You stand apart from the moral universe, he told himself as he slowed and donned a black balaclava. The laws of God and man do not bind you, Thierry Mulch. You, my friend, are the perfect criminal.
Buzzing on that idea, he slipped around the back of the main house and moved to the addition. The studs of the new room were up. So were the trusses and roof boards. Visqueen sheeting had been wrapped and stapled all around the perimeter.
Sunday got a utility knife from one of his cargo pockets. With the wind blustering all around him, he slit open the plastic where it met the house. When he had a flap about three feet long, he let it go, saw the piece flapping in the wind. He got duct tape out of the backpack. He tore a piece roughly the same length as the cut and pressed it gently against the outer flap.
Then Sunday crawled through the slit onto plywood floors covered in sawdust that whirled into the breeze. He almost choked on the dust before he could draw the duct tape tight to the side of the house. Getting to his feet, he brushed off the sawdust, moved toward the space that used to be the kitchen.
It was pitch-dark, and despite his familiarity with the general layout, Sunday was finally forced to get out a small night-vision monocle he’d bought from the Cabela’s catalog. He flipped it on and pressed the electronic spyglass to his right eye.
Cross’s inner sanctum now appeared in a soft green glow, making it more like the virtual version of the home, which suited Sunday. In seconds he found the plastic sheeting that separated the construction space from the rest of the house. As quietly as he could, the writer separated the Velcro fastener and stepped into Cross’s dining room.
He scanned it, seeing the table and the portable double burner and fridge. A few more moments’ study and Sunday had his spots picked out. He climbed up onto the table, got out a listening bug, activated it, and fixed it to the chain above the modest chandelier. Then he set a tiny motion-activated fiber-optic bug, transmitter, and nine-volt lithium battery in a spider plant in the corner, fish-eye lens aimed toward the table.
“Strong signals from both,” Acadia said in his ear.
Sunday made a light clucking noise with his tongue to tell her he’d heard and headed to the front room, where he placed an audio bug behind the sofa and a second optical bug in the bristles of the fireplace broom, aimed up at the couch and chairs. Then he went to the staircase and climbed as slowly and methodically as he’d practiced, keeping his weight well to the edges of the risers so they would not squeak.
Reaching the landing right beside Cross’s bedroom, Sunday grinned insanely at his audacity. If he wanted, he could open the door and shoot them both, or shoot Cross and take Bree. Anything he wanted. Everything was possible in an existential world.
Be patient, he thought. This will be so much better if you let it all play out.
Chapter
57
Sunday climbed up the second staircase to the attic and Cross’s fortress of solitude. When he reached the detective’s private office his heart was pounding. Was this what Raskolnikov felt as he planned the pawnbroker’s death?
Of course he did, the writer thought giddily. This sensation is classic, timeless, and shared by everyone on the face of the earth. Humans love causing destruction, especially of another human, especially those who have climbed highest. We just like to see them fall. It was just the way things worked.
He crossed to the gable window and drew down the shade. Then he pocketed the night-vision scope, turned on the desk lamp, and gazed around the room with great pleasure, thinking, How does that old song go?
Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby?
For several minutes, he hummed the tune, letting his happy attention dance over the shelves and the walls, the photographs, the mementos, the framed accolades and diplomas, and comparing it all to the photograph Acadia’s young computer genius had used in the virtual house.
Incredibly close, he thought. A book moved here. A picture there. But all in all it’s the same. Cross doesn’t like change, especially not in his sanctuary.
A weakness, he decided, one that he should exploit somehow.
Sunday set that idea aside for the moment and set about bugging the office, putting a keystroke repeater between the cable connected to the desktop computer and the wall socket that fed the Internet. Anything that Cross typed would be recorded and a transcript would immediately be sent to an anonymous website that Acadia had set up.
On the credenza behind the desk, Sunday taped an audio bug to the underside of the leg of a picture frame that held a photograph of Dr. Alex and his bride on their wedding day.
What about the last optical bug? Sunday looked around and spotted the perfect place. On the top shelf of a bookshelf opposite the desk, he fitted the tiny camera, transmitter, and nine-volt lithium battery between and behind two books on homicide investigation.
When he was satisfied the bug would not be seen unless Cross took down one of the books—an unlikely move—he went to sit in the detective’s chair, smiled at the camera, and murmured, “Test.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you look great in black?” Acadia said. “The mask especially is an improvement.”
He shot her the finger, checked his watch. It was 2:27 a.m.
Sunday was about to call it good and leave when he noticed tacked to the wall behind the desk the article about the mass murders that formed the basis of his book, The Perfect Criminal. Unable to help himself, he thumbed through the pages, looking for the places where the journalist had quoted him.
To his surprise, he saw that they’d been underlined. Cross had written something in the margin. Sunday had to turn the pages to see it.
“Grandstander in general, but this seems smart,” it read. “What else does he know?”
Grandstander? I know more than you, Cross. So much more than you.