Chad slammed the bucket onto a shelf where car care products were arranged like a display at Pep Boys. “You’re way out of line, lady.”
“She try to cut you out of a deal, Chad? Is that why you came back later and keyed her car?”
“What’s with you?” he demanded. “Why are you here? Do you have a warrant or something?”
I was standing too close to him. He wanted to back away. “I don’t need a warrant, Chad,” I said quietly, my eyes steady on his. “I’m not that kind of a cop.”
He didn’t know quite what that meant, but it made him nervous. He put his hands on his hips, shuffled his feet, crossed his arms over his chest, looked out at the street.
“Where’s Erin?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.”
“Since when? Since Friday? The night you fought with her? The night you keyed her car?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Talk to that fat cow she works with,” he said. “Jill Moron. She’s nuts. Ask her where Erin is. She probably killed her and ate her.”
“How do you know Jill Morone?” I asked. “How would you know anything about the people Erin works with if you haven’t been in touch with Erin?”
He went still and looked out the door.
Gotcha.
It was nice to know I still had the touch.
“What did you fight about Friday night, Chad?” I asked again, then waited patiently while he struggled to decide on an answer.
“I dumped her,” he said, turning toward the shelves again. He selected a white cotton towel from a stack of white cotton towels, all neatly folded. “I don’t need the trouble.”
“Uh-huh. Bullshit. You don’t dump a girl, then come back and key her car. There’s no point if you’re not the dumpee.”
“I didn’t key her car!”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, that’s your problem, not mine.”
“I don’t see you dumping her, Chad. Erin might have been off the hook with Krystal and Bruce because she moved out, but you could still pull your old man’s chain by staying involved with her.”
“You don’t know anything about my family.”
“Don’t I?” I looked around the garage with its place for everything and everything in its place. “Your old man is a tight-ass control freak. His way is the only way. His opinion is the only opinion. Everyone else in the house is there to serve his needs and validate his superiority. How am I doing so far?”
Chad went to his truck in a huff and started trying to towel off the water spots that had already dried on the finish.
“He’ll ride you if you don’t get those spots out, won’t he, Chad?” I said, following him around the truck. “Can’t have spots on the cars. What would the neighbors think? And imagine if they found out about you and Erin. What a disgrace, doing it with your stepsister. It’s practically incest. You really found Dad’s hot button, didn’t you?”
“Lady, you’re pissing me off.”
I didn’t tell him that was the idea. I followed him around the hood to the other side of the truck. “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll leave.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I don’t know where Erin is, and I don’t give a shit.”
“I bet you’ll give a shit when you’ve got a cop tailing you. Because maybe there’s a drug angle to Erin’s disappearance. I can tell you from experience, there are few things a narc likes better than getting his hooks into a kid with money and connections. And how about when your father gets questioned about your involvement? I guess you might enjoy that—”
He turned on me, hands up, as if I was holding him at gunpoint. “All right! All right. Jesus, you’re something, lady,” he said, shaking his head.
I waited.
“All right,” he said again, letting out a sigh. “Erin and I used to be together. I thought it meant something, but it didn’t mean anything to her. She dumped me. That’s it. That’s the whole story. There’s nothing to do with drugs or deals or anything else. That’s it. She dumped me.”
He shrugged and his arms fell back to his sides, limp, the admission taking all the starch out of him. The male ego is a fragile thing at seventeen or seventy.
“Did she give you a reason?” I asked quietly. “I wouldn’t ask,” I added as his tension level came back up. “But something has happened where Erin was working, and now she’s nowhere to be found.”
“Is she in trouble?”
“I don’t know.”
He thought about that for a minute. “She said there was someone else. ‘A man,’ she said. Like I’m twelve or something.” He shook his head in disgust.
“Did she say who?”
“I didn’t ask. I mean, why should I care? I know she had a thing for her boss, but he’s like fifty or something . . .”
“Did she tell you she was going anywhere? Did she say anything about changing jobs or moving?”
He shook his head.
“She never said anything about going to Ocala?”
“Ocala? Why would she go there?”
“Her boss says she quit her job and moved to Ocala to take another.”
“That’s news to me,” he said. “No. She wouldn’t do that. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Thanks for the info.” I pulled a card from my pocket, my phone number scribbled on it. “If you hear from her, would you call this number and leave a message?”
Chad took the card and stared at it.
I went back to my car and sat at the end of the Seabright driveway for a moment. I looked around the neighborhood. Quiet, lovely, expensive; golfers lining up a tee shot beyond the backyard. The American dream.
I thought about the Seabrights. Well-off, successful; neurotic, contentious, seething with secret resentments. The American dream in a fun house mirror.
I
parked on the street in front of the school, the soccer moms and me. I would have felt less out of place in a chorus line. Kids began to pour out the doors and head for the buses or the car-pool line.
There was no sign of Krystal Seabright, not that I had expected to see her. It seemed quite clear to me that Molly was just a small person who happened to live in the same house as Krystal. Molly had turned out the way she had turned out by luck or self-preservation or watching A&E. She had probably watched all the drama and rebellion and parental conflict of Erin’s life, and consciously turned in the other direction in order to win approval.
Funny, I thought, Molly Seabright was probably exactly who my little sister would have been, had I had a little sister. My parents had adopted me and called it quits. I was more than enough to handle. Too bad for them. The child learning from my mistakes might have been exactly the daughter they had wanted in the first place.
I got out of the car as I saw Molly come out of the school. She didn’t spot me right away. She walked with her head down, pulling her little black case behind her. Though she was surrounded by other children, she seemed alone, deep in thought. I called out to her as she turned and started down the sidewalk. When she saw me, her face brightened with a carefully tempered expectation.
“Did you find her already?” she asked.
“No, not yet. I’ve spent the day asking a lot of questions. She may be in Ocala,” I said.
Molly shook her head. “She wouldn’t have moved without telling me, without calling me.”
“Erin tells you everything?” I asked, opening the car door for her. I glanced around to see if anyone had me pegged as a child molester. No one was paying any attention at all.
“Yes.”
I went around to the driver’s side, got behind the wheel, and started the engine. “Did she tell you she and Chad were involved with each other?”
Her gaze glanced off of mine and she seemed to shrink a little in the seat.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Chad?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I would rather not acknowledge Chad’s existence.”
Or that Erin had shifted from sister to sexual being, I thought as I drove back toward the cul-de-sac where Molly lived. Erin had been her idol and protector. If Erin abandoned her, then Molly was all alone in the land of dysfunctional Seabrights.
“Chad was at Erin’s apartment Friday night,” I said. “They had an argument. Do you know anything about that?”
Molly shrugged. “Maybe they broke up.”
“Why would you think that? Was Erin interested in someone else?”
“She had a crush on her boss, but he’s too old for her.”
That was a matter of opinion. From what I had learned about Erin so far, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find out she had her sights set on a man old enough to be her father. And if past history was anything to go by, Jade wouldn’t draw that line for her.
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t know,” Molly said irritably. “Erin liked flirting with guys. I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t want to hear about it.”
“Molly, this is very important,” I said as I pulled to the curb at the end of her street. “When I ask you questions about Erin, or about anything, anyone, you have to tell me the absolute truth as you know it. No glossing over details you don’t like. Got it?”
She frowned, but nodded.
“You have to trust me,” I said, and a bolt of white-cold fear ran through me.
Molly looked at me in that steady, too-wise way and said, “I already told you I do.”
This time I didn’t ask her why.
7
I stand at the side
of the Golam brothers’ trailer. I’ve been told to stay put, to wait, but I know that’s not the right decision. If I go in first, if I go in now, I’ve got the brothers dead-bang. They think they know me. I’ve worked this case three months. I know what I’m doing. I know I’m right. I know the Golam brothers are already twitching. I know I want this bust and deserve it. I know Lieutenant Sikes is here for the show, to put a feather in his cap. He wants to look good when the news vans arrive. He wants to make the public think they should vote for him in the next election for sheriff.
He’s stuck me on the side of the trailer and told me to wait. He doesn’t know his ass. He didn’t listen to me when I told him the side door is the door the brothers use most. While Sikes and Ramirez are watching the front, the brothers are dumping their money into duffel bags and getting ready to bolt out the side. Billy Golam’s four-by-four is parked ten feet away, covered in mud. If they run, they’ll take the truck, not the Corvette parked in front. The truck can go off-road.
Sikes is wasting precious time. The Golam brothers have two girls in the trailer with them. This could easily turn into a hostage situation. But if I go in now . . . They think they know me.
I key the button on my radio. “This is stupid. They’re going to break for the truck. I’m going in.”
“Goddammit, Estes—”
I drop the radio into the weeds growing beside the trailer. It’s my case. It’s my bust. I know what I’m doing.
I draw my weapon and hold it behind my back. I go to the side door and knock the way all the Golam brothers’ customers knock: two knocks, one knock, two knocks. “Hey, Billy, it’s Elle! I need some.”
Billy Golam jerks open the door, wild-eyed, high on his own home cooking—crystal meth. He’s breathing hard. He’s got a gun in his hand.
Shit.
The front door explodes inward.
One of the girls screams.
Buddy Golam shouts: “Cops!”
Billy Golam swings the .357 up in my face. I suck in my last breath.
He turns abruptly and fires. The sound is deafening. The bullet hits Hector Ramirez in the face and blows out the back of his head, blood and brain matter spraying Sikes behind him.
The image faded slowly from my brain, and the building I had worked out of slowly came into focus before me.
The Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Complex is tucked away on a patch of landscaped acres off Gun Club Road near Lake Lytal Park. The complex houses the Sheriff’s Office, the medical examiner’s offices, the morgue, the county courts, and the jail. One-stop shopping for lawbreakers and their victims.
I sat in the parking lot looking at the building that held the Sheriff’s Office, feeling sick in my stomach. I hadn’t been through those doors in a long time. There was a part of me that believed everyone in the building would recognize me on sight and that all of them nursed a virulent hatred of me. Logically, I knew that wasn’t true. Probably only half of them would know and hate me.
The clock was ticking toward change of shift. If I didn’t catch James Landry now, it would have to wait until the next day. I wanted Erin Seabright’s name in his mind, a mental thorn to rub at all night.
My legs felt weak as I walked toward the doors. Jail inmates in dark gray uniforms were working on the landscaping, overseen by a black guard in camo pants and a painted-on black T-shirt, a trooper’s hat perched on his head. He exchanged bullshit with a couple of cops standing on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes. None of them looked at me.
I went inside to the desk. No one called out my name or rushed to assault me. Maybe it was the haircut.
The receptionist behind the bulletproof glass was a round-faced young woman with three-inch purple lacquered fingernails and a Medusa’s head of intertwined black braids.
“I need to speak with Detective Landry,” I said.
“What is this regarding, ma’am?”
“A missing persons case.”
“Your name?”
“Elena Estes.”
There was no flicker of recognition. No scream of outrage. I didn’t know her, she didn’t know me. She called Landry on the phone and told me to wait in the chairs. I stood with my arms crossed and stared at the door to the stairwell, barely breathing. It seemed an hour before the heavy gray door opened.
“Ms. Estes?”
Landry held the door back by way of invitation.
He was a compact, athletic-looking man, mid-forties, with a meticulous quality about him. There was still starch in his shirt at nearly four
P
.
M
. His hair was cropped almost military-short; black, heavily salted with gray. He had a stare like an eagle’s: penetrating and slightly disdainful, I thought. Or perhaps that was my paranoia showing.
I had known several of the seventeen detectives in Robbery/
Homicide, the major case squad, but I hadn’t known Landry. Because of the nature of their work, narcotics detectives usually keep—or are kept—to themselves, their paths crossing with the other detectives only over dead bodies.
We went up the stairs to the second floor without speaking. There was no one behind the glass in the small vestibule that led to the Robbery/Homicide squad room. Landry let us in with a card key.
Steel desks grouped together made islands across the expanse of the room. Most of the desks were empty. I recognized no one. The gazes that flicked my way were hooded, flat, and cold. Cop eyes. The look is always the same, regardless of agency, regardless of geography. The look of people who trust no one and suspect everyone of something. I couldn’t tell what they were thinking. I knew only that some of the gazes lingered too long.
I took the seat Landry indicated beside his desk. He smoothed a hand over his tie as he settled into his chair, his eyes never leaving my face. He clicked his computer on and settled a pair of reading glasses on the bridge of his nose.
“I’m Detective Landry,” he said, typing. “I’ll be taking your statement. I understand you want to report someone missing.”
“She’s already been reported missing. Erin Seabright. Her sister spoke with you a couple of days ago. Molly Seabright. She told me you were rude and condescending and of no help to her.”
Another chapter from
The Elena Estes Guide to Winning Friends and Influencing People.
Landry pulled his glasses off and gave me the stare again. “The kid? She’s twelve.”
“Does that somehow change the fact that her sister is missing?”
“We don’t take complaints from children. I spoke on the phone with the mother. She didn’t want to file. She says the daughter isn’t missing.”
“Maybe she killed the girl,” I said. “You’re not going to look for her because her murderer doesn’t want to file a complaint?”
His brows pulled together. “You have reason to think the mother killed her?”
“No. I don’t think that at all. I’m saying you didn’t know differently and you blew the girl off.”
“So you came here to pick a fight with me?” he said, incredulous. “Are you mentally ill? What have you got to do with these people? Are they relatives of yours?”
“No. Molly is a friend.”
“The twelve-year-old.”
“She asked me to help her. I happen to believe she has good reason to think her sister is missing.”
“Why is that?”
“Because her sister is missing. She hasn’t been seen since Sunday.”
I filled him in on the Don Jade saga and the death of Stellar. Landry was angry with me. Impatience hummed in the air around him. He didn’t like that I’d done his job for him, even if he didn’t believe he’d had a job to do. Cops can be territorial that way.
“You think something happened to this girl because of a dead horse.” He said it as if it were the most ludicrous theory he’d ever heard.
“People are killed for their shoes,” I said. “People are killed for turning down the wrong street. This dead horse by himself is worth a quarter of a million dollars in insurance money, and the sale of his replacement to his owner is probably worth nearly that much in sales commissions alone. I don’t find it hard to believe someone would resort to violence for that kind of money, do you?”
“And the trainer says the girl quit her job and moved to Ocala.”
“The trainer who probably had the horse killed and stands to profit handsomely by the next deal.”
“Do you know that she didn’t move to Ocala?” Landry asked.
“No. But it seems unlikely.”
“Have you been to her apartment? Were there signs of a struggle?”
“I’ve been to her apartment. There’s nothing there.”
“Nothing. As if she moved out?” he suggested.
“Maybe. But we won’t know if someone doesn’t look for her. You could put a call in to Ocala.”
“Or you could drive up there and look for her.”
“Or you could call the local PD or SO or whatever they have in Ocala.”
“And tell them what? That this girl might have moved up there and taken a job? She’s eighteen. She can do whatever the hell she wants.”
“Give them a heads-up on her car.”
“Why? Has it been stolen?”
I stood up. I was angrier than he was and glad he couldn’t see it on my face. “Okay, Landry. You don’t give a shit this girl has vanished, couldn’t care less that she might be dead, and you have no interest in a six-figure fraud case. What am I paying taxes for?”
“Insurance fraud isn’t insurance fraud until the insurance company says so. And the girl isn’t missing if she’s eighteen and willingly moved elsewhere—unless her family reports her missing.”
“Her family did report her missing. Her sister reported it. That fact aside, you’re saying if she’s estranged from her family and something happens to her, only she could report her own disappearance. That’s absurd. You’re going to let God-knows-what happen to this girl because her mother is a self-absorbed airhead who’s just happy to be rid of her.
“I guess I can see that,” I said sarcastically. “After all, it might take an hour or two out of your busy day investigating purse snatchings to make a couple of phone calls, do some background checks, ask a few questions—”
Landry stood now too. His face was growing red beneath his tan. Everyone in the office was watching us. In my peripheral vision I could see one of the sergeants had come out of his office to watch. In the background a phone rang unanswered.
“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, Estes?”
“I’ve done your job, Landry. It’s not that hard.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t see you working here now. Why is that?”
The phone stopped ringing. The silence in the room was the silence of outer space: absolute.
Half a dozen valid answers trailed through my head. I gave none of them. Only one answer counted—to the people in this room and to me. I didn’t work here anymore because I’d gotten one of our own—one of
their
own—killed. Nothing trumped that.
Finally, I nodded. “All right. You win,” I said quietly. “Cheap Shot of the Day Award goes to Landry. I figured you’d be a big asshole, and I was right. But Erin Seabright is missing, and someone has to care about that. If it has to be me, so be it. If that girl ends up dead because I couldn’t find her quickly enough and you could have, that one will be on your head, Landry.”
“Is there a problem here?” the sergeant asked, coming over. “Oh, yeah,” he said, stopping in front of me. “I’m looking at it. You’ve got a hell of a nerve coming into this building, Estes.”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize crime fighting had become by invitation only. Mine must have gotten lost in the mail.”
The path to the door seemed to elongate as I walked away. My legs felt like columns of water. My hands were shaking. I went out of the squad room, down the hall, and into the ladies’ room, where I slumped over a toilet and vomited.
A handful of moments passed as I leaned against the wall of the stall, closed my eyes, and held my face in my hands. I was hot, sweating, breathing hard. Exhausted. But I was still alive, literally and metaphorically. I had bearded the lions in their den and survived. I probably should have been proud of myself.
I pushed myself to my feet, went and washed my face and rinsed my mouth with tap water. I tried to concentrate on my small victory. James Landry wouldn’t be able to put Erin Seabright so easily out of his mind tonight, if for no other reason than that I had challenged him. If confronting him resulted in one phone call that turned up one lead, it would have been worth the effort and what it had cost me emotionally.
As I walked out to my car, I wondered dimly if I was developing a sense of purpose. It had been so long since I’d had one, I couldn’t be sure.
I got into the BMW and waited. Just when I was ready to decide Landry had made his exit while I was hugging the porcelain life preserver, he came out of the building, sunglasses hiding his eyes, a sport coat folded over one arm. I watched him get into a silver Pontiac Grand Am and roll out of the parking lot. I pulled into traffic two cars behind him, wanting to know who I was dealing with. Did he go straight home to a wife and kids? Could I play that parental angle on him? He hadn’t been wearing a ring.
He drove straight to a cop bar on Military Trail. Disappointingly predictable. I didn’t follow him inside, knowing my reception would probably be openly hostile. This was where the rank and file blew off steam, complained about their superiors, complained about civilians, complained about their ex-spouses. Landry would complain about me. That was all right. I didn’t care what James Landry thought of me . . . as long as thinking of me made him think of Erin Seabright too.