my sweater back?”

  “You have pretty little titties, Miss Gillian.” He stared at them.

  She swallowed.

  “But, okay,” he said abruptly, and disappeared from her sight lines.

  She had wild hopes of him unbinding her. He’d have to undo the tape to get her sweater over her head. It would be a chance to do something. Attack. Fight back. She braced herself for it, stoking her energy, drinking in air.

  But when he returned seconds later, it wasn’t with her sweater. He held a heavy but worn cardigan, which he draped over her like a blanket.

  He said, “I would have picked blue, you know.”

  “B-blue?” She found her teeth chattering with failure and disappointment. She started to shake.

  “For the picture. You chose brown, but my opinion? Blue would’ve popped more.”

  She forced herself to concentrate, to make sense of what he was telling her. Brown cardigan. Brown cardigan.

  A cry seized up inside her.

  She’d draped a brown cardigan around a chair in Kitchen in Suburbia. Her mother used to keep one. Old and heavy with a zipper and a hood. Brown. She still remembered the smell of it. Pancakes on Sunday morning. Butter and maple syrup.

  Her eyes widened. Aubrey was watching her, waiting for some pronouncement on his commentary.

  “I couldn’t find one in blue,” she said at last, but she had trouble pushing out the words.

  “If you could, you would have, though. Right?”

  She nodded. Anything to keep him from touching her again. “Sure.”

  He frowned. “No, you wouldn’t. Don’t lie to me, Miss Gillian.”

  She shrugged, tired of the game. “It’s art, Aubrey, and I’m the artist. I get to pick the colors.”

  “Not today, you’re not.”

  “I’m not what?” Suddenly the fear and frustration overwhelmed, and she cried out. “Who are you? Where have we met? What do you want with—” Suddenly, crazily, the room began to spin. Was she dizzy? Drugged? No, she was turning. Moving.

  Third realization. She was on some kind of pallet. And Aubrey was turning her around.

  “I’m the artist today,” he said.

  50

  The Gray mansion looked sedate and quiet in the morning light. The protesters were gone, and also the reporters. Ray cruised up to the gate, glad to see the squad car still there. The cop inside changed with the day and the shift; this time it was Carter something. Or something Carter. A twenty-year man, happy to slide by.

  He saw Ray, rolled down the window, and called over to him. “
You’re not careful, Ray, you’re gonna make a rut in the road,” he said.

  A rut in his life more like it.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Ray said.

  “No problem.” Carter gave him a mock salute.

  Ray pulled through the gate and parked in the driveway.

  A maid escorted him to the living room. The silk drapes still hung over the window that looked out on the terrace, bathing the room in a warm, golden glow that contradicted the icy glare in Genevra Gray’s eyes.

  “Mr. Pearce.” She frowned. “I thought we were finished with the incident at the auction.”

  “We are,” he said. “I’m here to see Gillian.”

  She stiffened her back, an animal about to strike. “I don’t see what you could possibly have to say to her.”

  “No, ma’am.” He weighed the hostility in her face. “I don’t suppose you do.”

  He met her eyes, not challenging, but making it clear he wasn’t going away until he got what he came for.

  When he entered, she’d been sitting at a small writing desk in the corner, leafing through a leather-bound appointment book. She returned to it, dismissing him. “She isn’t here.”

  Uninvited, he stepped farther into the room. “Where is she?”

  Genevra looked up as though surprised to still find him there. “I don’t know.”

  He came closer. Wondered what he’d done to draw her claws. Step over an invisible line and eat at her table? Fall for her rich granddaughter? Ask too many questions? Which sin was the greatest?

  “I think you do.” He smiled gently. “I don’t think you’d let her out of your sight without knowing. Ma’am.” He sat, a further goad to her hospitality. “I’m free for the rest of the day.” He put his feet up on a coffee table, leaned back, crossed his hands behind his head.

  “That’s an eighteenth-century French antique you’re crawling all over.”

  “I’m sure it is.” He settled in for however long it took.

  An irritated sigh. “She didn’t bother to inform me,” Genevra said tartly, “but I suspect she’s at the museum. Seeing to the packing of her photographs.”

  “Thank you.” He swung his legs down, stood, and was almost out the door when she stopped him.

  “Mr. Pearce. Ray.”

  He turned. She was still sitting at the desk. Still looking at her book.

  “You hurt my child, you’ll answer to me.”

  “Me hurt her?” Ruefully, he shook his head. “You know her better than that. More like the other way around.”

  The dizzying trip on the pallet ended, leaving Gillian facing the wall that had been behind her. She went cold at the sight of the set in front of her. Not because it was a perfect reproduction of the kitchen in her photograph, but because it wasn’t.

  The kitchen in her photograph had a black-and-white tile floor. She’d chosen it to better outline the body. But the kitchen here had a strip of linoleum in front of the counter. Linoleum like in the house. Her mother’s house. In her photograph, she’d used pink-and-green curtains to update and exaggerate the banality of the space. But here, they were thick, old-fashioned Venetian blinds. With a familiar red-and-white-checked valance across the top. A green wine bottle sat on a windowsill, with three yellow daisies in it.

  In the center of the room, between her and the set, stood a camera on a tripod. Bile rose up her throat.

  “Like it?” Aubrey asked softly.

  Her lungs clogged. Her brain screamed. How did he know? How did he know?

  “Who—who are you?” she choked out.

  “I’m Aubrey, Miss Gillian.” He stroked her hair the way you would a child. Or a pet. “You remember Aubrey, don’t you? I used to come to your house with my daddy when he mowed the lawn. Or fixed the fence. That fence was always getting broke, d’you remember? I’d sit out in the truck because he told me to, and ain’t no one didn’t listen to my daddy and live. I’d sit out there when it was so cold I could see my breath or so hot I couldn’t breathe at all. And I’d watch you through the window. You’d be out there playing. All twirling and laughing. Prettiest thing I ever saw in my entire life, you and your momma. I loved watching you.”

  The handyman? Aubrey belonged to the handyman? Nausea swirled in the pit of her stomach. She thought back, desperate for a single memory of the child he’d been, and came up blank.

  “I’d sit out there and watch through the truck window and a feeling would wind up inside me. Like a snake. Like a rattlesnake, all snarly and mean. I didn’t have no pretty momma, no house with green grass. I had nothing but my daddy. Oh, and his momma. Can’t forget Grandma. Who prayed and prayed and never did nothing to stop him. And that didn’t seem fair, Miss Gillian. Do you think it’s fair?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.” He gripped her hair, pulled back on it. “I told you not to lie to me.”

  “If you”—she gritted her teeth at the pain—“if you stayed in the truck, how did you ever see inside the house?”

  “Oh, that was your momma’s doing.” As if the mention of her mother was a call to gentler things, he released her. “Once, when my daddy was fixing the fence out back, she saw me in the truck. Felt sorry for me, I guess, because it was close to suffocating in there. She opened the door and took my hand and took me inside. I just about didn’t believe my own eyes. Pictures and rugs. Everything neat and colorful. Like a fairyland. Like my own private Disney World.” He paused, gazing out at the kitchen. “She gave me a can of Coke,” he said dreamily, and smiled at the memory. “Best can of Coke I ever had.” He sighed. “Sure was sorry about what happened to her.”

  He said the last in a funny, intimate kind of way. Gillian went rigid. Had he watched? Had he seen? He couldn’t have been but ten or eleven. But his father . . .

  “Was it . . .” She swallowed. Fear and anticipation mingled. Hope for an answer to the biggest question of her life. “Did your father—”

  “Do her? Hell no. He was sleeping off a two-day drunk that morning.”

  Disappointment crashed into her. “Then what do you know about it?”

  “Well, now, I know some.” He knelt again, stroked the back of a finger down her cheek. “I know what it’s like to steal someone’s breath. To have them struggle beneath my hands. Their body go limp. The light in their eyes go out. I know more than you, Miss Gillian.”

  “Things I wouldn’t want to know.”

  “That why you did all those pictures? Because you didn’t want to know?” His finger traced her mouth, her neck, and she stiffened against his touch. “You’re lying again. Don’t think I can’t see it. You’re desperate to know.” He ran his tongue up the side of her face to her ear. “What’s it like to draw that last pinch of air? What’s it like to know you’ll never laugh again, never twirl again. Never see another second of misery, and wanting to more than anything.” He tilted her head, his mouth an inch from her jugular. He held her there, like a vampire staring at the vein. “You think that little window in the camera keeps you safe? Underneath the phony rags and the New York galleries and the papers writing your name, you’re just aching to know, Miss Gillian.” His hand wrapped around her throat. He leaned in close and tight, whispered in her ear. “And I’m going to show you.”

  She struggled to keep from pulling away, to keep the terror at bay, to keep him from seeing how close he’d come.

  “That’s my work,” he said, and flourished a hand toward the set. “My art.”

  She looked toward the faithful reproduction in front of her. She would die there. On the floor, like her doomed mother. Gillian had always known it. She would die at the hands of the monster. Call it fate. Destiny. Luck of the draw.

  She flicked a glance at Aubrey’s wet eyes and smiling mouth. The pride and glee she saw chilled and horrified. Was this what her mother had seen? Was this the last sight her eyes beheld?

  No, not ten-year-old Aubrey. He was her monster, not her mother’s. And if that was different, everything else coul
d be, too.

  Or maybe they were all the same. Every monster the same monster. Evil returning in a thousand disguises, but at heart all one.

  She thought about Ray. About his pain and sympathy when he’d seen the scars on her arms. If he were here, he wouldn’t hesitate to shield her. Protect her. Save her. If he were here, would she give him the next thousand years of her life? Would she promise her love, her hope if he saved her?

  Wasn’t anyone looking out for you? Ray had asked.

  Only herself.

  “Are you ready, Miss Gillian? Are you ready to find what you so desperately seek?”

  Panic spiked, sharp as a spear. Not yet. Too soon. She needed another hour. A day, a week. A year. Please. Just a little more time.

  Did everyone haggle like this? Was every death scene set in a market stall? So, she thought, not so easy to die after all.

  She struggled against the tape. It held her tight, helpless. She had no options. He’d given her none. And no time.

  Ahead of her, he was waiting, eagerness in his face.

  But there was always a choice. Always. It may be a tiny crack in the void, but slim was better than none.

  So, she stopped struggling and turned from him. Deliberate, indifferent. Scornful.

  “What are you going to do, Aubrey”—she mocked his name—“put a plastic bag over my head like all the others? Strangle me, suffocate me? Put me on the floor of my own kitchen?” She snorted. “Make another copy of a Gillian Gray photograph?”

  His eyes narrowed, and the bottom fell out of her stomach, but she plowed on. “You’re not an artist, Aubrey, you’re a copier. A little Xerox machine.”

  He slapped her. Her head snapped back, her eyes watered.

  “I do what you don’t have the guts to do,” he said.

  “You want to talk about guts? Guts is facing the abyss and shaping it instead of falling in. Guts is a point of view. A single, original idea. And that’s something you’ve never had.”

  He raised his hand again.

  “But I can help you,” she said quickly. “I can show you how to do what’s never been done.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “And why would you do that, Miss Gillian?”