Elena Estes - Dark Horse Part 10

"How do you know Jill Morone?" I asked. "How would you know anything about the people Erin workswith if you haven't been in touch with Erin?" He went still and looked out the door. Gotcha. It was nice to know I still had the touch. "What did you fight about Friday night, Chad?" I asked again, then waited patiently while he struggled to decide on an answer.

"I dumped her," he said, turning toward the shelves again. He selected a white cotton towel from a stackof white cotton towels, all neatly folded. "I don't need the trouble." "Uh-huh. Bulls.h.i.+t. You don't dump a girl, then come back and key her car. There's no point if you're not the dumpee." "I didn't key her car!" "I don't believe you." "Well, that's your problem, not mine." "I don't see you dumping her, Chad. Erin might have been off the hook with Krystal and Bruce because she moved out, but you could still pull your old man's chain by staying involved with her." "You don't know anything about my family." "Don't I?" I looked around the garage with its place for everything and everything in its place. "Your old man is a tight-a.s.s control freak. His way is the only way. His opinion is the only opinion. Everyone else in

the house is there to serve his needs and validate his superiority. How am I doing so far?"

Chad went to his truck in a huff and started trying to towel off the water spots that had already dried on the finish.

"He'll ride you if you don't get those spots out, won't he, Chad?" I said, following him around the truck. "Can't have spots on the cars. What would the neighbors think? And imagine if they found out about you and Erin. What a disgrace, doing it with your stepsister. It's practically incest. You really found Dad's hot b.u.t.ton, didn't you?"

"Lady, you're p.i.s.sing me off."

I didn't tell him that was the idea. I followed him around the hood to the other side of the truck. "Tell mewhat I want to know and I'll leave." "There's nothing to tell. I don't know where Erin is, and I don't give a s.h.i.+t." "I bet you'll give a s.h.i.+t when you've got a cop tailing you. Because maybe there's a drug angle to Erin's disappearance. I can tell you from experience, there are few things a narc likes better than getting his hooks into a kid with money and connections. And how about when your father gets questioned about your involvement? I guess you might enjoy that-"

He turned on me, hands up, as if I was holding him at gunpoint. "All right! All right. Jesus, you're something, lady," he said, shaking his head.

I waited.

"All right," he said again, letting out a sigh. "Erin and I used to be together. I thought it meant something,

but it didn't mean anything to her. She dumped me. That's it. That's the whole story. There's nothing todo with drugs or deals or anything else. That's it. She dumped me." He shrugged and his arms fell back to his sides, limp, the admission taking all the starch out of him. The male ego is a fragile thing at seventeen or seventy.

"Did she give you a reason?" I asked quietly. "I wouldn't ask," I added as his tension level came backup. "But something has happened where Erin was working, and now she's nowhere to be found." "Is she in trouble?" "I don't know." He thought about that for a minute. "She said there was someone else. 'A man,' she said. Like I'm twelve or something." He shook his head in disgust.

"Did she say who?"

"I didn't ask. I mean, why should I care? I know she had a thing for her boss, but he's like fifty or

something . . ."

"Did she tell you she was going anywhere? Did she say anything about changing jobs or moving?"

He shook his head.

"She never said anything about going to Ocala?"

"Ocala? Why would she go there?"

"Her boss says she quit her job and moved to Ocala to take another."

"That's news to me," he said. "No. She wouldn't do that. It doesn't make any sense."

"Thanks for the info." I pulled a card from my pocket, my phone number scribbled on it. "If you hear

from her, would you call this number and leave a message?"

Chad took the card and stared at it.

I went back to my car and sat at the end of the Seabright driveway for a moment. I looked around the

neighborhood. Quiet, lovely, expensive; golfers lining up a tee shot beyond the backyard. The American

dream.

I thought about the Seabrights. Well-off, successful; neurotic, contentious, seething with secret resentments. The American dream in a fun house mirror.

I parked on the street in front of the school, the soccer moms and me. I would have felt less out of place in a chorus line. Kids began to pour out the doors and head for the buses or the car-pool line.

There was no sign of Krystal Seabright, not that I had expected to see her. It seemed quite clear to me that Molly was just a small person who happened to live in the same house as Krystal. Molly had turned out the way she had turned out by luck or self-preservation or watching A&E. She had probably watched all the drama and rebellion and parental conflict of Erin's life, and consciously turned in the other direction in order to win approval.

Funny, I thought, Molly Seabright was probably exactly who my little sister would have been, had I had a little sister. My parents had adopted me and called it quits. I was more than enough to handle. Too bad for them. The child learning from my mistakes might have been exactly the daughter they had wanted in the first place.

I got out of the car as I saw Molly come out of the school. She didn't spot me right away. She walked with her head down, pulling her little black case behind her. Though she was surrounded by other children, she seemed alone, deep in thought. I called out to her as she turned and started down the sidewalk. When she saw me, her face brightened with a carefully tempered expectation.

"Did you find her already?" she asked. "No, not yet. I've spent the day asking a lot of questions. She may be in Ocala," I said. Molly shook her head. "She wouldn't have moved without telling me, without calling me." "Erin tells you everything?" I asked, opening the car door for her. I glanced around to see if anyone had me pegged as a child molester. No one was paying any attention at all.

"Yes."

I went around to the driver's side, got behind the wheel, and started the engine. "Did she tell you she and

Chad were involved with each other?" Her gaze glanced off of mine and she seemed to shrink a little in the seat. "Why didn't you tell me about Chad?" "I don't know," she mumbled. "I would rather not acknowledge Chad's existence." Or that Erin had s.h.i.+fted from sister to s.e.xual being, I thought as I drove back toward the cul-de-sac where Molly lived. Erin had been her idol and protector. If Erin abandoned her, then Molly was all alone

in the land of dysfunctional Seabrights.

"Chad was at Erin's apartment Friday night," I said. "They had an argument. Do you know anything about that?"

Molly shrugged. "Maybe they broke up." "Why would you think that? Was Erin interested in someone else?" "She had a crush on her boss, but he's too old for her." That was a matter of opinion. From what I had learned about Erin so far, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to find out she had her sights set on a man old enough to be her father. And if past history was anything to go by, Jade wouldn't draw that line for her.

"Anyone else?"

"I don't know," Molly said irritably. "Erin liked flirting with guys. I didn't pay attention. I didn't want to hear about it."

"Molly, this is very important," I said as I pulled to the curb at the end of her street. "When I ask you questions about Erin, or about anything, anyone, you have to tell me the absolute truth as you know it. No glossing over details you don't like. Got it?"

She frowned, but nodded.

"You have to trust me," I said, and a bolt of white-cold fear ran through me.

Molly looked at me in that steady, too-wise way and said, "I already told you I do."

This time I didn't ask her why.

I stand at the side of the Golam brothers' trailer. I've been told to stay put, to wait, but I know that's not the right decision. If I go in first, if I go in now, I've got the brothers dead-bang. They think they know me. I've worked this case three months. I know what I'm doing. I know I'm right. I know the Golam brothers are already twitching. I know I want this bust and deserve it. I know Lieutenant Sikes is here for the show, to put a feather in his cap. He wants to look good when the news vans arrive. He wants to make the public think they should vote for him in the next election for sheriff.

He's stuck me on the side of the trailer and told me to wait. He doesn't know his a.s.s. He didn't listen to me when I told him the side door is the door the brothers use most. While Sikes and Ramirez are watching the front, the brothers are dumping their money into duffel bags and getting ready to bolt out the side. Billy Golam's four-by-four is parked ten feet away, covered in mud. If they run, they'll take the truck, not the Corvette parked in front. The truck can go off-road.

Sikes is wasting precious time. The Golam brothers have two girls in the trailer with them. This could easily turn into a hostage situation. But if I go in now . . . They think they know me.

I key the b.u.t.ton on my radio. "This is stupid. They're going to break for the truck. I'm going in."

"G.o.ddammit, Estes-"

I drop the radio into the weeds growing beside the trailer. It's my case. It's my bust. I know what I 'm doing.

I draw my weapon and hold it behind my back. I go to the side door and knock the way all the Golam brothers' customers knock: two knocks, one knock, two knocks. "Hey, Billy, it's Elle! I need some."

Billy Golam jerks open the door, wild-eyed, high on his own home cooking-crystal meth. He's breathing hard. He's got a gun in his hand.

s.h.i.+t.

The front door explodes inward.

One of the girls screams.

Buddy Golam shouts: "Cops!"

Billy Golam swings the .357 up in my face. I suck in my last breath.

He turns abruptly and fires. The sound is deafening. The bullet hits Hector Ramirez in the face and blows out the back of his head, blood and brain matter spraying Sikes behind him.

The image faded slowly from my brain, and the building I had worked out of slowly came into focus before me.

The Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Complex is tucked away on a patch of landscaped acres off Gun Club Road near Lake Lytal Park. The complex houses the Sheriff's Office, the medical examiner's offices, the morgue, the county courts, and the jail. One-stop shopping for lawbreakers and their victims.

I sat in the parking lot looking at the building that held the Sheriff's Office, feeling sick in my stomach. Ihadn't been through those doors in a long time. There was a part of me that believed everyone in thebuilding would recognize me on sight and that all of them nursed a virulent hatred of me. Logically, Iknew that wasn't true. Probably only half of them would know and hate me.

The clock was ticking toward change of s.h.i.+ft. If I didn't catch James Landry now, it would have to waituntil the next day. I wanted Erin Seabright's name in his mind, a mental thorn to rub at all night.

My legs felt weak as I walked toward the doors. Jail inmates in dark gray uniforms were working on the landscaping, overseen by a black guard in camo pants and a painted-on black T-s.h.i.+rt, a trooper's hat perched on his head. He exchanged bulls.h.i.+t with a couple of cops standing on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes. None of them looked at me.

I went inside to the desk. No one called out my name or rushed to a.s.sault me. Maybe it was the haircut.

The receptionist behind the bulletproof gla.s.s was a round-faced young woman with three-inch purple lacquered fingernails and a Medusa's head of intertwined black braids.

"I need to speak with Detective Landry," I said.

"What is this regarding, ma'am?"

"A missing persons case."

"Your name?"

"Elena Estes."

There was no flicker of recognition. No scream of outrage. I didn't know her, she didn't know me. She called Landry on the phone and told me to wait in the chairs. I stood with my arms crossed and stared at the door to the stairwell, barely breathing. It seemed an hour before the heavy gray door opened.