Hope to Die Read online

“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.

  Laughing and gleefully pounding his fist on the steering wheel, Sunday put the gas pedal to the floor and shot forward through the night.

  CHAPTER

  64

  I HUNG UP THE phone with Marcus Sunday feeling like I’d hit yet another dead end. Why had I called him? If the FBI and police had never heard of Thierry Mulch in connection with the Monahan and Daley murders, why should I expect Sunday to have come across his name?

  Because you are grasping at straws, Alex.

  As soon as I had that thought, I got angry with myself. Damn right I was grasping at straws. My family had been gone for ten days. For ten days, Mulch had been playing me like I was a puppet, and he was a cruel puppeteer. I would grasp at any straw, string, or thought if it might help me find Bree, Nana Mama, Damon, Jannie, and Ali.

  It was nearing midnight, however, and I realized there was nothing else I could do, no other straws I could reach for. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb and fell into a deep sleep.

  I surfaced groggily shortly after three a.m. and then tried to force myself back to that deep, dark respite from reality. Instead, I was cast into dreams where I saw Mulch as that red-bearded guy who’d gone to Ali’s school slipping alongside the Daleys’ house in a snowstorm carrying the knife that would kill the mother who had abandoned him. Mulch was inside then, a Grinch creeping past a glowing Christmas tree. He climbed the staircase, pushed open the first bedroom door. There were forms lying beneath the covers of a queen-size bed.

  When Mulch eased back the blankets, I saw that woman who now lived in the Daleys’ house. Beside her, my son Ali, not her son, was curled up in a fetal position. Mulch put the blade to Ali’s neck and pulled backward sharply. Blood misted the air.

  I screamed and spun in my dream, raced down the hallway to the next bedroom. But Mulch was somehow already there, and he was done with Damon and Jannie. The hallway got longer as I ran on, trying to protect Bree.

  Mulch came out her door before I got there, and he smiled at the blood dripping off the knife before beckoning me to follow him to the last bedroom door.

  When I got there, he was standing by my grandmother, who looked exactly as she had the day she came to get me when I was ten: that loving but no-nonsense expression, her teacher’s crisp posture, the blue dress she’d worn with a matching hat and handbag, and the white church gloves.

  As if unaware of Mulch raising the blade toward her throat, Nana Mama looked at me and said softly, “Alex, are you ready for a new life?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No?” my grandmother chided gently. “Then your thinking is wrong, young man. That’s the difference between folks when it comes down to it. Their thinking defines them. So I’ll ask you again, are you ready for a new way of thinking?”

  “No!” I screamed as the knife cut into her with a sound like thumping. “No!”

  The thumping became pounding in my brain so loud I thought my skull would split before I jolted awake, sweaty, and looked around the hotel room wildly. It was almost five a.m.

  The pounding startled me that time. Someone was knocking on my door.

  “Hold on!” I shouted, struggling to my feet and realizing I’d slept in my clothes. God only knew what I smelled like.

  At the door I peered through the peephole and saw Tess Aaliyah moving like Jannie had as a girl when she had to pee, rocking from one agitated foot to another, her face screwed up in concentration.

  My stomach did a flip, and I bowed my head, prayed, “Dear God, please give me the strength to handle whatever it is she has to tell me.”

  Then I opened the door.

  “I thought you were dead for a second there,” Detective Aaliyah said with relief. “Don’t you answer your phone?”

  “I had it on Do Not Disturb. What’s going on?”

  “Mahoney and Sampson have been trying to call you the past hour,” she replied. “They wanted to be the ones to tell you, but it is what it is.”

  Her face broke into a smile. “The facial-recognition software got a solid hit on that photo of Karla Mepps. Mahoney and Sampson think they know who she is.”

  CHAPTER

  65

  THE FACES OF NED MAHONEY and John Sampson filled the laptop screen. Aaliyah and I were in Aaliyah’s room, linked to them through Skype.

  “The biometric analysis keyed on a Louisiana driver’s license,” Mahoney explained. “I’ll send it over in a second.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Acadia Le Duc,” Sampson said. “She’s a former nurse turned freelance photographer. The New Orleans address on the license is old, and we have nothing current, but her name, Acadia, came up in those encrypted files on Preston Elliot’s computer. Elliot evidently did some work for an Acadia.”

  “Where?”

  “Looks like DC,” my partner said. “The notes in the file said ‘Acadia. Work complete. Services owed. Kalorama.’”

  “When was the file created?”

  “Three months ago,” Sampson said. “It was last updated two weeks ago.”

  I digested that, said, “So she was in DC just before my family was taken.”

  “Looks that way,” Mahoney agreed.

  “We have access to her credit cards?”

  “Not yet, but we’re working on it.”

  “Ms. Le Duc have a record?” Aaliyah asked.

  “Nothing as an adult,” Sampson said. “But we got bounce-back on her name in juvey files in … uh, Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana.”

  “With your permission, we’re going to put out a blanket bulletin on her,” Mahoney said. “Every agent and police officer in the country will have seen the face of Acadia Le Duc by tomorrow.”

  At first I thought that was a good idea, but then I balked.

  “Can we wait on that a day? Find out more about Le Duc first?”

  “Why?” Sampson asked.

  “I guess I’m nervous over what Mulch might do if we announce to the world that we’ve identified his accomplice.”

  My partner glanced at Mahoney, who said, “We’ll do it your way.”

  “Thanks. Listen, I’ll follow up on that juvenile report. Where was it?”

  The FBI agent looked at his notes, said, “Jefferson Davis Parish. Courthouse is in the county seat, Jennings.”

  With promises to keep my phone on and check in every hour, I ended the Skype call, looked at Aaliyah, and said, “I’m starving.”

  “I am too,” she said.

  We went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, and I ordered four eggs, toast, bacon, potatoes, and coffee. Aaliyah ordered oatmeal and fruit. While we waited for the food to come, I looked up the number for the Jennings, Louisiana, police department on the Internet and then called. A female dispatcher answered. I identified myself and asked if there were any detectives or officers still around from the year that Acadia Le Duc got a sealed file in juvenile court. After a long pause, I was told I’d need to talk with the Jefferson Davis Parish sheriff’s office.

  Our food came. Sensing that this might be a long hard day, I ate it all before looking up the sheriff’s phone number. The deputy who answered the phone said that Sheriff Paul Gauvin fit my searc
h criteria, but he was at a training seminar and wouldn’t be back for an hour or so. The deputy said he would give Sheriff Gauvin my number when he called in.

  Even though it was early, I called the court clerk in Jennings, Louisiana. Surprisingly, he answered the phone. Figuring I’d get shot down on the juvenile file, I asked if he could call up all civil and criminal files on anyone with the surname Le Duc.

  A few moments later, he returned and said, “There’s something from the late nineties on the girl, but it’s sealed. There are two old lawsuits regarding land boundaries that are more than twenty years old. And there are several old criminal cases involving the father, but Jean, well, he has been dead for years, since the late nineties.”

  The way the clerk said that last bit—emphasizing the late nineties—sounded odd, so I said, “How’d he die?”

  “His gators got him,” the clerk replied. “Any more than that, you need to talk with the sheriff. He worked all that nasty business back then.”

  The clerk hung up before I could get another word in, and I was left spinning my wheels, waiting for a call from Sheriff Gauvin but wondering if the way the clerk had said the words the late nineties was meant to tip me off that Acadia’s sealed juvenile case had something to do with her father’s death by gators.

  It kind of made twisted sense if that was so. Thierry Mulch had fed his father and Preston Elliot to the pigs, after all. How had Mulch and Acadia met? Did one monster sense the other and, what, confide? I’d seen it before, usually among male serial killers who’d taken on younger apprentices.

  But an alliance between monsters of different genders? I couldn’t come up with an example of it, other than Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and that seemed a weak case, at best, because they were bank robbers who happened to kill, not murderers who happened to kidnap.

  CHAPTER

  66

  IN A CRANKY, FOUL mood around eleven thirty that morning, Sunday sat in the rented pickup truck watching a small tan bungalow down a side street in Corpus Christi, Texas. Summer had come early. It was blistering hot out, ninety-two in the shade, and humid beyond belief. Worse, he’d barely slept in the past thirty hours, and he’d been pissing in a bottle since leaving Memphis.

  He’d dozed off and on since arriving around six twenty, but he’d woken up whenever a car or pedestrian had passed, and he was sure that Acadia had not gone into the house. He was also positive that no one had left in the almost five hours he’d been sitting in the heat, turning the AC on every few minutes and wanting to punch out the window.

  There was always the possibility that Acadia had gotten here first and had put her car in the garage before six twenty. Or he could have guessed wrong. But when he’d considered the three places she’d be most likely to head in times of turmoil, he’d followed his gut and come here first. How long should he give it?

  His head was starting to spin and pound, and he knew he was in no condition to make decisions. He’d have to give in and sleep.

  Sunday was just about to turn on the car, and the AC, and shut his eyes for an hour when, in the rearview mirror, he spotted a green Mini Cooper turning onto the street. He immediately slid across the bench seat, head down, and waited until the Mini passed, then he glided out the passenger door and galloped down the sidewalk wearing blue shorts, a sleeveless T, running shoes, sunglasses, and a visor pulled down low over his eyes.

  The Mini slowed. The bungalow’s garage door rose as the car turned into the short uphill drive. Sunday slowed too, eyes patrolling the suburban street and seeing it deserted in the blistering heat of day. When the Mini’s nose passed into the garage, he took one last glance around and exploded diagonally toward it.

  The Mini was inside. The door engaged and began to lower. Sunday dove over the security beam and then barrel-rolled into the garage. A second later, he was crouched behind the left rear bumper and the garage was closed off from the street.

  Sunday froze as the driver’s door opened and shut, and he heard footsteps walking across the floor to a set of wooden stairs. A key turned in a lock. The door opened and stood ajar. Sunday heard the first beep and made his move, dancing along and around the front of the Mini and up the steps as more beeps echoed in the garage.

  A loud buzz sounded, signaling that the security code had turned off the system. In a heartbeat, Sunday was through the door and on her from behind, clamping one hand over her mouth before she had the chance to scream and driving her across the hallway and up against the wall.

  He ground his hips hard against her rear and pushed his face close to the left ear of a terrified redheaded woman dressed in purple hospital scrubs.

  “Hello, Jillian,” he growled. “Just getting off shift?”

  CHAPTER

  67

  A FORMER CLASSMATE OF Acadia’s in nursing school and the closest his ex-lover had to a best friend forever, Jillian Green squealed into Sunday’s hand, sounding so much like a sow going to slaughter that he almost laughed.

  “Where is Acadia?” he snarled. “And if you scream or lie, I will hurt you. I don’t want to. But I will. Do you understand?”

  Tears welled in Jillian Green’s eyes and she nodded, trembling.

  “Please, Marcus,” she whined when he removed his hand and turned her to face him.

  Jillian was thick and busty, not at all his type, but he was still happy to press against her with his forearm across her throat and say, “Where is my girl?”

  “I don’t know,” Jillian said desperately. “I haven’t heard from her in weeks.”

  “Wrong answer,” Sunday said, pressing his arm harder against her throat and grabbing one of her pinkies. “Now, try again, or I will snap this finger and then another before I crush your larynx. Do you understand, Jillian?”

  She was weeping again, but she nodded.

  Sunday released the pressure on her throat but held her pinkie firmly.

  Jillian sobbed, “Don’t hurt her, please.”

  “Hurt her?” he said, acting taken aback. “I’m not interested in hurting Acadia any more than I’m interested in hurting you, Jillian. I just want the money she stole from me yesterday. I want it back in my account, and then I’m moving on. No hard feelings. Truth is, she and I have been on the outs for a while now, and while I can take the abandonment, I cannot abide a thief.”

  “You promise you won’t hurt her?”

  “On my dear mama’s soul,” Sunday assured her.

  Jillian swallowed, said, “Last I knew, around midnight, just as I was going on shift, she had car trouble and said she wouldn’t be coming here after all.”

  “Okay,” he said reasonably. “Where did she say she was going?”

  “Her apartment in New Orleans,” she said, a little too quickly.

  Sunday could spot a liar a mile away, much less six inches. He smiled, said, “So she’s going to her mother’s.”

  A wave of fear pulsed through Jillian’s face. “Marcus, no, she—”

  He pressed against her throat again, said, “Shhh, now. No more of that. I’m going to need a place to sleep for a few hours. I can crash here, right?”

  “That’s not a good—”

  He increased the pressure on her throat again, and she gulped and nodded.

  Sunday released her and let her lead the way. As they crossed through a small, tidy kitchen, he saw her hesitate as she passed a block of knives on the counter.

  “Don’t even think about that, darlin’,” he said.

  “What? I was wondering if you were hungry.”

  He was, but that could wait. He said, “I just want to sleep for now. I’ll eat later, and then you’ll be rid of me.”

  From the stiffness of her posture as they entered the hall, Sunday knew she was having a hard time believing him. But that was okay. He was having a hard time believing it himself.

  Jillian stopped, gestured through an open door, said, “There’s an extra bed in there you can use.”

  “No, no,” he said, pushing her forward. “I
was thinking we’d sleep together so I’d know if you got up or tried to make a phone call.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she said, her voice cracking as she went through the door at the end of the hall.

  “Just the same,” Sunday said, following her into the master bedroom, a tasteful and orderly space with a decidedly feminine touch.

  “I need to take a shower,” she said.

  “That’s a great idea,” he said. “But later, after.”

  Jillian turned and, without meeting his eye, said, “After?”

  “C’mon, now, darling, you take off those scrubs, show Marcus what he’s been missing, and he’ll show you what Acadia’s been getting,” he said.

  “Please, Marcus,” she whimpered.

  “Take them off,” he said. “Or I’ll tear them off you.”

  Looking humiliated, she shed the top and bottom, and then took off her bra and panties.

  “Well, Jillian, I must say, you’ve exceeded my expectations,” Sunday said, shucking his running shorts. “You’re an Aphrodite as Rubens might have painted her, pale and voluptuous. Now lie facedown on the bed and let old Marcus go to work on you. You watch; it’ll relieve the unnecessary tension between us, Jillian. It’ll help us both get a great afternoon snooze.”

  CHAPTER

  68

  TESS AALIYAH AND ALEX CROSS checked out of the hotel shortly after noon and headed to the airport. It was Cross’s idea to set up there, and Aaliyah agreed with the strategy. If they had a break of any kind anywhere in the country, they wanted to be able to move as fast as possible.

  They went to a café inside the airport and spent nearly five hours there, drinking coffee, eating, and reviewing every aspect of the case. They identified questions they wanted answered and let their imaginations and investigative instincts paint the space between what they knew and what they didn’t know about Thierry Mulch and Acadia Le Duc.