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“Ned,” I managed. “If we don’t catch him, he’ll carve them all up in the same twisted way.”
“That’s not happening,” said Captain Roelof Antonius Quintus, my boss, who was coming toward me with other members of the task force. “If that Jane Doe turns out to be Bree, he’s killed a DC cop. At the very least, he’s kidnapped a DC cop’s family. For that, he will pay.”
The rest of the detectives and FBI agents behind him nodded grimly.
“Thank you, Captain,” I said, nodding to the others. “Thank you all for everything you’re doing.”
I got out the envelope I’d taken from Dawson’s office.
“I went to Sojourner Truth and found the principal back from vacation,” I told them. “I have a business card Mulch gave her when he went there to speak to the kids.”
I handed it over to the captain, explaining about the fake website that was almost like the one a real Thierry Mulch ran.
“Everything was the same except the picture of Mulch. It took sophisticated computer work. The kind Preston Elliot could do in his sleep.”
Quintus, Sampson, and Mahoney exchanged glances.
“Why don’t you sit down, Alex,” the captain said.
“What’s going on?”
Quintus took a deep breath and pointed to a chair. Reluctantly, I sat in it, and I felt my eyes begin to burn even before Ned Mahoney spoke.
“Three days ago, the Fairfax County sheriff was called to a commercial pig farm in Berryville, Virginia,” Mahoney began. “The owner found a human skull and a piece of femur in some machinery. Quantico ran the DNA and got three immediate matches.”
I squinted at the light in the room, which suddenly felt too strong. “Three?”
Sampson said, “Semen taken from that rape scene in Alexandria, semen taken from the pants leg of Mandy Bell Lee’s murdered attorney, and the hair sample Preston Elliot’s mother filed as part of his missing-persons report.”
It took several moments before I grasped the implications of all that. Ten days before, the attorney of country-western star Mandy Bell Lee had been found poisoned in his room at the Mandarin Oriental. That same night, a man who called himself Thierry Mulch had raped a woman in Alexandria.
Since we had clear DNA evidence linking the rape and the murder to Preston Elliot, we had been working under the assumption that the missing computer engineering student and Mulch were one and the same.
But Mulch was not Elliot. He could not be Elliot because the DNA match on the bones found at the pigsty was dead certain, which meant …
“Mulch killed Elliot and dumped his body in that pig barn,” I said.
“We think so,” Sampson said, nodding. “Pigs’ll eat anything you throw at them.”
I remembered something Ali had told me about Mulch.
“It fits. When Mulch spoke at Ali’s school, he said that he’d grown up on a pig farm.”
“So how do we think this worked?” Captain Quintus asked. “Mulch got Elliot’s sperm before he killed him?”
“Why not?” Sampson replied. “It’s a brilliant way for Mulch to throw us, isn’t it? Plant a dead man’s DNA at a rape scene and at a murder?”
“This sonofabitch is diabolical,” Mahoney said.
“You’re right,” I said. “Mulch is diabolical. He’s very smart, thinks long term, and is cruel and audacious, which strikes me as narcissistically evil.”
Captain Quintus nodded. “Believes in himself above all others, thinks he’s too smart to get caught.”
“Which means he’s gotten away with serious shit before,” Sampson said. “It’s mutually reinforcing with these guys.”
Mahoney said, “What I’d like to know is, is Mulch acting solo, or are there others involved in what he’s doing?”
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