Dark Horse

by Tami Hoag

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  I paced the house, trying to shove back the emotions crowding in on me. I needed to do something. I needed a new plan. I wasn’t going to sit home with all these feelings to contemplate, and I didn’t have a good book to take to the bathtub.

  An idea began to take shape in my mind. Before it was more than an embryo, I had changed clothes and was out the door.

  My life would have been easier if I had gone to Barnes & Noble.

  Chapter 25

  Lorinda Carlton’s Wellington address was a town house on Sag Harbor Court

  . Unless Van Zandt made a revelation during his interview with Landry, there was not probable cause for a warrant to search the premises. But if Van Zandt had been involved in Erin’s kidnapping or Jill’s murder, and had kept a souvenir, there was a good chance he would get rid of it as soon as he came back to the town house.

  I parked in a visitor’s slot at the end of the block of buildings where Carlton’s unit was located. Half the places on the block had lights on, but there was no activity going on outdoors. No friendly neighbors sitting on their front stoop, watching Saturday night go by.

  Because of the nature of Wellington and the winter show season, rentals experience a big turnover of tenants every year. While some of the horse people own homes, many find themselves in a different apartment every winter. The nature of horse people being what it is, the accommodations for their horses are arranged first, accommodations for themselves often wait until the last minute. The town house and apartment complexes consequently do not have a strong feeling of community.

  Carlton’s unit was on the far end of the dead-end street and completely dark. I peered in the sidelight at the front door, looking for a security system panel. If there was one, it was located out of my limited range of sight. If there was an alarm and I tripped it, I was in a bad position to get back to my car. I would have to find a way to make my escape through or over the tall hedge that ran along the end of the complex, hoping that no one would see me, then double back around later to get my car.

  With that much of a plan in mind, I slipped a couple of picks out of my coat pocket and went to work on the front door lock. Any casual passerby would be far less suspicious of someone unlocking a front door than trying to sneak in the back. I could always shrug and say I’d lost my key, make up a story about how I was in for the weekend to see my friend Van Zandt, who had rudely forgotten about me.

  I held my breath as I worked the picks in the lock. Lock picking is not a skill taught at the police academy. I learned it from a groom when I was eleven years old. Bobby Bennet had spent many years working the south Florida racetracks until an unfortunate misunderstanding about a burglary had landed him in prison for three to five. He claimed to have mended his wicked ways after he got out, but he had retained his old skills and passed them on to me because I was a pest and he got a kick out of me.

  I thanked God for Bobby Bennet as the lock’s tumblers fell into place. My heart was still thumping as I opened the door and went inside. Many security systems allow entry with a key, but then require the proper code to be entered on the keypad within a minute or two or the alarm sounds both within the house and with whatever agency the system is connected to, whether it be a private security company or the Sheriff’s Office.

  I found the system control panel on the wall adjacent to the hinged side of the door. A small green light declared the system unarmed.

  Relieved, I moved on about my business. I flipped on a table lamp in the living room. Any neighbors bothering to notice the lights on would simply assume the person in the town house was the person who was supposed to be in the town house, because what thief would turn the lights on?

  The place was vaguely shabby and smelled of stale dog. The carpet had been white once. So had the fake leather sofas that were now cracked and dingy. Van Zandt needed to get a wealthier client to put him up free of charge. He probably had Sean in mind for that. He was probably already scheming to get the guest house next season.

  I passed through the galley kitchen, doing a cursory check of drawers and cupboards. Nothing but the usual assortment of mismatched utensils, cereal boxes, and laundry soap. He liked Heineken beer and orange juice with extra pulp. There were no amputated body parts in the refrigerator or freezer. A small load of laundry lay clean, dry, and wrinkled in the dryer. Slacks, socks, and underwear. As if he had undressed and thrown everything into the washing machine together. Except that there was no shirt. I wondered why.

  The living room offered nothing of interest. A collection of videos in the TV cabinet. Science fiction and romances. Lorinda Carlton’s, I assumed. I couldn’t picture Van Zandt sitting through Titanic, weeping as Leonardo DiCaprio went under for the third time. There was no sign of the video camera he had brought to Sean’s.

  I climbed the stairs to the second floor, where the bedrooms were located—one small and decorated with dog toys, one a master with cheesy laminated furnishings. This room smelled of Van Zandt’s cologne. The bed was made, his clothes were put away neatly in the closet and in the drawers. He might have made some woman a good husband if not for those unfortunate sociopathic and misogynistic tendencies.

  The video camera was in the closet, sitting on the floor beside a row of shoes. I opened the leather case and looked through the tapes, all of them labeled with the names of sale horses. Van Zandt would tape the horses, then copy the tapes (judiciously edited to show only the best traits of each horse) for prospective buyers to preview. I popped one of the VHSC cassette tapes into the camera, rewound it, and hit the play button. A gray horse appeared on the viewing screen, going over a series of jumps. Good form. The tape fuzzed out, then refocused, and a chestnut came into view. I hit the stop button and swapped tapes. More of the same. Van Zandt managed to get not only film of the horse in question, but also a smiling shot of some sweet young thing attached to the horse in some way or another. Rider or groom or owner. Cause for an eye roll, not alarm.

  On the third tape I found Paris Montgomery astride a black gelding with a white star on his forehead. Stellar.

  It broke my heart to watch him perform. He was a handsome animal with a mischievous sparkle in his eye and a habit of flipping his tail up like a flag as he jumped. He went to the fences with enthusiasm, but there wasn’t a lot of spring in his jump and he didn’t always get his hind legs out of the way in time to miss brushing the top rail of the fence. But I could see the will in him, the heart Dr. Dean had spoken of. When Stellar knocked a rail he pinned his ears and shook his head as he landed, as if angry with himself for not doing better. He had a lot of “try,” as horse people say, but it took more than try to win at the elite level or be sold at an elite price.

  Behind the camera, Van Zandt clearly became bored with the horse. There were far too many close-ups of Paris and her model’s smile. I wondered just how close they were, whether or not Paris Montgomery drew the same line I did when it came to getting what she wanted from a man.

  Then came one long shot of a girl holding Stellar by the reins, posing the riderless animal for a side view. Erin Seabright in a skin-fitting T-shirt and a pair of shorts that showed off slender, tan legs. Just as she got the horse positioned to best show him off, he butted her with his head and sent her staggering backwards, laughing. Pretty girl, pretty smile. She took hold of the horse’s head and planted a kiss on his nose.

  The tough, mouthy, bad girl. Not in this scene. I could see Erin’s connection to the horse. I could see it in the way she spoke to him, the way she touched him, the way her hand lingered on his neck as she moved him. Knowing her family situation, it wasn’t hard to imagine Erin felt closer to the horses she cared for than she did to most of the Seabright household. The horses didn’t judge her, didn’t criticize her, didn’t let her down. The horses didn’t know or care if she had broken rules. They only knew whether or not she was kind and patient, whether or not she brought them treats and knew where they liked to be scratched.

&n
bsp; I knew these things about Erin Seabright because I had been Erin Seabright a lifetime ago. The girl who didn’t fit the family mold, didn’t want to live up to family expectations; the girl who chose acquaintances based on their objectionable qualities. Her only true friends lived in the stables.

  The tape revealed more to me about Erin than it did about Van Zandt. I rewound it and watched Erin’s part again, hoping I would have the opportunity to see her smile like that in person, though I knew even if I could get her out of this mess, it could be a very long time before she felt like smiling.

  I swapped the tape for another and zoomed fast-forward through three more horses, then Sean and Tino popped up, and I let the tape play. The pair made a lovely picture as they moved around the arena. Sean was an excellent rider, strong, elegant, quiet and centered in his body. The brown gelding was lean and leggy and had a stylish way of going. The camera followed as they moved laterally across the ring toward the gazebo, diagonal pairs of legs crossing with the grace of a ballet dancer, the horse’s body curving like a bow around Sean’s leg. And then they went out of the frame.

  The camera lingered on the gazebo, zooming in on Irina. She stared out of the picture with an expression of cold hatred, brought her cigarette to her lips, and blew the smoke right at the glass eye. It didn’t seem to unnerve her that Van Zandt was watching her. It made my skin crawl. I wanted to go to Irina’s apartment and lecture her on locking her door at night.

  Elena Estes, Mother Hen.

  I put the camera back where I had found it and went back into the bedroom, to the TV stand that housed another television and VCR. And a collection of porn. Multiple girls with one guy. Multiple guys with one girl. Lesbian sex. Lots of lesbian sex. Gay men. Some of the movies looked like they might have been violent, most didn’t.

  An equal opportunity perv, our Mr. Van Zandt.

  I searched the drawers of the dresser and nightstands. I looked under the bed and found dust bunnies and some petrified dog turds. Van Zandt’s patron needed a new cleaning person.

  I found no tapes related to Erin’s kidnapping. I knew the kidnapper had to have them. The tape that had been sent to the Seabrights was a full-sized VHS tape. Most modern camcorders were either digital or recorded on eight millimeter or a small VHSC cassette like the ones in the closet. The tape would then have been copied via VCR onto the larger tape. The kidnapper had also had access to more sophisticated audio equipment than any I had seen in the town house. The voice on the tape had been mechanically altered. If Van Zandt was involved in the kidnapping, he had the tapes and recording equipment stashed elsewhere.

  Disappointed, I turned out the lights and went back downstairs. My internal clock was telling me it was time to go. I had lingered too long over the videotapes of the horses. I knew Landry would try to keep Van Zandt in the interview room as long as he could, but there was always the possibility Van Zandt would just get up and leave. He wasn’t under arrest—that I knew of. He didn’t even think the laws of the United States should apply to him.

  I looked at the front door, but didn’t move toward it. The idea of striking out had never appealed to me. I wanted to find something more incriminating than a porn habit, something—anything—that, even if it didn’t tie him directly to the murder or the kidnapping, could at least be used as leverage against him in a future interview.

  I went through the kitchen and let myself into a garage just large enough for one car and some storage lockers along one wall. The locker doors had padlocks on them. I didn’t have the time to pop them. On top of the lockers were precarious piles of junk: a Styrofoam cooler, pool toys, cases of Diet Rite soda, a twelve-roll package of cheap toilet paper. In other words: nothing.

  Plastic trash cans and recycling bins sat along the wall at the far end of the garage. I wrinkled my nose and went to them.

  A criminal’s garbage can be a treasure trove of evidence. Egg-coated, stinking evidence in most cases, but evidence nonetheless.

  I pulled the lid off the first can and peered down into it. The only lightbulb in the garage was on the wall beside the kitchen door. The wattage wasn’t enough to be of any real help to me. I wished I had brought my flashlight from the car, but there wasn’t time to go get it.

  I dug through the trash, having to get much too close to see what I was looking at. Junk mail, boxes and microwave trays from frozen dinners, egg cartons, egg shells, egg goo, Chinese take-out cartons, pizza boxes. The same garbage anyone might have. No credit card receipts, no to-do list that included murder and kidnapping.

  I found a note that listed names of horses, a date, a departure time from Palm Beach, an arrival time in New York, flight number and times for a flight to Brussels. The horses he was shipping to Europe. I slipped the note into my jeans pocket. If Van Zandt was shipping horses out of the country, he could ship himself out of the country with them. He could fly with the horses and be gone from Landry’s jurisdiction like a thief in the night.

  Then I pulled the lid off the second trash container, and adrenaline rushed through my system like a drug.

  The only item in the can was a shirt. The shirt that hadn’t been run through the wash with the pants and socks and underwear—clothes taken off in haste and thrown in the machine together.

  I had to lean down into the container to pick the shirt off the bottom. The smell of the can assaulted me, made my eyes water, turned my stomach. But I came back up with the shirt in hand and took it over by the light for a closer inspection.

  Fine Egyptian cotton in a warm French blue. I held the shirt up to the light, looking for a monogram, wanting some positive ID the shirt belonged to Van Zandt. I found none, but there was something on the left side of the collar that might just as positively identify the owner: dark stains that looked like blood. The left front panel of the shirt had a large tear in it about halfway down with more blood.

  My heart was racing.

  Van Zandt might have cut himself shaving, a defense attorney would argue. And did he stab himself shaving too, a prosecutor would ask. The evidence suggested he might have been injured in a struggle, the prosecution would say.

  I could easily picture Jill Morone fighting her attacker, arms flailing, fingers curled into claws, raking at him. She might have caught him on the neck, scratched him, he bled on the shirt. If the autopsy revealed skin beneath her fingernails . . . If Van Zandt had corresponding wounds on his neck . . . I hadn’t noticed any, but he could have hidden them with his ever-present ascot. I thought of the stall in Jade’s barn, of what I had thought might be blood on the pine bedding. Maybe from the second injury. She might have struck him with something, cut him with something. Maybe it wasn’t liquor that accounted for Van Zandt’s pallor that morning after all.

  My heart was pounding so hard, my hands were shaking. I’d hit the jackpot. In the old days, I would have bought a round for the house after a find like this. Now I couldn’t even claim the victory, and I wouldn’t be welcome in the cop bars even if I could have. I stood there in the dim light of the garage, trying to temper my excitement, forcing myself to think through the next crucial steps I had to take.

  Landry needed to find the shirt. As much as I would have enjoyed throwing it in his face, I knew that if I took it to him, it would never make it into a trial. As a private citizen, I didn’t need a warrant to search someone’s house. The Fourth Amendment protects us from agents of the government, not from each other. But neither could I be in that house illegally. If Van Zandt had invited me over, and during the course of my visit I had found the shirt, that would have been a different story. And still there might have been complications. Because I had once been a law enforcement agent, and because I had had contact with the Sheriff’s Office about this case, a good defense attorney would argue that I should be considered a de facto agent of the Sheriff’s Office, thereby blowing my status as an innocent citizen and rendering the evidence I had found inadmissable.

  No. This had to be done by the book. Chain of custody had to be estab
lished. The SO needed to come into the garage with a warrant. An anonymous tip, along with Van Zandt’s history and his connection to Jill Morone, might be enough to get it.

  Still, I didn’t want to put the shirt back into the trash container. I couldn’t trust that something wouldn’t go wrong; that Van Zandt wouldn’t spook after his chat with Landry, come back here and get rid of the evidence. I needed to hide it somewhere Van Zandt wouldn’t find it.

  No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than came the sound of a car pulling into the drive, and the garage door opener started to growl.

  The door was already a third of the way up as I turned and ran for the kitchen door, the car’s headlights illuminating the wall like spotlights on a prisoner escape.

  The car horn blasted.

  I bolted into the kitchen, slammed the door, and locked the dead bolt, buying a few precious seconds. Frantically, I looked around the room for place to hide the shirt.

  No time. No time. Ditch it and run.

  I stuffed the shirt into the back of a lower kitchen cupboard, shut the door, and ran on as the key turned in the dead bolt.