I tapped on the glass in the door and waited. Tapped a little harder and waited. I tried the doorknob. Locked.

Through the glass and a sheer curtain, I could see the living area of the tiny apartment. A couch, a chair, a messy TV cabinet, a coffee table strewn with magazines. A breakfast bar dividing off the minuscule kitchen.

I tapped on the glass one last time, then pulled a couple of simple lock picks from my bag and invited myself in.

Chapter 38

“I have some news for you, Detective Landry,” Mercedes Gitan said as she stuck her head out the door of the autopsy suite.

“Good news?”

“Depends on your point of view,” she said. “Come on in. We just finished up a drowning victim.”

“Hell of a way to start your morning,” Landry said.

Gitan pulled her cap off, setting free a mop of curly black hair, and tossed the cap and her gloves in a laundry bin. “Sad. A young woman with her whole life ahead of her.”

“So was Irina Markova. What’s the word?”

“Toxicology came back.”

“Drugs?”

“Ecstasy. A lot of it.”

“That’s no big surprise, considering what kind of party she was at. A lot of X, a lot of sex.”

“She was an active participant. No date-rape drugs.”

“Anything under the fingernails?”

“Actually, yes. Her own skin,” she said. “She was probably trying to dig her fingers under whatever it was she was being choked with,” she said, pantomiming the action.

“Anything else?”

“Some tiny bits of leather fibers. I think she was strangled with a thin leather strap or cord. The fibers I removed from the neck wound also appear to be leather.”

“But nothing that might give us a clue to her killer.”

“Sorry, no. Are you desperate?”

“No. I’ve got a couple hot prospects, but my life would be a lot easier if I could say ‘You did it. And here’s the proof.”“

“My life would be easier if George Clooney would sweep me away to his villa in Italy,” Gitan said.

“Ha-ha. I’d better get out there and face the lions,” Landry said. “It’s going to be a long, bad day.”

“My office has taken a half dozen calls from the media already this morning and another half dozen from the powers that be telling me not to talk to the press. These hot prospects you have, I take it they’re not the usual suspects.”

“Not by a long stretch. Big bucks, social standing, pains in the ass.

“Oooh… an honest-to-goodness juicy Palm Beach scandal,” Gitan said, pretending excitement.

“Move over, William Kennedy Smith. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

“Well, here’s your bonus of scandalous dirt and motive: your vic was pregnant.”

“Shit,” Landry whispered. No need to decipher the bill from the Lundeen Clinic after all.

“Showed up in the blood tests,” Gitan said. “There was so much damage to her lower torso from the alligator, there was nothing for me to find in the exam.”

“Let’s keep that to ourselves for now,” Landry said. “I can still use the DNA threat.”

“My lips are sealed.”

Landry thanked her and walked out into the sunshine. It was hot. He unbuttoned his shirtsleeves and rolled them up as he walked back across the parking lot to the justice center.

From a distance he could see the news vans and reporters scattered in individual spots that gave good background. The shit had officially hit the fan. Someone had ferreted out or passed along the information as to who the suspects might be in Irina Markova’s murder. There was no other big case going on that would warrant this kind of attention.

Landry took a detour and went to his car, still far enough away that no one was paying any attention to him. He backed out of his spot and drove slowly down the row toward the building to get a closer look. As he sat there, a black sedan with a driver and a man sitting in the back rolled past. The license plate read: ESTES ESQ.

Edward Estes. Elena’s father.

The great man had arrived. Now the show would begin.

Landry’s phone rang.

“Landry.”

“Weiss. We’ve found Irina Markova’s car.”

The show would go on with one less in the audience, Landry thought as he turned left and headed out of the complex. He had more important things to do than watch Edward Estes shoot his mouth off-like proving Estes’s client was a killer.

“This guy’s a deputy,” Weiss explained as Landry got out of his car. “He works security here on the side. So he got the BOLO on the car, and here it is.”

“You called CSI?”

“They re on their way.”

Irina Markova’s car was a sporty little dark-blue Volkswagen Jetta. The windows were closed. It sat parked among a few hundred cars in the lot of the Wellington Green mall.

“Are there cameras out here?” Landry asked, looking up and around at light poles.

“No.”

“All right. Did you look inside the vehicle?”

“Through the windows,” Weiss said. “I didn’t touch anything. There are no visible signs of blood or anything. There’s sand and dirt on the floor mats. And a partial footprint. It’s faint, but it’s there.”

“Yeah, I see it,” Landry said. “Let’s make sure they get a photograph of it before anyone touches the mat.”

“What do you suppose the odds are the guy left us any prints?” Weiss said.

“Slim and none if it was one of Brody’s crowd. Those guys are too smart not to have wiped it down. Maybe we’ll get a couple of head hairs. Better than nothing. Damn, I wish they had cameras out here.”

Chapter 39

Hooves pounded the turf as the two horses ran. Maintaining a distance of about ten yards apart, one would advance, then the other, as the ball was struck and chased, struck and chased.

Barbaro swung his mallet with a casual ease that belied the length behind it. The forehand shot went to Bennett Walker, who calculated his angle and distance. He yanked his horse back and twisted in the saddle to make an awkward offside tail shot. Barbaro had to circle back at a lope to pick up the ball, now traveling at half speed. Just for practice, he brought his mallet across his body to the left side, reached forward and beneath his horse’s neck, let the ball roll across his line, and tapped it back across to his friend.

Again Walker’s timing was wrong. The ball crossed his line five strides ahead of him. He swore loudly, spurred his horse unnecessarily, then hauled back on the reins with such force that the animal’s front feet came off the ground as her eyes rolled back and her mouth came open.

Barbaro rode over and jabbed him hard in the side with the head of his mallet.

Walker glared at him. “What the flick?!”

“It’s not the mare’s fault you can’t play for shit!” Barbaro shouted. “Don’t punish her for your mistakes!”

He called Walker a few choice names in Spanish and jabbed at him again.

Walker took a vicious swing at him, and Barbaro blocked him with a forearm to Walker’s wrist, driving Walker’s arm up and back.

“You want to fight with me?” Barbaro shouted. “I will kick your ass! I am not some little girl you can knock around!”

They were horse to horse, the polo ponies muscling against each other, ears pinned, the men knocking knee pad to knee pad.

They had this end of the field to themselves. The morning sun was bright and hot, horses and men all sweating, breathing hard. This was supposed to have been a practice, a lesson for Walker, a chance for Barbaro to hit some balls before the afternoon match- the first round in a big-money tournament that would conclude on Sunday on the championship field in front of the grandstand with a thousand or more spectators.

Walker threw his mallet down, staring at his friend and teacher. He looked back down the field. At the far end, a bunch of little kids were milling around on their ponies, gathering for lesson time. There was no one within earshot. Still, he kept his voice low.