Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls Read online

  They sat near the front window inside the restaurant. On purpose? They held hands at their table and kissed a few times. Casanova the Lover? A lunchtime tryst with another professor? None of it made any sense yet.

  At three-thirty they left Spanky’s restaurant and walked the half-block back to the message board. They kissed again, but this time with more restraint, and finally parted. Sachs drove back to his house in Hope Valley. Wick Sachs was definitely playing with us. His own game, for his own private pleasure.

  Rat and cat.

  Chapter 84

  KATE AND I decided to have a late supper at a place called Frog and the Redneck in downtown Durham. She said we had to have a couple of hours’ break from the action. I knew she was right.

  Kate wanted to go home first, and asked me to call for her in a couple of hours. I wasn’t prepared for the Kate who opened the door of her apartment. It wasn’t Kate’s usual bas couture look. She had on a beige linen sheath with a flowered blouse worn as a jacket. Her long brown hair was tied back with a bright yellow scarf.

  “My Sunday-go-to-eatin’ clothes,” Kate said with a conspiratorial wink. “Except I can never afford to go out to eat on my post-med-school budget. Occasionally KFC or Arby’s.”

  “You have a hot date tonight?” I asked her in my usual kidding tone. I wondered who was kidding whom, though.

  She casually took my arm in the crook of hers. “As a matter of fact, maybe I do. You look nice tonight. Very dashing, very cool.”

  I had abandoned my usual bas couture look, too. I’d decided on dashing and cool instead.

  I don’t remember much about the car ride to the Durham restaurant, except that we talked all the way. We never had any trouble talking. I don’t exactly remember the meal, except that it was very good regional/continental grub. I have the recollection of Muscovy duck, of blueberries and plums in whipped cream.

  What I remember most clearly is Kate sitting with one arm propped on the table, her face resting easily on the back of her hand. A very nice picture-portrait. I remember Kate taking off the yellow scarf at one point during dinner. “Too much,” she said and grinned.

  “I have a new pet theory, theory du jour, about the two of us. I think it’s right. Do you want to hear it?” she asked me. She was in a good mood, in spite of the harrowing and frustrating investigation. We both were.

  “Nah,” said the wiseguy in me, the part afraid of too much in the way of emotions. Lately, anyway.

  Kate wisely ignored me and went on with her theory. “I’ll start… Alex, we’re both really, really afraid of attachments right now in our lives. That’s obvious. We’re both too afraid, I think.” She was carefully leading the way. She sensed this was difficult territory for me, and she was right.

  I sighed. I didn’t know if I wanted to get into any of this right now, but I plunged ahead. “Kate, I haven’t told you much about Maria…. We were very much in love when she died. It was like that between us for six years. This isn’t selective memory on my part. I used to tell myself, ‘God I’m unbelievably lucky I found this person.’ Maria felt the same way.” I smiled. “Or so she told me. So yes, I am afraid of attachments. Mostly I’m afraid of losing someone I love that much again.”

  “I’m afraid of losing someone else, too, Alex,” Kate said in a soft voice. I could barely hear her words. Sometimes she seemed shy, and it was touching. “There’s a magical line in The Pawnbroker, magical to me, anyway. ‘Everything I loved was taken away from me, and I did not die.’”

  I took her hand and kissed it lightly. I felt an overwhelming tenderness toward Kate at that moment. “I know the line,” I said.

  I could see anxiety in her dark brown eyes. Maybe we both needed to take this thing forward, whatever was beginning to happen between us, whatever the risk might be.

  “Can I tell you something else? One more true confession that doesn’t come easily? This is a bad one,” she said.

  “I want to hear it. Of course I do. Anything you want to tell me.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to die just like my sisters, that I’ll get cancer, too. At my age, I’m a medical time bomb. Oh, Alex, I’m afraid to get close to someone, and then get sick on them.” Kate let out a long, deep breath. It was obviously a hard thing for her to say.

  We held hands for a long time in the restaurant. We sipped port wine. We were both a little quiet, letting powerful new feelings wash over us, getting used to them.

  After dinner we went back to her apartment in Chapel Hill. The first thing I did was to check around for uninvited houseguests. I had tried to talk her into a hotel room during the car ride, but, as usual, Kate said no. I remained paranoid about Casanova and his games.

  “You’re so damn stubborn,” I told her as we both checked all the doors and windows.

  “Fiercely independent is a much better description,” Kate countered. “It comes with the black belt in karate. Second degree. Watch yourself.”

  “I am.” I laughed. “I’ve also got eighty pounds on you.”

  Kate shook her head. “Won’t be enough.”

  “You’re probably right.” I laughed out loud.

  No one was hiding in the apartment on Old Ladies Lane. No one was there except the two of us. Maybe that was the scariest thing of all.

  “Please don’t run off now. Stay for a while. Unless you want to or have to,” Kate said to me. I was still standing in her kitchen. My hands were awkwardly jammed into my pockets.

  “I’ve got nowhere I’d rather be,” I told her. I was feeling a little nervous and keyed up.

  “I have a bottle of Château de la Chaize. I think that’s the name. It only cost nine bucks, but it’s decent wine. I bought it just for tonight, even though I didn’t know it at the time.” Kate smiled. “Three months ago when I made the purchase.”

  We sat on Kate’s couch in the living room. The place was neat but still funky. There were black-and-white photos on the walls of her sisters and her mother. Happier times for Kate. There was an amazing picture of her in her pink uniform at the Big Top Truck Stop, where she worked to pay her way through school. The waitressing job was part of the reason medical school had meant so much to her.

  Maybe the wine made me tell Kate more about Jezzie Flanagan than I wanted to. It had been my only attempt at a serious attachment since Maria’s death. Kate told me about her friend, Peter McGrath. History professor at the University of North Carolina. As she talked about Peter, I had the disturbing thought that maybe he was one suspect we had glossed over too quickly.

  I couldn’t leave the case alone, not even for one night. Maybe I was just trying to escape into my work again. Still, I made a mental note to check out Dr. Peter McGrath a little more carefully.

  Kate leaned in close to me on the couch. We kissed. Our mouths made a perfect fit. We had both done this before, kissed, but maybe never as well.

  “Will you stay tonight? Please stay,” Kate whispered. “Just this one night, Alex. We don’t have to be scared about this, do we?”

  “No, we don’t have to be scared,” I whispered back. I felt like a schoolboy. Maybe that was okay, though.

  I didn’t know exactly what to do next, how to touch Kate, what to say, what not to do. I listened to the soft hum of her breathing. I let everything take its natural course.

  We kissed again, as gently as I ever remember kissing anyone. We were both needy. But we were so vulnerable at that moment.

  Kate and I went to her room. We held each other for a long time. We talked in whispers. We slept together. We didn’t make love that night.

  We were best friends. We didn’t want to ruin it.

  Chapter 85

  NAOMI THOUGHT that she was finally losing the last pieces of her sanity. She had just seen Alex kill Casanova, even though she knew it hadn’t really happened. She’d seen the shooting with her own eyes. She was hallucinating, and she couldn’t stop the waves of delusion anymore.

  She talked to herself sometimes. The sound of her own voice w
as comforting.

  Naomi became quiet and thoughtful as she sat on an armchair in the darkened prison cell. Her violin was there, but she hadn’t played it in days. She was afraid for a whole new reason now. Maybe he wasn’t coming back again.

  Maybe Casanova had been caught, and he wouldn’t tell the police where he kept his captives. That was his ultimate leverage, wasn’t it? That was his diabolical secret. His final edge and bargaining chip.

  Maybe he’d already been killed in a shootout. How could the police hope to find her and the others if he was dead? Something’s happened, she thought. He hasn’t been here in the last two days. Something has changed.

  She desperately wanted to see sunny blue skies, grass, the Gothic spires of the university, the layered terraces at the Sarah Duke Gardens, even the Potomac River in all of its muddy-gray glory back home in Washington.

  She finally got up from the easy chair beside her bed. Very, very slowly, Naomi shuffled across the bare wooden floor, and stood by the locked door with her cheek pressed against the cool wood.

  Should I do this crazy thing? she wondered. Do I sign my own death warrant?

  Naomi could barely catch her breath. She listened for sounds in the mysterious house, any tiny, insignificant sound at all. The rooms had been soundproofed—but if you made enough noise, some sound carried through the eerie building.

  She went over what she wanted to say, exactly what she would say.

  My name is Naomi Cross. Where are you, Kristen? Green Eyes? I’ve decided that you’re right. We have to do something…. We have to do something together…. He’s not coming back.

  Naomi had thought this moment through clearly, intelligently, she hoped—but she couldn’t say the words out loud. She understood that plotting against him could mean her death.

  Kristen Miles had called out to her a few times during the past twenty-four hours, but Naomi hadn’t answered back. It was forbidden to talk, and she had seen his warning to them. The hanged woman a few days before. Poor Anna Miller. Another law student.

  She couldn’t hear anything, right now. White noise, that was all. The static of silence. The gentle hum of eternity. There was never even the sound of a car. Not a single backfire or a distant horn. Not even the boom of an airplane passing overhead.

  Naomi had decided they must be underground, at least a couple of levels down into the earth. Had he built this underground complex, this sinplex? Had he thought it all through, dreamed about it, and then done it in some burst of psychopathic fury and energy? She thought that he had indeed.

  She was getting herself ready to break the silence. She had to talk to Kristen, to Green Eyes. Her mouth was so dry. It felt like cotton wool. Naomi finally licked her lips.

  “I would kill for a Coke, I would kill him for a Coke,” she, whispered to herself. “I could kill him given the chance.”

  I could kill Casanova. I could commit a murder. I’m that far gone, aren’t I? she thought and had to stifle a sob.

  Naomi finally called out in a loud, strong voice. “Kristen, can you hear me? Kristen? It’s Naomi Cross!”

  She was shivering, and warm tears streamed down her cheeks. She’d gone against him and his shitty, sacred rules.

  Green Eyes called back immediately. The other woman’s voice sounded so good. “I can hear you, Naomi! I think I’m only a few doors away from you. I hear you fine. Keep talking, I’m sure he’s not here, Naomi.”

  Naomi didn’t think anymore about what she was doing. Maybe he wasn’t there; maybe he was. It didn’t matter now.

  “He’s going to kill us,” she called back. “Something’s different about him! He’s going to kill us for sure. If we’re going to do anything, we have to do it the first chance we get.”

  “Naomi’s right!” Kristen’s voice was slightly muffled, as if she were talking from the bottom of a well. “Do you all hear Naomi? Of course you do!”

  “I have one idea for everyone to consider.” Naomi spoke even more loudly this time. She wanted to keep this communication going now. They all had to hear her, all the trapped women. “The next time he gets us together—we have to go for it. If we rush him all at once, he might hurt some of us. But he can’t stop all of us! What do you think?”

  Just then the heavy wooden door to Naomi’s room opened a crack. Light streamed in.

  Naomi watched in stark horror as the door swung open. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak a word.

  Her heart beat painfully in her chest, pounding, and she couldn’t get a breath. She felt as if she were about to die. He’d been there, waiting, listening all this time.

  The door opened all the way.

  “Hello, my name is Will Rudolph,” the tall, good-looking man in the doorway said in a pleasant voice. “I like your plan very much, but I don’t think it will work. Let me tell you why.”

  Chapter 86

  I WAS AT Raleigh-Durham International Airport at a little before nine on Wednesday morning. The cavalry was arriving. Fresh troops were here. Team Sampson was back in town.

  In contrast to the creeping terror and paranoia that were present everywhere on the streets of Durham and Chapel Hill, the early-morning businesspeople at the airport seemed oblivious to harm in their dark, pressed suits, their floral print dresses from Neiman Marcus and Dillard. I liked that. Good for them. Denial is an approach.

  I finally saw Sampson loping through the USAir gate with long, determined strides. I waved my local newspaper at him. It was characteristic of me to wave and for Man Mountain not to. He gave me a city-cool head nod, though. Bad to the bone. Just what the doctor ordered.

  I brought Sampson up to speed while we drove from the airport to Chapel Hill.

  I needed to check out the Wykagil River area. It was just another hunch of mine, but it could lead to something… like the location of the “disappearing house.” I had enlisted the help of Dr. Louis Freed, a mentor and former teacher of Seth Samuel’s. Dr. Freed was a noted black historian on the Civil War, a period I was also interested in. Slaves and the Civil War in North Carolina…. In particular, the Underground Railroad that had been used for slaves escaping to the North.

  As we entered Chapel Hill, Sampson got to see for himself what the abductions and grisly murders had done to the once-peaceful college town. The nightmarish scene reminded me of a couple of my subway trips in New York City. It also reminded me a little of home, our nation’s capital. The people of Chapel Hill now hurried along the picturesque streets with their heads down. They no longer made eye contact with one another, especially with strangers. Trust had been replaced by fear and terror. The sweet small-townness had vanished.

  “You think Casanova is enjoying this Invasion of the Body Snatchers aura?” Sampson asked as we cruised the side streets bordering the University of North Carolina campus, former home base of Michael Jordan and too many other pro-basketball stars to mention.

  “I think he’s learned to enjoy being a local celebrity, yes. He likes to play the game. He’s especially proud of his handiwork—his art.”

  “Doesn’t he want a larger venue? Larger canvas, so to speak?” Sampson asked as we climbed the gentle hills the college town had apparently been named for.

  “I don’t know about that yet. He might be a very territorial rec killer. Some recs are strictly territorial: Richard Ramirez, the Son of Sam, the Green River killer.”

  I then told Sampson about my theory on twinning. The more I thought about it, the sounder it got for me. Even the FBI was starting to believe in it a little. “The two of them have to be sharing some big secret. That they abduct beautiful women is only part of it. One of them thinks of himself as a ‘lover’ and artist. The other is a brutal killer, much more typical of serial-killer cases. They complete each other, they correct each other’s weaknesses. Together, I think they’re virtually unstoppable. More importantly, I think they do, too.”

  “Which one is the leader?” Sampson asked a very good question. It was completely intuitive on his part. The way he always s
olves problems.

  “I think it’s Casanova. He’s definitely the more imaginative of the two. He’s the one who hasn’t made any major mistakes yet, either. But the Gentleman isn’t really comfortable being a follower. He probably moved to California to see if he could succeed on his own. And he couldn’t.”

  “Is Casanova this kinky-assed college professor? Dr. Wick Sachs? The pornography professor you told me about? Is he our man, Sugar?”

  I peered across the front seat at Sampson. We were into the real deal now. Cop shop talk. “Sometimes, I think it’s Sachs, and that he’s so goddamn clever and smart he can let us know who he is. He enjoys watching us squirm. That could be the ultimate power game for him.”

  Sampson nodded—one nod. “And other times, Dr. Freud, what is your alternative thought process on Dr. Sachs?”

  “Other times, I wonder if Sachs has been set up. Casanova is very bright, and he’s been extremely careful. He seems to send out misinformation that has everyone chasing his own tail. Even Kyle Craig’s getting uptight and crazy.”

  Sampson finally showed his large, very white teeth. Maybe it was a smile, or maybe he was going to bite me. “Looks like I’m here just in the motherfucking nick of time.”

  As I slowed for a stop sign on the side street, a man with a gun suddenly moved away from a parked car and toward us.

  There was nothing I could do to stop him, nothing Sampson could do.

  The gunman pointed a Smith and Wesson right into my face, up against my cheekbone.

  Endgame! I thought.

  Tilt!

  “Chapel Hill police,” the man shouted into the open window. “Get the hell out of the car. Assume the position.”

  Chapter 87

  “YOU GOT here just in the nick of time,” I muttered to Sampson under my breath. We climbed out of the car very slowly and carefully.

  “Looks like it,” he said. “Be cool now. Don’t get us shot or beat up, Alex. I wouldn’t appreciate the irony.”