“So I let her come to me,” the older man said. “She needed a friend.” He looked out the window to where Gillian stood at the shore. She took something from her pocket. A camera. A tiny camera. “She needed the truth. I gave it to her. I do it every time she comes home.”
Ray sank against the refrigerator. The cold metal burned into his back.
“She tell you about the new murder?”
“She did.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
“I think it’s mighty strange. But a connection after all these years? I don’t know.”
Somehow Ray was still holding on to the crime-scene photograph. He looked down at it. Holland Gray’s body was twisted at the waist, as though half of her had tried to get away. She wore a dress with some kind of design—in the rumpled black-and-white photocopy he couldn’t tell the color or discern the pattern. The best view would have been the bodice, but the chest wounds had bled out and covered the front of her dress with blood. A lot of blood.
He couldn’t help recalling her face as it had been on the cover of
Vogue.
Sultry and mysterious, with a hint of mischief in her smile. Lively, vibrant. All of which was absent from the death’s-head he gazed at now, with its bloodless pallor and vacant stare.
“Cause of death?”
“Two stab wounds to the chest. Sicko used a kitchen knife. We wondered if maybe she tried to defend herself, and he took it away from her.”
“Rape?”
“With a vengeance. She was all tore up inside.”
“She know her attacker?”
Harley shook his head. “No signs of a break-in, but we couldn’t find a single link to anyone she knew. She hadn’t gone to school here and so didn’t have a whole lot of friends. Didn’t bar hop, do the party scene. House was a little isolated thing in southwest Nashville off Highway
100. She lived quiet with her kid.”
“What about back in New York? Or LA? Success always breeds jealousy.”
He shrugged. “Everyone had solid alibis. Couldn’t find a motive for a paid contract. Never looked like a pro anyway. Looked like someone took advantage of a lone woman, then lost control and killed her.”
“Random?”
“That’s my bet, though we couldn’t prove it. And not for lack of trying. We pulled in the exterminator, the meter reader, the garbage collectors. Deliverymen. Repairmen. Anyone we knew of who had business at the house.”
“What about DNA?”
“We did that later, when it became available. Couldn’t track down every last one, but those we did weren’t a match.”
Ray thought it over. The conclusion seemed clear. “Maybe someone left town and just came back.”
Harley nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe. Mighty big coincidence, though.”
Ray looked down at the picture of Holland Gray, then back up at Harley. Coincidence wasn’t something that sat easy with him either.
“The thing is, that little girl out there”—Harley nodded toward the lake and Gillian—“she’s counting on it. And I mean with every breath. I were you, I’d find this guy quick. Or she will. And that’s not something I want to see.”
Gillian heard the screen door slam, but she didn’t need the sound to tell her Ray had stepped outside. Without turning around, she could feel his weighted presence behind her, hovering, shielding. Thick and close. Closer than she wanted anyone to come.
“It’s pretty out here,” he said, and moved up beside her.
She looked through the tiny Canon she’d slipped into her pocket before she left. Now she fixed her shot on the lake. It was wide and deep, the water calm. Bowled above it, the sky was perfectly blue and peaceful. It set her teeth on edge.
“Ever seen a drowning victim?” She lowered the digital camera. Felt his big body beside her but didn’t look at him.
A moment of silence, then, “No.”
“I haven’t done a drowned woman.” She calculated what it would be like to have your head held under water. The choking panic, the fire in the lungs, the inevitable gulp for air that killed. The water looked so inviting yet could be so deadly.
“What do you think?” She held up the camera, scrolled through the pictures she’d shot. Watched him examine them. When he finally looked away, there was a hint of sadness in his eyes. “I think you can’t handle pretty. Not without turning it into something else.”
“Something real, you mean.”
“Something ugly.” He looked out over the landscape. “It’s just a lake, Gillian. Water. Trees. The only death here is what you bring to it.”
She respected his innocence, misplaced though it was. He’d been a cop. He should know better. “There’s death everywhere. Even in the pretty places.”
“Only if you’re looking for it.”
“Or it’s looking for you.” She held his gaze a moment, but only just. There was something in his face, a wanting, a caring, that sadness again. Sudden tears welled up, and she averted her eyes, horrified that he might see.
But once again he was kind. Kinder than she expected. He neither laughed nor sympathized with her emotion. Gave no indication that he’d witnessed it.
“You know what?” He exhaled. A deep breath as though getting rid of that intense moment between them. “You think too much. You should get a real job. Pick tobacco. Haul bricks. You’d be too tired to think.”
She shot him a small, wry smile. “Lucky me, I’m rich. I don’t need a real job.”
He murmured a resigned sigh. “Well, come on, rich girl. We gotta go.”
He indicated for her to precede him, and they walked to the pickup.
Harley met them outside. “Don’t be a stranger,” he said to her.
“See ya around.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. And then Ray made sure she got inside the truck before taking his place behind the wheel. He turned the engine over, she waved once to Harley, and they were gone.
Another trip over. Another visit to the shrine ended.
She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. She could sleep for a week. A month.
It always hit her like this. The huge black dread on the way there, like an anvil over her head. Then the massive black hole on the way back. Drained. Empty.
“You talk to Harley about the new murder?”
“We talked.”
“And?”
“We didn’t solve anything if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You agree with him that there’s no connection?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She turned her head. Looked over at him. God, she needed an ally right now. “Then you think there could be a link?”
“I didn’t say that either.” He shot her a glance, and whatever hope she’d been brewing vaporized fast. “Doesn’t matter anyway.” He gazed back on the road. “I’m here to keep you in one piece, not to catch the bad guy. That’s someone else’s job.”
“It used to be yours.”
“Past tense, short stack.”
Carefully, she said, “Do you miss it?”
He thought it over. “Sometimes.” He shot her a glance, and she could tell he was debating how much to admit. He shrugged. “Yeah, I miss it.”
“So why not go back?”
He was silent a little too long. “It’s complicated.”
“What isn’t?”
He shrugged.
“Are we talking circumstances again?”
Another shrug.
“The same circumstances that brought you to Nashville?”
He gave her a short, tight smile. “You asking for my life story?”
“You know mine.”
Music suddenly erupted in the truck. Gillian dove for her purse to the strains of the Clash singing “I fought the law, and the law won,” and found her cell phone. It was Maddie.
“Still fishing?” she asked.
“On our way home,” Gillian told her.
“Still alive?”
“Bullets bounce off me.”
“It’s not bullets I’m worried about. It’s the memories.”
Gillian looked out at the passing landscape. “Yeah, okay, so maybe they dig a little deeper. But I’ll manage.”
“Well, I got something to ease your pain.”
“Shot of Novocain?”
“Bag of Cheetos.”
“Yum. Cream sodas, too?”
“Would I let you down?”
“Only if a man’s involved.”
“Speaking of which—Lassie still with you?”
Gillian looked over at Ray. “Still here.”
“Tell him to bark for me.”
Gillian laughed. Turned to Ray. “It’s Maddie,” she said. “Wants you to bark for her.”
He raised a single disbelieving, disapproving brow, then returned to concentrating on the road.
“Sorry,” Gillian said to Maddie. “Not going to happen.”
“Oh, geez, and I was so hoping.”
“So I’ll see you in about an hour?”
“There’s one hitch. That Detective Burke called. You didn’t show up at the hoosegow to sign your statement about the museum thing.”
“Hoosegow?”
“I’m working on my vocabulary.”
“Okay, we’ll make a detour. I wouldn’t mind talking to him myself.”
Matthew Dobie sat behind his desk in the mobile headquarters of Citizens for American Values—a trailer parked in a lot between a pawnshop and a liquor store on Charlotte Avenue. There was a knock on the door, and a young man stepped in.
“The woman’s here, sir,” he said.
The young man was part of Dobie’s vanguard. Dobie couldn’t recall the name at the moment. Davis, maybe. Or Dallas. Something with a “D.” Not that it mattered. The vanguard did their duty, protected him and his work. Names were unimportant.
What mattered was they were all tall, well-muscled white men, perfect American specimens. If he could find them, even a little pretty. He liked good-looking men. Liked the curve of a wide shoulder coming down from a thick neck. The tight skin, the power.
Dobie encouraged them to exercise and avoid sugar and processed foods. It was all a matter of discipline. Of control. Of keeping the doors locked and barred against the baser urges. He was proud of his young men. He liked to watch them go through their paces in the morning. Group calisthenics, a run. A phalanx of beauty, like galloping stallions.
This one seemed exceptional, and Dobie couldn’t help but take a moment to admire him, his fair hair skinned to the nub, chiseled jaw, Cary Grant cleft in his chin. But like all the others, his eyes were blank, waiting for orders, waiting for Matthew Dobie to fill them with direction.
He gestured “come forward” with a wave of his hand, and the nameless man—Davis or Dallas—stepped back and let Ruth Gellico enter.
Dobie rose, put on his warmest smile. “Come in, please. You must be exhausted. Here, sit. Sit.” He nodded to the guard, who led her to a chair. She sank into it, a pale, washed-out dishrag.
“Can I get you something to eat, Ruth?”
The woman shook her head. “I’d just like to go home.”
She still wore the clothes she’d been arrested in, the black-and-white waitstaff outfit. Splotches of red spattered her shirt. And she smelled from her time in jail.
“Of course you do,” Dobie said. He dismissed the young man with a silent nod, and Davis or Dallas disappeared through the door. “Of course. And you will. I promise. I’ll see to it myself. I’ll even pay your bus ticket.”
Tears sprang to the poor woman’s eyes. “Thank you, sir,” she whispered. “You’ve been so kind. You’ve paid my bail, everything. I don’t know what to say.”
But Matthew Dobie did. Ruth Gellico had worked out well. Better than he could have imagined. She’d generated the headlines he needed, kept the media attention focused. The world was falling into a devil’s pit. Whoring and killing was sport, and everyone wanted a piece of the action.
“It is I who should be thanking you, Ruth.” He patted her hand. “For your heroic deed. We all owe you a debt of gratitude. You’re a brave woman,” he said sympathetically. Always be sympathetic. “A very brave woman.”
The familiar stench hit Ray the minute he walked through the door of the downtown police headquarters. Puke and disinfectant, the perfume of the criminal justice system.
“Nice,” Gillian said, clearly meaning the opposite. “You miss this?”
“Never been to night court?” He nodded over his shoulder to a door in the corner by the front of the building.
“Haven’t had that supreme pleasure.”
“Oh, well, and here I was thinking you’d done everything.”
A black-skinned woman in a flowing orange robe came through the night court door accompanied by two small children dressed American style in jeans. They ran ahead, and she snapped at them in a language too exotic for Ray to place. Off to the side, two men and a woman were in a heated discussion in Spanish. Lounging against a wall was a lanky guy with a Unabomber beard. Skinny, pants drooping, layers of shirts under a shapeless coat. He smiled as Ray escorted Gillian past. One of his front teeth was missing.
Outside the glass front doors over Gillian’s shoulders, more people congregated. Sitting on the concrete benches. Smoking. Waving court papers at each other.