Sandra Brown - Ricochet

The public information office issued periodic statements to the press, but only after they were approved by the chief of police and Judge Laird. In every news story printed or broadcast, Elise Laird was portrayed as the victim, Meyer Napoli as her armed abductor. Suggested motives for his forcing her to stop her car on the Talmadge Bridge included extortion, kidnap for ransom, rape, and vengeance for an unnamed grievance.

Worley and DeeDee questioned the judge at length about keeping Napoli on retainer to follow his wife. He denied it. Then Duncan had a heated session with him. Duncan used every interrogation maneuver he knew to try to shake Cato Laird, but at the end of the session, the judge remained steadfast: His dealings with Napoli had ended months earlier, and if Napoli had continued to follow Elise, he had been doing it on his own, and obviously with criminal intent.

“There’s something else,” Duncan said at the conclusion of the taxing interview with Cato Laird. “We requested an inventory of your gun collection.”

“All are accounted for except an old twenty-two-caliber pistol.” Reading Duncan’s reaction, he said hastily, “I’m sure it’s only been misplaced.”

“When do you remember last seeing it?”

“A while back. It was in a box of outdated hunting gear I put up in the attic.” Becoming increasingly agitated, he said, “Surely you don’t think…Look, Detective, Elise didn’t even know I owned that gun.”

“Okay,” Duncan said, feeling anything but okay about this development. “Let me know if you run across it.”

In addition to the department’s press releases, the judge called a press conference nearly every day. They were brief and emotional. His appeals for information into his wife’s disappearance produced nothing except the usual crank calls and chronic confessors.

Then, toward the end of the first week, he surprised the media as well as the PD by offering a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information that would lead to his wife’s rescue. That increased the number of nuisance calls into the VCU, but yielded nothing useful.

By day seven the investigation had completely stalled.

Then two things happened that recharged it.

Early that morning a maintenance man working on the dock of the Westin Resort spotted Elise’s missing sandal among flotsam sloshing against the pilings.

He recognized it for what it was, because the sandal found on the bridge had been described in detail in every press account. He fished it from the water with a wire coat hanger, but had sense enough not to handle it and called the police immediately.

Duncan and DeeDee felt they should personally convey this portentous news to the judge. He’d been staying at home, within reach of the telephone, surrounded by friends and supporters, waited on by the vigilant Mrs. Berry.

It was she who answered the door. Duncan asked her to notify the judge that they were there and that they needed to see him immediately and in private. She led them into the study where Gary Ray Trotter had died two weeks earlier. Duncan noted that the bullet hole in the wall had been patched. There was a new rug on the floor. Nothing else in the room had changed except for the unopened mail stacked on the judge’s desk.

Cato Laird rushed into the room, breathless and anxious. Their somber expressions brought him to an abrupt standstill. He frantically searched their faces for a hint of why they were there, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

“As far as we know your wife is still alive,” Duncan said, eliminating his primary fear. “We don’t have any news of her whereabouts.” Then he told him about the workman finding the sandal.

“Where was it?” Cato Laird’s mellifluous voice sounded raw.

When Duncan told him, his face drained of color. “That’s where…last year…that fisherman who fell out of his boat into the river…”

The man had drowned in the current even as people watched helplessly from the riverbank. His body had disappeared, then surfaced a few days later near the resort’s dock.

“It’s only a sandal,” DeeDee said quietly. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that Mrs. Laird was in the river when it came off her foot.”

Duncan cleared his throat, but it still hurt to say the words. “Nevertheless, the search-and-rescue operation has been reclassified. It’s now a…a recovery mission.”

The judge lowered himself onto the nearest chair, his expression bleak. “Meaning that they’re now searching for her remains.”

Duncan stood mute. DeeDee nodded and murmured, “I’m sorry.”

Laird covered his face with his hands and began to sob. DeeDee and Duncan turned him over to the people hovering in the magnificent foyer of his home and let themselves out the front door. To reach DeeDee’s car, they had to battle their way through a throng of reporters who for a week had kept vigil in the Washington Street median in front of the judge’s home.

“Give me a break, Hatcher,” one of them shouted at Duncan. “What’s the new development?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Can I quote you?”

“Please.” Duncan climbed into the front seat and slammed the car door. “Get the hell out of here,” he said to DeeDee as she clambered into the driver’s seat.

They rode back to the Barracks in virtual silence. DeeDee must have sensed his mood, or maybe she had been subdued by the judge’s apparent grief. In any case, she remained blessedly and uncharacteristically mute.

But the day was far from over.

No sooner had they entered the VCU office than Worley sidled up to them. Bobbing a toothpick in his mouth, he said to Duncan, “Get ready for the hard-on of your life, my friend.”

“Bad timing, Worley,” DeeDee snarled. “We’re in no mood for one of your dirty jokes.”

“No joke.”

“Then what?” Duncan asked brusquely.

“While you were out, we got a tip. Someone who saw Elise Laird.”

Duncan ’s heart began to race. “When?”

“Last week. What? Oh, you thought I meant like today?” Worley shook his head. “Naw. Last week. Before his arrest.”

“Arrest? Whose arrest?”

“Gordie Ballew’s.”

“Gordie Ballew!” DeeDee exclaimed, underscoring Duncan ’s disappointment.

“He demanded a meeting with his public defender,” Worley said. “He’s changed his mind and wants to deal. Says he saw Elise Laird the same day he was arrested. Earlier in the day.”

Duncan made a scoffing sound. “Why’s he suddenly remembering this?”

“His lawyer mentioned time served and Laird’s reward of fifty grand.”

“Every lowlife within a hundred miles of Savannah is laying claim to that reward,” Duncan said. “And the lowest of them is Gordie Ballew. Tell him I said to find himself a sweetheart among the cons and enjoy his stay in prison.” He turned toward his private office, but Worley hooked his elbow and pulled him back around. “I’m not yanking your pod, Dunk, and neither is Gordie. This could be a legitimate break.”

Crossly, he pulled his elbow free. “I doubt it, but okay. What did Gordie have to say?”

“Guess who he claims was with Mrs. Laird.”

DeeDee, sharing Duncan ’s impatience, asked, “Who?”

“Robert Savich.” Worley grinned and jabbed Duncan in the gut. “You hard yet?”

SAVICH’S SECRETARY, KENNY, RECOILED FROM DEEDEE’S COIFFURE with unconcealed horror. “I can recommend a product that will help control that.”

“Control what?” she asked, flashing him her badge.

“Oh dear.”

Duncan didn’t know if his lament was over DeeDee’s frizzy hairdo or the police being there to question his boss.

As they entered Savich’s office, he smiled from behind his desk and politely motioned them to sit in the matching chairs facing him. “I’ve been expecting you.”