Ricochet (37 page)

But flaws and all, Duncan Hatcher was DeeDee’s hero. To see him so reduced by guilt filled her with compassion, not condemnation. That she reserved for Elise Laird, for whom she had the utmost contempt. She’d be damned before she let that conniving woman’s ghost destroy Duncan.

“You made a mistake,” she said gently. “But you’ve acknowledged it. Put it away. It’s over.”

“Not for me, it isn’t. I’ll never forget the way she looked at me when—”

“Duncan, she was a player!” she exclaimed, loudly enough for the bartender to glance their way. “She knew you were attracted to her and she used that. What better way to protect herself from prosecution than to screw the cop who’s trying to incriminate her?”

“I know that, DeeDee. Goddamn it, don’t you think I know all that? But knowing it doesn’t make me any less culpable. Three people are dead, not even counting poor Trotter, who started all this. Napoli, Gordie Ballew, and Elise. If I had done the right thing, they wouldn’t have died.”

“You don’t know that. No one can know that. One way or another it was bound to end tragically.” She leaned toward him so he had no choice but to look at her. “The lady was poison. You said so yourself when we started investigating this case. You lusted after her body, but that didn’t blind you to her character. I know that for a fact. You trusted her no more than I did.

“She lied at every turn, she lied to everyone, and that night on the bridge all those lies caught up with her. Frankly, I don’t regret whatever happened between her and Napoli. I’m glad she became history before she had a chance to destroy your career. Before she had a chance to destroy
you
.”

She rarely touched him, never wanting their working relationship to be jeopardized. But now she laid her hand on his arm and gave it a no-nonsense squeeze. “Put this behind you, Duncan. Forgive yourself for being male, for being human. Make a conscious decision to forget her. Refocus. Tomorrow we start fresh trying to nail Savich.” She pushed the highball glass out of his reach. “For that, you need to be stone cold sober.”

Duncan let himself be led out of the bar and into the deluge. By the time they reached DeeDee’s car, he was drenched. He didn’t care.

“What about my car?” he asked as she herded him into the passenger seat of hers.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning and drive you back here to get it.”

He didn’t argue, having no interest whatsoever in any aspect of tomorrow.

It was a short distance to his town house; they covered the blocks in a matter of minutes. DeeDee cut her engine and was reaching for the door handle when he stopped her. “Don’t come in.”

“I’m coming in.”

“I’ll be fine. I won’t drink any more. I swear,” he said in response to her skeptical expression.

“All right, I believe you. But are you sure you don’t want company?”

“Positive.”

“Go play the piano for a while.”

“I don’t play the piano.”

“Right.” She grinned.

He forced one in return, but it felt like an unnatural stretching of his lips.

“Try and get some rest. See you in the morning.”

He scowled. “Not too early.” With that, he opened the door and got out.

The gutter had turned into a rushing creek. He stepped over the swift current and onto the sidewalk. Then he climbed the steps to his front door and unlocked it. He turned to wave good-bye to DeeDee. She tooted her horn as she drove away through the rain.

Inside, Duncan switched on a table lamp and, out of habit, walked toward the kitchen. When he got there, he couldn’t think of a single thing that sounded appetizing. He wasn’t hungry. He wanted nothing more to drink even though Smitty’s whiskey hadn’t had the desired mind-numbing effect. His head was all too clear.

Heedless of the rainwater he was dripping onto the rugs and hardwood floors, he made his way back into the living room, then stood in the center of it like a stranger, looking about for something familiar with which to make an emotional connection. For the first time ever in his life that he could remember, he felt utterly alone.

He could call his parents, who had always been there whenever he needed them, ready with an embrace, with a prayer and words of encouragement, with unqualified love. But he couldn’t talk to them about this. Not yet.

DeeDee would come back in a heartbeat. She’d even offered to stay with him tonight. But he couldn’t drag her down with him into this morass of guilt and self-loathing. Besides, he hadn’t been completely honest with her.

He had confessed making love to Elise.

He hadn’t confessed falling in love.

He glanced at the piano with complete indifference, but the piano bench was a painful reminder of the morning Elise had sat on it, looking up at him with imploring eyes that entranced and ensnared as facilely as they lied.

Irresistibly drawn to it, he sat down where she had sat. He was haunted by the possibility that nothing she had said or done had been true. Nothing. And worse, he feared that she’d been coached by Savich, that she had operated strictly under instructions from him. That when she was moving against Duncan on that shabby sofa, every touch, every expression, every sigh had been calculated.

Actually, it was treachery worthy of Savich. If Savich had shot him execution-style as he had Freddy Morris, it would have been too obvious, and Savich might have been easily captured.

Besides that, a bullet to the head wouldn’t have been poetic. How much more satisfying to Savich to place Elise in his path, then sit back and watch with glee as Duncan came under the spell of her allure, compromising every ethical code to which he adhered, sacrificing his integrity, his career, his self-respect, everything that was valuable to him, slowly but inexorably bringing about his own downfall.

A brilliant plan.

He bowed his head lower and tried to compose a prayer of contrition, but the only sounds that issued from his raw throat were harsh, dry sobs. He longed to cry, but what would he be crying over? His squandered morality? Or Elise? What right did he have to cry over losing something that was never his to lose? Elise was lost to him forever.

He
was simply lost.

He sat there a long time, but he never touched the keyboard. Eventually he got up, switched off the lamp, and started upstairs, feeling his way in the dark. The rain-streaked skylight cast a watery shadow on the wall of the staircase that made it appear to be weeping. He paused on the landing to watch the mournful trickles reflected on the wallpaper, then entered his bedroom, switching on the light as he passed through the door.

She was backed into the corner between his bed and the window.

He cried out in disbelief, shock, outrage. And
joy
. She was alive!

Acting instinctively, he whipped his pistol from its holster and crouched, aiming the barrel directly at her. “Drop the coat and face the wall, hands above your head.”

“Duncan—”

“
Fucking do it
!” he shouted. “Do it or so help me God, I’ll shoot you.”

Elise dropped the rain slicker that she’d been holding folded over her arm and turned toward the wall, hands raised.

It took a conscious effort to close his mouth and control his rapid breathing. There was nothing he could do to slow down his racing heart. “Do you have the twenty-two?”

“The what?”

Keeping his pistol aimed at her, he came up behind her and hastily patted her down, running his hand down both her sides from armpit to ankle, up the inseam of her jeans and around the waistband. Satisfied that she wasn’t armed, he sidestepped across the floor and picked up the telephone on the nightstand. She turned around as he fumbled with the rubberized digits on the phone.

She held up a hand, palm out. “Don’t call anyone. Not until I’ve had a chance to explain.”

“You’ll explain, all right.”

“Duncan—”

“Don’t call me that! I’m not Duncan to you. I’m not anything to you except the cop that’s gonna haul your ass to jail.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it.”

“You don’t have to hold a gun on me.”

“I’m sure you said that to Trotter and Napoli, and look what happened to them. How’d you get in here?”

“I heard you downstairs. Were you crying?”

“How did you get in?” he repeated, enunciating the words.

“A back window on the ground level wasn’t locked. I guess you forgot to set your alarm. Why were you crying?”

Again, he dodged that question. “Armies of men and women all over the Southeast have been busting their butts looking for you. There’s been much ado over your disappearance off that bridge. You enjoyed all that attention, I’m sure.”

She spread her arms at her sides. “Do I look like I enjoyed it?”

She had a point. She looked like hell. “What happened to your hair?”

“When you fake your suicide, the first thing you do is change your appearance.”

Her hair looked like it had been sawed off with a dull butcher knife. It was short and spiky and stuck up in random spots like a punk rocker’s. And it had been dyed a dark brown.

She wasn’t dressed in the quality stuff she usually wore. The jeans and shirt were too large and looked like rejects of a yard sale. On her feet were plain canvas sneakers. No turquoise stones on these shoes. They were also wet and muddy.

Her face was gaunt, the thinness emphasized by the extreme haircut. Her eyes were outlined in dark makeup that had been applied with a heavy hand. When she saw that he noticed it, she said, “To cover up a black eye, compliments of Meyer Napoli.”

“Who put up the fight? Him or you?”

She extended her arm and pushed up the long sleeve of her shirt. From wrist to elbow her arm was mottled with bruises in a range of colors. “I don’t think he expected me to fight back.”

The cordless telephone felt heavy in Duncan’s hand. So did the pistol, but he didn’t lower either of them. “He was waiting for you in your car?” She gave him an odd look, and he said, “That much we figured out. Napoli took a taxi to where you’d left your car.”

“While I was with you.”

“While you were favoring me with the motherlode of fucks.”

She lowered her gaze but only for a moment. When she looked at him again, her eyes were bright with anger. “Don’t you get it yet?”

“Apparently not.”

“I was desperate,” she cried out. “I would have done anything to enlist your help.”

“But you didn’t do
anything
. You did that.”

“Because I knew…” Again her gaze faltered, but only for a moment before it locked with his. “Because I knew that’s what you wanted.”

It was almost verbatim what he’d said to DeeDee a half hour earlier, but hearing it from Elise made his blood run hot with fury.

“I even knew that’s what you expected me to do,” she continued. “Detective Bowen, too. She would have expected me to play the whore. So I guess I proved you both right.”

“Well, it was a wasted effort.”

“I know. You didn’t believe me.”

“Not then, and for damn sure not now.”

“I hoped you might have changed your mind.”

He didn’t allow himself to be taken in by her wounded look. “What happened on the bridge?”

She shook back long hair that was no longer there, a reflexive gesture Duncan recognized as what she did when collecting her thoughts. Or fabricating lies. “After you left, I fell asleep.”

“Oh, right. You the insomniac.” She really was a priceless liar. She would like for him to believe that she had drifted off following their lovemaking, when she’d been unable to sleep after sex with her husband. Lest he fall for the manipulation, he yanked his mind back to what she was saying.

“I slept for over two hours. When I woke up, I panicked, knowing Cato would be looking for me. I rushed back to my car. Napoli was waiting for me in the backseat.”

“As arranged.”

“No.”

Trying to trap her in a lie, he said, “But you recognized him immediately.”

She shook her head emphatically. “I’d never seen him before. He introduced himself, even gave me his business card.”

Duncan had wondered why, if their meeting was prearranged, there’d been any need for the transponder and why Napoli’s card had been in the seat of her car. He’d raised those questions once with DeeDee and Worley, but they’d shrugged them off as insignificant details.

“Okay,” he said, “Napoli’s in your car. Then what?”

“He held a gun to my head and told me to drive to the middle of the Talmadge Bridge. I did as he said, but when we topped the bridge I called his bluff and kept going. He dug the barrel of his pistol into my temple and threatened to pull the trigger unless I turned around. So as soon as we reached the other side, I made a U-turn.”

That explained why the car had been in the inbound lane. But she could have heard that in the news reports.

“This time, when I reached the crest, I stopped. He told me to leave the key in the ignition, get out, and walk to the wall. I kept stalling, asking him what he wanted, offering him money. He said he’d already struck a deal for more than I could ever pay him.”

“With who?”

“Who do you think?”

“Don’t dare say your husband. The man’s been shattered by this.”

“You’re wrong.”

“And you’re lying,” he fired back. “For ten days I’ve watched him. I’ve seen him disintegrate bit by bit. He’s devastated.”

“That’s what he wants you to think.”

“He’s faking it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sticking to that story?”

“Yes.”

He started pressing digits on his phone.

“Wait! Duncan, I beg you. Listen to me.”

He stopped dialing, but kept his thumb poised over the buttons.

She clasped her raised hands in a gesture of appeal. “Gary Ray Trotter failed, so Napoli had to finish the job himself. He gave me the choice of jumping off the bridge, or of being shot. Either way was fine by him, he said. I wouldn’t survive the two-hundred-foot fall into the river. People would think I’d killed myself. If he shot me, it would look like another carjacking. Either way, I’d be dead and he would be richer, courtesy of Cato.”

“Why would your husband pay a creep like Napoli to get rid of you?”