Ricochet

Chapter 11

WHEN THE HIGH-PITCHED WARNING BEEP SIGNALED THAT A main door of the house had been opened, Elise swiftly left her bedroom. She’d reached the top of the stairs when she heard the chirps indicating that the code was being entered. Cato was home.

He appeared in the foyer below her. She called his name. He looked up and saw her poised there at the top of the staircase. “Hello, Elise. You’re still awake. Why am I not surprised?” Rather than coming upstairs, he proceeded down the foyer, disappearing from her sight.

Her meeting with Savich had left her shaken. Meetings with Savich always did.

When she’d returned home, the house was empty. Mrs. Berry was off on Saturday evenings, so Elise hadn’t expected to find her there. But it surprised her that Cato wasn’t. As evening turned to night, she called his cell phone several times but got only his voice mail. He hadn’t responded to her messages.

It was uncharacteristic of him not to keep in touch. It was also a bad omen. She passed the entire evening and into the wee hours in a state of high anxiety, wondering what Duncan Hatcher had told her husband.

She quickly descended the staircase. “Cato?”

“In here.”

She followed the direction of his voice into the kitchen. As she entered, he turned to face her with a butcher knife in his hand. She looked from the gleaming blade to him. “What are you doing?”

“Making a sandwich.” He moved aside, allowing her to see the ham on the countertop, along with fixings for a sandwich. “Would you like one?”

“No, thank you. Wouldn’t you rather have breakfast? I could make-”

“This will do.” He turned back to carving slices off the ham.

“I’ve been calling your cell phone all night. Where have you been?”

“Didn’t you get the message?”

“No.”

“I asked the receptionist at the club to call and tell you that I’d been invited into a high-stakes poker game and that it would be late before I got home.”

He reached around her for the telephone, depressing the button that put it on speaker. The static dial tone indicated that no messages were waiting to be retrieved. “Hmm. That’s odd. She’s usually reliable.”

Elise doubted he’d ever made the request to the receptionist. If he’d wanted to assuage her concern, why hadn’t he just called her himself?

He built his sandwich and halved it with the butcher knife. “What time did you get home, Elise?”

“Around five, I think. After leaving you at the club, I got a call from the dress shop, telling me that my alterations were ready. I went to pick them up, did some shopping.”

That much was the truth. But before going to the boutique where she often shopped, she’d driven to the edge of town to the White Tie and Tails Club to meet Robert Savich.

He put the sandwich on a plate and carried it to the table in the breakfast nook. “Buy anything?”

“A pants suit and a cocktail dress.”

He licked a dollop of mayonnaise off his finger. “You can model them for me later.”

“I think you’ll approve.” She sat down across from him, studying his expression, trying to make eye contact, which he was avoiding. “You’ve never stayed out all night before. Not once since we’ve been married.”

He chewed a bite, blotted his mouth. “Not since we’ve been married have I had a day like yesterday.”

He took another bite, chewed, blotted his mouth again. And he still wouldn’t look at her. She was in an agony of suspense.

“My conversation with Duncan Hatcher was most upsetting.”

Her throat closed.

“Even Kurt the massage Nazi couldn’t work out the tension in my shoulders and back.” He took another bite.

“What did he say to upset you? What did you talk about?”

“Our relationship. Yours and mine, not mine and his,” he added, flashing a humorless smile.

“Our relationship is none of his business.”

Then he did look at her directly. “Maybe he thinks it is.”

“Why would he?”

“You tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Cato. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Twice now I’ve come upon you two with your heads together, lost in conversation. The night of the awards dinner. And again today at the club. I didn’t like it either time.”

“The night of the awards dinner, he was a stranger asking me for change. Today, when I left the powder room, he was in the hallway, looking for you.”

His dark eyes searched hers. “I wasn’t that hard to find today. And he could have asked a dozen other people for change that night. He’s deliberately putting himself in your path. You must sense why, Elise. You can’t be that naive.”

“You think Hatcher is interested in me romantically?”

He scoffed. “No romance about it. He’d love to sleep with you only to make a fool of me.”

Cato had stayed away all night out of pique and jealousy. She felt her lungs expanding with relief.

“That would be the ultimate payback for my putting him in jail, wouldn’t it?” he said. “To seduce my wife?”

Although Duncan Hatcher had said as much to her the night of the awards dinner, she smiled and shook her head. “You’re wrong, Cato. He has no interest in me outside his investigation.”

“What man could be immune to you?”

She smiled at the flattery.

“But what about you, Elise?”

“What about me?”

“What do you think of the detective?”

“You have to ask?” She placed her hand on his forearm where it rested on the table and squeezed it lightly. “Cato, since the night of the shooting, Detective Hatcher has done nothing but bully me. I dread the sight of him.”

His features relaxed. “I’m glad to hear that.” Pushing aside his plate, he reached across the table and stroked her cheek. “Let’s get in the pool.”

“Now? You just ate, and it’s nearly dawn. Aren’t you too tired to swim?”

“I’m wide awake. Apparently, so are you. And I didn’t say I wanted to swim.”

He took her hand and they walked outside together. She reached for the switch that turned on the pool light and the fountain in its center. He said, “No, leave them off.”

He stripped to the skin. It was evident that he wasn’t at all tired. He came to her, untied the belt of her robe, and pushed it off her, along with her slip-type nightgown. He ran his hands over her, possessively and with more aggressiveness than usual.

She responded as expected, but her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking of Duncan Hatcher. He hadn’t betrayed her to Cato. Did that mean he believed her? Even a little?

Cato took her hand and pulled her down the steps into the pool. He clasped her around the waist and waded in until she could no longer touch bottom. As her body floated against his, she noticed that here in the center of the pool, the water was deep and dark. Like secrets.

“ Duncan?”

He grunted a semblance of a response.

“That’s yours.”

“Hmm?” He lifted his head from the pillow and opened one eye.

“Your cell phone is ringing.”

“Oh. Thanks.” He rubbed sleep from his eyes with one hand and reached for his phone with the other. He flipped it open. “Yeah?”

“Guess who they hauled in last night and is still in a holding cell?”

“What time is it?” he grumbled, trying to pull the numbers of his alarm clock into focus.

“Gordon Ballew.”

“Who?” How was it that DeeDee didn’t sound groggy even on a Sunday morning?

“Gordie,” she exclaimed. “Gordie Ballew. One of Savich’s boys.”

“Got it.” With a groan, he rolled onto his back and sat up. The woman who’d been sleeping beside him was already up and across the room, gathering her clothing and pulling it on. “What did he do?”

“Who cares?” DeeDee said. “So long as we can get him in a bargaining mood. Meet you there.”

She hung up before he could say anything more. He returned his cell phone to the nightstand and swung his feet to the floor. “Sorry, but I’ve got to run. Work.”

“It’s all right,” she said as her head popped through the neck of her top. “I’ve got to go anyway.”

He’d met her in one of the hot spots in Market Square last night. She was petite, pretty, and brunette. That was the sum total of what he knew about her. She’d told him some stuff, but the music had been loud, the drinks strong, and he hadn’t really been listening anyway because he hadn’t been that interested in anything she had to say.

He remembered none of their conversation, not even her name. He didn’t specifically recall inviting her back to his place, but he must have. As for the act itself, the only thing he remembered was that he’d made sure to use a condom. Immediately after rolling off her, he’d fallen into a deep sleep.

It wasn’t like him to bring home a stranger, but he’d thought that having sex, even mindless, meaningless sex, would keep him from thinking about Elise Laird.

Silly him.

His distraction must have made itself felt, and that was unfair to any woman. Feeling rotten about it, he said, “Look, you don’t have to race out of here just because I do. Stay. Sleep. Make yourself at home. If this doesn’t take too long, we could go out for breakfast later.”

“No, thanks.”

“Well, then, leave your number.” He tried to inject his voice with a bit of enthusiasm, but was pretty sure he didn’t achieve it. “I’d like to see you again.”

“No, you wouldn’t, but that’s cool.” She moved to the door, where she turned back and smiled. “You were a good fuck. Savich said you probably would be.”

Gordon Ballew was one of those individuals who’d been doomed before he took his first breath. His mother hadn’t been sure who his father was and didn’t consider that it mattered much since she didn’t keep the baby anyway.

Not even a barren couple desperate for an adopted child wanted one with a cleft palate, so from the delivery room Gordie had become a dependent of the state, shuttled from one foster home to another until he was old enough to exit the system and try and fare on his own.

His entire life had been an endless round of ridicule and abuse because of his deformed mouth, defective speech, and diminutive size. Today, at age thirty-three, he might weigh 120 pounds, sopping wet.

Duncan would have felt sorry for Gordie Ballew, except for the fact that he had never tried to improve his lot, had never attempted to reverse the downward spiral that his life had been since he wormed his way out of the birth canal.

Once he bade his last set of foster parents good-bye, he’d been in and out of penal institutions so many times that Duncan figured Gordie considered a cell block home.

He watched him thoughtfully on the video monitor in the room adjacent to the interrogation room, where a member of the counter-narcotics team had been hammering away at him for several hours, without success.

“Has the DEA been notified?”

Another narcotics officer shook his head and gave a sour harrumph. “They’ve been such bastards, blaming us ’cause Freddy Morris got popped, I figure we don’t owe them this.”

“Did we cause Freddy Morris to get popped?” Duncan asked.

“Hell no,” the officer answered with soft but angry emphasis.

“Savich got him past you. All of you.”

The officer grunted agreement without accepting blame. “I don’t see how he coulda done that.”

“He couldn’t,” Duncan said. “Not without help.”

The narc looked at him sharply. “From inside? Are you saying somebody on our team ratted us out?”

It was a touchy subject, one that had been broached before to a barrage of protests from both teams. It was something constantly in the back of Duncan ’s mind, but he dropped it for now.

“Where’s Ballew’s lawyer?”

“Waived one,” the narc told him. “Said he was ready to sign a confession, go straight to jail, do not pass Go.”

DeeDee had been practically dancing in place with impatience. “Are we going to get a crack at him, or what?”

“Be our guest,” the narc said.

As they moved toward the interrogation room, DeeDee asked Duncan, “Were you good cop or bad cop last time we questioned Gordie?”

“Bad. Let’s stick with that.”

“Okay.”

The narc opened the door to the small, dreary room and told the interrogating officer that he had a phone call. “Besides, homicide has a hard-on for our boy here.”

“Homicide?” Gordie squeaked.

The narcotics officer stepped aside to make room for Duncan and DeeDee. “He’s all yours. Y’all have fun.” He strolled out and let the door swing closed behind him.

“Hi, Gordie.” DeeDee took a seat across the small table from him. “How are you?”

“How’s it look?” he mumbled.

Ignoring the attitude behind his reply, she introduced herself by name. “Remember us? My partner there is Duncan Hatcher.”

“I know you.” Gordie cast a wary glance toward Duncan where he was leaning up against the wall, arms folded over his chest, ankles crossed.

“Didn’t the narcs get you anything to drink? What would you like?” She moved as though to get up.

“Sit down, DeeDee,” Duncan said. “He doesn’t need anything to drink.”

DeeDee frowned at him with feigned asperity and dropped back into the chair. “You picked the wrong time to get busted, Gordie. Duncan ’s pissed. He had plans for this morning, but now he’s here with you.”

“Don’t let me keep you, Detective.”

The con’s cheeky courage was short-lived. He shriveled under Duncan ’s hard glare. “Let’s stop screwing around,” he said to DeeDee, “book him for murder two, and I can be on my way.”

“The guy died?” Gordie squealed. “He wasn’t bleeding that much. Swear to God it was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt him that bad. He said something about my lip. I was high. It happened before I realized. Oh Jesus. Murder two? I’ll confess to assault, but…Oh Jesus.”

“Relax, Gordie.” Duncan ’s somber tone and the sinister way in which he pushed himself away from the wall and sauntered toward the table didn’t inspire relaxation.

Gordie Ballew began to cry, his knobby shoulders bobbing up and down.

“ Duncan, he needs a Kleenex,” DeeDee said kindly.

“No, he doesn’t.” Duncan sat down on the corner of the table.

Gordie wiped his running nose on his sleeve and looked up at him with patent fear. “He died? I barely swiped him with that broken bottle.”

“The guy you assaulted last night was treated and released.”

Gordie sniffed loudly. He gaped up at Duncan, then looked at DeeDee, who nodded encouragingly. “Then how come y’all’re talking murder two?”

“Another case, Gordie. Freddy Morris.”

His face, flushed with anxiety moments before, turned pale. He licked snot off his misshapen upper lip. His eyes began to dart between them, wild with fear. “You’re crazy, Hatcher. I didn’t have nothing to do with Freddy Morris. Me? You kidding?”

“No. I’m not kidding. You want to change your mind about that lawyer?”

Gordie was too upset for that to register. “I…I never shot nobody. I’m scared of guns. They make me nervous.”

“That’s why we’re not charging you with first degree. We don’t believe you made poor Freddy lie down in that marsh, cut out his tongue, and then popped him in the back of the head with a forty-five.” He pretended to fire a pistol and made a loud noise with his mouth.

Gordie flinched. “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

“You can hold it.”

“ Duncan,” DeeDee said.

“I said, he can hold it.”

She looked at Gordie with sympathy and raised her shoulders in a helpless shrug.

“Look, Gordie,” Duncan said, “we know, those narcs outside know, the Feds know, we all know you gave Freddy Morris over to Savich.”

“Are you nuts? Savich? He scares me worse than guns. If Freddy had been smarter, he would have been scared of him, too, and kept his trap shut.”

Duncan looked over at DeeDee with a complacent grin, as though expecting her to congratulate him for scoring a point. Too late, Gordie realized that he’d given himself away. Immediately he tried to rectify it. “At least that was the word on the street. I heard that Freddy Morris, uh, you know, was in conversation with y’all. I didn’t have personal knowledge of it.”

“I think you did, Gordie,” Duncan countered smoothly.

“No,” he said, shaking his head adamantly. “Not me. Un-unh.”

He squirmed in his chair. He wiped his damp palms on the thighs of his grimy blue jeans. He blinked hard as though clearing his vision.

Duncan let him stew for a moment, then said, “Tell me about Savich.”

“He’s a tough customer. So I hear. I only know him by reputation.”

“You work for him. You cook and sell meth for him.”

“I peddle some dope now and then, yeah. I don’t know where it comes from.”

“It comes from Savich.”

“Naw, naw, he’s a mechanic, ain’t he? Makes machines or something?”

“You think I’m queer, Gordie?” Duncan asked angrily.

“Huh? No!”

“Is that what you think?”

“No, I-”

“Then stop jerking me around. You’re not clever enough to outsmart me. You’re one of Savich’s most reliable mules. We’ve got schoolkids who testified at your last trial, Gordie, remember? They said under oath that they go to you for a sure score.”

“I admitted to dealing every now and then. Didn’t I?” He turned to DeeDee, frantically seeking her backing. “Didn’t you hear me just admit that?”

“You’re far too humble, Gordie,” Duncan said. “Savich depends on you to make addicts, future customers, out of children. You’ve introduced them to meth. You’ve got them raiding their folks’ medicine cabinets for boxes of Sudafed. You’re an asset to Savich’s operation.”

The little man swallowed hard. “Far as I know, his operation is that machine shop.”

“Are you afraid that if you talk about him to us, you’ll wind up like Freddy Morris did?”

“What I heard? I heard…I heard Freddy bought it over some woman. A guy, I don’t know who, did Freddy on account of he was banging his old lady. That’s the story I got.”

Duncan spoke softly, but with menace. “You’re jerking me around again.”

“I ain’t gonna say nothing about Savich,” the convict cried out, his voice tearing. He tapped the tabletop with a dirty, chipped fingernail. “You’ll never get me to say anything, neither. Not now, not ever.”

He appealed to DeeDee, whining, “Where’s the confession? Those first cops that arrested me? They said it would take a while to draw up the paperwork. Left me waiting here, and in come those narcs, harassing me. Now y’all. Just let me sign a confession saying I went at that guy last night with a broken beer bottle. Lock me up. I’m ready to take my punishment.”

“We could make a deal-” DeeDee began.

“No deal,” he said with a stubborn shake of his head.

“We could make this assault with a deadly weapon charge disappear like that.” Duncan snapped his fingers an inch away from Gordie’s flat nose. “Or we could lay several others on you. We might even ratchet this charge up to attempted murder. You’d do more time.”

“Fine. You do that, Hatcher,” he said, calling Duncan ’s bluff. “I’d rather go to jail than…Nothing,” he finished in a mumble.

“Than wind up like Freddy Morris?” DeeDee asked.

But even her seeming gentleness didn’t make a dent. She and Duncan continued with him for another half hour. He would not incriminate Savich. “Not even for spittin’ on the sidewalk,” he avowed.

They left him alone, not showing their weariness until they were out of the room. DeeDee slumped against the wall. “I’ve never had to try so hard to be nice. I wanted to wring it out of the little jerk.”

“You were convincing. Even I thought you were turning soft.” Duncan was teasing, and she knew it, but neither was in the mood for levity.

“Y’all did the best you could,” said one of the narcotics officers gazing morosely at the video monitor, where Gordie could be seen gnawing at a bleeding cuticle. “Can’t say as I blame him. Freddy Morris had his tongue cut out. Savich got to Chet Rollins in prison. Somebody crammed a bar of soap down his gullet. He died slow. And that Andre…what was his last name?”

“Bonnet,” Duncan supplied.

“No sooner had the DEA struck a deal with him to testify against Savich than his house blows up, his mother, his girlfriend, and her two kids in there with him.”

“Savich got a hung jury and that screwup ADA ruined us for a retrial,” Duncan said. “He got away with killing five people. The baby was three months old.”

“We thought we had Morris locked down tight,” the narc said, taking out his frustration on his chewing gum. “That Savich is one smart sumbitch.”

“He’s not that smart,” Duncan growled. “We’ll get him.”

“Doesn’t look like we’re going to get him with Gordie Ballew’s help,” the second narc said.

“Even if he made a deal with us, Gordie isn’t a good candidate.” They all looked to Duncan to elaborate on his statement. “First off, he’s scared shitless of Savich. He’d give himself away before you could set up the sting. Secondly, he’s resigned to spending most of his life behind bars.

“In fact, I think he wants to. Why would he risk dying violently by ratting out Savich, when he can be guaranteed three squares a day and a home where everybody else is just as bad off as he is? For someone as pathetic as Gordie, that’s about the best deal available.”

They all muttered agreement of sorts. Duncan and DeeDee left the others to wrap up getting Gordon Ballew’s confession to the assault charge.

“Who do we know I could get to sweep my house for electronic bugs?”

By tacit agreement, Duncan and DeeDee had regrouped in his office. She was opening a can of Diet Coke when he asked his surprise question, nearly causing her to spill the drink.

“You think your house is bugged?”

He told her about his overnight guest.

She listened, her mouth slack with disbelief. “Duncan, you stupid-”

“I know, I know.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I was an idiot. I confess. But it happened. Now I’ve got to do some damage control.”

“She could have killed you.”

“Savich is saving that particular honor for himself. This was just another taunt, his way of letting me know how vulnerable I am.”

“Was she worth it?”

“I don’t even remember,” he admitted. “I didn’t know anything until you called and woke me up. When she dropped that bombshell, I bounded out of bed and chased her downstairs. She struck off down the sidewalk at a run. I would’ve gone after her, but realized I was bare-assed, unarmed, and that possibly that was the plan. Savich could be waiting out there in the bushes, ready to pop me the minute I appeared. So I went back in, got my weapon, and searched the house, thinking he might be inside. He wasn’t, of course. Far as I can tell, nothing was disturbed.”

“Except her side of the bed.”

“You couldn’t resist, could you?”

“Did she take anything?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t notice anything missing. But while I was asleep she might have planted some kind of surveillance equipment in my house. I want it checked as soon as possible.”

Within half an hour, they’d run down a surveillance expert who sometimes did contract work for the department. He promised to do the sweep later that morning. Duncan gave him the location of his hidden key as well as the code of his alarm system, which he’d changed before leaving the house.

As he concluded the call, DeeDee stacked her hands atop the mass of steel wool that passed for hair, and sighed with resignation. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Send me to my room?”

“Did you at least use a condom?”

“I did.”

“Well, that’s something. And you’re being conscientious about setting your house alarm. That’s good. But from now on, get references before you take a woman to bed, okay? If Savich is-”

“Cato Laird lied to us.”

She dropped her hands from her head. “I thought we were discussing Savich.”

“Now we’re discussing the Lairds.”

“You learned something yesterday after sending me away from the country club, didn’t you? You fibbed when you told me nothing came out of your locker room chat with the judge. Waste of time, you said.”

He’d called her on his cell phone from the taxi he’d taken from the club to his town house. “Yeah, I fibbed.”

“How come?”

“Because I wanted to take an evening off.”

“Look how that turned out,” she said drolly.

“I knew if I even hinted that I’d learned something potentially important, neither of us would have had a night off, and in my estimation, both of us needed one.”

“I could kill you,” she snarled. “But not before you tell me what you found out.”

“He lied to us about Meyer Napoli.”

He recounted everything Judge Laird had told him about hiring the private investigator to follow Elise. “He’s so crazy in love, he doesn’t care that their marriage has cost him the respect of friends and associates. Possibly even his next reelection. They share a passionate sexual appetite for each other. Even though she had an affair, he loved her too much to confront her with it. It’s over. History. The marriage remains intact. Everyone’s happy.”

“She doesn’t know that he hired Napoli?”

“He says she doesn’t.”

“So the lady was telling the truth when she claimed she’d never heard of him.”

“I guess.”

“And the judge is convinced the affair is over?”

“Oh, it’s over, all right.”

DeeDee looked at him quizzically.

“Mrs. Laird’s lover was Coleman Greer.”