Hope to Die Read online

The breeze shifted. Acadia wrinkled her nose at the smell of rank water and rotted meat coming from the bayou. Years had gone by, and her mother still fed the alligators that had fed on her father’s corpse.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she’d always say. “The gators set us free, didn’t they? I owe them, don’t I?”

  For her part, however, Acadia had not gone near the backwater where her father’s pets lived since the night the old bastard died. She’d go anywhere else around the twenty-acre homestead, but never, ever down there. Though not a superstitious person by nature, she thought of that sliver of wetland as cursed.

  Above the noise of a preacher delivering a sermon of salvation on the radio, and Gil Grissom shooting his mouth off about X-ray analysis on the television, Acadia heard the rattle of pots and pans. Her mom was probably cleaning up after a late supper in front of the tube.

  For several moments longer, Acadia stood there, just inside the shadows, racking her brain, trying to remember if she’d ever mentioned this place to Sunday. Maybe once. Maybe that very first drunken night when they’d met in a bar in the French Quarter, but never again. She’d made sure of that, telling Sunday that she’d been raised over on the Mississippi border northwest of Slidell.

  Something intense must have been happening on CSI because the music coming from the TV got all creepy. Then she heard her mother start coughing and hacking. It was enough to embolden Acadia, and she finally stepped from the trees and cut across the yard toward the cabin.

  Acadia thumbed the latch and opened the screened-in porch’s door, expecting Mercury, her mother’s beloved pit bull, to come charging out to meet her. Instead, she heard snores and spotted the old dog on his straw bed in the corner.

  “Some protection you are,” she said.

  Mercury grumbled, sighed, and farted. The door to the cabin was ajar.

  “Ma?” Acadia called as she gently pushed it open, seeing dishes drying in a rack by the sink.

  She stepped inside onto the rough-hewn floor and saw her mother’s overstuffed chair, empty except for the latest copy of People magazine open to the celebrity crossword. Several cans of Diet Coke sat on the TV-dinner table next to her ashtray and an open pack of Pall Malls. CSI had given way to a commercial that touted a breakthrough in fabric softeners. The preacher on the radio had shifted from salvation to a theme of damnation and hellfire for all sinners before God.

  “Mama, where are you?” Acadia called louder. “It’s me.”

  Her mother’s frail voice answered from her bedroom. “I’m back here, baby doll. Can you come give me a hand? With the rain, my arthritis is acting up.”

  “Be right there,” Acadia said, and she walked past piles of newspapers and older editions of People magazine and a plastic bag full of empty Diet Coke cans.

  In a short hallway that smelled of old age, she maneuvered through stacks of old magazines and boxes of moldy treasures her hoarder mother flatly refused to get rid of. Acadia pushed open the bedroom door, stepped in, and turned left, expecting to see her mother trying to button up her nightdress or tie her robe.

  Instead, her terrorized mother lay on the bed with her arms, chest, and ankles wrapped in duct tape. The old woman whimpered, “I’m sorry, baby doll, he said he’d shoot me if I didn’t.”

  Before Acadia could run, the cold muzzle of the pistol bumped the back of her head.

  “Don’t you move now, lover,” Sunday whispered behind her. “I found this in the closet and I think the safety’s kinda loose on a hair trigger.”

  He pushed her toward an overstuffed chair, saying, “Admit it, you’re shocked. But you’ve got to remember, I’ve got the superior mind, Acadia. Total recall. You said that first night that you grew up in the seat of Jefferson Davis Parish, and after that you always said it was Slidell. Ha. How’s that for a memory?”

  “Marcus,” she said. “You left me no—”

  The butt of the gun clipped Acadia hard behind the ear, and stars exploded and blew her straight into darkness.

  CHAPTER

  73

  THOUGH THE STORMS HAD slackened and Tess Aaliyah was able to drive seventy miles per hour, we were still a solid fifty minutes west of Jennings, Louisiana, when I said into her phone, “Are we ready?”

  “We are,” Mahoney said. “Just do the smart shrink thing and keep him talking long enough for my men to triangulate.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, and handed Aaliyah’s phone back to her.

  Picking up the burner cell I’d bought with Ava back in West Virginia, I prayed that FBI techs using software I couldn’t begin to comprehend would be able to quickly home in on the three cell towers closest to Sunday’s position.

  For the past fifteen minutes I’d been wrestling over what I should say to the man who had my family. By whatever name, Mulch or Sunday, he was a diabolical sonofabitch who would not hesitate to kill, and I was as nervous as I’d ever been punching in his phone number.

  Sunday answered on the third ring and yawned before saying, “Dr. Cross? Is that you?”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Sunday,” I said. “Did I wake you?”

  “I was just about to turn off the hotel-room lights,” he replied. “I’ve got a big day planned for tomorrow.”

  “In Austin?”

  “That’s right. You still in Omaha?”

  “Back in DC, and again, sorry to call, but I could use your help.”

  “Well, of course,” Sunday said, and he yawned again. “How can I be of service?”

  “You know, I jumped to conclusions about your book,” I said. “And I wanted to apologize again about that. I know we differ about the quotes you attributed to me, but I went back through the book earlier this evening and was really impressed how you got inside the perfect criminal’s or, now, Thierry Mulch’s mind.”

  There was a pause, and I heard what sounded like gospel music playing in the background before he said, “That’s high praise coming from you, Dr. Cross. I truly appreciate that.”

  “You’re welcome. So, anyway, I was wondering, now that you’ve had the chance to consider Mulch’s background, if you had come to any kind of deeper insight into his character and what he might have done with my family?”

  There was another pause, this one longer, before Sunday said, “As a matter of fact, Dr. Cross, Thierry Mulch is all I’ve thought about since you told me he was my perfect criminal.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I don’t mean to sound narcissistic, but I think I sketched him with remarkable accuracy.”

  “How so?”

  “I stated quite forcefully in the book that the perfect criminal would have to be, in effect, an existentialist, someone who believed there was no inherent right or wrong, no ultimate moral code in the universe.”

  “I saw that,” I said, glancing at Aaliyah, who took her cell away from her ear to make a keep-going motion with it. “You think Mulch is an existentialist?”

  “I most certainly do,” Sunday said. “Think of the drastic actions he’s taken over the years. Killing his father to free and enrich himself before faking his own death. And then slaughtering his mother’s family and the family of this woman you say Mulch knew when he was in high school?”

  “Alice Littlefield,” I said.

  “Yes, so it would be much too easy to dismiss this man as insane,” Sunday said, sounding as if he were spouting off at some academic symposium. “Quite the contrary, I think those drastic actions show that he is thoughtful and careful in the extreme but bold in his execution, which means that he knows that he functions outside the norm, that he thinks a moral universe is folly, and that his acts are simply a means to an end. No right. No wrong. Simply tools for his purposes.”

  I paused, glanced at Aaliyah, who shook her head.

  “Interesting,” I said. “And what end or purpose might that be?”

  After a moment of silence, Sunday said, “I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll get to ask him that someday when you catch him.”

  “I look forward t
o it.”

  “As do I,” Sunday said. “Now, really, Dr. Cross, I have a long day tomorrow and need my sleep.”

  “Just one more question?”

  He sighed and said, “One more.”

  “In your research,” I said. “Did you ever come across a woman named Acadia Le Duc?”

  CHAPTER

  74

  MARCUS SUNDAY CLOSED HIS eyes to the sight of Acadia Le Duc sprawled unconscious at his feet, took a long, slow breath, and then said, “You couldn’t forget a name like that if you tried. I can honestly say Acadia Le Duc’s never crossed my path.”

  “Huh,” Cross said. “That’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?” Sunday said, opening his eyes.

  “Well, you said you had a book signing at Whodunit Books in Philadelphia last week, and according to her credit card records, Ms. Le Duc was there,” Cross said. “She even bought one of your books.”

  Fighting the urge to kick Acadia in the head, Sunday said, “There were at least twenty-five people in attendance that night. Who is she?”

  “Mulch’s accomplice,” Cross said. “We have strong evidence to link her to my son Damon’s kidnapping, and we have several clear pictures of her. They’ll be all over the news in the morning.”

  Sunday refused to give in to the sharp pains suddenly knifing through his skull, forced himself to sound shocked. “So, what, you think this Le Duc woman might have come to my reading in Philadelphia on Mulch’s behalf?” Sunday asked.

  There was a pause on the line before Cross said, “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? You write about Mulch, he’s going to want to find out about you, maybe even target you. So he sends in Acadia, or maybe he was even there with her.”

  Sunday almost smiled. He liked where this was going now. “You think Mulch could have been in the audience that night, right there in front of me?”

  “Why not?” Cross said. “You were talking about him, weren’t you? And you know how delusional criminals of this nature can be, always believing they’re too smart to get caught.”

  I am too smart to get caught, asshole, Sunday thought. Then he said, “So, am I in any danger?”

  “We suspect he and Le Duc might be stalking you. Perhaps getting ready to kidnap or kill you.”

  Sunday laughed nervously. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Cross said. “Where was your reading in Memphis?”

  For a moment, Sunday floundered, but then he snagged something from his memory of the prior day. “Booksellers at Laurelwood. God, I do so many of these things, I lose track sometimes. You think one of them was there last night?”

  “We can put Acadia Le Duc in Memphis,” Cross said. “She flew in from DC yesterday morning and rented a car at the Memphis airport.”

  “My God,” Sunday said, feeling as if there were dogs close at his heels for the first time since Mulch had faked his death to get away from Atticus Jones. “Should I suspend the book tour?”

  “No,” Cross said. “Keep going. The FBI people will have agents at your event. Where is it in Austin, and when?”

  Acadia moaned on the floor, and Sunday’s head began to saw with pain. He’d believed that he’d covered every base, but Cross’s questions were upsetting him, forcing him to ad lib at every turn. He had not had a reading the night before and he didn’t have one coming up. Then he saw a plausible explanation.

  “The reading was tonight,” Sunday said. “I don’t actually have another event scheduled until Friday night in LA, and that’s at Diesel in Brentwood.”

  Acadia moaned again, and Sunday felt as if he were late for something.

  “Diesel in Brentwood,” Cross said, as if writing it down.

  It dawned on Sunday that he’d been on the phone for almost ten minutes, and a nub of suspicion grew into a conviction that they were tracking him.

  He started making noises like static and said, “Dr. Cross?”

  Then he made more static noises before thumbing his cell off, prying it open, and ripping out the battery.

  Despite the odd twist Cross had put on the facts, he thought there was an excellent chance that the detective had him pegged as Thierry Mulch, which meant that once again, he had to speed things up.

  It was time to cut his losses, time to move on, he decided, squatting down to grab Acadia beneath the armpits. It was time to put an end to Marcus Sunday and all of his terrible obsessions.

  CHAPTER

  75

  ACADIA STIRRED AT FLASHES of light, water spitting in her face, and wind howling all about her. She had a splitting headache and vaguely understood she was lying on her back in something chill and slimy.

  When she forced open her eyes, she saw only shades of darkness. Then she tried to move, and panic flared in her gut. Her wrists were bound and pinned above her head somehow. Her ankles were tied down as well. She tried to yell, but cloth had been stuffed in her mouth.

  Where am I? How did I get here?

  Then, despite the pounding in her skull, Acadia remembered her mother’s terror and Sunday telling her about the gun with the hair trigger.

  Where is he? Where am I?

  Thunder cracked. Lightning scarred the sky. The wind reversed direction and gusted up a sickening stench, and Acadia knew exactly where she was.

  Closing her eyes, she screamed, and screamed again.

  But the sounds that made it through the gag, though tortured and shrill, were muffled by the wind, no more than the noise of a teapot boiling in another part of the house or a train horn blowing in the distance, something easily dismissed on a dark and stormy night.

  Acadia didn’t care that no one could hear her. She screamed and yanked at her restraints until the skin at her wrist and ankles was raw, and her stomach seized up in knots. Flopping back in the mud on the bank above the backwater slough where her father’s alligators fed, she started to sob.

  There was a snapping noise, and a soft glowing light came over her from above and behind her head. It came closer, grew stronger. Acadia strained against her bindings, arched her head to look backward, and saw Marcus Sunday holding two of the Coleman lanterns her mother kept around for hurricanes.

  Sunday hung them on barbed wire strung between fence posts driven into the ground. Her wrists were bound to the bottom of those same posts. She looked down at her feet, saw her ankles tied to two other posts closer to the water.

  “Your mother told me the light brings them,” Sunday said, appearing at Acadia’s right side. “Light and blood.”

  He got out a pocketknife, locked the blade open, and crouched beside her. As he ran the dull blade up one side of her rib cage and across her breast, Acadia shook like someone lost in a snowstorm.

  “Your mother likes to talk,” Sunday went on. “Funny how some people are like that when they meet a published writer, just willing to open up and tell you all sorts of crazy things about themselves.”

  “Please, don’t hurt her,” Acadia tried to say through the gag.

  “What’s that?” Sunday said. “I can’t get what you’re trying to say there.”

  She screamed at him so hard, her face flamed red and veins bulged at her pounding temples.

  “I didn’t understand that one either,” Sunday said, amused. “But I got the subtext, and honestly, lover, I don’t give a shit about you begging for yourself or your mother. I don’t even care to hear your flimsy excuses or pleas for mercy. I just need you both out of the way so I can move on.”

  He gestured at the slough and then up the bank to her. “And this little tableau? A gift of serendipity, an irony for me to treasure to the end of my days.”

  Acadia panted in the mud, and then screamed and writhed in agony when Sunday pressed the blade to her navel and sliced shallowly, down a good six inches. Blood poured from the wound.

  “You can imagine now, can’t you?” Sunday asked. “How they’ll come for the place that’s bleeding first?”

  Acadia lost all control then, screaming and weeping in convulsions of fear th
at went on for a full minute and left her spent and almost catatonic.

  “We could have gone farther, you and I,” Sunday said, pocketing the knife. “A lot farther. But you pressed the issue, lover, so here you are, and here come your dead daddy’s pets. I’m betting they’ll make you sing before they’re done.”

  “No, Marcus,” Acadia tried to say through the gag. “Please?”

  But Sunday snorted, walked away, and didn’t look back.

  For several long minutes there was only the howling of the wind and the rain. Then, as if the eye of the storm was passing overhead, the rain slowed to a drizzle, the wind died, and the moon peeked out through a vent in the clouds.

  “Help!” Acadia screamed through her gag, managing to make a long, insistent whine of it. “Mom!”

  She stopped, breathed in through her nose in short bursts, trying to listen.

  Swish.

  Plop.

  Blip.

  Swish.

  Acadia had known those sounds her whole life: the swish of an armored tail against cattails, the plop of a ten-foot body submerging, and the blip of a creature coming to the surface. Each noise cut deeper than Sunday’s blade.

  Swish.

  Swish.

  Swish, plop.

  That last noise felt like a hot sword jabbed in her back.

  Acadia strained against her lashings, looking down at the bank and the clouded water of the back channel, seeing it swirl like cream in coffee.

  Blip.

  The prehistoric head breached first.

  CHAPTER

  76

  SHORTLY AFTER ELEVEN, TESS AALIYAH and I raced out of Jennings on the Evangeline Highway heading north behind the flashing lights of the cruiser Sheriff Paul Gauvin was driving. Behind us roared three more cruisers, each with two deputies and one with a police dog too. None of the cars had sirens on.

  We had ample reason for our urgency and our stealth. I had kept Sunday on the phone long enough for the triangulation to work, and it put the man within a five-mile radius of the cabin where Acadia Le Duc’s mother lived. Not a hint of doubt now. Sunday was Mulch and was the man responsible for multiple murders, not to mention my torture and my family’s peril. And Acadia Le Duc was definitely in the area as well. Hertz had run the GPS locator and put her rental car within three miles of the cabin.