by Tami Hoag
“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.”
Chapter 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. . . .”
Chapter 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. . . .”
Chapter 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.
Chapter 58
All I could say to Molly as I hugged her tight was that it was over. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. But that was a lie of such grand proportions, all lies that had come before it were dwarfed in comparison. Nothing was over for Molly, except having a family.
Krystal, fragile in the best of times, had shattered under the pressure. She blamed her husband for what she believed had happened to Erin. The kidnapping, the rape. Landry told me she had suspected Bruce of sending Paris Montgomery to her to rent the Loxahatchee house where the whole drama had been staged.
She had reached her limit. In the end, one might have tried to put a nobler face on it and said Krystal had defended her daughter, had taken revenge for her. Sadly, I didn’t believe that at all. I believed killing Bruce had been punishment not for ruining her daughter, but for ruining her fairy tale.
I only ever wanted a nice life.
I wondered whether Krystal would have stayed with Bruce if she had found out that what they had all been put through had been orchestrated at least in part by her daughter. I suspected she would have put the blame squarely on Erin and no one else. She would have found a way to excuse Bruce’s sins and keep her pretty life intact.
The human mind has an amazing capacity for rationalization.
Landry sent Krystal to the Sheriff’s Office in a cruiser, then drove Molly and me to Sean’s farm. Not a word was said about calling Child Protective Services, which was standard operating procedure in a case like Molly’s.
We rode in silence most of the way, drained of our emotions and our energies, weighed down by the magnitude of what had gone on. The only sound in the car was the crackle of Landry’s radio. An old familiar noise for me. For a moment I felt as nostalgic for it as I ever had for any song from my adolescence.
As we turned in at the Avadonis gate, Landry used his cell phone to call Weiss at the airport. There was still no sign of Van Zandt, and the plane was ready to taxi onto the runway.
Exhausted, Molly had fallen asleep leaning against me in the backseat. Landry scooped her out and carried her into the guest house. I led the way to the second small bedroom, thinking what an odd family unit we made.
“Poor kid,” he said as he and I walked back outside onto the little patio. “She’ll grow up in a hurry.”
“She’s already done that,” I said, sitting down sideways on a delicate iron chaise with a thick cushion. “That one was a child for a minute and a half. Do you have kids?”
“Me? No.” Landry sat beside me. “You?”
“Always seemed like a bad idea to me. I’ve watched too many people screw it up. I know how badly that hurts.”
I knew he was watching me, trying to read into me, into my words. I looked up at the stars and marveled at the vulnerability I had just shown him.
“Molly’s great, though,” I said. “Figures. She raised herself watching the Discovery Channel and A and E.”
“I was married once,” Landry offered. “And I lived with a woman for a while. It didn’t work out. You know: the job, the hours, I’m difficult. Blah, blah, blah.”
“I never tried. Go straight to ‘I’m difficult. Blah, blah, blah.’ ”
He smiled wearily and produced a cigarette and a lighter from his pocket.
“Car pack?” I asked.
“Gotta get that corpse taste out.”
“I used to drink,” I confessed. “To cleanse the palate.”
“But you quit?”
“I gave up everything that could dull pain.”
“Why?”
“Because I believed I deserved to hurt. Punishment. Penance. Purgatory. Call it what you like.”
“Stupid,” Landry proclaimed. “You’re not God, Estes.”
“A welcome relief to all true believers, I’m sure. Maybe I thought I should beat Him to the punch.”
“You made a mistake,” he said. “I don’t believe the Pope is infallible either.”
“Heretic.”
“I’m just saying, you’ve got too much good in you to let one bad mistake shut it all down.”
The half smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. “I know,” I said. “I know that now. Thanks to Molly.”
Landry glanced back over his shoulder at the house. “What are you going to tell her about Erin?”
“The truth,” I said on a sigh. “She won’t stand for anything less.”
The prospect drove me to my feet. As exhausted as I was, still I was restless, frustrated at the injustices of Molly Seabright’s life and the inadequacy of my people skills. Crossing my arms against the damp night air, I walked to the edge of the patio.
“On the first day of this, I remember thinking Molly was about to get a lesson in life. That she would learn the way everyone learns that she can’t count on anyone but herself in this world: by being let down by someone she loved and trusted. I wish now I could change that for her.”
Landry came to stand beside me. “You can,” he said. “You have. She trusts you, Elena. You haven’t let her down. You won’t.”
I wished I could have been that certain of myself.
His pager went off. He checked the number, pulled his phone off his belt, and returned the call.
“Landry.”
I watched his face, sensed his tension.
When he ended the call he turned to me and said, “Erin and Chad were picked up on Alligator Alley, halfway to Venice. She’s claiming Chad abducted her.”
Chapter 59
You’re eighteen,” Landry said. “In the eyes of the law, you’re an adult. You made bad choices that have big consequences, and now you’re going to pay. The question is, are you going to take the big fall, or are you going to try to make life easier for all of us?”
Chad Seabright stared at the wall. A heavy gauze patch covered the socket where his left eye had been. “I can’t believe any of this is happening,” he muttered.
A state trooper had spotted Chad’s pickup speeding on the highway known as Alligator Alley, the road that connected Florida’s east coast with the Gulf Coast. A chase had ensued. A roadblock had eventually stopped them. The pair had been returned to the gracious accommodations of the Palm Beach County justice system, where both of them had been seen and treated in the infirmary.
Now they sat in back-to-back interview rooms, each wondering what story the other was telling.
Had Bruce Seabright survived, Landry did not doubt that Chad would have had a lawyer the caliber of Bert Shapiro sitting at his elbow. But Bruce Seabright was dead, and Chad had taken the
first public defender out of the pool.
Assistant State’s Attorney Roca tapped her pen on the table impatiently. “You’d better start talking, Chad. Your girlfriend has been telling us quite a tale in the other room. How you kidnapped her to extort money from your father. We have the videotape of you beating her.”
