Ricochet by Sandra Brown Page A

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