Ray stood speechless.
They were all trapped in silence. No one moved. No one spoke.
Finally, Ray recovered his voice. “Start . . . start from the beginning. What happened?”
Chip sighed. He looked as gray as his name. “We didn’t know at first. Holland refused to reveal the father’s identity.” He looked down at his hands. Age spots covered the tops. “I’m not sure she told anyone.”
“Except the rapist?” Yeah, that made sense.
“How he found out, I don’t know to this day,” Chip said. “Holland never told us.”
“And this was when?”
“Gillian was six.”
Six. A year before her mother’s death. “So somehow he finds out he has a kid,” Ray said, piecing it together, “and sees a way to make money off it.”
“He threatened to sue for custody unless Holland paid him off.”
“He didn’t stand a chance,” Ray objected. “No court in the world would have granted him custody.”
“The threat wasn’t about taking her child,” Genevra said with impatience. “It was about the publicity surrounding a court battle.”
The rape becoming public. The way her child had been conceived common knowledge. That hit hard. Even now, more than twenty years later.
“So she paid?”
Genevra had remained silent, only staring at nothing, the veins taut in her thin neck. Now she broke her silence with the single, curt word. “No,” she said.
“She ended her career,” Chip said. “She came home. If she was out of the public eye, she reasoned, he’d have less hold over her.”
Ray looked away from the ravaged faces of Gillian’s grandparents. What they were saying answered most of the questions he’d had about Holland’s sudden disappearance from the celebrity world long after she’d had a child. He thought of the mythology Gillian had absorbed. Her beautiful mother giving up everything for her beloved daughter. Little did she know.
“Why didn’t he make good on his threat? The tabloids would’ve paid a bundle.”
“He didn’t have to. He approached us,” Chip said.
“And we paid,” Genevra said bitterly. “Every month, like a mortgage on our granddaughter’s happiness.”
“She’s had enough to deal with,” Chip said defensively. “Finding out how she was conceived . . .” He gazed at Genevra, who shuddered.
“Unfortunately . . .” Her mouth turned up in a brittle smile. “Unfortunately, it cost us more than money.”
Ray looked between the two of them. Saw acid knowledge in their faces.
“Holland was furious with us,” Chip said. “She hated that man and the thought that he could benefit from what he’d done to her . . .”
“We did it to protect her,” Genevra said, her eyes dark with hindsight. “And her child.”
In sudden perception, Ray got it. “That’s why she moved out.” A chill went up his spine. It fit. It all fit.
“He’s responsible,” Genevra said with deep feeling. “He’s responsible for what happened to her. He hurt her. He took her away from us.” She began to weep. Chip laid a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“We were very generous,” Chip said. “And he stayed away.”
“Until now,” Ray said.
“Until now,” Chip repeated dully. “Honestly, I don’t know if he’s the one doing these awful killings. But he is a photographer. Or he was. I just . . . we have to be sure.”
“What’s his name? How are you supposed to contact him?”
“Sklar. Jerry Sklar. I have a phone number . . .”
“Sklar could have killed Holland. Why didn’t you tell the police about him?”
“He has a rock-solid alibi,” Genevra said.
Ray stared at her, but it was Chip who spoke.
“That morning . . .” He faltered. “I was paying him off.” He shook his head. Tears swam in his eyes. “I was with him when Holland was . . . God help me, I was with him.”
A swell of sorrow rolled over Ray. Pity for the things they’d endured, the decisions they’d been forced to make.
A knock on the door. Will cracked it open. “The police are here,” he said.
“We’ll be right out,” Ray said.
Genevra clutched his arm. “You can’t tell them.”
Ray shook his head. “No choice. If this Jerry Sklar is a suspect, the police will have to investigate.”
Her fingers dug deep in her arm. “If Gillian means anything to you, you will keep this to yourself.”
“We have a sad history with the police,” Chip said. He took out his wallet. “If there’s any way we could persuade you to check this out quietly first. On your own. Make absolutely certain the authorities need to be told.”
Ray clamped his jaw down. Chip Gray had waved his wallet around once before, using it to suck Ray in. And he’d let himself be persuaded. It pissed him off to know he’d do it again. And for the same reason.
“Put your damn money away,” Ray barked.
He looked between the two of them. Old. Sapped. Enclosed in a shroud of the past. The same shroud Gillian tried to cut through with every dead shot she took. And it always seemed to pull her back. He wanted her free and clear.
And alive. Mostly, he wanted her alive.
54
Ray opened the door to Jimmy and another detective, Ned Mills, who was running the case. Steve and Dan had gone back to work, but the rest trooped back into Will’s office. In the muddle, Ray stepped into the hallway, took out his cell phone, and punched in the number Chip had given him. It was long-distance, which, if Sklar was in town, probably meant a cell phone. No one picked up.
Odd for a blackmailer not to be at the contact number.
He called Carleco and asked them to trace the number and see what they could come up with on Sklar. Then he returned to the office.
“Mr. Davenport has filled us in,” Mills was saying. He was an older man with gold-rimmed glasses, maybe ten years from retirement. Ray remembered him as steady and methodical. He was tempted to tell him about Sklar, then didn’t. Until he got a lead on the phone number or the man himself, there was nothing the police could do that he couldn’t.
Meanwhile, his ex-brother-in-law was eyeing him. “How’d you get involved?” he asked, only slightly belligerently.
Ray told him about his visit to the Grays earlier in the day, how Mrs. Gray had sent him to the museum, how he’d found Gillian’s car but not her.
Jimmy eyed him suspiciously. “Carleco is through with the Grays, and from what I saw at the station, Miss Gray is through with you. What was so important that you had to chase her all over town?”
Ray shifted. Truth was, he didn’t quite know the answer to that himself. Whatever it was, whatever he thought he’d prove by clapping eyes on Gillian again, by seeing her smile or hearing some wisecrack come out of her beautiful mouth, he sure as hell wasn’t going to confess it to Jimmy Burke or Ned Mills. “None of your business.”
“Everything related to this case is our business,” Jimmy said.
“Not my personal relationships.”
“Personal?” Ned Mills said, homing in. “How personal?”
His face heated. He was acutely aware of Will Davenport and the Grays a few feet away. “Look, if you want my whereabouts this morning, I brought the sarge a lemon pie and stayed for coffee.”
“You what?” Jimmy said, clearly taken aback.
“It’s good you hired someone,” Ray said to him. “He needs it.”
The surprise on Jimmy’s face relaxed into thoughtfulness.
Mills said, “That was real neighborly of you. I should stop by and see him myself.”
“Don’t expect too much,” Ray said. “He recognized me at first, then lost track again.”
Grudgingly, Jimmy said, “Thanks.”
Ray waved off the gratitude. “No problem. And Joseph can corroborate the times. From there I went to the Grays, and you have the rest.”
“I don’t th
ink you should be concentrating on Mr. Pearce,” Genevra said cuttingly.
“It’s okay,” Ray said. “They have to cover all the bases.”
“While they’re covering their bases, or more likely a close anatomical object, my granddaughter is—”
Shouts from down the hall interrupted. Will stuck his head out the door. “In here.”
The two men from the design team burst in, breathless from running down the hall.
“We just remembered something,” the minivan driver said. “Well, Dan remembered it, and that clicked something with me and—”
“What?” Ray cut off the rambling. “What did you remember?”
“A van,” Dan said. “Some kind of work van.”
“It was parked near the service entrance,” Steve said. “I think the back door was open.”
“I didn’t see a van when I came in,” Will said.
They all took a moment to digest that, and Will introduced the detectives to the two men.
Jimmy turned to Will. “Were any workmen scheduled for this morning?”
Will shook his head. “Not that I know of.” He made several phone calls to department heads, including maintenance. No one had outstanding work orders.
“Okay, let’s figure out a time line.” Ray pointed to Steve. “You were here first. What time?”
“Oh, maybe ten to seven.”
“And the van was there?”
“Yes.”
“And it was still there when you got in?” he said to Dan, who’d driven the Volvo.
“Yes.”
“But by seven-fifteen, when you got here”—he turned to Will—“it was gone.”
“I don’t remember seeing it,” said Will.
Ray, Ned, and Jimmy looked at one another.
“What kind of van?” Ned Mills asked.
“That’s just it,” Dan said miserably. “I don’t remember.”
Aubrey spun Gillian around to the right side of the set, where the table was located. The table that was to be her final destination.
“Having fun?” Smiling broadly, he bent down to her.
She looked at him coldly. “Not really.”
“Now, now, don’t be like that. Today’s a happy day. All your dreams come true.”
He whipped a long, lethal knife from the tool belt and made sure she got a good look at it. With a crafty smile, he lunged toward her, laughed when she flinched. “Oh, don’t be afraid. I ain’t gonna hurt you.” Slowly, he cut the tape at her ankles, then straddled them, hot eyes observing her reaction. “I’m gonna let you do that yourself.” She forced herself not to shrink away as he slid forward and slit the tape below her knees, then forward again to cut the tape at her hips. “You’re so good at it.”
Revulsion rose in the back of her throat, pungent and strong. It was all she could do not to vomit it up. But there was one binding left. It wound around her chest below her breasts, pinning her arms.
“You gonna run, Miss Gillian?” He transferred the knife to his left hand, took out the gun, and held it in his right. He sawed through the remaining tape, slowly, deliberately until she was free. “Now’s your chance,” he whispered.
He wasn’t a big man, nothing like Ray, but it didn’t take much to outweigh her. And he was pressing her down, knife at her ribs, gun at her throat. She could smell his breath, taste his excitement, feel his erection. The gamble she took seemed stupid now. Foolish. Lost.
Terrified, she denied it and stared him straight in the eyes. “You don’t scare me, Aubrey.” She put every ounce of strength she had into staying cool, bored, unimpressed. “I’m not afraid.”
He yanked her to her feet, his pleasure dimmed. “Well, hell, Miss Gillian, pretend. I like it better when you are.”
He pulled her off the pallet by one arm, uncaring when she fell to the floor and he nearly yanked it out of its socket. He just hauled her upright, pushed her over to the table. Held the gun to her neck and made her tape her legs to one of the chairs. Then he did the same with her torso, leaving one arm free. He found her sweater, yanked it on, so it covered the sight of the tape and stretched over the back of the chair. She was trussed, neat and complete.
He smiled. “How you doing?”
She didn’t answer. What was the point?
He laughed and made a big show of emptying the bullets from the cylinder of the revolver. He shoved them in a pocket, except for one, which he kissed before loading back.
He spun the cylinder. “Let’s see what kind of shot you take.” He set the gun on the table and walked to the camera.
Gillian stared at the revolver. Six pulls, five empties. One lethal blast. Would she hear it before she felt it?
She would love to be calm. Love for her hand to be steady. She conjured up Ray, but the thought of all she might have had didn’t stop the shakes. She wrapped her hand around the grip. Made contact with the hard metal. Heard the first snick of the camera.
She had one chance. Should she use it now? Or should she try to lower the odds?
Slowly, she pulled the revolver toward her. She saw a spiderweb in the corner. In the stream from the lights, fairy dust silvered the edges. It was all so sharp, so beautiful.
She looked over at Aubrey. Heard the camera click again.
She raised the gun to her head. And pulled the trigger.
55
“How about the color of the van?” Jimmy asked.
“Or words,” Ray said. “Letters. Anything at all.”
Dan and Steve exchanged a baffled glance. “White van, I think,” said Steve.
“There was writing,” Dan said. “Some kind of company name? Green pops into my head.”
“Okay,” Mills said. “That’s good. Now, try to remember a word. Even a couple of letters.”
Dan screwed his face up, thinking back. He shook his head. “Maybe . . . something with an ‘H’? Harold or Harvey?”
That galvanized Ray. “Got a phone book?” he asked Will, and waited impatiently while the other man rummaged through two drawers before coming up with a Yellow Pages. Ray clamped his jaw to keep from screaming. “We need a White Pages,” he said, and along with the rest, waited a two-minute eternity until Will was able to locate one in an office down the hall.
He scurried in and handed it to Ray, who dropped the heavy book on the desk and flipped through to the business section in the back half.
It took them half an hour and a painstaking, name-byname search for Harold or Harvey to become Harpeth, and another fifteen minutes to separate the Harpeth Hills from the Harpeth Rivers and, finally, the Harpeth Valleys, which is where Ray stopped suddenly.
“What?” Jimmy said. “Go on, keep reading.” Impatiently, he turned the book around, ran a finger down the page, and found Ray’s place in the phone book. “Harpeth Window Cleaning Service,” he read, then looked up at Dan.
“I don’t know.” Dan shrugged. “Could be. Sorry. I’m just not sure.”
But Ray was picturing it. Night. Downtown. He was parking his truck.
“The night of the auction,” he said slowly.
“Oh, yes, let’s revisit that waste of effort,” Genevra said.
“What about it?” Lee Mills asked.
“I parked my truck behind a van.” He looked up. “A van from a window-washing company.”
Suddenly every pair of eyes was on him. Shock ricocheted around the room.
Jimmy swore softly.
“Oh, my God,” Genevra said on a sharp intake of breath.
“What?” Will said, looking from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”
“He was there,” Ray said. “At the auction. He was there all along.”
Jimmy exchanged a glance with his colleague. Both rose to leave, and Ray knew they’d go back to the station, check in with the lieutenant, hand out assignments, work the phones, and gather as much information as they could.
They’d probably hit gold, but not for hours.
“Let me help. You could use it.”
“Sorry, Ray,” Mills said, not unkindly. “You don’t work for us anymore. And we have to follow procedure.” He left, but Jimmy hung back.
“Look, Ray.” He pursed his lips, going through some inner struggle. Ray expected a barb, a further twisting of the knife, but when Jimmy finally spoke, he pitched his voice low, for Ray alone. “Someone has to check out the cleaning office.”
Their eyes met.
“Someone who doesn’t have to . . . follow procedure,” Ray said.
Jimmy didn’t respond. Just followed Mills out the door.
Ray headed straight to the little storefront office. It was located next to a liquor store in a decaying strip mall. The manager—one Floyd Burdette, if the name on the desk plaque was any indication—wore a stain on his tie and a comb-over.
Ray gave him a bogus business name and a phony offer of work. “Saw one of your trucks downtown Saturday night. Figured anyone working weekends must be worth checking out.”
Burdette seemed pleased. He rocked back in his chair with an air of self-importance. “Saturday downtown? Sure, that was the Gray Building. Big job.”
Excitement twisted inside Ray’s chest. The Gray Building was across from the hotel where the gala was held.
Floyd was shaking his head, the enormity of the task sobering him. “Takes two to three days. Only send my best guys.”
Ray restrained himself from leaping up and shaking the name out of the guy. “That’s who I want, then.”
Wide smile. “Well, let me check Aubrey’s schedule for you.”
Ray leaned forward. “Aubrey?”
“Aubrey Banks.” Floyd consulted a computer screen. “Good worker. Polite. Quiet. Does an A-plus job.”
“Yeah, it’s always the quiet ones,” Ray said dryly.
“Excuse me?”
He gave the man a tight smile, rose, and shook his hand. “Never mind,” he said. “Thanks.”
He hurried out, punching information into his cell phone as he raced to his truck. In less than a minute he had an address and was heading out the lot on a squeal of brakes.
He drove north, one hand on the wheel, the other speed-dialing Jimmy.
Dead Shot Page 26