Ricochet (27 page)

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?”