Ricochet (29 page)

Spanning two thousand feet, it had been built to replace a drawbridge that had become inefficient in handling the traffic on the river as Savannah’s importance as a seaport increased.

Duncan had driven across the bridge a thousand times, but because of his aversion to heights and suspension, he’d kept his eyes on the road. He’d never studied the structure of the bridge. He’d certainly never been this up-close and personal with its awe-inspiring construction and massive proportions.

He leaned as far over the wall as he dared and studied the infrastructure. As he was mentally gauging the height of the nearest tower, which supported the struts, he noticed a descending metal ladder that connected to a piece of machinery — he didn’t even know what to call it — on the underside of the bridge. And on the floor of that thingamajig, he spotted something fluttering, something that didn’t belong.

He jogged toward the tower, keeping his eyes trained on the spot, hoping that what had captured his attention wouldn’t disappear before he could determine exactly what it was. When he was directly above it, he leaned over the wall and looked down onto the mechanism below.

What he’d seen was a piece of cloth. Light-colored, soft-looking, out of place on this brutally masculine structure of iron and steel and concrete.

Napoli’s body was being transferred from the car to a gurney. Worley and DeeDee had been cleared by forensics to investigate the interior of the car. They were busy with that. Gerard was catching an earful of abuse from Judge Laird, who was punctuating his tirade with jabs of his index finger.

“Why are your detectives concentrating on what happened to Napoli?” Duncan heard him say. “They need to be searching for my wife.”

Duncan returned to his study of the piece of machinery attached to the underside of the bridge and to the ladder that connected it to the level on which he was standing. Trying to stave off the dizziness assailing him, he switched his focus to the giant tanker gliding beneath the bridge on its way out to sea. However, the movement of the vessel only made his vertigo worse.

Nevertheless, he threw his leg over the wall, stepped onto the small platform at the top of the ladder, and started down. The metal rungs were enclosed by bars that formed a small cylindrical cage, but those bars were widely spaced and he wasn’t sure they would hold him if he was to slip and fall backward against them.

He was about halfway down when he heard Gerard exclaim, “Dunk! What the hell are you doing?”

He glanced up. A mistake. He was blinded by the lights on the top of the tower, shining down on the bridge. In the direction of Gerard’s voice, he shouted up, “There’s something down here.”

“Are you crazy?”

That from DeeDee, practically screeching.

“Probably,” he said under his breath.

“Get back up here!”

Ignoring her, he continued down. Thankfully he had put on sneakers when he’d quickly dressed. Their rubber soles gave him a better grip than dress shoes would have. He had pulled on a pair of latex gloves as soon as he and DeeDee had arrived at the scene. Inside them his hands were wet with nervous perspiration. He didn’t dare look down at the swift current of the river, now churning in the wake of the tanker.

“Bill?” he called up. “Do you know anything about this thing under here?”

“The carrier?”

“I guess.”

“There are three of them. One for each section of the bridge. They connect to tracks on each side of it. They roll along the underside of the bridge so workers have access to the navigational lights. They can do maintenance, conduct inspections. Like that.”

“So no one except maintenance workers would come down here, right?”

“And damn fools!” he heard DeeDee shout.

Maintenance workers didn’t wear clothes made of soft fabric that could flutter when there was no wind and only a negligible breeze.

He risked glancing down and was relieved to see that he had only three more rungs to go. He took them with relative speed and stepped onto the carrier. Solidly built, it was an impressive example of ingenuity and engineering, but he was glad that someone else had the job of working on it. To him, it seemed a hell of a long way to the other side of the bridge. And beyond that, empty air. He didn’t want to think of the nothingness directly beneath him.

Instead he stayed focused on the area immediately surrounding him. The fixtures lighting the bridge from its underside were as bright and eyeball-searing as suns. He tried to avoid looking directly into them as he went down on his haunches. The piece of fabric was snagged on a bolt that secured the ladder to the floor of the carrier.

One edge of the printed material was hemmed. The other had obviously been ripped from a garment… which in this case was the skirt Elise had been wearing that night.

Pinching the fabric between two gloved fingers, he carefully worked it free from the metal on which it had become snagged, then placed it in a brown paper evidence bag. Slowly, he stood up and returned the bag to his pocket.

His colleagues were shouting questions down to him. He was no longer in their sight so they were concerned about his safety. They wanted to know if he was all right. They were admonishing him to be careful. He heard Worley ask if he’d found anything.

Tuning them out, he forgot his acrophobia and stared into the river far below him, where the water at this point was over forty feet deep. He looked at the slow-moving tanker, a floating city, now gliding past the restaurants and bars lining River Street and, on the far side, the docks at the Westin Resort.

His throat became uncommonly tight as he realized the implication of finding only one of Elise’s sandals and this scrap of fabric ripped from her clothing.

Chances were very good that she hadn’t made it off this goddamn bridge alive.

J
UDGE
L
AIRD PACED THE LIMITED SQUARE FOOTAGE OF THE
SVU office, wearing a path in the ugly maroon carpeting and muttering affirmations to himself that his wife was alive. He also launched into periodic tirades about the sluggish pace and general ineptitude with which the police investigation was being conducted.

He demanded immediate answers to questions to which no one had answers. He refused to accept honest replies such as, “We don’t know, but we’re doing all we can to find out.”

Unfortunately DeeDee had been put in charge of him.

After cordoning off a larger section of the bridge to include the carrier and the ladder leading down to it, DeeDee had accompanied Bill Gerard and the judge back to police headquarters, while Duncan and Worley stayed behind to coordinate the investigation, which would involve several other law enforcement agencies.

She resented that they’d have all the fun, while she’d been assigned what amounted to baby-sitting duty. But Captain Gerard had issued the order, and he’d been in no mood for argument.

Actually she would have felt sorry for Judge Laird, had he not been such a total bastard. Rarely did he address a question directly to her. Any unsolicited conjecture or suggestion she made was ignored. He tolerated her, barely, and only because he must.

The Cato Lairds of the world, good ole boys that custom-tailored suits couldn’t disguise, underscored the insecurity that had been instilled in her by her parents, particularly her father. The judge’s disdain reduced her achievements to mediocrity and insignificance. He made her feel as her father had, like a tinfoil star trying to replace the solid-gold one her older brother had been.

It also had fallen to her to question the judge about his activities before being notified of Napoli’s murder in his wife’s car, and to ask what he knew of her activities during that same time period.

That was the shittiest aspect of this shit detail.

He was frenetic. He could sit still for only a few minutes at a stretch. He was easily distracted by anyone who came into or left the unit. Every time a telephone rang, which was often, his reflexes went into overdrive.

When she did manage to hold his attention, he either answered her questions with dramatized resignation or took umbrage, although she went out of her way to be tactful.

“When was the last time you saw Mrs. Laird?”

“About nine thirty or so. We’d had dinner. Elise wanted to turn in early. That being the case, I asked if she would mind if I went to the country club. A poker tournament had commenced last Saturday night. I knew some of my friends would be playing last night.”

“Given her insomnia, it’s unlike Mrs. Laird to go to bed early, isn’t it?”

“She’d bought a sleep aid that she hoped would help her rest.”

“Do you usually play poker on a work night, so to speak?”

“No, but we were both upset and needed something to take our minds off the interrogation that was scheduled for the morning.”

“Why was the prospect of that upsetting?”

“Detective Hatcher advised us to bring our attorney with us. He made it sound as though Elise was a criminal.”

“We had more questions about her relationship with Coleman Greer.”

“Elise gave you a full explanation of their relationship.”

For the time being, DeeDee let that pass and moved on. “Did you speak with Mrs. Laird by telephone, or have any contact with her, after you left the house yesterday evening?”

“No. In the hope that the sleep medication was working, I didn’t want to disturb her by calling.”

“I doubt she took that medication, Judge. We know she didn’t sleep.” She didn’t let his fulminating look prevent her from pressing on. “What was she wearing when you last saw her?”

“A skirt and sleeveless top. You know this, Detective Bowen. I recognized the scrap of fabric that your partner found on the carrier. It was from Elise’s skirt.”

“You’re sure? Most husbands wouldn’t notice or remember—”

“I’m not most husbands,” he said icily. “The skirt was new. I’d just brought it home to her as a gift. She had tried it on for me.”

“Did she have on the sandals with the turquoise stones?”

“She was barefoot.”

“For dinner?”

“We had dinner on trays in the bedroom.”

“I see. Mrs. Berry served you there?” He nodded. “What time did she leave?”

“I heard her tell Captain Gerard that she left around ten thirty.”

“After you, then.”

“Correct. She wanted to make certain that Elise didn’t need her.”

“Sometime after Mrs. Berry left, your wife put on her shoes and left the house in her car.”

“We don’t know the circumstances under which she left,” he said. “She could have been forced from the house.”

“Maybe, but according to Captain Gerard, who was at your house, there was no sign of a struggle, forced entry, nothing like that. We can rule out robbery because Gerard said you’d found her jewelry, wedding ring, and ear studs — sizable diamonds in both — on her dressing table.”

“That’s right.”

“So it looks like she dashed out in a hurry, doesn’t it? I mean, not even remembering to put on her wedding ring. And that’s a ring you wouldn’t likely leave behind unless you were really rattled.”

The judge stayed stonily silent, while DeeDee tapped her pencil against the legal pad on which she’d been jotting down notes. “Do you have any idea where your wife might have gone, Judge?”

“If I did, don’t you think I’d be looking for her there?”

“Does she have friends or family—”

“No.”

“Nobody she might have decided to go visit, even on the spur of the moment?”

He shook his head. “Not without telling me.”

She didn’t tell you about her visits with Coleman Greer, DeeDee thought peevishly. Tired of all the pussyfooting around, she cut to the chase. “Do you think she had an appointment with Meyer Napoli tonight?”

He leaned in close to her, his features rigid with rage. “Is this the way you solve crimes, Detective Bowen? You hound a victim’s loved ones with silly questions and draw asinine conclusions?”

Probably he didn’t expect an answer, but she gave him one. “Sometimes. You’d be surprised what witnesses know that they don’t know they know. I toss out possibilities to see if anything sticks. Often something does, and it can be that seemingly unimportant, silly fact that ultimately solves the case.”

He looked around impatiently as though searching for someone to come to his rescue. Gerard had disappeared; DeeDee assumed he was in his office. A few other detectives were milling around, trying to look busy, but actually drawn to the excitement as moths to a flame.

The judge said, “I know the importance of being thorough and precise, Detective Bowen. After all my years on the bench, I realize that crime-solving nuggets can be pried from the memory of a witness. But I know only what I’ve told you.
Repeatedly
,” he stressed.

She flipped back a sheet of the legal tablet so she would have a fresh page on which to take notes. “May I continue?”

And so it had gone for a grueling hour and a half. Finally, believing he had nothing else that he was able or willing to tell her, she released him to do his pacing and haranguing.

She used a phone outside the SVU to place a call to the manager of the Silver Tide Country Club. She woke up his wife, who woke him up after DeeDee identified herself and conveyed the urgency of the call. From him she got phone numbers for the club’s parking valet and bartender who’d been on duty that night.

She called them at their respective residences. Neither was happy to be called at this hour, especially after having worked a long shift. But both confirmed to her that the judge had arrived at the club shortly before ten o’clock and joined a spirited poker game. He hadn’t left until he was notified by police that Mrs. Laird’s car had been found on the narrow shoulder of the Talmadge Bridge with a dead man inside.

“When he was told that there was no sign of her, he freaked,” the bartender told DeeDee.

“I can imagine.” She asked the names of those with whom the judge had been playing cards all evening. It was a star-studded lineup of movers and shakers, including the district attorney.

If indeed it turned out that Elise Laird had met Meyer Napoli for no honest purpose, while the judge was enjoying a night of poker and single-malt scotch, he would have a lot to live down. He would look even more a fool for love than before. Some political enemies, and possibly even loyal supporters, might question whether such a fool should be chief judge of superior court.