Hope to Die (21 page)

“Alex Cross,” Vincente said. “Fuck, man, I am so fucking sorry about the world of shit that’s whirling around you now, my brother.”

Vincente was smart and profane, and I liked him a lot. He’d come up from poverty and was a tireless worker and an all-around good guy.

“Appreciate it, JP,” I said. “I need some help that might help you.”

“With what?”

“You ever hear the name Thierry Mulch come up during your investigations into the Monahan murders?”

After a pause, he said, “Name doesn’t ring a fucking bell. Why? Who is he?”

“The son of Bea Daley, and the sonofabitch who took my family.”

It took a while to explain. When I’d finished, Vincente said, “Name doesn’t click for me. But let me pull up the file.”

“Look for anything that connects the mother to Mulch or West Virginia or anything that sticks out.”

“I’ll get back to you,” he promised and hung up.

Detective Sergeant took us to an excellent steak house for dinner. The meat was amazing—Omaha, after all—but I had little appetite and turned down all offers of alcohol. I was trying to juggle so much at the same time that I couldn’t chance anything that might cloud my judgment.

Aaliyah looked exhausted around nine o’clock when she said good night and went to one of the rooms we’d rented at the Hyatt. I felt exhausted and unsure of where to go or what to do next beyond flopping into a bed.

There was the deadline for delivering video proof of a double killing. But Gloria Jones and her friend in LA were already putting something together. All I had to do, she said, was find a place to film my part in the fake murder sometime later the following day.

There was nothing for me to do in the meantime.

That frightened me. As long as I was moving, trying some new avenue of investigation, I was able to keep my family’s situation from getting to me. Now, however, lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, it came back down on me like a crushing force.

Yes, there was hope that they were all still alive, but linking Mulch to the Daley murders had made me realize that he would not hesitate to kill my entire family when the time came. But when was that time? How long was he likely to keep playing me? Did I have enough time to find them?

I considered a promise to God: I’d leave this life of constant investigation if my family were returned safely to me. But then I remembered something Nana Mama had told me back when I was fifteen or sixteen.

You can’t bargain with God, Alex. You can state your good intentions, you can imagine the life you want, but you can’t negotiate with Him. He holds all the cards
.

Lying on the bed, I closed my eyes and imagined my family as vividly as I could. We were in the new addition. My arm was tight around Bree’s waist, and I smelled her as if she were right there. Ali was pretending he was in a gunfight behind the new furniture. Jannie was with Damon on the couch, laughing at their younger brother. Back in the kitchen, I saw a shadow and—

My cell phone rang. A Texas area code.

“You ready for this?” Lieutenant Vincente said.

I SAT UP, TURNED
on the light, said, “Go ahead, JP. I’m ready.”

“Okay,” he said. “So Alice Monahan was born in Alaska, graduated from Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts, and did her undergrad and MBA at Rice University.”

“Smart lady,” I said.

“Very,” he said and laughed. “That’s why I almost missed it.”

“Tell me.”

“For some reason, we had her transcript from Deerfield under her maiden name,” he said. “If I hadn’t dropped the papers, I wouldn’t have seen the bottom of the transcript and the fact that she attended high school in
Buckhannon, West Fucking Virginia
, her freshman and sophomore years before transferring to Deerfield. Her father was a high-profile geologist who had a two-year contract with the mines.”

My heart raced. Buckhannon! What was the likelihood of a coincidence like that? Two women who lived in the same small town in West Virginia end up slain in the same gruesome manner? A million to one? More like ten million to one. This was no coincidence. Mulch knew Alice Monahan. I was sure of it, but I wanted the evidence straight in my mind.

“What was Mrs. Monahan’s maiden name?”

“Littlefield.”

“Years she attended Buckhannon High?”

It took Vincente a few seconds, but he found it and told me.

“She and Mulch would have been in the same graduating class had she stayed,” I said, feeling pieces starting to snap together. “And she was a great student and so was Mulch. My guess is if we compare Mulch’s transcripts with hers, they took classes together.”

“So, you’re thinking Alice did some mean-girl shit to him and he took revenge?”

“It feels right,” I replied. “She’s smart, well-to-do. He’s smart and lives on a pig farm. Maybe, after the psychological release Mulch got killing his mother and her second family, his thoughts turned to Alice and her family.”

“Like his thoughts have now turned to you and yours?”

The question unnerved me, but I said, “For whatever reason, JP.”

“Hey, you know who you should talk to about Alice Monahan?”

“Who’s that?”

“That fucking Harvard guy who wrote that book about the cases. What’s his name?”

“Sunday,” I said. “Marcus Sunday.”

SUNDAY SIPPED A DOUBLE
espresso and kept his eyes on the highway. It was already half past ten; he was ten miles out of Little Rock, and he had a long ride ahead of him. But he welcomed the journey.
It’s the drifter and the hunter in me
, he thought.
I am simply one of those men born to roam and kill
.

He was also like the philosopher Epicurus, seeing good and evil linked with pleasure and pain. A good meal was pleasurable, and therefore good. A hangover showed the evil potential of wine.

But his thoughts about the pleasure that could be derived from pain were more complex and contradictory. Indeed, as his mind drifted toward Acadia Le Duc, he drove on, feeling the pleasure of her coming pain and knowing that was going to be good.

Very, very good.

A smile crossed Sunday’s face and he glanced over at Cochran’s laptop computer. It was the only thing he’d taken from the truck.

Before leaving the rig, he’d wiped the interior down completely, shut the drapes, and then waited for an upsurge in activity at the truck stop. He left the truck idling, as sleeping drivers often do, doors locked, and strolled behind the convenience store, looking for cameras.

Seeing none there, Sunday slipped into the scrub pines that abutted the truck stop and headed south. He walked five miles and then trashed his trucking cap before calling a cab, which had brought him to an Enterprise.

While waiting for the pickup he’d rented to be serviced, he’d gotten on the Internet using Cochran’s laptop and started monitoring four of his bank accounts as well as all activities on his credit cards. In the past few hours, nearly twelve thousand dollars in cash had been taken from the accounts via ATMs in Memphis and across the river in Arkansas.

Worse, close to one hundred and eighty thousand dollars had been wire-transferred to accounts in Mexico he’d never heard of. There was only one person who could have pulled this off, only one person who could have gotten copies of his ATM cards, the passwords, and the bank account numbers and routing information for those wire transfers.

Acadia.

She was a bright, larcenous creature, wasn’t she?

He’d seen that she’d dropped the Malibu with Avis at the Memphis airport and then somehow gotten across the river to make the withdrawals. But how? He assumed she was using her own credit cards, but unfortunately he had no way of getting into her accounts. That pissed him off.
She thought to find out my numbers
, he fumed,
but I didn’t think to learn hers
. Which meant it was a crapshoot as to which of the three places he thought she might run to she’d actually gone.

Before he could consider them each again, he heard a phone ring. It was his legitimate cell phone, the one he used in his professional and writing life. He dug it from his pocket, saw an unfamiliar number on the screen, wondered if it might be Acadia, and punched Answer.

“Marcus Sunday?” a man said.

“You’re talking to him.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but I got your number from your publicist in Los Angeles, and—”

“Whom do you write for?” Sunday asked. He’d had a flurry of stories written about him when the book came out, but none in months.

“I don’t write for anyone. This is Alex Cross. Do you remember me?”

FOR THREE SLOW BEATS,
time stood still for Sunday, and for once in his life, no thoughts flickered in his brain.

“Dr. Sunday?” Cross said. “Hello?”

Then time and Sunday’s mind lurched back into sync. Talk to Cross? Now, this
was
interesting.

“Right here, Special Agent Cross,” Sunday said. “And of course I remember you.”

“I’m not with the Bureau anymore.”

“No?” Sunday said, feeling excited, dueling. “I hadn’t heard that.”

“Look, I know you’ve got reason not to talk to me after the review I gave your book, but are you aware of my situation?”

“Situation?” Sunday said with slight imperiousness. “No. I’ve been overseas and have only just returned. What is your situation?”

“A guy named Thierry Mulch has killed several people in the DC area and has taken my family hostage.”

“Jesus,” Sunday said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

“Thank you,” Cross said. “Ever heard of him? Thierry Mulch?”

Be calm
, Sunday thought.
Carry on smoothly
. But what was Cross’s game? How much did he know? How much should Sunday say? He decided to go on instinct, his intimate ally in the past.

“I can’t say I’ve ever heard the name, as unusual as it is,” Sunday replied. “Who is he?”

“The son of Bea Daley,” Cross replied.

Sunday’s mind whirled with the implications of that statement. Cross now had a link that, to Sunday’s knowledge, no one else had. But that link in no way indicated that Cross had connected Mulch to Sunday. He was positive of that.

“You must be mistaken, Dr. Cross. Bea Daley’s son, Ross, died in the house with the rest of the family.”

“Turns out she had another son in another life before she met Daley.”

“What? Where? In Montana?”

“Buckhannon, West Virginia,” Cross said. “Bea was Lydia Mulch back then. She met Calvin Daley when he worked as an engineer at a coal mine there, and ran away with him, leaving her son behind. She changed her name legally in Montana and then moved to Omaha and married Calvin. That story she told people about being raised in Montana was fiction.”

“So what are you saying?” Sunday said coolly. “You think this Thierry Mulch character killed the Daley family?”

“I do,” Cross said.

“But the killer left no evidence,” Sunday said. “So you can’t say for sure. Or can you?”

“Not good enough for a jury, if that’s what you mean,” Cross admitted. “But there’s more. Alice Monahan? She was once Alice Littlefield.”

“Correct. Born in Anchorage, I think.”

“That’s right,” the detective said. “And she graduated from Deerfield Academy after spending two years in Buckhannon High School.”

“I … I didn’t know that.”

“It was there in the evidence.” Cross sighed. “But no one attached any significance to it until now.”

“Well,” Sunday said, making a point of sounding dejected, “I guess my perfect criminal wasn’t so perfect after all.”

“Oh, Mulch was close to perfect,” Cross said. “Had all sorts of people believing he was dead for decades. No one suspects a ghost in a series of mass murders.”

“So why exactly did you call me?”

“I don’t know,” Cross admitted, sounding as if he was bearing a heavy burden. “J. P. Vincente thought you might have come across something that we could use to help us find Mulch before he kills my family.”

“You don’t know where this Mulch is?”

“We have no idea.”

Cross sounded frustrated and sincere, and Sunday’s shoulders relaxed before he said in a soothing voice, “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Dr. Cross. I’m terribly sorry, and sorry for your … horrible, horrible situation.”

“Sorry I wasted your time.”

“You didn’t waste my time,” Sunday said. “You actually did me a favor.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“You gave me the heads-up,” he replied. “I’m going to have to amend the book now, and I should probably start by researching Mr. Thierry Mulch and Buckhannon, West Virginia. That was the name of the place, wasn’t it?”

“Correct. And while you’re at it, would you amend the quotes you attributed to me? They’re not right.”

“You tell me how you want them to read,” Sunday said. “And I deeply apologize if I misquoted you.”

There was a silence before Cross said, “Apology accepted.”

“Good. Where are you, Dr. Cross? DC?”

“Omaha. You?”

“Memphis, for a reading. Last week was Philly, and after this I’m headed to Austin,” Sunday said. “Say, would you agree to do an interview when this is all over?”

Cross hesitated, then said, “Sure, with a tape recorder running, maybe,” and hung up.

Ignoring the dig, Sunday grinned, buzzing on the adrenaline his conversation with the detective had triggered and the satisfaction he got knowing that even if Cross had learned of Thierry Mulch’s past, he had no clue where to find Mr. Mulch now. Sunday clearly had the upper hand and was still two, maybe even three steps ahead.