The rationale of the serial victim never ceased to amaze him. He was willing to bet Lorinda had a rotten ex-husband or two in her background, and this asshole had somehow managed to convince her he was a good guy-while he lived off her largesse.
"That person might have been here planting evidence," she said. And now Landry knew how Van Zandt had explained away a bloody shirt.
"The evidence we're not finding?" Weiss asked.
"We can dust the place for prints, see if we get a hit on a known criminal," Landry said, looking at Van Zandt. "Of course, we'd have to fingerprint both of you for elimination purposes. You know, the guy might have been a serial killer or something. Wanted all over the world."
Van Zandt's eyes were narrow and hard as flint. "Fucking assholes," he muttered. "I'm calling my attorney."
"You do that, Mr. Van Zandt," Landry said, moving past him to go into the garage. "Waste your money-or the money of whatever sucker you've got supplying you with a lawyer like Bert Shapiro. There's nothing he can do about us searching this house. And you know, even if you've gotten rid of that shirt, we have blood evidence from the stall where Jill Morone died. Not her blood. Yours. We'll nail you on it eventually."
"Not mine," Van Zandt declared. "I wasn't there."
Landry stopped with his hand on the doorknob. "Then you would be willing to submit to a physical exam to prove your innocence?"
"This is harassment. I'm calling Shapiro."
"Like I said"-Landry smiled a nasty smile-"it's a free country. You know what's funny about this murder, though? It looked like a rape, but there wasn't any semen. The ME didn't find any semen. What happened, Van Zandt? You didn't want to do her after she suffocated? You like 'em kicking and screaming? Or could you just not get it up?"
Van Zandt looked like his head would explode. He grabbed at the phone on the wall and knocked the receiver on the floor. He was shaking with anger.
Landry went out the door. At least he'd gotten in a shot.
They searched the premises for another forty minutes-and ten of those were just to annoy Van Zandt. If there had been a bloody shirt, it was gone. All they found was a video porn collection and that no one in the house ever bothered to clean. Landry was certain he could feel fleas biting his ankles through his socks.
Weiss sent the deputy on his way, then looked at Landry like what now?
"So this burglar," Landry said as they stood in the foyer. "Did you see which way he went?"
"Through the patio and that way through the yards, along the hedge," Lorinda said. "Cricket went after him. My brave little hero. Then I heard a terrible yelp. That awful person must have kicked him."
The dog looked up at Landry and snarled. Landry wanted to kick him too. Filthy, flea-ridden, vicious mutt.
"We'll take a look," he said. "Maybe the guy dropped his wallet on the way out. Sometimes we get lucky."
"You won't find anything," Van Zandt said. "I already have looked."
"Yeah, well, you're not exactly playing on our team," Weiss said. "We'll see for ourselves. Thanks anyway."
Van Zandt went off in a huff.
Weiss and Landry went to the car and got a flashlight. Together, they walked around to the back of the town house, shining the light on the shrubbery, on the grass. They walked in the direction Lorinda Carlton had pointed until they ran out of real estate, and found not so much as a gum wrapper.
"Pretty strange coincidence Van Zandt's place gets broken into while he's being interviewed," Weiss said as they walked.
"Crime of opportunity."
"Nothing was taken."
"Thievery Interruptus."
"And then we happen to get that tip."
Landry shrugged as they reached their car and he opened the driver's door. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Weiss. They bite."
27
The call came at 3:12 A.M.
Molly had taken the handset from the portable phone in the living room, snuck it upstairs, and hidden it under a magazine on her nightstand. She wasn't allowed to have her own telephone, even though practically every girl in her class did. Bruce believed a girl and her own phone were a recipe for trouble.
He didn't let Chad have a phone either, though Molly knew Chad had a cell phone and a beeper so he and his stupid loser friends could send text messages back and forth, and page each other like they were important or something. Bruce didn't know about that. Molly kept the secret because she disliked Bruce more than she disliked Chad. According to Bruce, everyone in the house-except him-was supposed to make calls from the kitchen, where anybody could hear the conversation.
The phone rang three times. Molly stared at the handset she clutched in one hand, holding her breath, holding her microcassette recorder tight in her other small, sweating hand. She was afraid Bruce was going to sleep through the call. He didn't care what happened to Erin. But just as she decided she would answer, the ringing stopped. She bit her lip and punched the on button on the phone and the record button on the tape recorder.
The voice was that terrible, creepy, distorted voice from the video, like something from a horror movie. Every word drawn-out and deliberate, metallic and ominous. Molly's eyes filled with tears.
"You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."
"What are you talking about?" Bruce asked.
"You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."
"It wasn't my choice."
"You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."
"It wasn't my fault. I didn't call the cops. What do you want me to do?"
"Bring the money to the place. Sunday. Six P.M. No police. No detective. Only you."
"How much?"
"Bring the money to the place. Sunday. Six P.M. No police. No detective. Only you. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price."
The line went dead.
Molly clicked the phone off, clicked the recorder off. She was shaking so hard, she thought she might get sick. You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price. The words played over and over, so loud, she wanted to slam her hands over her ears to drown them out, but the sound was inside her head.
It was all her fault. She had thought she was doing the right thing, the smart thing. She had thought she was the only one who would do anything to save Erin. She had taken action. She had gone for help. Now Erin could die. And it was her fault.
Her fault and Elena's.
You broke the rules. The girl will pay the price.
28
In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of the interminable night
Strange the things we remember and the reasons we remember them. I remember those lines from a T. S. Eliot poem because at eighteen, as a headstrong freshman at Duke, I had an obsessive crush on my literature professor, Antony Terrell. I remember a passionate discussion of Eliot's works over cappuccino at a local coffeehouse, and Terrell's contention that Four Quartets was Eliot's exploration of issues of time and spiritual renewal, and my argument that Eliot was the root cause of the Broadway musical Cats and therefore full of shit.
I would have argued the sun was blue just to spend time with Antony Terrell. Debate: my brand of flirtation.
I didn't think of Antony as I sat curled in the corner of the sofa, chewing on my thumbnail, staring out the window at the darkness before dawn. I thought about uncertainty and what would come at the end of the unending night. I didn't allow myself to contemplate issues of spiritual renewal. Probably because I thought I may have blown my chance to hell.
A tremor went through me and I shivered violently. I didn't know how I would live with myself if my getting caught at Van Zandt's caused the loss of evidence that could prove him to be a murderer. If he was somehow tied to Erin Seabright's disappearance, and I had blown the chance for him to be charged with something, and in charging him pressure him to give up Erin…