Dead Shot (37 page)
“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.”
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.
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.
“Gillian, we have something to tell you.” She faltered. Looked at Chip.
“About your father,” Chip said gravely.
“My father?” Gillian looked from her grandparents to Ray. There was something in the room. Something huge and burdensome pressing down on everyone. “You were talking about my father?”
Genevra took a quavery breath. “He’s—”
“—Dead,” Gillian said.
Chip stepped forward. “No, Gillian, he’s—”
“A doornail.”
“You should let them tell you what they have to say,” Ray said.
“They don’t have to,” Gillian said.
“Yes, they do.”
“No.” She shook her head. Went to her grandmother’s side and clasped the older woman’s hands in hers. “They don’t.”
And there was this tiny moment between them. A moment of understanding and compassion. Did Gillian know the truth after all? Or didn’t it matter?
“He’s dead,” she said quietly. “Let’s keep him that way.”
After that, there was nothing left to do but take Gillian’s single bag out to the truck and say good-bye. Ray shook hands with Chip, nodded to Genevra, then stood back and let Gillian make her own farewells.
The drive to the airport took fifteen minutes, and they didn’t say much on the way. When they got there, he pulled up to the departure curb, got her bag from the truck bed, and put it on the curb. Absently, she toed it with her foot, then squinted up at him.
“Look, I could make a big speech. Say thank you and all that crap.”
“You could.”
“Here’s the thing.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a folded sheet of paper, and tapped it against one hand as if debating what to do with it. Abruptly, she shoved it at him. “I’d rather do it somewhere else.”
He unfolded it. Saw the flight itinerary. Ray Pearce. Nashville to New York.
“If you’re not busy,” she said.
He looked at her. Heard everything neither of them was saying. “Guy’s gotta work, short stack.”
She nodded sagely. “Plenty of jobs elsewhere for an enterprising young man such as yourself. I believe there is a police department in New York.”
He tried hard not to smile. Reached into his jacket and pulled out a similar sheet of paper. Gave it to her.
She looked at it, grinned smugly. Picked up her bag and walked toward the entrance. He called after her.
“So, who gets the refund?”
She held up a hand, waved his question away, and kept on walking.
He got back in the truck and drove away. He had a ton of packing to do. Calls to make. Another job to quit.
He was finally leaving town.
A native New Yorker, Annie Solomon has been dreaming up stories since she was ten. After a twelve-year career in advertising, where she rose to Vice President and Head Writer at a midsize agency, she abandoned the air conditioners, heat pumps, and furnaces of her professional life for her first love—romance.
Dead Shot
is her sixth novel of romantic suspense. To learn more, visit her Web site at www.anniesolomon.com.
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Annie Solomon
Dear Reader,
One of the fun things about writing my latest romantic suspense novel, DEAD SHOT (on sale now), is that it’s my first Nashville-set book, and I enjoyed using real locations around town. My heroine, Gillian Gray, is an art photographer who comes from a wealthy family. Their estate is in Belle Meade, which is where old Nashville money lives. The original wealth in that part of town came from racing horses on the Belle Meade Plantation, a historic site that is popular with visitors. There really is a statue of prancing horses at the beginning of Belle Meade Boulevard.