Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls Read online

  The girl’s lips were already purplish-blue, and her tongue protruded sideways from them. The eyes were stretched wide with terror and pain. It must be Anna, Naomi thought. A girl had been calling out for help. She’d broken the house rules. She said her name was Anna Miller. Poor Anna. Whoever you were before he kidnapped you.

  Casanova turned off the music and spoke calmly from behind his mask; he talked as if nothing much had happened. “Her name is Anna Miller, and she did this to herself. Do you all understand what I’m saying? She was plotting through the walls, talking about escaping. There is no escape from here!”

  Naomi shuddered. No, there is no escape from hell, she though. She looked at Green Eyes and nodded her head. Yes, they had to take a chance, and soon.

  Chapter 77

  THE GENTLEMAN stopped to play the game in Stoneman Lake, Arizona. It was a beautiful morning for it. It was crisp and cool and the smell of a wood fire was in the air.

  He was parked in woods among the boulders, just off the rural road. No one could see him. He sat there and thought about the way this should go down as he watched a cozy, white-shingled family house through hooded lids. He could actually feel the beast taking over. The transformation. The strange passion that accompanied it. Jekyll and Hyde.

  He saw a man leave the house and get into a silver Ford Aerostar. The husband seemed in a hurry, probably late for work. The wife was alone now, maybe still in bed. Her name was Juliette Montgomery.

  At a little past eight, he carried an empty gas container up to the house. If anybody happened to see him, no problem. He needed fuel for his rented car.

  No one saw him. Probably nobody around for miles.

  The Gentleman climbed the front proch steps. He paused for a moment, then gently turned the doorknob. He found it amazing that people didn’t lock their doors in Stoneman Lake.

  God, he loved this… lived for it… his times as Mr. Hyde.

  Juliette was making breakfast for herself. He could hear her half humming, half singing as he made his way across the living room. The aroma and the crackling sound of bacon frying made him think of his family’s house in Asheville.

  His father had been the original gentleman. Army colonel and proud and arrogant about it. Inflexible asshole who was never pleased about anything his son did. Big fan of the thick leather belt to instill discipline. Liked to scream at the top of his lungs as he beat the shit out of him. Raised the perfect son. High school standout scholar and athlete. Phi Beta Kappa undergrad. High honors in Duke medical school. Human monster.

  He watched Juliette Montgomery from the doorway that led into her spotlessly clean kitchen. The window shades were up and the room was flooded with sunlight. She was still singing… an old Jimi Hendrix song called “Castles Made of Sand.” Unexpected tune from the pretty lady.

  He loved watching her like this—when she thought she was alone. Singing something she’d probably be embarrassed to in front of him. Carefully laying out her three strips of bacon on a paper towel that came close to matching the beige-and-brown kitchen wallpaper.

  Juliette wore a sheer white cottony negligee that fluttered around her thighs as she moved between the stove and table. She was in her mid-twenties. Long dancer’s legs. Nicely tanned. Bare feet on the kitchen linoleum. Auburn hair she’d bothered to brush before coming down to make her breakfast.

  A set of knives in a butcher-block holder sat on the counter. He took out the cleaver. The knife made a soft ringing noise as it lightly struck a stainless steel pot on the counter.

  She turned at the sound. Very lovely in profile. Freshly scrubbed, radiant. Juliette liked herself, too. He could tell that she did.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

  The words came out in small gasps. Her face was as pale as her negligee.

  Now move fast, he told himself.

  He grabbed Juliette and held the cleaver up high. Shades of Hitchcock’ Psycho and also Frenzy. High-concept melodrama.

  “Don’t make me hurt you. It’s all in your control,” he said softly.

  She stopped the scream before it got out of her mouth, but the scream was in her eyes. He loved the look on Juliette’s face. Lived for it.

  “I won’t hurt you as long as you don’t do anything to hurt me. Are we all right so far? Are we clear as a bell?”

  She nodded her hear curtly. A couple of nods. Her blue-green eyes were tilted up strangely. She was afraid to move her head too much for fear he’d slash her.

  She sighed. Amazing. She seemed to trust him a little. His voice had that effect on people. His style and fine manners. Mr. Hyde. The Gentleman Caller.

  She was looking deeply into his eyes, searching for some explanation. He had seen that questioning look so many times before. Why? it said.

  “I’m going to take your panties off now. No doubt this has been done for you before, so there’s no reason to panic. You have the softest, nicest skin. I mean that,” said the Gentleman.

  The cleaver slashed quickly.

  “I like you, Juliette, I really do… as much as I’m able to like anyone,” the Gentleman said in his softest voice.

  Chapter 78

  KATE MCTIERNAN was home again. Home again, home again, jiggitty-jig. First thing was to call her sister Carole Anne, who lived far away in Maine now. Then she called a few close friends in Chapel Hill. She reassured them that she was perfectly all right.

  That was total bullshit, of course. She knew that she wasn’t anything close to all right, but why cause them to worry? It wasn’t Kate’s way to inconvenience other people with her unsolvable problems.

  Alex didn’t want her to go back to her house, but she had to. This was where she lived. She tried to calm herself a little, to slow down the big bad world in her head, at least. She drank wine and watched late-night TV. She hadn’t done that in years. Centuries!

  She was missing Alex Cross already, and more than she wanted to admit to herself. Staying home and watching TV was a good test, but she was failing miserably. She was such a schlump sometimes.

  She had developed—what?—a schoolgirl crush on Alex? He was strong, smart, funny, kind. He loved children, and was even in touch with the child in himself. He had a sculpted body, fabulous bone structure, a sensational torso, also. Yes, she had a crush on Alex Cross.

  Understandable; nice. Only maybe it was more than a crush. Kate wanted to call Alex at his hotel in Durham. She picked up the phone a couple of times. No! She wouldn’t let herself do it. Nothing was going to happen between her and Alex Cross.

  She was an intern, and she wasn’t getting any younger. He lived in Washington with his two children and his grandmother. Besides, they were too much alike, and it wouldn’t work out. He was a willful black man; she was an extremely willful white woman. He was a homicide detective… but he was also sensitive and sexy and generous. She didn’t care whether he was black, green, or purple. He made her laugh; he made her as happy as a clam in deep wet sand.

  But nothing was going to happen between her and Alex.

  She would just sit here in her scary apartment. Drink her cheap Pinot Noir. Watch her bad, semiromantic Hollywood movie. Be afraid. Be a little horny. Let it get worse. That’s what she would do, dammit. Build her character.

  She had to admit she was frightened to be in her own house, though. She hated that feeling. She wanted all of this shitty madness to stop, but it wouldn’t. Not even close. There were still two horrifying monsters on the loose out there.

  She kept hearing creepy noises all around her in the house. Old creaking wood. Banging shutters. Wind chimes she had put on an old elm tree outside. The chimes reminded her of the cabin in Big Sur. They had to come down tomorrow—if not sooner.

  Kate finally fell asleep with the wineglass, which was really an old Flintstones jelly glass, balanced in her lap. The glass was a holy relic from the house in West Virginia. She and her sisters used to fight over it sometimes at breakfast.

  The glass tipped and spilled onto her
bedcovers. It didn’t matter. Kate was dead to the world. For one night at least.

  She didn’t usually drink much. The Pinot Noir hit her like the freight trains that used to rumble through Birch when she was a kid. She woke up 3:00 A.M. with a throbbing headache, and hurried into her bathroom, where she got sick.

  Images of Psycho flashed through her mind as she bent over the sink. She thought of Casanova in the house again. He was in the bathroom, wasn’t he? No—of course no one was there… please, make this stop. Make this end… right… now!

  She went back to bed and crawled under the covers. She heard the wind rattling the shutters. Heard those stupid chimes. She thought about death—her mother, Susanne, Marjorie, Kristin. All gone now. Kate McTiernan pulled the blanket over her head. She felt like a little girl again, afraid of the bogeyman. Okay, she could handle that.

  Trouble was, she could see Casanova and the horrifying death mask whenever she closed her eyes. She held a secret thought buried in the center of her chest: He was coming for her again, wasn’t he?

  At seven in the morning her phone rang. It was Alex.

  “Kate, I was in his house,” he said.

  Chapter 79

  AROUND TEN the night we returned from California, I drove to the Hope Valley residential area of Durham. I went alone to see Casanova. Doctor Detective Cross was back in the saddle again.

  There were three clues that I considered essential to solving the case. I reviewed them again as I drove. There was the simple fact that they both committed “perfect crimes.” There was the aspect of twinning, the codependence of Casanova and the Gentleman. There was the mystery of the disappearing house.

  Something had to come from one, or all, of those bits of information. Maybe something was about to happen in the Hope Valley suburb of Durham. I hoped so.

  I drove slowly along Old Chapel Hill Road until I reached a formal, white-brick, protal-type entrance into the upscale Hope Valley estates. I got the feeling that I wasn’t supposed to intrude beyond the gate, that just maybe I was the first black man not in workingman’s overalls to pass through here.

  I knew I was taking a chance, but I had to see where Dr. Wick Sachs lived. I needed to feel things about him, needed to know him better, and in a big hurry.

  The streets of Hope Valley didn’t run in straight lines. The road I was on didn’t have curbs or gutters, and there were not many streetlamps. The neighborhood was unpleasantly hilly, and as I drove I began to have the sense of being lost, of moving in a great looping circle. The houses were mostly upscale Southern Gothic, old and expensive. The notion of the killer next door had never been more powerful.

  Dr. Wick Sachs lived in a stately red-brick house set back on one of the highest hills.

  The shutters were painted white, matching the gutters. The house looked too expensive for a university professor, even one at Duke, the “Harvard of the South.”

  The windows were all dark and looked as shiny as slate. The only lights came from a single brass carriage lamp dangling over the front door.

  I already knew that Wick Sachs had a wife and two small children. His wife was a registered nurse at Duke University Hospital. The FBI had checked her credentials. She had an excellent reputation, and everyone spoke very highly of her. The Sachses’ daughter, Faye Anne, was seven; and their son, Nathan, was ten.

  I figured that the FBI was probably watching me as I drove up to the Sachses’ house, but I didn’t much care. I wondered if Kyle Craig was with them… he was deeply involved in the grisly case, almost as much as I was. Kyle had also gone to Duke. Was this case personal for him, too? How personal?

  My eyes very slowly ran up and down the front of the house, then along the well-tended grounds. Everything was extremely orderly, actually quite beautiful, perfect as could be.

  I had already learned that human monsters can live anywhere; that some of the clever ones chose ordinary all-American-looking houses. Just like the house I was examining now. The monsters are literally everywhere. There is an epidemic running out of control in America, and the statistics are frightening. We have nearly seventy-five percent of the human hunters. Europe has almost all the rest, led by England, Germany, and France. Mass murderers are changing the face of modern homicide investigations in every American city, village, and town.

  I studied everything I could about the house’s exterior. The southeast side had what was known as a “Florida room.” There was a patio, which was living-room size. The lawn was fescue, and it was extremely well kept. There was no moss, no crabgrass, no weeds.

  The cobbled-brick walkway from the driveway was carefully edged, and not a single stray blade of grass peeked through the stones. The bricks of the walk perfectly matched the bricks of the house.

  Perfect.

  Meticulous.

  As I sat in the car, my head was pounding from too much tension and stress. I kept the motor running, in case the family Sachs suddenly came home.

  I knew what I wanted to do, what I had to do, what I’d been planning to do for the last few hours. I needed to break into his house. I wondered if the FBI would try to stop me, but I didn’t think they would. I believed that maybe they actually wanted me to break inside and look around. We knew very little about Dr. Wick Sachs. I still wasn’t officially involved in the Casanova manhunt, and I could try things that the others couldn’t. I was supposed to be the “loose cannon.” That was my deal with Kyle Craig.

  Scootchie was out there someplace, at least I prayed that she was still alive. I hoped that all the missing women were alive. His harem. His odalisques. His collection of beautiful special women.

  I shut off the motor and took a deep breath before I climbed out of the car.

  I walked quickly across the springly lawn in crouch. I remembered something that Satchel Paige used to say: “Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.” I was jangling.

  Shaped boxwoods and azaleas ran along the front of the house. A child’s red bike with silver streamers on the handlebars lay on its side near the porch.

  Nice, I was thinking as I hurried along. Too nice.

  Casanova’s child’s bike.

  Casanova’s respectable house in the suburbs.

  Casanova’s fake, perfect life. His perfect disguise. His big, ugly joke on all of us. Right in the city of Durham. His middle finger extended to the world.

  I carefully made my way around to the patio, which was built with white tile. It was bordered with the same brick as the house and the front walk. I noticed that creeping tendrils had invaded the red-brick walls. Maybe he wasn’t so perfect, after all.

  I quickly crossed the patio, moving toward the Florida room. There was no turning back now. I’d done a little breaking and entering in the name of duty before this. That didn’t make it right, just easier.

  I broke a small windowpane in a door and let myself in. Nothing. Not a sound. I didn’t think that Wick Sachs would have any use for an alarm system. I seriously doubted that he wanted the Durham police to investigate a breaking and entering.

  The first thing I noticed was the familiar cloying smell of lemon furniture polish. Respectability. Civility. Order. It was all a façade, a perfectly designed mask.

  I was inside the monster’s house.

  Chapter 80

  THE HOUSE was as neat and orderly as the outside grounds. Maybe even more so. Nice, nice, much too nice.

  I was nervous and afraid, but that didn’t matter anymore. I was used to living with the feelings of fear and uncertainty. Carefully, I roamed from room to room. Nothing seemed out of place, even with two small children living there. Strange, strange, very strange.

  The house reminded me a little of Rudolph’s apartment in Los Angeles. It was as if no one really lived there. Who are you? Show me who you really are, fucker. This house isn’t the real you, is it? Does anyone know you without your masks? The Gentleman does, doesn’t he?

  The kitchen was right out of Country Living magazine. Antiques and other bea
utiful “things” were in almost every room.

  In a small study, the professor’s notes and papers were strewn everywhere, covering every available surface. He’s supposed to be very orderly and neat, I thought, and stored the conflicting data. Who was he?

  I was searching for something specific, but I didn’ know exactly where to look. Down in the basement I saw a heavy oak door. It was unlocked. It led into a small furnace room. I searched the room carefully. On the far side of the furnace room, I found another wooden door. It looked like a door to a closet, to some small, insignificant space.

  The second door was closed with a hook, which I removed as quietly as I could. I wondered if there could be more rooms in here? Maybe an underground space? Maybe the house of horror? Or a tunnel?

  I pushed open the wooden door. Pitch-blackness. I switched on the lights, and entered a single room that must have been twenty-five by forty. My heart skipped a beat. My knees got weak and I felt a little sick.

  There were no women in here, no harem, but I had found Wick Sachs’s fantasy room. It was right in his house. Hidden in a secret corner of his basement. The room didn’t fit in with the design of the rest of the house. He had built this room specially for himself. He liked to build things, to be creative, didn’t he?

  The special room was laid out like a library. There was a heavy oak desk, and two red leather club chairs were on either side of it. The four walls of bookcases were filled with books and magazines from floor to ceiling. My blood pressure must have soared fifty points. I tried to be still inside, but I couldn’t.

  This was a collection of pornography and erotica, the most extraordinary I had ever seen or even heard described. There were at least a thousand books in the room. I read titles as I quickly roamed from wall to wall, shelf to shelf.