Dark Horse

by Tami Hoag

  It was one thing to stick the grooms out here in the sticks. Rent was cheap—relatively speaking. But Paris Montgomery with her money-green Infiniti and her emerald and diamond heirloom ring?

  The lights in the rearview brightened as the car behind me closed the distance between us.

  Abruptly, I hit the brakes and turned hard right onto another side road. But it wasn’t a road at all. It was a cul-de-sac ringed by several freshly cleared lots. My lights caught on the frame skeleton of a new home.

  The headlights turned into the cul-de-sac behind me.

  I gunned the engine around the curve of the drive, beating it back toward the main road, then hit the brakes and skidded sideways, blocking the exit.

  The hell if I would let that son of a bitch stalk me like a rabbit.

  I pulled the Glock out of its box in the door.

  Kicked the door open as the other car pulled alongside and the passenger’s window went down.

  I brought the gun up into position, dead aim on the face of the driver: eyes wide, mouth open.

  Not Van Zandt.

  “Who are you?” I shouted.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don’t kill me!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” I yelled. “I want ID. Now!”

  “I just—I just—” he stuttered. He looked maybe forty, thin, too much hair.

  “Out of the car! Hands where I can see them!”

  “Oh, my God,” he whimpered. “Please don’t kill me. I’ll give you my money—”

  “Shut up. I’m a cop.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  Apparently, that was worse than if I had been ready to rob and kill him.

  He climbed out of the car with his hands held out in front of him.

  “Are you right-handed or left-handed?”

  “What?”

  “Are you right-handed or left-handed?”

  “Left.”

  “With your right hand, take out your wallet and put it on the hood of the car.”

  He did as he was told, put the wallet on the car and slid it across to me.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jimmy Manetti.”

  I flipped the wallet open and pretended I could see in the faint backwash of the headlights.

  “Why are you following me?”

  He tried to shrug. “I thought you were looking too.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “The party. Kay and Lisa.”

  “Kay and Lisa who?”

  “I dunno. Kay and Lisa. Waitresses? From Steamer’s?”

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered, tossing the wallet back on the hood. “Are you an idiot?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  I shook my head and lowered the gun. I was trembling. The afterglow of an adrenaline rush and the realization that I had nearly shot an innocent moron in the face.

  “Keep your distance, for God’s sake,” I said, backing toward my car. “The next person whose ass you run up might not be as nice as I am.”

  I left Jimmy Manetti standing with his hands still up in the air, pulled out of the cul-de-sac, and went back in the direction I had come. Slowly. Trying to regulate my heartbeat. Trying to get my head back where it belonged.

  The lights were on in the house Paris Montgomery had gone to. Her dog was chasing its tail in the front yard. There was a car parked in the drive.

  A classic Porsche convertible with the top down and personalized plates: LKY DOG

  Lucky Dog.

  Trey Hughes.

  Chapter 36

  Obviously, they went in there and set up the tape and the timer before they even made the last ransom call,” Landry said.

  They had gathered in a conference room: himself and Weiss; Dugan and Armedgian. Major Owen Cathcart, head of the Investigations Division, had joined the gathering and would act as liaison to Sheriff Sacks. Completing the group were Bruce and Krystal Seabright, and a woman from Victim Services whose name Landry hadn’t caught.

  The Vic Services woman and Krystal Seabright sat off to the side of the group, Krystal shivering like a Chihuahua, her eyes sunken, her hair a bleached fright wig. Bruce had been none too happy to see her there, insisting she go home and let him handle things. Krystal pretended not to hear him.

  “There hasn’t been an event at that facility in the last three weeks,” Weiss said. “The place is kept locked up, but we’re talking padlocks. Security has never been an issue because of the location. But it wouldn’t be hard to break in.”

  “Any fingerprints?” Cathcart asked.

  “A few hundred,” Landry said. “But none on the audiotape, none on the videotape, none on the timer, none on the tape deck . . .”

  “And is someone trying to get that tape to sound like a real human being?”

  “They’re working on it,” Dugan said.

  “And what’s on the videotape? Let’s see it.”

  Landry hesitated, glancing at Krystal and the Vic Services woman. “It’s pretty rough, sir. I don’t know that the family—”

  “I want to see it,” Krystal said, speaking up for the first time.

  “Krystal, for God’s sake,” Bruce snapped as he paced behind her. “Why would you want to see it? The detective just told you—”

  “I want to see it,” she said with more force. “She’s my daughter.”

  “And you want to see some animal attack her? Rape her? That’s what you’re saying, aren’t you, Landry?” Bruce said.

  Landry moved his jaw. Seabright set his teeth on edge. If he got through this case without popping the guy in the face, it was going to be a miracle.

  “I said it’s pretty rough to watch. There’s no rape, but Erin takes a beating. I wouldn’t recommend you watch it, Mrs. Seabright.”

  “There’s no reason, Krystal—” Bruce started. His wife interrupted him.

  “She’s my daughter.”

  Krystal Seabright stood up, her trembling hands clasped in front of her. “I want to see it, Detective Landry. I want to see what my husband has done to my daughter.”

  “Me?” Bruce turned red in the face and made a choking sound in his throat like maybe he was having a heart attack. He looked at the cops in the room. “I am nothing but a victim in this!”

  Krystal turned on him. “You’re as guilty as the people who took her!”

  “I’m not the one who brought the cops into this! They said no cops.”

  “You wouldn’t have done anything,” Krystal said bitterly. “You wouldn’t even have told me she was gone!”

  Seabright looked embarrassed. His mouth quivered with bad temper. He stepped closer to his wife and lowered his voice. “Krystal, this is neither the time nor the place to have this discussion.”

  She ignored him, looking instead at Landry. “I want to see the tape. She’s my daughter.”

  “As if you ever cared,” Bruce muttered. “A cat is a better mother than you.”

  “I think it’s important for Mrs. Seabright to see at least part of the tape.” The Vic Services woman put her two cents in. “You can always ask them to stop it at any point, Krystal.”

  “I want to see it.”

  Krystal walked forward, teetering unsteadily on leopard print stiletto heels. She looked as fragile as a glass ornament, as if one tap would shatter her into a million gaudy-colored slivers. Landry moved to take her by the arm. The Vic Services woman then finally got up off her wide ass to help, to come and stand beside Krystal Seabright and offer support.

  “This is against my better judgment, Mrs. Seabright,” Dugan said.

  Krystal looked at him, eyes bugging out. “I want to see it!” she shouted. “How many times do I have to say it? Do I have to scream? Do I have to get a court order? I want to see it!”

  Dugan held up a hand in surrender. “We’ll play the tape. Just tell us when to stop it, Mrs. Seabright.”

  He nodded to Weiss, and Weiss fed the tape into the VCR that sat with a twenty-one-inch TV on a cart at the front of the room.

  Every
one was silent as the video image faded in to a scene inside a bedroom in what looked to be a trailer house. The window gave it away: a cheap aluminum frame around filthy glass. Someone had taken a finger and written on the dirty pane: HELP, the letters backward so the word could be read from outside the trailer.

  It was night. One lamp with a bare lightbulb lit the scene.

  Erin Seabright sat naked on a filthy, stained mattress with no sheets, chained to the rusty iron frame of the bed by one wrist. She was hardly recognizable from the girl Landry had seen only in a photograph. Her lower lip was split and crusted with dried blood. Mascara ringed her eyes. There were red welts and bruises on her arms and legs. She sat with her knees pulled up, trying to cover as much of her nakedness as she could. She looked directly at the camera, tears streaming down her face, her eyes glassy with terror.

  “Why won’t you help me? I asked you to help me! Why can’t you just do what they say?” she asked, a thread of hysteria quivering through her voice. “Do you hate me that much? Don’t you know what he’s going to do to me? Why won’t you help me?!”

  “Oh, my God,” Krystal murmured. She brought a hand up to cover her mouth. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, my God, Erin!”

  “We warned you,” the metallic voice said, the words drawn out, low and slow and slightly garbled. “You broke the rules. The girl will be punished.”

  A figure dressed in black from head to toe stepped into the frame from behind the camera—black mask, black clothes, black gloves—and moved toward the bed. Erin began to whimper. She shrank back on the bed, huddling against the wall, trying to hide, trying to cover her head with her free arm.

  “No! No!” she screamed. “It’s not my fault!”

  The figure struck her with a riding whip. Landry felt himself flinch at the sound of the whip connecting with bare flesh. The whip came down again and again with vicious force on her arms, her back, her legs, her buttocks. The girl screamed again and again, a horrible piercing shriek that went through Landry like an ice pick.

  Dugan stopped the tape without being asked.

  “My God,” Bruce Seabright muttered. Turning away, he rubbed a hand over his face.

  Krystal Seabright fell against the Victim Services woman, trying to cry, but no sound coming out of her open mouth. Landry caught hold of one of her arms, Weiss caught the other, and they moved her toward a chair.

  Bruce Seabright stood where he was, the asshole, staring at this woman he had married, looking like he was wondering if he could call it quits on that deal right there and then.

  “I told you it would only upset you,” he said.

  Krystal sat on the chair, doubled over, her face in her hands, her pink skirt halfway up her thighs.

  Landry turned his back to her, stepped up to Bruce, and said in a low voice, “If you could crawl out of your own asshole for three seconds, a little faked compassion would be a good thing right now.”

  Seabright had the gall to be offended.

  “I’m not the villain here! I’m not the one who called you people in when the kidnappers said not to.”

  “No,” Krystal said, lifting her head. “You didn’t call anyone! You didn’t do anything!”

  “Erin would be home by now if not for that detective sticking her nose into it,” Bruce said angrily. “I was handling it. They would have let her go. They would have known I wouldn’t give in to their terrorism, and they would have let her go.”

  “You hate her!” Krystal shrieked. “You want her dead! You never want to see her again!”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Krystal. Neither do you!” Seabright shouted. “She’s nothing but a nasty little piece of white trash, just like you were before I found you! That doesn’t mean I want her dead!”

  “That’s it!” Landry declared, moving toward Seabright. “You’re out of here.”

  “I’ve given you a life you never would have gotten any other way,” Seabright said to his wife. “You didn’t want Erin messing it up. You threw her out of the house yourself.”

  “I was afraid!” Krystal cried. “I was afraid!”

  Sobbing again, she fell off the chair onto the floor, and curled into a ball.

  “Out!” Landry said, shoving Seabright to the door.

  Seabright shrugged him off and went out into the hall. Landry followed, with Dugan coming behind him.

  “I’m pressing charges!” Seabright shouted.

  Landry looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “What?”

  “I want that woman brought up on charges!”

  “Your wife?”

  “Estes! None of this would be happening if not for her.”

  Dugan looked at Landry. “What’s he talking about?”

  Landry ignored him and advanced on Seabright. “Your stepdaughter was kidnapped. That wasn’t Estes’ doing.”

  Seabright stuck a finger in his face. “I want her license. And I’m calling my attorney. I never wanted you people involved, and now look what’s happened. I’m suing. I’m suing this department and I’m suing Elena Estes!”

  Landry batted his hand to the side and backed him up against the wall. “Think twice before you start throwing threats around, you fat prick!”

  “Landry!” Dugan shouted.

  “I find one thing that ties you into the kidnapping, you can bend over and kiss your ass good-bye!”

  “Landry!”

  Dugan grabbed him roughly by one shoulder. Landry shrugged him off and stepped aside, his glare still on Seabright.

  “Take a walk, Detective Landry,” Dugan said.

  “Ask him what she meant,” Landry said. “Ask him what Erin meant when she said she had asked him to help her. When did she ask? Why didn’t we hear about it? I want a warrant for that house and for that bastard’s office too. If he’s withholding evidence, he can rot in jail.”

  “Go,” Dugan said. “Now.”

  Landry went down the hall, into the squad room to his desk, and dug through the pencil drawer for a pack of Marlboro Lights he kept there. He had quit smoking as a rule, but certain moments were exceptions, and this was one of those moments. He shook out one cigarette, took the lighter, and went out of the building to pace on the sidewalk and smoke.

  He was shaking. He wanted to go back into the building and beat Bruce Seabright unconscious. The son of a bitch. His wife’s daughter kidnapped and his solution was to do nothing. Let her rot. Let them rape her, kill her, throw her in a canal. Jesus H.

  I asked you to help me! Why won’t you help me? Do you hate me that much?

  Seabright hadn’t said anything about having spoken with Erin directly. Landry was willing to bet his pension Seabright had another tape stashed somewhere. A tape where Erin begged for help. And Bruce Seabright hadn’t done a goddam thing.

  But that wasn’t why Erin was being punished, was it? She was in that filthy place, chained naked to a bed, being beaten with a whip because the rules had been broken and the Sheriff’s Office had been called in.

  It could have been that Estes had poked at the wrong hornet’s nest. She’d spoken with everyone involved with Erin Seabright. Maybe Van Zandt had figured out she wasn’t what she seemed to be.

  All of Jade’s crowd had been interviewed Saturday regarding Jill Morone’s death. Erin’s name had been raised. Jade might have been tipped off that way.

  Someone in the neighborhood might have been watching, but Landry didn’t believe it. He’d looked over the reports on the neighbors: their families, their professions, their connections to the Seabrights. Nothing.

  Maybe the kidnappers had had the house bugged, but that seemed a long stretch. This wasn’t some multibillionaire they were trying to shake down.

  Or the kidnappers had inside information. That kid of Seabright’s. Or Seabright himself.

  What better way to distance himself from suspicion than to cooperate with the cops, then blame it on them when things went south. He would never have done a thing to help Erin if Estes hadn’t stu
ck her nose in it.

  He would have done exactly what Landry had said in the beginning: kept all the info to himself until the girl turned up dead—if she turned up at all. And he would have told his wife he’d done everything he could, everything he’d thought best. Too bad it hadn’t worked out, but what the hell, Erin was just a white trash liability anyway.