He hummed a note to himself, thinking something I was certain I didn't want to know. I was uncomfortable with the idea of anyone thinking of me as a sexual being, because I had ceased to think of myself in that way two years before.
Deeper than the scars on my body, my sense of self had been stripped down to nothing that day in rural Loxahatchee when Hector Ramirez had been killed and I had gone under the wheels of Billy Golam's truck.
Despite the fact that surgeons had spent the last two years repairing the physical damage to my body-mending broken bones, patching skin burned away by the road, rebuilding the shattered side of my face-I didn't know that I would ever feel whole again. Essential parts of me were missing-parts of my soul, of my psychological self. Maybe the layers would fill in eventually. Maybe that process had begun. But I had a very long way to go, and most days I doubted I had the strength or the will for the journey. I did know I didn't want anyone close enough to watch the process. Certainly not James Landry.
"Never say never, darling." Sean finished his wine and went off to ready himself for a night on the town in Palm Beach. I went to the guest house and checked my e-mail.
Special Agent Armedgian, my contact with the FBI field office in West Palm, had come through with the Interpol info.
According to Armedgian, Van Zandt had no arrest record, but Interpol had a file on him, which said something. He had dabbled in a lot of business pies, always skirting the line of what was legal and what was not, but never quite crossing over it-or not getting caught, at any rate.
There was no mention of him coming under scrutiny for anything of a sexual nature. I was disappointed, but not surprised. If there were other victims of his dubious charms, they were probably like Irina's friend: young, inexperienced, alone in a foreign country, afraid to tell anyone.
Needing to clear my head before the evening's mind games, I changed into a swimsuit and went to the pool to let the warm, silky water soothe my body and clean the layers of grit from my brain.
The sun was gone, but the pool shimmered midnight blue, lit from within its walls. I thought of nothing at all as I swam lazy laps with slow-motion underwater turns at the end of each. The tension washed away, and for a short time I was simply a sleek, aquatic animal, bone and muscle and instinct. It felt good to be something that fundamental and uncontrived.
When I'd had enough, I rolled over onto my back and floated, looking up at the pinpoint stars in the black velvet sky. Then Landry came into view, standing at the water's edge.
I dove under and came back up, shaking the water from my head.
"Detective. You got the drop on me," I said, treading water.
"I'm sure that doesn't happen very often."
He was still in his work clothes, though he had jerked the tie loose and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
"My fault for giving you the gate code," I said. "Hard day turning the thumbscrews?"
"Long."
"Sorry I missed it. No one makes a better bad cop than me."
"I have no doubt about that," he said with half a smile. "Aren't you going to invite me in? Say the water's fine?"
"That would be a cliché. I abhor predictability."
I swam to the ladder and climbed out, forcing myself not to rush to cover my body with my towel. I didn't want him to know how vulnerable I felt. Somehow I thought that even in the dim light around the pool he would see every scar, every imperfection. It made me angry that I cared.
I toweled myself off, rubbed my hair dry, then wrapped the towel around my waist like a sarong to hide the pitted, scarred flesh of my legs. Landry watched, his expression unreadable.
"Nothing about you is predictable, Estes."
"I'll take that as a compliment, though I don't think you consider unpredictability a virtue. Do you have any good news?" I asked, leading the way to the guest house.
"The deputies found Erin Seabright's car," he said. "Parked under about six inches of dust in a corner of that first lot at the truck entrance of the equestrian center."
I stood with my hand on the doorknob, holding my breath, waiting for him to tell me Erin had been found dead in the trunk.
"The CSU is going over it for prints, et cetera."
I let go a sigh at the initial sense of relief. "Where was it?"
"In the first parking lot as you come in the truck entrance, over by the laundry place."
"Why would it be there?" I asked, not expecting an answer. "She would have parked near Jade's barn, not half a mile away. Why would it be there?"
Landry shrugged. "Maybe she had dropped stuff off at the laundry."
"Then walked all the way to Jade's barn? And then walked to the back gate to meet whoever she thought she was meeting? That doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't make sense for the kidnappers to move it there either," Landry said. "They kidnapped her. Why would they care where her car was parked?"
I thought about that as we went into the house. "To buy time? Monday would have been Erin's day off. If not for Molly, no one would have missed her until Tuesday morning."
"And no one would have missed her then, because Jade claimed she'd quit and moved to Ocala," Landry finished the theory.
"How did he take the questioning?"
"It was an inconvenience to him. The interview and the murder."
"Any nerves?"
"Not worth mentioning."
"Well… the guy makes a living riding horses over fences taller than I am. It's not a game for the faint of heart."
"Neither is murder."
A game. It would be difficult for the average person to consider murder and kidnapping a game, but in a macabre way it was a game. A game with very serious stakes.
"Any word from the kidnappers?"
Landry sat against the back of a chair, hands in his pockets. He shook his head. "No. The phones are rigged at the Seabright house. I've had a couple of guys checking out the neighbors. That's a dead end."
"There's a bar in that armoire under the TV," I said, pointing into the living room. "You look like you need it. Help yourself while I change."
I made him wait while I took a quick shower, then stood in front of the mirror for five minutes, staring at myself, trying to read my own inscrutable expression.
I didn't like the anxious feeling lingering in my belly. The bubble of fear had been replaced by something I almost didn't recognize: hope. I didn't want it to mean so much that Landry had come back, that he was filling me in, including me.
"You told Seabright you're a private investigator," he said. His voice was strong and clear. He must have been standing just on the other side of the bedroom door. "Are you?"
"Not exactly."
"That's fraud."
"No. It's a lie," I corrected. "It would only be fraud if I were misrepresenting myself and accepting money from the Seabrights based on that misrepresentation. I'm not."
"You'd make a hell of a lawyer."
So my father had always said, which was the reason I had become a cop. I hadn't wanted to be like him, bending the law like it was made of wire, bending it to suit the needs of corrupted people, corrupted wealth. I hadn't realized at the time that as a cop I would end up bending it as many ways myself and excusing my actions because I believed my cause was just. I still wasn't like him. That was the important thing.
"I checked the Seabright kid's record," Landry said. "He's never been in any trouble. Good student, lots of extracurricular activities."
"Like screwing his stepsister?"
"And the math club."
"I don't like that he's lying about where he was Sunday," I said.
"Like father, like son."
I pulled on black underwear, checking over my shoulder, half-expecting to see Landry standing in the doorway. He wasn't.