by Anne Frasier
"I can't believe I'm going to be living here with you," Gillian said. "Come help me get my stuff."
Holly followed her outside. "This is your car?" Holly asked, staring at the Mustang convertible.
"Isn't it great? It's a '65. Dad restored it for me." Gillian put down a huge suitcase and then made a face. "That was last year. Before I started getting into trouble."
Holly felt a little dizzy, trying to sort out what was real and what was acting. She'd been told the cop, when she came, would remain in character most of the time. Holly was already believing the crap she was telling her, even though she knew it was made up.
She helped carry her things inside, locking the door behind them. "Mom! Dad!" she shouted. "Gillian's here!"
Her parents appeared from around the corner. Their mouths dropped open, and Holly giggled. She could tell they were still trying to figure it all out when Gillian reached into her backpack and pulled out her badge. Now that she was inside the house, she must have thought it would be okay to come clean.
"I'm Agent Cantrell," Gillian said, her voice lower and smoother than it had been before. "We spoke on the phone."
Holly's father shook her extended hand, a perplexed expression on his face. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three." She flipped her-hair with one hand. "The stylist did an excellent job. I cut a picture out of Seventeen magazine, took it in, and told her I wanted to look like that."
"You could be seventeen," Holly said.
"I've always looked young for my age. You should see my mom. She's fifty and looks thirty."
"The FBI agent who interviewed me-her name was Cantrell."
"She's my sister."
"Cool." But Holly was really thinking about school. She'd spent the last two days moving through classes in a cloud, like nothing was quite real. Her friends didn't know how to act, so they avoided her. She would have been hurt, but it was like there was a fuzzy glass between her and everybody else. Now, at the thought of Gillian coming along, she felt a surge of excitement. "You're going to have the guys at school going crazy!" she said, laughing.
Gillian sat down with the Lindstroms at the kitchen table.
They talked about the detectives that were watching the house. They talked about being hypervigilant. They rechecked phone numbers in order of importance. Gillian told them what to watch out for and what to do in any given situation. "It's extremely important that you treat me like a seventeen-year-old relative, and not a BCA agent," she told them once all the pertinent details had been discussed.
Holly's parents nodded in agreement. The unforgiving ceiling light cast shadows, accentuating the exhaustion in both of their faces. "We want this guy caught and our daughter safe again," Mrs. Lindstrom said.
"That's what we all want," Gillian agreed.
Holly's father stretched his arms above his head. "You know, I might actually be able to sleep a little tonight."
His vote of confidence should have made Gillian feel good. Instead, she found it unsettling. They were counting on her. They had faith in her. Suddenly she began to wonder if Mary had been right. Was she ready for a step of this magnitude? Or had she jumped into a situation above her skill level just to prove herself to Mary, with no thought of the possible consequences? Now, with the victim and her family looking at her as if she were their salvation, Gillian was confused and a little scared-a reaction she was careful to hide.
Holly jumped to her feet. "Come on." She waved her hand, motioning for Gillian to follow. "I'll show you where you're going to sleep and put your stuff."
Holly's room was small, with a single window facing the street. The walls were papered with pink flowers- a design probably left over from early childhood. The rest of the room had been updated with funky lights, fake-fur-covered pillows, band posters, and candles. And, of course, stuffed animals.
"We brought a bed in here for you," Holly said, pointing to a twin bed covered with a purple spread.
Holly slid open the closet door. "I moved my clothes over so you can have this side."
"Thanks."
Holly plopped down on her bed, sitting on her hands. "I was so pissed when my parents told me you were coming. It sounded like such a lame idea. I was expecting some goofy older person in a wig or something. But this is going to be so cool." She bounced up and down. "This is going to be so much fun."
Gillian had spent the last two days pulling together a wardrobe, getting her hair cut and lightened, and talking the department into letting her lease the Mustang rather than a Fiesta. At first they were going to allow her only a hundred dollars for clothes. She finally convinced them that she would need at least five hundred. She'd looked into the school Holly attended and knew that even though Holly's parents were both teachers and weren't in the upper income bracket, most of the kids at the school came from wealthy families. The idea was for Gillian to blend, not stick out.
"You can't tell anybody about me," Gillian warned. "Not your best friend, not anybody."
"I'm good at keeping secrets, and this is one I won't have to feel guilty about. That's why it's so cool."
"I'm your cousin who's been having trouble at home, so I've come to live with you and keep you company. Period."
Holly nodded. "Right."
They went over various scenarios that might pop up, such as where Gillian was from, how well she and Holly knew each other. They decided to say they had met only a couple of times. That way there would be less chance of messing up their stories.
"Do you have a gun?" Holly asked out of the blue.
Gillian sat down on her bed and pulled up the hem of her flared pants. Strapped to her ankle was a little five-shot Smith amp; Wesson backup. "You can't as much as touch it."
"Don't worry."
Gillian didn't like guns. She wasn't comfortable with them. As a BCA agent she didn't wear one all that often, and she hadn't thought a gun would be appropriate to bring into a high school, but Wakefield felt it was necessary and had cleared it with the few school authorities who knew her true identity.
"Part of the reason you're there is to protect Holly," he'd pointed out.
Now Holly shrugged. "I've seen guns before."
"Your dad's?"
"No, kids at school."
Holy shit. "Kids have guns at school?"
"Well, not in the building, but in their cars. One guy had me come out and look, and he had three guns in his trunk." Gillian must have appeared dismayed, because Holly made a shooing motion with her hand. "Don't worry. He got kicked out last semester."
"If you ever see anyone with a gun, you have to report it right away," Gillian said. "You know that, don't you?"
"I don't like to squeal on people, but yeah, I know."
The room grew dim, and Holly lighted some candles and incense. They settled back on their beds and talked, Holly hugging a stuffed animal.
This was the part of childhood that Gillian had missed out on. She'd been fourteen when Fiona was murdered. At that point, her world had changed, had lost its brilliance. At that point, she'd finally understood that life was real, and the things you said, every word you spoke, mattered. She had screwed up, and in the process Mary, Gavin, Fiona, and herself had been robbed of their youth. So lying in the candlelit bedroom, talking and confiding in soft whispers was bittersweet for Gillian because she'd spent her own years in silence, in shame, guilt, and fear.
They chatted lightly for a while; then Gillian asked, "What about the guy who kidnapped you? Do you mind if we talk about him?"
Holly looked up sharply. "I'd like to. Nobody here has even mentioned what happened. Like it's going to set me off or something. Like it's not something I'm thinking about every second anyway. Do you think he'll try to kidnap me again?" she asked, poking the eye of the stuffed bear she was holding. "Detective Wakefield said that's why you're here."
"It's a possibility. Are you afraid?"
"No. Worried, but not afraid. I got away from him once. I can do it again." Holly was quiet for a minu
te, thinking through the question. Then she said softly, "Have you ever killed anybody?"
Nobody had ever asked Gillian that before. "No." She couldn't imagine any other answer.
"If you had to, would you?"
Point a gun at someone and pull the trigger? Could she do it? "Yes. If I had to. If someone's life was in danger."
Had Mary ever shot anybody? Gillian wondered. Had she ever killed anybody?
"But isn't that why you're here? To kill him if you have to?",
"Catch him, not kill him."
A knock sounded on the closed door; then Mrs. Lindstrom said, "Better get to sleep, girls. School tomorrow."
Gillian raised her eyebrows in surprise, and Holly pressed her face against the bear to stifle a giggle.
Once they were in bed and the candles were blown out, Holly had another question to ask: "Why did you become a cop?"
Gillian wondered how much she should divulge and decided upon a watered-down version of the truth. "When I was a little younger than you, something happened to me that made me question who I was and what I really wanted out of life. I had a friend who was put in prison for something he may not have done, or something that may not have been his fault. That led to my interest in crime investigation."
"What did your friend do?"
Gillian hesitated, then decided to be forthright. "He was found guilty of murder."
Holly gasped. "But you don't think he did it?"
"I never used to feel that he was capable of murder. But now… lately, I'm not so sure… I always thought I knew him so well, but I'm beginning to wonder if I was just fooling myself. My sister says I see things the way I want them to be, not the way they really are, and maybe that's true."
Holly was quiet for so long that Gillian thought she was asleep.
"I lied," Holly suddenly said, the confession coming out of the darkness. "When I said I wasn't afraid, I lied. I'm always afraid now. 1 think about him all the time. I can't think about anything else." Her words came in a panicked rush. "You'll catch him, won't you? You'll kill him or put him in prison so I can quit thinking about him, won't you?"
Mary headed for the U of M campus and the fraternity where Sebastian Tate lived. They'd uncovered some new incriminating information about him, and she wanted to get her own interview.
Three days had passed since Gillian had gone undercover, and Mary wasn't feeling any better about it now than she had that afternoon in Wakefield's office. The thought of her sister exposing herself to a warped killer scared the hell out of her. But Gillian was a grown-up, and Mary couldn't do a thing if Gillian decided to act like an idiot. Not that she'd ever listened to Mary before-not even when they were kids. Gillian may have been the youngest, but she'd always had a mind of her own.
Mary spotted the address Wakefield had given her and parked her rental car. It wasn't fair that obnoxious, partying frat guys got the coolest houses, but there it was. Sebastian Tate lived in a massive three-story stone building with an equally impressive wraparound porch and defaced cement lions guarding the front steps.
Dave Matthews was blasting from a radio somewhere, and two guys on the roof of the porch were rolling out sod. The temperature was in the low fifties, but that didn't keep them from going shirtless while they worked.
She shaded her eyes and shouted up at them. "Does Sebastian Tate live here?"
One of them straightened. He wore khaki shorts and a curled cap with a band logo on the front. "Tate? Yeah, most of the time. Go on in."
"What's the grass for?" she asked, curious.
"Homecoming. We're having a kegger, and we're gonna put lawn furniture out here. You aren't a cop, are you?" he asked, laughing.
She pulled out the leather case that held her photo ID and flipped it open.
"Oh, shit."
The other guy stopped working. "Nice going, Carver."
"Hey," he called down to her, "nobody here will be under twenty-one."
"I'm sure they won't," Mary said dryly, slipping the badge back into her pocket. She had zero interest in their drinking habits. "Where'd you say Tate is?"
"His room's on the third floor. Go on in."
"Thanks."
The place reeked of stale beer. As she took the stairs, she met two students on their way down, laughing and struggling to transport a half-finished keg.
She found Tate in a room that may once have been a library. Sunlight managed to filter through windows that looked as if they hadn't been washed in years. Two unmade double beds were shoved against opposite walls. Clothes littered the hardwood floor, and the room smelled like sweat and dirty socks. The radio she'd heard outside was blaring, the DJ shouting nonsensical patter.
Tate sat at a table, deeply engrossed in something she couldn't see.
She knocked on the molding of the open door.
He didn't hear her.
She walked over to the radio and turned it off.
"Hey!" He looked up. "Who the hell are you?"
She introduced herself, flashed her ID, and said she wanted to talk to him.
In his hand was an X-Acto knife he was using to cut out mat board for photos.
"You're pretty good at that," she said, noting the precise lines. Shewmsmbnrt trying tv cut mat board and knew it was excruciatingly hard to do. In the right hands, an X-Acto knife could do as much damage as a scalpel.
"I've already been downtown." He leaned back, one hand braced on the table in front of him. He was shirtless. Didn't anybody wear shirts around there?
"I'd really like to talk to you myself." She found a chair and pulled it close, sitting down. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Cantrell… You aren't related to Gillian, are you?"
"You mean Officer Cantrell? She's my sister."
He gave her a big, predatory smile. "I'd rather talk to her."
Of course he would. "What kind of photography are you interested in?"
"Black-and-white."
"Nature?"
"People." He tossed down the knife. "I like taking pictures of people."
She fished around in her coat pocket and pulled out a page torn from City Pages, the Twin Cities free weekly entertainment paper. "Is this your ad?"
He glanced at the clipping, but couldn't have looked closely enough to see anything. When he didn't answer, she read it aloud.
"Models. Female. Eighteen to twenty-five. Blond. Some nudity required." She read the ten-digit number. "According to the phone company, that number belongs to you."
"So?"
She sensed his restrained rage, and maybe an urge to hit her.
"That's not against the law, is it?" he asked, his face taking on an angry flush.
"No. Not as long as they're willing participants."
"Oh, they're willing. If they answer the ad and find out it's not up their alley, they don't do it. Simple as that." '
She wasn't letting this creep off so easily. "Would you mind showing me some of your photos?"
"I've got buddies in law school. I know I don't have to show you anything without a search warrant. And there's no way a judge or DA's going to give you one."
He was absolutely right. They didn't have anything to justify a search warrant. "How about names?" she persisted. "Do you have names of the girls you've photographed? I'd like to talk to them. Just to put my mind at ease. Just to confirm what you're saying."
He shoved himself to his feet, rummaged through a pile of papers in the corner of the room, and finally came back with two phone numbers written on a scrap of paper. "There," he said, angrily thrusting it into her hand. "Call them. They'll tell you I was a perfect gentleman."
"Thanks," she said, pocketing the numbers.
Outside in her car, Mary was able to reach one of the women, a girl named Poppy Adams, and arranged to meet with her at a bar in Brooklyn Park. She left a message at the second number.
Poppy was bottle blonde, about twenty-one, wearing a black tank top, hip-hugger jeans, and hemp chokers. She had several tattoos and pierc
ings.
"I'm trying to get into acting," she told Mary, "and needed some publicity photos. Those cost like hell, so I told him I'd pose if he'd print up some extra shots for me."
"How did he behave when you did the photo shoot? Was he professional?"
"Do you mean, did he try anything? No, he just took the pictures. Then he gave me a few of his cards and said if I knew anybody else who might want photos to let them know about him."
"Have you passed his cards on to anybody else?"
"Yeah. A couple of girls."
"You wouldn't happen to have their numbers, would you?"
She had to think about it for a second. "One of them doesn't have a phone, but I can tell you where she lives. Her name's Jennifer." She gave her directions to an apartment building in Uptown. "The other girl… I don't even know her name. She used to come in here quite a bit, but I haven't seen her recently."
Mary pulled out four-by-six head shots of all the murder victims. "Do any of these look familiar?"
Poppy examined them, shook her head, and gave them back.
"If you do see the girl you told me about, will you ask her to give me a call?" Mary handed Poppy her card. "And if you think of anything else, please get in touch with me."
From Brooklyn Park, Mary drove directly to Uptown. The loft apartment Poppy had described was above a coffee shop. Uptown wasn't the cheapest place to live, but it was considered the hippest. In order to achieve that hip status, about a dozen people were occupying an apartment that looked more suited to two or three. Jennifer didn't ask her in. Instead, she stepped out into the dark hallway and shut the door behind her.
"Yeah, I got photos taken," she said, arms crossed below her breasts, shoulder blades sharp. She looked and sounded as if she had a bad cold. "But I got the idea I wasn't.what he had in mind."
Jennifer had light brown dreadlocks, tattoos, and more piercings than Poppy.
"What type of girl do you think he was looking for?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. He's a frat guy. Frat guys don't go for girls like me. He'd want somebody more conservative. Somebody more Minnesota."