As they walked back through the woodworking machines, Aaliyah tried to figure out where the dog had come from and why she hadn’t seen him until he was in full attack mode. Remembering the angle at which the Rottweiler appeared, she went toward the horse stalls filled with lumber.
Aaliyah soon spotted a gap of about fifteen inches between the lumber pile and the far wall of the first stall. She shone her light into it.
A broken slat in the barn wall provided an opening big enough for a dog to get through. There was a filthy, ragged blanket on the floor, the dog’s bed, she supposed, and what at first glance looked like the rawhide pieces people give dogs so they’ll chew on those instead of the furniture. But then Sampson lit up a rear wall with a ledge on the top, and Aaliyah felt nauseated all over again.
Those weren’t rawhide strips in the dog’s bed or on that shelf right there in stacks, like Pringles chips without the can. They were curling ovals of black human flesh in various stages of drying.
CHAPTER
41
AT THREE IN THE morning, I set the GoPro camera and the harness on a picnic bench beside a deserted gravel parking lot lit by high-pressure sodium lights. Across the lot, there was a long, low yellow-and-silver prefabricated metal building that put me in mind of the commercial pig barn where Preston Elliot’s bones had been found.
Aiming the high-definition camera at myself and turning it on, I felt a weight descend on my shoulders. I glanced angrily at the camera and tugged on latex gloves, saying, “I’m doing what you wanted, Mulch. When I’m done, you let someone go.”
Then I drew the Colt, bowed my head, and prayed God would forgive me for what I was about to do. I’d had to kill men before, several of them, as a matter of fact. But in those terrible moments when I’d had to turn a gun or some other weapon on a fellow human, it had always been in self-defense, situations where there’d been only the instinct to survive and all moral conduct had been nullified by my right to live.
This was different. I was about to kill for no reason other than that I had decided one life was worth less than another. The weight of that was like no other I have ever felt or imagined—crushing, disintegrating, and wretched at its core. I wondered whether Mulch would see the agony of my predicament crippling my posture, worming through my mind, and gnawing at my skin like some flesh-eating bacteria.
Would he feed on it?
Is this what he wanted to see?
Was I his entertainment?
For much of the night leading up to that moment, I’d been thinking hard about Mulch, about what could possibly be driving him. Atticus Jones thought that Mulch had simply fallen in love with murder and with getting away with murder. Forcing me to kill for his amusement was just a twisted next step.
So be it, I thought numbly. I’m dooming my soul to save the ones I love. Feeling the torture of that, I set the pistol on the picnic table, picked up the GoPro, brought it close to my face, and whispered in a wavering voice, “This is how you want to see it, isn’t it? From my point of view?”
Then I turned the camera away slowly, took the harness hanging from the bottom, and fit it and the camera on my head. After adjusting the camera so it could pick up the gun if my arm was extended to shoot, I set off toward the building.
The temperature was in the sixties, but to me it felt like the air had been heated to a hundred degrees or more. My breath turned labored. Sweat trickled off my brow and from under my arms. And yet my hands were clammy, as if I’d just touched the cold skin of a day-old corpse.
Hearing the gravel crunch under my shoes like so many tiny brittle bones, I turned my head and the camera, giving Mulch multiple angles of the building. I drifted the camera across the sign for A. J. Machine Tool and Die before going around the near corner of the building and passing a closed loading dock. I climbed cement stairs to a door, twisted the knob, and opened it.
CHAPTER
42
INSIDE THE LOADING DOCK, the only light, a red bulb, revealed boxes, dollies, and hand trucks. With slow, soft steps I went to an interior door and hesitated there, my head bent, looking down at my gun hand and my gloved free hand, which hovered over the thumb latch. My shoulders trembled, and I wondered if I had the strength to press the latch, much less pull a trigger.
“Do it,” I choked out softly. “Just do it.”
Then I thumbed the latch and drew the door open. I raised my head, which raised the camera, and both shook ever so slightly, as if I were in the first stages of Parkinson’s disease. I stepped through into the machine shop. Without pausing to look around, I pivoted and slowly shut the door so the click was no louder than the second hand ticking on my grandmother’s clock.
The shop was lit like the loading dock, with red lights glowing in cages bolted high on the walls every thirty feet or so. At the rear of the space, however, several bright lights shone in an office with windows that were opaque for the first three feet and then clear, as if the manager liked his privacy but also wanted to be able to look out at his workers. I stood several long moments, peering intently over the tops of heavy metal lathes, drill presses, planers, cutting tools, and bending devices, until I saw dark movement behind the lower, opaque glass.
“He’s in there, Mulch,” I said in the barest of whispers.
Then I set off slowly through the machine shop, hyperaware of everything around me, sidestepping rebar and pipe, pausing in the darkness next to two of the biggest machines to listen and peer out until I spotted a shadow moving behind the glass.
The side door to the office was open, throwing a thick shaft of light toward heavy-duty shelving that held stacks of sheet metal and steel bar. Ten feet from that light, I hesitated again, thinking I could not go through with it, that I could not sacrifice an innocent human being even if it meant saving another innocent human being who just happened to be more precious to me.
But could I imagine having to face another member of my family dead, beaten to a pulp and carved up for fetish reasons I couldn’t begin to fathom?
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. The war inside me echoed in the short, sharp breaths I was taking and in the jerky way I stepped into the dim light.
Wearing a green baseball cap and a green jacket that said SECURITY, an old black man sat with his back turned not ten feet from me, hunched over, facing one of those old rolltop desks. He was hunt-and-peck typing on a computer keyboard. The screen was big, but he craned his neck toward it as if he could barely see what he was working on.
“Sir,” I said softly. “I’m here, sir. It’s time.”
The man froze for a long moment, then hunched over more and said, “Let me close this. One last letter to my daughter.”
I just stood there, looking at his back, sniffling and feeling tears dripping down my cheeks. The computer screen went dark.
Atticus Jones swiveled in the chair to face me. Despite the shadows, I could make out his expression of resoluteness and courage. He licked his lips before he said, “I’ve lived a long life, young man, but the pain’s too much. You’re doing me a favor; nothing wrong with mercy. I want to see my wife again. I want to see my mother and my father. I want you to see your loved ones too. In this life, not the next.”
“Yes, sir,” I sobbed. “And may God have mercy on my soul.”
Then Jones clasped his hands and bowed his head. A slat of light crossed his face, and then it was lost in shadow.
I raised the Colt shakily, the barrel wavering during several sharp breaths before the wispy white hair of his head steadied in the Colt’s sights.
And I squeezed the trigger.
And I shot that wonderful old man dead.
Part Three
CHAPTER
43
SUNDAY HIT PAUSE, STARED at the dead man on the computer screen.
“Look it there, Marcus,” Acadia purred. “Cross made it a mercy killing. Bet you weren’t expecting that. I know I wasn’t, but even so, it’s made me hornier than ought to be allowed in civilized—”
<
br /> He cut her off, snarling, “My love? With all due respect for your insatiable libido, please shut the fuck up.”
They were in the living room of an apartment Sunday had rented in Washington’s Kalorama neighborhood. He sat on the couch. She and Cochran stood behind him.
“Why should I shut the fuck up?” Acadia demanded hotly after a moment’s pause. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Cross a murderer, an existential man? Or are you just pissed that he’s made it seem more like a blessing than a killing?”
Sunday wanted to spin around and slap her silly. But he restrained himself and said, “It has nothing to do with that. I’m thinking, Acadia. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you? Thinking?”
“Screw you, Marcus,” she said, and she stormed down the hall, went into the bedroom, and slammed the door.
“Don’t matter,” Cochran said. He came around to the front of the couch. “’Bout it being a mercy killing, I mean. He did it, pulled the trigger. Straight up.”
Sunday said nothing. Part of him agreed. But then he noticed a stirring in his gut.
Gut feelings had saved Sunday in more than one desperate situation. Gut feelings had led him to torch Thierry Mulch all those years ago, hadn’t they? Gut feelings had made him a fortune, given him freedom, hadn’t they?
They had, and as he continued to study that image of the dead man, Sunday realized that his stomach had gone nervous and acidic when it should have been calm and alkaline. Watching the video had made him feel vulnerable.
But why?
Why was he so agitated? However Cross tried to mitigate his crime, Cochran was right: he had done the deed. There was no doubt about that, was there? No. Cross had abandoned moral order. Cross had become a cold-blooded murderer. Cross had become a universe unto himself. Just like me, Sunday thought.
But something about the victim bothered him, something beyond the fact that the man appeared to have been terminally ill and eager for death. Something about that man seemed … well … off.
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.”
CHAPTER
44
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.”
CHAPTER
45
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—