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“Jesus,” Sunday said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
“Thank you,” Cross said. “Ever heard of him? Thierry Mulch?”
Be calm, Sunday thought. Carry on smoothly. But what was Cross’s game? How much did he know? How much should Sunday say? He decided to go on instinct, his intimate ally in the past.
“I can’t say I’ve ever heard the name, as unusual as it is,” Sunday replied. “Who is he?”
“The son of Bea Daley,” Cross replied.
Sunday’s mind whirled with the implications of that statement. Cross now had a link that, to Sunday’s knowledge, no one else had. But that link in no way indicated that Cross had connected Mulch to Sunday. He was positive of that.
“You must be mistaken, Dr. Cross. Bea Daley’s son, Ross, died in the house with the rest of the family.”
“Turns out she had another son in another life before she met Daley.”
“What? Where? In Montana?”
“Buckhannon, West Virginia,” Cross said. “Bea was Lydia Mulch back then. She met Calvin Daley when he worked as an engineer at a coal mine there, and ran away with him, leaving her son behind. She changed her name legally in Montana and then moved to Omaha and married Calvin. That story she told people about being raised in Montana was fiction.”
“So what are you saying?” Sunday said coolly. “You think this Thierry Mulch character killed the Daley family?”
“I do,” Cross said.
“But the killer left no evidence,” Sunday
said. “So you can’t say for sure. Or can you?”
“Not good enough for a jury, if that’s what you mean,” Cross admitted. “But there’s more. Alice Monahan? She was once Alice Littlefield.”
“Correct. Born in Anchorage, I think.”
“That’s right,” the detective said. “And she graduated from Deerfield Academy after spending two years in Buckhannon High School.”
“I … I didn’t know that.”
“It was there in the evidence.” Cross sighed. “But no one attached any significance to it until now.”
“Well,” Sunday said, making a point of sounding dejected, “I guess my perfect criminal wasn’t so perfect after all.”
“Oh, Mulch was close to perfect,” Cross said. “Had all sorts of people believing he was dead for decades. No one suspects a ghost in a series of mass murders.”
“So why exactly did you call me?”
“I don’t know,” Cross admitted, sounding as if he was bearing a heavy burden. “J. P. Vincente thought you might have come across something that we could use to help us find Mulch before he kills my family.”
“You don’t know where this Mulch is?”
“We have no idea.”
Cross sounded frustrated and sincere, and Sunday’s shoulders relaxed before he said in a soothing voice, “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Dr. Cross. I’m terribly sorry, and sorry for your … horrible, horrible situation.”
“Sorry I wasted your time.”
“You didn’t waste my time,” Sunday said. “You actually did me a favor.”
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“You gave me the heads-up,” he replied. “I’m going to have to amend the book now, and I should probably start by researching Mr. Thierry Mulch and Buckhannon, West Virginia. That was the name of the place, wasn’t it?”
