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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?”

CHAPTER
12
     
    COULD MULCH HAVE KIDNAPPED my entire family in less than ten hours, starting with Damon at his prep school in the Berkshires, on his own?
    On Good Friday morning, Damon was supposed to have taken a 7:45 jitney from campus to the Albany train station, but according to the driver, at the last minute, Damon told a friend that he was canceling because he’d gotten a ride to Washington.
    But with whom? Mulch? Or someone else?
    We hadn’t been able to answer those questions because the Kraft School, like Sojourner Truth, had been closed for vacation.
    In any case, I knew from personal experience that the drive from the Kraft School to DC takes at least seven hours, and Good Friday traffic had to have been thick. So let’s say eight hours. That put Mulch in Washington around four.
    Bree, Ali, Jannie, and Nana Mama were all taken in the following two hours. Theoretically, then, it
was
possible that Mulch had done this alone. But if so, he’d acted with what felt like pinpoint and ruthless precision.
    “My instincts say he had help,” I said. “The sperm found at the rape and the murder scene supports that too.”
    “How’s that?” Mahoney asked.
    “Unless Elliot was a homosexual, it makes sense to me that Mulch had a female accomplice. She lured the kid in for sex, saved his sperm, probably from a condom, and Mulch killed him afterward.”
    “It fits,” Quintus said.
    It did fit. As if a fog bank were lifting, we were beginning to get a clearer view of the world behind us, a world I would have given my soul to return to.
    I said, “Can someone go back to George Mason, back to Elliot’s friends, ask them about any women he might have been seeing?”
    “I’ll do it myself,” Mahoney promised.
    I looked at Sampson. “Feel like driving?”
    “Where we going?”
    “That farm where they found Elliot’s bones.”
    “Uh,” Captain Quintus began, sharing a glance with Mahoney. “You sure you want to be working now, Alex?”
    My breath turned shallow. “I can’t just sit here and wait for more members of my family to show up dead, Cap. I refuse to. That’s what Mulch wants and I just won’t do it.”
    “Alex,” Mahoney said. “Maybe—”
    I glared at my old friend, said, “If I don’t work, Ned, I’ll be lost to Bree, and I won’t be lost to her. Not now.”
    Mahoney nodded slowly and then gestured at Sampson and said, “But you’re driving, John. With that head injury, he’s still in no condition