Chapter 20

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON DUNCAN RETURNED TO THE VCU.

“We caught a break,” Worley informed him as soon as he cleared the doorway.

He stopped in his tracks. “You found her?”

“I said a break, not a miracle.”

Duncan had left the abandoned house and gone home, ostensibly to sleep for a few hours. He lay down, but he remained awake, half in dread, half in anticipation of a telephone call telling him that Elise had been found…one way or the other.

He’d finally given up trying to sleep. In between a shower and shave, he’d placed a dozen or more telephone calls, phoning every agency taking part in the search. As lead investigator, he’d insisted on talking to the individual in charge. None had anything substantial to report, nor had he expected to hear of a breakthrough. As soon as there was one, he would know of it. But he gave all of them a pep talk, reminding them of Judge Laird’s standing in the community and the priority that Chief Taylor had given Mrs. Laird’s disappearance.

The Coast Guard had several choppers in the air, flying low along the coastline. The beaches were being patrolled. Search-and-rescue craft were patrolling offshore. These activities looked and sounded good, but no one actually expected Elise to reach the Atlantic.

Exhausted dogs and their trainers were still searching the river-banks and marshes. Police boats were searching the river and all its tributaries. Chatham County SO and state troopers were assisting any way they could. The dive team had been in the shipping channel since daylight.

Local TV stations frequently interrupted their programming to recap the story and update viewers on the search. These news bulletins reported nothing except that there was nothing new to report.

“Pardon my saying so, Dunk,” Worley said now, “but you look like shit.”

“And here I was about to tell you how fresh and handsome you look today.”

Worley continued to regard him with concern. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“Grabbed something on my way here,” Duncan lied. “What kind of break?”

Worley went to the door and shouted down the hallway, “Hey, Kong? Dunk’s here.”

Kong appeared carrying an insulated drinking cup and wiping powdered sugar from his mouth with the back of his hairy hand. “Hey, Dunk. You don’t look so good.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Yeah, well, heard y’all had a late night. Found my guy for me. Just for the record, I’d have preferred him alive.”

“So would I. What’s the break?”

Duncan ’s tone must have conveyed that he wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. Kong said, “Ever since Napoli went missing, we’ve been looking for his car. Turned up this morning.”

“Where?”

“A church parking lot.”

“Last place we’d think to look for Napoli,” Worley said around a chuckle.

Duncan headed for the door. “Let’s go take a look.”

“DeeDee’s already on it.”

“Oh.”

“But that’s not all of it,” Worley said. “I figured that Napoli hadn’t gone to the church to pray. I think he just dropped his car there ’cause it was a convenient place to leave it-and probably because it was the last place we’d look.”

They’d come to the conclusion last night that if Meyer Napoli was blackmailing either of the Lairds, his so-called disappearance of the last few days had been voluntary.

“I checked all the taxi services in the city and guess what?”

Duncan was no more in the mood for Worley’s guessing games than he was for chitchat, but he guessed anyway. “ Napoli called a taxi to pick him up at the church.”

“At twelve sixteen in the A.M.,” Worley declared with satisfaction. “The driver dropped him at his destination at twelve twenty-six.”

“Short trip,” Kong remarked.

“A few miles.”

“What was his destination?” Duncan asked.

Worley consulted his small spiral notebook and read off the address.

Duncan knew the street; he’d been walking up and down both sides of it just a few hours ago looking for a trace of Elise or her car. “That’s a rough neighborhood,” he said, hoping his voice sounded neutral.

“Well, it wasn’t the street Napoli was interested in,” Worley said. “It was the car parked on the street. The car that didn’t fit the neighborhood and stuck out like a sore thumb. The taxi driver said Napoli didn’t want to be let out at any particular house number and tipped him real good to forget he’d ever seen him.

“But when the guy saw Napoli ’s picture on TV this morning, he figured what the hell? What was Napoli going to do to him if he told about it now? So when I called, he was eager to talk. Driving around a murder victim hours before he got popped has made this guy a celebrity among his coworkers.”

Worley straddled the nearest chair and asked Kong if he had any more doughnuts. Kong apologized for having eaten the last one.

Duncan asked, “Did the cabdriver describe the car parked on the street where Napoli was dropped?”

“Elise Laird’s,” Worley replied as he frowned at Kong for hogging the doughnuts. “He didn’t get the license number or anything, but he described it to a T. So, I guess that solves the mystery of where they linked up. Oops. Don’t tell His Judgeship I used that ‘vulgar’ phrase again.” He explained to Kong how Judge Laird had jumped him for suggesting that his old lady’s meeting with Napoli had been prearranged.

“We haven’t confirmed that it was prearranged,” Duncan reminded him.

“No,” Worley replied a shade irritably. “That hasn’t been confirmed, but what else would Mrs. Laird be doing in that neighborhood?”

Screwing a cop, Duncan thought.

He had left Elise around eleven forty, eleven forty-five. Had she stayed there, waiting for Napoli to join her at twelve twenty-six? Why? To enlist his help, since Duncan had refused his? Or to solve her problem once and for all? If it hadn’t been a prearranged meeting, how had Napoli known where to find her?

Struck by a sudden thought, he asked, “Where’s her car now?”

“In the pound.”

This time he made it to the door, saying over his shoulder, “Call me as soon as anything else breaks.”

An hour later Duncan upended the brown paper evidence bag and dumped the small, round object onto Bill Gerard’s desk. “A transponder.”

“ Duncan found it under Mrs. Laird’s car,” DeeDee explained.

She and Duncan had met at the car pound. She had accompanied Napoli ’s car when it was towed from the church parking lot to the garage. Duncan had given her a Cliffs’ Notes rendition of Napoli ’s taxi ride.

“So what are you doing here?” she’d asked.

“Looking for a tracking device.”

Napoli had been sloppy about hiding it, and in under a minute Duncan had found it. He’d wasted no time getting it back to the Barracks.

“She didn’t meet him there,” he told Gerard, DeeDee, and Worley, who were grouped around the captain’s desk looking at the transponder as though it were a specimen of some foreign matter. “He tracked her there.”

“How’d he get this gizmo on her car?” Worley asked.

“He did stuff like this for a living. You can order surveillance equipment off the Internet. He could have put it on her car while she was parked outside the hairdresser’s. He could have got a flunky like Trotter to do it while she was having lunch with her husband. It wouldn’t have been hard. Couple of seconds and the deed was done.”

“Okay, that bug is pretty incriminating. Napoli was tracking Mrs. Laird. But what was our esteemed judge’s wife doing in that run-down neighborhood last night?” DeeDee tossed out the question, but no one picked it up, especially not Duncan.

Finally Worley said, “The first thing we need to do is ask the judge was he having his wife followed again.”

“Even if he was, he’ll deny it,” DeeDee said. “And how can we prove it now?”

“Is the neighborhood being canvassed?” Gerard asked.