Sandra Brown - Ricochet

Duncan leveled a hard look on him. “I remind you again, Judge, that this is my investigation. Think of it as my equivalent to your courtroom. I’ve extended you the courtesy of being present while I question Mrs. Laird, but if you insist on contributing another word without being asked to, you’ll be excused and I’ll conduct the interview with her alone.”

The judge’s jaw turned rigid and his eyes glittered with resentment, but he gave a negligent wave of his hand. It wasn’t a gesture of concession. He made it appear he was granting Duncan permission to continue.

Duncan turned his attention back to Elise. “You felt for a pulse?”

She pulled her hand from her husband’s grasp, crossed her arms over her chest, and hugged herself. “I didn’t want to touch him. But I forced myself. I went into the room-”

“Did you still have the pistol?”

“I had dropped it. It was on the floor, there at the door.”

“Okay,” Duncan said.

“I went into the study and stepped around the desk. I knelt down, put my fingers here.”

She touched her own throat approximately where her carotid would be. Duncan noticed that her fingers were very slender. They looked bloodless, cold. Whereas the skin of her throat…

He yanked his eyes away from her neck and looked at the judge. “I overheard you telling Officer Crofton that when you reached the study, you found Elise slumped behind the desk.”

“That’s correct. She was slumped in the desk chair. I thought…well, you can’t imagine the fear that gripped me. I thought she was dead. I rushed over to her. That’s when I saw the man on the floor. I’m not ashamed of the relief I felt at that moment.”

“You had blood on your robe.”

He shuddered with revulsion. “There was already a lot of blood on the carpet beneath him. My hem dipped into it when I bent over the body. I felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one.”

“What were you doing at this point?”

If DeeDee hadn’t asked that of Elise, Duncan would have. He’d been watching her out the corner of his eye. She’d been listening raptly to her husband’s account. If he’d said anything contradictory to what she’d experienced, she hadn’t shown it.

“I was…I wasn’t doing anything. Just sitting there in the chair. I was numb.”

Too numb to cry. He remembered her eyes being dry, with no sign of weeping. She hadn’t shed a tear, but at least she hadn’t lied about it.

The judge said, “Elise was in shock. I probably remember more at this point than she does. May I speak?”

Duncan realized he was being patronized, but he let it pass. “Please, Judge,” he said with exaggerated politeness.

“I picked Elise out of the chair and carried her from the room. I stepped over the pistol, which was on the floor just inside the study door, as she said. I left it there and didn’t touch the body again or anything else in the room. I deposited Elise here in the living room and used that telephone to call 911.” He pointed out a cordless phone on an end table. “No one went into the study until the officers arrived.”

“While you were waiting on them, did you ask her what had happened?”

“Of course. She explained in stops and starts, but I got the gist of it. In any case, it was rather obvious that she’d interrupted an attempted burglary.”

Not so obvious from where I sit, Judge. Duncan didn’t speak his thought aloud because there was no point in riling the judge unnecessarily. However, there were some details that needed further investigation and explanation before he was ready to rubber-stamp this a matter of self-defense and close the books on it. Getting an identity on the dead man would be the first step. That could shed some light on why he was in the Lairds’ home study.

Duncan smiled at the couple. “I think that’s all we need to go over tonight. There may be some loose ends to clear up tomorrow.” He stood up, essentially putting an end to the interview. “Thank you. I know this wasn’t easy. I apologize for the need to put you through it.”

“You were only doing your job, Detective.” The judge extended his hand and Duncan shook it.

“Yes. I was.” Releasing the judge’s hand, he added, “For the time being, the study is still a crime scene. I’m sorry if this poses an inconvenience, but please don’t remove anything from it.”

“Of course.”

“I have one more question,” DeeDee said. “Did either of you recognize the man?”

“I didn’t,” Elise said.

“Nor I,” said the judge.

“You’re sure? Because Mrs. Laird said she’d turned on the wrong light. The room would have been semi-dark. Did you turn on the overhead light in the study, Judge?”

“Yes, I did. I explained to Officer Crofton that on my way into the room, I switched on the light.”

“So, with the overhead light on, you got a good look at the man?”

“A very good look. As stated, he was a stranger to us, Detective Bowen.” He softened the edge in his voice by politely offering to see them out. Before leaving Elise, he bent down to where she had remained seated on the sofa. “I’ll be right back, darling, then I’ll take you up.”

She nodded and gave him a weak smile.

Duncan and DeeDee walked from the room with him. When they reached the foyer, DeeDee said, “Judge, before we leave, I’d like to measure the height of that bullet hole in the wall. It’ll only take a sec.”

He looked annoyed by the request, but said, “Certainly,” and motioned her to follow him toward the study.

Duncan stayed where he was in a deceptively relaxed stance, hands in his pants pockets, staring after his partner and the judge as they moved down the foyer out of earshot.

Beale and Crofton were talking together at the front door. From the snatches of conversation Duncan could overhear, they were discussing the pros and cons of various barbecue joints and ignoring the reporters and curiosity seekers still loitering in the street, waiting for something exciting to happen.

He looked into the living room. Elise was still on the sofa. She had picked up her cup of tea, but left the saucer on the coffee table. Both her hands were folded around the cup. They looked as delicate as the china. She was staring down into the tea.

Quietly Duncan said, “I was drunk.”

She didn’t move or show any reaction whatsoever, although he knew she had heard him.

“I was also pissed off at your husband.”

Her fingers contracted a little more tightly around the cup.

“Neither excuses what I said to you. But I, uh…” He glanced toward both ends of the foyer. Still empty. He was safe to speak. “I want you to know…what I said? It wasn’t about you.”

She raised her head and turned toward him. Her face was still wan, her lips colorless, making her eyes look exceptionally large. Large enough for a man to fall into and become immersed in the green depths of them. “Wasn’t it?”

UPON SEEING ROBERT SAVICH FOR THE FIRST TIME, PEOPLE were initially struck by his unusual coloring.

His skin tone was that of café au lait, a legacy from his maternal grandmother, a Jamaican who’d come to the United States seeking a better life. At age thirty-four she had given up the quest by slashing her wrists in a bathtub in the brothel where she lived and worked. Her leached body was discovered by another of the whores, her fifteen-year-old daughter, baby Robert’s mother.

His blue eyes had been passed down through generations of Saviches, a disreputable lineage no more promising than his maternal one.

Superficially, he was accepted for what he was. But he knew that neither pure blacks nor pure whites would ever wholly accept his mingled blood and embrace him as one of their own. Prejudice found fertile ground in every race. It recognized no borders. It permeated every society on earth, no matter how vociferously it was denounced.