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…
Funny. Before I had ever heard of Erin Seabright, I hadn't known how I would live with myself because Hector Ramirez had died as a consequence of my actions. The difference was that now it mattered to me.
Somewhere in all this, hope had snuck in the back door. If it had come knocking, I would have turned it away as quickly as I would turn away a door-to-door missionary. No, thanks. I don't want what you're selling.
"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings without the words
And never stops-at all
Emily Dickinson
I didn't want to have hope for myself. I wanted to simply exist.
Existence is uncomplicated. One foot in front of the other. Eat, sleep, function. Living, truly living, with all the emotion and risk that entails, is hard work. Every risk presents the possibility of both success and failure. Every emotion has a counterbalance. Fear cannot exist without hope, nor hope without fear. I wanted neither. I had both.
The horizon turned pink as I stared out the window, and a white egret flew along that pink strip between the darkness and the earth. Before I could take it for a sign of something, I went to my bedroom and changed into riding clothes.
No deputies had come knocking on my door in the dead of night to question me about my jacket and the break-in at Lorinda Carlton's/Tomas Van Zandt's town house. My question was: if the deputies didn't have my jacket, who did? Had the dog dragged it back to Lorinda Carlton? His trophy for his efforts. Had Carlton or Van Zandt followed my trail and found it? If ultimately Van Zandt had possession of the prescription with my name on it, what would happen?
Uncertainty is always the hell of undercover work. I had built a house of cards, presenting myself as one thing to one group of people and something else to another group. I didn't regret the decision to do that. I knew the risks. The trick was getting the payoff before I was found out and the cards came tumbling down. But I felt no nearer to getting Erin Seabright back, and if I lost my cover with the horse people, then I was well and truly out of it, and I would have failed Molly.