Tami Hoag - Dark Horse

"I haven't done anything wrong!" Erin said to her. "I don't have anything to hide. It wasn't my fault!"

Landry looked at Roca and rolled his eyes. "So how did Chad hook up with Jade, Erin? As far as I can see, the only thing Don Jade and Chad Seabright have in common is knowing you. I can't picture them being friends."

"Ask them!" she snapped. "Maybe they fell for each other. I wouldn't know."

"And they were both in on it with Paris Montgomery, right? They held you in a trailer in her backyard."

Erin put her face in her hands. "I don't know!"

"Erin is the victim in this," Onjo said. "She's the last person who should be sitting in jail."

"That's not what Chad is saying," Roca said. "That's not what Paris is saying. They're both saying the kidnapping was Erin's idea. Paris came up with the plot to kill the horse and implicate Jade. Erin pushed her to fake the kidnapping to extort money from her stepfather and drive a wedge between Seabright and her mother, as well as to implicate Jade in a crime that would ruin his career."

"And you know what?" Landry said. "That story makes a lot more sense to me than Chad and Jade as sociopathic secret bisexual lovers."

"This is a nightmare!" Erin sobbed. "They raped me!"

Landry sighed, got up, stretched his shoulders, rubbed his face. "I'm just having a hard time with that, Erin."

Onjo pushed her chair back and stood up. She was no taller standing than sitting. "This is barbaric, and it's over." She called to the guard outside the door.

"You're not going to stay for the movie?" Landry asked, gesturing toward the television and VCR on a metal cart in a corner of the room.

Onjo scowled at him. "What are you talking about? What movie?"

"They made videos," Erin said. "They made me do things. It was horrible."

"I don't think they made this one for public consumption," Roca said. "You may want to reconsider your strategy, Erin. I tend to give the best deal to the person telling me the fewest lies."

Landry pushed the play button on the VCR.

"You're a very talented actress, Ms. Seabright," he said. "If you hadn't turned to a life of crime, you might have made it all the way to triple-X porn."

The tape was a copy of the one that had been in the video camera Elena had saved from the trailer. Behind the scenes of the alleged kidnapping. Outtakes. The actors rehearsing.

The image that filled the television screen was of Erin posing suggestively on the bed, smiling seductively at the camera. The same bed she had been chained to in the videos that had been sent to Bruce Seabright. The same bed she had huddled into in the video that showed her taking a beating so brutal, even hardened cops had been shocked to see it.

Maria Onjo watched the tape, the color in her face draining away with her defense.

Erin looked from her attorney to Landry. "They made me do that. I had to do exactly what they said or they beat me!" she cried. "You think I wanted to do that?"

Her own image stared out at her from the television screen as she touched herself between her legs, then licked her fingers.

"Yeah," Landry said. "I do."

A male voice in the background on the tape mumbled something, then he and Erin both laughed.

Erin shoved her chair back from the table and got up to pace. A caged, cornered, angry little animal. "I had to play along," she said. "I was afraid they would kill me! What is wrong with you people? Why won't you believe me? It was Chad. I know that now. He was punishing me."

Something struck the one-way mirror from the back side. Erin and Onjo jumped. Landry looked at Roca.

On the screen, Chad Seabright walked around in front of the video camera and joined Erin on the bed. They kneeled face-to-face on the stained mattress.

"How do you like it, baby?" he asked.

Erin looked up at him and smiled like a vixen. "You know how I like it. I like it rough."

They both started to laugh. Two kids having fun. Actors rehearsing.

Landry glanced over at the one-way mirror, nodding to someone on the other side, then went to the door and opened it on the excuse of telling something to the guard outside.

"You fucking bitch!" Chad Seabright screamed into the room as a deputy pulled him past in handcuffs. Seabright tried to jerk away, lunging toward the interview room. "I loved you! I loved you!"

He tried to spit at her from ten feet away. Landry stepped to the side, frowning in distaste.

"Some people just aren't well brought up," he commented as he closed the door.

Onjo puffed up. "This is outrageous! Terrorizing my client with her attacker-"

"Give it up, Counselor," Roca said wearily. "A jury takes one look at this tape, and your client can kiss her movie future good-bye."

"I want a deal!" Chad shouted. "I want a deal!"

Erin jumped up from her chair. "Shut up! Shut up!"

"I did it for you! I loved you!"

Erin glared at him with venomous disdain. "You stupid fucking idiot."

L andry went out onto the sidewalk to stand in the hot afternoon sun and smoke a cigarette. He had to get the taste of other people's lies out of his mouth, burn out the stink of what they had done.

Chad Seabright had copped to everything, giving up his claims of innocence in order to hurt Erin. He claimed Erin had come to him with the plan. They would fake her kidnapping, and collect the ransom from Bruce Seabright. If he didn't pay one way, he would pay another: with his reputation, with his marriage. At the same time, Don Jade would be implicated and ruined, and Paris Montgomery would get what she wanted-Jade's business and Trey Hughes' stables.

A simple plan.

The three of them had sat down together and come up with the scripts for the videotapes as if they were shooting a movie for a film class. According to Chad, the beating had been Erin's idea. She had insisted he actually strike her with the whip for the sake of realism.

It was Erin's idea. It was Paris Montgomery's idea. It wasn't Chad's fault.

Nothing was ever anybody's fault.

Chad had been deceived and used by Erin. He was an innocent. Erin's mother hadn't raised her right. Bruce Seabright didn't love her. Paris Montgomery had brainwashed her.

Paris Montgomery had yet to be questioned, but Landry would eventually have to listen to her while she cried and told him how her father made her play the skin flute when she was three, and how she lost out on being the homecoming queen in high school, and how that all warped her.

Chad claimed not to know anything about Tomas Van Zandt or about the death of Jill Morone. Landry figured that would turn out not to be anyone's fault either.

What Landry wanted to know was: If nothing was ever anybody's fault, then how was it people ended up murdered, orphaned, lives destroyed? Paris Montgomery and Erin Seabright and Chad Seabright had made decisions that had ruined people's lives, ended people's lives. How was all that nobody's fault?

In the uncertain hour before the morning

Near the ending of the interminable night…

I recalled those lines again as I sat tucked up against the back of the chaise on my patio, watching the sunrise the day after Chad Seabright had cut a deal with the state's attorney.

Chad had turned on Erin. Erin had turned on Paris Montgomery. Paris had fingered Van Zandt as Jill Morone's killer, trying to win herself points with the state's attorney. They all deserved to rot in hell.

I thought of Molly, and tried to apply T. S. Eliot's words as a caption to what she was going through, and to the journey of her life. I tried not to dwell on the irony that it had been Molly who had fought to bring her family back together by hiring me to find her sister, and at the end of it, Molly was the only one left.

Bruce Seabright was dead. Krystal's mind had shattered. If she had ever been of any real support in Molly's life before, it was doubtful she ever would be again. And Erin, the sister Molly had loved so much, was lost to her forever. If not by a prison term, by Erin's betrayal.