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?'
'A smart one.'
'One who's been caught before-or learned by doing,' Landry mused.
'One who watches the Discovery Channel.'
'One who knows there would have been evidence.'
'Meaning she scratched him,' Weiss said. 'Did Van Zandt have any marks on him?'
'Not that I could see. He was wearing a turtleneck. I couldn't see anything on Jade either. We're not going to get a good look at either of them unless we have some pretty strong evidence to hold them on. Any word back on whether or not that was blood in the stall?'
Weiss shook his head and rolled his eyes. 'It's Saturday night. If Dr. Felnick didn't have his in-laws staying at his house, we wouldn't have gotten the autopsy tonight.'
'I think we would have,' Landry said. 'The management at the equestrian center have friends in high places. They want this thing solved and swept away ASAP. Murder is bad for morale among the patrons.'
'People don't get murdered in Wellington.'
'No. You have to come to West Palm for that.'
'What about that assault the other night?' Weiss asked. 'When the horses got turned loose. Think they're connected?'
Landry frowned, remembering the bruises on Estes' back that night, though at the time the bruises had hardly registered in his mind. He'd been too stunned by the old scars and lines of demarcation where skin had been grafted over tissue.
She had taken a beating Thursday night, but she hadn't said anything about a sex angle. She had surprised someone in the act of letting the horses loose. Wrong place, wrong time. Now he wondered if she'd come off lucky. Jill Morone had been in the wrong place at the wrong time too. Just two tents over.
'I don't know,' he said. 'What did the security people have to say?'
'Nothing. According to them, the place is virtually crime-free. The odd theft here and there. Nothing serious.'
'Nothing serious. They've got serious now. Estes said she didn't like the guard she ran into that night. I spoke with him the next day. I didn't like him either. I meant to run a check on him, then-'
'Estes?' Weiss looked at him as if he was certain he had heard wrong.
'The vic,' Landry qualified.
'What's her first name?'
'What's it matter?' Landry said defensively.
'Not Elena Estes?'
'What if it is?'
Weiss turned his head, and his thick neck made a sound like heavy boots on crushed shell. 'She's a problem, that's what. Plenty of people would be happy if she was the one on that table in there,' he said, looking at the door to the autopsy suite.
'Are you one of them?' Landry asked.
'Hector Ramirez was a hell of a guy. That bitch got his head blown off. I have a problem with that,' Weiss said, puffing up, his arms raising another inch from his sides. 'What's she doing in this? I heard she'd gone off and crawled into a bottle.'
'I don't know anything about that,' Landry snapped. 'She's in the middle of this mess because she's helping somebody out.'
'Yeah? Her kind of help I don't need,' Weiss said. 'Does the lieutenant know she's in it?'
'Oh, for Christ's sake. What is this, Weiss? Kindergarten? Are you gonna tell on her?' Landry said sarcastically. 'She got the crap beat out of her Thursday. Be happy about that and get your head where it belongs. We've got a dead girl here and one kidnapped.'
'Why are you defending her?' Weiss demanded. 'Are you fucking her or something?'
'I'm not defending her. I barely know her, and what I do know, I don't like,' Landry said. 'I'm doing my job. Are we picking and choosing vics now? Did I miss that briefing? Can I just go sit on my boat every goddam day until we
