U PON 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.

So from the time he could reason, Savich had understood that he must create a dominion that was solely his. A man didn’t achieve an egotistic goal of that caliber by being a nice guy, but rather by being tougher, smarter, meaner than his peers. A man could do it only by evoking fear in anyone he met.

Young Robert had taken the dire experiences of his childhood and youth and turned them to his advantage. Each year of poverty, abuse, and alienation was like an additional application of varnish, which became harder and more protective, until now, he was impenetrable. This was particularly true of his soul.

He had directed his intelligence and entrepreneurial instincts toward commerce—of a sort. He was dealing crack cocaine by the time he was twelve. At age twenty-five, in a coup that included slit-ting the throat of his mentor in front of awed competitors, he established himself as the lord of a criminal fiefdom. Those who hadn’t known his name up to that point soon did. Rivals began showing up dead by gruesome means. His well-earned reputation for ruthlessness rapidly spread, effectively quelling any dreamed-of mutinies.

His reign of terror had continued for a decade. It had made him wealthy beyond even his expectations. Minor rebellions staged by those reckless or stupid enough to cross him were immediately snuffed. Betrayal spelled death to the betrayer.

Ask Freddy Morris. Not that he could answer you.

As Savich wheeled into the parking lot of the warehouse from which he ran his legitimate machine shop, he chuckled yet again, imagining Duncan Hatcher’s reaction upon finding the little gift that had been left in his refrigerator.

Duncan Hatcher had started as a pebble in his shoe, nothing more than a nuisance. Initially his crusade to destroy Savich’s empire had been somewhat amusing. But Hatcher’s determination hadn’t waned. Each defeat seemed only to strengthen his resolve. Savich was no longer amused. The detective had become an increasingly dangerous threat who must be dealt with. Soon.

The gradual introduction of methamphetamine into the Southeastern states had opened up a new and vigorous market. It was an ever-expanding profit center for Savich’s business. But it was a demanding taskmaster, requiring constant vigilance. He had his hands full controlling those who manufactured and marketed meth for him. He was equally busy keeping independents from poaching on his territory.

Any idiot with a box of cold remedy and a can of fuel thought he could go into business for himself. Fortunately, most of the amateurs blew themselves and their makeshift labs to smithereens without any help from him. But as relatively easy as it was to produce, meth was even easier to market. Because of its various forms of ingestion—snorting, smoking, injecting, and simply swallowing—there was something to suit every user.

It was a lucrative trade, and Savich didn’t want Duncan Hatcher to bugger it up.

The machine shop on the ground floor of the warehouse was noisy, nasty, and hot, in contrast to the cool oasis of his office suite upstairs. The two areas were separated by a short ride in a clanking service elevator, but aesthetically they were worlds apart.

He’d spared no expense to surround himself with luxury. His leather desk chair was as soft as butter. The finish on his desk was satin smooth and glossy. The carpet was woven of silk threads, the finest money could buy.

His secretary was a homosexual named Kenny, whose family had deep roots in Savannah society and, unfortunately for Kenny, longevity genes. Kenny was waiting impatiently for his elderly parents to die and leave him, their only son and heir, his much-anticipated paper mill fortune.

In the meantime he worked for Savich, who was dark and mysterious and exciting, who was anathema to his stodgy parents for every reason thinkable, and who had won Kenny’s undying loyalty by slowly choking to death a violent homophobe who had waylaid Kenny outside a gay bar and beaten him to within an inch of his life.

Their working relationship was mutually beneficial. Savich preferred Kenny to a female secretary. Invariably women got around to wanting a sexual relationship with him, the depth of which depended on the woman. His policy had always been to keep romance and business separate.

Besides, women were too easily swayed by flattery, or even kindness. Cops and federal agents often used this feminine weakness as a means of getting information. They’d once tried that tactic in the hope of incriminating him. It failed when his secretary mysteriously disappeared. She’d never been found. He’d replaced her with Kenny.

Kenny shot to his feet the instant Savich crossed the threshold of the office suite. Although his well-coiffed hair remained well-coiffed as he nodded toward the closed door to Savich’s private office, it was apparent that he was in a state of excitability.

“You have a visitor who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he said in an exaggerated stage whisper.

Instantly alert to the danger of an ambush—his first thought was Hatcher—Savich reached for the pistol at the small of his back.

His secretary’s plucked eyebrows arched fearfully. “It’s not like that. I would have called you if it was like that. I believe you’ll want to see this visitor.”

Savich, now more curious than wary, moved to the door of his private chamber and opened it. His guest was standing with her back to the room, staring out the window. Hearing him, she turned and removed the dark sunglasses that concealed half her face.

“Elise! What an unexpected and delightful surprise. You’re always a sight for sore eyes.”

She didn’t return either his wide smile or his flattery. “I’m glad to hear that because I need a favor.”

 

Duncan’s rank as detective sergeant afforded few benefits above those of his colleagues, but one of them was a private office at the back of the narrow room that was home to the Violent Crimes Unit.

Duncan nodded at DeeDee as he walked past her desk. He had a doughnut stuck in his mouth, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand, his sport jacket hooked on a finger of the other, a newspaper tucked under his arm. He stepped into his office, but before he even had a chance to sit down, DeeDee, who’d followed him into the closet-sized office, laid a folder on his desk with a decisive slap.

“His name was Gary Ray Trotter.”

Duncan wasn’t a morning person. Hated them, in fact. It took a while for him to warm up to the idea of daylight and get all his pistons firing. DeeDee, on the other hand, could go from zero to sixty within a few seconds.

Despite their late night at the Lairds’ house, she would have been up and at ’em for hours. Other detectives had straggled into the VCU this morning, looking already sapped by the cloying humidity outside. DeeDee, not surprisingly, was by far the most chipper of the lot and was practically bristling with energy.

Duncan raised his arm and let the newspaper slide onto his desk. He draped his jacket over the back of his chair, set down the coffee, which had grown hot in his hand despite the cardboard sleeve around the cup, and took a bite from the doughnut before removing it from his mouth.

“No ‘good morning’?” he asked grumpily.

“Dothan got to work early, too,” she told him as he plopped into his desk chair. “He fingerprinted the Lairds’ corpse. Gary Ray Trotter was a repeat offender, so I had the ID in a matter of minutes. Lots of stuff on this guy.” She indicated the folder lying still untouched on his desk.

“Originally from Baltimore, over the last dozen years he’s gradually worked his way down the East Coast, spending time in various jails for petty stuff until a couple of years ago he got brave and expanded into armed robbery in Myrtle Beach. He was released on parole three months ago. His parole officer hadn’t heard from him in two.”

“My, you’ve been busy,” Duncan said.

“I thought one of us should get a running start, and I knew you wouldn’t.”

“See, that’s why we work so well together. I recognize your strengths.”

“Or rather, I recognize your weaknesses.”

Smiling over the barb, he flipped open the file folder and scanned the top sheet. “I thought his clothes looked new. Like a con recently out.”

By the time he’d finished reading Gary Ray Trotter’s rap sheet he had eaten the doughnut. He licked the glaze off his fingers. “He didn’t have a very distinguished criminal career,” he remarked as he removed the plastic top from the coffee cup.

“Right. So I don’t get it.”

“ ‘It’?”

DeeDee pulled a chair closer to Duncan’s desk and sat down. “Burglarizing the Lairds’ house seems a trifle ambitious for Gary Ray.”

Duncan shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to go out with a bang.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I couldn’t resist.”

“He’d never been charged with burglary before,” DeeDee said.

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t commit one.”

“No, but from reading his record, he doesn’t come across as the sharpest knife in the drawer. In fact, his first offense at age sixteen was theft of a bulldozer.”

“I thought that was a typo. It really was a bulldozer?”

“He drove it from the road construction site where he was employed as a flagman. You know, orange vest? Waves cars around roadwork?”

“Got it.”

“Okay, so Gary Ray steals a bulldozer and drives it to his folks’ farmhouse, leaves it parked outside. Next morning, the road crew shows up for work, discovers the bulldozer missing, calls the police, who—”

“Followed the tracks straight to it.”

“Duh!” DeeDee exclaimed. “How dumb can you be?”

Duncan laughed. “Where was he going to fence a bulldozer?”

“See what I mean? Our Gary Ray wasn’t too astute. It’s quite a leap from bulldozer theft to breaking into a house with a sophisticated alarm system. It wasn’t set, but Gary Ray didn’t know that when he went at that window with a tire iron.”

Playing devil’s advocate, Duncan said, “He’d had years to perfect his craft.”

“Wouldn’t that include coming prepared? Bringing along the tools of his trade? Let’s say Gary Ray had become a crackerjack burglar. Doubtful, but let’s say. One who knew how to disarm sophisticated alarm systems, cut glass so he could reach in and unlock windows, stuff like that.”

“Your basic Hollywood-heist type with his fancy techno toys.”

“I guess,” she said. “So, anyway, where was Gary Ray’s gear? All he brought with him was that tire iron.”

“And a Ruger nine-millimeter.”

“Well, that. But nothing to pick locks or crack safes. Nothing he could use to break into a desk drawer.”

“Those locks would be simple, the kind you open with a tiny key. Give me a few seconds and I could pick them with a safety pin,” Duncan said.

“Gary Ray didn’t have even that. And another thing, even if you were the dumbest burglar in history, wouldn’t you at least wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints?”

None of the points she’d raised were revelations to Duncan. When he’d returned home in the wee hours, he’d made an earnest effort to sleep. But his mind was busy with jumbled thoughts about Elise Laird’s account of the events that had left a man dead, and about the judge’s urgency for them to accept her account without question.

Every discrepancy that DeeDee had cited, he’d already considered. Even before he knew that Gary Ray was an inept criminal, the break-in seemed ill planned and poorly executed. Failure was practically guaranteed.

Nevertheless, he continued to argue the points. “You’re assuming that Gary Ray planned this burglary.” He tapped the folder. “According to this, he was a drug user. He started life stupid and then cooked his few good brain cells with controlled substances.

“Supposing he’s in bad need of a fix, has no money, sees a house that’s bound to have good stuff in it, stuff he can grab quick and fence within a half hour. He could get at least one good toot out of a crystal paperweight or silver candlestick.”

DeeDee thought it over for several moments, then shook her head. “Maybe I’d buy that scenario if he’d been in a commercial area. He pulls a crash-and-snatch on an electronics store or something. Even if the alarm is blaring, he could be in and out in a matter of seconds with a goodie in his pocket.

“But not out there in the burbs,” she went on. “Especially on foot. No one’s found a car attached to him. I checked as soon as I got here this morning. What was he doing in that neighborhood without a getaway car?”

“I wondered about that last night,” Duncan admitted. “It’s been nagging me ever since. How’d he get there and how did he plan to get out?”

“If he didn’t have a car, where’d the tire iron come from?” she asked. “Which, when you think about it, is a pretty clumsy apparatus for a burglar.”

The high humidity had upped the frizz factor of her hair. It swept the air like a stiff broom when she shook her head again. “No, Duncan, something’s out of joint.”

“So what do you think?”

She propped her forearms on the edge of his desk and leaned forward. “I don’t think we’re getting the straight story from the angel-faced Mrs. Laird.”

Dammit, that’s what he thought, too.

He didn’t want to think it. He’d spent the early morning hours trying to convince himself that Elise Laird was as true blue as a nun, had never told a lie in her life, had never even fudged the truth.

But his detective’s gut instinct was telling him otherwise. His master’s degree was telling him otherwise. Fifteen years of police work was telling him that something didn’t gibe, that the judge’s hot tub buddy had intentionally left something out or, worse, made it all up.

Obviously his partner questioned Elise’s veracity, and DeeDee didn’t even know about the private exchange that he’d had with Elise.

He told himself not to read anything into that, that it was irrelevant, and to forget it. However, in addition to sorting through the elements of the shooting incident that didn’t add up, his mind frequently wandered back to that moment when a simple, two-word question had become foreplay.

“Wasn’t it?”

Each time he thought about it—the husky pitch of her voice, the expression in her eyes—he had a profound physical reaction. Like now.

For a cop, it was a bad and dangerous reaction to have to a woman who’d fatally shot a man. For a cop who’d criticized fellow officers for having similar lapses in judgment and morality, it was hypocritical.

It was also damned inconvenient, when DeeDee was sitting across the desk, watching him, waiting for his assessment of Elise Laird’s story.

“What do you know about her?” he asked in a reasonably normal voice. “Her history, I mean.”

“How would I know her history? She and I hardly run in the same circles.”

“You recognized her the night of the awards dinner.”

“From her pictures in the newspaper. If you read something besides the sports page and the crossword puzzle, you would have recognized her, too.”

“She’s featured frequently?”

“Always looking sensational, wearing haute couture, attached at the hip to the judge. She’s definitely a trophy for His Honor.”

“Do some digging. See what you can find on her. I’ll go over to the morgue, goose Dothan into giving priority to Gary Ray Trotter’s autopsy. We’ll compare notes when I get back.” He drained his coffee cup. Then, trying not to appear self-conscious, he stood up and reached for his sport jacket.

“Duncan?”

“Yeah?”

“I just realized something.”

He was afraid DeeDee would say something like, I just realized that you’re sporting a boner for the judge’s wife.

But what she said was, “I just realized that we’re not treating this shooting like it was self-defense. We’re investigating it as something else, aren’t we?”

He almost wished she’d said the other thing.

 

He called the ME from his car and prevailed upon him to put Gary Ray Trotter at the head of the line. Dr. Dothan Brooks had already opened up the cadaver by the time Duncan arrived.

“So far, all his organs are normal size and weight,” Dothan said over his shoulder as he placed a hunk of tissue on the scale.

Duncan took up a position against the wall, listening and watching as the ME methodically went about his work. He glanced at the cadaver only occasionally. He wasn’t particularly squeamish. In fact, he was fascinated by the information a cadaver could impart.

But his fascination made him feel guilty. He felt like he was no better than people who rushed to the scene of a tragedy in the perverse hope of glimpsing strewn body parts and blood.

The ME finished and turned the human shell over to his assistant to close. After he had washed up, Dothan joined Duncan, who was waiting for him in his office.

“Cause of death was obvious,” he said as he huffed in. “His heart was pulp. Exit wound bigger than a salad plate.”

“Before I got here, did you see any other wounds, bruises, scratches?”

“Was he in a fight, you mean? Struggle of some sort?” He shook his head. “Nothing under his fingernails except your common dirt, and there was gunpowder residue on his right hand. He had a broken toe on his left foot, long time ago. No surgical scars. He hadn’t been circumcised.”

“From how far away would you say he was shot?” Duncan asked.

“Fifteen feet, give or take.”

“About the distance between the door of the study and the desk.” He remembered that DeeDee had measured it at sixteen feet. “So Mrs. Laird was telling the truth.”

“About that.” Dothan unwrapped the corned beef sandwich that had been waiting for him on his desk. “Early lunch. Want half?”

“No, thanks. Do you think Mrs. Laird was lying about something else?”

Brooks took a huge bite, but blotted mustard from the corners of his lips with surprising daintiness. He chewed, swallowed, belched, then said, “Possibly. Maybe not. There’s the question of who fired first.”

“You said Trotter died instantly. Meaning he would have had to shoot first.”

“Then you’ve got to believe he was blind—he wasn’t—or the worst marksman in the history of crime.”

“Maybe he deliberately aimed high. He was only trying to frighten her with a warning shot.”

“Could be,” Dothan said, nodding in time to his chewing. “Or maybe she startled him when she appeared in the doorway. Trotter had a knee-jerk reaction, fired a wild shot.”

“She didn’t startle him. She said she told him to leave. He just stood there, looking at her, then jerked his arm up—that’s the word she used—and fired.”

“Hmm.” The ME talked around a big bite of sandwich. “Then I suppose he was extremely nervous, which would account for his aim being nowhere near her. Another possibility”—he paused to slurp Dr Pepper from a paper cup the size of a small wastebasket—“is that he was in the act of firing when her bullet struck him. His finger reflexively contracted and completed the action that pulled the trigger as he was falling backward.” He swallowed. “Now that I think on it, the angle would be right for where the bullet struck the wall.”

He acted it out, pretending to fall backward, his index finger serving as the barrel of a pretend pistol. As he went back, his aim moved to a spot high on the wall, far above Duncan’s head.

“Could that happen?” Duncan asked. “A reflex like that at the moment your heart is blown to hell?”

Brooks crammed the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth. “I’ve seen fatal bullet wounds with even more bizarre explanations. You wouldn’t believe how far-fetched.”

“So what are you telling me?”

“I’m telling you that anything can happen, Detective. But lucky for me, it’s your job to find out what actually did.”

 

“I’ve put them in the sunroom, Mrs. Laird.”

“That’s fine.”

Mrs. Berry had come upstairs to inform her that the same detectives who’d been at the house the night before were downstairs and had asked to see her. “Could you please bring in some refreshments? Diet Coke and iced tea.”

The formidable housekeeper nodded. “Shall I tell them you’ll be right down?”

“Please.”

Elise shut the bedroom door, then stood there, wondering what questions the detectives would be asking today.

Hadn’t they believed her last night?

If they had, they wouldn’t be back today, would they?

Loose ends, Detective Hatcher had said. The term could cover any number of inconsequential nagging details. Or it could be an understatement for discrepancies of major importance.

She feared the latter.

That’s what had prompted her to go see Savich this morning. It had been risky, but she’d wanted to contact him as soon as possible, and using the telephone could have been even chancier than driving to his place of business. She didn’t trust that the home telephone would not be tapped, and cell phone calls could be traced.

Cato had got up at his normal time and quietly dressed for work. She’d pretended to be asleep until he left the bedroom. Then, as soon as his car had cleared the driveway, she had dressed quickly and left the house, hoping to complete the errand and return home before Mrs. Berry arrived for the day.

Keeping a watchful eye in the rearview mirror, she’d been confident that no one had followed her. Despite her haste, she had heeded the speed limits, not wanting to be stopped for a traffic ticket that she would have to explain to Cato.

She had returned home only minutes ahead of the housekeeper and had remained in her bedroom ever since, pacing, playing over in her mind the events of the previous night, trying to decide what her next course of action should be.

Detective Bowen and Duncan Hatcher were waiting for her downstairs. She dreaded the interview, but further delay would look suspicious. She went to her dressing table, gathered her hair into a ponytail, considered changing clothes, then decided not to take the time. She picked up a tube of lip gloss, but changed her mind about that, too. Detective Bowen would find fault with her vanity, and Duncan Hatcher…

What did he think of her? she wondered. Really think of her.

She deliberated that for several precious moments, then, before she could talk herself out of it, did one thing more before leaving the bedroom.

 

The sunroom was a glass-enclosed portion of the terrace, floored in Pennsylvania bluestone, furnished with wicker pieces that had floral print cushions. Mrs. Berry was better with plants than with people. Ferns and palms and other potted tropicals flourished under her care.

When Elise entered the room, DeeDee Bowen was seated in one of the chairs facing the door. Duncan was standing at the wall of windows looking out over the terrace and swimming pool, seemingly captivated by the fountain at the center of it.

Detective Bowen stood up. “Hello, Mrs. Laird. We apologize for showing up unannounced. Is this an inconvenient time?”

“Not at all.”

Upon hearing her name, Duncan turned away from the window. Elise glanced at him, then came into the room and joined Detective Bowen in the sitting area.

“Mrs. Berry will be here shortly with something to drink,” she said, motioning Detective Bowen back into her chair, then sat down in one facing it.

“That’ll be nice. It’s so hot out.”

“Yes.”

Having exhausted the topic of the weather, they lapsed into an awkward silence. Elise was aware of Duncan, still standing near the window, watching her. She resisted looking in his direction.

Finally Bowen said, “We have a few more questions.”

“Before leaving last night you implied that you would.”

“Just a few things we’d like to clear up.”

“I understand.”

“Overnight, did you think of anything you left out? Something that may have slipped your mind?”

“No.”

“That can happen in stressful situations.” The woman smiled at her. “I’ve had people call me in the middle of the night, suddenly remembering a detail they’d forgotten.”

“I told you what I remembered exactly as I remembered it.”

The soft rattle of glassware announced the arrival of a serving cart, pushed into the room by Mrs. Berry. “Shall I serve, Mrs. Laird?” Her voice was as chilly as the condensation on the ice bucket. Elise wasn’t sure if she was disdainful of their guests, or her. Probably both.

“No, thank you.” Welcoming a chance to move and get out from under the scrutiny of the detectives, she left her chair and approached the cart. “I believe you prefer Diet Coke, Detective Bowen?”

“Sounds great.”

Elise poured the cola over a glass of ice and carried it to her. She accepted it with an easy smile, which Elise instantly mistrusted. Then she turned and looked up at Duncan Hatcher. His eyes were still on her. Unblinking. Intent. “Something for you?”

He glanced at the cart. “Is that tea?”

“It’s sweetened. Mrs. Berry thinks that’s the only way to make it.”

“That’s the only way my mom makes it, too. Sweetened is fine.” His smile was as easy as DeeDee Bowen’s, but Elise trusted it even less. It never reached his eyes.

She wondered if the decision she’d made before coming downstairs was a foolhardy one.

Of course, it would have been more foolhardy not to do anything.

She poured Duncan Hatcher a glass of iced tea and was passing it to him when Cato strode into the room. “Apparently I didn’t receive the memo.”

“W HO FIRST, HER OR THE JUDGE?”

Duncan thought about it. “Let’s talk to them together.”

DeeDee registered surprise as well as a trace of disapproval. “How come?”

“Because they’ve already been questioned separately by Crofton and Beale. Sally Beale told me Mrs. Laird’s second telling didn’t vary from the first and that she’s prepared to sign a statement.

“If it really is a matter of her shooting a home intruder, and we continue badgering them, it’s going to look like we doubt them, and that will seem like reprisal for my contempt charge. The only thing it will accomplish is to piss off the judge. Gerard will have my ass if I have another run-in with him.”

“Okay,” DeeDee said. “But what if it isn’t a case of her protecting herself from a home intruder?”

“We have no reason to disbelieve them, do we?”

He left DeeDee to mull that over and followed his nose until he located the kitchen, where Sally Beale and Elise Laird were seated at the table in the breakfast nook, talking quietly. When he came in, the policewoman, in the manner of a heavy person, pushed herself to her feet. “We’re finished here.” She closed the cover of her spiral notebook. “I’ve got it all down.”

None of the color had returned to Elise Laird’s face. She looked at him inquisitively. He sensed unspoken apprehension.

“We’re ready for you in the living room, Mrs. Laird.”

He made his way back to the formal room, where Crofton and Judge Laird had been joined by an austere, gray-haired woman who was pouring hot liquid from a silver pot into china cups.

Sally Beale, who had escorted Elise Laird from the kitchen, came up behind Duncan and noticed his curiosity. “The housekeeper,” she said in a low rumble. “Something Berry. Blew into the kitchen twenty minutes ago like she owned the place.” She chuckled. “’Bout keeled over when she saw my big black self sitting at the breakfast table.”

“So she doesn’t live in?”

She shook her head. “Apparently the judge called her to duty and she came running in no time flat. She’s prepared to do battle for him.”

From over his shoulder, Duncan gave the policewoman a significant look. “For him, but not for Mrs. Laird?”

“All the time she was boiling water and preparing the tea tray, she didn’t say boo to the lady of the house. You couldn’t melt an ice cube on that one’s ass.” She raised her shoulders in an indolent shrug. “I call ’em as I see ’em.”

The judge stood up and warmly embraced his wife when she rejoined him. They were talking together softly, but Crofton was close enough to overhear, so Duncan reasoned that Judge Laird was only asking his wife how she was faring.

Crofton, trying to balance the dainty teacup and saucer on his knee while jotting something in his notebook, greeted Duncan and DeeDee’s appearance with evident relief. “I’ll turn it over to the detectives now.” He set the china on the nearest table, then left the room along with Beale.

Duncan and DeeDee took the twin chairs facing the sofa, where the judge and his wife sat shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. Neither had touched the steaming cups of tea in front of them. Laird offered some to Duncan and DeeDee.

Duncan declined. DeeDee smiled up at the sour-faced housekeeper. “Do you have a Diet Coke?”

She left the room to fetch the drink.

“Have they removed it?”

Duncan supposed the judge was referring to the corpse. “Yes. On his way to the morgue.”

“Where he belongs,” he muttered with distaste.

Elise Laird tipped her head down. Duncan noticed her hands were tightly clasped together and that she had pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over the backs of them as though to keep them warm.

The housekeeper returned with DeeDee’s Diet Coke, served over ice in a crystal tumbler on a small plate with a doily and a lacy cloth napkin. To her credit, and Duncan’s surprise, DeeDee thanked the housekeeper graciously. Any other time, she would have been breaking up with laughter, or scorn, over such pretentious finery.

At a motion from the judge, Mrs. Berry withdrew, leaving the four of them alone. The judge placed his arm around his wife and drew her closer to him. He looked at her with concern, then focused on Duncan.

“We’ve told the other officers everything we know. They took copious notes. I don’t know what more we could possibly add, although we want to do everything we can to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.” His expression was earnest, concerned.

“I hate asking you to retell what happened, but Detective Bowen and I need to hear it all for ourselves,” Duncan said. “I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course. Let’s just get it over with so I can take Mrs. Laird to bed.”

“I’ll make it as painless as possible,” Duncan said, flashing his most reassuring grin. “However, during our questioning, Judge, I’ll ask you not to offer a comment or answer unless directly asked. Please say nothing that could influence Mrs. Laird’s recollection. It’s important that we hear—”

“I understand the procedure, Detective.” Although the judge’s interruption was rude and his tone brusque, his expression remained as pleasant as Duncan’s. “Please proceed.”

The man’s condescending tone grated on Duncan. The judge was accustomed to running the show. In his courtroom, he was the despotic authority. But this was Duncan’s arena and he was the ringmaster. Lest his anger get him into trouble, Duncan thought it best to let DeeDee begin, ease them into it. He’d take over when it got down to the nitty-gritty.

He gave DeeDee a subtle nod and she picked up the cue immediately. “Mrs. Laird?” DeeDee waited until Elise raised her head and looked at her. “Can you lead us through what happened here tonight?”

Before beginning, Elise took a deep breath. “I came downstairs to get something to drink.”

“She does nearly every night,” the judge chimed in, flouting Duncan’s request that he not speak until asked.

Duncan chose to let it pass. Once. “You suffer from chronic insomnia,” he said, remembering what he’d heard the judge tell Crofton.

“Yes.” She addressed the reply to DeeDee, not to him. “I was on my way to the kitchen when—”

“Excuse me. What time was this?” DeeDee asked.

“Around twelve thirty. I remember looking at the clock shortly after midnight. It was about half an hour later that I got up and came downstairs. I thought a glass of milk would help me fall asleep. Sometimes it does.”

She paused, as though expecting someone to comment on that. When no one did, she continued. “I was in the kitchen when I heard a noise.”

“What kind of noise?”

She turned toward Duncan, meeting his eyes for the first time since that moment in the kitchen. “I wasn’t sure what I heard. I’m still not. I think maybe it was his footfalls. Or him bumping into a piece of furniture. Something like that.”

“Okay.”

“Whatever it was, I knew the sound was coming from the study.”

“You couldn’t identify the noise, but you knew where it was coming from?”

The judge frowned at the skepticism underlying DeeDee’s question, but he didn’t say anything.

“I know that sounds odd,” Elise said.

“It does.”

“I’m sorry.” She raised her hands palms up. “That’s how it was.”

“I don’t see why this couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning,” the judge said.

Before Duncan could admonish him, Elise said, “No, Cato. I’d rather talk about it now. While it’s still fresh in my mind.”

He studied his wife’s face, saw the determination in her expression, and sighed. “If you’re sure you’re up to it.” She nodded. He kissed her brow, then divided an impatient look between DeeDee and Duncan, ending on him. “She heard a noise, realized where it was coming from, thought—as any rational person would—that we had an intruder.”

Duncan looked at Elise. “Is that what you thought?”

“Yes. I immediately thought that someone was inside the house.”

“You have an alarm system.”

Duncan had noted the keypad on the wall of the foyer just inside the front door. He’d seen a motion detector in the study and assumed that similar detectors were in other rooms as well. Homes of this caliber almost always had sophisticated alarm systems. A judge who’d sent countless miscreants to prison would surely want his home protected against any ex-con with a vendetta in mind.

“We have a state-of-the-art monitored security system,” the judge said.

“It wasn’t set?” Duncan asked.

“Not tonight,” the judge replied.

“Why not?” The judge was about to answer. Duncan held up his hand, indicating he wanted to hear the answer from Elise. “Mrs. Laird?”

“I…” She faltered, cleared her throat, then said more assertively, “I failed to set the alarm tonight.”

“Are you usually the one who sets it?”

“Yes. Every night. Routinely.”

“But tonight you forgot.” DeeDee put it in the form of a statement, but she was really asking how Mrs. Laird could forget to do tonight what was her routine to do every night.

“I didn’t exactly forget.”

These questions about the alarm had made her uneasy. An uneasy witness was a witness who was either withholding information or downright lying. An uneasy witness was one you prodded. “If you didn’t forget, why wasn’t the alarm set?” Duncan asked.

She opened her mouth to speak. But no words came out.

“Why wasn’t it set, Mrs. Laird?” he repeated.

“Oh, for crissake,” the judge muttered. “I’m forced to be indelicate, but seeing as we’re all adults—”

“Judge, please—”

“No, Detective Hatcher. Since my wife is too embarrassed to answer your question, I’ll answer for her. Earlier tonight we enjoyed a bottle of wine together in our Jacuzzi. From there we went to bed and made love. Afterward, Elise was…Let’s just say she was disinclined to leave the bed in order to set the alarm.”

The judge paused for effect. The air in the room suddenly became abnormally still. Hot. Dense. Or so it seemed to Duncan. He became aware of his pulse. His scalp felt tight.

Finally the judge ended the taut silence. “Now, can we move beyond this one point and talk about the man who tried to kill Elise?”

An inactivated alarm system was a significant point in the investigation of a home break-in that had resulted in a fatal shooting. As the lead detective conducting the investigation, that’s what Duncan should have been concentrating on.

But instead, he was having a hard time getting past the idea of a bottle of wine and Elise Laird in a tub of bubbles. To say nothing of an Elise Laird in bed, sexually sated to the point of immobility.

And when an erotic visualization of that flashed into his mind, it wasn’t Cato Laird who was lying with her.

As though reading his mind, DeeDee shot him a look of reproof, then addressed the next question to Mrs. Laird. “When you heard the noise, what did you do?”

As though grateful for the new direction of questioning, she turned to DeeDee. “I went through the butler’s pantry, which is the shortest route from the kitchen into the foyer. When I reached the foyer, I was certain there was someone in the study.”

“What made you certain?” DeeDee asked.

She raised her slender shoulders. “Instinct. I sensed his presence.”

“His presence? You knew it was a man? Instinctually?”

Elise’s gaze swung back to Duncan. “I assumed so, Detective Hatcher.” She continued to look at him for a moment, then turned back to DeeDee. “I was afraid. It was dark. I sensed someone inside the house. I…I took a pistol from the drawer in the hall table.”

“Why didn’t you run to the nearest telephone, dial 911?”

“I wish I had. If I had it to do over—”

“You would be the one on the way to the morgue.” Cato Laird took one of her hands and pressed it between his. He kissed her temple near her hairline.

Duncan interrupted the tender exchange. “You knew there was a pistol in that drawer?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“Had you used it before?”

She looked affronted. “Of course not.”

“Then how did you know it was there?”

“I own several guns, Detective,” the judge said. “They’re kept handy. Elise knows where they are. I made sure of that. I also insisted on her taking lessons to learn how to use the guns to protect herself in the event she should need to.”

She learned well, Duncan thought. She’d shot a man straight through the heart. He was a good marksman, but he doubted he could be that accurate under duress.

To defuse another tense moment, DeeDee prompted Elise. “So you have the pistol.”

“I walked toward the study. When I got to the door, I switched on the light. But I flipped the wrong switch and the light in the foyer came on, not the overhead light in the study. They’re on the same switch plate. Anyway, I illuminated myself, not him, but I could see him, standing there behind the desk.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing. He just stood there, frozen, looking startled, staring at me. I said, ‘Get out of here. Go away.’ But he didn’t move.”

“Did he say anything?”

She held Duncan’s gaze for several seconds, then replied with a terse no.

He was absolutely certain she was lying. Why? he wondered. But he decided not to challenge her about it now. “Go on.”

“Suddenly he jerked his arm up. Like a puppet whose string has been yanked. His hand came up and before it even registered with me that he had a gun, he fired it. I…I reacted instantaneously.”

“You fired back.”

She nodded.

No one spoke for a time. Finally DeeDee said, “Your aim was exceptionally good, Mrs. Laird.”

“Thank God,” the judge said.

More quietly Elise said, “I got lucky.”

Neither Duncan nor DeeDee said anything to that, although DeeDee glanced at him to see if he thought that shot could be attributed to luck.

“What happened next, Mrs. Laird?”

“I checked his body for a pulse.”

Duncan remembered Baker saying that the victim’s muddy footprints had been smeared, probably by both the Lairds.

“He fell backward, out of sight,” she said. “I was terrified, afraid that he was…”

“Still alive?” DeeDee said.

Again Elise appeared to take umbrage. “No, Detective Bowen,” she said testily. “I was afraid that he was dead. When I got up this morning, I didn’t plan on ending a man’s life tonight.”

“I didn’t imply that you had.”

The judge said brusquely, “That’s it, detectives. No more questions. She’s told you what you need to know. The law is clear on what constitutes self-defense. This intruder was inside our home, and he posed an imminent threat to Elise’s life. If he had survived, you’d be charging him with a list of felonies, including assault with a deadly weapon. Shooting him was justified, and I believe my wife is being inordinately generous by wishing he had survived.”

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?”

D UNCAN DIDN’T NEED THE LIGHTS ON IN ORDER TO PLAY.

In fact, he liked to play in the dark, when it seemed that the darkness produced the music and that it had no connection to him. It was sort of that way even with the lights on. Whenever he touched a piano keyboard, he relinquished control to another entity that lived in his subconscious and emerged only on those occasions.

“It’s a divine gift, Duncan,” his mother had declared when he tried to explain the phenomenon to her with the limited vocabulary of a child. “I don’t know where the music comes from, Mom. It’s weird. I just…I just know it.”

He was eight when she had determined it was time to begin his music lessons. When she sat him down on their piano bench, pointed out middle C, and began instructing him on the fundamentals of the instrument, they discovered to their mutual dismay that he already knew how to play.

He hadn’t known that he could. It shocked him even more than it did his astonished parents when he began playing familiar hymns. And not just picking out single-note melodies. He knew how to chord without even knowing what a chord was.

Of course, for as far back as he could remember, he’d heard his mother practicing hymns for Sunday services, which could have explained how he knew them. But he could also play everything else. Rock. Swing. Jazz. Blues. Folk songs. Country and western. Classical. Any tune he had ever heard, he could play.

“You play by ear,” his mother told him as she fondly and proudly stroked his cheek. “It’s a gift, Duncan. Be thankful for it.”

Not even remotely thankful for it, he was embarrassed by his “gift.” He thought of it more like a curse and begged his parents not to boast about it, or even to tell anybody that he had the rare talent.

He certainly didn’t want his friends to know. They’d think he was a sissy, a dork, or a freak of nature. He didn’t want to be gifted. He wanted to be a plain, ordinary kid. He wanted to play sports. Who wanted to play the stupid piano?

His parents tried to reason with him, saying it was okay for a person to play sports and also be a musician, and that it would be a shame for him to waste his musical talent.

But he knew better. He went to school every day, not them. He knew he’d be made fun of if anyone ever found out that he could play the piano and had tunes he didn’t even know the names of stored up inside his head.

He held firm against their arguments. When pleading with them didn’t work, he resorted to obstinacy. One night after a supper-long debate over it, he swore that he would never touch a keyboard again, that they could chain him to a piano bench and not let him eat or drink or go to the bathroom until he played, and even then he would refuse. Think how bad they would feel when he shriveled up and died of thirst while chained to the piano bench.

They didn’t cave in to the melodramatic vow, but in the long run, they couldn’t force him to play, so he won. The compromise was that he played only for them and only at home.

Although he would never admit it, he enjoyed these private recitals. Secretly he loved the music that was conducted from his brain to his fingers effortlessly, mindlessly, without any urging from him.

At thirty-eight he still couldn’t read a note. Sheet music looked like so many lines and squiggles to him. But over the years, he had honed and refined his innate talent, which remained his secret. Whenever an acquaintance asked about the piano in his living room, he said it was a legacy from his grandmother, which was true.

He played in order to lose himself in the music. He played for his personal enjoyment or whenever he needed to zone out, empty his mind of the mundane, and allow it to unravel a knotty problem.

Like tonight. There hadn’t been a peep out of Savich since the severed tongue incident. The lab at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had confirmed that it had indeed belonged to Freddy Morris, but that left them no closer to pinning his murder on Savich.

Savich was free. He was free to continue his lucrative drug trafficking, free to kill anyone who crossed him. And Duncan knew that somewhere on Savich’s agenda, he was an annotation. Probably his name had a large asterisk beside it.

He tried not to dwell on it. He had other cases, other responsibilities, but it gnawed at him constantly that Savich was out there, biding his time, waiting for the right moment to strike. These days Duncan exercised a bit more caution, was a fraction more vigilant, never went anywhere unarmed. But it wasn’t really fear he felt. More like anticipation.

On this night, that supercharged feeling of expectation was keeping him awake. He’d sought refuge from the restlessness by playing his piano. In the darkness of his living room, he was tinkering with a tune of his own composition when his telephone rang.

He glanced at the clock. Work. Nobody called at 1:34 in the morning to report that there hadn’t been a killing. He answered on the second ring. “Yeah?”

Early in their partnership, he and DeeDee had made a deal. She would be the first one called if they were needed at the scene of a homicide. Between the two of them, he was the one more likely to sleep through a ringing telephone. She was the caffeine junkie and a light sleeper by nature.

He expected the caller to be her and it was. “Were you asleep?” she asked cheerfully.

“Sort of.”

“Playing the piano?”

“I don’t play the piano.”

“Right. Well, stop whatever it is you’re doing. We’re on.”

“Who iced whom?”

“You won’t believe it. Pick me up in ten.”

“Where—” But he was talking to air. She’d hung up.

He went upstairs, dressed, and slipped on his holster. Within two minutes of his partner’s call, he was in his car.

He lived in a town house in the historic district of downtown, only blocks from the police station—the venerable redbrick building known to everyone in Savannah as “the Barracks.”

At this hour, the narrow, tree-shrouded streets were deserted. He eased through a couple of red lights on his way out Abercorn Street. DeeDee lived on a side street off that main thoroughfare in a neat duplex with a tidy patch of yard. She was pacing it when he pulled up to the curb.

She got in quickly and buckled her seat belt. Then she cupped her armpits in turn. “I’m already sweating like a hoss. How can it be this hot and sticky at this time of night?”

“Lots of things are hot and sticky at this time of night.”

“You’ve been hanging around with Worley too much.”

He grinned. “Where to?”

“Get back on Abercorn.”

“What’s on the menu tonight?”

“A shooting.”

“Convenience store?”

“Brace yourself.” She took a deep breath and expelled it. “The home of Judge Cato Laird.”

Duncan whipped his head toward her, and only then remembered to brake. The car came to an abrupt halt, pitching them both forward before their seat belts restrained them.

“That’s the sum total of what I know,” she said in response to his incredulity. “I swear. Somebody at the Laird house was shot and killed.”

“Did they say—”

“No. I don’t know who.”

Facing forward again, he dragged his hand down his face, then took his foot off the brake and applied it heavily to the accelerator. Tires screeched, rubber burned as he sped along the empty streets.

It had been two weeks since the awards dinner, but in quiet moments, and sometimes even during hectic ones, he would experience a flashback to his encounter with Elise Laird. Brief as it had been, tipsy as he’d been, he recalled it vividly: the features of her face, the scent of her perfume, the catch in her throat when he’d said what he had. What a jerk. She was a beautiful woman who had done nothing to deserve the insult. To think she might be dead…

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Ardsley Park. Washington Street.” DeeDee gave him the address. “Very ritzy.”

He nodded.

“You okay, Duncan?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I mean, do you feel funny about this?”

“Funny?”

“Come on,” she said with asperity. “The judge isn’t one of your favorite people.”

“Doesn’t mean I hope he’s dead.”

“I know that. I’m just saying.”

He shot her a hard look. “Saying what?”

“See? That’s what I’m talking about. You overreact every time his name comes up. He’s a raw nerve with you.”

“He gave Savich a free pass and put me in jail.”

“And you made an ass of yourself with his wife,” she said, matching his tone. “You still haven’t told me what you said to her. Was it that bad?”

“What makes you think I said something bad?”

“Because otherwise you would have told me.”

He took a corner too fast, ran a stop sign.

“Look, Duncan, if you can’t treat this like any other investigation, I need to know.”

“It is any other investigation.”

But when he turned onto Washington and saw in the next block the emergency vehicles, his mouth went dry. The street was divided by a wide median of sprawling oak trees and camellia and azalea bushes. On both sides were stately homes built decades earlier by old money.

He honked his way through the pajama-clad neighbors clustered in the street, and leaned on the horn to move a video cameraman and a reporter who were setting up their shot of the immaculately maintained lawn and the impressive Colonial house with the four fluted columns supporting the second-story balcony. People out for a Sunday drive might slow down to admire the home. Now it was the scene of a fatal shooting.

“How’d the television vans get here so fast? They always beat us,” DeeDee complained.

Duncan brought his car to a stop beside the ambulance and got out. Immediately he was assailed with questions from onlookers and reporters. Turning a deaf ear to them, he started toward the house. “You got gloves?” he asked DeeDee over his shoulder. “I forgot gloves.”

“You always do. I’ve got spares.”

DeeDee had to take two steps for every one of his as he strode up the front walkway, lined on both sides with carefully tended beds of begonias. Crime scene tape had already been placed around the house. The beat cop at the door recognized them and lifted the tape high enough for them to duck under. “Inside to the left,” he said.

“Don’t let anyone set foot on the lawn,” Duncan instructed the officer. “In fact, keep everybody on the other side of the median.”

“Another unit is on the way to help contain the area.”

“Good. Forensics?”

“Got here quick.”

“Who called the press?”

The cop shrugged in reply.

Duncan entered the massive foyer. The floor was white marble with tiny black squares placed here and there. A staircase hugged a curving wall up to the second floor. Overhead was a crystal chandelier turned up full. There was an enormous arrangement of fresh flowers on a table with carved gilded legs that matched the tall mirror above it.

“Niiiiice,” DeeDee said under her breath.

Another uniformed policeman greeted them by name, then motioned with his head toward a wide arched opening to the left. They entered what appeared to be the formal living room. The fireplace was pink marble. Above the mantel was an ugly oil still life of a bowl of fresh vegetables and a dead rabbit. A long sofa with a half dozen fringed pillows faced a pair of matching chairs. Between them was another table with gold legs. A pastel carpet covered the polished hardwood floor, and all of it was lighted by a second chandelier.

Judge Laird, his back to them, was sitting in one of the chairs.

Realizing the logical implication of seeing the judge alive, Duncan felt his stomach drop.

The judge’s elbows were braced on his knees, his head down. He was speaking softly to a cop named Crofton, who was balanced tentatively on the edge of the sofa cushion, as though afraid he might get it dirty.

“Elise went downstairs, but that wasn’t unusual,” Duncan heard the judge say in a voice that was ragged with emotion. He glanced up at the policeman and added, “Chronic insomnia.”

Crofton looked sympathetic. “What time was this? That she went downstairs.”

“I woke up, partially, when she left the bed. Out of habit, I glanced at the clock on the night table. It was twelve thirty-something. I think.” He rubbed his forehead. “I think that’s right. Anyway, I dozed off again. The…the shots woke me up.”

He was saying that someone other than he had shot and killed his wife. Who else was in this house tonight? Duncan wondered.

“I raced downstairs,” he continued. “Ran from room to room. I was…frantic, a madman. I called her name. Over and over. When I got to the study…” His head dropped forward again. “I saw her there, slumped behind the desk.”

Duncan felt as though a fist had closed around his throat. He was finding it hard to breathe.

DeeDee nudged him. “Dothan’s here.”

Dr. Dothan Brooks, medical examiner for Chatham County, was a fat man and made no apology for it. He knew better than anyone that fatty foods could kill you, but he defiantly ate the worst diet possible. He said that he’d seen far worse ways to die than complications from obesity. Considering the horrific manners of death he’d seen over the course of his own career, Duncan thought he might have a point.

As the ME approached them, he removed the latex gloves from his hands and used a large white handkerchief to mop his sweating forehead, which had taken on the hue of a raw steak. “Detectives.” He always sounded out of breath and probably was.

“You beat us here,” DeeDee said.

“I don’t live far.” Looking around, he added with a trace of bitterness, “Definitely at the poorer edge of the neighborhood. This is some place, huh?”

“What have we got?”

“A thirty-eight straight through the heart. Frontal entry. Exit wound in the back. Death was instantaneous. Lots of blood, but, as shootings go, it was fairly neat.”

To cover his discomposure, Duncan took the pair of latex gloves DeeDee passed him.

“Can we have a look-see?” she asked.

Brooks stepped aside and motioned them toward the end of the long foyer. “In the study.” As they walked, he glanced overhead. “I could send one of my kids to an Ivy League college for what that chandelier cost.”

“Who else has been in there?” DeeDee asked.

“The judge. First cops on the scene. Swore they didn’t touch anything. I waited on your crime scene boys, didn’t go in till they gave me the go-ahead. They’re still in there, gathering trace evidence and trying to get a name off the guy.”

“Guy?” Duncan stopped in his tracks. “The shooter is in custody?”

Dothan Brooks turned and looked at the two of them with perplexity. “Hasn’t anybody told y’all what happened here?”

“Obviously not,” DeeDee replied.

“The dead man in the study was an intruder,” he said. “Mrs. Laird shot him. She’s your shooter.”

Movement at the top of the staircase drew their gazes upward. Elise Laird was making her way down the stairs followed by a policewoman in uniform. Sally Beale was as black as ebony and hard as steel. Her twin brother was a defensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers. Sally’s size alone made her physically imposing. It was coupled with a stern demeanor.

But Duncan’s gaze was fixed on Elise Laird. Her face looked freshly scrubbed. Her pallor couldn’t be attributed to the glare of the gaudy chandelier, because even her lips appeared bloodless. Her features were composed, however, and her eyes were dry.

She had killed a man, but she hadn’t cried over it.

Her hair was secured with a rubber band at the back of her head. The ponytail looked mercilessly tight. She wore pink suede moccasins on her feet and was dressed in a pair of soft, worn blue jeans and a white sweater that looked like cashmere. With the outdoor temperature hovering around ninety degrees, the sweater seemed out of season. Duncan wondered if she felt chilled, and why.

When she saw Duncan, she halted so suddenly that Officer Beale nearly ran into her. The pause was short-lived, but lasted long enough to be noticed by DeeDee, who gave him a sharp glance.

When Elise reached the bottom step, her gaze locked with Duncan’s for several beats before it slid to DeeDee, who stepped forward and introduced herself. “Mrs. Laird, I’m Detective DeeDee Bowen. This is my partner, Detective Sergeant Duncan Hatcher. I think you two have met.”

“Darling, did the shower make you feel better?” The judge came from the living room and quickly moved to his wife, placing his arm around her shoulders, touching her colorless cheek with the back of his finger. Only then did he acknowledge the rest of them. Without so much as a hello, he said, addressing the question to Duncan, “Why did they send you?”

“You’ve got a dead man in your house.”

“But you investigate homicides. This wasn’t a homicide, Detective Hatcher. My wife shot an intruder, whom she caught in the act of burglarizing my study, where I keep valuable collectibles. When she challenged him, he fired a pistol at her. She had no choice but to protect her own life.”

Standard operating procedure was to keep the witnesses of a crime separate until each had been questioned, so that one couldn’t influence the other’s account in any way. A criminal court judge should know that.

With consternation, Duncan said, “Thanks for the summary, Judge, but we would prefer to hear what happened directly from Mrs. Laird.”

“She’s already given an account to these officers.” He nodded toward Beale and Crofton.

“I talked to her first,” Crofton said. “It’s pretty much like he said.”

“That’s her story,” Beale confirmed, slapping her notebook against her palm. “His, too.”

The judge took umbrage. “It’s not a story. It’s a true account of what took place. Is it necessary for Elise to repeat it tonight? She’s already been traumatized.”

“We haven’t even seen the victim or the scene yet,” DeeDee said.

“Once we’ve taken a look and talked to forensics, we’re certain to have questions for Mrs. Laird.” Duncan glanced at her. She’d yet to utter a sound. Her eyes were fixed on a spot in near space, as though she had detached herself from what was going on around her.

Coming back to the judge, he said, “We’ll try and keep it as brief as possible. We certainly wouldn’t want to contribute to the trauma Mrs. Laird has suffered tonight.” He turned and addressed Sally Beale. “Why don’t you take her into the kitchen? Maybe get her something to drink. Crofton, you can continue with the judge.”

Judge Laird didn’t look happy about Duncan’s directives, which purposefully kept him separated from his missus, but he consented with a terse nod. Stroking his wife’s arm, he said, “I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”

Sally Beale laid her wide hand on Elise’s shoulders, firmly but not unkindly. “I could use a Coke or something. How ’bout you?”

Still saying nothing, Elise went along with the policewoman. DeeDee gave Duncan a questioning look. He raised his shoulders in a shrug and proceeded down the hallway to rejoin the ME. “What about it, Dothan? Does it look like self-defense to you?”

“See for yourself.”

Duncan and DeeDee paused on the threshold of the study. From that vantage point, they could see only the victim’s shoes. They asked the crime scene techs if it was all right to come in.

“Hey, Dunk. DeeDee.” Overseeing the collection of evidence was a small, bookish guy named Baker, who looked more like an antiques dealer than a cop who performed the nasty job of scavenging through the rubble of violent death. “We’ve vacuumed the whole room, but I don’t think he got any farther than where you see him now. He jimmied a window lock to break in.” He motioned toward the window.

“We found a tire iron outside under the bushes. We’ve got casts of the footprints outside the window. Matching prints here inside don’t extend past the desk. They were muddy prints, so now they’re sorta smeared.”

“Why’s that?”

“The Lairds smeared them when they checked to see was he dead.”

“Lairds plural?” DeeDee asked.

Baker nodded. “Her, soon as she shot the guy. The judge when he came into the room and saw what had happened. He assessed the situation and immediately called 911. That’s what they told Crofton and Beale anyway.”

“Huh. How’d the intruder get here? To the house, I mean.”

“Beats me,” Baker replied. “We’ve lifted prints off the desk drawers, but they could belong to the judge, his wife, the housekeeper. We’ll see. Took a Ruger nine-millimeter out of his right hand.” He held up an evidence bag. “His finger was around the trigger. We’re pretty sure he fired. Smelled like it.”

“I bagged his hands,” Dothan Brooks said.

“We pulled a slug out of the wall over there.” Duncan and DeeDee turned to look at where Baker was pointing and saw a bullet hole in the wall about nine feet above the floor.

“If he was trying to shoot Mrs. Laird, his aim was lousy,” DeeDee remarked, echoing what Duncan was thinking.

“Maybe she startled him, caught him in the act, and he fired too quickly to take aim,” Duncan said.

“That’s what we figured,” Baker said. He motioned toward the photographer, who was replacing his gear in its hard-shell case. “We got pictures from every angle. I made sketches of the room, and took measurements. It’ll all be ready when you need it, if you need it. We’re done.”

With that, he and his crew trailed out.

Duncan advanced into the room. The victim was lying on the floor, faceup, between a desk that was larger than Duncan’s car and a bookcase filled with leather-bound books and knickknacks that looked rare, old, and expensive. The rug beneath him was still wet with blood.

The man was Caucasian, appeared to be around thirty-five, and looked almost embarrassed to be in his present situation. Duncan had been taught by his parents to respect the nobility of life, even in its most ignoble forms. Often his father had reminded him that all men were God’s creation, and he’d grown up believing it.

He had acquired enough toughness and objectivity to do the work he did. But he never looked at a dead body without feeling a twinge of sadness. The day he no longer felt it, he would quit. If the time ever came when he felt no remorse over a life taken, he would know his soul was in jeopardy. He would have become one of the lost. He would have become Savich.

He felt he should apologize to this unnamed person for the indignity he had undergone already and would continue to be subjected to until they got from him all the answers he could provide. No longer a person, he was a corpse, evidence, exhibit A.

Duncan knelt down and studied his face, asking softly, “What’s your name?”

“Neither the judge nor Mrs. Laird claim to recognize him,” Dothan said.

The ME’s statement jerked Duncan out of his introspection and back into the job at hand. “ ‘Claim’?”

“Don’t read anything into that. I’m just repeating what the judge told me when I got here.”

Duncan and DeeDee exchanged a significant look, then he searched the dead man’s pockets, hoping to find something that perhaps Baker had overlooked. All the pockets were empty.

“No car keys. No money. No ID.” He studied the man’s face again, searching his memory, trying to place him among crooks he’d come across during the investigations of other homicides. “I don’t recognize him.”

“Me, neither,” DeeDee said.

Standing, Duncan said, “Dothan, I’d like to know the distance from which the fatal shot was fired. How close was Mrs. Laird when she shot him?”

“I’ll give you my best guess.”

“Which is usually pretty damn good.”

“Baker’s reliable, but I’ll take my own measurement of the distance between the door and the desk,” DeeDee said, pulling a tape measure from her pocket.

“Well, unless y’all need me, I’m off,” the ME said, tucking his damp handkerchief into his pants pocket. “Ready to get him out of here?”

“DeeDee?” Duncan asked.

“Sixteen feet.” She wrote the measurement in her notebook, then took a look around the room. “I think I’ll do my own sketch of the room, too, but you don’t have to hang around,” she said to the ME.

“Then I’ll send in the EMTs.” He glanced around, his expression turning sour. “Money sure gets you nice stuff, doesn’t it?”

“Especially old money. Laird Shipping was started by the judge’s grandfather, and he’s the last of the line,” DeeDee informed them. “No other heirs,” she said, raising her eyebrows.

“This place probably isn’t even mortgaged,” Dothan grumbled as he turned to leave. “Think I’ll find a Taco Bell open this time of night?” He was panting hard as he lumbered off.

As DeeDee sketched in her notebook, she said, “He’s going to keel over one of these days.”

“But he’ll die happy.”

Duncan’s mind wasn’t on the ME’s health. He was noting that the victim’s clothing and shoes appeared new, but cheap. The kind a con would wear when he was released from prison. “First thing tomorrow, we need to check men recently released from prison, especially those who’d been serving time for breaking and entering. I bet we won’t have to dig too deep before we find this guy.”

EMTs wheeled in a gurney. Duncan stood by as the unidentified dead man’s body was zipped into the black bag, placed on the gurney, and rolled out. He accompanied it as far as the front door. From there he could see that a larger crowd of gawkers had gathered on the far side of the median. More news vans were parked along the street.

The flowers in the vase on the foyer table shimmied, alerting him to Sally Beale’s approach. “I had her go through it all again,” she said to Duncan, speaking in an undertone. “Didn’t falter. Didn’t change a word. She’s ready to sign a statement.”

He surveyed the divided street, trying to imagine it prior to becoming a crime scene. Without the flashing emergency lights and the onlookers, it would be serene.

“Sally, you were first on the scene, right?”

“Me and Crofton were only a couple blocks away when we got the call from dispatch.”

“Did you see any moving vehicles in the area?”

“Nary a one.”

“Abandoned car?”

“Not even a moped, and other patrol units have been canvassing the whole neighborhood looking for the perp’s means of transportation. Nothing’s turned up.”

Puzzling. Something out of whack that demanded an explanation. “Are the neighbors being canvassed?”

“Two teams are going door-to-door. So far, everybody was fast asleep, saw no one, heard nothing.”

“Not even the shots?” He turned to face the policewoman, who was shrugging.

“Big houses, big yards.”

“Mrs. Laird showered?”

“Said she felt violated,” Beale said. “Asked would it be okay.”

It was a typical reaction for people to want to wash after their home was invaded, but Duncan didn’t like it when a bloody corpse was just downstairs. “Did she have blood on her?”

“No, and I was with her the whole time upstairs. All she had on was her robe. I got it from her, gave it to Baker. No blood on it that I saw. But the judge, the hem of his robe had blood on it from when he checked the body. He asked permission to dress. Baker’s got his robe, too.”

“Okay, thanks, Sally. Keep them separate till we’re ready to question them.”

“You got it.”

He returned to the study, where DeeDee was examining the judge’s desk. “All these drawers are still locked.”

“Mrs. Laird must have caught the burglar early.”

She raised her head and gave him an arch look. “You believe the burglar scenario?”

“I believe it’s time we asked just how this went down.”

D UNCAN WOULD TAKE THE SEVERED TONGUE—NOW SEVERAL months old—to the ME in the morning. For the time being he placed it in an evidence bag and returned it to his refrigerator.

DeeDee was aghast. “You’re not going to leave it in there, are you? With your food?”

“I don’t want it smelling up my house.”

“Are you going to have the place dusted for prints?”

“It wouldn’t do any good and would only make a mess.”

Whoever had been inside his house, either Savich or one of his many errand boys—Duncan guessed the latter—would have been too smart to leave fingerprints. More disturbing than finding the offensive, shriveled piece of tissue was knowing that his house had been violated. In and of itself, the tongue was a prank. Savich’s equivalent to na-na-na-na-na. He was rubbing Duncan’s nose in his defeat.

But the message it sent was no laughing matter. Duncan had detected the underlying threat in Savich’s taunting good-bye, but this wasn’t the retribution that threat foretold. This was only a prelude, a hint of things to come. It broadcast loud and clear that Duncan was vulnerable and that Savich meant business. By coming into Duncan’s home, he’d taken their war to a new level. And only one of them would survive it.

Although he minimized his apprehension with DeeDee, he did not underestimate Savich and the degree of his brutality. When he launched his attack on Duncan, it would be merciless. What worried Duncan most was that he might not see it coming until it was too late.

He’d hoped the incident would relieve him of having to attend the awards dinner with DeeDee. Surely she wouldn’t require him to go now. But she persisted, and ultimately he gave in. He dressed in a dark suit and tie and went with her to one of the major hotels on the river where the event was being held.

Upon entering the ballroom, he took a cursory glance at the crowd and stopped dead in his tracks. “I cannot believe this!” he exclaimed.

Following the direction of his gaze, DeeDee groaned. “I didn’t know he was going to be here, Duncan. I swear.”

Judge Cato Laird, immaculately attired and looking as cool as the drink in his hand, was chatting with police chief Taylor.

“I formally release you from your obligation,” DeeDee said. “If you want to leave, you won’t get an argument from me.”

Duncan’s eyes stayed fixed on the judge. When Laird laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkled handsomely. He looked like a man confident of the rightness of every decision he’d ever made in his entire life, from the choice of his necktie tonight to declaring Savich’s murder trial a mistrial.

Duncan would be damned before he tucked tail and slunk out. “Hell no,” he said to DeeDee. “I wouldn’t pass up this chance to escort you when you’re this gussied up. You’re actually wearing a skirt. First time I’ve ever seen you in one.”

“I swore off them once I graduated from Catholic high school.”

He made a point of looking at her legs. “Better than decent. Fairly good, in fact.”

“You’re full of shit, but thanks.”

Together they wove their way through the crowd, stopping along the way to speak to other policemen and to be introduced to significant others they hadn’t met before. Several mentioned Duncan’s days in jail, the sentiments ranging from anger to sympathy. He responded by joking about it.

When they were spotted by the police chief, Taylor excused himself from the group he was speaking with and approached them to extend his congratulations to DeeDee for the commendation she was to receive later that evening. While she was thanking him, someone addressed Duncan from behind.

Turning, he came face-to-face with Cato Laird, whose countenance was as guileless as that of the lead soprano in his dad’s church choir. Reflexively Duncan’s jaw clenched, but he replied with a civil, “Judge Laird.”

“Detective. I hope there are no hard feelings.” He extended his right hand.

Duncan clasped it. “For the jail time? I have only myself to blame for that.”

“What about the mistrial?”

Duncan glanced beyond the judge’s shoulder. Although DeeDee was being introduced to the mayor, who was enthusiastically pumping her hand, she was keeping a nervous eye on him and Laird. Duncan felt like telling the judge in the most explicit terms what he thought of his ruling and where he could shove his gavel.

But this was DeeDee’s night. He would hold his temper. He would even refrain from telling the judge about the unpleasant surprise he’d had waiting in his home upon his return.

His eyes reconnected with the judge’s dark gaze. “You know as well as I do that Savich is guilty of the Morris hit, so I’m certain you share my misgivings about releasing him.” He paused to let that soak in. “But I’m equally certain that, under the circumstances, you ruled according to the law and your own conscience.”

Judge Laird gave a slight nod. “I’m glad you appreciate the complexities involved.”

“Well, I had forty-eight hours to contemplate them.” He grinned, but if the judge had any perception at all, he would have realized that it wasn’t a friendly expression. “Please excuse me. My partner is signaling for me to rejoin her.”

“Of course. Enjoy the evening.”

The judge stepped aside and Duncan brushed past him.

“What did he say?” DeeDee asked out the side of her mouth as Duncan took her arm and guided her toward the bar.

“He told me to enjoy the evening. Which I think includes having a drink.”

He elbowed them through the crowd to the bar, ordered a bourbon and water for himself and a Diet Coke for her. Another detective in their division sidled up to them, awkwardly holding a drink in one hand and balancing a plate piled with hors d’oeuvres in the other.

“Hey, Dunk,” he said around a mouthful of crab dip, “introduce me to your new squeeze.”

“Eat shit and die, Worley,” she said.

“What do you know? She sounds just like Detective Bowen!”

Worley was a good detective but one of the “yahoos” that DeeDee had referred to earlier. Never without a toothpick in his mouth, he held one there now, even as he ate from his plate of canapés. He and DeeDee had an ongoing contest to see who could better insult the other. The score was usually tied.

“Lay off, Worley,” Duncan said. “DeeDee is an honoree tonight. Behave.”

DeeDee was always in cop mode. Having worked with her for two years, Duncan thought that was possibly the only mode she operated in. Even tonight, despite the skirt and the lip gloss she’d smeared on for the occasion, she was thinking like a cop. “Tell Worley what we found in your house.”

Duncan described the severed tongue. He indicated a chunk of meat on Worley’s plate. “Looked sorta like that.”

“Jeez.” Worley shuddered. “How do you know Morris was the rightful owner?”

“Just a guess, but a pretty good one, don’t you think? I’ll take it to the lab tomorrow.”

“Savich is pricking with you.”

“He’s a regular comedian, all right.”

“But coming at you where you live…” Worley rearranged his toothpick and popped the questionable chunk of meat into his mouth. “That’s ballsy. So, Dunk, you spooked?”

“He’d be stupid not to be a little spooked,” DeeDee said, answering for him. “Right, Duncan?”

“I guess,” he replied absently. He was wondering if, when the final showdown came, he would be able to kill Savich without compunction. He supposed he could, because he knew with certainty that Savich wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.

In an effort to lighten the mood, Worley said, “Honest, DeeDee, you look sorta hot tonight.”

“Little good it’ll do you.”

“If I get drunk enough, you might even start to look like a woman.”

DeeDee didn’t miss a beat. “Sadly, I could never get drunk enough for you to start looking like a man.”

This was familiar office banter. The men in the Violent Crimes Unit gave DeeDee hell, but they all respected her skill, dedication, and ambition, all of which she had in surplus. When the situation called for it, the teasing stopped, and her opinions were respected equally with those of her male counterparts, sometimes more. “Women’s intuition” was no longer just a catchphrase. Because of DeeDee’s perception, they’d come to believe in it.

Knowing she could fend for herself without his help, Duncan turned away and let his gaze rove over the crowd.

Later, he remembered it was her hair that had first called her to his attention.

She was standing directly beneath one of the directional lights recessed into the ceiling thirty feet above her. It acted like a spotlight, making her hair look almost white, marking her as though she were the only blonde in the crowd.

It was in a simple style that bordered on severity—pulled back into a small knot at the nape of her neck—but it defined the perfect shape of her head and showed off the graceful length of her neck. He was admiring that pale nape when a nondescript woman who’d been blocking his view of the rest of her moved away. He saw her back. All of it. Tantalizing square inches of bare skin from her neck to her waist, even slightly below.

He didn’t know jewelry could be worn on that part of the body, but there it was, a clasp made of what looked like diamonds winking at him from the small of her back. He imagined the stones would be warm from her skin.

Just from looking at her, his skin had turned warm.

Someone moved up behind her, said something. She turned, and Duncan got his first look at her face. Later, he thought that maybe his jaw had actually dropped.

“Dunk?” Worley nudged his arm. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“I asked you how jail was.”

“Oh, just peachy.”

The other detective leaned toward him and leered. “You have to fight off any cell mates looking for romance?”

“No, they were all pining for you, Worley.”

DeeDee laughed so suddenly, she snorted. “Good one, Duncan.”

He turned away again, but the blonde had moved from the spot where he’d seen her. Impatiently his gaze scanned the crowd, until he located her again. She was talking to a distinguished-looking older couple and sipping a glass of white wine with seeming uninterest in both it and the conversation. She was smiling politely, but her eyes had a distant quality, like she wasn’t quite connected to what was going on around her.

“You’re drooling.” DeeDee had moved up beside him and followed his stare to the woman. “Honestly, Duncan,” she said with exasperation. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“Can’t help it. I’ve fallen into instant lust.”

“Rein it in.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Don’t want to, you mean.”

“Right, don’t want to. I didn’t know that getting struck by lightning could feel so good.”

“Lightning?”

“Oh yeah. And then some.”

DeeDee critically looked the woman over and shrugged. “She’s okay, I guess. If you’re into tall, thin, perfect hair, and flawless skin.”

“To say nothing of her face.”

She took a noisy sip of her Diet Coke. “Yeah, there’s that. I gotta give credit where credit’s due. As usual, your sexual radar homed in on the dishiest babe in the room.”

He shot her his wicked smile. “It’s this gift I have.”

The couple moved away from the woman, leaving her standing by herself in the midst of the crowd. “The lady looks lost and lonely,” Duncan said. “Like maybe she needs a big strong cop to come to her rescue. Hold my drink.” He thrust his glass toward DeeDee.

“Have you lost your mind?” She stepped in front of him to block his path. “That would be the height of stupidity. I will not stand by and watch as you self-destruct.”

“What are you talking about?”

DeeDee looked at him with sudden understanding. “Oh. You don’t know.”

“What?”

“She’s married, Duncan.”

“Shit. Are you sure?”

“To Judge Cato Laird.”

 

“What did he say to you?”

Elise Laird set her jeweled handbag on the dressing table and stepped out of her sandals. Cato had come upstairs to their bedroom ahead of her. He was already undressed and in his robe, sitting on the side of their bed.

“Who?” she asked.

“Duncan Hatcher.”

She pulled a pin from her hair. “Who?”

“The man you were talking to in the porte cochere. When I went to pay for the valet parking. Surely you remember. Tall, rugged, in dire need of a haircut, built like a wide receiver. Which he was. At Georgia, I believe.”

“Oh, right.” She dropped the hairpins next to her handbag and uncoiled the chignon, then combed her fingers through her hair. Facing the mirror, she smiled at her husband’s reflection. “He asked if I had change. He needed to tip the parking valet and didn’t have any bills smaller than a ten.”

“He only asked for change?”

“Hmm.” Reaching behind her she tried to undo the clasp of the diamond brooch at the small of her back. “Could you help me here, please?”

Cato left the bed and moved up behind her. He unfastened the clasp, pulled the pin from the black silk with care, then handed her the brooch and placed his hands on her shoulders, massaging gently. “Did Hatcher address you by name?”

“I honestly don’t remember. Why? Who is he?”

“He’s a homicide detective.”

“Savannah police?”

“A decorated hero with a master’s degree in criminology. He has brains and brawn.”

“Impressive.”

“Up till now he’s been an exemplary officer.”

“Till now?”

“He testified in my court this week. Murder trial. When circumstances forced me to declare a mistrial, he lost his temper. Became vituperative. I found him in contempt and sentenced him to two days in jail. He was released just this afternoon.”

She laughed softly. “Then I’m sure he didn’t know who I was. If he had, he would have avoided speaking to me.” She took off her earrings. “Was the woman with him his wife?”

“Police partner. I don’t believe he’s married.” He slipped the dress off Elise’s shoulders, sliding the fabric down her arms, baring her to the waist. He studied her in the mirror. “I guess I can’t blame the man for trying.”

“He didn’t try anything, Cato. He asked me for change.”

“There were other people he could have asked, but he asked you.” Reaching around her, he took the weight of her breasts in his palms. “I thought he might have recognized you, that you might have met before.”

Meeting his dark eyes in the mirror, she said, “I suppose it’s possible, but if so, I don’t remember it. I wouldn’t have remembered speaking to him tonight if you hadn’t brought it up.”

“Untrimmed dirty-blond hair isn’t attractive to you? That shaggy, scruffy look doesn’t appeal?”

“I much prefer graying temples and smoother shaves.”

The zipper at the back of her dress was short. He smiled into the mirror as he pulled it down, following the cleft between her buttocks, then pushed the dress to the floor, leaving her in only a black lace thong. He turned her to face him. “This is the best part of these dull evenings out. Coming home with you.” He looked at her, waiting. “No comment?”

“I have to say it? You know I feel the same.”

Taking her hand, he folded it around his erection. “I lied, Elise,” he whispered as he guided her motions. “This is the best part.”

 

A half hour later, she eased herself from the bed, padded to the closet for a robe, and pulled it on. She paused briefly at her dressing table, then went to the door. It creaked when she pulled it open. She looked back toward the bed. Cato didn’t stir.

She slipped from the room and tiptoed downstairs. Her insomnia concerned him. Sometimes he would come downstairs and find her on the sofa in the den, watching a DVD of one of her favorite movies. Sometimes she was reading in the living room, sometimes sitting in the sunroom, staring out at the lighted swimming pool.

He sympathized with her sleeplessness and urged her to get medication to help remedy it. He chided her for leaving their bed without waking him when he might have helped soothe her into sleep.

Recently she had begun to wonder if his concern was over the insomnia, or her nocturnal prowls through the house.

A night-light was left on in the kitchen, but the route was so familiar she could have found her way without it. Whatever else she did when she came downstairs, she always poured herself a glass of milk, which she claimed helped, and left the empty glass in the sink to ensure never being caught in a lie.

Standing at the sink, sipping the unwanted milk, she hoped that Cato would never catch her in the lie she’d told him tonight.

The detective had known who she was; he had called her by name.

“Mrs. Laird?”

When she turned, she was struck first by his height. Cato was tall, but Duncan Hatcher topped him by several inches. She had to tilt her head back to look into his face. When she did, she realized that he was standing inappropriately close, but not so close as to call attention to it. His eyes had the sheen of inebriation, but his speech wasn’t slurred.

“My name is Duncan Hatcher.”

He didn’t extend his hand, but he looked down at hers as though expecting her to shake hands with him. She didn’t. “How do you do, Mr. Hatcher?”

He had a disarming smile, and she suspected he knew that. He also had enough audacity to say, “Great dress.”

“Thank you.”

“I like the diamond clip at the small of your back.”

She coolly nodded an acknowledgment.

“Is that all that’s keeping it on?”

That was an improper remark. And so was the insinuation in his eyes. Eyes that were light gray and darkly dangerous.

“Good-bye, Mr. Hatcher.”

She was about to turn away when he moved a step closer, and for a moment she thought he would touch her. He said, “When are we going to see each other again?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When are we going to see each other again?”

“I seriously doubt we are.”

“Oh, we are. See, every judge who finds me in contempt and sends me to jail? I make it a point to fuck his wife.”

He made it sound like a promise. Shock rendered her speechless and motionless. So for several seconds they simply stood there and looked at each other.

Then two things happened simultaneously that broke the stare. The woman she now knew was his partner seized Duncan Hatcher by the arm and dragged him toward the car that a parking valet had just delivered. And Cato appeared in her peripheral vision. As he approached her, she turned toward him and managed to smile, although the muscles of her face felt stiff and unnatural.

Her husband looked suspiciously after Hatcher as the woman hustled him into the passenger seat of the car. Elise had feared Cato would confront her then about the brief exchange, but he hadn’t. Not until they were home, and by then she’d had time to fabricate a lie.

But she wondered now why she had lied to her husband about it.

She poured the remainder of the unwanted milk down the drain and left the glass in the sink, where it would be conspicuous. Leaving the kitchen, she returned to the foot of the curving staircase in the foyer. There she paused to listen. The house was silent. She detected no movement upstairs.

Quickly she went down the center hallway and into Cato’s study. She crossed the room in darkness, but once behind the desk, switched on the lamp. It cast dark shadows around the room, particularly onto the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that formed the wall behind the desk.

She swung open the false shelf that concealed the wall safe and tried the handle, knowing already that it wouldn’t budge. The safe was kept locked at all times, and even as they approached three years of marriage, Cato had never entrusted her with the combination.

She replaced the shelf of faux books and stepped back so she could study the bookcase wall as a whole. Then, as she’d done many times before, she broke it down into sections, focusing on one shelf at a time, letting her gaze slowly move from volume to volume.

There were countless hiding places in this bookshelf.

On a shelf slightly above her head, she noticed that one of the leather-bound volumes extended a fraction of an inch over the edge of the shelf. Coming up on tiptoe, she reached overhead to further investigate.

“Elise?”

She whipped around, gasping in fright. “Cato! Good Lord, you scared me.”

“What are you doing?”

Her heart in her throat, she took the diamond pin from the pocket of her robe, where she’d had the foresight to place it before leaving the bedroom. “My brooch.”

“Is that all that’s keeping it on?”

It surprised her that her memory would replay Duncan Hatcher’s suggestive remark at this moment, when her husband was looking at her curiously, waiting for an explanation.

“I was going to leave it here on your desk with a note so you’d see it before you left in the morning,” she said. “I think some of the stones are loose. A jeweler should take a look.”

He advanced into the room, looked at the pin lying in her extended palm, then into her eyes. “You didn’t mention loose stones earlier.”

“I forgot.” She gave him a small, suggestive smile. “I got distracted.”

“I’ll take it downtown with me tomorrow and drop it off at the jeweler.”

“Thank you. It’s been in your family for decades. I’d hate to be responsible for losing one of the stones.”

He looked beyond her at the bookcase. “What were you reaching for?”

“Oh, one of your volumes up there isn’t lined up properly. I just happened to notice it. I know how finicky you are about this room.”

He joined her behind the desk, reached up, and pushed the legal tome back into place. “There. Mrs. Berry must have dislodged it when she was dusting.”

“Must have.”

He placed his hands on her upper arms and rubbed them gently. “Elise?” he said softly.

“Yes?”

“Anything you want, darling, you only have to ask.”

“What could I possibly want? I don’t want for anything. You’re extremely generous.”

He looked deeply into her eyes, as though searching for something behind her steady gaze. Then he squeezed her arms quickly before releasing them. “Did you have your milk?” She nodded. “Good. Let’s go back to bed. Maybe you’ll be able to sleep now.”

He waited for her to precede him. As she made her way toward the door, she glanced back. Cato was still standing behind his desk, watching her. The glare of the lamp cast his features into stark relief, emphasizing his thoughtful frown.

Then he switched off the lamp and the room went dark.

T
HE RECOVERY MISSION WAS CALLED OFF AT 6:56
P.M.

The grim announcement was made by Chief of
Police Clarence Taylor during a locally televised press conference.

His somber expression was in keeping with
his buzz haircut and military bearing. “The police
department, along with all the other agencies involved, devoted
countless hours to the search in hope of a rescue. Short of that, a
recovery.

“However, since the exhaustive
efforts of law enforcement officers, the Coast Guard, and civilian
volunteers haven’t produced any encouraging evidence in
several days, we’ve come to the sad conclusion that to
continue an organized search would be futile.”

The lone drinker at the bar, watching the
snowy TV screen mounted in the corner, tossed back the whiskey
remaining in his glass and motioned the barkeep for a refill.

The barkeep held the open bottle poised
above the highball glass. “You sure? You’re hitting
it pretty hard, pal.”

“Just pour.”

“Have you got a ride
home?”

The question was met with a menacing
glare. The barkeep shrugged and poured. “Your
funeral.”

No,
not mine.

Off the beaten path in a low-rent area of
downtown Savannah, Smitty’s attracted neither tourists nor
respectable locals. It wasn’t the kind of watering hole one
came to seeking fun and frivolity. It didn’t take part in the
city’s infamous pub crawl on St. Patrick’s Day.
Pastel drinks with cute names weren’t served.

The potables were ordered straight up. You
might or might not get a lemon twist like the ones the barkeep was
mindlessly peeling as he watched the television news bulletin that had
preempted a Seinfeld
rerun.

On the TV screen, Chief Taylor was
commending the tireless efforts of the sheriff’s office,
canine unit, marine patrol and dive team, on and on, blah, blah, blah.

“Mute that, will you?”

At the request of his customer, the
barkeep reached for the remote control and silenced the TV.
“He’s dancing around it ’cause he has to.
But if you cut through all the B.S., what he’s saying is, the
body’s fish food by now.”

The drinker propped both elbows on the
bar, hunched his shoulders, and watched the amber liquor sloshing in
his glass as he slid it back and forth between his hands across the
polished wood surface.

“Ten days after going into the
river?” The barkeep shook his head with pessimism.
“No way a person could survive. Still, it’s a hell
of a sad thing. Especially for the family. I mean, never knowing the
fate of your loved one?” He reached for another lemon.
“I’d hate to think of somebody I loved, dead or
alive, being in the river or out there in the ocean, in this
mess.”

He used his chin to motion toward the
bar’s single window. It was wide, but only about eighteen
inches deep, situated high on the wall, much closer to the ceiling than
to the floor, providing a limited view of the outside if one cared to
look. It allowed only a slash of semi-light to relieve the oppressive
gloom in the bar, and gave only a slim promise of hope to the hopeless
inside.

A ponderous rain had been soaking the Low
Country of Georgia and South Carolina for the last forty-eight hours.
Unrelenting rain. Torrents of water falling straight down out of opaque
clouds.

At times the rainfall had been so heavy
that you couldn’t see across the river to the opposite bank.
Low-lying areas had become lakes. Roads had been closed due to
flooding. Gutters roiled with currents as swift as white-water rapids.

The barkeep wiped lemon juice from his
fingers and cleaned the blade of his knife on a towel. “This
rain, can’t say I blame ’em for calling off the
search. They’ll probably never find the body now. But I guess
that means it’ll forever remain a mystery. Was it murder or
suicide?” He tossed aside his towel and leaned on the bar.
“What do you think happened?”

His customer looked up at him with bleary
eyes and said hoarsely, “I know what happened.”