Dark Horse

by Tami Hoag

  “We have Erin,” I said. “That’s all that matters right now. Maybe she can identify the kidnappers. Even if she can’t, we’re going to get these guys, Molly. You hired me to do a job. I won’t quit until it’s over. And it’s not over until I say so.”

  It was a good line at the time. In the end, I would come to wish that I hadn’t meant it.

  “Elena?” Molly said, looking up at me with her earnest face. “I’m still scared. Even with Erin back, I still feel scared.”

  “I know you do.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders and she leaned her head against me. It was one of those small moments that I knew would remain stamped in my memory forever. Someone turning to me for comfort, and me being able to give it.

  From somewhere in the ER came a crash and a scream and a lot of shouting. I looked down the hall that ran behind where Molly and I were sitting, and saw Bruce Seabright backing away from a door, looking stunned. Then Landry came out of the same room pushing a sobbing, hysterical Krystal along ahead of him.

  “I’ll find out what I can,” I told Molly, knowing it was time to make myself disappear. “Call me in the morning.”

  She nodded.

  I went past the reception desk to the ladies’ room and ducked inside, betting Krystal wouldn’t be far behind me. She came in half a minute later, crying, mascara striping her face, her lipstick smudged.

  I felt sorry for her. In some ways Krystal was more a child than Molly. All her life she’d dreamed of having a respectable husband and a nice home and all the trappings. She had never imagined living the Barbie Doll life would have the same pitfalls as living poor. I’m sure it had never occurred to her that making bad choices in men crossed all socioeconomic borders.

  She leaned against the counter, hanging her head over the sink, her face distorted with emotional anguish.

  “Krystal? Can I help?” I asked, knowing I couldn’t.

  She looked up at me, swiping tears and snot from her face with her hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “Molly called me. I know Erin is back.”

  “She hates me. She hates me, and I don’t blame her,” she confessed. She looked at herself in the mirror and spoke to her reflection. “Everything’s ruined. Everything’s ruined!”

  “You’ve got your daughter back.”

  Krystal shook her head. “No. Everything is ruined. What am I going to do?”

  I would have started by taking Bruce Seabright to the cleaners in divorce court, but then I’m the bitter, vindictive type. I chose not to offer that advice. Whatever decisions this woman would come to, she would have to come to them herself.

  “She blames Bruce,” she said.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But it’s my fault really. It’s all my fault.”

  “Krystal, your life is none of my business,” I said. “And God knows you probably won’t listen to me, but I’m going to say this anyway. Maybe it is all your fault. Maybe you’ve made nothing but bad choices your whole life. But your life is not over, and Erin’s life is not over, and Molly’s life is not over. You still have time to do something right.

  “You don’t know me,” I went on, “so you don’t know that I’m an expert on the subject of fucking up one’s own life. But I’ve recently discovered that every day I get another shot at it. So do you.”

  Ladies’ room psychology. I felt like I should have offered her a linen hand towel and hoped she would leave a tip for me in a basket on the counter.

  A large woman in a purple Hawaiian mumu came in the door and gave Krystal and me the glare, like she thought we were hogging the room to have lesbian sex. I glared back at her and she turned sideways and waddled into a stall.

  I went out in the hall. Bruce Seabright was in the waiting area near the exit, having an argument with Detective Weiss and Lieutenant Dugan. Landry was nowhere in sight. I wondered if anyone had let Armedgian know about Erin’s escape. He would want in on the interview in the hopes that Erin would finger Van Zandt as one of her kidnappers.

  There seemed to be nothing for me to do but wait until the hostile forces left. I would hold out in the parking lot, stake out Landry’s car. If I could get a moment alone with him, I would.

  I turned and went down the hall in search of a cup of bad coffee.

  T he doctor offered Erin Seabright a stronger sedative. Erin snapped at the woman to leave her alone. The fragile flower flashing her thorns, Landry thought. He hung back in the corner, saying nothing as he watched the girl order the doctor from the room. She turned then and looked at him.

  “I just want it to be over,” she said. “I just want to go to sleep and wake up and have it be over.”

  “It won’t be that easy, Erin,” he said, coming forward to take his seat again. “I’ll be straight with you. You’re only halfway through the ordeal. I know you want it to be over. Hell, you wish it had never happened. So do I. But you’ve got a job now to help us catch the people who did this to you so they can’t do it to someone else.

  “I know you’ve got a little sister. Molly. I know you wouldn’t want to imagine what happened to you happening to her.”

  “Molly.” She said her sister’s name, and closed her eyes for a moment.

  “Molly’s a pretty cool kid,” Landry said. “All she’s wanted from the beginning of this is to have you back, Erin.”

  The girl dabbed at her swollen eyes with a tissue and breathed a shaky sigh, preparing herself, settling herself to tell him her story.

  “Do you know who did this to you, Erin?” Landry asked.

  “They wore masks,” she said. “They never let me see their faces.”

  “But they spoke to you? You heard their voices. And maybe you recognized a voice or a mannerism or something.”

  She didn’t answer yes, but she didn’t answer no either. She sat very quietly, her eyes on her hands neatly folded in her lap.

  Landry waited.

  “I think I know who one of them was,” she said softly. Fresh tears filled her eyes as the emotions welled up inside her. Disappointment, sadness, hurt.

  She touched a hand to her forehead, partly shielding her eyes. Trying to hide from the truth.

  “Don,” she whispered at last. “Don Jade.”

  Chapter 42

  Weiss came out of the hospital first, running for his car. As he drove past me, I could see he was on his cell phone. Something was going down.

  Ten minutes later, Armedgian finally arrived and went into the hospital, then came back out a minute later with Dugan. They stood on the sidewalk, Armedgian angry and animated. Their voices rose and fell, the gist of the conversation drifting my way as I sat in my car with the windows down. Armedgian felt he’d been left out, should have been notified immediately, blah, blah, blah. Dugan was short with him. Not the FBI’s secretary, get over it, all on the same page now, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  They went to their individual vehicles and drove away, dash lights flashing.

  I got out of my car and went back into the ER, going down the hall toward the examination room Erin had been in. Landry came out of the room with a large brown paper evidence bag in hand: Erin’s clothes, which would go to the lab to be examined for DNA evidence.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, changing direction and hustling to keep up with him.

  “Erin says Jade was one of the kidnappers.”

  “Positive ID?” I asked, not believing it. “She saw him?”

  “She says they wore masks, but she thinks it was him.”

  “How? Why does she think it was him? His voice? A tattoo? What?”

  “I don’t have time for this, Elena,” he said impatiently. “Weiss and some uniforms are on their way to pick him up. I’ve got to get back to the station.”

  “Did she say anything about Van Zandt?”

  “No.”

  “Who else then?”

  “She didn’t say. We don’t have the whole story yet. But we’re grabbing Jade bef
ore he can split. If he knows she’s gotten away, he knows he’s gotta get out of Dodge. If we can snag him now, we’ll get him to roll on his partner.”

  The doors swooshed open and we went outside, headed for Landry’s car. I wanted everything to stop, for time to stop right then so I could think before anything more happened. The plot had taken a hard left turn, and I was having a difficult time making the corner. Landry, however, had no intention of slowing down.

  “Where did they have her?” I asked. “How did she get away?”

  “Later,” Landry said, getting into his car.

  “But—”

  He fired the engine and I had to jump back as he pulled out of the parking space and drove away.

  I stood there like an idiot, watching him go, trying to digest what had just happened. It just didn’t make sense to me that Jade would take the risk of kidnapping someone—or that he had the temperament for it. I couldn’t see Jade as a team player in a thing like this.

  Landry had developed Jade as a suspect, had circumstantial evidence against Jade. He had a vested interest in Jade being the perpetrator.

  I wanted to know what Erin had said. I wanted to hear her story from her lips. I wanted to ask the questions and interpret her answers from my own perspective, with my own knowledge of the case and the people involved.

  An ambulance came screaming toward the hospital, screeching to a halt in the bay as hospital staff ran out to meet it. A huge woman screaming blue murder came out of the vehicle on the gurney, calling for Jesus as arterial blood sprayed in a geyser from what looked like a compound fracture of her left leg. Someone shouted something about a victim from the second car coming in.

  I slipped back into the hospital behind the mob as they rushed the woman toward a trauma room. Staff were running everywhere in the chaos of the moment. I went directly to the room where Erin had been and slipped inside.

  The bed was empty. Erin had already been taken to a regular room. The exam room had not yet otherwise been cleared. A steel tray sat with suture equipment and bloody cotton balls. A speculum lay in the small sink, discarded after the rape exam.

  I felt like the party was over and no one had invited me in the first place. Landry had Erin’s clothes and the rape kit. There was nothing here for me to find.

  I sighed and stepped back from the table, my absent gaze dropping to the floor. A small silver bracelet lay half-hidden under the table. I bent to pick it up. Made of silver, the links were fashioned in the shape of stirrups, one interlocking with the next. A couple of tiny charms hung from it—one a horse’s head, one the letter E for Erin.

  Just the thing for a horse-crazy teenager. I wondered if it had been a gift. I wondered if the gift-giver was a man, and if that man had betrayed her in the most terrible way.

  The door swung open and I turned around to face a deputy.

  “Where did they take my niece?” I asked. “Erin Seabright?”

  “Fourth floor, ma’am.”

  “Will she have a guard?” I asked. “I mean, what if one of the men who took her comes here—”

  “We’ve posted someone outside her room. You won’t have to worry, ma’am. She’s safe now.”

  “What a relief,” I said without enthusiasm. “Thank you.”

  He held the door for me as I left the room. I walked away, disappointed. I couldn’t get to Erin. I couldn’t get to Jade. I didn’t know where Van Zandt was lurking. It was three in the morning and I was locked out of the case again.

  I slipped the bracelet in my pocket and headed home to sleep.

  The calm before the storm.

  Chapter 43

  What do you have to say about this, Mr. Jade?”

  Landry placed the photographs on the table in front of Don Jade, side by side by side. Jade astride a horse, smiling at the camera. Jade standing beside a colorful fence in a showring, in breeches and boots, profile to the camera as he pointed to something. Jade on another horse, going over a fence. Jade with his arm around Erin, her face scribbled over in ink by a jealous Jill Morone.

  “I don’t have anything to say about them.”

  Landry reached out and turned the last picture over like a blackjack dealer flipping an ace.

  “Until someone drew a line through it, the inscription on this was: To Erin. Love, Don. Do you have something to say now?”

  “I didn’t write it.”

  “We can have an expert compare handwriting samples.”

  “Don’t even start the battle of the experts with me, Detective,” Bert Shapiro said, sounding like he might die of boredom. Landry wished he would. “I’ve got bigger clubs in my bag than you do.”

  Bert Shapiro: walking, talking, designer-dressed prick.

  Landry looked at the attorney with hooded eyes. “What’s your connection to these people, Counselor?”

  “This should be self-evident, but we are dealing with the Sheriff’s Office, after all,” Shapiro said to the room at large, amused with himself. Stubby little cocksucker. “I’m Mr. Jade’s attorney.”

  “Yeah, I caught on to that. And Van Zandt’s attorney.”

  “Yes.”

  “And who else in that little rat’s nest? Trey Hughes?”

  “My client list is confidential.”

  “Just trying to save you some time,” Landry said. “Hughes will be in here next, talking to us about Mr. Jade. So, if he’s one of yours too, you can just hang out with us morons at the Sheriff’s Office all day. Enjoy our hospitality and bad coffee.”

  Shapiro frowned. “Do you have some legitimate reason for wasting Mr. Jade’s time here, Detective?”

  Landry looked around the room, the same way Shapiro had. “That should have been self-evident when Mr. Jade was Mirandized. He’s charged with the kidnapping of Erin Seabright.”

  Jade pushed his chair back from the table and got up to pace. “That’s absurd. I haven’t kidnapped anyone.”

  “What evidence do you have to support the charge, Detective?” Shapiro asked. “And before you answer, let me point out to you that it’s not illegal to have one’s photograph taken by an ardent fan or employee.”

  Landry looked at Jade, letting the anticipation gain some weight. “No, but it is against the law to hold a young woman against her will, chain her to a bed, and beat her with a riding whip.”

  Jade exploded. “That’s ridiculous!”

  Landry loved it. The cool cat was in a corner now. Now the temper came out. “Erin didn’t seem to find it amusing at all. She says you were the mastermind.”

  “Why would she say such a thing?” Jade demanded. “I’ve never been anything but kind to that girl.”

  Landry shrugged just to be annoying. “Maybe because you terrorized her, abused her, raped her—”

  “I did no such thing!”

  Shapiro put a hand on his client’s arm. “Have a seat, Don. Clearly, the girl is mistaken,” he said to Landry. “If she’s been tortured, as you say, who knows what kinds of things the kidnappers put into her head. They might have convinced her of anything. They might have had her on drugs—”

  “Why would you say that?” Landry asked.

  “Because clearly the girl isn’t in her right mind if she thinks Don had anything to do with this.”

  “Well, somebody’s misunderstood something,” Landry said. “When last we spoke, Mr. Jade denied having had anything other than a working relationship with Erin Seabright. Maybe he misunderstood the meaning of ‘working relationship.’ That doesn’t generally involve sex between employer and employee.”

  Jade blew out a breath. “I told you before: I have never had sex with Erin.”

  Landry pretended not to be listening. He fingered the photographs on the table. “You know, we found these photographs this morning—Sunday morning—in the apartment shared by Jill Morone—victim of murder and sexual assault—and Erin Seabright—victim of kidnapping and sexual assault. Jill Morone was last seen alive having an argument with you, and you yourself admit you were the last person
to see Erin before she disappeared.”

  “She came to tell me she was quitting,” Jade said. “I had no idea she’d gone missing until you brought it up.”

  “Employee relations are not your strong suit, are they, Don?” Landry said. “Erin wants to leave you, so you chain her to a bed. Jill disappoints you, so you shove her face in a pile of shit and suffocate her—”

  “My God,” Jade said, still pacing. “Who could believe I would do any of that?”