Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls Read online

  He licked his lips in anticipation. Here was something splendid up ahead…

  A tall, slender, exquisite black woman leaned against a shapely old oak in the Edens Quad. She was reading the Duke Chronicle, which she’d folded into thirds. He loved the smooth shine of her brown skin, her artistically braided hair. But he moved on.

  Yes, men are hunters by nature, he was thinking. He was off in his own world again. “Faithful” husbands were oh-so-careful and furtive with their looks. Fresh-eyed boys of eleven and twelve appeared very innocent and playful. Grandfathers pretended to be above the fray, and were just “cute” with their affection. But Casanova knew they were all watching, constantly selecting, obsessed with mastering the hunt from puberty to the grave.

  It was a biological necessity, no? He was quite certain of that. Women nowadays were demanding that men accept the fact that their female biological clocks were ticking… well, with men, it was their biological cocks that were ticking.

  Constantly ticking, those cocks.

  That was a fact of nature, too. Everywhere he went, at virtually any time of day or night, he could feel the pulsing beat inside. Tick-cock. Tick-cock.

  Tick-cock!

  Tick-cock!

  A beautiful honey-blond coed sat crosslegged on the grass intersecting his path. She was reading a paperback, Karl Jasper’s Philosophy of Existence. The rock group Smashing Pumpkins was contributing mantralike riffs from a portable CD player. Casanova smiled to himself.

  Tick-cock!

  The hunt was relentless for him. He was Priapus for the nineties. The difference between him and so many gutless modern men was that he acted on his natural impulses.

  He relentlessly searched out a great beauty—and then he took her! What an outrageously simple idea. What a compellingly modern horror story.

  He watched two petite Japanese coeds chowing down on greasy North Carolina barbecue from the new Crooks Corner II restaurant in Durham. They looked so delicious eating their dinner, wolfing their barbecue like small animals. North Carolina BBQ consisted of pork cooked over a fire, seasoned with a vinegar-laced sauce, then finely chopped. You couldn’t eat BBQ without slaw and hush puppies.

  He smiled at the unlikely scene. Yum.

  Still, he moved on. Sights and scenes caught his eye. Pierced eyebrows. Tattooed ankles. Lalapalooza T-shirts. Lovely flowing breasts, legs, thighs everywhere he looked.

  He finally came to a small Gothic-style building near the Duke University Hospital, North Division. This was a special annex where terminally ill cancer patients from all over the South were cared for during their final days. His heart began to pound, and a series of small tremors shook his body.

  There she was!

  Chapter 10

  THERE WAS the most beautiful woman in the South! Beautiful in all ways. Not only was she physically desirable—she was extremely smart. She might be able to understand him. Maybe she was as special as he was.

  He almost said the words out loud, and believed them to be absolutely true. He had done a great deal of homework on his next victim. Blood began to pump and rush into his forehead. He could feel a throbbing all through his body.

  Her name was Kate McTiernan. Katelya Margaret McTiernan, to be as precise as he liked to be.

  She was just walking out of the terminal cancer wing, where she had worked to help pay her way through medical school. She was all by her lonesome, as usual. Her last boyfriend had warned her that she was going to “end up a beautiful old maid.”

  Fat chance of that. Obviously, it was Kate McTiernan’s decision to be alone as much as she was. She could have been with nearly anyone she chose. She was stunningly beautiful, highly intelligent, and compassionate, from what he could tell so far. Kate was a grind, though. She was incredibly dedicated to her medical studies and hospital duties.

  Nothing was overdone about her, and he appreciated that. Her long, curly brown hair framed her narrow face nicely. Her eyes were dark brown, and sparkled when she smiled. Her laugh was catchy, irresistible. She had an all-American look, but not banal. She was a hardbody, but she appeared so soft and feminine.

  He’d watched other men hit on her—studly students and even the occasional jaunty and ridiculous professor. She didn’t hold it against them, and he saw how she deflected them, usually with some kindness, some small generosity.

  But there was always that devilish, heartbreaking smile of hers. I’m not available, it said. You can never have me. Please, don’t even think about it. It’s not that I’m too good for you, I’m just… different.

  Kate the Dependable, Kate the Nice Person, was right on time tonight. She always left the cancer annex between a quarter to eight and eight. She had her routines just as he did.

  She was a first-year intern at North Carolina University Hospital in Chapel Hill, but she’d been working in a co-op program at Duke since January. The experimental cancer ward. He knew all about Katelya McTiernan.

  She was going to be thirty-one in a few weeks. She’d had to work three years to pay for her college and medical-school expenses. She had also spent two years with a sick mother in Buck, West Virginia.

  She walked at a determined pace along Flowers Drive, toward the multilevel Medical Center parking garage. He had to move quickly to keep up with her, all the while watching her long shapely legs, which were a little too pale for his liking. No time for the sun, Kate? Afraid of a little melanoma?

  She carried thick medical volumes against one hip. Looks and brains. She planned to practice back in West Virginia, where she was born. Didn’t seem to care about making a lot of money. What for? So she could own ten pairs of black high-topped sneakers?

  Kate McTiernan was wearing her usual university garb: a crisp white med-school jacket, khaki shirt, weathered tan trousers, her faithful black sneakers. It worked for her. Kate the Character. Slightly off-center. Unexpected. Strangely, powerfully alluring.

  On Kate McTiernan, almost anything would have worked, even the most homespun interpretation of cheap chic. He particularly loved Kate McTiernan’s irreverence toward university and hospital life, and especially the holier-than-thou medical school. It showed in the way she dressed; the casual way she carried herself now; everything about her lifestyle. She seldom wore makeup. She seemed very natural, and there was nothing phony or stuck-up about her that he’d noticed yet.

  There was even a little of the unexpected klutz in her. Earlier in the week, he had seen her flush the deepest red after she tripped on a guardrail outside Perkins Library and crashed into a bench with her hip. That warmed him tremendously. He could be touched, could feel human warmth. He wanted Kate to love him…. He wanted to love her back.

  That was why he was so special, so different. It was what separated him from all the other one-dimensional killers and butchers he had ever heard or read about, and he had read everything on the subject. He could feel everything. He could love. He knew that.

  Kate said something amusing to a fortyish-looking professor as she walked past him. Casanova couldn’t hear it from where he was watching. Kate turned for some quick repartee, but kept on walking, leaving the professor with her luminous smile to think about.

  He saw a little jiggle action as Kate whirled around after her brief interchange with the prof. Her breasts weren’t too large or too small. Her long brown hair was thick and wavy, shiny in the early evening light, revealing just a touch of red. Perfect in every detail.

  He been watching her for more than four weeks, and he knew she was the one. He could love Dr. Kate McTiernan more than all the others. He believed it for a moment. He ached to believe it. He said her name softly—Kate….

  Dr. Kate.

  Tick-cock.

  Chapter 11

  SAMPSON AND I took shifts at the wheel on the four-hour haul from Washington, down into North Carolina. While I drove, the Man Mountain slept. He wore a black T-shirt that bluntly said SECURITY. Economy of words.

  When Sampson was at the controls of my ancient Porsche, I pu
t on a set of old Koss headphones. I listened to Big Joe Williams, thought about Scootchie, continued to feel hollowed-out.

  I couldn’t sleep, hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before. I felt like a grief-stricken father whose only daughter was missing. Something seemed wrong about this case.

  We entered the South at noon. I had been born around a hundred miles away, in Winston-Salem. I hadn’t been back there since I was ten years old, the year my mother died, and my brothers and I were moved to Washington.

  I’d been to Durham before, for Naomi’s graduation. She had finished Duke undergraduate summa cum laude, and she received one of the loudest, cheeriest ovations in the history of the ceremony. The Cross family had been there in full force. It was one of the happiest, proudest days for all of us.

  Naomi was the only child of my brother Aaron, who died of cirrhosis at thirty-three. Naomi had grown up fast after his death. Her mother had to work a sixty-hour week for years to support them, so Naomi was in charge of the house from around the time she was ten. She was the littlest general.

  She was a precocious little girl, and read about Alice’s adventures in Through the Looking-Glass when she was only four. A family friend gave her violin lessons, and she played well. She loved music, and still played whenever she had time. She graduated number one in her class at John Carroll High School in D.C. As busy as she was with her studies, she found time to write graceful prose on what life was like growing up in the projects. She reminded me of a young Alice Walker.

  Gifted.

  Very special.

  Missing for more than four days.

  The welcome mat wasn’t out for us at Durham’s brand-new police headquarters building, not even after Sampson and I showed our badges and IDs from Washington. The desk sergeant wasn’t impressed.

  He looked something like the TV weatherman Willard Scott. He had a full crewcut, long thick sideburns, and skin the color of fresh ham. After he found out who we were, it got a little worse. No red carpet, no Southern hospitality, no Southern comfort.

  Sampson and I got to sit and cool our heels in the duty room of the Durham Police Department. It was all shiny glass and polished wood. We received the kind of hostile looks and blank stares usually reserved for drug dealers caught around grade schools.

  “Feel like we just landed on Mars,” Sampson said as we waited and watched Durham’s finest, watched complainants come and go. “Don’t like the feeling I get from the Martians. Don’t like their beady little Martian eyes. Don’t think I like the new South.”

  “You think about it, we’d fit in the same anywhere,” I told Sampson. “We’d get the same reception, same cold stares, at Nairobi Police Headquarters.”

  “Maybe.” Sampson nodded behind his dark glasses. “But at least they’d be black Martians. At least they’d know who John Coltrane is.”

  Durham detectives Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes finally came down to see us an hour and a quarter after we arrived.

  Ruskin reminded me a little of Michael Douglas in his dark-hero cop roles. He wore a coordinated outfit: green-and-tan tweed jacket, stonewashed jeans, yellow pocket T. He was about my height, which would make him six three or so, a little bigger than life. His longish brown hair was slicked back and razor-cut.

  Davey Sikes was well built. His head was a solid block that made sharp right angles with his shoulders. He had sleepy, oatmeal-brown eyes; almost no affect that I could discern. Sikes was a sidekick type, definitely not the leader. At least not if first appearances meant anything.

  The two detectives shook hands with us, and acted as if all were forgiven, as if they were forgiving us for intruding. I had the feeling that Ruskin especially was used to getting his way inside the Durham PD. He seemed like the local star. The main man around these parts. Matinee idol at the Durham Triplex.

  “Sorry about the wait, Detective Cross, Sampson. It’s been busy as a son of a bitch around here,” Nick Ruskin said. He had a light Southern accent. Lots of confidence in himself.

  He hadn’t mentioned Naomi by name yet. Detective Sikes was silent. Didn’t say a word.

  “You two like to take a ride with Davey and me? I’ll explain the situation on the way. There’s been a homicide. That’s what had us all tied. Police found a woman’s body out in Efland. This is a real bad one.”

  Chapter 12

  THIS IS a real bad one. A woman’s body in Efland. What woman?

  Sampson and I followed Ruskin and Sikes out to their car, a forest-green Saab Turbo. Ruskin got in the driver’s seat. I remembered Sergeant Esterhaus’s words in Hill Street Blues: “Let’s be careful out there.”

  “You know anything at all about the murdered woman?” I asked Nick Ruskin as we headed onto West Chapel Hill Street. He had his siren screaming and he was already driving fast. He drove with a kind of brashness and cockiness.

  “I don’t know enough,” Ruskin said. “That’s our problem, Davey’s and mine, with this investigation. We can’t get straight-dick information about much of anything. That’s probably why we’re in such a good mood today. You notice?”

  “Yeah, we noticed,” Sampson said. I didn’t look over at him. I could feel the steam rising in the back seat, though. Heat coming off his skin.

  Davey Sikes glanced back and frowned at Sampson. I got the feeling they weren’t going to become best buddies.

  Ruskin continued talking. He seemed to like the spotlight, being on the Big Case. “This entire case is under the control of the FBI now. The DEA got in the act, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the CIA was part of the ‘crisis team.’ They did send some kinky crackerjack down from their fancy outpost in Sanford.”

  “What do you mean this entire case?” I asked Ruskin. Warning alarms were sounding in my head. I thought of Naomi again.

  This is a real bad one.

  Ruskin turned around quickly and looked at me. He had penetrating blue eyes and they seemed to be sizing me up. “Understand we’re not supposed to tell you anything. We’re not authorized to bring you out here either.”

  “I hear what you’re saying,” I said. “I appreciate the help.”

  Once again, Davey Sikes turned and looked at us. I felt as if Sampson and I were on the other team, looking over the line of scrimmage, waiting for the ball snap, the crunch of bodies.

  “We’re on our way to the third murder site,” Ruskin went on. “I don’t know who the victim is. Goes without saying that I hope the victim isn’t your niece.”

  “What’s this case all about? Why all the mystery?” Sampson asked. He sat forward in his seat. “We’re all cops here. Talk straight to us.”

  The Durham homicide detective hesitated before he answered. “A few women, let’s say several, have disappeared in a three-county area—Durham, Chatham, and Orange, which you’re in now. The press has reported a couple of disappearances and two murders so far. Unrelated murders.”

  “Don’t tell me the media is actually cooperating with an investigation?” I said.

  Ruskin half smiled. “Not in your wildest wet dreams. They only know what the FBI’s decided to tell them. Nobody’s actually withholding information, but nothing’s being volunteered, either.”

  “You mentioned that several young women have disappeared,” I said. “How many exactly? Tell me about them.”

  Ruskin talked out of the side of his mouth. “We believe eight to ten women are missing. All young. Late teens and early twenties. All students in college or high school. Only two bodies have been found, though. The one we’re going to see could make three. All the bodies were discovered in the last five weeks. The Feebies think we’re in the middle of what could be one of the worst kidnapping and murder sprees ever in the South.”

  “How many FBI in town?” Sampson asked. “Squad? Battalion?”

  “They’re here in full force. They have ‘evidence’ that the disappearances extend beyond state lines—Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, down into Florida. They think our friendly squirrel abducted a Florida State cheerl
eader at this year’s Orange Bowl. They call him ‘The Beast of the Southeast.’ It’s as if he’s invisible. He’s in control of the situation right now. Calls himself Casanova… believes he’s a great lover.”

  “Did Casanova leave mash notes at the murder scenes?” I asked Ruskin.

  “Just at the last one. He seems to be coming out of his shell. He wants to communicate now. Bond with us. He told us he was Casanova.”

  “Were any of the victims black women?” I asked Ruskin. One trait of repeat killers was that they tended to choose their victims along racial grounds. All white. All black. All Spanish. Not too much mixing, as a rule.

  “One other missing girl is black. Student from North Carolina Central University. Two bodies we found were white. All the women who’ve disappeared are extremely attractive. We have a bulletin board up with pictures of the missing girls. Somebody gave the case a name: ‘Beauties and the Beast.’ It’s on the board in big letters. Right over the pictures. That’s another handle we have for the case.”

  “Does Naomi Cross fit his pattern?” Sampson asked quietly. “Whatever the crisis team has established so far?”

  Nick Ruskin didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about it, or just trying to be considerate.

  “Is Naomi’s picture up on the FBI bulletin board? The Beauties and the Beast board?” I asked Ruskin.

  “Yes, it is.” Davey Sikes finally spoke. “Her picture is on the big board.”

  Chapter 13

  DON’T LET this be Scootchie. Her life is just beginning, I silently prayed as we sped to the homicide scene.

  Terrible, unspeakable things happened all the time nowadays, to all kinds of innocent, unsuspecting people. They happened in virtually every big city, and even small towns, in villages of a hundred or less. But most often these violent, unthinkable crimes seemed to happen in America.