“I understand. I agree to your terms.”
“Excellent,” Mulch said. “Your surviving family members will very much appreciate your actions. So let’s set a deadline, shall we? Say, twenty-four hours?”
“Thirty-six,” I said.
“Twenty-four,” he replied.
“I can’t just do it. I have to develop a plan.”
“Thirty hours,” Mulch shot back finally. “And remember: I want proof. Video proof. And you damn well better be full in the frame, or there’ll be one less Cross come tomorrow night. By the way, this is the last time this number will work.”
“How exactly am I supposed to get proof to you, then?” I demanded.
“Go on Craigslist New Orleans an hour before the deadline,” he said. “Click Casual Encounters and look for a personal ad from TM in the men-looking-for-women section. E-mail the video to the poster.”
He hung up.
Setting down the phone I’d bought at a truck stop near Richmond, Virginia, the night before, I looked at Ava, who was curled up in a ball in the passenger seat. She looked played out.
I said, “You can leave anytime you want, you know. No hard feelings.”
Acting a little insulted, Ava said, “I’m not going anywhere except with you.”
I started the unmarked car. “All I’m saying is that, at some point, you might want to bail, and if you do, it’s okay. I will never hold it against you. Ever.”
Ava said nothing, just reached over and turned up the heat. We were in a campground in Glen Maury Park, three miles off Interstate 81, west of Lynchburg. She’d driven the entire five hours to get there while I’d used Jannie’s computer to go through the flash drive I’d taken from the task force. The drive contained all the files and leads the six-investigator team had generated since my family was taken, as well as my own research into Thierry Mulch.
We’d gotten to the campground around three in the morning and found it empty. We’d slept, me in the front seat, Ava in the back beneath my jacket. I am a big man, and the front seat was probably the most uncomfortable place I have ever slept. But I passed out almost immediately and didn’t stir until I heard Ava get out to go to the outhouse.
The five hours of sleep had evidently let my deep subconscious digest t
he bizarre and violent events of the prior day as well as everything I’d managed to read during the long ride to the park.
Now, in the gathering light, my short-term plan of attack seemed as plain as day.
CHAPTER
27
THE VERY FIRST TIME Thierry Mulch contacted me—by letter, during the investigation into the massage-parlor murders—I’d done a long Internet search and found only a handful of men spread out around the country who had that name. Every single one of the Thierry Mulches checked out, and none of them looked remotely like the red-bearded, red-haired man who’d shown up at Sojourner Truth.
There was also one other Thierry Mulch I’d come across, in an obituary. He’d died in a terrible car crash at age nineteen in West Virginia.
Had someone adopted the dead Mulch’s identity? Maybe the man who had my family used the name only when he was dealing with me.
The dead Mulch was an extreme long shot, but we were going to check it out.
I put the car in gear, left the park, got back on I-81, and headed north toward the interchange with I-64 near the border with West Virginia. We stopped at a truck stop near Covington later that morning, and I bought gas, food, and coffee and withdrew another five hundred dollars from an ATM.
When we were well into West Virginia, almost to Lewisburg, Ava finally said, “Where are we going?”
“A small town called Buckhannon.”
“Does it have to do with Mulch?”
“It might.”
“Was that Mulch you were on the phone with this morning?”