Even if they bothered to dust the place for prints, mine weren't in any criminal database, and no other database was checked as a matter of routine. Because I had been in law enforcement, my prints were on file with Palm Beach County, but not with the prints of the common bad folk.
Still, I should have worn gloves. If nothing else, they would have been nice to have while I was digging through the trash.
I kept the wrapper around the Power Bar as I ate it.
They would have my jacket-or what was left of it when the dog finished with it-but nothing about the jacket connected it to me. It was a plain black windbreaker.
I tried to think if there had been anything in the pockets. A Tropicana lip sunblock, the end of a roll of Breathsavers, a cash receipt from the Shell station. Thank Christ I hadn't paid with a credit card. What else? When had I last worn that jacket? The morning I went to the emergency room.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
The prescription. The prescription for painkillers, which I'd had no intention of filling. I had stuffed it in my pocket.
Oh, shit.
Had I taken it out? Had I thrown it away and forgotten? I knew I hadn't.
I felt sick.
I leaned back against the wall and tried to remember to breathe, to think. My name was on the scrip-Elena Estes, not Elle Stevens. The name wouldn't mean anything to Van Zandt. Unless he had seen the photograph in Sidelines. The photograph with the caption that identified me riding at Sean's farm. And if that happened, how long before all the puzzle pieces fell into place?
Stupid, careless mistake.
If the deputies came knocking on my door, I would deny having been on Sag Harbor Court. I would say I'd lost that jacket at the show grounds. I wouldn't have a witness to corroborate the lie that would be my alibi, but why would I need an alibi, for heaven's sake? I would say with indignation. I was no criminal. I was a well-brought-up citizen with plenty of money. I wasn't some crack addict forced to steal to buy my next fix.
And they would show my photograph to Van Zandt and ask him if he recognized me, and I would be fucked.
Dammit, why wasn't Landry calling back? I called his pager again, left the pay phone number with 911 after it, hung up, and started to pace.
The worst of this mess wasn't going to be explaining my way out of charges. The worst of this was going to be if Van Zandt found that shirt before Landry could get there with a warrant.
Damn, damn, damn. I wanted to bang my head against the concrete wall.
I didn't dare go back to Van Zandt's. Even if I could have cleaned up and changed clothes, showed up as Z.'s abandoned dinner date in the hopes of finding him there, I couldn't risk that woman recognizing me-or Van Zandt himself identifying me as the person in his garage, if Van Zandt had been in that car too. At this point I didn't even dare go back to the complex to get my car.
What a fuckup. I'd had the best of intentions, but there was a real chance my actions were going to result in the loss of a potentially crucial piece of evidence, and a chance I'd blown my cover with Van Zandt-and thereby with all of Jade's crowd.
This was why I shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place, a nasty little voice inside told me. If a killer got away because of this, it was on my conscience. Another weight pressing down on me. And if Erin Seabright ended up dead as a result-
Why didn't Landry fucking call?
"Screw him," I muttered. I picked up the phone and called 911.
26
The phone on the other end of the line rang unanswered. Landry swore and hung up. He didn't recognize the number. The 911 on the end of it made him think it was Estes. Up to her pretty ass in God knew what. It was a sure bet she hadn't stayed home and gotten into the tub with a book.
She was something. Going off to dinner with a possible sex killer like it was no big deal. Landry supposed he had overreacted to the plan. She was a cop, after all-had been. And she was the last woman any man should have felt compelled to protect, but he had just the same. There was something about her lack of a sense of self-preservation that got to him, that made her seem, of all things, vulnerable. He kept thinking of her jumping on the running board of Billy Golam's truck, trying to wrench the wheel out of his hands… going under the goddam thing… being dragged down the pavement like a rag doll.
She didn't know enough-or care enough-to take care of herself. And it was a safe bet she didn't appreciate him doing the job for her. He could still see the look in her eyes when he'd called Weiss and told him to pick up Van Zandt. Anger, hurt, disappointment-all just beneath a scrim of tough indifference.
He stood in the hall outside an autopsy suite in the medical examiner's building. He had run straight from interviewing Van Zandt to catch the ME at the tail end of Jill Morone's slice-and-dice.
Van Zandt had provided nothing but frustration, mouthing off for fifteen minutes about the inferiority of the United States justice system, then exercising his right to an attorney. End of interview. They hadn't had anything solid to back up an arrest warrant. As had been pointed out to him recently, being an asshole was not against the law.
He had really screwed the pooch with this move. If he had waited until after the autopsy to bring in Van Zandt, he would have had some facts to play off, to twist around, to use against the man, maybe get him scared, get him to say something he would never say now.
Landry told himself again he had needed to maintain control of the situation, not have a wild card-Elena-adding to the mayhem.
He wondered what she was tangled up in right that moment. Nothing good, he was sure.
She would want to hear all about the autopsy. She would want to know Jill Morone had been pushed facedown into the floor of a horse stall. There had been pieces of wood shavings and horse manure lodged in her throat and in her mouth and nose. She had died from suffocation. A hand had gripped her neck from behind, exerting enough pressure to leave finger marks on the skin. At some point she had struggled with her assailant, breaking off several fingernails in the process. But there had been no skin or blood or anything else under her remaining nails.
That didn't make sense to Landry. If she'd fought hard enough to break fingernails, there should have been something to find. She had been held facedown in filth. There should at least have been traces of the stall bedding and the manure under her remaining nails, wedged there as she tried to struggle to push herself up. But there was nothing.
And while her clothes had been torn in a way that suggested a sexual assault, there had been no semen present in or on the body. In fact, evidence of rape was minimal. Some scratches on the thighs and labia, but no vaginal bruising or tearing. Could have been Jill's attacker had worn a condom, or he'd lost his erection and hadn't been able to close the deal. Or the attempted rape was an afterthought, staged to make a straight murder look like something else.
Landry could have used all this information against Van Zandt before the man had demanded an attorney, particularly the apparently failed attempt at rape. He could have gone straight at Van Zandt's ego with that, taunted him, mocked him. Van Zandt would have blown up. The man was too arrogant to stand for having his masculinity questioned, too arrogant to control his temper. He was smart enough to ask for a lawyer, though, and now there would be no questioning, no taunting, no mocking, without that lawyer present.
Who was too arrogant?
Landry cursed himself as Weiss came out of the autopsy suite. Weiss, a transplant from New York, was a small man who spent too much time in the gym and consequently had an upper body that looked like it had been inflated to the point of discomfort. Little man syndrome. His arms could not lie entirely flat at his sides.
"What do you think?"
"I think it's pretty goddam strange her fingernails were clean," Landry said. "What kind of perp kills a girl in what is essentially a public place, then takes the time to clean under her fingernails?"