Ricochet

Chapter 8

THE CREPE MYRTLE TREE WAS DRIPPING MOISTURE AND SO WAS Duncan. Elbows locked, his arms were braced against the smooth tree trunk, his body at an almost forty-five-degree angle from it as he stretched out his left calf muscle.

His head was hanging between his arms. Sweat dripped off his face onto the lichen-covered brick sidewalk in front of his town house. The sidewalk was buckled from roots of live oaks that lined the street and formed a canopy above it. He was grateful for the shade.

Breaking with tradition, he’d gotten up early and had decided to go for a run, before the sun was fully up, before it pushed the temperature from the eighties at six thirty into the nineties by nine. Even so, each breath had been a labored gasp. The air was as dense as chowder.

Most people were sleeping in this Saturday morning. In the next block a woman was watering the ferns on her porch. Earlier, Duncan had seen a man walking his dog in Forsyth Park. Few cars were on the streets.

He switched feet to stretch his other calf. His stomach growled, reminding him that he’d forgone the carry-out fried chicken last night, opting to come straight home after leaving Meyer Napoli’s office. While there, he’d lost his appetite and had skipped supper altogether.

He’d tried to get interested in a baseball game on TV. When that failed, he moved to the piano, but his playing had been uninspired and for once hadn’t helped him sort through his disturbing thoughts. He’d slept in brief snatches between long periods of wakefulness. Still restless at dawn, he’d kicked off the annoying bedsheet and gotten up, his mind in as much of a tangle as it had been the previous evening.

“Detective Hatcher?”

With a start, he turned. She was standing no more than three feet away. His heart rate, which during his stretches had returned to a normal, post-exercise rhythm, spiked at the sight of her.

He looked past her, almost expecting someone to be there playing a practical joke on him. He couldn’t have been more surprised had there been a rowdy group with balloons and noisemakers having fun at his expense.

But the sidewalk was empty. The woman who’d been watering her ferns was no longer on her porch. There was no sight of the dog and his owner. Nothing, not a single leaf, moved in the thick air. Only his rushing breath disturbed it.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Didn’t you read my note?” she said.

“Yeah, I read it.”

“Well then.”

“It’s a bad idea for us to meet alone. In fact, this meeting just concluded.”

He moved toward the steps of his town house, but she sidestepped to block his path. “Please don’t walk away. I’m desperate to talk to you.”

“About the fatal shooting at your house?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I’m interested to hear what you have to say. I have an office. Give me half an hour. Detective Bowen and I will meet you there.”

“No. I need to speak to you privately. Just you.”

He steeled himself against her soft-spoken urgency. “You can talk to me at the police station.”

“No, I can’t. This is too sensitive to talk about there.”

Sensitive. A bothersome word for sure. He said, “The only thing you and I have to talk about is a dead and dissected Gary Ray Trotter.”

A few strands of pale hair had shaken loose from a messy topknot. The hairdo looked like an afterthought, something she had fashioned as she rushed out the door. She was dressed in a snug cotton T-shirt and a full skirt that hung from a wide band around her hips, the hem skimming her knees. Leather flip-flops on her feet. It was a typical summertime outfit, nothing special about it, except that she was the woman inside, giving shape to the ordinary clothing.

She nodded toward the steps leading up to his front door. “Can we go inside?”

“Not a chance.”

“I can’t be seen with you,” she exclaimed.

“Damn right you can’t. You should have thought of that before you came. How’d you get here anyway?”

“I parked my car on Jones.”

One street over. That’s how she’d managed to come up behind him unheard and unseen until she’d wanted to be. “How’d you know where I live?”

“Telephone directory. I thought the A. D. Hatcher listed might be you. What’s the A for?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “I took a huge risk by coming here.”

“You must enjoy taking risks. Like passing me the note practically under your husband’s nose.”

“Yes, I risked Cato seeing it, and I risked you giving me away. But you didn’t. Did you show my note to Detective Bowen?”

He felt his face grow warm and refused to answer.

“I didn’t think you would,” she said softly.

Embarrassed and angry, he said, “What did you do, sneak out on the judge this morning? Leave him sleeping in your bed?”

“He had an early tee time.” She came a step closer. “You’ve got to help me. Please.”

She didn’t touch him, but she might as well have for the heat that gathered in his crotch. “Groin tug,” he remembered DeeDee saying. Pretty accurate description. He wished he was dressed in something more substantial than nylon running shorts.

“I will help you,” he said evenly. “It’s my duty as a law officer to help you, as well as to resolve the case involving you. But not here and not now. Give me time to clean up. I’ll call Detective Bowen. We’ll set a time to meet. Doesn’t have to be at the police station. You name the place, we’ll be there.”

Before he was finished, she had lowered her head and was shaking it remorsefully. “You don’t understand.” She spoke barely loud enough for him to hear. “I can’t talk about this to anyone else.”

“Why me?”

She raised her head then and looked up at him meaningfully. Their gazes locked and held. Understanding passed between them. The air shimmered with more than thermal heat.

For Duncan, everything receded except her face. Those eyes, as bottomless as the swimming hole he used to dive into headfirst, although he’d been warned that doing so was reckless. That mouth. Shaped as though giving pleasure was its specialty.

Suddenly the front door of the neighboring town house opened, alarming them. Elise slipped into the recessed doorway beneath his front steps where she couldn’t be seen.

“Good morning, Duncan,” the neighbor lady called as she retrieved her newspaper from the porch. “You’re up mighty early.”

“Getting in my exercise before it gets too hot.”

“My, my, you’re disciplined. But, honey, you be careful of this heat. Don’t overexert yourself, now.”

“I won’t.”

She retreated into her house and closed the front door. He ducked below the steps into the damp, cavelike enclosure, surprisingly cool and dim. It served as the entrance to a basement apartment that he had rented out when he’d first acquired the town house. His last renter had skipped out, owing him three months’ rent. He hadn’t bothered to lease it again. He missed the additional income, but rather liked having all four floors of the town house to himself.

Elise stood in shadow with her back pressed against the door.

“I want you away from here,” he whispered angrily. “Now. And don’t pass me any more notes. What is this, junior high? I don’t know what your game is-”

“Gary Ray Trotter came to our house to kill me.”

Duncan ’s rapid breathing sounded loud in the semi-enclosed area. The top of his head barely cleared the low brick ceiling, where ferns sprouted from cracks in the mortar. There was scarcely room enough for two people in the confined space. He was standing close enough to feel the hem of her skirt against his legs, her breath on his bare chest.

“What?”

“I shot him in self-defense. I had no choice. If I hadn’t, he would have killed me. That’s what he was sent to do. He’d been hired to kill me.” She’d spoken in a rush, causing the words to stumble over one another. When she finished, she paused and drew in a short but deep breath.

Duncan stared at her while he pieced together her hurried words so they would make sense. But even after making sense of them, he couldn’t believe them. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“Trotter was a hired assassin?”

“Yes.”

“Hired by who?”

“My husband.”

His phone was ringing as he ushered-more like pushed-Elise through the front door. He went around her and snatched up the phone, looking directly at her as he raised it to his ear. “Yeah?”

“Are you up?” DeeDee asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sound out of breath.”

“Just got in from a run.”

“I’ve had some ideas about what we learned last night.”

He continued to stare at Elise with single-minded concentration. She was watching him with equal intensity.

“ Duncan?”

“I’m still here.” He hesitated, then said, “Look, DeeDee, I’m dripping sweat, about to melt all over the living room floor. Let me shower, then I’ll call you back.”

“Okay, but be quick.”

As he disconnected, he realized that he’d made another ill-advised decision. Already he’d placed himself in a dangerously gray area by not telling DeeDee about the note. Now he’d omitted to tell her who was in his living room, making unreasonable claims about a crime they were investigating. In both instances, he had violated police procedure and his personal code of ethics. Somewhere along the way he knew he would be held accountable.

It made him terribly angry at the woman responsible for his misconduct and for the conflicting emotions that assailed him every time he was near her. And even when he wasn’t.

As he dropped the phone back onto the end table, she said huskily, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I’m still a cop with a dead man in the morgue, and you’re the lady with a smoking gun in her hand.”

“Then why didn’t you tell your partner that I’m here?”

“I’m feeling generous this morning,” he said, with much more flippancy than he felt. “Especially toward damsels in distress.” In a measured tread, he walked toward her. To her credit she stood her ground and didn’t back away. “That’s the angle you’re playing, isn’t it?”

“I’m not playing an angle. I came to you because I don’t know what else to do.”

“Because you see me as a sucker.”

“You’re a policeman!”

“Who said he wanted to fuck you!”

She was taken aback by his bluntness, but recovered quickly. “You told me that remark had more to do with my husband than with me.”

“It did,” he said, wondering if she believed that. Wondering if he did. He continued forward, forcing her to walk backward. “But when you got yourself in a jam, you remembered it. You killed a man, for reasons yet to be discovered. But, lucky you, the detective investigating the fatal shooting thinks you look good enough to eat.”

By now he had her against the wall, and they were standing toe to toe. He planted his hand near her head and leaned in close. “So to turn me all squishy with sympathy and blind to your guilt, you invent this story about a killer for hire.”

“It’s not a story. It’s the truth.”

“Judge Laird wants an instant divorce?”

“No, he wants me to die.”

The conviction with which she spoke gave Duncan momentary pause. She took advantage of it to step around him. “Maybe you should rinse off.”

“Sorry. You’ll just have to put up with the stink.”

“You don’t smell bad, but doesn’t the drying sweat itch?”

Reflexively he scratched the center of his chest. The hair there had become matted and salty. “I can stand it.”

“I’ll be glad to wait for-”

“Why does your husband want you dead?” he asked, speaking over her. “And why is it a big secret you can only tell me?”

She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them and said, “I came to you with this, sought you out personally, because I sensed you would be more-”

“Gullible?”

“Receptive. Certainly more so than Detective Bowen.”

“Because I’m a man and she’s a woman?”

“Your partner comes across as hostile. For whatever reason, our chemistry isn’t very good.”

“By contrast, you think our chemistry is?”

She lowered her gaze. “I felt…I thought…” When she raised her head and looked at him, her eyes were imploring. “Will you at least listen with an open mind?”

He folded his arms over his chest, fully realizing that it was a subconscious, self-protective gesture. When she looked at him like that, her eyes seemed to touch him, and his physical reactions were as though she actually had.

“Okay, I’m listening. Why does your husband want you dead?”

She took a moment, as though collecting her thoughts. “You and Detective Bowen picked up on the alarm not being set.”

“Because you and the judge had sex.”

“Yes. After, I tried to get up and set the alarm. But Cato wouldn’t let me leave the bed. He pulled me back down and…”

“I get the picture. He was horny.”

She didn’t like that remark. Her expression changed, but she didn’t address his vulgarity. “Cato didn’t want the alarm to be set that night. He wanted Trotter to get into the house. After I was dead, he could truthfully say that it was part of my routine to set the alarm and that he had prevented me from doing so. He would say that he would never forgive himself, that if only he had allowed me to leave the bed, the tragedy would have been prevented. He would assume responsibility for my murder and, by doing so, win everyone’s pity. It’s a brilliant strategy. Don’t you see?”

“Yeah, I see. But when you were in the kitchen and heard the noise, why didn’t you call 911, get help immediately?”

“I didn’t know how much time I had.” She answered quickly, as though she’d known he would ask that and needed to have a response ready. “My instinct was to protect myself. So I took the pistol from the drawer in the foyer table.”

Duncan tugged on his lower lip as though thinking it through. “You wanted the pistol in case Trotter attacked before you could make the 911 call.”

“I suppose that’s what I was thinking. I’m not sure I was thinking at all. I merely reacted. I was afraid.”

She dropped down onto the piano bench and covered her face with her hands, massaging her forehead with the pads of her fingers. This position left the nape of her neck exposed and Duncan ’s gaze found it, just as it had the night of the awards dinner. He blinked away the vision of kissing her there.

“You were afraid,” he said, “but you found the courage to go into the study.”

“I don’t know where I got the courage. I think maybe I hoped I was wrong. I hoped that what I’d heard was a tree branch knocking against the eaves, or a raccoon on the roof, something. But I knew that wasn’t it. I knew that someone was in there, waiting for me.

“I’d been expecting it for several months. Not a burglary, specifically. But something. This was the moment I’d been dreading.” She pressed her fist against the center of her chest, right above her heart, pulling the fabric of her T-shirt tight across her breasts. “I knew, Detective. I knew.” Whispering that, she raised her head and looked up at him. “Gary Ray Trotter wasn’t a thief I caught in the act. He was there to kill me.”

Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes as though concentrating hard, trying to work out the details in his mind. Actually, he had to do something to keep from drowning in those damn eyes of hers or becoming fixated on her breasts. He wanted to haul her up against him, kiss her, and see if her mouth delivered as promised. Instead, he pinched the skin between his eye sockets until it hurt like hell. It helped him to refocus. Some.

“Gary Ray Trotter hardly fits the profile of a hired assassin. Mrs. Laird.” He tacked on the name to reestablish in his mind who she was.

“I can’t account for that.”

“Try.”

“I can’t,” she said, her voice cracking.

He crouched down in front of her, and caught himself about to place his hands on her knees. They were face-to-face now, inches apart. From this close, he should be able to detect any artifice. Should be able to.

“Judge Cato Laird wants you dead.”

“Yes.”

“He’s a rich and powerful man.”

“That doesn’t exclude him from wanting to have me killed.”

“But he hires a bargain-basement assassin to do it?” He shook his head with skepticism.

“I know it sounds implausible, but I swear to you it’s true.”

He searched her eyes for signs of drug-induced paranoia or hallucination. None there.

Her husband doted on her, so it was unlikely that she was trying to spice up her mundane existence by creating some excitement.

Schizophrenia? Possibly. Compulsive liar? Maybe.

There was also a chance she was telling the truth, but the odds of that were so slim as to be negligible. Knowing Cato Laird, knowing Gary Ray Trotter, it just didn’t gel.

What Duncan suspected, what he believed with every instinct that had made him a good detective, was that she was trying to cover her own sweet ass, and that, because of what he’d said to her the night of the awards dinner, she was trying to use him to do it.

Why her sweet ass needed covering, he didn’t know yet. But, based on what he and DeeDee had discovered last night at Meyer Napoli’s office, he would soon find out. In the meantime, it pissed him off that she thought he’d be that easily manipulated, and he wanted to tell her so.

For the moment, however, he would continue to play along. “Implausible is precisely the word I would use, Mrs. Laird. I can’t wrap my mind around the idea of the judge contracting with someone as inept as Trotter.”

“All I know is this. If I hadn’t fired the pistol when I did-and I did not fire first, no matter how many theories to the contrary you parade out-I would be dead. Cato would have told this story about a burglar caught in the act, and who wouldn’t believe him?”

She stood up so suddenly she almost knocked Duncan over. “He’s a superior court judge. He’s from a wealthy, influential family. It would never occur to anyone that he would hire someone to kill his wife.”

“It certainly would never occur to me.”

His inflection brought her around slowly to face him.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, he would have to be crazy, wouldn’t he?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on,” he said, his voice as taunting as his smile. “What man in his right mind would want to get rid of a wife like you?”

She regarded him closely for several long moments, then said softly, with defeat, “You don’t believe me.”

His smile vanished and his tone turned harsh. “Not a goddamn word.”

“Why?” Her voice had gone thin. If he didn’t know better, he would swear she was genuinely perplexed.

To keep himself from falling for it, he gave a sardonic snuffle. “The judge has got himself a live-in topless waitress.”

She took a deep breath, the defeat settling on her even more heavily. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

“Because I worked topless, I’m automatically a liar, is that it?”

“Not at all. But it doesn’t particularly lend credence to your story, does it. I mean, the judge can look his fill, touch his fill, screw his fill, and he doesn’t have to tip. You’re every man’s wet dream.”

She continued to stare at him for several beats, her hurt and bafflement rapidly turning to anger. “You’re cruel, Detective.”

“I get that a lot. Especially from people who I know are lying to me.”

She turned her back to him and marched toward the door. He crossed the room in three long strides and caught her as she was fumbling with the latch. He grabbed her by the shoulders and brought her around.

“Why’d you come here?”

“I told you!”

“The judge hired Trotter to kill you.”

“Yes!”

“Bullshit! I’ve seen him with you. He can’t keep his hands off you.”

She tried to wrestle herself free of his grasp, but he wouldn’t let her.

“You’re his prized possession, Mrs. Laird. That six-carat marquise diamond on your left hand took you off the market and bought him whirlpool baths and second helpings in bed. And it’s all legal, tied up neat and proper with a marriage license. Now, why would he want you dead?”

She remained silent, glaring up at him.

“Why? If I’m to believe this sob story, I’ve got to hear a motive. Give me one.”

“I can’t!”

“Because there isn’t one.”

“There is, but I can’t risk telling you. Not…not now.”

“Why?”

“Because you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I might.”

“You haven’t believed anything else.”

“That’s right. I haven’t. Cato Laird has no motive whatsoever to kill you. You, on the other hand, have an excellent motive for coming here and trying to win me to your side.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t want me to learn the truth of what went down that night.”

“I-”

“Who was Trotter to you?”

“No one. I’d never seen him before.”

“Oh, I think you had. I think you knew who was waiting for you in the study, and that’s why instead of calling 911, you armed yourself with a loaded pistol, which, by the way, you knew how to fire with deadly accuracy.”

He lowered his face close to hers and said in a stage whisper, “I’m this close to booking you for murder.” That wasn’t true, but he wanted to see what kind of reaction he would get.

It was drastic. She went very still, very pale, and looked very afraid.

“Well, I see that got your attention,” he said. “Do you want to change your story now?”

She redoubled her efforts to break his hold. “Coming here was a mistake.”

“You’re damn right it was.”

“I was wrong about you. I thought you would believe me.”

“No, what you thought was that if you showed up at my place looking as inviting as an unmade bed, I’d forget all about poor old Gary Ray Trotter. And if one thing led to another and we wound up in the sack, I might drop the investigation of that shooting altogether.”

Furious now, she pushed hard against his chest. “Let go of me.”

He shook her slightly, demanding, “Isn’t that the reason for this secret meeting?”

“No!”

“Then tell me what possible motive Cato Laird could have for wanting to kill you.”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“I already did!”

She practically flung the words into his face and met his hot gaze with one equally fierce. Neither of them was moving now, except for the rise and fall of her chest against his. He was dangerously aware of that, damnably aware of every point at which they were touching.

“The only reason I came here was in the hope of convincing you that my husband is going to kill me.” Her voice was gruff with emotion, vibrating through her body into his. “And because you don’t believe me, he’ll do it. What’s more, he’ll get away with it.”