Trophies (27 page)

"And the window would have been lit,
too."

Behind the barred glass, a line of Trés'
charcoals snickered and glared at passers-by, like captive
specimens in a human zoo. I shivered, forced myself to look away,
and caught Sherlock watching me. My jaw tightened. I'd told him I
could get through this, and I would. I had to — I needed answers
for all Aunt Edith's questions. But I couldn't let Sherlock see any
of my oddities, either.

He shook his head. "The spotlights are on top
of the window, pointing inward at the pictures, not toward the
street. All that would show out here is the backwash and I doubt
that would reach to the cars."

"So if anyone was out here waiting for Aunt
Edith—"

"—then the safest location would be the
passenger seat of her car. The only light that mattered, the one to
the front, was out of commission. The ones to the rear and side
wouldn't reach."

Over by the Camaro, Patty shook her head.
"She'd never get in the car with someone she didn't know."

The obvious rejoinder seemed to occur to all
of us at the same time. Patty bit her lip and looked away.

"Most victims do know their murderers, and
we'll presume he had the gun hidden until he used it." Sherlock
pointed and beckoned. "Lindsay, you're as close as we'll get to the
right size. Come here and give me a hand."

She'd quit leaning against the car a long
time ago and her boredom had vanished ditto. At his call, she
sprang forward, at first for the passenger side, but when he called
again, she doubled about and scrambled to stand beside him at the
driver's door of the Toyota. Her expression was confident and
expectant, just as mine was when I looked at Sherlock; his big
goofy presence was one people instinctively
knew
they could
trust. I shook my head. He'd nabbed another member for his
impromptu team.

"You play the role of Edith Hunter," he told
her. "When I'm in position, you jump for the door of the gallery.
Remember, you're in danger, you're afraid, and the only way you can
reach safety is if you beat me to that door and push the button to
attract the attention of the people indoors. Get it?"

Lindsay nodded. "Got it."

"Good. Robbie, you seem frozen up on those
steps anyways, you play the roles of Trés and the security guard.
Sometime after Lindsay starts moving, you make like you're stepping
out the door. Get it?"

I grinned. "Yes, boss, I've got it."

"Double good." He stepped around to the
passenger side of the Toyota, nearest the gallery, and stood with
his back to me and Trés' human zoo. "Go, Lindsay!"

She jumped like a greyhound from the starting
gate, scrabbled around the rear of the Toyota, leapt for the
stairs. I caught a glimpse of her intense face as her honey-toned
hair flew out behind her; her entire heart was in the effort.

Sherlock paused. He went through the motion
of opening a car door, then jumped to follow.

I stepped forward. But before my foot touched
the first stair, his position closest to the building paid off. In
two steps he cut across Lindsay's path, grabbed her around the
waist as she tried to twist away, and hauled her back against his
body. Her hair whipped forward then flared back onto his scarred
neck. He held her helpless with one arm and his face rose to target
me.

Time slowed to freeze-frames. It was so real:
her twisted astonished face, fingernails clawing his arm, his
implacable hooded stare. He didn't blink. His right hand mimed a
gun in the classic game of cops and robbers. It aimed right at me.
The eyes behind the childish gesture were those of a lethal
predator sighting its natural prey.

I froze, too shocked to move, and waited for
the bullet.

"Bang." His voice was flat.

In the split second of silence that followed
his silly word, I felt Trés' body fall through where I stood and
collapse onto the steps. Before I could react, Sherlock's arm and
pointing finger swung to my right. I knew it aligned on the door,
where the nonexistent security guard had just stepped out and
turned his back to lock the gallery. The sound from the silenced
gun hadn't been loud enough to attract his attention.

"Bang," Sherlock said again, and the guard
dropped without ever seeing what hit him.

Sherlock didn't wait to see him fall. His
left hand slipped from Lindsay's waist, spun her about to face him,
thrust her toward the red-brick wall of the gallery. His gun hand
targeted her.

"Bang. Bang. Bang."

For the second time I witnessed the murder I
had not seen. Bullets slammed into the small, shadowy form and
drove her against the brick wall. Blood sprayed. Her hair jerked
loose and her shoe dropped off. Her fading echoed through me like a
dwindling ghost as she collapsed onto her back, legs bent, glassy
eyes staring up, and then she was gone and Lindsay stood alone on
the unstained sidewalk. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were
wide. But still she showed no fear.

"That's how it happened." Her voice was
breathless, as if she'd run a mile rather than around one small
car. "Isn't it?"

I turned and leaned onto the railing, eyes
squeezed tight, trying to keep lunch in its appropriate location.
She didn't even know enough to be afraid.

"I imagine so." Sherlock paused. "Robber
mine?"

I fought back and the nausea lost. When I
opened my eyes, Sherlock stood watching me from the pristine
sidewalk. The cobra stare was gone. Instead he looked as if he'd
seen his worst nightmare.

The cold sliced from my guts to my chest and
groin. It was a worse mistake even than showing Patty my
lockpicking skills. I'd shown Sherlock the weakness that lay
beneath my determination. I'd given him the reason to kick me off
the team.

In desperation — I had to distract him, had
to cover up — I blurted out what I'd intended to say in private,
away from Patty and Lindsay. "It could have been one of the family.
It could have been Father."

His chin lowered. The worry in his eyes faded
to thought.

In the stunned silence, Lindsay said,
"What?"

I ignored her and pushed on, aiming my words
at Sherlock as if they could penetrate his thoughts as his pretend
bullets had penetrated me. My voice sounded harsh. "You said it
yourself. It was dark. Trés couldn't see who shot them. Only Aunt
Edith, who sat with the killer inside the car and argued with him,
would have known who it was. And she's the one who was finished
off."

"I don't believe it," Lindsay said.

"He's an old man." Patty still stood on the
passenger side of the Camaro, leaning against it. Her face was
white and her voice as angry as mine. "He walks with a cane. He
can't run and jump that way."

Sherlock turned back to face me, awaiting my
riposte. From his expression, I knew he was listening. I didn't
bother to hope he'd forget what he'd seen. But perhaps I could
convince him to discount it.

"William isn't."

Patty rolled her eyes. "Is he your bogey man?
You accuse him of everything."

"Besides, Dad wouldn't shoot his own son,"
Lindsay said.

"It could be any other member of this family,
as well." I looked at Sherlock and again aimed my words at him.
"Besides, sometimes things happen in combat that you don't
intend."

"We both know that to be true," Sherlock
said. "But the shooter stood closer to the gallery than the parked
car and the light would be brighter. He couldn't be certain Trés
hadn't recognized him, even from a dim outline."

That was true. "But it would explain why Trés
wasn't finished off."

"So would the possibility the shooter didn't
want to go out and buy more ammunition." He shook his head. "It's
not a really viable theory, Robbie. I think there are stronger ones
out there. We just gotta find them."

For a moment longer I stared at him. His
expression was neutral and the moment was over: if he was going to
recommend my removal from a combat position, he wasn't going to
whip out his cell phone then and there. I slumped against the
railing then pushed myself erect. "Right." I didn't need to look
down to know my hands were shaking, as usual, so I ignored the regs
and stuffed them in my pockets.

"Why didn't she scream?" Lindsay lounged
against the mock shutter beside the plate glass window. Over her
shoulder, one of the human zoo's inhabitants snickered, an old
woman with a sly face and wispy hair. She looked like a second-rate
char and for an insane second I hoped Trés had seen her in the
local pub and not in Linda's kitchen.

"I wondered that, too." Patty shoved her
drooping hair behind her ears.

I looked at Sherlock. He looked at me, then
popped his eyebrows. Needless to say, we hadn't.

"Would they have heard it inside?" Lindsay
asked.

"Probably," Sherlock said. "And I can't
imagine why she didn't scream on instinct, in any case. Somebody
grabs you, that's the sort of thing that just kind of pops out,
right?" He looked at me, his eyebrows twin question marks.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

We stood in silence. The ambient background
noises intruded on our pause and the world seemed to expand. For
the first time since leaving the cool showroom, I remembered there
was a city around us, more than this one intense bit of
sidewalk.

I shrank from all of it. Peace and quiet
would help me recover. There had been too much tension in my day
already, even if it was only the early afternoon, and the
adrenaline flooding my system kept me queasy. The brew at lunch
hadn't helped and I must have been crazier than usual to drink
it.

"All right, Robbie my Robber?"

Even at that moment the stupid nickname made
me grin. "You still want to swing by my condo?"

"Got to." Sherlock popped the Camaro's locks
with the remote. "You don't think Bonnie's going to hoof it all
over town looking for that Suburban, do you? We need your computer,
unless we're going to buy one on our way back to the house, and I'm
personally not splurging. As it is, she's gonna have to make do
with AOL instead of DSL, as that's the only Internet access we can
get on short notice, and you know her opinion on that. Besides, you
need at least a spare mag, and Bonnie flew civilian so she doesn't
have a weapon at all. So grab a few extras while we're there,
okay?"

"You know, it's been peaceful since the
backup arrived in town." I hadn't meant to sound so petulant, but I
wanted to return to Cambridge, find a quiet spot, and crawl into
it, not hike around the city on errands. "What makes you think it
won't stay that way?"

He didn't answer as he fastened his seatbelt
and started the engine. "Humor me, okay? I'm starting to get a real
bad feeling about this one."

That was not good news and the bottom dropped
from my already uncomfortable stomach. The prickings of Sherlock's
thumbs were legendary, horrifying, and never ever wrong. If he
wasn't feeling good about this situation, then it was time for the
remainder of us to start worrying, too. Especially me.

"How about our tail?" I asked. "Is he still
back there?"

He checked the rearview mirror. "Yeah."

"So he saw our little performance and knows
we're onto him."

"Yeah."

"Do we care?"

He huffed and swung into traffic. "I ain't
gonna lose any sleep over it."

"Is it good news that he's still following
us?" Patricia asked.

"Yes," Lindsay said before I could get my
mouth open. "If he's following us, then he's not trying to finish
off Trés."

"Or hunting Caren," I said. "Or anyone
else."

"Do you think that might be the police
tailing us?" Patricia said. "Particularly you, Charles." Her voice
had that too-sweet note and I sat on my hands rather than smack
her.

Sherlock huffed again. "So why don't we just
pull him over and ask him?"

With that oh-so-comforting thought, I leaned
back and tried those stupid deep breathing exercises again. I
didn't really expect them to work. But if Sherlock was unhappy, it
was best to be as prepared as possible. At least he warned me.

Sherlock drove steadily to make life simpler
for our tail. He pulled up in the visitors' parking lot outside my
waterfront high-rise condo, rather than the owners' garage.

"You three go on in." His eyes never left the
rearview mirror. "I'll stay out here this time and keep an eye on
our friend. No, don't look at him, Patricia, unless you want him to
know he's been made."

The condominium building was twelve stories
and open to the bay, with stairwells and landings for each main
entry outdoors, protected only by cast-iron coverings. The
elevators were inside. My condo was on the second floor, so we took
the stairs. I used my keys to open, just because it was quicker and
wouldn't aggravate Patricia further: two deadbolts and the lock on
the doorknob, even though they were useless to stop a determined
thief and I knew from experience it took less than two minutes to
pick open all three.

Once inside, I killed the burglar alarm that
rang at the security service's headquarters, or at least I started
to punch in the code on the pad just inside the front door. Then I
realized the little "armed" light wasn't blinking. It was already
off and I knew I had set it before leaving last time.

I shot out an arm and stopped Patricia and
Lindsay before they got through the door. Damn it, I'd left the 9mm
with Caren and hadn't thought to borrow Sherlock's Colt .45. I had
no weapon at all and there was a small arsenal inside the condo.
Anyone already inside had one hell of a jump on me. And I had
civilians to protect.

"What?" Patricia's voice rose about an octave
in the middle of the word.

"Go back to the car. Now." Any danger would
be inside. Although our potentially troublesome tail had followed
us across town, Sherlock was out there and would take care of the
civilians if it killed him.