"Me?" Bruce turned red in the face and made a choking sound in his throat like maybe he was having a heart attack. He looked at the cops in the room. "I am nothing but a victim in this!"
Krystal turned on him. "You're as guilty as the people who took her!"
"I'm not the one who brought the cops into this! They said no cops."
"You wouldn't have done anything," Krystal said bitterly. "You wouldn't even have told me she was gone!"
Seabright looked embarrassed. His mouth quivered with bad temper. He stepped closer to his wife and lowered his voice. "Krystal, this is neither the time nor the place to have this discussion."
She ignored him, looking instead at Landry. "I want to see the tape. She's my daughter."
"As if you ever cared," Bruce muttered. "A cat is a better mother than you."
"I think it's important for Mrs. Seabright to see at least part of the tape." The Vic Services woman put her two cents in. "You can always ask them to stop it at any point, Krystal."
"I want to see it."
Krystal walked forward, teetering unsteadily on leopard print stiletto heels. She looked as fragile as a glass ornament, as if one tap would shatter her into a million gaudy-colored slivers. Landry moved to take her by the arm. The Vic Services woman then finally got up off her wide ass to help, to come and stand beside Krystal Seabright and offer support.
"This is against my better judgment, Mrs. Seabright," Dugan said.
Krystal looked at him, eyes bugging out. "I want to see it!" she shouted. "How many times do I have to say it? Do I have to scream? Do I have to get a court order? I want to see it!"
Dugan held up a hand in surrender. "We'll play the tape. Just tell us when to stop it, Mrs. Seabright."
He nodded to Weiss, and Weiss fed the tape into the VCR that sat with a twenty-one-inch TV on a cart at the front of the room.
Everyone was silent as the video image faded in to a scene inside a bedroom in what looked to be a trailer house. The window gave it away: a cheap aluminum frame around filthy glass. Someone had taken a finger and written on the dirty pane: HELP, the letters backward so the word could be read from outside the trailer.
It was night. One lamp with a bare lightbulb lit the scene.
Erin Seabright sat naked on a filthy, stained mattress with no sheets, chained to the rusty iron frame of the bed by one wrist. She was hardly recognizable from the girl Landry had seen only in a photograph. Her lower lip was split and crusted with dried blood. Mascara ringed her eyes. There were red welts and bruises on her arms and legs. She sat with her knees pulled up, trying to cover as much of her nakedness as she could. She looked directly at the camera, tears streaming down her face, her eyes glassy with terror.
"Why won't you help me? I asked you to help me! Why can't you just do what they say?" she asked, a thread of hysteria quivering through her voice. "Do you hate me that much? Don't you know what he's going to do to me? Why won't you help me?!"
"Oh, my God," Krystal murmured. She brought a hand up to cover her mouth. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. "Oh, my God, Erin!"
"We warned you," the metallic voice said, the words drawn out, low and slow and slightly garbled. "You broke the rules. The girl will be punished."
A figure dressed in black from head to toe stepped into the frame from behind the camera-black mask, black clothes, black gloves-and moved toward the bed. Erin began to whimper. She shrank back on the bed, huddling against the wall, trying to hide, trying to cover her head with her free arm.
"No! No!" she screamed. "It's not my fault!"
The figure struck her with a riding whip. Landry felt himself flinch at the sound of the whip connecting with bare flesh. The whip came down again and again with vicious force on her arms, her back, her legs, her buttocks. The girl screamed again and again, a horrible piercing shriek that went through Landry like an ice pick.
Dugan stopped the tape without being asked.
"My God," Bruce Seabright muttered. Turning away, he rubbed a hand over his face.
Krystal Seabright fell against the Victim Services woman, trying to cry, but no sound coming out of her open mouth. Landry caught hold of one of her arms, Weiss caught the other, and they moved her toward a chair.
Bruce Seabright stood where he was, the asshole, staring at this woman he had married, looking like he was wondering if he could call it quits on that deal right there and then.
"I told you it would only upset you," he said.
Krystal sat on the chair, doubled over, her face in her hands, her pink skirt halfway up her thighs.
Landry turned his back to her, stepped up to Bruce, and said in a low voice, "If you could crawl out of your own asshole for three seconds, a little faked compassion would be a good thing right now."
Seabright had the gall to be offended.
"I'm not the villain here! I'm not the one who called you people in when the kidnappers said not to."
"No," Krystal said, lifting her head. "You didn't call anyone! You didn't do anything!"
"Erin would be home by now if not for that detective sticking her nose into it," Bruce said angrily. "I was handling it. They would have let her go. They would have known I wouldn't give in to their terrorism, and they would have let her go."
"You hate her!" Krystal shrieked. "You want her dead! You never want to see her again!"
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Krystal. Neither do you!" Seabright shouted. "She's nothing but a nasty little piece of white trash, just like you were before I found you! That doesn't mean I want her dead!"
"That's it!" Landry declared, moving toward Seabright. "You're out of here."
"I've given you a life you never would have gotten any other way," Seabright said to his wife. "You didn't want Erin messing it up. You threw her out of the house yourself."
"I was afraid!" Krystal cried. "I was afraid!"
Sobbing again, she fell off the chair onto the floor, and curled into a ball.
"Out!" Landry said, shoving Seabright to the door.
Seabright shrugged him off and went out into the hall. Landry followed, with Dugan coming behind him.
"I'm pressing charges!" Seabright shouted.
Landry looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "What?"
"I want that woman brought up on charges!"
"Your wife?"
"Estes! None of this would be happening if not for her."
Dugan looked at Landry. "What's he talking about?"
Landry ignored him and advanced on Seabright. "Your stepdaughter was kidnapped. That wasn't Estes' doing."
Seabright stuck a finger in his face. "I want her license. And I'm calling my attorney. I never wanted you people involved, and now look what's happened. I'm suing. I'm suing this department and I'm suing Elena Estes!"
Landry batted his hand to the side and backed him up against the wall. "Think twice before you start throwing threats around, you fat prick!"
"Landry!" Dugan shouted.
"I find one thing that ties you into the kidnapping, you can bend over and kiss your ass good-bye!"
"Landry!"
Dugan grabbed him roughly by one shoulder. Landry shrugged him off and stepped aside, his glare still on Seabright.
"Take a walk, Detective Landry," Dugan said.
"Ask him what she meant," Landry said. "Ask him what Erin meant when she said she had asked him to help her. When did she ask? Why didn't we hear about it? I want a warrant for that house and for that bastard's office too. If he's withholding evidence, he can rot in jail."
"Go," Dugan said. "Now."
Landry went down the hall, into the squad room to his desk, and dug through the pencil drawer for a pack of Marlboro Lights he kept there. He had quit smoking as a rule, but certain moments were exceptions, and this was one of those moments. He shook out one cigarette, took the lighter, and went out of the building to pace on the sidewalk and smoke.
He was shaking. He wanted to go back into the building and beat Bruce Seabright unconscious. The son of a bitch. His wife's daughter kidnapped and his solution was to do nothing. Let her rot. Let them rape her, kill her, throw her in a canal. Jesus H.