Dead Shot (36 page)

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.

“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.”

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.