Ricochet

Chapter 19

“LIKE HELL HE’D DO THE RIGHT THING,” DEEDEE MUTTERED after the judge and Gerard were out of earshot. “He lied to us about Napoli in order to protect her. He may be lying now. He may know exactly what happened on that bridge.”

“I don’t think so.” Duncan was almost too weary to speak. He was certainly too exhausted to go toe to toe with DeeDee, who was wired and fidgety, partly from guzzling caffeine. She was also juiced over the startling events of the past night. Her eyes were unnaturally bright and restive as she looked over at him. “You don’t think he’s lying?”

“He may be lying about some aspects of this, but I don’t think he knows what happened on that bridge.”

“Who the hell does, except Napoli and the broad.” Worley had gnawed his toothpick into splinters and was patting down his pockets in search of the cigarettes he’d quit smoking two years ago. In times of stress, he reverted to the conditioned motions if not to the habit. “One of them is dead and the other one’s disappeared.”

“Which doesn’t distinguish it from most of our cases,” DeeDee remarked. “Name me one time we’ve found the doer standing over the do-ee with the weapon at his feet and his hands in the air.”

“Yeah, but in this case…”

Worley let the rest of his thought go unspoken as Gerard returned, saying as he came in, “Judge Laird is on his way home. Unhappily, but obediently.”

“What about the media?”

“They swarmed us. TV, newspaper, the whole shebang is outside. We gave them the standard ‘no comment,’ but soon we’ll have to make some kind of statement.”

“Will you clear that statement with Judge Laird and the chief?”

Gerard nodded. “In fact, Chief Taylor will probably want to conduct the press conference himself. Judge Laird is a respected community leader, high-profile public servant, a man with strong convictions and an unimpeachable reputation for fairness. He has the support of every law enforcement agency, and those agencies are working round the clock to locate Mrs. Laird.” He finished with a sigh. “So forth.”

“What will he say about Mrs. Laird being in the company of a disreputable character like Napoli in the middle of the night?” DeeDee persisted.

“Don’t have the vaguest,” Gerard replied. “It’ll be the public information office’s problem to give that particular element the right spin. My problem-our problem-is locating Mrs. Laird so we can solve this thing.”

“Mrs. Laird or her body,” Worley said.

Duncan ’s heart constricted. Thankfully DeeDee jumped on Worley’s statement, freeing him of having to comment immediately. “Are you sold on the scenario you laid out for the judge?”

“Not entirely,” Worley admitted.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “Because I think that if Napoli had been shot during a struggle over the pistol, Mrs. Laird would have dropped it in horror and called for help. I mean, wouldn’t you? Even if you were in a struggle for your life, and the other guy wound up getting shot, wouldn’t you try to get aid immediately and explain the circumstances under which he was shot?”

“That’s what she did with Trotter,” Duncan observed quietly. “We didn’t believe her story. Maybe she’s twice shy.”

“Which brings me to point B,” DeeDee said, undeterred. “If a person is involved in an accidental fatal shooting once in a lifetime, it’s bizarre, a quirk of fate, damned rotten luck. It’s happened to this lady twice in one week? Give me a break.”

“Dunk is talking out both sides of his mouth, DeeDee,” Worley said. “Your conclusion is the one we drew, too. We talked about it before we got here. Dunk and I agree that if Mrs. Laird was able to call for help after Napoli was shot, she would have called.”

“ ‘Able’ meaning what, exactly?” she asked.

“ ‘Able’ meaning alive,” Worley replied. “Or ‘able’ meaning innocent of any wrongdoing.”

“Option one would indicate that Napoli pushed her off the bridge at the exact instant she shot him.” DeeDee’s frown dismissed that as a remote possibility. “I’ll go with option two. Mrs. Laird gained control of the pistol, backed Napoli into the driver’s seat of the car, and plugged him in the stomach for all the trouble he’s caused her in recent months. She then fled on foot-”

“One foot,” Duncan interjected.

“-taking the pistol with her. Or throwing it in the river.”

“She commits murder and leaves a shoe behind for evidence?” Duncan said, angrily coming to his feet. “She ‘fled’ without taking her handbag, credit cards, cash?”

“Well, what do you think, then?” DeeDee fired at him.

“I-”

He closed his mouth with a soft click of his teeth. He didn’t know what he thought.

He didn’t want to think of Elise being so coldhearted that she had fatally shot two men in the space of a week to protect her marriage and lifestyle with Cato Laird.

But it was even worse to think of her foundering in the river before being dragged under by the wake of an oceangoing vessel.

Neither could he endure thoughts of her pleading for his help, and his refusing it, hours before she died by one violent means or another.

If they thoroughly analyzed that scrap of fabric from her skirt, they would find human skin cells, and at least some of them could belong to him. He recollected grabbing handfuls of that soft fabric and bunching it up around her waist, out of his way.

If they checked his shoes, they’d find gritty gray powder on the soles. He could tell Worley exactly where to find a sidewalk in such disrepair that it was crumbling into dust.

The matching gray residue found on Napoli ’s shoes was proof that he had also been in that neighborhood last night. No way did Duncan believe that to be a coincidence. But what was eating at him was this: Did Elise have an appointment to meet Napoli after her interlude with him in the abandoned house? Or had Napoli abducted her when she returned to her car, and forced her to drive to the middle of the bridge?

The car was in the inbound lane. Where had they been?

Was she an innocent victim? Or guilty of double murder?

These questions warranted some serious brainstorming with his colleagues. Knowing Elise’s actions before she met with Napoli was the kind of clue-worthy information that he often wrung from material witnesses who were reluctant to disclose it, fearing either retribution or exposure of their own misdeeds.

Now, he was that material witness. He was withholding pertinent information. His coworkers were watching him, Gerard and Worley with puzzlement, DeeDee with dangerous perception.

He should tell them about him and Elise now. He should come clean, as he had resolved to do. He should admit to what had happened mere hours before Napoli died bloody and Elise pulled a vanishing act.

But if he did, if he did, he would be immediately removed from the case. He would probably be fired and possibly jailed, but by one means or another, he would be banished from the police department. Confession would amount to abandoning Elise.

He couldn’t do that, not now, not after last night. Whether she was already dead or still alive, he had to learn what had happened to her. If she was the perpetrator, the killer of two men, he would see to it that she was brought to justice, and own up to his own guilt as well. If it was determined that she was the victim, he wouldn’t stop looking for her until she was rescued, or her body was recovered.

But in order to carry out either pledge, he must remain at the epicenter of the investigation. That was essential.

The others were waiting for an answer. He plopped down into a swivel chair, grumbling, “I don’t know what to think.”

In lieu of a cigarette, Worley put a fresh toothpick in his mouth. DeeDee took a sip of room-temperature Diet Coke. Gerard was the one to break the charged silence.

“I’ve been thinking about the timing,” he said. “The housekeeper left Mrs. Laird at home around ten thirty. Dothan called a while ago to tell me that he places the time of Napoli ’s death somewhere between two thirty and three. Where were he and Mrs. Laird for that four hours in between, and what were they doing?”

Well, Duncan could account for an hour of her time.

Had she met Napoli immediately after he’d left her in the abandoned house? Or later?

“If we knew where they were returning from, we might know how they’d filled that time,” DeeDee said.

“I’ve got a problem with his being shot outside the car,” Worley said. “The highway patrolman told me that the car door was closed. He remembers that clearly because he knocked on the driver’s window before he took a closer look inside and saw that Napoli was dead.”

“Okay,” DeeDee said. “What’s your point?”

“Who closed the car door?”

“ Napoli,” she returned.

“He couldn’t have,” Duncan said, realizing what Worley was getting at. “There was no blood on the door handle or the panel.”

“Right,” Worley said. “ Napoli ’s hands were bloody.”

“So he was shot inside the car, and either the shooter closed the door, or the shooter was inside the car with him,” Gerard said.

“Either way leaves us with yet another mystery,” Worley said. “Why did savvy, ass-saving Napoli just sit there and let the shooter reach around him to put a bullet square in the spot where it would do the most damage?”

“Especially when a shot to the head would have been much easier and just as deadly,” Duncan said.

“But that would also have been messy,” DeeDee said. “People driving by would have seen the gore on the windows.”

“Besides, a shot to the head is quick, probably painless.” They all looked toward Worley for elaboration. “What I mean is, when you go for a gut shot, you’re going for a fatal wound, but a slow one. You want to give your victim time to think, Holy shit, I’m gonna fucking die!”

“I think our lady is capable of that,” DeeDee said. When nobody responded, she looked first at Worley. “Worley?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know her, but I trust your instincts. Dunk, what do you think?”

“If she did him, how’d she get Napoli to just sit there and let her do it, when he outweighed her almost a hundred pounds?”

“She was whispering sweet nothings in his ear?” DeeDee said.

None of the men smiled, especially Duncan. “Okay. Then why in her own car? Why did she leave so many clues behind? The sandal. The scrap of fabric from her clothing. How could she run, and where to, without taking the cash from her wallet? According to Baker, there was several hundred dollars in it.”

“All of which seems as unlikely as Napoli tossing her over the bridge railing at the same instant she pulled the trigger, discharging the fatal shot,” Worley said, frowning. “I don’t know what we’ve got here.”

“Third party?” DeeDee ventured.

“No evidence of one,” Worley said.

“There is one other possibility,” Gerard said quietly.

Duncan knew what Gerard was going to say. That one other possibility also had occurred to him, but he had stubbornly refused to acknowledge or accept it.

“I think it’s safe to say that Mrs. Laird had gotten herself into trouble over Coleman Greer. Whether he was gay or bi or whatever, first Trotter, then Napoli, threatened her with a nasty scandal. Her life went from sugar to shit in a very short period of time. The incident with Trotter could be explained away as self-defense. Plausibly, I believe.

“But no matter how this business with Napoli went down, it was ugly, and she was stuck with a second dead man. That was going to raise questions as well as eyebrows, and possibly incriminate her. Even if she didn’t go to jail, the scandal would have ruined her husband’s career and, more importantly, her way of life.

“Maybe the fear of all that fallout was overwhelming.” He let that statement reverberate for a moment, then concluded, “Elise Laird may have jumped from the bridge because she wanted to die.”

Promising to write up his report first thing when he returned, Duncan left the office ahead of everyone else.

Or tried.

DeeDee fell into step with him as he left the building and forged past reporters. “ Duncan, are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he repeated insistently. “I’m exhausted, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing!”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“I’m not yelling, I’m emphasizing a point. I’m okay except for all the…ambiguity.”

“Ambiguity?”

He unlocked his car door then turned to face her. “Think about it. The last two cases we’ve investigated haven’t been clear-cut homicides. I wish we’d draw one where we looked at the corpse and said, ‘This was your textbook, old-fashioned, honest-to-God malice-with-aforethought, thou-shall-

not-kill murder.’ ”

“I have thought about it,” she said. “And you know what? I think that’s exactly what we’ve got. Honest-to-God, thou-shalt-not, et cetera, murders. Doesn’t it strike you funny-and I don’t mean funny ha-ha-that in those same two ambiguous cases, the victims died looking at Elise Laird?”

He opened the car door and climbed in. “See you later.” DeeDee caught the door before he could close it. He frowned up at her. “We’ll pick this up later, DeeDee. I’m so beat, I can’t even think right now, much less concentrate.”

“You’re more than tired. I’ve seen you tired. This isn’t tired.”

“Take a good look. This is tired.” He pulled on the door until she let go. “See you later.”

As he drove away, he watched her in his rearview mirror. She stood staring after him, frowning with concern, before turning and walking back toward the building. As soon as she was out of sight, he kicked up his speed by twenty miles an hour.

A few minutes later, he was back in the neighborhood where he’d met Elise last night. Ordinarily, the pastel glow of early daylight softened the appearance of even the most hostile environment. Not these streets. They appeared as malevolent this morning as they had the night before.

He drove past the house slowly, looking for any sign of activity inside and finding none. He recalled now that when he’d arrived last night, there had been no evidence of anyone being inside then either.

Where had Elise parked her car?

When she’d ambushed him at his town house, she’d parked on another street to prevent her car from being seen. Deducing she might have used that same technique last night, he turned at the next corner and drove around the block.

The houses on this street were in no better condition than their neighbors behind them. He parked in front of the house that backed into the one belonging to Elise’s unnamed friend, although he wondered if there was such a person.

Before getting out, he took a flashlight from his glove box. He welcomed the weight of his service weapon tucked beneath his arm, although, unlike last night, he wasn’t worried about Savich right now.

Breakfast smells wafted from a few of the houses. A television was playing inside one, tuned to morning cartoons. Basically, however, he had the street to himself. He walked up and down it on both sides, going several blocks in each direction, searching for anything that might indicate that Elise had parked along the curb. He found nothing except the same crumbling sidewalk as on the next street.

He returned to his car. From there, he followed the hedge between the two houses. Both were shuttered and silent, seemingly vacant. Nothing challenged him except sticker patches, the uneven ground, and a cat with a nasty disposition that hissed at him for trespassing.

As he moved along, he searched the ground carefully. At one point he found a small, circular depression in the dirt that might have been made by the short heel on Elise’s sandal. But he was no expert tracker. It could have been made by something else just as easily.

He crossed the alley. The house where they’d met looked even more dilapidated from the rear. He vaulted the unstable chain link fence and jogged through the tall weeds of the backyard. The screen door squeaked when he pulled it open. He froze, held his breath, and listened. Hearing nothing after several moments, he wedged himself between the screen door and its solid counterpart and tried the knob. It was locked, but the lock was old and flimsy, and with the help of his pocketknife, he had it open within seconds.

The door opened directly into the kitchen. He switched on his flashlight and shined it around the dim room. There was no sign that anyone had been there in a long while. He crossed the cracked and curling linoleum floor and pushed through the swinging door leading into the long central corridor. His flashlight cut through the gloom, catching nothing in motion except dust motes.

When he called her name, his voice echoed eerily. He moved swiftly toward the living room, and when he reached it, he realized he was holding his breath in anticipation.

Except for the scent of her, of them, the room was empty.

He’d been called to the scene of Napoli ’s murder shortly after three o’clock. Almost five hours ago. And during all that time, while he’d been investigating the crime scene, trying to reconstruct what had taken place and surmising Elise’s fate, he had clung to the slender hope that he would find her where he’d last seen her, perhaps disoriented by trauma, cowering in fright, or eluding capture. In whatever condition he might have found her, at least she would have been alive.

Now he expelled a sigh of profound disappointment, and despair settled over him like a mantle of chain mail. A desultory search of the other rooms on the first floor yielded nothing. He forced himself to climb the creaky staircase and check the upstairs rooms, but they were all empty save for one of the bedrooms that contained a rusty iron bedstead with even rustier springs.

He returned to the living room. Although he realized it was pathetically maudlin, he sat down on the sofa and ran his hand over the nap of the upholstery, imagining it to be still warm from the heat their bodies had generated.

What had happened here after he walked out? What? What had she done next?

Even if he hadn’t confessed to the sexual encounter, perhaps he should have told his colleagues about his meeting with Elise in this house. It was material to their investigation.

It wasn’t too late. He could call DeeDee now, give her this address. She would make record time getting here. He could give her a condensed version of what had transpired in this room last night. Telling her about it would be a relief, would make his burden of guilt lighter.

But DeeDee would do the right thing. No question of that. She would go straight to Gerard. Gerard might think that his clandestine meeting with Elise was reason enough to take him off the case, put him on suspension.

He couldn’t let that happen. So for the time being, it would remain his secret, and he was stuck with carrying his guilt.

He had a lot to feel guilty about. Elise had implored him to believe her. She was in desperate fear for her life. She had begged for his help. He had refused. By doing so, he had either caused her to kill Napoli, or he had handed her over to Napoli to be killed, or, rejected by her last hope for help, she had thrown herself off the bridge and killed herself.

“Christ.” He covered his face with his hands and fell against the back of the sofa.

When he was seven years old, the family cat had given birth to a litter of kittens. His parents had said that he could choose one to keep. The others they would give away.

He knew immediately the one he wanted. It was the cutest of the litter by far. Around the clock, he kept vigil over the box of kittens. He asked every day when he could take his kitten to his room to live.

His mother told him repeatedly, “As soon as he’s weaned, Duncan.”

That became a little too long. He was afraid that one of the adopting families would lay claim to that kitten before he could establish his ownership of it. One night after his parents had gone to bed, he sneaked into the kitchen and took the newborn from its mother. He placed it in bed with him. The frightened kitten was still mewling when Duncan drifted off to sleep.

The following morning, it was dead.

He cried for days and couldn’t be consoled. Even though his mistake hadn’t been malicious, even though his parents didn’t scold him, he blamed himself and couldn’t get over what he’d done. He had wanted that kitten more than anything in the world. He had loved it with the unrestrained passion of a seven-year-old. But his selfishness had killed it.

For more than an hour, he sat in abject misery where, only hours before, he had known ecstasy. He should be wishing that he’d never met her. Short of that, he should be wishing that he’d never gone near her, never touched her. Instead, he wished he had taken more time to touch her. He wished his touch had been gentler. He wished they had shared at least one tender kiss.

But if he had taken more time and shown her more tenderness, would that have alleviated the heat of this personal hell, or made it worse?

And, despite the angry roughness with which they’d coupled, had she sensed his yearning for it to be different? Had she been aware of the emotion he wanted to express, but couldn’t? Had she?

He would never know.