Ricochet

Chapter 16

ELISE AWOKE, SITTING BOLT UPRIGHT, GASPING FOR BREATH, heart racing.

One second, she’d been in a deep sleep, the next it was as though an alarm had sounded loudly in her head, awakening her with a jolt. Frantically she looked around, and although she was surrounded by darkness, she remembered instantly where she was, and why, and what had happened.

When Duncan had walked out, she’d been so distraught, she’d wept until she cried herself to sleep. She’d slept? She, the chronic insomniac, had fallen into a dreamless sleep? For how long? Half an hour? Longer? Even as she pulled on her tank top, she tried to read her wristwatch, but it was too dark to see the hands. Cato! What would she tell him?

Sweat had dried on her skin, making it feel tight and dry. She wiped her cheeks and felt the salty tracks of tears. She groped along the floor for her underwear. As she stepped into the panties, she realized that she needed to bathe before she saw Cato.

She grabbed her handbag and within seconds of waking up was feeling her way through the dark house, moving as quickly as possible. She must get home ahead of Cato. Otherwise how would she explain her absence? How would she explain her appearance?

There was only one explanation for that. If he looked at her, he would know instantly what she’d done.

God, please let him still be playing cards.

Whatever his mood, she must deal with it. Since Duncan had made plain his intention to follow through with his investigation, she had no choice now except to continue the pretense with Cato that their relationship was one of matrimonial bliss.

She let herself out the back door through which she had come in. The yard was a hardscrabble landscape of wild grass and weeds that chafed her bare legs as she crossed it in a run.

A gate in the cyclone fence at the back of the yard opened into the alley. It was a rutted, unpaved path lined with garbage cans and the detritus of an uncaring community-rusted-out appliances, old tires, discarded furniture, toys, tools, and trash.

The route back to where she’d left her car led her between the two houses that backed up to the one that Duncan had described as Boo Radley’s house. He didn’t know it, but To Kill a Mockingbird was one of her favorite movies. When she was a kid, she had watched it every time it came on TV. She’d probably seen every movie ever aired on television. Comedies, dramas, mysteries, she loved them all. They had been her escape from the grim reality of her life.

This neighborhood boasted several Boo Radley houses. The ones on either side of her were dark, nothing to indicate that she was being watched from behind shuttered windows. But just when she thought she would get past undetected, a cat jumped out from a scrawny hedge, causing her heart to leap. The cat hissed and bowed his back, then darted back into the shrubbery.

Her car was parked halfway down the block. She was relieved to see that none of the windows had been smashed and that the hubcaps were still there. Having her car vandalized would have been tough to explain to Cato.

Passing under a streetlight, she checked her wristwatch again, and when she saw the time, she almost stumbled on the uneven sidewalk. She’d been asleep for hours!

Frantic with anxiety, she dug into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. If it had rung, it hadn’t awakened her. She looked at the readout. Good! No missed calls had been logged.

When Cato had announced his plan to go to the country club, she had told him she was going to take a sleep medication and hopefully get some rest in preparation for the interrogation in the morning. At the risk of disturbing her much-needed sleep, he had said he wouldn’t call.

Well, at least he hadn’t called her cell phone. But he might have called the house.

She considered calling his cell phone to see where he was. If she caught him still at the club, she could say she was just checking on him. But if he was at home, he would demand to know why she wasn’t there, tucked in safe and sound. He would want to know what she was doing out at this hour when she was supposed to be enjoying a medicated sleep. Then what? What would she tell him?

No, better not to call than to risk being put on the spot like that. Her best chance of not being found out was to get home ahead of him. Toward that end, she jogged the remaining distance to her car.

She unlocked it with the remote. It chirped and her headlights flashed once, momentarily relieving the darkness along the deserted street, and reminding her of the strobe lights that had been pulsing during her most recent meeting with Savich.

She opened the car door, tossed her handbag into the passenger seat, and slid in behind the wheel. She hit the automatic lock button as soon as she had closed the door, then quickly started the car and drove away.

Best-case scenario: Cato was still at the club and had done as he said he would and left her to sleep undisturbed. He had played cards into the wee hours last Saturday. Perhaps he had again tonight. Hopefully he had.

A slightly more bothersome scenario: He was still at the club, but had been calling the house to check on her. If that was the case, she could explain that she’d taken two tablets of over-the-counter medication. Stronger than she thought, the sleep aid had knocked her out and she’d slept through his calls.

Worst-case scenario: Cato was at home angrily awaiting her return.

To explain her absence, she could say that despite the sleep aid, her insomnia had been so bad she’d gone out for a drive. That was lame, but at least credible.

But how would she explain the unmistakable signs of lovemaking? Duncan hadn’t been gentle. Neither had she.

“I don’t believe we get to choose who we fall in love with. Do you?”

He hadn’t said anything in response to her question. He hadn’t needed to. His expression had told her what she’d needed to know. What she already knew.

Once triggered, his passion had been explosive and mindless. It had left marks. Unless she was able to make repairs before she saw Cato, he would surely notice her tangled hair and wrinkled skirt, the whisker burns around her lips.

Checking to see if the abrasion was as visible as it felt, she glanced into the rearview mirror.

A face grinned at her from the backseat.

She cried out in shock and fear, and reflexively stamped hard on the brake pedal.

“Mrs. Laird. We’ve never actually met. Allow me to introduce myself.” With a flourish, the man proffered a business card, holding it between his index and middle fingers. “Meyer Napoli.”

After leaving Elise, Duncan had driven around aimlessly for a while. In search of what, he couldn’t say. Redemption, perhaps.

But it wasn’t going to be found driving the streets of the city, or in a bar, or the gym, or a movie theater, all of which he considered. He ended up at the Barracks.

Only one other detective was in the VCU. When Duncan came in, the officer made a joke of the late hours they were keeping. Duncan said something suitable in reply, then went into his office and closed the door, signaling that he didn’t want conversation.

In the back of his mind, he supposed he was thinking that if he was working on the case-actually seated at his desk reviewing the contents of the case file-then he could rationalize his private meeting with Elise.

Even after all that double-talk speculation about Savich, when he’d seen who was waiting for him inside that house, he could credibly say that he’d stayed only because he was in pursuit of the truth, a confession, new evidence. Something.

If he could convince himself of that, he could almost excuse himself for what had happened. For several hours he tried. But eventually he gave up the pretense. He’d stayed in that house because he’d wanted to be with her, not to make headway on the case. What had taken place on the dusty sofa could not be classified as police work.

Admitting it was liberating to some extent. But not entirely. He still had to grapple with the guilt.

As long as he was wallowing in his culpability, he’d rather do it in the comfort of home. He left the Barracks and drove the few blocks to his town house. By now it was as close to dawn as to midnight, but as soon as he got inside, he sought refuge in his piano.

He played rock and roll, country, and classics, but every tune had a funereal beat. The music didn’t salve his soul as it usually did. He soon quit trying to find comfort in it and lay down on his couch, placed his forearm across his eyes, and gave way to the remorse he’d been trying to outrun since leaving Elise.

It landed on him like an anvil.

On a professional level, there was no justification for what he’d done. He had been intimate with a suspect, probably the primo, numero uno no-no of law enforcement.

DeeDee and his fellow detectives would scorn him. His superiors would discipline him if not outright fire him. But no matter how severe their condemnation, it wouldn’t be as harsh as he deserved, or as severe as his self-condemnation. He had compromised an investigation. There was no forgiveness for that.

And even if that were forgivable, there was the other thing-Elise was married.

He’d been the typical preacher’s kid, out to prove that he was no holier than the other kids. Growing up, he’d habitually gone looking for mischief and usually found it.

During adolescence, he’d developed a real wild streak. The worst punishment he’d ever received was having to sit through two Sunday morning services so hungover from a Saturday night drinking binge that he’d wanted to cry. He’d had to leave the sanctuary three times to throw up a rancid blend of bile and apple-flavored wine cooler.

His dad had hoped the punishment would teach him a lesson. The experience had only taught him how to choose his liquor more wisely, how to avoid a hangover, and how to handle one if the avoidance tactics didn’t work.

Much to his loving parents’ despair, he was determined not to be different just because they were in the ministry, which made him even more adventurous than most teenagers. That applied especially to sexual exploration. He started early, and some of the most memorable of those experiences had occurred on church grounds. While the deacons were discussing the purchase of new pews or hymn-books with his father, he was coaxing kisses from their daughters in the choir room closet, where the robes were stored.

He copped his first feel of a breast at church camp. It was after the evening service, on the walk through the woods from the tabernacle back to the cabins. Two summers later, he lost his virginity in a similar fashion. The next morning when prayers of thanksgiving were said, possibly his was the most sincere.

He’d had some pretty crazy escapades during his college years, but who hadn’t? Maturity had made him more cautious and careful-last Saturday night being an exception.

He’d evolved from the horny college kid out to nail any coed who would say yes to a more responsible man who had a genuine liking and respect for women. No matter how long a relationship lasted, or didn’t, he tried to conduct himself honorably.

That included never poaching on another man’s claim. It most certainly meant never having carnal knowledge of another man’s wife.

For over forty years his parents had enjoyed a loving, stable, and happy marriage. There was no doubt in his mind that they were still madly in love and sexually active. The sanctity of the institution was a familiar theme of his dad’s sermons.

Duncan supposed, as hell-raising as he’d been, that particular moral lesson had stuck. Adultery was one commandment you didn’t break. You just didn’t go there. He’d never even been tempted.

But now, he’d taken a married woman, and he was ashamed of himself for it.

The real shame, however, was that, despite everything, he still wanted her.

That would be his punishment, knowing that he could never have her.

No matter how the investigation into the Trotter shooting was ultimately resolved, he would never have Elise.

And the investigation wouldn’t be left to him to resolve.

He wouldn’t be at that ten o’clock interrogation session. Because at nine thirty, he would be in Captain Bill Gerard’s office, admitting that, in regards to Mrs. Laird, he hadn’t been as objective as he’d claimed to be. Not even as objective as he wanted to be. He would make a full confession to Gerard, taking sole responsibility for what had happened, leaving Elise blameless.

He would ask Gerard not to tell Cato Laird why he was removing himself from the case, and Gerard would probably grant that request, not to spare him, but to spare the judge, Elise, and the police department a public scandal.

Gerard would take some disciplinary action, possibly even demand Duncan ’s badge. Tomorrow at this time, he might be out of a job. It was no less than he deserved.

There was one other person to whom he must confess. DeeDee. Other coworkers would speculate on why he was no longer serving in his capacity, and probably a few would guess correctly. But DeeDee needed to hear the truth from him. He owed her that. As his partner, and as his friend. Because as both partner and friend, she had warned him against letting his personal feelings for Elise interfere with their investigation. He doubted she would say “I told you so,” but even if she did, she’d earned that right.

Having resolved what he would do, he left his couch and trudged upstairs. Before he talked to DeeDee, it seemed only proper, and symbolic, that he wash away all vestiges of Elise.

In his bathroom, he reached into the shower stall and turned on the faucets, then took off his clothes. Surrendering to a moment of weakness, he held his shirt against his face. He inhaled the essence of her, which seemed woven into the fabric. Then he impatiently stuffed the garment into the hamper before he talked himself into saving it as some kind of romantic souvenir.

He stepped into the shower beneath the spray.

He had looked at what he’d done from a practical, professional, and moral standpoint, forcefully keeping his emotions at bay, fearing that they would prevent him from making the right decisions.

But the warm water of the shower dissolved his control. Moaning, he leaned against the tile wall and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. The ache inside his chest was guilt. He was suffering the torment of conscience. Regret had sunk its sharp teeth into him.

But he still wanted Elise with every breath he drew.

He couldn’t turn it off, this all-encompassing desire. Both tenacious and urgent, it was unlike anything he’d felt for any other woman. It had gripped him the instant he saw her, and tonight, having had her, it was even more acute than before.

Tomorrow he would atone. “I swear I will,” he vowed in a ragged whisper.

But tonight…

He closed his eyes tightly and let the recollections flow through his mind as freely as his blood surged through his veins. He remembered every detail, vividly. He relived every sound, smell, taste, every touch, every sensation he’d experienced. That first turbulent kiss. Discovering her wet for him. The last sweet ripple of her orgasm.

A raw groan escaped his tight throat. The warm water rained down over his body as a tide of sensation coursed through him, inexorably and uncontainably. As it spilled from him, he shuddered and permitted himself to say, with all the emotion he felt, what he hadn’t allowed himself to say before. “Elise. Elise.”

Towel around his waist, he walked from his bathroom into his bedroom and sat down on the bed. He was physically exhausted, but knew he wouldn’t be able to rest until he’d unburdened himself to DeeDee. This couldn’t keep till daylight.

He picked up his cell phone, took a deep breath, and before he could talk himself out of it, speed-dialed her number.

She answered on the first ring. “How’d you hear so fast? Did Worley call you, too?”

“Huh?”

“You know about Napoli, right?”

“ Napoli? No. What about him?”

“They found him on the Talmadge Bridge, deader than a hammer. I’m ten minutes from you.” She clicked off before he could say anything else.

For several seconds, he stared at the phone in his hand, wondering if the bizarre conversation had actually taken place or if he’d imagined it. Then, having assimilated what she said, he bounded off the bed and dressed hastily. He finger-combed his wet hair and jogged downstairs, only barely remembering to set the house alarm before leaving.

He was pacing the sidewalk in front of his town house when DeeDee turned the corner onto his street. He jogged to meet her. She stopped only long enough for him to scramble in, then sped away.

“You were farther than ten minutes out.”

“I stopped for coffee, Grumpy. Please don’t bother to thank me for being kind and considerate enough to guarantee that you get your minimum daily requirement of caffeine.”

She had a Big Gulp of Diet Coke wedged between her thighs, but he was too grateful for the coffee to remark on it.

“Are we still mad at each other?” she asked, looking at him out the corner of her eye.

He took a sip of coffee. “I wasn’t mad at you.”

“You were mad.”

“We had a difference of opinion. It happens. Even between people of like minds.”

“Well, I was mad at you.” He looked over at her. She shrugged. “First for sneaking off to Atlanta without me.”

“You wouldn’t like Tony Esteban. Trust me on this.”

“Then I was mad because you were being so mulish about Elise Laird. For a while there, I was afraid you’d gone round the bend. I was relieved when you decided to bring her downtown tomorrow. Or today, actually.”

“Wait, DeeDee. Before you give me too much credit, which I don’t deserve, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.” He hesitated, trying to find the words for his confession that wouldn’t send her into orbit. “Tonight I-”

“From the minute we walked into the Lairds’ house the night of the shooting, I’ve felt that something was out of joint,” she said. “I still do. Now this.”

“ ‘Now this’? What do you mean?”

She took the entrance ramp of the bridge too fast. Duncan, never entirely comfortable on the bridge, gripped the armrest and tried to keep from spilling hot coffee in his lap.

From just about any point in downtown Savannah, you could see the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge. That was especially true at night, when its well-lighted struts dominated the northern skyline of the city. Tonight, it was even more visible. At its crest, the flashing colored lights of several emergency vehicles had it lit up like the Fourth of July.

“Forensics is already here. Good,” DeeDee said, noticing their van. She brought the car to a halt and opened her door.

Duncan reached across the console and stopped her from getting out. “What did you mean by ‘now this’?”

She stuck out her hand, palm up. “I’m betting a hot fudge sundae against an egg white omelet that our dead Meyer Napoli is somehow connected to our dead Gary Ray Trotter.”

Duncan looked down at her open palm then reluctantly slapped it.

She was out of the car like a shot.

His confession would have to wait.

Meyer Napoli didn’t look as dapper in death as he had in life.

Vain as he was, Napoli would have hated making such a bad-looking corpse. His olive complexion had faded to the color of biscuit dough. It looked even paler in the flash of the crime scene photographer’s camera.

“Bled quarts on the inside, I bet,” Worley remarked around his toothpick and stepped aside to give Duncan and DeeDee a better view into the car, which was parked on the shoulder of the inbound lane.

Napoli was in the driver’s seat. His chin was resting on his chest; he had died gazing at the bullet hole in his upper abdomen and possibly wondering how a wound that small could wreak such havoc.

His hands were lying in his lap, palms up. They’d provided a reservoir for the blood that had trickled from the fatal wound. Perhaps he’d tried to contain the internal hemorrhage by pressing on the bullet hole, until he’d become resigned to the inevitable.

“Bullet must’ve passed through several organs,” Worley told them. “Bursting them like water balloons. He bled out.”

“Is that what Dothan said?”

“He hasn’t got here yet,” Worley replied, “but I’ve seen enough men gut shot to know what it looks like.”

“Did you find a weapon?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you looked?”

Worley removed his toothpick and sneered at DeeDee. “No, Detective Bowen. I’m a damn rookie. Would never occur to me to look for a weapon at a shooting.”

Duncan jumped in before they got into one of their verbal skirmishes. “No weapon rules out suicide.”

“Correct. Besides, this asshole was too conceited to off himself. But I’m guessing he may have been shot with his own pistol. He always carried a Taurus twenty-five in an ankle holster, with a bullet in the chamber.”

“Trusting guy,” DeeDee said.

“He bragged about it. One time I personally saw him pull up his pants leg and show it off.” Worley bent down and raised the cuff of Napoli ’s left trouser leg with the tip of a ballpoint pen. A holster was strapped to his ankle with Velcro. It was empty.

“Shell casing?” Duncan asked.

“No sign of one yet. And I’ve looked,” he added for DeeDee’s benefit. “Along with forensics. They checked under the car seat. Nothing.”

DeeDee said, “Time of death?”

“ Dothan will have to nail that. But the blood isn’t quite congealed, so I’m guessing not too long ago. Besides, it couldn’t have been too long because he would have been discovered sooner.”

“Crazy that he was shot here on the bridge,” Duncan said. “It’s brighter than a shopping mall on this damn thing. Anybody passing would have witnessed the shooting.”

“Struck me as strange, too,” Worley said. “I guess it was a crime of passion. Unplanned. The act of a moment. This time of morning, traffic’s light. Whoever plugged him got lucky. Shot him then boogied outta here before the next car came along.

“Of course, anybody driving past could have thought he was just broken down or something. He’s sitting up. No blood visible. It was actually a highway patrolman who found him. He stopped to tell him to get his car moving.” Signs were posted at regular intervals prohibiting standing, stopping, or parking on the bridge.

“You questioned the patrolman?”

Worley nodded. “He said, ‘What you see is what you get.’ ”

“Was the car door closed?”

“It was. Patrolman did a cursory check of the area after calling it in. No one else was around or near the car, he said. He didn’t see anything, and he didn’t touch anything except to open the door and he used a hankie to protect prints.”

Duncan looked at the corpse and noted something else. “Have you ever seen Napoli with a hair out of place?”

“Yeah, looks like there might have been a tussle,” Worley said. “He used that goo, you know, that kept every hair on his head plastered down.”

Napoli ’s hair was still greasy, but it looked like it had been hit by a hurricane-force wind. His necktie was askew. And yet he was sitting perfectly straight behind the wheel, both feet near the pedals.

Worley, never known for his sensitivity, said around a chuckle, “He’d hate having his picture taken looking like this, wouldn’t he?”

“Any other signs of a struggle?” Duncan asked.

“Heel marks over there by the railing. Might or might not be his. We won’t know until we can get his shoes off and compare, but Baker and his crew have roped off the scuff marks to check later, just in case.”

Duncan wasn’t fond of heights. He didn’t get nauseous and dizzy like someone with severe acrophobia, but he kept to the inside lane when driving over high bridges and overpasses, and he never went out of his way to hang suspended or to peer into deep gorges.

But he walked toward the wall of the bridge now, where forensics had placed orange traffic cones and yellow crime scene tape to form a perimeter around an area about fifteen feet square. Avoiding that, he stepped to the wall and looked down at the Savannah River two hundred feet below.

The tide was out, so the river was flowing toward the ocean. At high tide, it flowed in the opposite direction, something that puzzled tourists and newcomers until the phenomenon was explained to them. At the tidal mouth of the river, fresh water mixed with sea-water to form an estuary. The direction of the river current was dependent upon the tide. Because of all the crosscurrents, this stretch of the river, which was used as the shipping channel, was treacherous.

Duncan walked back to the others. “Attempted carjacking?” There had been a rash of them in the city. Often either the victim or the thief wound up dead.

“Here on the bridge where a pedestrian would be immediately suspect?”

“DeeDee’s right, Dunk,” Worley said, “this is something else. This isn’t even Napoli ’s car.” He grinned and shifted his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “That’s why I called y’all. This car is registered to Cato Laird.”