Dead Shot

by Annie Solomon

  “I got a name,” he told his ex-brother-in-law. “It’s Banks. Aubrey Banks.” He gave Jimmy the address. “I’ll meet you there.”

  “The hell you will. You know damn well I’ll need a warrant.”

  “Fine. Get your court order. I’ll have been and gone.”

  “You stay the hell away from that house, Ray. Digging up information is one thing. You contaminate that evidence, we’ll never convict.”

  “Maybe you can get him for murder, Jimmy. In the time it takes you to haul ass down there, he could kill her ten times over.”

  “Dammit, Ray, slow down. You don’t even know he’s our guy.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Ray—”

  But Ray had already disconnected.

  He gunned the engine, heading around the capital and down Eighth. The Farmer’s Market looked irritatingly inviting, yellow pansies and red tulips scattered like sunshine to draw you in. He resented the cheer but took it as a sign. He could just as easily despair as hope. Why not hope?

  The address led to a cramped little house that looked like it had been there since Lee surrendered. Ray bounded out of the truck, hammered up the rotting porch steps. There was no “keep away” sign badly lettered on the door, but there didn’t need to be. Whoever he was, Aubrey Banks didn’t believe in curb appeal.

  Ray knocked, waited, knocked again. “Mr. Banks!”

  Just to make sure, he scouted around the decaying clapboard building. A chicken-wire fence enclosed the weedy rear, cutting it off from the back end of an overgrown rail yard. Neglected tracks slid by an ancient warehouse with several broken windows. Behind it, he could see the top of the U.S. Tobacco building. Had the warehouse once been used to house Skoal Fine Cut and Copenhagen Snuff? Not anymore by the looks of things.

  He located a back door, which was covered in brown paper, felt around for the hole he assumed was behind it, and punched through. The opening wasn’t big enough for him, not without a little help, but he was happy to provide it. Using his elbow, he cleared out the glass and climbed in.

  The door led into the kitchen, tiny, damp-smelling. Empty.

  “Gillian!”

  Like he would be that lucky.

  He waded to the front. The place was neater than expected. Well, not neat exactly, with furniture in its appropriate place, but no hermit’s pile of newspapers and dirty soup cans either. A worn rag rug covered the floor in the middle room, an armchair and a sagging couch staggered haphazardly on top. Plastic pails and cleaning fluid were scattered around. Squeegees, brushes, packages of wiping cloths.

  Down a narrow hall, he found two other rooms, a bedroom with an open door and an unmade bed, and one with the door firmly locked.

  His stomach did a little somersault.

  “Gillian?” He rattled the knob, pounded on the door. “Gillian!”

  He clamped his jaw down. If she was there, she might not be able to answer. Frantic, he used his shoulder to batter down the door. Didn’t take much. The lock was old and gave easily.

  But whatever he hoped to find—Gillian alive and tied up in a corner was first on his wish list—he was disappointed.

  The room turned out to be another bedroom. Neat, pristine. Stale. Like a re-creation in a museum. A precisely made bed with a white chenille spread and a round pillow embroidered with curvy script: God Loves You. Next to the bed, a night table with lamp, a glass lamb nestling at its foot. A closet with wide grandma dresses and orthopedic shoes.

  Ray swept the clothes back, felt around the back of the closet for unusual bumps, thumped the wall for a hollow space. “Gillian!”

  Coming up with zip, he pounded the wall. He was close, so close. He wheeled around to face the room.

  Who was Aubrey Banks? What would he want with Gillian? He could imagine no universe in which their two worlds collided. Was it random, then? Did he pick her out of a hat? Local celebrity? He could think of a dozen more famous.

  Ray sank on the bed. There was something here. Something he missed.

  Was this Banks’s mother’s room? The clothes seemed a generation older. Unless his mother had him old. That was possible. Or it could be his grandmother’s. An aunt. Some female relation who raised him. There were no men’s clothes, which could mean a spinster. Or a widow.

  Why lock the door? That was obvious—to keep something hidden.

  From who?

  Outsiders.

  But there wasn’t anything here anyone couldn’t see.

  Who else do you hide things from?

  He thought of his own mother, his own closet, the rooms inside his own head. There was plenty he liked hidden. Pain and failure and missed opportunities.

  He panned around the room. So maybe Aubrey Banks kept the room locked not from other people, but from himself. So he wouldn’t have to see it.

  Why? What had happened here?

  He rose on a hunch, braced himself, and jerked the spread down.

  No bloodstain stared up at him.

  Across from the bed, a dresser sat against the wall. A couple of photographs in wood frames stood on top. He picked one up. It showed a very young woman in a dark dress. Her hair waved in that deeply curled fashion of the forties. There was a shy look about her. Compliant. Submissive.

  He picked up the second photo.

  Blinked.

  Looked away and looked back.

  And that’s where Jimmy and his cop shop found him. Holding a picture of Holland Gray’s house.

  56

  The trigger clicked.

  Gillian gasped, still alive.

  In the distance, she heard Aubrey giggle his hyena laugh. Heard the faraway tick of the camera. His voice slowed as it reached her ears. “Go on. Do it again. Do. It. Again.”

  Sweat poured off her. The gun was slippery in her hand. She regripped it, staring out at the broken-down warehouse, its tired brick walls and boarded-up windows. Abandoned. Left behind to die alone.

  Mommy!!! Mommy!!!

  Her heart bucked as the screen door inside her head slammed shut behind her.

  Mommy!

  “What are you waiting for, Miss Gillian?”

  She shifted her gaze to the man behind the camera. Four chances left. Four more times to decide who shall live and who shall die.

  “Nothing,” she murmured, the truest thing she’d ever said. Everything she’d ever waited for was here. Now.

  She put the gun to her head. Wanted desperately to shut her eyes but refused to.

  She inhaled one last time. Pulled the trigger.

  “You’re sure?” Jimmy asked.

  “For God’s sake, I was at the house a few days ago.” And when Jimmy still looked doubtful. “Get the photos from the cold case file. It’s Holland Gray’s house.” Ray put it down. “But there’s something . . .”

  “What?”

  “Something different about it.”

  He took a step back, trying to get some perspective. Jimmy went to the bedroom door, stuck his head out. “Anyone find anything?”

  “Roaches,” one of the uniforms called back. “We got a little corral going in the kitchen.”

  Jimmy left to check out what they were doing, and the last words ricocheted around Ray’s head. “That’s it,” he murmured. Picture in hand, he ran after Jimmy. “That’s it!” He skidded to a stop in the kitchen, shoved the photo in the smaller man’s hand. “Take a look at the fence.”

  Jimmy glanced at the picture, then up at Ray. “So?”

  “It’s a picket fence, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Send someone out there. No picket fence now. It’s split rail. And look.” He pointed to the west side of the house. “No chimney. There’s a big honking stone chimney there now.”

  The two men stared at each other. “You’re saying this is the original house?” Jimmy tapped the photo. “What it looked like—”

  “—When Holland Gray was murdered.” Grimly, Ray nodded. “He knows her. He fucking knows her.”<
br />
  Click.

  A small cry escaped Gillian. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure the camera could capture the beat.

  But once again, the pull of the trigger had left her alive. Still, God, still alive.

  Why? The question hovered in the air, frantic for an answer.

  She would never call herself lucky. Fated, doomed, whatever word you chose, she’d always been a pawn of the universe.

  So why had the universe not lived up to its promise?

  A frowning Aubrey stepped away from the camera. Even at a distance she could see the malevolence in his eyes. He started toward her, clearly unhappy with the way the hand was being dealt.

  She licked her lips. Three more chances. Stay or hit?

  Jimmy called Mills. “We found a connection,” he said rapidly. “Get everything you can on an Aubrey Banks, dob 8-2-1969. LKA—” He relayed the current address.

  “I’m going outside to look around,” Ray said.

  “Truitt.” Jimmy nodded to one of the uniforms. “Go with him. See what you can find.”

  What they found was a root cellar in the southeast corner, butt up against the fence and practically buried in the weeds.

  Truitt lifted the heavy cover and started down the steps into the black hole. He was half-in and half-out when Ray heard a sound in the distance.

  They both froze.

  “You hear that?” Ray said.

  “I heard something,” Truitt said. “Firecracker maybe.”

  “Car backfire?”

  “Possible.” He nodded in the direction of the old warehouse. “Came from over there. And I don’t see a car.”

  “I’m going to check it out.”

  Ray headed off, and Truitt spoke into his shoulder radio. “Detective, we might have something out here.”

  The chicken wire was only knee high off the ground, so Ray had no trouble hopping it. He listened hard for a repeat of the sound. Nothing but his footsteps crunching gravel.

  Was it a gunshot?

  Or his mind playing tricks?

  Hunching low, he crossed the weed-strewn tracks, pulling his weapon. Backed against the warehouse’s decaying brick wall. To his left, two wide steel doors, closed and rusting, a padlock wound around the handles. He sidled toward them.

  Across the yard, Truitt was conferring with Jimmy. Truitt pointed, and the two of them looked his way.

  Ray reached the doors as Jimmy started forward. The lock had been smashed, one door was cracked open.

  Ray’s heart started to thud.

  He leaned closer to the opening. Listened. Only silence answered.

  Jimmy reached the warehouse, inched over to him. “Anything?” he whispered.

  Ray shook his head. “I’m going in.”

  Jimmy nodded. “Right behind you.”

  Ray twisted, darted inside, weapon aimed and steady. He went left, Jimmy, right.

  Across the warehouse, a sight that stunned.

  An ordinary kitchen, one corner brightly lit. A body slumped over a table. Another on the floor.

  Ray stared, horror filling his throat.

  He knew what it was. What it had to be.

  Gillian Gray’s last dead shot.

  He stumbled forward on straw legs, but an arm blocked his progress.

  “Don’t,” Jimmy said. “I’ll go.” Pity in his eyes. Not stopping him because of police procedure but out of kindness. To spare him.

  But Ray didn’t want to be spared. Carefully, he brushed the arm away, staggered another step.

  Then the miracle happened.

  Gillian moved.

  Slowly, her head rose. He could see her face. Gray. Drawn. Tendrils of sweat-soaked hair framing it.

  “Farm boy.” Hoarse voice tinged in familiar sarcasm. “I knew you’d show up. Eventually.”

  57

  Gillian watched Ray come. Watched him close the gap between them in three rapid strides. The shield of his body blocking her view of anything but him.

  “Are you all right?” A pocketknife already in his hand, the binding around her chest, her arms, gone in a breath.

  Shouts blurred, noise she heard, words she didn’t. The edges of the world hazy except for the man kneeling in front of her. Cutting through the tape she’d wound around her ankles. Looking up at her with his strong, welcome face. The one that said he was here, and she could lean on him.

  She reached down, traced the line of his mouth. Soft lips, hard chin. His brown eyes went all watery, and, she was ashamed to say, so did hers. Without knowing how, she was out of the chair and down on the floor. With a cry, she was in his arms. Safe. Alive.

  And all she could think to do was ask for a favor.

  It wasn’t that she was morbid, though many were fond of saying so. There were just . . . certain things she couldn’t turn away from. So before the entire police department descended on them, she made a simple request.

  He tensed against her and she wondered how many times over how many years she would ask him to do things he wouldn’t want to do. And how many times he would do them.

  He took her face in his big hands. She could feel the tremor in them. “Jimmy!” he called, his eyes locked on hers, still watching, always watching out for her.

  “Cylinder’s empty.” Detective Burke walked over, holding the gun through the trigger guard with a pen. The chamber was open and he was looking through it. “What happened?”

  Ray helped her to her feet, took Jimmy aside. Whatever excuse he made, he got his ex-partner out of the warehouse long enough for her to remove the camera’s memory stick and the pictures on it.

  Two days of wrangling followed. Explanations, statements, revelations. Aubrey Banks had washed windows at or near all the victims’ workplaces or homes. Inside the root cellar the police found a collage of newspaper articles about Gillian, huge blowups of her photos, headlines from the murders, and a small elastic band from Dawn Farrell’s hair.

  They discovered a grave in the yard and identified the bodies as Aubrey’s father and grandmother, both bludgeoned to death more than ten years ago.

  And in a small box hidden in an alcove, a wedding ring and a necklace belonging to one Sarah Beth Henderson, along with a small newspaper clipping about the missing woman dating back five years.

  And through it all, Gillian managed to keep the pictures to herself. Detective Burke suspected what she’d done, but the police didn’t need them to prove their case, and she never admitted their existence.

  Now, a week later, she was packed, ready to leave. Just waiting for Ray to show up and take her to the airport.

  She pictured saying good-bye to him. Couldn’t get the focus sharp enough.

  She had one last thing to do. She slipped inside the bathroom and reached for the broken tile above the mirror. She’d had to remove the scissors to fit the small disc from Aubrey’s camera behind it. When she took out the disc, the cubbyhole was empty.

  She turned the digital card over in her hand. So small. Not much bigger than a stick of gum, if that. And yet big enough to hold everything she’d thought important.

  With deliberate slowness, she tilted her hand. Watched the card slide forward and plop into the toilet.

  The police still didn’t know who killed her mother. Chances were, they’d never know.

  But she’d faced the monster and come out alive. She didn’t need pictures to prove it.

  58

  Ray stood in the shadow of the hospital doorway gazing at the man dying in the bed. It hadn’t taken much to track down Jerry Sklar. He’d holed up at a flophouse across the river until he had collapsed and been hauled away to General Hospital, where all the uninsured went.

  Ray could see why he needed the money, but it didn’t look like he would have to worry about expenses much longer.

  He stepped back, away from the room and its secret.

  Half an hour later, the Grays’ maid showed him into the sunroom, bright and cheerful, with its apricot walls and view of the terrace. A far cry from
the oppressive air of the hospital room he’d just come from.

  The Grays greeted him with caution but not the outright hostility of the past. Ray sensed the nervous tension between them and dispelled it as quickly as possible.

  “I found him,” he said.

  Genevra clutched the back of the sofa, then sank to the seat.

  “He’s dying,” Ray said. “Liver cancer.”

  It might have been cruel, but relief rushed across Genevra’s face. She reached out to grasp her husband’s hand, and they held on to each other like frightened children.

  “Probably why he tried pumping you for more money. No insurance.”

  Neither of the Grays had invited him to sit. Chip himself still stood, large and imposing, standing over his wife’s narrow form.

  Ray handed Chip a slip of paper with the room number on it. “He’s at General. You can see him if you want to. Or not. Up to you.”

  But the question that hung in the room was not about visiting the sick. Ray looked between the two older people. Gillian’s people. Her connections, her family.

  “She has a right to know,” Ray said softly.

  “She knows enough,” Chip said.

  Ray thought about how long and how hard Gillian’s grandparents had fought to protect her. To stand between her and what could hurt her. Not so different from himself.

  And yet, how much damage had they done at the same time? The scars on her arms marked the heavy toll of silence.

  Which wounded more?

  Before he could decide, Gillian waltzed into the room.

  “Plotting attack?” she asked, and the air around its three occupants seemed to solidify. Genevra stiffened, Chip went rigid. Ray opened his mouth but nothing came out. They were all caught, specimens under glass. Gillian examined them. “Where’s the cauldron?”

  She smiled. Mischief and mayhem in a pair of lips. But there was courage, too. An open face, ready for anything. She might look like a fragile doll, but she always faced into the wind. And if it dared to knock her down, she got up again.

  He turned to the elder Grays, his decision made. Genevra saw at once what he meant to do. Something in her face went dull with pain, but she fought it. It was their place to speak, and she knew it. She rose. Squared her shoulders, prepared herself for the coming ordeal.