Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls (14 page)

The FBI agents would want to talk for hours about the gruesome details of the murder scene.
The feet!
The Gentleman had cut off Sunny Ozawa’s feet with some kind of razor-sharp knife. Both her feet were missing from the crime
scene in Pasadena.

Brutality was his trademark, but that was the only consistent pattern so far. He had mutilated genitalia in the past. He had
sodomized one victim, then cauterized her. He had cut open a woman investment banker’s chest and removed her heart. Was he
experimenting? He was no gentleman once he selected his victim.
He was a Jekyll and Hyde in the 1990s.

Beth Lieberman finally opened her eyes and saw a tall, slender man standing very close to her in the newsroom. She sighed
loudly and she held back a frown.

It was Kyle Craig, the special investigator from the FBI.

Kyle Craig knew,
something
that she desperately needed to know, but he wouldn’t tell her squat. He knew why the deputy director of the FBI had flown
to Los Angeles the previous week. He knew secrets that she needed to know.

“Hello, Ms. Lieberman. What do you have for me?” he asked.

T
ICK-COCK, dickory dock.

This was the way he hunted for the women. This was how it really happened, time after time. There was never any danger for
him personally. He fit in wherever he chose to hunt. He did his best to avoid any kind of complication or human error. He
had a passion for orderliness and, most of all, perfection.

That afternoon, he waited patiently in a crowded arcade of a trendy shopping mall in Raleigh, North Carolina. He watched attractive
women enter and leave the local Victoria’s Secret across a long marble transverse. Most of the women were well dressed. A
copy of
Time
magazine and also
USA Today
were folded on the marble bench beside him. The newspaper headline read:
Gentleman Calls for 6th Time in LA.

He was thinking to himself that the “Gentleman” was zooming out of control in southern California. He was taking gruesome
souvenirs, doing two women a week sometimes, playing stupid mind games with the
Los Angeles Times,
the LAPD, and the FBI. He was going to get caught.

Casanova’s blue eyes moved back across the crowded shopping mall. He was a handsome man, as the original Casanova had been.
Nature had equipped the eighteenth century adventurer with beauty, sensuality, and great enthusiasm for women—and so it was
with him as well.

Now where was the lovely Anna? She had slipped into Victoria’s Secret—to buy something campy for her boyfriend, no doubt.
Anna Miller and Chris Chapin had been in law school together at North Carolina State. Now Chris was an associate in a law
firm. They liked to dress in each other’s clothes. Cross-dress to get their kicks. He knew all about them.

He had watched Anna whenever he could for almost two weeks. She was a startling, dark-haired twenty-three-year-old beauty,
maybe not another Dr. Kate McTiernan, but close enough.

He watched Anna finally leave Victoria’s Secret and walk almost directly toward him. The
click
of her high heels made her sound so wonderfully haughty. She
knew
she was an extraordinary young beauty. That was the very best thing about her. Her supreme confidence nearly matched his
own.

She had such a nicely arrogant, long-legged stride. Perfect slender lines up and down her body. Legs wrapped in dark nylons;
heels for her part-time job in Raleigh as a paralegal. Sculptured breasts that he wanted to caress. He could see the subtle
lines of her underwear under a clinging tan skirt. Why was she so provocative? Because she
could
be.

She seemed intelligent, too. Promising, anyway. She had just missed Law Review. Anna was warm, sweet, nice to be around. A
keeper. Her lover called her “Anna Banana.” He loved the sweet, stupid intimacy of the nickname.

All he had to do was take her. It was that easy.

Another very attractive woman suddenly broke into his field of vision. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. He stood up
and stretched, then walked toward her. She had store packages and bags piled high in both arms.

“Hi there, beautiful,” he said when he got close. “Can I take some of those? Ease your heavy load, sweet darlin’?”

“You’re such a sweet, handsome thing yourself,” the woman said to him. “But then you always were. Always the romantic, too.”

Casanova kissed his wife on the cheek and helped her with the packages. She was an elegant-looking woman, self-possessed.
She had on jeans, a loose-fitting workshirt, a brown, tweed jacket. She wore clothes well. She was effective in many ways.
He had picked her with the greatest care.

As he took some bags, he held the nicest, warmest thought:
They couldn’t catch me in a thousand years. They wouldn’t know where to start to look. They couldn’t possibly see past this
wonderful, wonderful disguise, this mask of sanity. I am above suspicion.

“I saw you watching the young chippie. Nice legs,” his wife said with a knowing smile and a roll of her eyes. “Just as long
as all you do is watch.”

“You caught me,” Casanova said to his wife. “But her legs aren’t as nice as yours.”

He smiled in his easy and charming way. Even as he did so, a name exploded inside his brain.
Anna Miller.
He had to have her.

T
HIS WAS harder than hard.

I slapped on a happy, make-believe smile as I barged through my own front door back home in Washington. A day off from the
chase was necessary. More important, I had promised the family a meeting, a report on Naomi’s situation. I was also missing
my kids and Nana. I felt as if I were home on leave from a war.

The last thing I wanted Nana and the kids to know was how anxious I was about Scootchie.

“No luck yet,” I told Nana as I stooped and kissed her cheek. “We’re making a little progress, though.” I stepped away from
her before she could cross-examine me.

Standing in the living room, I launched into my best working-father lounge act. I sang “Daddy’s Home, Daddy’s Home.” Not Shep
and the Limelites’ version; my own original tune. I scooped up Jannie and Damon in my arms.

“Damon, you got bigger and stronger and you’re handsome as a prince of Morocco!” I told my son. “Jannie, you got bigger and
stronger and beautiful as a princess!” I told my daughter.

“So did you, Daddy!” The kids squealed the same kind of sweet nonsense right back at me.

I threatened to scoop up my grandmother, too, but Nana Mama made a serious-looking cross with her fingers to ward me off.
Our family sign. “You just stay away from me, Alex,” she said. She was smiling,
and
issuing a baleful stare. She can do that. “Decades of practice,” she likes to say. “
Centuries,
” I always come back at her.

I gave Nana another big kiss. Then I more or less “palmed” the kids. I held them out the way big men can hold basketballs
as if they were nothing but an extension of their arms.

“Have you two been good little rapscallions?” I began my interrogation techniques with my very own repeat of fenders. “Clean
your rooms, do your chores, eat your brussels sprouts?”

“Yes, Daddy!”
they shouted in unison. “We been good as gold,” Jannie added as convincing detail.

“You lyin’ to me? Brussels sprouts? Broccoli, too? You wouldn’t lie so brazenly to your daddy? I called home at ten-thirty
the other night, both of you were still up. And
you say to me
that you’ve been good. Good as
gold!
”

“Nana let us watch pro
hoops!
” Damon howled with laughter and undisguised glee. That young con man can get away with anything, which worries me sometimes.
He is a natural mimic, but also an ingenious creator of his own original material. At this point, his humor level is about
that of the TV hit
In Living Color.

I finally reached into my travel satchel for their cache of presents. “Well, in that case, I’ve brought y’all something from
my trip down South. I say y’all now. I learned it in North Carolina.”

“Y’all,” Jannie said back at me. She giggled wildly and did an impromptu dance turn. She was like the cutest puppy kept in
the house for an afternoon. Then you come home and she’s all over you like sticky flypaper. Just like Naomi was when she was
a little girl.

I pulled out Duke University NCAA champion basketball T-shirts for Jannie and Damon. The trick with those two is they have
to get the same thing. Same exact design. Same exact color. That will last for another couple of years, and then neither one
of them will be caught dead in anything vaguely associated with the other.

“Thank you, y’all,” the kids said one after the other. I could feel their love—it was so good to be home. On leave, or otherwise.
Safe and sound for a few hours.

I turned to Nana. “You probably thought I forgot all about you,” I said to her.

“You will never forget me, Alex.” Nana Mama squinted her brown eyes hard at me.

“You got that right, old woman.” I grinned.

“I surely do.” She
had
to have the last word.

I took a beautifully wrapped package from my duffel bag of wonders and surprises. Nana unwrapped it, and she found the most
handsome handmade sweater that I had ever seen anywhere. It had been created in Hillsborough, North Carolina, by eighty- and
ninety-year-old women who still worked for a living.

For once, Nana Mama had nothing to say. No smart comebacks. I helped her on with the hand-knitted sweater, and she wore it
for the rest of the day. She looked proud, happy, and beautiful, and I loved seeing her like that.

“This is the nicest gift,” she finally said with a tiny crack in her voice, “other than you being home, Alex. I know you’re
supposed to be a tough hombre, but I worried about you down there in North Carolina.”

Nana Mama knew enough not to ask too much about Scootchie yet. She also knew exactly what my silence meant.

I
N THE late afternoon, thirty or of my very closest friends and relatives swarmed through the house on Fifth Street. The investigation
in North Carolina was the topic of discussion. This was natural even though they knew I would have told them if I had any
good news to report. I made up hopeful leads that just weren’t there. It was the best I could do for them.

Sampson and I finally got together on the back porch after we’d had a little too much imported beer and rare beefsteaks. Sampson
needed to listen; I needed some cop talk with my friend and partner.

I told him everything that had happened so far in North Carolina. He understood the difficulty of the investigation and manhunt.
He’d been there with me before, on cases without a single clue.

“At first, they shut me out completely. Wouldn’t listen to squat from me. Lately, it’s been a little better,” I said to him.
“Detectives Ruskin and Sikes dutifully check in and keep me up to date. Ruskin does, anyway. Occasionally, he even tries to
be helpful. Kyle Craig is on the case, too. The FBI still won’t tell me what they know.”

“Any guesses, Alex?” Sampson wanted to know. He was intense as he listened and occasionally made a point.

“Maybe one of the kidnapped women is connected to somebody important. Maybe the number of victims is a lot higher than they’re
letting on. Maybe the killer is connected to somebody with power or influence.”

“You
don’t
have to go back down there,” Sampson said after he’d heard all the details. “Sounds like they’ve got enough ‘professionals’
on the case. Don’t start on one of your vendettas, Alex.”

“It’s already started,” I told him. “I think Casanova’s enjoying the fact that he has us stumped with his perfect crimes.
I think he likes it that
I’m
stumped and frustrated, too. There’s something else, but I can’t figure it out yet. I think he’s in heat now.”

“Mmm, hmm. Well it sounds to me like
you’re
in heat, too. Back the hell off him, Alex. Don’t play Sherlock fuckin’ Holmes with this kinky madman.”

I didn’t say anything. I just shook my head, my very
hard
head.

“What if you can’t get him,” Sampson finally said. “What if you can’t solve this case? You have to think about that, Sugar.”

That was the one possibility I
wouldn’t
consider.

W
HEN KATE McTiernan woke up, she knew immediately that something was very wrong, that her impossible situation had gotten even
worse.

She didn’t know what time it was, what day it was, where she was being held. Her vision was blurred. Her pulse was jumpy.
All her vital signs seemed off kilter.

She had gone from extreme feelings of detachment, to depression, to panic, in just the few moments she had been conscious.
What had he given her? What drug would produce these symptoms? If she could solve that puzzle, it would prove she was still
sane, at least still competent to think things through clearly.

Maybe he’d given her Klonopin, Kate considered.

Ironically, Klonopin was usually prescribed as an antianxiety medication. But if he started her at a high-enough dosage, say
five to ten milligrams, she would experience approximately the same side effects she was feeling now.

Or maybe he’d used Marinol capsules? They were prescribed for treatment of nausea during chemotherapy. Kate knew Marinol was
a real beaut! If he put her on, say, two hundred milligrams a day, she’d be bouncing off the walls. Cottonmouth. Disorientation.
Periods of manic depression. A dosage of fifteen hundred to two thousand milligrams would be lethal.

He had taken away her escape plan with the powerful drugs. She couldn’t fight him like this. Her karate training was useless.
Casanova had seen to that.

“You fucker,” Kate said out loud. She almost never swore. “You motherfucker,” she whispered between clenched teeth.

She didn’t want to die. She was only thirty-one years old. She was finally trained to be a doctor, a good one, she hoped.
Why me? Don’t let this happen. This man, this awful maniac, is going to kill me for no good reason!