“I don’t know what you think you are going to find,” Van Zandt said.
Weiss looked under the sink. “Bloody shirt. Torn, bloody shirt.”
“Why would I have such a thing? And why would I keep it in a kitchen cupboard? It’s ridiculous. Do you think I am stupid?”
Neither detective answered.
Landry reached up to move a stack of phone books off the refrigerator, and dust rained down in a thick cloud. The tip had specified the shirt was in a cupboard, but he had expanded the scope of the warrant to include the entire property, on the chance that Van Zandt had moved it. It was looking like he had. They had been through all the kitchen cupboards. A deputy was upstairs going through the cabinets and dresser drawers.
“On what grounds did you get this warrant?” Van Zandt asked. “Or are you allowed to persecute just anyone who is not a citizen?”
“A judge determined we have probable cause to believe this item is in your possession, Mr. Van Zandt,” Landry said. “We have a witness. How’s that for grounds?”
“Lies. You have no witness.”
Landry arched a brow. “And how would you know that if you weren’t there and didn’t kill that girl?”
“I haven’t killed anyone. And who could know what I have in this house? I have had no one here but a burglar. I’m sure you don’t care about that.”
“When did you have a burglar?” Landry asked casually as he looked in the closet that housed the washer and dryer.
“Tonight,” Lorinda said. “Just as I got here from the airport. There was someone in the garage. Cricket chased him through the house, but he got away.”
The dog started barking again at the mention of his name.
“Was anything taken?”
“Not that we’ve been able to see. But that doesn’t change the fact that someone broke in.”
“Was there a sign of forced entry?”
Carlton frowned.
“Did you call nine-one-one?”
Van Zandt pulled a face. “What would you have done? Nothing. Nothing was taken. You would say to be more careful locking the doors. A waste of time. I told Lorinda not to bother.”
“You’d had your fill of law enforcement for one evening?” Landry said. “That’s great. For all you know, this person killed someone last week, and now they’re still running around loose thanks to you.”
“Then you should have caught that person when they killed someone,” Van Zandt pronounced.
“Yeah. We’re working on that,” Weiss said, bumping Van Zandt as he passed him to go into the living room.
“Did you get a good look at this person, Ms. Carlton?” Landry asked, thinking he was going to have to lock Estes in a cell for the duration of this mess. And if Lorinda Carlton had called 911, that job might already have been taken care of.
“Not really,” she said, squatting down to catch hold of her dog. “It was dark.”
“Man? Woman? White? Hispanic? Black?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t say. White, I think. Maybe Hispanic. I’m not sure. Slight build. Dark clothes.”
“Nnn,” Landry said, chewing his lip. Jesus Christ. What had Estes been thinking?
That she might find a bloody shirt. But she’d gotten caught in the act, and Van Zandt had ditched the evidence in the time it had taken to get the warrant.
“Do you want to file a report?” Weiss asked.
Carlton kind of shrugged, kind of shook her head, her attention on her dog. “Well . . . nothing was taken . . .”
And Van Zandt didn’t want the cops going over the place with a fine-tooth comb. That was why they hadn’t called it in. And what the hell was this woman thinking? How could she listen to him tell her not to call the cops after a break-in and not think he had something to hide?
The rationale of the serial victim never ceased to amaze him. He was willing to bet Lorinda had a rotten ex-husband or two in her background, and this asshole had somehow managed to convince her he was a good guy—while he lived off her largesse.
“That person might have been here
planting
evidence,” she said. And now Landry knew how Van Zandt had explained away a bloody shirt.
“The evidence we’re not finding?” Weiss asked.
“We can dust the place for prints, see if we get a hit on a known criminal,” Landry said, looking at Van Zandt. “Of course, we’d have to fingerprint both of you for elimination purposes. You know, the guy might have been a serial killer or something. Wanted all over the world.”
Van Zandt’s eyes were narrow and hard as flint. “Fucking assholes,” he muttered. “I’m calling my attorney.”
“You do that, Mr. Van Zandt,” Landry said, moving past him to go into the garage. “Waste your money—or the money of whatever sucker you’ve got supplying you with a lawyer like Bert Shapiro. There’s nothing he can do about us searching this house. And you know, even if you’ve gotten rid of that shirt, we have blood evidence from the stall where Jill Morone died. Not her blood. Yours. We’ll nail you on it eventually.”
“Not mine,” Van Zandt declared. “I wasn’t there.”
Landry stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “Then you would be willing to submit to a physical exam to prove your innocence?”
“This is harassment. I’m calling Shapiro.”
“Like I said”—Landry smiled a nasty smile—“it’s a free country. You know what’s funny about this murder, though? It looked like a rape, but there wasn’t any semen. The ME didn’t find any semen. What happened, Van Zandt? You didn’t want to do her after she suffocated? You like ’em kicking and screaming? Or could you just not get it up?”
Van Zandt looked like his head would explode. He grabbed at the phone on the wall and knocked the receiver on the floor. He was shaking with anger.
Landry went out the door. At least he’d gotten in a shot.
They searched the premises for another forty minutes—and ten of those were just to annoy Van Zandt. If there had been a bloody shirt, it was gone. All they found was a video porn collection and that no one in the house ever bothered to clean. Landry was certain he could feel fleas biting his ankles through his socks.
Weiss sent the deputy on his way, then looked at Landry like
what now?
“So this burglar,” Landry said as they stood in the foyer. “Did you see which way he went?”
“Through the patio and that way through the yards, along the hedge,” Lorinda said. “Cricket went after him. My brave little hero. Then I heard a terrible yelp. That awful person must have kicked him.”
The dog looked up at Landry and snarled. Landry wanted to kick him too. Filthy, flea-ridden, vicious mutt.
“We’ll take a look,” he said. “Maybe the guy dropped his wallet on the way out. Sometimes we get lucky.”
“You won’t find anything,” Van Zandt said. “I already have looked.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly playing on our team,” Weiss said. “We’ll see for ourselves. Thanks anyway.”
Van Zandt went off in a huff.
Weiss and Landry went to the car and got a flashlight. Together, they walked around to the back of the town house, shining the light on the shrubbery, on the grass. They walked in the direction Lorinda Carlton had pointed until they ran out of real estate, and found not so much as a gum wrapper.
“Pretty strange coincidence Van Zandt’s place gets broken into while he’s being interviewed,” Weiss said as they walked.
“Crime of opportunity.”
“Nothing was taken.”
“Thievery Interruptus.”
“And then we happen to get that tip.”
Landry shrugged as they reached their car and he opened the driver’s door. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Weiss. They bite.”
27
The call came at 3:12
A
.
M
.
Molly had taken the handset from the portable phone in the living room, snuck it upstairs, and hidden it under a magazine on her nightstand. She wasn’t allowed to have her own telephone, even though practically every girl in her class did. Bruce believed a girl and her own phone were a recipe for trouble.
He didn’t let Chad have a phone either, though Molly knew Chad had a cell phone
and
a beeper so he and his stupid loser friends could send text messages back and forth, and page each other like they were important or something. Bruce didn’t know about that. Molly kept the secret because she disliked Bruce more than she disliked Chad. According to Bruce, everyone in the house—except him—was supposed to make calls from the kitchen, where anybody could hear the conversation.
The phone rang three times. Molly stared at the handset she clutched in one hand, holding her breath, holding her microcassette recorder tight in her other small, sweating hand. She was afraid Bruce was going to sleep through the call. He didn’t care what happened to Erin. But just as she decided she would answer, the ringing stopped. She bit her lip and punched the on button on the phone and the record button on the tape recorder.
The voice was that terrible, creepy, distorted voice from the video, like something from a horror movie. Every word drawn-out and deliberate, metallic and ominous. Molly’s eyes filled with tears.
“You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price.”
“What are you talking about?” Bruce asked.
“You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price.”
“It wasn’t my choice.”
“You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price.”
“It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t call the cops. What do you want me to do?”
“Bring the money to the place. Sunday. Six
P
.
M
. No police. No detective. Only you.”
“How much?”
“Bring the money to the place. Sunday. Six
P
.
M
. No police. No detective. Only you. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price.”
The line went dead.
Molly clicked the phone off, clicked the recorder off. She was shaking so hard, she thought she might get sick.
You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price.
The words played over and over, so loud, she wanted to slam her hands over her ears to drown them out, but the sound was inside her head.
It was all her fault. She had thought she was doing the right thing, the smart thing. She had thought she was the only one who would do anything to save Erin. She had taken action. She had gone for help. Now Erin could die. And it was her fault.
Her fault and Elena’s.
You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price
.
28
In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of the interminable night
Strange the things we remember
and the reasons we remember them. I remember those lines from a T. S. Eliot poem because at eighteen, as a headstrong freshman at Duke, I had an obsessive crush on my literature professor, Antony Terrell. I remember a passionate discussion of Eliot’s works over cappuccino at a local coffeehouse, and Terrell’s contention that
Four Quartets
was Eliot’s exploration of issues of time and spiritual renewal, and my argument that Eliot was the root cause of the Broadway musical
Cats
and therefore full of shit.
I would have argued the sun was blue just to spend time with Antony Terrell. Debate: my brand of flirtation.
I didn’t think of Antony as I sat curled in the corner of the sofa, chewing on my thumbnail, staring out the window at the darkness before dawn. I thought about uncertainty and what would come at the end of the unending night. I didn’t allow myself to contemplate issues of spiritual renewal. Probably because I thought I may have blown my chance to hell.
A tremor went through me and I shivered violently. I didn’t know how I would live with myself if my getting caught at Van Zandt’s caused the loss of evidence that could prove him to be a murderer. If he was somehow tied to Erin Seabright’s disappearance, and I had blown the chance for him to be charged with something, and in charging him pressure him to give up Erin . . .
Funny. Before I had ever heard of Erin Seabright, I hadn’t known how I would live with myself because Hector Ramirez had died as a consequence of my actions. The difference was that now it mattered to me.
Somewhere in all this, hope had snuck in the back door. If it had come knocking, I would have turned it away as quickly as I would turn away a door-to-door missionary.
No, thanks. I don’t want what you’re selling.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings without the words
And never stops—at all
Emily Dickinson
I didn’t want to have hope for myself. I wanted to simply exist.
Existence is uncomplicated. One foot in front of the other. Eat, sleep, function. Living, truly living, with all the emotion and risk that entails, is hard work. Every risk presents the possibility of both success and failure. Every emotion has a counterbalance. Fear cannot exist without hope, nor hope without fear. I wanted neither. I had both.
The horizon turned pink as I stared out the window, and a white egret flew along that pink strip between the darkness and the earth. Before I could take it for a sign of something, I went to my bedroom and changed into riding clothes.
No deputies had come knocking on my door in the dead of night to question me about my jacket and the break-in at Lorinda Carlton’s/Tomas Van Zandt’s town house. My question was: if the deputies didn’t have my jacket, who did? Had the dog dragged it back to Lorinda Carlton? His trophy for his efforts. Had Carlton or Van Zandt followed my trail and found it? If ultimately Van Zandt had possession of the prescription with my name on it, what would happen?
Uncertainty is always the hell of undercover work. I had built a house of cards, presenting myself as one thing to one group of people and something else to another group. I didn’t regret the decision to do that. I knew the risks. The trick was getting the payoff before I was found out and the cards came tumbling down. But I felt no nearer to getting Erin Seabright back, and if I lost my cover with the horse people, then I was well and truly out of it, and I would have failed Molly.
I fed the horses and wondered if I should call Landry or wait to see if he would come to me. I wanted to know how Van Zandt’s interview had gone, and whether or not the autopsy had been performed on Jill Morone. What made me think he would tell me any of that after what he had done the night before, I didn’t know.
I stood in front of Feliki’s stall as she finished her breakfast. The mare was small in stature and had a rather large, unfeminine head, but she had a heart and an ego as big as an elephant’s, and attitude to spare. She regularly trounced fancier horses in the showring, and if she had been able to, I had no doubt she would have given her rivals the finger as she came out of the ring.
She pinned her ears and glared at me and shook her head as if to say, what are
you
looking at?
A chuckle bubbled out of me, a pleasant surprise in the midst of too much unpleasantness. I dug a peppermint out of my pocket. Her ears went up at the crackling of the wrapper and she put her head over the door, wearing her prettiest expression.
“Some tough cookie, you are,” I said. She picked the treat delicately from my palm and crunched on it. I scratched her under her jaw and she melted.
“Yeah,” I murmured, as she nuzzled, looking for another treat. “You remind me of me. Only I don’t have anybody giving me anything but grief.”
The sound of tires on the driveway drew my attention out the door. A silver Grand Am pulled in at the end of the barn.
“Case in point,” I said to the mare. She looked at Landry’s car, ears pricked. Like all alpha mares, Feliki was ever on the alert for intruders and danger. She spun around in her stall, squealed and kicked the wall.
I didn’t go out to meet Landry. He could damn well come to me. Instead, I went to D’Artagnon, took him out of his stall, and led him to a grooming bay. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Landry approach. He was dressed for work. The morning breeze flipped his red tie over his shoulder.
“You’re up bright and early for someone who was out prowling last night,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I chose a brush from the cabinet and started a cursory grooming job that would have made Irina scowl at me and mutter in Russian if it had not been her day off.
Landry leaned sideways against a pillar, his hands in his pockets. “You don’t know anything about a B&E at the town house of Lorinda Carlton—the town house where Tomas Van Zandt is living?”
“Nope. What about it?”
“We got a nine-one-one call last night claiming there was a piece of evidence there that would lock Van Zandt into the murder of Jill Morone.”
“Terrific. Did you find it?”
“No.”
My heart sank. There was only one piece of news that would have been worse, and that would have been that they had found Erin’s body. I hoped to God that wasn’t the next thing coming.
“You weren’t there,” Landry said.
“I told you I was going to bed with a book.”
“You told me you were getting in the tub with a book,” he corrected me. “That’s not an answer.”
“You didn’t ask a question. You made a statement.”
“Were you at that town house last night?”
“Do you have reason to believe I was? Do you have my fingerprints? Something that fell out of my pocket? Video surveillance tapes? A witness?” I held my breath, not sure which answer I feared most.
“Breaking and entering is against the law.”
“You know, I kind of remember that from when I was on the job. And there was evidence of forcible entry at this town house?”
He didn’t look amused by the clever repartee. “Van Zandt made it back to his place before I could get the warrant. If that shirt was there, he got rid of it.”
“What shirt is that?”
“Goddammit, Estes.”
He grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around, startling D’Artagnon. The big gelding scrambled and pulled back against the cross-ties, jumped ahead, then sat back and reared.
I hit Landry hard in the chest with the heel of my hand. It was like punching a cinder block. “Watch what you’re doing, for Christ’s sake!” I hissed at him.
He let me go and backed away, more leery of the horse than of me. I went to the horse to calm him. D’Artagnon looked at Landry, uncertain that calming down was the wisest choice. He would have sooner run away.
“I’ve had zero sleep,” Landry said in lieu of an apology. “I’m not in the mood for word games. You haven’t been properly Mirandized. Nothing you say can be used against you. Neither Van Zandt or that goofy woman wants to pursue the matter anyway, because, as I’m sure you know, nothing was stolen. I want to know what you saw.”
“If he got rid of it, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, I have to think you had an accurate description of whatever it was or you wouldn’t have gotten the warrant. Or did he give you grounds during your interview? In which case you should have been smart enough to hold him while you got the warrant and executed the search.”
“There was no interview. He called a lawyer.”
“Who?”
“Bert Shapiro.”
Amazing. Bert Shapiro was on a par with my father in terms of high-profile clients. I wondered which of Van Zandt’s grateful pigeons was footing that bill.
“That’s unfortunate,” I said. And doubly so for me. Shapiro had known me all my life. If Van Zandt showed him that prescription slip, I was cooked. “Too bad you didn’t wait until the autopsy was done to pull him in. You might have had something to rattle his cage with before he used the L word.”
I struck a nerve with that. I could see it in the way his jaw muscles flexed.
“Was there anything in the autopsy?” I asked.
“If there was, I wouldn’t be standing here. I’d be in the box busting that asshole’s chops, lawyer or no lawyer.”
“It’s hard to imagine he’s clever enough to get away with murder.”
“Unless he’s had practice.”
“He hasn’t been caught at it,” I said.
I chose a white saddle pad with the Avadonis logo embroidered on the corner and tossed it on D’Artagnon’s back, lifted his saddle off the rack, and settled it in place. I thought I could feel Landry’s inner tension as he watched me. Or maybe the tension was my own.
I moved around the horse, adjusting the girth—a job that had to be done gradually and in ridiculously small increments with D’Ar because he was, as Irina called him, a delicate flower. I tightened the girth one hole, then knelt to strap on his protective leg boots. I watched Landry shuffle his feet as he shifted positions restlessly.
“The Seabrights had another call,” he said at last. “The kidnapper said the girl would be punished because Seabright broke the rules.”
“Oh, God.” I sat back on my heels, feeling weak at the news. “When did the call come?”
“Middle of the night.”
After my screw-up at Van Zandt’s. After Landry had executed the search warrant.
“Do you have someone sitting surveillance on Van Zandt?”
Landry shook his head. “The LT wouldn’t approve it. Shapiro was already screaming harassment because of the search. We don’t have a goddam thing on him. How do we justify surveillance?”
I rubbed at the tension in my forehead. “Great. That’s great.”
Van Zandt was free to do as he pleased. But even if he wasn’t, we knew he wasn’t in the kidnapping alone. One person had run the camera, one had grabbed the girl. There was nothing stopping the partner from hurting Erin even if Van Zandt was under twenty-four-hour guard.
“They’re going to hurt her because I brought you into it,” I said.
“First of all, you know as well as I do, the girl could already be dead. Second, you know you did the right thing. Bruce Seabright wouldn’t have done anything at all.”
“That’s not a lot of comfort at the moment.”
I pushed myself to my feet and leaned back against the cabinet, crossing my arms tightly against my body. Another tremor rattled through me, from my core outward, as I thought of the consequences Erin Seabright was going to suffer for my actions. If she wasn’t dead already.
“They set up another drop,” Landry said. “With luck, we’ll have the accomplice by the end of the day.”
With luck.
“Where and when?” I asked.
He just looked at me, his eyes hidden by his sunglasses, his face like stone.
“Where and when?” I asked again, moving toward him.
“You can’t be there, Elena.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, knowing where this conversation was going to end. “You can’t shut me out of this.”
“It’s not up to me. The lieutenant will run the show. You think he’s going to let you ride along? Even if it was my call, you think I’d let you in after that stunt you pulled last night?”
“That
stunt
netted a torn, bloody shirt from a murder suspect.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“You got caught.”
“None of that would have happened if you hadn’t had to flex your muscles last night and take Van Zandt in when you did,” I argued. “I might have gotten something out of him over dinner. You could have had him afterward, after the autopsy. You could have held him, gotten the warrant, found the shirt yourself. But no. You couldn’t play it that way, and now this guy is running around loose—”
“Oh, it’s
my
fault you broke into that house,” Landry said, incredulous. “And I suppose it was Ramirez’s fault he walked in front of that bullet.”
I heard myself gasp as if he had slapped me. My instinct was to step back. Somehow, I managed not to.
We stood there staring at each other for a long, horrible moment, the weight of his words hanging in the air. Then I turned, very deliberately, and went back to D’Artagnon to put on his other boot.
“Jesus,” Landry murmured. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
I didn’t say anything. My focus was on tightening the boot straps just so, aligning them perfectly.
“I’m sorry,” he said again as I stood. “You just make me so goddam mad—”
“Don’t put this on me,” I said, turning to face him. “I’m carrying enough guilt without taking on yours too.”
He looked away, ashamed of himself. I could have done without the small victory. The price for it had been too high.
“You’re a son of a bitch, Landry,” I said, but not with any strong emotion. I could have as easily said, you have short hair. It was a simple statement of fact.
He nodded. “Yeah. I am. I can be.”
“Don’t you have a ransom drop to arrange? I’ve got a horse to ride.”
I took D’Ar’s bridle down from the hook and went to put it on him. Landry didn’t move.