Hope to Die Read online

  She’d done enough, she decided as she exited the container, locked the hatch, and tossed the triple-wrapped garbage bag to Sunday. She climbed down, looked up, and said, “So what happens when they get to New Orleans?”

  He looked back at her, grinned, said, “I want it to be a surprise. But I guarantee you’ll love it.”

  “What’s the matter, Marcus? Don’t trust me?”

  CHAPTER

  56

  SUNDAY COCKED HIS HEAD at the question before saying, “No, it’s just that at this point, there are a few ways this can go, all of them fantastic. For now I’ll keep my options open but close to my chest.”

  He turned and went down the gangway to the docks where the barge captain, Scotty Creel, was waiting.

  Creel said, “So how’s the new system working for you?”

  Sunday acted the entrepreneur, said, “So far, so good.”

  “You think this will work all over the world? Solar-based refrigeration?”

  “Wouldn’t that be something?” Sunday said, and he laughed. “I came up with this idea off the top of my head. We’ll see you in two and a half days and let you know.”

  The captain said, “We’ll be there faster than that. Probably less than forty-eight hours. I figure we’ll be at the port before two or three Wednesday morning. River’s really starting to move now, heading toward flood stage.”

  “Excellent,” Sunday said.

  But Acadia didn’t think that was excellent at all. The Cross family might be coming around by then, but they certainly would not be capable of making much noise.

  She followed Sunday off the docks, and they walked up the bank to a small lot where their rental car, a Chevy Malibu, was parked. On the road outside the fenced-in area, another Kenworth tractor-trailer idled with Cochran behind the wheel. They’d rented the rig in case something catastrophic had happened and they were forced to remove the container.

  “I’ll go tell him we’re good,” Sunday said, checking his watch. “We’ve got a few hours before the flight back, and he’s going to want to eat. Any preference?”

  “I’m not really hungry,” Acadia said.

  “Then you get no say,” he said, and tossed her the keys and the lading documents they’d used to access the container car. “Follow us.”

  “Right on your tail,” she promised, and got in the car.

  Acadia threw the lading documents on the seat and started the car, seeing Sunday climb up into the passenger seat of the tractor cab. When he closed the door and was no longer visible through the tinted glass, she put the car in gear.

  Following the rig east on Old Randolph Road, she stayed close. She fell back slightly on State Route 50 heading south and then caught up on the connector toward I-40.

  Acadia waited until Cochran had fully committed to taking the eastbound I-40, a left-hand exit. She threw on her blinker as if to follow, but at the last possible second, she veered right onto Interstate 69, heading south.

  Her heart beat so hard she could feel it in her throat.

  Thirty seconds. A minute. Her cell phone began to ring. She glanced over at it, feeling panic rise. Should she say an animal ran across the road, she’d swerved to avoid it, and she’d be right along?

  No, Acadia decided, and she hurled the phone out the window. Once you made a move like this on someone like Marcus Sunday, there was no turning back. She’d ditch the car as soon as she could and rent or steal another. And she’d need all the cash she could get her hands on.

  Acadia understood that she knew too much about everything. When Marcus decided to come after her—and she had no doubt he eventually would—she wanted to be able to go a long, long way at a moment’s notice.

  CHAPTER

  57

  SUNDAY LISTENED TO ACADIA’S phone ring once and then go to voice mail.

  “Say what you have to say,” her voice drawled.

  It was the second time he’d heard the message since Acadia had gone south instead of east.

  “Maybe she’s going to the airport ahead of us,” Cochran offered. “Expects us to take the shuttle over to meet her.”

  Sunday dismissed that possibility out of hand. His agile mind was running full tilt, spinning out motives and scenarios to explain Acadia’s actions. His lover was an extremely smart woman. Sometimes she envisioned the future as well as he did. She was also a survivor and could be lethally ruthless if her survival required it. Acadia rarely acted on impulse. She put thought into her words and deeds. But then she acted and didn’t look back.

  She’s running from me, he thought, just as I knew she would eventually. Sunday felt not a lick of anger at her abandoning him. He just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. Too bad; she was a certifiable genius in bed, and it was always nice to talk to someone who shared his active interest in death.

  But when paths part, they part. Ordinarily, that’s how Sunday would have handled it, chalked it up to randomness and walked on. But Acadia knew too much about him. He’d opened up to her more than to any other woman. He couldn’t abide her using that information against him somehow, which meant she had to die. And sooner than—

  Cochran coughed and broke Sunday’s train of thought. “Any luck?”

  Sunday gazed at the driver a long moment, recalculating, before he replied, “I’ll try again.”

  He punched in Acadia’s number. When it went to voice mail, he said, “Hey. We’ve been calling. Where are you?”

  He paused, nodded, said, “That’s what we kind of thought. We’re going to gas the truck, get something to eat, and we’ll take the shuttle to meet you.”

  He listened, said, “I dunno. An hour and a half, two hours?”

  Cochran glanced his way, seeing Sunday looking at him quizzically.

  “Sounds right,” the driver said.

  “Six, six thirty,” Sunday said, and ended the call. “She had to take a pee. And the airport is right there.”

  Cochran bought it, said, “I had a girlfriend like that. When that woman had to go, she had to go.”

  “That’s Acadia,” Sunday said. “She has to go.”

  Cochran took an exit, went north underneath the interstate, and pulled into a Pilot truck stop. He parked at the pumps and started to get out.

  “Want a coffee?” Sunday asked.

  “Sounds good. Make it like you did last time.”

  Wearing sunglasses and a Kenworth cap that had come with the truck, Sunday got down out of the cab, went into the truck stop, and got two coffees that he took time to prepare according to a very precise formula. He paid with a ten-dollar bill and returned to the truck.

  Cochran was already up in the cab, and he reached out for his coffee through the open window. Sunday handed it to him, then went around and got in the other side. Cochran had already taken a big swig of the coffee. There was foam on his upper lip.

  “Damn it, Marcus,” Cochran said. “What’s in that? It’s so damned good.”

  “I know, right?” Sunday said, pleased. “I added a little something, though. Do you taste it?”

  Cochran took another drink, and said, “Cinnamon?”

  “Close.”

  “Nutmeg?”

  “You’re good,” Sunday said.

  “No, this is good,” Cochran said and drank more.

  “Hey, do me a favor?” Sunday said. “Pull over there in the back of the lot. I have to look up something and I don’t want to be bouncing all over.”

  “Sure, Marcus,” Cochran said. “But watch the time. If we get it back past noon, they dun you for the full-day charge. Says so in that sheet with the copy of the lading docs.”

  “Thank you for thinking of my pocketbook,” Sunday said. “And this shouldn’t take long at all.”

  Sunday was right. It didn’t take long at all after they’d parked at the back of the lot by several other rigs idling while their drivers slept. He made a show of opening the laptop and typing as Cochran lifted his cup for another sip.

  But something stopped him before he
drank, something that seemed to bewilder him. His fingers loosened and began to drop the coffee cup. Sunday snagged it before it fell.

  Cochran slumped over to his left against the window, taking slow, shallow breaths. Sunday looked out the side-view mirrors, saw the closest movement seventy yards away, and dug in his pocket for a pair of latex gloves.

  When he had them on, he twisted around in his seat, grabbed Cochran, and pulled him over onto his back. Cochran looked up at him blankly. But Sunday knew better. Though paralyzed, the man was fully in control of his mind.

  “Some surplus pancuronium,” Sunday told him matter-of-factly. “If I gave it enough time, you’d suffocate. But the truth is, you’ve been very useful, Mitch Cochran. I owe you a little mercy.”

  Despite Cochran’s paralysis, Sunday saw hope flicker in his eyes.

  Then Sunday reached up and over him, got a pillow from the sleeping berth, and smothered the man to death.

  CHAPTER

  58

  I STARTLED AWAKE IN the front seat of the unmarked cruiser and looked around blearily, seeing farmland and tractors along the interstate, and then Tess Aaliyah hunched over the wheel, looking wired.

  “Where are we?”

  “North of New York City,” she replied.

  “I can drive.”

  “You had a head injury recently.”

  “Haven’t had a headache or symptom in two days. Honestly.”

  She glanced at me, saw my sincerity, and then nodded. “I’ll get off at the next stop. We need gas anyway.”

  “You’re a machine.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “You drove all night, and now you turn around and drive back?”

  “Oh, believe me, I will crash in a big way when I get home to my bed. Right now, I’m just like a homing pigeon.”

  “I appreciate it. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me. You’re a fine detective. And you’ve done your dad proud.”

  She looked over at me, embarrassed.

  “What?” I said. “You didn’t think I knew who your father was?”

  Aaliyah shrugged, said, “I try not to broadcast it.”

  “Must be hard to live in the shadow of a legend.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, and then she seemed eager to change the subject. “I wonder if we’ll get a match on Mepps.”

  I’d contacted John Sampson and Ned Mahoney before we left the Kraft School, and was buoyed at first by the DNA tests, which had come in at last, confirming that neither body in the morgue belonged to a member of my immediate family. Then I’d had to come to grips with the fact that two innocent people had died simply because they looked like my wife and son. In its own way, that knowledge was one more torture Sunday was inflicting on me.

  Pushing that pain aside, I had gotten Sampson and Mahoney up to speed on all that had happened to me in the prior two days, and then I’d forwarded the JPEG of Damon and Karla Mepps at the coffee shop. Ned had promised to run the image through facial-recognition software that would search through a broad cross section of state and federal databases, including criminal records, driver’s licenses, and passports.

  The problem was that that could take even longer than the DNA testing. In the movies, someone feeds a picture to a computer, makes a few keystrokes, and out pops a name. In fact, facial recognition is a laborious process based on complex algorithms that tax even the fastest of computers.

  “Mahoney said the search might take hours,” I told Aaliyah. “Or it could grind on a few days before the system finds a match or admits defeat.”

  “Like it did with that picture of Mulch from the fake ID?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Either he’s not in any of the databases or he altered his face for that picture.”

  She put on the blinker and took the Ramapo exit off Interstate 87. My cell phone rang. I checked it and saw it was Gloria Jones calling.

  “This is Alex Cross,” I said.

  After a loud sigh of relief, the television news producer said in a lower, more conspiratorial tone, “Let me get Ava and find somewhere we can talk. Call you back in two minutes.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering what was up.

  Aaliyah pulled into a gas station, headed in to use the restroom. I filled the tank. It wasn’t until after the detective had returned with a Diet Coke and a bag of Kettle Chips and we’d gotten back on the highway, this time with me behind the wheel, that my cell rang again.

  Aaliyah said, “Take 287 South. It’s quicker to DC.”

  I nodded, answered the cell, put it on speaker, and set it up on the dash so Aaliyah could hear.

  “Ava?” I said.

  “I’m here, Alex,” she replied. “You won’t believe what we found!”

  “I had very little to do with it,” Gloria Jones said. “This was all Ava.”

  “Well, I’m in a car with Detective Aaliyah of DC Metro Homicide,” I said. “We’d both like to hear whatever you’ve got, but Ava, I have something wonderful to tell you.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s complicated, but we believe Damon and Bree are alive.”

  She gasped. “But—”

  “Mulch had someone else kill and mutilate people who looked like Damon and Bree. The DNA doesn’t match.”

  For several moments there was no reply, but then I heard her sobbing, and tears welled in my eyes all over again. They were alive. I had a chance to save them. Ava could feel that hope as strongly as I did. Wiping away my tears, I saw that the exit for Suffern and I-287 was coming up in five miles.

  “What did you find, Ava?” Aaliyah asked.

  “Okay,” Ava said. She sniffled, and then told us.

  It took a few moments for her discoveries to penetrate my tired brain, but when they did, I almost drove off the road.

  “That’s where I am,” Ava said. “I’m trying to figure out what happened to her after that.”

  “I already know what happened to her after that,” I said.

  “What?” Ava, Aaliyah, and Jones cried all at once.

  “Ava? Gloria? I hate to do this, but I promise I’ll call you right back.”

  Over their protests, I grabbed the phone and ended the call.

  “Take 287 before you tell me what the hell is going on,” Aaliyah said.

  I glanced at the exit before veering away from it, staying on I-87, heading east toward Nyack and New York City.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “Omaha,” I said, handing her my phone. “Call and get us on the next flight out of JFK or LaGuardia.”

  CHAPTER

  59

  SIX HOURS LATER, WE were driving north through Omaha. We passed a playground full of young children and a soccer field where older kids, eleven or twelve, were practicing on a blustery spring afternoon.

  “Every kid I see seems vulnerable now,” I said to Aaliyah, who was driving. “Part of me wants to roll down the window and shout at their parents to never let their kids out of their sight. Absolutely never.”

  For several moments, the detective did not reply. She’d been annoyed and on edge from lack of sleep and from the blowback she’d gotten from Captain Quintus when she’d called him after booking our flights to Omaha.

  But at last, she sighed and said, “I can understand the feeling.”

  Feeling was what had brought us to Omaha. I knew much of the story, but I wanted to run Ava’s discovery by the people who knew the case best. And something in my gut said that would be better done in person and on-site. Captain Quintus had disagreed, but the tickets had already been bought, and so there we were around four thirty that afternoon, driving past the Omaha Country Club into the bedroom community of Raven Oaks.

  We followed the GPS on Aaliyah’s phone into a development of upscale homes, some with tennis courts and others with pools, until we reached the North Fifty-Fourth Avenue circle, which ran out to a cul-de-sac with six homes on it. As soon as we turned onto the road, I saw the unmarked car parked by the curb and told the
detective to pull in behind it.

  We got out and started toward the car. My attention went immediately to the big white house at the end of the cul-de-sac and stayed there until I climbed into the unmarked car’s backseat.

  “Alex, I wish we were seeing each other under better circumstances,” said the petite woman sitting sideways in the front passenger seat. Omaha police detective Jan Sergeant had aged little since I’d last seen her, seven years before.

  “I do too, Jan,” I said.

  Sergeant’s partner, Brian Box, sat behind the wheel looking straight ahead with an expression I remembered. Box had gone gray since I’d last seen him, but he still looked as if he’d bitten into something that didn’t taste quite right.

  I’d met the two detectives eighteen months after a brutal mass murder had taken place in that white house on the cul-de-sac before us. The Daley family of Omaha—Calvin, Bea, Ross, Sharon, and Janet—were found dead in their home two nights before Christmas. Their throats had been cut with a scalpel or razor.

  I’d gotten involved after a second mass murder in suburban Fort Worth. The Monahan family—Alice, Bill, Kenzie, Monroe, Annie, and Brent—were found at home with their throats slit.

  I’d worked the case for the FBI but ultimately had been unable to push the investigation beyond a psychological profile I wrote of the unnamed suspect.

  “We couldn’t have done this over the phone?” said Box.

  “I thought you’d want to hear it in person, Box,” I said. “And I needed to see the scene again, and I wanted Detective Aaliyah to see it as well.”

  “We’re not going in there and upsetting those people without cause,” Sergeant said.

  “No need to go inside. We can do this from here.”