Sandra Brown - Ricochet

“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.

JUDGE LAIRD 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?”