Ricochet (18 page)

“Were you able to do what I asked?” she said.

He blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. It swirled in the glow of the pink and blue neon stars. “Tell me, Elise, what do you think of Duncan Hatcher?”

“He’s tough, just as you warned me he would be.”

Lowering his voice, he said, “Maybe a more interesting question would be to ask what Detective Hatcher thinks of
you
, sweet Elise?”

“He thinks I’m a liar.”

“Really?” Fixing his steady blue gaze on her, he idly stroked his cheek. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m afraid Detective Hatcher will continue to think I’m a liar.”

“Change his mind,” he said simply.

“I’ve tried. He didn’t believe me.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. He can be charming. Or so I’ve heard. But under those rough-and-tumble Southern-boy, tawny good looks, he’s all cop. A fucking cop,” he said, letting his enmity toward Hatcher show.

“He won’t close your case as long as there’s one iota of doubt in his mind that it was self-defense. Hear me well, Elise. He’ll leave no stone unturned. And he would delight in finding something nasty beneath one. There’s bad blood between him and your husband.”

“I know about that. Most recently they clashed over your mistrial.”

“Yes, and for that, Hatcher would enjoy embarrassing you and the judge. Publicly if he can. But that’s nothing compared to the plans he has for me. He’s a man with a mission. He never forgets, and he never gives up.”

“I sense that about him.”

“You’re in a dangerous spot, Elise.”

She pulled her lower lip through her teeth. “He doesn’t have any evidence to disprove self-defense.”

“But Hatcher has been known to build cases out of virtually nothing, and, with the exception of my recent trial, he gets convictions and they stick despite appeals.” Sounding almost mystified, he said, “The man actually believes in what he’s doing. Right versus wrong. Good versus evil. He’s a crusader. True blue. Seemingly incorruptible.”

Snagged by his own words, he thought,
Seemingly
incorruptible.

Through the haze of cigarette smoke, he studied his guest. She really was a lovely girl. Classiness and sexiness in one stunning package. A tantalizing combination. Which even a crusader would find hard to resist.

The smile originated with his thoughts and spread slowly across his face. “Sweet Elise,” he said, his voice dripping honey, “let’s talk about this favor you asked of me. You’ll be pleased to know I’ve already granted it.”

W
HEN THE HIGH-PITCHED WARNING BEEP SIGNALED THAT A
main door of the house had been opened, Elise swiftly left her bedroom. She’d reached the top of the stairs when she heard the chirps indicating that the code was being entered. Cato was home.

He appeared in the foyer below her. She called his name. He looked up and saw her poised there at the top of the staircase. “Hello, Elise. You’re still awake. Why am I not surprised?” Rather than coming upstairs, he proceeded down the foyer, disappearing from her sight.

Her meeting with Savich had left her shaken. Meetings with Savich always did.

When she’d returned home, the house was empty. Mrs. Berry was off on Saturday evenings, so Elise hadn’t expected to find her there. But it surprised her that Cato wasn’t. As evening turned to night, she called his cell phone several times but got only his voice mail. He hadn’t responded to her messages.

It was uncharacteristic of him not to keep in touch. It was also a bad omen. She passed the entire evening and into the wee hours in a state of high anxiety, wondering what Duncan Hatcher had told her husband.

She quickly descended the staircase. “Cato?”

“In here.”

She followed the direction of his voice into the kitchen. As she entered, he turned to face her with a butcher knife in his hand. She looked from the gleaming blade to him. “What are you doing?”

“Making a sandwich.” He moved aside, allowing her to see the ham on the countertop, along with fixings for a sandwich. “Would you like one?”

“No, thank you. Wouldn’t you rather have breakfast? I could make—”

“This will do.” He turned back to carving slices off the ham.

“I’ve been calling your cell phone all night. Where have you been?”

“Didn’t you get the message?”

“No.”

“I asked the receptionist at the club to call and tell you that I’d been invited into a high-stakes poker game and that it would be late before I got home.”

He reached around her for the telephone, depressing the button that put it on speaker. The static dial tone indicated that no messages were waiting to be retrieved. “Hmm. That’s odd. She’s usually reliable.”

Elise doubted he’d ever made the request to the receptionist. If he’d wanted to assuage her concern, why hadn’t he just called her himself?

He built his sandwich and halved it with the butcher knife. “What time did you get home, Elise?”

“Around five, I think. After leaving you at the club, I got a call from the dress shop, telling me that my alterations were ready. I went to pick them up, did some shopping.”

That much was the truth. But before going to the boutique where she often shopped, she’d driven to the edge of town to the White Tie and Tails Club to meet Robert Savich.

He put the sandwich on a plate and carried it to the table in the breakfast nook. “Buy anything?”

“A pants suit and a cocktail dress.”

He licked a dollop of mayonnaise off his finger. “You can model them for me later.”

“I think you’ll approve.” She sat down across from him, studying his expression, trying to make eye contact, which he was avoiding. “You’ve never stayed out all night before. Not once since we’ve been married.”

He chewed a bite, blotted his mouth. “Not since we’ve been married have I had a day like yesterday.”

He took another bite, chewed, blotted his mouth again. And he still wouldn’t look at her. She was in an agony of suspense.

“My conversation with Duncan Hatcher was most upsetting.”

Her throat closed.

“Even Kurt the massage Nazi couldn’t work out the tension in my shoulders and back.” He took another bite.

“What did he say to upset you? What did you talk about?”

“Our relationship. Yours and mine, not mine and his,” he added, flashing a humorless smile.

“Our relationship is none of his business.”

Then he did look at her directly. “Maybe he thinks it is.”

“Why would he?”

“You tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Cato. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Twice now I’ve come upon you two with your heads together, lost in conversation. The night of the awards dinner. And again today at the club. I didn’t like it either time.”

“The night of the awards dinner, he was a stranger asking me for change. Today, when I left the powder room, he was in the hallway, looking for you.”

His dark eyes searched hers. “I wasn’t that hard to find today. And he could have asked a dozen other people for change that night. He’s deliberately putting himself in your path. You must sense why, Elise. You can’t be that naive.”

“You think Hatcher is interested in me romantically?”

He scoffed. “No romance about it. He’d love to sleep with you only to make a fool of me.”

Cato had stayed away all night out of pique and jealousy. She felt her lungs expanding with relief.

“That would be the ultimate payback for my putting him in jail, wouldn’t it?” he said. “To seduce my wife?”

Although Duncan Hatcher had said as much to her the night of the awards dinner, she smiled and shook her head. “You’re wrong, Cato. He has no interest in me outside his investigation.”

“What man could be immune to you?”

She smiled at the flattery.

“But what about you, Elise?”

“What about me?”

“What do you think of the detective?”

“You have to ask?” She placed her hand on his forearm where it rested on the table and squeezed it lightly. “Cato, since the night of the shooting, Detective Hatcher has done nothing but bully me. I dread the sight of him.”

His features relaxed. “I’m glad to hear that.” Pushing aside his plate, he reached across the table and stroked her cheek. “Let’s get in the pool.”

“Now? You just ate, and it’s nearly dawn. Aren’t you too tired to swim?”

“I’m wide awake. Apparently, so are you. And I didn’t say I wanted to swim.”

He took her hand and they walked outside together. She reached for the switch that turned on the pool light and the fountain in its center. He said, “No, leave them off.”

He stripped to the skin. It was evident that he wasn’t at all tired. He came to her, untied the belt of her robe, and pushed it off her, along with her slip-type nightgown. He ran his hands over her, possessively and with more aggressiveness than usual.

She responded as expected, but her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking of Duncan Hatcher. He hadn’t betrayed her to Cato. Did that mean he believed her? Even a little?

Cato took her hand and pulled her down the steps into the pool. He clasped her around the waist and waded in until she could no longer touch bottom. As her body floated against his, she noticed that here in the center of the pool, the water was deep and dark. Like secrets.

“Duncan?”

He grunted a semblance of a response.

“That’s yours.”

“Hmm?” He lifted his head from the pillow and opened one eye.

“Your cell phone is ringing.”

“Oh. Thanks.” He rubbed sleep from his eyes with one hand and reached for his phone with the other. He flipped it open. “Yeah?”

“Guess who they hauled in last night and is still in a holding cell?”

“What time is it?” he grumbled, trying to pull the numbers of his alarm clock into focus.

“Gordon Ballew.”

“Who?” How was it that DeeDee didn’t sound groggy even on a Sunday morning?

“Gordie,” she exclaimed. “Gordie Ballew. One of Savich’s boys.”

“Got it.” With a groan, he rolled onto his back and sat up. The woman who’d been sleeping beside him was already up and across the room, gathering her clothing and pulling it on. “What did he do?”

“Who cares?” DeeDee said. “So long as we can get him in a bargaining mood. Meet you there.”

She hung up before he could say anything more. He returned his cell phone to the nightstand and swung his feet to the floor. “Sorry, but I’ve got to run. Work.”

“It’s all right,” she said as her head popped through the neck of her top. “I’ve got to go anyway.”

He’d met her in one of the hot spots in Market Square last night. She was petite, pretty, and brunette. That was the sum total of what he knew about her. She’d told him some stuff, but the music had been loud, the drinks strong, and he hadn’t really been listening anyway because he hadn’t been that interested in anything she had to say.

He remembered none of their conversation, not even her name. He didn’t specifically recall inviting her back to his place, but he must have. As for the act itself, the only thing he remembered was that he’d made sure to use a condom. Immediately after rolling off her, he’d fallen into a deep sleep.

It wasn’t like him to bring home a stranger, but he’d thought that having sex, even mindless, meaningless sex, would keep him from thinking about Elise Laird.

Silly him.

His distraction must have made itself felt, and that was unfair to any woman. Feeling rotten about it, he said, “Look, you don’t have to race out of here just because I do. Stay. Sleep. Make yourself at home. If this doesn’t take too long, we could go out for breakfast later.”

“No, thanks.”

“Well, then, leave your number.” He tried to inject his voice with a bit of enthusiasm, but was pretty sure he didn’t achieve it. “I’d like to see you again.”

“No, you wouldn’t, but that’s cool.” She moved to the door, where she turned back and smiled. “You were a good fuck. Savich said you probably would be.”

Gordon Ballew was one of those individuals who’d been doomed before he took his first breath. His mother hadn’t been sure who his father was and didn’t consider that it mattered much since she didn’t keep the baby anyway.

Not even a barren couple desperate for an adopted child wanted one with a cleft palate, so from the delivery room Gordie had become a dependent of the state, shuttled from one foster home to another until he was old enough to exit the system and try and fare on his own.

His entire life had been an endless round of ridicule and abuse because of his deformed mouth, defective speech, and diminutive size. Today, at age thirty-three, he might weigh 120 pounds, sopping wet.

Duncan would have felt sorry for Gordie Ballew, except for the fact that he had never tried to improve his lot, had never attempted to reverse the downward spiral that his life had been since he wormed his way out of the birth canal.

Once he bade his last set of foster parents good-bye, he’d been in and out of penal institutions so many times that Duncan figured Gordie considered a cell block home.

He watched him thoughtfully on the video monitor in the room adjacent to the interrogation room, where a member of the counter-narcotics team had been hammering away at him for several hours, without success.

“Has the DEA been notified?”

Another narcotics officer shook his head and gave a sour harrumph. “They’ve been such bastards, blaming us ’cause Freddy Morris got popped, I figure we don’t owe them this.”

“
Did
we cause Freddy Morris to get popped?” Duncan asked.

“Hell no,” the officer answered with soft but angry emphasis.

“Savich got him past you. All of you.”

The officer grunted agreement without accepting blame. “I don’t see how he coulda done that.”

“He couldn’t,” Duncan said. “Not without help.”

The narc looked at him sharply. “From inside? Are you saying somebody on our team ratted us out?”

It was a touchy subject, one that had been broached before to a barrage of protests from both teams. It was something constantly in the back of Duncan’s mind, but he dropped it for now.