He raced down the aisle to the first of the sedans. Checked the plate against the number Genevra had given him. His heart sank. It was a match.
“I’ve got it. The car is here.”
“Thank God. So she’s all right?”
“I don’t know. The car is here, but Gillian isn’t. She never showed up inside.”
Gillian knew instantly that he didn’t have enough light, and it wasn’t the right kind. There were a few small Fresnels on stands, but the set was wide. He needed more intensity and better distribution. The color was off. She would have used a minimum of three key lights, probably four, plus fills. And a special for the body. There’d be scores of practicals inside the set itself. Maybe some under-thecounter stuff, something reproducing a central ceiling light. And, of course, the window. She usually tented a powerful HMI to create the ominous glow that was her specialty. She’d experimented with all kinds of material and found an Indian muslin gauze that worked best.
But she didn’t tell him that. Once the scene was set, it wouldn’t matter how it was lit. Not to her. Instead, she concentrated on the composition.
“Forget the kitchen,” she told him. “Put the table over by the window. Isolate that area and focus your light there.” She grunted, craning her neck to see the right side of the set.
When he didn’t respond, she thought she’d lost him. “Look, try it. You can always move everything back. You don’t want this to be like all the rest. It should be special. Unique. Larry King isn’t going to be interested otherwise.”
He brightened at the mention of the interview host. That senseless smile lit his face so he looked like a kid anticipating a birthday. “Larry King? Whooee, Miss Gillian!” He rubbed his hands together and giggled. “You think so?”
“He wanted me. Why not you? Except he’d want something new. Fresh.”
He thought about it. “I can always move it back,” he said, as if it was his idea, and she hadn’t just told him that.
She lay back while he lugged the table. The legs scraped against the floor, and she tried to breathe, but everything was jammed up inside. Then she remembered Ray’s technique and began counting. Catching her breath was hard at first, but after two attempts, she could feel herself steady, her heart rate down enough to think.
Typical of Ray to give her that. Steadiness. Calm.
She would have liked to stay a while with Ray, siphon off his strength and compassion, but Aubrey was finished moving the chairs, and she had to find something else for him to do. “Only two.” She shook her head. “This is someone who doesn’t have friends for dinner.”
He dragged the third and fourth chairs back across the room and out of the corner she was creating, giving her more time. More precious time to decide.
What would she do? Live or die?
“That good?” he asked, standing with his hands on his hips and looking it over critically.
“That’s perfect,” she said. If she’d been designing the photograph, there’d be a box of cereal on the table. Rice Krispies, maybe. And a quart of milk.
But she wasn’t designing a photograph. She was designing a deathbed. Her deathbed.
“How we going to do it?” Aubrey asked.
She licked her lips. More than dry now. Cracked. “I told you. I explained it. Makes no sense any other way.”
He put a hand on the gun in his tool belt. “I don’t know . . .”
She shrugged, or at least she tried to within the confines of the tape. “Well, okay, then.” She turned her head away, betting, hoping, laying it all down on the manipulation. “If you’re not sure . . .”
“There’s too much blood,” he whined. “I don’t like blood.”
“Fine, then. Get out your plastic bag, rev up the computer, and wave bye-bye to Larry King.”
“Okay, okay.” He looked uncertain, but that was better than ten minutes earlier when he’d been adamantly against her idea. His pink tongue flicked out between those sharp little teeth and rested on the corner of his mouth while he thought about it. “But, I want to do it.”
God, she felt sleepy. What a struggle to stay awake. To keep her brain working.
Patiently, she said, “Then it won’t be me doing it, will it, Aubrey? Then you can’t go on Larry King as the man who watched Gillian Gray die. You’d be the man who killed her. You do see the difference.”
Quick as a whip he was at her throat. “Don’t be nasty with me, Miss Gillian.” His fingers pressed inward. Lights danced around the edge of her sight. “Ain’t no cause to be nasty with me.”
“Sorry,” she managed to choke out. “I’m . . . sorry . . .” He shoved her away, and she coughed and wheezed.
“I’m having all kinds of second thoughts here,” he said viciously.
“Check the shot,” she croaked.
He stared at her malevolently.
“It’s good,” she told him. “Move the tripod and check it before you decide.”
Grudgingly, he did it. Laughed when he looked through the lens. “My, my, my, it does look all bright and pretty.” He hopped away, giggling with anticipation. “Okay, then.” Turned to her. “You ready?” He pulled out the gun. “I’m ready.” He drew in a sharp breath. “How you going to do it? Here?” He held the weapon to his temple. “Or here?” He held it underneath his chin. “Or . . .” He knelt and stroked her cheek with the muzzle. Forced her mouth open and slid it inside. “Here.”
The taste was dirty and metallic. She nearly gagged with terror. But again, she reached for Ray’s count. Breathe in. Two. Three. Four. Breathe out.
He chuckled. “Oh, I am so tempted, Miss Gillian.” But he slid the gun out of her mouth, chucked her under the chin with it. “How’s this? I’ll put one bullet in the chamber, one tiny little bullet. So you won’t see it coming. And then I shoot you with the camera as you shoot yourself.”
She swallowed, stomach grinding. She’d not expected this. She’d expected one decision. One shot, over and done.
“I’ll take all kinds of pictures,” Aubrey crooned. “As you sweat. As you learn what you so dearly want to know. What it’s like to stare Mr. Death in the face.” He smiled, pleased with himself. “How many times you think you can pull that trigger?”
She gave him a clear, direct look, though she had to clench her bound hands and stiffen her spine to do so. “I guess . . . we’ll find out.”
The Grays arrived at the museum before the police did, frantic and demanding. They burst into Will Davenport’s office, where Ray had already gathered the small crowd of people who’d arrived the first hour of the morning.
“What’s happened?” Chip boomed.
Will raised his hands in a calming gesture. “We don’t know yet.”
Dissatisfied, Chip pivoted away from Will and set his sights on Ray, who was leaning on Will’s desk.
“Where is my granddaughter?”
Coolly as he could, Ray said, “She made it to the parking lot. Something happened between arriving at the museum and getting inside.”
“What?” Chip demanded.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Suddenly, Genevra swayed and gripped the side of a chair to steady herself. “People don’t vanish, Mr. Pearce.” Her tone was icy as usual, but the quiver in her voice was unmistakable. “They just don’t disappear.”
“Chip,” Will said in a soothing voice. “Why don’t you and Genevra sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down!” Genevra’s voice wobbled on a shriek.
The outburst was greeted by an uncomfortable silence.
Finally, Ray said, “We were just going over some questions. Sit down and listen in. Maybe you’ll remember something that could help.”
Chip pulled out a chair for his wife, and, grudgingly, they both sat.
Ray turned to Will. “All right, you got here around—”
“Seven-fifteen.”
“How many cars were in the lot?”
He thought back. “I think three. I recognized Stephanie’s, and two others.”
“Did you see a gray BMW?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not positive, but I don’t think so.”
“Anything else?”
“A red car, I think. A minivan.”
Steve, one of the design team members, held up his hand. “That would be mine. Gotta pick the kids up from school today, so I switched cars with my wife.”
“Okay. We got Stephanie’s Honda, your minivan, possibly Gillian’s BMW.”
“I was there by seven-fifteen,” said Dan, the other design team member. “I’ve got an old green Volvo.”
“So that gives us our four.” Ray looked around the room. “Anyone see something else?”
The room went quiet. “I must have been the first in,” said the minivan driver, “because I didn’t see any of your cars.”
Genevra burst out, “Something has happened to Gillian, and we’re analyzing the parking lot!”
“Mrs. Gray—”
“No, I will not let this happen. Not again.” Her voice caught, and Chip sent her a pleading look.
Ray saw some kind of signal pass between the two of them. Chip asking, her refusing.
“What?” Ray rose, his attention suddenly focused on them. “What’s going on?” He waited, and the two older Grays seemed frozen. “If you know anything, anything about this—”
Chip’s shoulders slumped. He turned to Will. “Excuse us? Please. I’d like to speak to Mr. Pearce in private.”
“Don’t,” Genevra said to Chip. She rose stiffly to her feet. “Please. Don’t do this.” And now the plea was in her face.
“We no longer have that choice,” Chip replied gently. He gestured for the others to leave. “Will?”
Davenport looked at him curiously, but only said, “Yes, of course. We’ll wait in the curator’s office.” He ushered the three out and left Ray alone with the Grays.
Inside the now-cleared office, the air was charged. Ray looked between the two elder Grays. Chip had crossed to the window and was gazing out over the city. Genevra was clasping the back of her chair. Tense, white-knuckled.
Ray waited. It was like waiting for a land mine to explode. Your toes were on the trigger, and it was only a matter of time before you had to step off and detonate something. Your foot, your leg, your life. In this case . . . what?
“You had dinner with us,” Chip said at last. “You remember that?”
“Yeah.” Not likely to forget that evening.
“You asked about Gillian’s father.”
Inside, a little burst of surprise Ray was careful not to show. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t genealogy. “The dead one.”
“Yes, the dead one.”
Genevra Gray was naturally pale, her complexion that of the fair Southern beauty who never meets the sun without a hat. But now, she looked beyond pale. She looked ghostly.
“He isn’t dead,” she whispered. More like a croak.
Ray’s brows rose.
“He’s here, in town,” Genevra said. “And he wants money. A lot of money.”
Chip turned from the window, his hands in his pockets. He shrugged, defeated, embarrassed. “We’ve been paying him for years, but now . . .” He exhaled a hard breath. “It seems he wants more. And I . . . I refused him.” He hesitated, then drew himself up. “That’s when the first murder happened.”
A pulse in Ray’s throat began hammering. “Who is he?”
“He’s nothing. Nobody.” Chip waved a hand as if waving the man’s essence away. “A photographer. Runs a third-rate modeling agency, when he’s in the mood.”
Slowly, Ray said, “You’re telling me you think Gillian’s father, who, by the way, suddenly turns up alive, could be the killer? And you kept quiet about it?”
“We had good reason,” Chip said.
“Three women are dead!”
“Don’t take that tone,” Genevra snapped. “This man is weak and vile, a walking disaster—”
“Disaster? He’s a hell of a lot more than a disaster if he killed those women. If he’s stalking Gillian. If he has her now.”
Silence, rich with fear.
“At the least, you should have told her,” Ray said. “Years ago.” He thought of the decades of lying, the things Gillian had lost. Things whose value only she had the right to judge.
“Never,” Genevra said.
“He’s her damn father,” Ray roared. “She has a right to—”
“No,” Chip said adamantly. “She has no rights.”
Ray wanted to punch him. “Are you kidding? Who the hell do you think you—”
“He raped her mother!” Genevra cried.
Ray stared at her. Inside the office, time seemed to thicken and congeal. “He . . . what?”
Genevra gasped and clamped a hand to her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes, and she looked away.
“He . . . he assaulted her,” Chip said quietly. “Gillian was the result.”
Ray stood speechless.
They were all trapped in silence. No one moved. No one spoke.
Finally, Ray recovered his voice. “Start . . . start from the beginning. What happened?”
Chip sighed. He looked as gray as his name. “We didn’t know at first. Holland refused to reveal the father’s identity.” He looked down at his hands. Age spots covered the tops. “I’m not sure she told anyone.”
“Except the rapist?” Yeah, that made sense.