Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls Read online

  The first thing she had noticed about the neighborhood were the exquisite trees. They were old and stately hardwoods, not pines. Their long branches reminded her of the arms and fingers of wizened old women. She called her street “Old Ladies Lane.” Where else would the old lady of the medical school live?

  Kate arrived home at about a quarter to ten. Nobody was living downstairs in the house that she rented from a widowed lady who lived in Durham.

  “I’m home. It’s me, Kate,” she called to the family of mice who lived somewhere behind the refrigerator. She couldn’t bring herself to exterminate them. “Did you miss me? You guys eat yet?”

  She flipped on the overhead kitchen light and listened to the irritating electric buzz that she hated. Her eyes caught the blowup of a quote from one of her med-school teachers: “Medical students have to practice humility.” Well she was definitely practicing humility.

  Inside her small bedroom, Kate pulled on a wrinkled black polo shirt that she never ever bothered to iron. Ironing clothes was not a priority these days. It was one reason to have a man around, though—someone to clean, maintain, take out the trash, cook, iron. She was fond of a particular old feminist line: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

  Kate yawned just thinking about the sixteen-hour day that would start for her at five the next morning. Dammit, she loved her life! Loved it!

  She fell onto the creaking double bed that was covered with plain white sheets. The only flourish was a couple of colored chiffon scarves which hung from the bedpost.

  She canceled her order for chili and hot chocolate with Marsh-mallow Fluff, and she set All the Pretty Horses on top of unread copies of Harper’s and The New Yorker. Kate flipped off her lamp and was asleep in five seconds. End of wonderfully illuminating discussion with herself for the night.

  Kate McTiernan had no idea, no suspicion, that she was being watched, that she had been followed ever since she’d walked down crowded, colorful Franklin Street, that she had been chosen.

  Dr. Kate was next.

  Tick-cock.

  Chapter 17

  NO! KATE thought. This is my home. She almost said it out loud, but she didn’t want to make a sound.

  There was someone in her apartment!

  She was still half asleep, but she was almost sure about the intruding noise that woke her up. Her pulse was already racing. Her heart floated up into her throat. Jesus God, no.

  She stayed very still, huddled near the head of her bed. A few more nervous seconds passed slowly, like centuries. Not a move from her. Not a breath. Bone-white slants of moonlight played across the windowpanes, creating eerie shadows in her bedroom.

  She listened to the house, listened with total concentration to every creak and crack the old building made.

  She didn’t hear anything unusual now. But she was sure she had. The recent murders and the news stories about the kidnappings in the Research Triangle area made her fearful. Don’t be gruesome, she thought. Don’t get melodramatic.

  She sat up slowly in bed and listened. Maybe a window had blown open. She had better get out of bed and check the windows and doors.

  For the first time in four months, she actually missed Peter McGrath. Peter wouldn’t have helped, but she would have felt safer. Even with dear old “Peter-out.”

  Not that she was totally frightened or vulnerable; she could hold her own with most men. She could fight like hell. Peter used to say that he “pitied” the man who messed with her, and he meant it. He had been a little physically afraid of her. Well, prearranged fighting in karate dojos was one thing. This was the real thing.

  Kate slipped silently out of bed. Not a sound. She felt the roughness and coolness of the floorboards under her bare feet. It sent a wake-up call to her brain, and she moved into a fighting stance.

  Whap!

  A gloved hand came down hard over her mouth and nose, and she thought she heard cartilage crack in her nose.

  Then a large and very strong male body tackled her. All of his weight was pressing her into the cool, hard floorboards, pinning her down.

  Athlete. Her brain was computing every bit of information. She tried to stay clear and focused.

  Very powerful. Trained!

  He was cutting off her air supply. He knew precisely what he was doing. Trained!

  It wasn’t a glove that he was wearing, she realized. It was a cloth. Thick with dampness. It was suffocating her.

  Was he using chloroform? No, it was odorless. Maybe ether? Halothane? Where would he get anesthetic supplies?

  Kate’s thinking was getting fuzzy, and she was afraid she was going to black out. She had to get him off of her.

  Bracing her legs, she twisted her body hard to the left and threw all of her weight away from her attacker, toward the pale, shadowy bedroom wall. Suddenly, she was out of his grasp, free.

  “Bad idea, Kate,” he said in the darkness.

  He knew her name!

  Chapter 18

  THE STRIKE of a hawk… timing was everything. Now, timing was survival, Kate understood.

  She tried desperately to stay alert, but the powerful drug from the dampened cloth had started to act. Kate managed a three-quarter-speed sidekick, aiming at his groin. She felt something hard. Oh, shit!

  He was prepared for her. He had on an athlete’s cup to protect his mushy genitals. He knew her strengths. Oh, God, no. How did he know so much about her?

  “Not nice, Kate,” he whispered. “Definitely not hospitable. I know about your karate. I’m fascinated by you.”

  Her eyes were wild. Her heart was hammering so loudly she thought he might hear it. He was scaring the living shit out of her. He was strong and fast, and knew about her karate, knew what her next move would be.

  “Help me! Somebody, please help!” she shrieked as loudly as she could. Kate was just trying to scare him off with her screams. There was nobody within half a mile of the house on Old Ladies Lane.

  Powerful hands like claws grabbed at her and managed to catch her arm just above the wrist. Kate howled as she ripped herself away.

  He was more powerful than any of the advanced black belts at her karate school in Chapel Hill. Animal, Kate thought. Savage animal… very rational and crafty. Professional athlete?

  The most important lesson her sensei at the dojo had taught her broke through the numbing fear and chaos of the moment: Avoid all fights. Whenever possible, run from a fight. There it was—the best of hundreds of years of experience in martial arts. Those who never fight, always live to fight another day.

  She ran from her bedroom and down the familiar, narrow, twisting hallway. Avoid all fights. Run from a fight, she told herself. Run, run, run.

  The apartment seemed darker than usual that night. She realized that he’d closed every curtain and blind. He’d had the presence of mind. The calmness. The plan of action.

  She had to be better than him, better than his plan. A saying of Sun-tzu’s hammered through her head: “A victorious army wins its victories before seeking battle.” The intruder thought exactly like Sun-tzu and her sensei. Could it be someone from her karate dojo?

  Kate managed to reach the living room. She couldn’t see a thing. He had closed the curtains in there, too. Her vision and sense of balance were definitely way off. There were two of just about every shape and shifting shadow in the room. Goddamn him! Goddamn him!…

  Floating in the soft drug-induced haze, she thought of the other women who had disappeared in Orange and Durham counties. She’d heard on the news that another body had been found. A young mother of two children.

  She had to get out of the house. Maybe the fresh air would help to revive her. She stumbled to the front door.

  Something was blocking her way. He had pushed the sofa against the door! Kate was too weak to shoulder it away.

  In desperation she screamed out again. “Peter! Come help me! Help me, Peter!”

  “Oh, shut up, Kate. You don’t even see Peter McGrath anymore. You
think he’s a bloody fool. Besides, his house is seven miles away. Seven point three miles. I checked.” His voice was so calm and rational. Just another day at the office of psychopathology. And he definitely knew her, knew all about Peter McGrath, knew everything.

  He was somewhere close behind her in the electrifying darkness. There was no urgency or panic in his voice. This was a day at the beach for him.

  Kate moved quickly to her left, away from the voice, away from the human monster inside her house.

  Excruciating pain suddenly shot through her body, and she let out a low groan.

  She’d clipped her shin on the too-low, too-dumb-for-words glass table her sister Carole Anne had given her. It was Carole’s well-meaning effort to class up the place. Ohhh, Christ, god-dammit, how she hated that table. There was a shooting, throbbing pain in her left leg.

  “Stub your toe, Kate? Why don’t you stop trying to run around in the dark?” He laughed—and it was such a normal-sounding laugh—almost friendly. He was enjoying himself. This was a big game for him. A boy-girl game, in the dark.

  “Who are you?” she screamed at him…. Suddenly, she thought: Could it be Peter? Has Peter gone mad?

  Kate was close to passing out. The drug he had given her left her little strength to run anymore. He knew about her karate black belt. He probably knew she spent time in the weight room, too.

  She turned—and a bright flashlight shone right in her eyes. Blinding light was beaming at her face.

  He moved the flashlight away, but she still saw residual circles of light. She started to blink, and could barely make out the silhouette of a tall man. He was more than six feet tall, and had long hair.

  She couldn’t see his face, just a glimpse of his profile. Something was wrong with his face. Why was that? What was the matter with him?

  Then she saw the gun.

  “No, don’t,” Kate said. “Please… don’t.”

  “Yes, do,” he whispered to her intimately, almost like a lover.

  Then he calmly shot Kate McTiernan point-blank in the heart.

  Chapter 19

  EARLY ON Sunday morning it got even worse on the Casanova case. I had to drive Sampson to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. He needed to be back on The Job in Washington that afternoon. Someone had to protect the capital while I was working down here.

  The investigation was getting hotter and nastier now that the third woman’s body had been found. Not only local police and FBI, but also field-and-game officials had joined in the physical search at the homicide site. Deputy Director Ronald Burns had been here last night. Why was that?

  Sampson gave me a bear hug at the American Airlines security gate. We must have looked like a couple of Washington Redskins linebackers after they won the Super Bowl, or maybe after they didn’t even get into the play-offs in 1991.

  “I know what Naomi means to you,” he whispered against the side of my skull. “I know some of what you’re feeling. You need me again, you call.”

  We gave each other a quick kiss on the cheek, like Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas used to before their NBA basketball games. That drew a few stares from the peanut gallery milling around the metal detectors. Sampson and I love each other, and we’re not ashamed to show it. Unusual for tough-as-nails men of action like the two of us.

  “Watch out for the Fed Bureau. Watch your back with the local folk. Watch your front, too. I don’t like Ruskin. I really don’t like Sikes,” Sampson continued to give me instructions. “You’ll find Naomi. I have confidence in you. Always have. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

  The Big Man finally walked away, and never once looked back.

  I was all alone down South.

  Chasing monsters again.

  Chapter 20

  I WALKED from the Washington Duke Inn to the Duke campus at around one o’clock on Sunday afternoon.

  I had just eaten a real North Carolina breakfast: a pot and a half of hot, good coffee, very salty cured ham and runny eggs, biscuits and redeye gravy, grits. I’d heard a country song playing in the dining room, “One Day When You Swing That Skillet, My Face Ain’t Gonna Be There.”

  I was feeling crazy and on edge, so the pretty, half-mile hike to the campus was good therapy. I prescribed it for myself and then listened to the doctor. The crime scene the night before had shaken me.

  I vividly remembered a time when Naomi was a little girl, and I’d been her best friend. We used to sing “Incey Wincey Spider” and “Silkworm, Silkworm.” In a way, she’d taught me how to be friends with Jannie and Damon. She had prepared me to be a pretty good father.

  At the time, my brother Aaron used to bring Scootchie with him to the Capri Bar on Third Street. My brother was busy drinking himself to death. The Capri was no place for his little girl but, somehow, Naomi handled it. Even as a child, she understood and accepted who and what her father was. When she and Aaron would stop at our house, my brother would usually be high, but not really drunk yet. Naomi would be in charge of her father. He would make the effort to stay sober when she was there. The trouble was, Scootchie couldn’t always be around to save him.

  At one o’clock on Sunday I had a meeting scheduled with the dean of women at Duke. I went to the Allen Building, which was just off Chapel Drive. Several administration offices were housed there on the second and third floors.

  The dean of women was a tall, well-built man named Browning Lowell. Naomi had told me a lot about him. She considered him a close adviser and also a friend. That afternoon I met with Dean Lowell in his cozy office that was filled with thick, old books. The office looked out across magnolia- and elm-lined Chapel Drive to the Few Quad. Like everything else about the campus, the setting was visually spectacular. Gothic buildings everywhere. Oxford University in the South.

  “I’m a fan of yours through Naomi,” Dean Lowell said as we shook hands. He had a powerful grip, which I expected from the physical look of him.

  Browning Lowell was well muscled, probably in his mid-thirties, and good-looking. His sparkling blue eyes seemed relentlessly cheerful to me. Once upon a time he’d been a world-class gymnast, I remembered. He had attended Duke as an undergraduate, and was supposed to star for the American team in the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

  In the early part of that year an unfortunate news story had broken that Browning Lowell was gay, and having an affair with a basketball player of some renown. He had left the American team even before the eventual Olympic boycott. Whether the story was true had never been proved to my knowledge. Lowell had married, though, and he and his wife now lived in Durham.

  I found Lowell to be sympathetic and warm. We got down to the sad business of Naomi’s disappearance. He had all the right suspicions and appropriate fears about the ongoing police investigation.

  “It seems to me that the local papers aren’t making simple, logical connections between the murders and the disappearances. I don’t understand that. We’ve alerted all the women here on campus,” he told me. Duke coeds were being asked to sign in and out of dorms, he elaborated. The “buddy system” was encouraged whenever students went out at night.

  Before I left his office, he made a phone call to Naomi’s dorm house. He said it would make access a little easier, and he wanted to do everything he possibly could to help.

  “I’ve known Naomi for almost five years,” he told me. He ran his hand back through his longish blond hair. “I can feel a small fraction of what you’re going through, and I’m so sorry, Alex. This has devastated a lot of us here.”

  I thanked Dean Lowell and left his office feeling touched by the man, and somewhat better. I went off to the student dorms. Guess who’s coming to high tea?

  Chapter 21

  I FELT like Alex in Wonderland.

  The main dormitory area at Duke was another idyllic spot. Smaller houses, a few cottages, rather than the usual Gothic buildings. Myers Quad was shaded by tall ancient oaks and spreading magnolias, surrounded by well-kept flower gardens. Glory be to God fo
r dappled things.

  A silver BMW convertible was parked in front of the place. The sticker on the Bimmer bumper read: MY DAUGHTER AND MY MONEY GO TO DUKE.

  Inside, the living room of the dorm had polished hardwood floors and respectably faded oriental rugs that could pass for the real thing. I took in the sights while I waited for Mary Ellen Klouk. The room was filled with overstuffed “period” chairs, couches, mahogany highboys. Bench seats were under both front windows.

  Mary Ellen Klouk came downstairs a few minutes after my arrival. I had met her half a dozen times before that Sunday afternoon. She was nearly six feet tall, ash blond, and attractive—not unlike the women who had mysteriously disappeared. The body that was found half-eaten by birds and animals in the woods around Efland had once been a beautiful blond woman, too.

  I wondered if the killer had checked out Mary Ellen Klouk. Why had he chosen Naomi? How did he make his final choices? How many women had been chosen so far?

  “Hello, Alex. God, I’m glad you’re here.” Mary Ellen took my hand and held it tightly. Seeing her brought on warm, but also painful, memories.

  We decided to leave the dorm and stroll out onto the rolling grounds of the West Campus. I had always liked Mary Ellen. She’d been a history and psych major as an undergraduate. I remembered that we’d talked about psychoanalysis one night in D.C. She knew almost as much about psychic trauma as I did.

  “Sorry I was away when you arrived in Durham,” she said as we walked east among elegant Gothic-style buildings that were built in the 1920s. “My brother graduated from high school on Friday. Little Ryan Klouk. He’s over six feet five, actually. Two hundred and twenty pounds if he’s an ounce. Lead singer for Scratching Blackboards. I got back this morning, Alex.”

  “When was the last time you saw Naomi?” I asked Mary Ellen as we crossed onto a pretty street called Wannamaker Drive. It felt all wrong to be talking to Naomi’s friend like a homicide detective, but I had to do it.