Sandra Brown - Ricochet

“Especially when a shot to the head would have been much easier and just as deadly,” Duncan said.

“But that would also have been messy,” DeeDee said. “People driving by would have seen the gore on the windows.”

“Besides, a shot to the head is quick, probably painless.” They all looked toward Worley for elaboration. “What I mean is, when you go for a gut shot, you’re going for a fatal wound, but a slow one. You want to give your victim time to think, Holy shit, I’m gonna fucking die!”

“I think our lady is capable of that,” DeeDee said. When nobody responded, she looked first at Worley. “Worley?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know her, but I trust your instincts. Dunk, what do you think?”

“If she did him, how’d she get Napoli to just sit there and let her do it, when he outweighed her almost a hundred pounds?”

“She was whispering sweet nothings in his ear?” DeeDee said.

None of the men smiled, especially Duncan. “Okay. Then why in her own car? Why did she leave so many clues behind? The sandal. The scrap of fabric from her clothing. How could she run, and where to, without taking the cash from her wallet? According to Baker, there was several hundred dollars in it.”

“All of which seems as unlikely as Napoli tossing her over the bridge railing at the same instant she pulled the trigger, discharging the fatal shot,” Worley said, frowning. “I don’t know what we’ve got here.”

“Third party?” DeeDee ventured.

“No evidence of one,” Worley said.

“There is one other possibility,” Gerard said quietly.

Duncan knew what Gerard was going to say. That one other possibility also had occurred to him, but he had stubbornly refused to acknowledge or accept it.

“I think it’s safe to say that Mrs. Laird had gotten herself into trouble over Coleman Greer. Whether he was gay or bi or whatever, first Trotter, then Napoli, threatened her with a nasty scandal. Her life went from sugar to shit in a very short period of time. The incident with Trotter could be explained away as self-defense. Plausibly, I believe.

“But no matter how this business with Napoli went down, it was ugly, and she was stuck with a second dead man. That was going to raise questions as well as eyebrows, and possibly incriminate her. Even if she didn’t go to jail, the scandal would have ruined her husband’s career and, more importantly, her way of life.

“Maybe the fear of all that fallout was overwhelming.” He let that statement reverberate for a moment, then concluded, “Elise Laird may have jumped from the bridge because she wanted to die.”

Promising to write up his report first thing when he returned, Duncan left the office ahead of everyone else.

Or tried.

DeeDee fell into step with him as he left the building and forged past reporters. “ Duncan, are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he repeated insistently. “I’m exhausted, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing!”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“I’m not yelling, I’m emphasizing a point. I’m okay except for all the…ambiguity.”

“Ambiguity?”

He unlocked his car door then turned to face her. “Think about it. The last two cases we’ve investigated haven’t been clear-cut homicides. I wish we’d draw one where we looked at the corpse and said, ‘This was your textbook, old-fashioned, honest-to-God malice-with-aforethought, thou-shall-

not-kill murder.’ ”

“I have thought about it,” she said. “And you know what? I think that’s exactly what we’ve got. Honest-to-God, thou-shalt-not, et cetera, murders. Doesn’t it strike you funny-and I don’t mean funny ha-ha-that in those same two ambiguous cases, the victims died looking at Elise Laird?”

He opened the car door and climbed in. “See you later.” DeeDee caught the door before he could close it. He frowned up at her. “We’ll pick this up later, DeeDee. I’m so beat, I can’t even think right now, much less concentrate.”

“You’re more than tired. I’ve seen you tired. This isn’t tired.”

“Take a good look. This is tired.” He pulled on the door until she let go. “See you later.”

As he drove away, he watched her in his rearview mirror. She stood staring after him, frowning with concern, before turning and walking back toward the building. As soon as she was out of sight, he kicked up his speed by twenty miles an hour.

A few minutes later, he was back in the neighborhood where he’d met Elise last night. Ordinarily, the pastel glow of early daylight softened the appearance of even the most hostile environment. Not these streets. They appeared as malevolent this morning as they had the night before.

He drove past the house slowly, looking for any sign of activity inside and finding none. He recalled now that when he’d arrived last night, there had been no evidence of anyone being inside then either.

Where had Elise parked her car?

When she’d ambushed him at his town house, she’d parked on another street to prevent her car from being seen. Deducing she might have used that same technique last night, he turned at the next corner and drove around the block.

The houses on this street were in no better condition than their neighbors behind them. He parked in front of the house that backed into the one belonging to Elise’s unnamed friend, although he wondered if there was such a person.

Before getting out, he took a flashlight from his glove box. He welcomed the weight of his service weapon tucked beneath his arm, although, unlike last night, he wasn’t worried about Savich right now.

Breakfast smells wafted from a few of the houses. A television was playing inside one, tuned to morning cartoons. Basically, however, he had the street to himself. He walked up and down it on both sides, going several blocks in each direction, searching for anything that might indicate that Elise had parked along the curb. He found nothing except the same crumbling sidewalk as on the next street.

He returned to his car. From there, he followed the hedge between the two houses. Both were shuttered and silent, seemingly vacant. Nothing challenged him except sticker patches, the uneven ground, and a cat with a nasty disposition that hissed at him for trespassing.

As he moved along, he searched the ground carefully. At one point he found a small, circular depression in the dirt that might have been made by the short heel on Elise’s sandal. But he was no expert tracker. It could have been made by something else just as easily.

He crossed the alley. The house where they’d met looked even more dilapidated from the rear. He vaulted the unstable chain link fence and jogged through the tall weeds of the backyard. The screen door squeaked when he pulled it open. He froze, held his breath, and listened. Hearing nothing after several moments, he wedged himself between the screen door and its solid counterpart and tried the knob. It was locked, but the lock was old and flimsy, and with the help of his pocketknife, he had it open within seconds.

The door opened directly into the kitchen. He switched on his flashlight and shined it around the dim room. There was no sign that anyone had been there in a long while. He crossed the cracked and curling linoleum floor and pushed through the swinging door leading into the long central corridor. His flashlight cut through the gloom, catching nothing in motion except dust motes.

When he called her name, his voice echoed eerily. He moved swiftly toward the living room, and when he reached it, he realized he was holding his breath in anticipation.

Except for the scent of her, of them, the room was empty.

He’d been called to the scene of Napoli ’s murder shortly after three o’clock. Almost five hours ago. And during all that time, while he’d been investigating the crime scene, trying to reconstruct what had taken place and surmising Elise’s fate, he had clung to the slender hope that he would find her where he’d last seen her, perhaps disoriented by trauma, cowering in fright, or eluding capture. In whatever condition he might have found her, at least she would have been alive.