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We went downstairs to the hotel restaurant, and I ordered four eggs, toast, bacon, potatoes, and coffee. Aaliyah ordered oatmeal and fruit. While we waited for the food to come, I looked up the number for the Jennings, Louisiana, police department on the Internet and then called. A female dispatcher answered. I identified myself and asked if there were any detectives or officers still around from the year that Acadia Le Duc got a sealed file in juvenile court. After a long pause, I was told I’d need to talk with the Jefferson Davis Parish sheriff’s office.
Our food came. Sensing that this might be a long hard day, I ate it all before looking up the sheriff’s phone number. The deputy who answered the phone said that Sheriff Paul Gauvin fit my searc
h criteria, but he was at a training seminar and wouldn’t be back for an hour or so. The deputy said he would give Sheriff Gauvin my number when he called in.
Even though it was early, I called the court clerk in Jennings, Louisiana. Surprisingly, he answered the phone. Figuring I’d get shot down on the juvenile file, I asked if he could call up all civil and criminal files on anyone with the surname Le Duc.
A few moments later, he returned and said, “There’s something from the late nineties on the girl, but it’s sealed. There are two old lawsuits regarding land boundaries that are more than twenty years old. And there are several old criminal cases involving the father, but Jean, well, he has been dead for years, since the late nineties.”
The way the clerk said that last bit—emphasizing the late nineties—sounded odd, so I said, “How’d he die?”
“His gators got him,” the clerk replied. “Any more than that, you need to talk with the sheriff. He worked all that nasty business back then.”
The clerk hung up before I could get another word in, and I was left spinning my wheels, waiting for a call from Sheriff Gauvin but wondering if the way the clerk had said the words the late nineties was meant to tip me off that Acadia’s sealed juvenile case had something to do with her father’s death by gators.
It kind of made twisted sense if that was so. Thierry Mulch had fed his father and Preston Elliot to the pigs, after all. How had Mulch and Acadia met? Did one monster sense the other and, what, confide? I’d seen it before, usually among male serial killers who’d taken on younger apprentices.
But an alliance between monsters of different genders? I couldn’t come up with an example of it, other than Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, and that seemed a weak case, at best, because they were bank robbers who happened to kill, not murderers who happened to kidnap.
CHAPTER
66
IN A CRANKY, FOUL mood around eleven thirty that morning, Sunday sat in the rented pickup truck watching a small tan bungalow down a side street in Corpus Christi, Texas. Summer had come early. It was blistering hot out, ninety-two in the shade, and humid beyond belief. Worse, he’d barely slept in the past thirty hours, and he’d been pissing in a bottle since leaving Memphis.
He’d dozed off and on since arriving around six twenty, but he’d woken up whenever a car or pedestrian had passed, and he was sure that Acadia had not gone into the house. He was also positive that no one had left in the almost five hours he’d been sitting in the heat, turning the AC on every few minutes and wanting to punch out the window.
There was always the possibility that Acadia had gotten here first and had put her car in the garage before six twenty. Or he could have guessed wrong. But when he’d considered the three places she’d be most likely to head in times of turmoil, he’d followed his gut and come here first. How long should he give it?
His head was starting to spin and pound, and he knew he was in no condition to make decisions. He’d have to give in and sleep.
Sunday was just about to turn on the car, and the AC, and shut his eyes for an hour when, in the rearview mirror, he spotted a green Mini Cooper turning onto the street. He immediately slid across the bench seat, head down, and waited until the Mini passed, then he glided out the passenger door and galloped down the sidewalk wearing blue shorts, a sleeveless T, running shoes, sunglasses, and a visor pulled down low over his eyes.
The Mini slowed. The bungalow’s garage door rose as the car turned into the short uphill drive. Sunday slowed too, eyes patrolling the suburban street and seeing it deserted in the blistering heat of day. When the Mini’s nose passed into the garage, he took one last glance around and exploded diagonally toward it.
The Mini was inside. The door engaged and began to lower. Sunday dove over the security beam and then barrel-rolled into the garage. A second later, he was crouched behind the left rear bumper and the garage was closed off from the street.
Sunday froze as the driver’s door opened and shut, and he heard footsteps walking across the floor to a set of wooden stairs. A key turned in a lock. The door opened and stood ajar. Sunday heard the first beep and made his move, dancing along and around the front of the Mini and up the steps as more beeps echoed in the garage.
A loud buzz sounded, signaling that the security code had turned off the system. In a heartbeat, Sunday was through the door and on her from behind, clamping one hand over her mouth before she had the chance to scream and driving her across the hallway and up against the wall.
He ground his hips hard against her rear and pushed his face close to the left ear of a terrified redheaded woman dressed in purple hospital scrubs.
“Hello, Jillian,” he growled. “Just getting off shift?”
CHAPTER
67
A FORMER CLASSMATE OF Acadia’s in nursing school and the closest his ex-lover had to a best friend forever, Jillian Green squealed into Sunday’s hand, sounding so much like a sow going to slaughter that he almost laughed.
“Where is Acadia?” he snarled. “And if you scream or lie, I will hurt you. I don’t want to. But I will. Do you understand?”
Tears welled in Jillian Green’s eyes and she nodded, trembling.
“Please, Marcus,” she whined when he removed his hand and turned her to face him.
Jillian was thick and busty, not at all his type, but he was still happy to press against her with his forearm across her throat and say, “Where is my girl?”
