Hope to Die (15 page)

Sunday started up the video again. He watched every move and listened to every breath and sound Cross made before entering that machine tool-and-die shop. He studied the detective’s face when he spoke to the camera and then the scene in which Cross walked into the office and revealed the old, withered black man asking to be delivered from his suffering.

For the most part, the victim’s face had remained in shadow, but for several seconds before the shot, as the old man clasped his hands and bowed his head, a slat of light traveled over his features, revealing it in sections.

“And may God have mercy on my soul,” Cross said and shot him.

“Told you,” Cochran said, and he walked into the kitchen.

Sunday backed the video up and played that light traveling over the victim’s face three times until the pieces gathered in his mind like a jigsaw and made his stomach lurch so hard he thought he was going to puke.

Atticus Jones.

Atticus fucking Jones.

Detective Atticus fucking Jones of the West Virginia State Police. Or what was left of that nosy sonofabitch, anyway.

How the hell had …? What the fuck did this …?

For the first time since Sunday had set his entire diabolical scheme in motion, a shiver of doubt passed through him. Somehow, Cross had found the man who’d investigated his father’s death. Somehow, Cross had gotten to the detective who’d looked into the fiery passing of Thierry Mulch all those years ago. And then Cross had killed Jones to satisfy Sunday
and
put the old bastard out of his misery?

But why the security jacket? Was that what had become of Atticus Jones? Had the great detective been doomed to the pitiful life of a night watchman?

Was it a coincidence? How was that possible? What were the odds?

Ten thousand to one, Sunday decided. No, make that a hundred thousand to one. No matter how random the universe could seem at times, this was no random event. No way.

It was a message. Cross was telling Sunday that he was on his trail.

Sunday tasted bile creeping up his throat. Then he swallowed hard at it, growing scornful and defiant.

That trail is cold, Cross
, he thought.
Thierry Mulch disappeared in flames two and a half decades ago. By killing Atticus Jones, you honestly did me a favor; you eliminated one more potential witness against me
.

He stood and walked past the kitchen, where Cochran was eating cold Chinese food and drinking a beer, and went down the hall to the closed door of his bedroom. He opened it, found Acadia lying on her side in the bed, reading a book.

“Far as I’m concerned, this is your gig now,” Acadia said, not looking his way. “You and Cochran can go to Memphis and handle it. I’m done.”

SUNDAY SET ASIDE THE
video in his mind, stared at her, said, “That right? You’re done?”

Acadia almost nodded, but then seemed to think better of it. She took a sidelong look at Sunday. Their eyes locked, and her defiance gradually waned until she dropped her chin and looked away, saying, “Just a figure of speech, Marcus. Back there you treated me like I was …”

“Stupid?” he asked, softer now.

She glanced at him angrily, nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “One thing you are not, Acadia, is stupid. And I’m sorry if I made it sound that way. There was just something off about that video.”

Acadia nodded again, this time with more confidence, and looked directly at him. “What was off?”

Sunday hesitated, thought about telling her, but decided against it. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“You don’t think the video’s real?”

“Oh, it’s real enough, as far as I can tell,” he replied. “You’d have to have a real expert to doctor something like that.”

She thought about that, said, “In any case, Marcus, just so we’re on the same page here, you’ve made your point, right? Turned Cross into a killer? Proved your hypothesis?”

“I think so.”

“So which one are you going to let go?”

Without hesitation, Sunday said, “None of them. They’re all sticking around just a little while longer.”

Acadia’s expression hardened, and she sat up. “That wasn’t the plan,” she said. “That wasn’t what you told—”

“Plans change, things evolve,” Sunday said coldly. “Until I figure out what Cross was up to with that tape, he gets no mercy. Absolutely none.”

“So what are you going to make him do?”

“Why, I’m going to make him kill again, of course.”

FOR WHAT FELT LIKE
the hundredth time, I watched myself shoot Atticus Jones at point-blank range, felt my stomach drop when the terminally ill man lurched and fell into the shadows, blood pooling on the floor.

“Don’t worry, Alex, Mulch will buy it,” Jones croaked. “Gloria’s friend is a genius. Mulch will absolutely buy it.”

Sitting in a chair beside the old detective’s bed at the nursing facility, the computer in my lap, I chewed on the inside of my cheek before saying, “Mulch doctored those photographs of my family. I’m just afraid he’ll anticipate me using the same tactic against him and respond accordingly.”

“He’d have to be a CGI expert to spot the flaws,” Gloria Jones said flatly. She was sitting on the other side of the bed, drinking yet another cup of coffee and eating the last of the burgers Ava had brought in.

Jones’s daughter was an award-winning news producer at WPXI, the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh. The night before, after I’d told her what I had in mind, she’d bought into the plan and went far beyond what I’d hoped, contacting Richard Martineau, an old friend of hers who worked in computer-generated imagery out in Hollywood.

In fewer than six hours, Martineau had done a masterly job, taking the GoPro footage and inserting the fake head wound and the blood that ran from it so convincingly. But I was still uneasy, thinking I might have gone too far in agreeing to let Jones be the victim.

If Mulch did recognize the old detective, I had no idea how he’d react. We’d all discussed it, of course, and ultimately I’d come over to Jones’s point of view: that recognizing the detective would upset Mulch, maybe enough to throw him off his game, maybe enough that he would make a mistake.

But what if seeing the detective triggered a more brutal response? What if he decided I’d gotten too close, and he responded in the worst way? How would I deal with that? How could any man deal with that sort of loss?

For the most part, I’d been able to box off thoughts of Bree and Damon, except during those six hours when Martineau had worked on the video and I’d retreated to a nearby motel room to sleep. In bed, behind a locked door and before I’d collapsed into unconsciousness, I’d been unable to keep a lid on my roiling emotions. Though as far as I knew, there had been no definitive matching of Bree’s and Damon’s DNA with the bodies, I could not help fearing they were both dead and gone.

Bree could be gone.

Forever.

Damon could be gone.

Forever.

And there was the real and terrible possibility that Nana Mama, Jannie, and Ali would soon be gone.

Forever.

That word—
forever
—had released a wave of anguish that broke my resolve and my faith, and I’d curled up in a fetal position, feeling like I’d been gut shot and sobbing like there was no tomorrow.

But when I’d awoken to Gloria Jones pounding at my door and seen the video, I’d taken heart. It was totally convincing. For all intents and purposes, Atticus Jones had died there onscreen. For all intents and purposes—

“Do you think he’ll let one of them go?” Ava asked, shaking me from my conflicted thoughts.

“We can hope so,” I said. “But I’m not counting on it.”

“So what are you going to do?” Gloria Jones asked. “Just sit here and wait to see if a member of your family shows up somewhere?”

“Ball’s in Mulch’s court,” her father said. “Not much else he can do.”

I thought about that a few moments and then shook my head. “I think I’ll go to the Berkshires, try to figure out how Damon was taken.”

“That’s a ten-hour drive, at least,” Gloria Jones said.

“I’ll fly out of Pittsburgh, go to Albany,” I said. “His classmates and teachers should be returning today from their Easter break. Classes start tomorrow.”

I knew it was a weak angle, but I got to my feet anyway; it was the only one I could see at the moment. Looking over at Ava, I said, “You still in?”

She nodded, but then bit her lip. “Could I ask Mr. Jones one more thing before we leave?”

The old detective’s eyes were closed; his breathing was shallow, and he looked so frail, he put me in mind of a baby bird that had fallen from the nest.

“Dad?” his daughter said in mild alarm, getting up from her chair.

“I haven’t given up the ghost yet, Gloria,” her father said with his eyes still shut. “What can I do for you, young lady?”

Ava asked, “Did you ever track down Mulch’s mother?”

Jones’s eyes opened and he looked at her, puzzled. “Why?”

Ava shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he contacted her? I mean, Little Boar abused her too. She left because of that, right?”

The old detective cocked his head in a way that indicated he’d never seen that angle, and then he said, “You’ve got a real future in this game, you know that?”

Ava flushed, said, “It just made sense to me.”

“Makes sense to me too, now that you mention it,” Jones croaked. “And the answer to your question is no, I did not try to track down Lydia Mulch.”

Ava looked at me, said, “Maybe we should do that instead?”

“It’s a good thought,” I said. “No doubt. But the trail on Mulch’s mother is thirty years cold. Damon disappeared from school less than nine days ago.”

Ava appeared crestfallen until Gloria Jones said, “Ava, how about you stay here with me awhile and we try to find Lydia Mulch together?”

Ava’s forehead wrinkled, and I could see she was intrigued by the idea but didn’t want to leave me.

“Do it,” I said to Ava. “You’ll still be helping even if you’re not with me.”

She paused, said, “You’ll come find me when it’s all over?” I walked over and hugged her, saying, “Of course I’ll come find you, Ava. You’re family. Maybe the last family I’ve got.”

AROUND THREE THAT SUNDAY
afternoon, in the community of Arbutus, a suburb of Baltimore, Tess Aaliyah parked on Francis Street in front of the modest bungalow where she’d grown up. The blue and white paint was fresh. The lawn looked like it had been cut that morning. Her late mother’s flower beds were tended. And the dogwoods and the first azaleas were in bloom.

At least Dad’s keeping the place up
, Aaliyah thought, though she remained upset that he had not answered any of her phone calls last night or this morning, which was what had prompted this visit.

Aaliyah got out of the car. But before she started toward the house, she checked the bandage that wrapped her throbbing right forearm, looking for blood or something worse, a yellow or green discharge.

Yellow or green discharge?

Aaliyah shuddered at the thought.

On a day-to-day basis, not much bothered the detective. But the idea that she might have gotten an infection from Claude Harrow’s Rottweiler had nagged at her ever since the emergency room physician mentioned the possibility. The nurses had stuck her with more needles than she cared to remember, and she’d been given a powerful antibiotic. Still, you never knew what might be festering in a neo-Nazi dog’s mouth.

To her relief, except for a slight dark red discoloration—normal seepage—the bandages looked fine. Fortunately, it turned out that her arm wasn’t broken. Even the wounds on her face weren’t all that bad—mostly just superficial abrasions.

She crossed the lawn diagonally, heading toward the side door to the kitchen. Her dad’s Chevy Tahoe was parked in the driveway. His surf-casting rods were in the ski carrier he used to transport them to the beach.

That’s where he’d been. Fishing again. He’d probably been out all night.

Sighing with relief, she climbed the stoop, and she was reaching out with her good arm to knock when she heard a woman chuckle.

“Bernie, you’re awful,” she said, and chuckled again.

“I swear, Christine,” Aaliyah heard her father reply. Then he chuckled.

For a moment, the detective was so stunned she didn’t know what to do. She stopped herself from knocking.

Christine?

Aaliyah felt a pit open up in her stomach. Her mother had been dead fourteen months.
Christine?

She’d known the day would come, of course, when her father would move on, find someone else to spend his life with. He was only in his late sixties. It made sense. But she’d had no inkling of …
Christine?

“Oh, hello,” said the woman, startling Aaliyah.

She hadn’t heard Christine walking over, but there she was on the other side of the screen door, a very tall and very pretty redhead in jeans, a denim shirt, and pearls. Aaliyah guessed she was somewhere in her fifties, maybe early sixties, if she’d had work done.

“I’m looking for my dad?” Aaliyah said.

The woman let out a quiet shriek of pleasure. “You’re Tess?”

“That’s me.”

She grinned widely, opened the door, and extended her hand, saying, “What a wonderful surprise. I’m Christine Prince. Your father’s been telling me so much about you.”

“Has he, now?” Aaliyah asked.

“You’re all he talks about,” she said, and chuckled that chuckle.

“Tess?” her father said, coming up behind Christine Prince, limping slightly from the wound that had ended his career.