Dead Shot (31 page)

Ray ground his jaw. He didn’t like doing it, but he put a hand on Burke’s shoulder. “Jimmy. We made a deal.”

“Should have my head examined,” Burke muttered. But he left.

When the door closed, Gillian took the chair opposite Maddie. She reached across the table and enclosed Mad-die’s hands in her own.

Maddie looked up.

“What happened?” Gillian asked. “When did you come back? What’s Kenny doing here?”

“Oh, God,” Maddie said in a shaky voice, and hiccupped. “I have so screwed up.”

“Tell me, Maddie. You can tell me anything.”

“You’re going to be so mad at me.”

“Better me than them.” She nodded toward the door.

Maddie sniffed. “You remember when you kicked Kenny out?”

He’d had a little temper tantrum in her studio and wrecked a bunch of very expensive lights. “Oh, yeah, I remember.”

“Well, he started sending you stuff.”

“Stuff? What kind of stuff?”

“Messages.”

“Like the one we saw?”

She nodded. “I suspected they were from him, so I went to see him.”

“By yourself? Are you crazy?”

She gave a watery laugh. “I guess. But the thing is, I felt sorry for him. He seemed so lost. So I went back a second time. Just to make sure he was okay. And then a third.” Her voice got small and wobbly. “And then . . .” She sobbed. “I . . . we . . . I love him, Gillian.” She broke down altogether.

Gillian sat there stunned. Maddie and Kenny? Were the planets out of alignment? Did hell just freeze over?

“Okay, okay.” She stroked Maddie’s arm. “But why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you’d hate me. I hated me. It felt”—she gulped down a huge lungful of air—“it felt like a huge betrayal. Like I was taking his side.” She shook her head wildly. “But I wasn’t. I swear. I wasn’t.” She looked away, ashamed. “I didn’t mean for anything to happen between us. I just wanted him to stop bothering you. But he made me laugh, and he cooked me dinner.”

“Kenny cooked you dinner? Geez, I couldn’t get him to boil water.” She looked at poor, broken Maddie. Thought about Ray. Was this what love did?

She shuddered, refocused. “So you fell for his bad-boy charm. So what? So did I.”

Maddie shook her head. “Underneath, he’s really an okay guy. And talented. Really, really talented.”

“Yeah, but it’s the same old, same old, Maddie. Too many drugs. Too much alcohol. Guys like that—they’re trouble.”

She sniffed. “I know. And that’s why I told him—” She swallowed a sob. “That’s why I told him I couldn’t be with him unless he got help.”

“Oh, Maddie. When are you going to stop thinking about everyone else and start thinking about yourself?”

“I am, Gillian. I swear. And Kenny is, too.”

“Kenny Post never had a thought in his head that wasn’t about Kenny Post.”

“No, you don’t get it.” Maddie was wide-eyed and persuasive, a true believer. “He did it. He went into rehab.”

Gillian wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

“That’s where he’s been,” Maddie said.

“Rehab?” It was hard to keep the astonishment out of her voice.

“He made me promise to keep it secret. He didn’t want anyone to know. He was so ashamed. But Gillian, that’s why he couldn’t have done any of this. He was at the Canyon Rock Center outside LA until last night.”

“So why haven’t the police let him go?”

“I don’t know,” she wailed. “They don’t believe him.” She grabbed on to Gillian desperately. “It’s all been this awful, horrible mistake. Please, you’ve got to help him. You’ve got to tell them to listen.”

Afraid the police would burst in if Maddie kept hanging on to her, Gillian disengaged herself. “But what about you? You were supposed to be in New York. When did you come back? And why?”

“I never left.” She began to cry again. “When the killings started, and Ray accused me and everything, I got so confused. I thought, maybe Kenny was behind them. See, I didn’t trust him. I thought—I thought maybe he had done it. I called to make sure he hadn’t left the center, but I wanted to make sure, so I stayed to keep an eye out. But I was wrong about him. I was so wrong.”

“Then what is he doing here?”

“He had a weekend pass. A reward for all the hard work he’s been doing. He surprised me. But I swear, it had nothing to do with you.”

“Then what was that at the hotel?”

“Him being an idiot. You know how he is.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“He’s supposed to apologize for all the bad stuff he’s done. And he saw the article and realized you would be here. He just wanted to”—she started sobbing again—“to talk to you. Say how sorry he was for being such an ass-hole.”

Gillian sighed. “All right. Calm down. We’ll figure something out.”

She looked up with hope in her eyes. “You believe me?”

“Of course I believe you, stupid. The story’s too after-school special and cheesy not to be true.”

Maddie smiled through her tears. “I’ll make it up to you, Gillian. I swear. I’ll beat Kenny upside the head. Anything you want.”

But Maddie had given Gillian back her monster. And that was gift enough.

47

Two days later, Gillian woke early, borrowed one of her grandparents’ cars, and drove to the museum.

Since her photographs were only part of the exhibit and had been struck into isolation, she wanted to make sure they were packed and crated correctly. Though she was paying for it, and it was her idea, she didn’t have to be there. Her grandparents had urged her to stay home— loudly and at length the night before. But supervising the task gave Gillian one more feeling of control. It would be the last official thing she did at the museum. The last tie, the last logistical reason to stay.

Maddie and Kenny had already left. The police had held on to them until yesterday, but their story panned out in every particular, so they were cleared and released. Not that Gillian had had any doubts. Whoever the black evil stalking her was, it wasn’t Kenny Post or Maddie Crane.

Before they left, they stopped to say good-bye. Mad-die was going back with Kenny for a few days to see him resettled in rehab; then she was going on to New York to check in with Gillian’s studio and catch up on whatever she’d dropped to come to Nashville.

Gillian had been in the basement studio at her grandparents’, working on the lake picture when the two of them clomped down the steps.

Kenny looked wan and shaky, but he was forthright in apologizing to her.

“Babe, I’m sorry. Truly. I was a jerk and, well, shit, you know.” His long legs in their jackboots and tattered jeans shifted. “I’m going to pay for those lights, and you know, make up for everything.”

She shook his hand, felt the hardened calluses at his fingertips from the guitar strings. “Just don’t break Mad-die’s heart, you hear me?”

He grinned, his teeth white against beard stubble. “Loud and clear.”

“Because you hurt her, I’ll rip your tongue out.”

“Whoa.” He laughed uneasily. “No problem.”

“And cut off your balls.”

“I’d like him to keep those,” Maddie said.

“Me, too.” He squeezed her against him.

“Yeah, well, only if you behave.”

He nodded and held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

She and Maddie looked at each other and laughed.

He looked insulted. “Hey, man, I was a Boy Scout.”

“I thought telling the truth was part of recovery,” Gillian said.

“Okay, well . . . Cub Scout. Never made it to the big boys.”

Maddie put an arm around his waist. “You will, baby. I promise. You will.”

They looked at each other with enough heat to launch a hot-air balloon. Jealousy licked at Gillian, but she fought it. She and Ray had parted the night of the gala, and she hadn’t seen him since.

“All right, you two. You’re giving me a major sugar high. Scram!”

Maddie gave her a hug. “I’m just going to stay a few days to see Kenny settled. I should be back in New York by the end of the week.” She jabbed a finger at Gillian. “I expect the same from you.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“And stay out of trouble,” she said with a sternness that was only half-faked.

They both knew that wasn’t likely. But Gillian hugged her anyway. “Call me when you get to the studio.”

Maddie nodded, and they were gone.

Now, Gillian pulled into the parking lot behind the museum and wondered what she would do. How long she would stay. Used to be she couldn’t wait to get back to New York. But now . . . She knew the monster was out there, lurking close. Waiting. Just waiting. Leaving felt like giving up. Like letting him win. Again.

But what if she stayed, and the killer was never caught? That grim possibility had been played out her whole life. Would staying be a futile sacrifice? What if she went back to New York, and he went with her? What if he didn’t?

The museum hadn’t opened yet, and the lot was mostly empty. In the early morning stillness, the wide expanse of blacktop was unnatural. Impressions of former occupants flickered in her mind like the shimmer of heat waves. Museum goers now afraid to go out. Protesters who hadn’t arrived. Or maybe they were gone for good, now that she’d caved. She saw a couple of cars, and, near the service entrance, a van with its rear doors open, a yellow pail on the ground at its foot. Evidently the shipping company hadn’t arrived because she didn’t see the Artco truck.

Shipping artwork was highly specialized, and museums hired professional companies like Artco to handle it. Photographs were less complicated than paintings or sculpture, but her pieces were huge, so they needed custom wood frames built with hinged covers that were screwed on, not nailed. Two of the custom crates her work had been shipped in to Nashville had warped and needed to be rebuilt. They’d just completed them yesterday.

Before being crated, the photographs also had to be enclosed properly. Some foam wraps gave off damaging gases. Others trapped moisture and created mold. Water and snow damage, breakage, abrasion. Shipping was a big risk, so required as much art as science. Which was partly why she wanted to be there.

She parked and headed toward the service entrance, which was the only door open at seven in the morning.

She could see the lettering on the van now.
HARPETH WINDOW CLEANING SERVICE
, painted in green on the side. A skinny man, maybe a few years older than she, stood at the open doors, swiping the blade of a squeegee. His standard industrial green uniform—matching pants and shirt with some kind of embroidered name over the pocket—hung off his skeletal frame. He grinned as she approached, his face a death’s-head. She saw his teeth were small and grayed at the bottom, like a row of sharp, dead trees.

A shiver ran down her back, and she passed him, heading around the van to the door. He spoke.

“Miss Gillian?”

She started, his voice was so close. His breath in her ear.

“Ye—?”

A cloth clamped over her mouth. She tried to scream, inhaled something awful, noxious. She gagged.

At the very last second, when she knew she was going under, she had one final thought.

At last.

48

Ray pulled up to the curb and stared at the familiar little house. He’d been there a thousand times, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Stanley Cup. All the major holidays.

But not lately. Not in a long time.

He grabbed the bag with the lemon icebox pie and got out. Trudged up the walk, went around the side to the kitchen entrance. Knocked.

Used to be he would have just let himself in. Now, he waited for the sarge to shuffle to the door and open it. Except it wasn’t Mackenzie Burke who let him in. It was an overgrown farm boy, thick and wide, with a round, childish face and an open, gap-toothed smile.

“Can I help you?”

Ray stood there a minute, taken aback. “Uh, I’m looking for Sarge,” he said, trying to peer over the giant’s shoulder.

“Oh, you mean Mr. Mac?” The boy—no, man—grinned, opened the door wider. “He’s here. Mr. Mac!” he called, stepping aside to let Ray into the kitchen. “Mr. Mac, you got company!”

“And you are?” Ray said.

“Oh, sorry.” He closed the door carefully. “I’m Joseph. Mr. Mac’s daughter, Miss Nancy?” He made the name a question, but after years of living here Ray knew the other man wasn’t asking anything. “She hired me to stay with her father. Make sure he don’t wander off no more.”

Ray nodded, glad Nancy and Jimmy had finally found a solution to the problem. He could have wished one of them would have taken their father in, but doing something was better than doing nothing.

“Let me see what he’s up to,” Joseph said.

Ray handed over the bag with the pie. “That’s okay, I know my way. I’ll find him. Maybe you can slice up the pie? Make us some coffee?”

The prospect of pie lit Joseph’s face. “Be happy to.”

Ray walked through the living room, saw all of Gloria’s knickknacks where’d they’d always been. Nancy must have hired someone to clean, or maybe Joseph kept the place spotless. Either way, no dust gathered on the little eggcups Gloria had collected, or the spoons from Washington, DC, and the Grand Canyon.