Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls Read online

  It was a tale about a young woman who was being held “captive” by the Gentleman Caller in California.

  The young woman’s name: Naomi C. Her occupation: Second-year law student.

  Description: Black, very attractive. Twenty-two years old.

  Naomi was twenty-two… a second-year law student… How could a savage, recreational killer in Los Angeles know anything about Naomi Cross?

  Chapter 43

  I IMMEDIATELY called the reporter at the paper whose byline appeared on the diary stories. Her name was Beth Lieberman. She answered her own phone at the Los Angeles Times.

  “My name is Alex Cross. I’m a homicide detective involved with the Casanova murders in North Carolina,” I told her. My heart was pounding as I tried to quickly explain my situation.

  “I know exactly who you are, Dr. Cross,” Beth Lieberman cut me off. “You’re writing a book about this. So am I. For obvious reasons, I don’t think I have anything to say to you. My own book proposal is circulating around New York right now.”

  “Writing a book? Who told you that? I’m not writing any book.” My voice level was rising in spite of my better instincts. “I’m investigating a spree of kidnappings and murders in North Carolina. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “The chief of detectives in D.C. says otherwise, Dr. Cross. I called him when I read you were involved with the Casanova case.”

  The Jefe strikes again, I thought. My old boss in D.C., George Pittman, was a complete asshole, who also wasn’t a fan of mine. “I wrote a book about Gary Soneji,” I said. “Past tense. I needed to get it out of my system. Trust me, I’m—”

  “History!”

  Beth Lieberman hung up on me. Bang!

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered into the dead receiver in my hand. I dialed the paper again. This time I got a secretary on the line. “I’m sorry, Ms. Lieberman has left for the day,” she said in a staccato cadence.

  I was a little hot. “She must have left in the ten seconds it just took me to get reconnected. Please put Ms. Lieberman back on the phone. I know she’s there. Put her on now.”

  The secretary also hung up on me.

  “You’re a son of a bitch, too!” I said to the dead phone line. “Dammit all to hell.”

  I was getting noncooperation in two cities on the same case now. The infuriating part was that I thought I might be on to something. Was there some kind of bizarre connection between Casanova and the killer on the West Coast? How could the Gentleman Caller possibly know about Naomi? Did he know about me as well?

  It was just a hunch so far, but much too good to brush aside. I called the editor in chief at the Los Angeles Times. It was easier to get through to the big man than it was to his reporter. The editor’s assistant was a male. His phone voice was crisp, efficient, but as pleasant as Sunday brunch at the Ritz-Carlton in D.C.

  I told him that I was Dr. Alex Cross, that I’d been involved in the Gary Soneji investigation, and that I had some important information on the Gentleman Caller case. Two-thirds of that was absolutely true.

  “I’ll tell Mr. Hills,” the assistant informed me, still sounding as if he were pleased as punch to hear from me. I was thinking it would be nifty to have an assistant like that.

  It didn’t take long for the editor in chief to come on the phone himself. “Alex Cross,” he said, “Dan Hills. I read about you during the Soneji manhunt. Glad to take your call, especially if you have something for us on this messy affair.”

  As I talked to Dan Hills, I pictured a big man in his late forties. Tough enough, but California-dapper at the same time. Pinstriped shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. Hand-painted tie. Stanford all the way. He asked me to call him Dan. Okay, I could do that. He seemed like a nice guy. Probably had a Pulitzer or two.

  I told him about Naomi, and my involvement with the Casanova case in North Carolina. I also told him about the Naomi entry in the L.A. diaries.

  “I’m sorry about your niece’s disappearance,” Dan Hills said. “I can imagine what you’re going through.” There was a pause over the line. I was afraid that Dan was about to be either politically or socially correct with me. “Beth Lieberman is a good young reporter,” he went on. “She’s tough, but she’s professional. This is a big story for her, and for us as well.”

  “Listen,” I cut off Hills—I had to. “Naomi wrote me a letter almost every week that she was in school. I saved those letters, all of them. I helped to bring her up. We’re close. That means a lot to me.”

  “I hear you. I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though.”

  “No promises, Dan.”

  Good to his word, Dan Hills called me back at the FBI offices within the hour. “Well, we had a meeting of the minds out here,” he told me. “I talked to Beth. As you can imagine, this puts both of us in a tough spot.”

  “I understand what you’re telling me,” I said. I was cushioning myself for a soft blow, but I got something else.

  “There are mentions of Casanova in the unedited versions of the diaries that the Gentleman sent her. It sounds like the two of them could be talking, even sharing exploits. Almost as if they’re friends. It seems like they’re communicating for some reason.”

  Bingo!

  The monsters were communicating.

  Now I thought I knew what the FBI had been keeping secret, what they were afraid would come out in the open.

  There were coast-to-coast serial killers.

  Chapter 44

  RUN! GO! Just run your butt off! Get the hell out of here now!

  Kate McTiernan staggered and weaved out through the heavy wooden door he had left open behind him.

  She didn’t know how badly Casanova was hurt. Escape was her only thought. Go now! Get away from him while you can.

  Her mind was playing tricks on her. Confusing images came and went, without making the proper connections. The drug, whatever it was, was taking its full toll. She was disoriented.

  Kate touched her face, and realized her cheeks were wet. Was she crying? She couldn’t even tell that for sure.

  She was barely able to climb a steep wooden stairway outside her door. Was it heading to another floor? Had she just come up these stairs? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything.

  She was hopelessly bewildered and confused now. Had she really knocked Casanova down, or was she hallucinating?

  Was he coming after her? Was he racing up the stairs behind her right now? Blood was roaring in her ears. She felt dizzy enough to fall down.

  Naomi, Melissa Stanfield, Christa Akers. Where were they being held?

  Kate was having tremendous difficulty navigating her way through the house. She weaved like a drunken person down the long hallway. What kind of strange structure was she in? It looked like a house. The walls were new, freshly built, but what kind of house was this?

  “Naomi!” she called out, but her voice barely made a sound. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus for more than a few seconds. Who was Naomi? She couldn’t remember exactly.

  She stopped and pulled hard on a doorknob. The door wouldn’t open for her. Why was the door locked? What on earth was she looking for? What was she doing here? The drugs wouldn’t allow her to think in straight lines.

  I’m going into shock, trauma, she thought. She felt so cold and numb now. Everything that could gallop was galloping out of control inside her head.

  He’s coming to kill me. He’s coming from behind!

  Escape! she commanded herself. Find the way out. Focus on that! Bring back help.

  She came to another flight of wooden stairs that looked ancient, almost from another era. Dirt was caked on the stairway. Soil. Little rocks and glass fragments. These were really old stairs. Not like the new wood inside.

  Kate couldn’t keep her balance any longer. She pitched forward suddenly and almost hit her chin on the second stair. She kept crawling, scrabbling, up the stairs. She was on her knees. Climbing stairs. Toward what? An attic? Where would she
end up? Would he be there, waiting for her with the paralyzing stun gun and the syringe?

  Suddenly she was outside! She was actually out of the house! She had made it somehow.

  Kate McTiernan was half blinded by the streaming bands of sunlight, but the world had never looked so beautiful. She breathed in the sweet smell of the gums of trees: oaks, sycamores, towering Carolina pines, with no limbs except at the very top. Kate looked at the woods and the sky, high, high above, and she cried. Tears washed down her face.

  Kate stared up at the tall, tall pines. Scuppernongs reached from treetop to treetop. She’d grown up in woods like these.

  Escape; she suddenly thought of Casanova again. Kate tried to run a few steps. She fell again. She did the hands-and-knees waltz. She lurched back to her feet. Run! Get away from here!

  Kate turned around in a full, sweeping circle. She kept on turning—once, twice, three times—until she almost fell again.

  No, no, no! The voice inside her head was loud, screaming at her. She couldn’t believe her eyes, couldn’t trust any of her senses.

  This was the weirdest, craziest thing yet. It was the scariest daydream. There was no house! There was no house anywhere Kate looked as she whirled and turned in circles under the towering pines.

  The house, wherever she had been kept, had completely disappeared.

  Chapter 45

  RUN! MOVE your damn legs fast, one after the other. Faster! Faster than that, girl. Run away from him.

  She tried to concentrate on finding her way out of the dark, dense forest. The tall Carolina pines were like umbrellas that filtered light onto the hardwoods that grew beneath them. There wasn’t enough light for the young saplings, and they stood like uptight tree skeletons.

  He would be coming after her now. He had to try to catch her, and he’d kill her if he did. She was pretty sure she hadn’t hurt him very badly, though God knows she had tried.

  Kate settled into a herky-jerky rhythm of running and stumbling forward. The forest floor was soft and spongy, a carpet of pine straw and leaves. Long spindly briar brambles grew straight up from the ground, reaching for the sunlight. She felt like a bramble herself.

  Have to rest… hide… let the drugs wear off, Kate mumbled to herself. Then go get help… logical thing to do. Get the police.

  Then she heard him crashing about behind her. He screamed out her name. “Kate! Kate! Stop right now!” His voice echoed loudly through the forest.

  His bravado had to mean that nobody was around for miles; nobody to help her in the godforsaken woods. She was on her own out here.

  “Kate! I’m going to get you! It’s inevitable, so stop running!”

  She climbed a steep, rocky hill that seemed like Mount Everest in her exhausted state. A black snake was sunning itself on a smooth patch of rock. The snake looked like a fallen tree limb, and Kate almost stooped to pick it up. She thought she could use it as a support. The startled black snake slithered away, and she was afraid she was hallucinating again.

  “Kate! Kate! You’re doomed! I’m so angry now!”

  She went down hard in a mesh of honeysuckle and pointy rocks. Excruciating pain shot through her left leg, but she pushed herself up again. Ignore the blood. Ignore the pain. Keep going.

  You have to get away. You have to bring help. Just keep running. You’re smarter, faster, more resourceful than you think you are. You’re going to make it!

  She heard him pounding up the steep hill—the mountainside—whatever she had just climbed herself. He was very close.

  “I’m right here, Kate! Hey, Katie, I’m coming up behind you! Here I am!”

  Kate finally turned around. Curiosity and terror got the best of her.

  He was climbing easily. She could see his white flannel shirt flashing through the almost-black trees below, and his long blond hair. Casanova! He was still wearing his mask. The stun gun, or some kind of gun, was in his hand.

  He was laughing loudly. Why was he laughing now?

  Kate stopped running. All hope of getting away suddenly left her. She experienced a jolting moment of shock and disbelief: she cried out in anguish. She was going to die right here, she knew.

  Kate whispered, “God’s will.” That was all there was now, nothing else.

  The top of the steep hill ended abruptly in a canyon. Steep, sheer rock dropped at least a hundred feet. Only a few bare scrub pines grew out of the rock. There was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to run. Kate thought it was such a sad, lonely place to die.

  “Poor Katie!’ Casanova screamed. “Poor baby!”

  She turned to see him again. There he was! Forty yards, thirty, then twenty yards away. Casanova watched her as he climbed up the steep hillside. He never took his eyes off her. The painted black mask seemed immobile, fixed on her.

  Kate turned away from him, turned her back on the death mask. She peered down at the steep valley of rocks and trees. It must be a hundred feet, maybe more than that, she thought. The dizziness she felt was almost as terrifying as the deadly alternative rushing up behind her.

  She heard him scream her name. “Kate, no!”

  She didn’t look behind her again.

  Kate McTiernan jumped.

  She tucked in her knees and held on to them. Just your regular swimming-hole cannonball leap, she thought to herself.

  There was a stream down below. The silver-blue ribbon of water was coming at her unbelievably fast. The roar was getting louder in her ears.

  She had no idea how deep it was, but how deep could a small stream like that be? Two feet? Maybe four feet? Ten feet deep if these were the luckiest few seconds of her life, which she sincerely doubted.

  “Kate!” She heard his screams from high above. “You’re dead!’

  She saw tiny whitecaps—which meant rocks beneath the rippling water. Oh, dear God, I don’t want to die.

  Kate hit a wall of freezing cold water—hard.

  She hit bottom so quickly it was as if there hadn’t been any water in the fast-running stream. Kate felt shooting pain, terrible pain, everywhere. She swallowed water. She realized she going to drown. She was going to die, anyway. She had no strength left—God’s will be done.

  Chapter 46

  DURHAM HOMICIDE detective Nick Ruskin called and informed me that they had just found another woman, and that it wasn’t Naomi. A thirty-one-year-old intern from Chapel Hill had been fished out of the Wykagil River by two young boys playing hooky for the day and caught by cruel fate instead.

  Ruskin’s flashy green Saab Turbo picked me up in front of the Washington Duke Inn. He and Davey Sikes were trying to be more cooperative lately. Sikes was taking a day off, his first in a month, according to his detective partner.

  Ruskin actually seemed glad to see me. He hopped out of the car in front of the hotel and pumped my hand as if we were friends. As always, Ruskin was dressed for success. Black Armani rip-off sportcoat. Black pocket T-shirt.

  Things were picking up a little for me in the new South. I got the feeling that Ruskin knew I had connections with the FBI, and that he wanted to use them, too. Detective Nick Ruskin was definitely a mover and shaker. This was a career-making case for him.

  “Our first big break,” Ruskin said to me.

  “What do you know about the intern so far?” I asked en route to the University of North Carolina Hospital.

  “She’s hanging in there. Apparently, she came down the Wykagil like a slippery fish. They’re saying it’s a miracle. Not even a major broken bone. But she’s in shock, or something worse. She can’t talk, or she won’t talk. The docs are using words like catatonic and posttraumatic shock. Who knows at this point? At least she’s alive.”

  Ruskin had a lot of enthusiasm, and he could also be charismatic. He definitely wanted to use my connections. Maybe I could use his.

  “Nobody knows how she got into the river. Or how she got away from him,” Ruskin told me as we entered the college town of Chapel Hill. The thought of Casanova stalking female students here was terr
ifying. The town was so pretty and seemed so vulnerable.

  “Or whether she actually was with Casanova,” I added a thought. “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “We don’t know shit from Shinola, do we?” Nick Ruskin complained as he turned down a side street marked HOSPITAL. “I’ll tell you one thing, though, this story is about to go public in a big way. The circus just came to town. See, up ahead.”

  Ruskin had that right. The scene outside North Carolina University Hospital was already media bedlam. Television and press reporters were camped out in the parking lot, the front lobby, and all over the serene, sloping green lawns of the university.

  Photographers snapped my picture, as well as Nick Ruskin’s, when we arrived. Ruskin was still the local star detective. People seemed to like him. I was becoming a minor celebrity, at least a curiosity, in the case. My involvement in the Gary Soneji kidnapping had already been broadcast by the local wags. I was Dr. Detective Cross, an expert on human monsters from up North.

  “Tell us what’s going on,” a woman reporter called out. “Give us a break, Nick. What’s the real story with Kate McTiernan?”

  “If we’re lucky, maybe she can tell us.” Ruskin smiled at the reporter, but he kept on walking until we were safely inside the hospital.

  Ruskin and I were far from first in line, but we were allowed to see the intern later that night. Kyle Craig pulled the necessary strings for me. A determination had been made that Katelya McTiernan wasn’t psychotic, but that she was suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome. It seemed a reasonable diagnosis.

  There was absolutely nothing that I could do that night. Anyway, I stayed after Nick Ruskin left, and I read all the medical charts, the nursing notes, and write-ups. I perused the local police reports describing how she had been found by two twelve-year-old boys who had skipped school to fish and smoke cigarettes down by the riverside.

  I suspected I knew why Nick Ruskin had called me, too. Ruskin was smart. He understood that Kate McTiernan’s current state might involve me in the case as a psychologist, especially since I had dealt with this kind of poststress trauma before.