Dark Horse

44

He told me to meet him at the back gate," she said quietly, her eyes downcast.

Landry had slept on a bunk at the station and come back to the hospital at the crack of dawn to wait impatiently for Erin Seabright to wake up. Jade would be arraigned later that morning. Landry wanted the state's attorney to have every scrap of ammunition possible to keep Jade in the tank.

"People gossip-especially about Don," Erin said. "He said he didn't want them talking about us. I totally understood that. I thought it was kind of exciting, really. Our secret affair. Pathetic."

"Had you had sex with him prior to that?" Landry asked. He kept his voice matter-of-fact. No accusation, no excitement.

She shook her head. "We flirted. We were friends, I thought. I mean, he was my boss, but… But I wanted it to be more, and he did too. At least, that's what he told me."

"So he asked you to meet him at the back gate. You knew no one would see you there?"

"There weren't any horses in those last two barns that weekend. That's where the dressage horses are stabled when they come to Wellington for a show, but there wasn't a show for them. Plus it was Sunday night. No one hangs around."

"You hadn't told Mr. Jade you were quitting your job, moving to Ocala?"

"No. Why would I? I wanted to work for him. I was in love with him."

"What happened then, Erin? You went to the back gate to meet him…"

"He was late. I was afraid he had changed his mind. Then this van pulled up and a guy in a mask jumped out and-and-he grabbed me."

Her voice died out as another bout of tears came. Landry handed her a box of tissues and waited.

"Did you recognize him, Erin?"

She shook her head.

"Did you recognize his voice?"

"I was so scared!"

"I know you were. It's hard to remember details when you're afraid and something awful like that is happening. But you need to try to slow it all down in your mind. Instead of seeing it all happen so fast, you need to try to see individual moments, like snapshots."

"I'm trying."

"I know you are," he said quietly. "Take your time, Erin. If you need a break, just let me know and we'll take a break. Okay?"

She looked at him and tried to smile. "Okay."

"If you never saw their faces, why do you think Jade was one of the kidnappers?"

"He's the one who told me to be there at the back gate."

"I know, but did you recognize anything in particular about one of the kidnappers that made you think it was him?"

"I know him," she said, frustration showing. "I know his build. I know how he moves. I'm sure I heard his voice different times."

"What about the other guy's voice? Did he sound familiar? Did he have an accent?"

The girl shook her head and rubbed a hand across her eyes, exhausted. "He didn't talk much. And when he did, he whispered and mumbled. He never talked to me."

"Do you know where they were holding you?" Landry asked. "Could you take us there?"

Erin shook her head. "It was a trailer house. That's all I know. It was horrible. It was filthy and old."

"Could you tell if you were near a busy road? Were there any particular sounds you heard regularly?"

"I don't know. Cars, I guess, in the distance. I don't know. They kept me drugged most of the time. Special K."

"How do you know that was the drug?"

She glanced away, embarrassed. "I've had it before. At a party."

"What happened last night? How did you get away?"

"One of them-the other one-he dragged me out of the trailer and put me in the van. I thought he was going to kill me and dump my body somewhere, and no one would ever find me!"

She paused to catch a ragged breath and try to compose herself. Landry waited.

"He just drove around. I don't know how long. He had given me a shot of K. I was pretty out of it. I just kept waiting for the van to stop, knowing that when it did, he would kill me."

"You couldn't see out the windows?"

She shook her head. "I was on the floor. And then we stopped, and I was so scared! He opened the door and dragged me out. I was dizzy. I couldn't stand up. I fell on the ground, a- a-dirt road. And he just got back in the van and drove away."

Thrown on the side of the road like a sack of garbage. Something they had used and didn't need anymore. Still, she was damn lucky, Landry thought.

"I don't know how long I was laying there," Erin said. "Then finally I got up and started walking. I could see lights. Town. I just started walking."

Landry said nothing for a moment. He let Erin's story sink in. He turned it over a few times in his mind, more questions shaking loose.

So, Jade and company figured out they weren't going to get the ransom. They dumped the girl rather than face a murder rap. Only, the way Landry saw it, Van Zandt was Jade's accomplice, and he was already under the lights for one murder. Why risk Erin Seabright identifying them? Because they knew she couldn't do so positively? Because they had taken pains to make certain there was no physical evidence to tie them to her?

That remained to be seen, of course. The clothes Erin had been wearing were at the lab being scrutinized under microscopes and fluorescent lights, swabbed and stained and picked over with tweezers.

Maybe letting Erin go was just part of the game for them. Let the victim live, and let her live with the knowledge that she can't put them away. Let the vic live, and let the cops live with the knowledge of their guilt, but no evidence to prove it. Power trip.

The problem with that theory was that Landry had no intention of letting anyone get away with anything.

"Erin, did they ever talk about why they singled you out?"

She shook her head, her eyes on Landry's microcassette recorder sitting on the bed tray, tape rolling. "I was so drugged up most of the time. I know they wanted money. They knew Bruce has money."

"Did they call him Bruce?"

"They called him I don't know how many times-"

"When they talked about him," Landry clarified, "did they use his first name? Did they call him Bruce?"

Erin nodded, though he thought she didn't get the significance of her answer.

"Did you tell them his name?"

"No. They just knew it."

It struck Landry odd the perps would call Seabright by his first name. Familiar. Like a friend.

"I could have died because of him," Erin said bitterly. "I can't believe my mother stays with him. She's so weak."

"People are complicated," Landry offered, out of his element.

Erin just looked at her lap and shook her head.

"Erin, how many videotapes did they make of you while you were in the trailer?"

"I don't know. Three or four. It was so humiliating. They made me beg. They did things to me. They hit me." She started to cry again. "It was horrible."

That son of a bitch, Landry thought. Three or four tapes. Seabright had handed over one besides the tape he had picked up at the ransom drop.

"Erin, did either of the men have sex with you?"

The tears came harder. "They k-kept drugging me. I couldn't do anything about it. I c-couldn't stop them. I c-couldn't d-do anything."

"We're going to try really hard to do something about it now, Erin. We'll work together-you and me-to build the case against them. Deal?"

She looked up at him with tear-filled eyes and nodded.

"Get some rest," Landry said as he started for the door.

"Detective Landry?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

Landry walked out hoping he would be able to really give her something to thank him for sooner rather than later.

I was waiting down the hall when Landry came out of Erin's hospital room. He didn't look surprised to see me. He stopped outside her door, took out his cell phone, and made a call that lasted about three minutes. When he ended the call, he glanced in the opposite direction down the hall, toward the nurses' station, then came toward me.

"What's she saying?" I asked as we walked toward the emergency exit.

"She says it was Jade, but that the kidnappers wore masks the whole time and they kept her doped up on ketamine. She never actually saw Jade. She can't identify the other guy at all. She says he rarely spoke."

"That doesn't sound like Van Zandt," I said. "I've never met anyone who liked the sound of his own voice better than Tomas Van Zandt."

"But she'd know his voice, because of the accent," Landry said. "Maybe he's smarter than he looks." He sighed and shook his head. "She won't make a good witness."

He was frowning, and I could tell I had only a fraction of his attention. He was mentally replaying what Erin had told him, trying to find a way to work it into a lead or lead him to a piece of evidence.

"She doesn't need to be a good witness, yet," I reminded him. "You've got enough for Jade to be arraigned. Maybe you'll come up with some forensic evidence."

"Yeah. Don't strain yourself in your enthusiasm," he said sarcastically.

I shrugged. "What do you have on him I don't know about? Have you come up with anything from his condo?"

He said nothing.

"Anything from the girls' apartment?"

"Some snapshots of Jade. One of him and Erin together. Someone wrote on the back: 'To Erin. Love, Don.' Jill had the pictures stashed. She had scratched out Erin's face and name with a ballpoint pen."

"All the girls love Donnie."

"I don't see it, myself," Landry muttered.

"Have you found whether or not he owns or rents property other than the condo?"

"He wouldn't be stupid enough to hold Erin on property that could be traced back to him. And I couldn't get that lucky."

"How did she get away?"

"She says they let her go. They figured they weren't getting the money, so they tossed her in the back of the van, drove her around, and dumped her like an old rug."

"So, she can't say where they held her."

"No. A trailer house. That's all she knows."

"Could you tell anything from the last videotape? Any background sounds?"

"There was some noise in the background. The techno-geeks are trying to figure it out. Sounded like heavy machinery to me."

"What did Erin say about it?"

He looked out the window. "That she wasn't sure. That they kept her drugged. Special K, she says. It's easy to come by," Landry said. "Especially for people who work around veterinarians."

"But it's not a sedative we use on horses," I told him. "It's commonly used on small animals."

"Still, the access is there."

"What about Chad?"

"He never left the Seabright house last night," Landry said, opening his phone again. "Besides, Erin and Chad had an intimate relationship. You think she wouldn't recognize him while he was raping her?"

"Maybe he was the silent one. Maybe he just watched the partner do her. Maybe they had her so drugged up, she wouldn't have recognized Santa Claus if he was bending over her."

Landry scowled at me while he checked his messages. "You know what? You're a pain in the ass, Estes."

"Yeah, like that's news." I slipped down from the ledge. "Well, what the hey, Landry. Just kill them all and let God sort 'em out."

"Don't tempt me. Half the people involved in this girl's life belong in prison, if you ask me," he muttered as he listened to the phone. "We'll be executing a search warrant at the Seabright house in a couple of hours. I'll be sure Dugan includes drugs as part of the warrant inventory."

"What else are you looking for?"

"Erin keeps saying the kidnappers called Bruce Seabright multiple times, and that they made more than one video in the trailer. Three or four, she says."

"Jesus God, what's he doing with them?" I asked. "Selling them on eBay?"

"Yeah, and he'll claim he was just trying to defray the cost of the ransom," Landry muttered. "Asshole."

I sat down on the deep window ledge, the early morning sun hot on my back, and thought about Bruce Seabright's possible involvement. "So, let's say Seabright wanted Erin gone. He sets up the kidnapping scheme with no intention of ever bringing the cops in, or ever bringing Erin home. Why wasn't she killed right away? They could have made the tapes in an hour, killed her, and dumped her.

"Then I get involved and bring you in," I went on. "Now Bruce has to play along. Again, why not just have the accomplice get rid of her?"

"Because now we're watching him, asking questions. The accomplices see cops nosing around and they get scared."

"So they let Erin go so she can help you build a case against them?" I shook my head. "That doesn't make any sense."

"I'm playing with the cards I've got, Estes," Landry said impatiently. "Erin says it was Jade. I'm going with that. It'd be stupid not to. If the thing tracks back to Bruce Seabright, I'll go with that too. Felony makes strange bedfellows."

I didn't say anything. Occasionally, I do realize the value of discretion. Landry had his suspect and his circumstantial evidence. He had a half-sure victim and doubts of his own.

"I've got to go," he said, closing his phone. "The state's attorney wants a meeting before Jade's arraignment."

I thought I might be able to slip into Erin's room after he'd gone, but I could see the deputy assigned to the post had already come back from his coffee break.

"Landry?" I asked as he started down the hall. He glanced back at me. "Any sign of Van Zandt yet?"

"No. He never came back to the town house." He started to turn away and I called him back a second time.

I took Erin's bracelet from my pocket and held it out to him. "I found this on the floor of the examination room Erin was in last night. Ask her about it. Maybe it was a gift from Jade."

He took it from me, his fingers brushing mine. He nodded.

"Thank you," I said. "For filling me in."

Landry tipped his head. "Your case first."

"I thought you didn't share."

"First time for everything."

He looked at the bracelet in his hand, then walked away.

I left the hospital and took a drive around the parking lot with an eye peeled for a navy blue Chevy, but Van Zandt wasn't there. Nor was Krystal Seabright's white Lexus or Bruce's Jaguar. Ever the loving parents. Erin had told them to go, so they'd gone. Off the hook.

I have never understood people who have children but don't raise them, don't nurture them, don't help them become human beings. What other reason is there? To carry on the family name? To get a welfare check? To preserve proof of a relationship? Because that was what one was supposed to do at a particular time in one's life: get married, have kids. No one ever explained why.

I didn't know much about Erin Seabright's upbringing, but I knew she hadn't gotten where she was by being loved. She was, by her own sister's account, an angry, bitter girl.

I didn't like her sketchy tale. I knew from personal experience that angry, bitter girls want the people who hurt them most to pay for their sins. I wondered if she might blame whom she wanted to blame. Perhaps Jade hadn't loved her. Perhaps he'd broken her heart. And, in pain, in terror, under the influence of drugs, she might have projected his identity onto her tormentor.

Or perhaps the tormentor had put the idea there for her to believe.

I thought of Michael Berne again. It would have been simple for him to call Radio Shack and ask for that cell phone to be set aside. He could have sent a minion in to get the thing. If he had known about Erin's attraction to Jade, he could have played on that during Erin's captivity.

But who would Michael's partner be? He had no connection to the Seabrights I was aware of. He was on the wrong side of the relationship with Trey Hughes.

Trey Hughes, who kept my father's phone number in his wallet. Trey with his eye for the girls and his connection to every aspect of this sordid tale.

I didn't want to believe he could be a part of something so vicious as what had been done to Erin Seabright. I was still putting money on Van Zandt.

But it seemed to me I had pieces from three different puzzles. The trick would be coming up with a final picture that wasn't an abstract.