Dark Horse (35 page)

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.

45

The assistant state’s attorney seemed
unperturbed by the fact that Erin Seabright had not seen the faces of her captors. As Elena had said, they had enough evidence to hold him on the charges, to arraign him and make a strong argument for high bail or no bail. They would then, by Florida law, have 175 days to bring Jade before a jury. Ample time to put the case together, provided the additional evidence was there to find.

The blood that had been found in the stall where Jill Morone had died had been typed. If they could match it to Jade, they were on their way to a murder indictment to add to the kidnapping charge. They had put Jade’s alibi for the night of Jill’s death in doubt. He had no alibi for the night the horse had been killed, the event Estes believed had kicked everything into motion.

Landry thought of Elena as he left the prosecutor’s office. He didn’t like that she had doubts about Jade’s involvement, and he didn’t like that it mattered to him what she thought. She had dragged him into this mess, and he wanted it to lay out as simply as her original theory had. Most crimes were like that: straightforward. The average murder was about money or sex, and didn’t require Sherlock Holmes to solve. Kidnapping for ransom—the same. Good basic police work led to arrests and convictions. He didn’t want this case to be any different.

And maybe the reason Estes’ doubts bothered him so much was that some of those same doubts were chewing at the back of his mind. He tried to shake them off as he walked down the hall. Weiss came out of the squad room to meet him.

“Paris Montgomery is here. Asking for you,” he added with an eye roll.

“Did you find anything at the Seabright house?”

“Jackpot,” Weiss said. “We found a videotape stashed on a shelf in Seabright’s home office. You won’t believe it. It actually shows the girl being raped. We’ve got Seabright in the conference room. I’m on my way now.”

“Wait for me,” Landry said, fury burning in his gut. “I want a crack at that son of a bitch.”

“There’ll be a line,” Weiss assured him.

Paris Montgomery was pacing behind the table as Landry walked into the interview room. She looked upset and nervous, though her emotional state had not prevented her from putting on makeup or styling her hair.

“Ms. Montgomery. Thank you for coming in,” Landry said. “Have a seat. Can I get you anything? Coffee?”

“God, no,” she said, sitting down. “If I have any more caffeine I’m going to start spinning around the room like a top. I can’t believe any of this is happening. Don in jail. Erin
kidnapped
. My God. Is she all right? I just tried calling the hospital, but they wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“She’s been roughed up,” Landry said. “But she’ll recover.”

“Will they let me see her?”

“Immediate family only, for the time being. Maybe later today.”

“I feel terrible about what happened. I mean, she worked for me. I should have looked out for her.” Tears filled the big brown eyes. “I should have done something. When Don said she’d quit and gone— I should have tried harder to contact her. I should have known something was wrong.”

“Why is that? Did you have reason to be suspicious?”

She glanced away; her expression seemed to have the kind of glazed look people get when they are watching memories run through their minds.

“Erin had seemed happy with the job. I mean, I knew she was having boyfriend trouble, but what girl her age doesn’t? I just— I should have questioned her leaving so suddenly. But you have to understand, grooms come and go during the season. There’s too much opportunity. Someone offers more money or health insurance or an extra day off and they’re gone.”

Landry offered no platitudes, no absolution. Someone sure as hell should have been paying closer attention to what was going on with Erin Seabright. He wasn’t inclined to let anyone off the hook.

“Were you aware of any relationship between Erin and Don?” he asked.

“Erin had a crush on him.”

“To your knowledge, did he act on it?”

“I—well—Don is very charismatic.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“He’s a magnetic kind of person. Women are drawn to him. He enjoys that. He likes to flirt.”

“With Erin?”

“Well . . . sure . . . but I didn’t think he would take advantage of her. I don’t want to believe that he did.”

“But he might have.”

She looked uncertain, which was answer enough.

“Did Erin say anything to you about the death of the horse?”

“She was upset. We all were.”

“Did she hint that she knew something about what happened?”

She looked away again and pressed two fingers against the small crease digging in between her eyebrows. “She didn’t believe it was an accident.”

“She took care of the horse, right?”

“Yes. She was very good with him—with all the horses. She put in extra time with them. She would come and check on them after hours sometimes.”

“Had she checked on them that night?”

“Around eleven. Everything was fine.”

“Why did she think it wasn’t an accident?”

Paris Montgomery began to cry. She looked around the room as if looking for a crevice to disappear into.

“Ms. Montgomery, if Don Jade did what we believe he did, you don’t owe him any loyalty.”

“I didn’t believe he’d done anything bad,” she said in a small voice, making the excuse for herself, not for Jade.

“What happened?”

“Erin told me Don was at the barn already when she got there that morning. Early. Really early. We had horses showing that day, and Erin had to get there early to braid manes and get the horses ready. She told me she saw Don in Stellar’s stall, doing something with the cord of the electric fan. She went over to the stall to ask him why he was there so early.”

She stopped and tried to compose herself, her breath catching. Landry waited.

“She saw Stellar was down. Don told her the horse had bitten through the cord of the fan, and he held the cord up. But Erin said he had something in his other hand. Some kind of a tool.”

“You think he cut the cord to make it look like an accident.”

“I don’t know!” she sobbed, covering her face with her hands. “I don’t want to believe he could have killed that poor animal!”

“And now that might be the least of what he’s done,” Landry said.

He sipped his coffee impassively while Paris Montgomery cried for her sin of omission. He turned the new facts over in his mind. Erin could have fingered Jade for staging the accident. That might logically have led to her death, he thought, as it may have led to Jill Morone’s death. But the evidence regarding the cell phone purchase indicated the kidnapping had been planned in advance of the horse murder. Therefore, the one thing had nothing to do with the other.

“What did you do when Erin came to you with this information?” he asked.

Paris dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I got angry. I told her of course it was an accident. Don wouldn’t—”

“Despite the fact that Don
had
on several occasions previous.”

“I never believed that was true,” she said adamantly. “No one ever proved anything.”

“Except that he’s clever and adept at evading the consequences of his actions.”

Even now, she rose to Jade’s defense. “In three years I have
never
known Don to do one cruel thing to a horse in his care.”

“What was Erin’s reaction when you didn’t believe her?”

“She was upset at first. We talked some more. I told her what I just told you about my experience working for Don. I asked her if she could believe him capable of hurting anyone. I made her feel ashamed for even thinking it.”

“So, when Jade told you she had quit later that day—”

“I wasn’t that surprised.”

“But you didn’t try to call her.”

“I tried to call her, she didn’t answer. I left a message on her voice mail. I went to her apartment a couple of days later, but it looked like she had moved out.”

She sighed dramatically and looked at Landry with the big eyes, looking for forgiveness. “I would give anything if I could go back to that day and change what happened.”

“Yeah,” Landry said. “I’ll bet Erin Seabright would too.”

46

I went back
to the day it all began. The day Stellar was found dead in his stall. The day Erin Seabright was snatched from the back gates of the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Center. I laid it all out in black and ecru on sheets of expensive stationery I found in the writing desk. A timeline. When Jade had allegedly purchased the cell phone. When Erin and Chad had argued. When Stellar had been found dead. When Erin had been taken. Everything I knew about the case, I wrote down and I spread the sheets out in order on my bedroom floor.

I had become focused on the idea that everything had come out of the death of Stellar, but looking at the timeline, reflecting on what I knew, I realized that it wasn’t so. The kidnapping plan was already in motion when Stellar died. Someone had purchased the disposable cell phone. Someone had lined up the trailer where Erin had been held, had gathered the video and audio equipment, had procured the ketamine to drug Erin and found the van used in the abduction. An elaborate plan with at least two people involved.

I wanted to know everything that had transpired that Sunday, the day of Stellar’s death and Erin’s abduction. I wanted to know what had gone on between Erin and Jade that day and prior to it. I wanted to know where Trey Hughes had been that day, and Van Zandt.

I looked at my timeline and all the things I did know. No matter how many times I went over it, the simplest explanation was not the best. But I knew plenty of people would have been happy to stop there. Landry among them.

I have never been able to do things the easy way.

I went back into the living room, pulled out the tape of the kidnapping, and shoved it into the VCR.

Erin standing at the back gate, waiting. She watched the van approach. She stood there as the masked man got out. She said, “No!” Then she ran. He grabbed her.

I rewound the tape and played it again.

I thought about the things she had told Landry, and the things she had not told him.

I thought about who had come under suspicion and who had not.

Don Jade was sitting in jail. Bruce Seabright was under a microscope. Tomas Van Zandt, known predator, suspected murderer, was nowhere to be found.

I went back to the writing desk and dug through the mess I’d made to find the piece of paper I had taken from Van Zandt’s trash. The flight schedule of horses being shipped to Brussels. The plane was scheduled to leave that night at eleven. I would have to give that information to Landry. And Landry would have to pass it on to Armedgian.

Screw that. I wasn’t giving Armedgian anything. If I could find a way to make him look like an idiot, I would. God knew, after the fiasco at The Players, neither Armedgian nor Dugan was going to have anything to do with me anyway.

I decided, when the time came, I would go to the airport and wait for Van Zandt myself, then call in Landry. If Tomas Van Zandt thought he could get away with murder in my country, he could think again.

47

He had no idea
how long he had been in the trunk of the car. Night had become day. He knew that because of the heat. The fucking Florida sun was beating down on the car, the temperature in the trunk becoming unbearable.

He was going to die in this horrible place because of that Russian cunt. Two of them. Their faces blended together in his brain. He went in and out of delirium from the pain and the heat.

He would have tried to break out, but he couldn’t move. He didn’t know how many of his bones were broken. He would have tried to scream, but the lower half of his face was encased in tape. Many times in the hours past he had feared he would vomit and choke to death.

Like the fat groom. Stupid little whore. She had been ready to have sex with Jade. She should have been willing to have sex with him. Some of his beating was her fault. Kulak had known about her death.

An accident. Not murder. If he had gotten rid of her body the way he had wanted, no one would ever have known. No one would have asked questions about where was Jill. Who in the world could give a shit about that one?

If he hadn’t been talked into dumping the body into that manure pit, plenty of what had happened wouldn’t have. And maybe he would not now be waiting to die.

He could hear sounds outside the car. Machinery running, men’s voices. Russians speaking Russian. Fucking Russians.

Something struck the car, rocking it, then it began to move forward. The noise of the machinery grew louder, like a beast from hell devouring everything in its path. The noise grew deafening—the roaring of the beast, the crunching of metal as the front end of the car collapsed.

He knew what was coming. He knew, and he started screaming, even though the sound could not escape his own head. He screamed the names of every woman who had turned against him.

Women. Stupid, ungrateful bitches. The bane of his existence. Many times he had said women would be the death of him. As always, he was right.