Ricochet (32 page)

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.

S
HORTLY BEFORE NOON
D
UNCAN RETURNED TO THE
VCU.

“We caught a break,” Worley informed him as soon as he cleared the doorway.

He stopped in his tracks. “You found her?”

“I said a break, not a miracle.”

Duncan had left the abandoned house and gone home, ostensibly to sleep for a few hours. He lay down, but he remained awake, half in dread, half in anticipation of a telephone call telling him that Elise had been found… one way or the other.

He’d finally given up trying to sleep. In between a shower and shave, he’d placed a dozen or more telephone calls, phoning every agency taking part in the search. As lead investigator, he’d insisted on talking to the individual in charge. None had anything substantial to report, nor had he expected to hear of a breakthrough. As soon as there was one, he would know of it. But he gave all of them a pep talk, reminding them of Judge Laird’s standing in the community and the priority that Chief Taylor had given Mrs. Laird’s disappearance.

The Coast Guard had several choppers in the air, flying low along the coastline. The beaches were being patrolled. Search-and-rescue craft were patrolling offshore. These activities looked and sounded good, but no one actually expected Elise to reach the Atlantic.

Exhausted dogs and their trainers were still searching the river-banks and marshes. Police boats were searching the river and all its tributaries. Chatham County SO and state troopers were assisting any way they could. The dive team had been in the shipping channel since daylight.

Local TV stations frequently interrupted their programming to recap the story and update viewers on the search. These news bulletins reported nothing except that there was nothing new to report.

“Pardon my saying so, Dunk,” Worley said now, “but you look like shit.”

“And here I was about to tell you how fresh and handsome you look today.”

Worley continued to regard him with concern. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“Grabbed something on my way here,” Duncan lied. “What kind of break?”

Worley went to the door and shouted down the hallway, “Hey, Kong? Dunk’s here.”

Kong appeared carrying an insulated drinking cup and wiping powdered sugar from his mouth with the back of his hairy hand. “Hey, Dunk. You don’t look so good.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Yeah, well, heard y’all had a late night. Found my guy for me. Just for the record, I’d have preferred him alive.”

“So would I. What’s the break?”

Duncan’s tone must have conveyed that he wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. Kong said, “Ever since Napoli went missing, we’ve been looking for his car. Turned up this morning.”

“Where?”

“A church parking lot.”

“Last place we’d think to look for Napoli,” Worley said around a chuckle.

Duncan headed for the door. “Let’s go take a look.”

“DeeDee’s already on it.”

“Oh.”

“But that’s not all of it,” Worley said. “I figured that Napoli hadn’t gone to the church to pray. I think he just dropped his car there ’cause it was a convenient place to leave it — and probably because it was the last place we’d look.”

They’d come to the conclusion last night that if Meyer Napoli was blackmailing either of the Lairds, his so-called disappearance of the last few days had been voluntary.

“I checked all the taxi services in the city and guess what?”

Duncan was no more in the mood for Worley’s guessing games than he was for chitchat, but he guessed anyway. “Napoli called a taxi to pick him up at the church.”

“At twelve sixteen in the
A.M
.,” Worley declared with satisfaction. “The driver dropped him at his destination at twelve twenty-six.”

“Short trip,” Kong remarked.

“A few miles.”

“What was his destination?” Duncan asked.

Worley consulted his small spiral notebook and read off the address.

Duncan knew the street; he’d been walking up and down both sides of it just a few hours ago looking for a trace of Elise or her car. “That’s a rough neighborhood,” he said, hoping his voice sounded neutral.

“Well, it wasn’t the street Napoli was interested in,” Worley said. “It was the car parked
on
the street. The car that didn’t fit the neighborhood and stuck out like a sore thumb. The taxi driver said Napoli didn’t want to be let out at any particular house number and tipped him real good to forget he’d ever seen him.

“But when the guy saw Napoli’s picture on TV this morning, he figured what the hell? What was Napoli going to do to him if he told about it now? So when I called, he was eager to talk. Driving around a murder victim hours before he got popped has made this guy a celebrity among his coworkers.”

Worley straddled the nearest chair and asked Kong if he had any more doughnuts. Kong apologized for having eaten the last one.