Dark Horse (39 page)

53

We manage a lot of properties,
Detective,” Bruce Seabright said. “I have nothing to do with most of them.”

“I only care about what you have to do with this one,” Landry said.

They stood in Seabright’s home office. Seabright turned around in a circle and heaved a sigh up at the ceiling. “I don’t have anything to do with it!”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“I don’t know where that videotape came from,” he said. “Someone planted it.”

“Yeah, right. You stick with that story. I’m asking you about the property in Loxahatchee.”

“I have an attorney,” Seabright said. “Talk to him.”

“This is an unrelated line of questioning.”

“And I told you, I don’t have anything to do with the rental property.”

“You expect me to believe that someone involved in Erin’s kidnapping just happened to rent that property from your company? The same way these people you sent Erin to for a job just happened to turn out to be killers and rapists and Christ knows what all.”

“I don’t care what you believe,” Seabright said, reaching for his phone. “I had nothing to do with any of this, nor did my son. Now get out of my office or I’m filing harassment charges.”

“File it up your ass, Seabright,” Landry said. “You and your rotten kid are both going to jail. I’ll see to it personally.”

Landry left the office, thinking he just wanted to drive the lot of these people out to Lion Country Safari and dump them inside the pen with the big cats.

Krystal Seabright was standing in the hall a few feet from the office door. For once, she didn’t look stoned, but stricken. She held a hand out to stop him from passing her, her mouth opening to form words that didn’t come out.

“Can I help you, Mrs. Seabright?”

“I did it,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“That woman came to me, to my office. I rented her that property. I remember her name. Paris. I’ve always wanted to visit Paris.”

She didn’t know quite how she should be reacting to the news, Landry thought. With guilt? With shock? With outrage?

“How did she happen to come to you?” he asked.

“She told me a friend sent her.” Tears shone in her eyes. She shook her head and looked toward her husband’s office. “Was it him? Do you think it was him?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Seabright,” Landry confessed. “I guess you have to ask him.”

“I guess I do,” she murmured, staring at the office door. “I have to do something.”

Landry left her there in the hall, glad he was just a cop. He could walk away from this mess when it was over. Krystal Seabright wouldn’t be so lucky.

54

I stared at the barrel
of the gun in Paris Montgomery’s hands. Jimmy Buffett was still singing in the background.

“Put down the phone and the gun,” Paris said to me.

I now held the Glock in my weak and damaged right hand. I could have tried to raise it up and call her bluff, but I couldn’t have done it convincingly. I couldn’t have pulled the trigger if I needed to. I weighed my options as Landry’s voicemail message came on the line.

Paris came toward me. She was angry and she was afraid. Her neat little scheme was fraying at the edges like a cheap rag.

“It seemed a simple plan, didn’t it, Paris?” I said. “You got Erin to help you frame Jade. She and Chad got to ruin Bruce Seabright in the process. It would have worked like a charm if Molly Seabright hadn’t come to me for help.”

“Put down the phone and the gun,” she ordered again.

I clipped the phone onto my jeans and glanced at Trey, who stood flat-footed and expressionless.

“Why did you let Van Zandt in on it?” I asked. “Or did he force his way in?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why are you pointing a gun in my face, Paris?”

She glanced at Trey. “This is all Don’s doing,” she said. “He killed Stellar. He kidnapped Erin. He killed Jill. It’s all Don, Trey. You have to believe me.”

“Why?” he asked. “Because it’s part of your plan?”

“Because I love you!” she said emphatically, though her eyes were on me, sighting down the barrel of a gun. “Erin saw Don kill Stellar. Don did horrible things to her, to punish her. And he killed Jill.”

“No, he didn’t, honey,” Trey said wearily. “I know he didn’t.”

“What are you saying?”

“You had night check the night Jill was killed. You left my bed to go do it. Just like you did the night before, when Berne’s horses were turned loose.”

“You’re confused, Trey,” Paris said, an edge in her voice.

“Generally, yes. Life’s easier that way. But not about this.”

She took another step toward me, her patience wearing thin. “Put the fucking gun down!”

I heaved a sigh and slowly crouched down as if to set the gun on the floor, then ducked and rolled sideways.

Paris fired twice, one of the bullets hitting the floor near me and spitting up shards of travertine marble.

I switched my gun to my left hand, trying to steady it with my right, came to my feet, and rushed her before she could adjust her position to fire at me a third time.

“Drop it, Paris! Drop it! Drop it!”

She turned and bolted for the stairs at the far end of the balcony. I ran after her, pulling up short as she turned the corner and fired off a shot behind her.

Cautiously, I peered around the corner, looking down on an empty stairwell faintly illuminated by the glow of the security light. She could have been waiting beyond the landing, tucked against the wall, waiting for me to charge after her. I could see myself turning the corner on the landing and the bullet hitting me square in the chest, my blood the only color in a black-and-white scene.

I went instead to the end of the balcony and looked down. She was gone. I ran down the stairs. The engine of Trey’s Porsche roared to life as I hit the ground. The headlights blinded me as the car leapt toward me.

I brought my gun up and put a round through the windshield, then dove to the side.

Paris tried to swing the Porsche around, tires spinning, dirt and gravel spraying out behind it. The car skidded sideways and slammed violently against the side of the concrete building, setting off the horn and alarm system.

Paris shoved the door open, fell out of the vehicle, got up and started to run down the driveway, a hand pressed to her left shoulder. She stumbled and fell, got up and ran another few steps, then stumbled and fell again. She lay sobbing on the ground within sight of the sign proudly announcing construction of Lucky Dog Farm.

“No, no, no, no, no!” she whimpered over and over as I reached her. Blood ran between her fingers from the bullet wound in her shoulder.

“The game is over, Paris,” I said, looking down at her. “You’re out of luck, bitch.”

55

Molly sat curled up
in a little knot on her bed, knees pulled up beneath her chin. She was trembling and trying hard not to cry.

She listened to the fight going on below her, their voices coming up through her floor. Bruce shouting. Things crashing. Hateful and angry, her mother shrieking like something from a nightmare, like nothing Molly had ever heard. An eerie, high-pitched tone that rose and fell like a siren. She sounded insane. Bruce called her insane more than once.

Molly feared he might be right. That maybe the tight band that had held Krystal together all this time had just broken, and everything she had held repressed inside her had come bursting out.

As the shrieking rose again, Molly jumped off the bed, locked her door, and struggled to shove her nightstand in front of it. She grabbed the phone Elena had given her, scrambled back to her spot against the headboard, and dialed Elena’s cell phone.

She listened to the phone ring unanswered. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

Below her the noise abruptly stopped and a strange, horrible silence took its place. Molly strained her ears for any kind of sound, but the silence pressed in on her until she wondered if she’d gone deaf.

Then came a small, soft voice drifting up through the vent as if from another dimension. “I only ever wanted a nice life. . . . I only ever wanted a nice life. . . .”

56

Landry arrived on the heels
of the ambulance that had been called for Paris. My shot through the windshield had clipped her shoulder. She had lost some blood, but she would live to see another day, and another and another—all of them from a prison cell, I hoped.

Landry got out of his car and came directly to me, holding a finger up at the deputy who had secured the scene, warding him off for the moment. Deputy Saunders, my escort from the night Michael Berne’s horses had been turned loose, stood watching me, not willing to accept my word for my innocence.

Landry dismissed him, his focus on me.

“Are you all right?”

I gave him the half smile. “You must be tired of asking me that. I’m fine.”

“You’ve got more lives than a cat,” he muttered.

I filled him in on what had happened, what had been said, my take on it all.

“What made you come here in the first place?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I thought Paris might try to get to Trey. It all revolved around him—around Trey, around his money, around this place.”

I looked back at the barn, the massive walls washed in the colored lights from the ambulance and county radio cars. Trey was being escorted in handcuffs to one of the cruisers.

“I believe Trey and Jade cooked up a scheme to kill Sallie Hughes so Trey could inherit and build this place. I confronted Trey about it. He didn’t even bother to deny it. That’s why he’s stayed loyal to Jade. He didn’t have a choice. Paris wanted Jade out of the way so she could have it all. And in the end, none of them will end up with anything,” I said. “All the deceit, all the scheming, all the pain they caused—it’s all for nothing. Everybody loses.”

“Yeah,” Landry said as the ambulance rolled out with a cruiser behind it. “Cases like this one make me wish I’d listened to my old man. He wanted me to be a civil engineer.”

“What did he do for a living?” I asked.

His mouth quirked. “He was a cop. What else? Thirty years on the Baton Rouge PD.”

“No sign of Van Zandt yet?” I asked as we walked back toward our cars.

“Not yet. The guy at the cargo hangar told us Van Zandt’s horses arrived by commercial shipper a while ago, but they haven’t heard from Van Zandt all day. You think he was in it with Paris?”

“I still believe he killed Jill. But Trey said Paris got out of his bed to go check the horses that night. Jill’s body was left to be found, and whoever put it there knew everyone would connect it to Jade. That furthers Paris’ plan.”

“We know Van Zandt was at The Players that night,” Landry said. “He was all over the girl. Say he followed her out, thinking to pick up the pieces after Jade had broken her heart. Maybe she said no and he didn’t want to hear it. She ends up dead.”

“Paris comes on the scene and convinces Van Zandt to dump the body in the manure pit,” I speculated. “Was he involved in the rest of it? I don’t know. Chad tried to tell me someone had actually raped Erin, that Paris had let things get out of hand. Maybe Van Zandt came into it and took over.”

“If that’s what happened, I’m sure she’ll spill it,” Landry said. “She’s in custody, he’s not. Nothing ruins a partnership faster than threat of jail time. Good work, Estes.”

“Just doing my civic duty.”

“You should still have a badge.”

I looked away. “Oh, well, don’t you say the sweetest things? I wouldn’t express that opinion around the SO, if I were you.”

“Fuck ’em. It’s true.”

I felt embarrassed that his compliment meant so much to me.

“Any news of Chad and Erin?” I asked as my phone rang.

Landry shook his head.

“Estes,” I said into the phone.

“Elena?”

The tremulous sound of her voice sent fear through me like shards of glass. “Molly? Molly, what’s wrong?”

I was already hustling toward Landry’s car. I could see the concern on his face as he kept pace with me.

“Elena, you have to come. Please come!”

“I’m on my way! What’s happening?”

In the background I could hear pounding, like someone banging on a door.

“Molly?”

And then a strange and terrible keening sound that ended with her name.

“Hurry!” Molly said.

The last thing I heard before the line went dead was an eerie voice: “I only ever wanted a nice life. . . . I only ever wanted a nice life. . . .”

57

Okay,” Landry said.
“Here’s how we’re playing it. I’m going in first with the uniforms.”

I let him talk, not caring what he said, not caring what his plan was. All I could think of was Molly.

If someone had harmed that child . . .

I thought of Chad and Erin running at large. If they had come back to the house—

“Elena, did you hear me?”

I didn’t answer him.

He turned in at the driveway and ran the car onto the lawn. A radio car turned in behind us. I was out of the car before it was stopped.

“Dammit, Estes!”

The front door was open. I went through it without a care to what danger might be on the other side.

“Molly!”

Landry was right behind me. “Seabright? It’s Landry.”

“Molly!”

I took the stairs two at a time.

If someone has harmed that child . . .

L
andry went toward Seabright’s home office. The house was eerily silent, except for a small, faint sound coming from beyond the office doors.

“Seabright?”

Landry moved along the wall, gun drawn. In his peripheral vision, he saw Elena bolt up the steps.

“Seabright?” he called out again.

The sound was growing more distinct. Singing, he thought. He sidled along the door, stretching his arm as long as he could to reach the doorknob.

Singing. No, more like chanting. “All I ever wanted was a nice life.”

M
olly!”

I had no idea which of the closed doors belonged to her. I stood to the side and opened the first one I came to. Chad’s room.

If someone has harmed that child . . .

I shoved open another door. Another unoccupied bedroom.

“Molly!”

If someone has harmed that child
. . .

The third door opened an inch and hit something. I shoved at it.

“Molly!”

If someone has harmed that child
. . .

T
he doors to the study fell open, revealing a gruesome tableau. Krystal Seabright stood behind her husband’s desk, covered in blood. Blood streaked her bleached hair, her face, the pretty pink dress she had been wearing when Landry had seen her earlier. Bruce Seabright was slumped over his otherwise immaculate desk, a butcher’s knife sticking out of one of perhaps fifty stab wounds in his back, neck, and head.

“Jesus God,” Landry murmured.

Krystal looked at him, her eyes glassy and wide.

“I only ever wanted a nice life. He ruined it. He ruined everything.”

I
f someone has harmed that child
. . .

I pulled back, took a deep breath, and rammed the door with my shoulder as hard as I could.

“Molly!”

The block on the other side of the door gave a few inches, enough for me to wedge into the opening and shove it a few inches more. Someone had piled half the furniture in the room as a blockade.

“Elena!”

Molly ran into me full force. I fell to my knees and caught her in my arms and held her as tightly as I had ever held anyone in all my life. I put my arms around Molly Seabright and held her while she cried, and held her for a long time after that.

For her . . . and for myself.