Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls (26 page)

Among his dozen expensive suits were
two
tuxedoes. The suit closet was small, narrow, and oh-so-neat. It was less a closet than a shrine for his clothes.

Our strange, strange Gentleman.

I came over to Kate after an hour or so of touring the Gentleman’s place. I had read the local detectives’ reports. I’d talked
to most of the techs, but so far they had nothing. That didn’t seem possible to any of us. The newest laser equipment was
being brought from downtown Los Angeles. Rudolph had to have left clues somewhere. But he hadn’t! So far, that was his closest
parallel to Casanova.

“How are
you
doing?” I asked Kate. “I’m afraid I’ve been lost in my own world for the last hour.”

We were at a window overlooking Wilshire Boulevard and also the Los Angeles Country Club. Lots of shimmering car and building
lights surrounding an eighteen-hole expanse of darkness. A disturbing Calvin Klein billboard was brightly lit up down on the
street. It showed a naked model on a couch. She looked to be about fourteen.
Obsession,
the ad proclaimed.
For men.

“I’ve got my second or third wind,” Kate said. “
All
the world’s a hideous nightmare suddenly, Alex. Have they found anything at all?”

I shook my head as I looked at the two of us in the dark, reflective window. “It’s maddening. Rudolph commits ‘perfect crimes,’
too. The techies might eventually match fiber from his clothes to one or more of the crime scenes, but Rudolph is unbelievably
careful. I think he has a knowledge of forensic evidence.”

“There’s enough written about it these days, isn’t there? Most doctors are pretty good at absorbing technical information,
Alex.”

I nodded at the truth of her statement. I’d thought the same thing. Kate had the makings of a detective. She looked tired.
I wondered if I looked as exhausted as I felt.

“Don’t even say it.” I dialed up a smile. “I’m
not
going to a hospital now. I think we’re done here for the night, though, We lost him, goddammit, we lost them both.”

W
E LEFT Will Rudolph’s penthouse apartment at just past two in the morning. That made it 5:00 A.M. our time. I was reeling.
So was Kate. We called ourselves “the bruise brothers.” We were both out of it.

Grogginess, exhaustion, possible internal injuries, they were one and the same. If I had ever felt this badly before, I couldn’t
remember the time, and didn’t want to. We collapsed into the first of our rooms when we reached the Holiday Inn on Sunset.

“Are you all right? You don’t look so good to me.” Not unexpectedly, Kate resumed her advertisement for the McTiernan Medical
Group. She was a compelling spokeswoman, actually. She had a way of crinkling her forehead that made her look thoughtful and
wise, and highly professional.

“I’m not dying, I’m just dead tired.” I groaned and slowly lowered myself onto the edge of the comfy bed. “Just another tough
day at the office.”

“You’re so
damn stubborn,
Alex. Always the macho big-city detective. All right, I’m going to examine you myself. Don’t try to stop me or I’ll break
your arm, which I’m entirely capable of doing.”

Kate pulled a stethoscope and sphygmomanometer out of one of her travel bags. She wasn’t taking “no,” “absolutely not,” or
“no way” as an answer.

I sighed. “I’m not having a physical exam now, and especially here,” I told her with as much resolve as I could muster under
the circumstances.

“I’ve seen it all before.” Kate rolled her eyes and frowned. Then she smiled. No, actually she laughed. A doctor with a smile
and a nice sense of humor. Imagine that.

“Take your shirt off, Detective Cross,” Kate said to me. “Make my day. My night, anyway.”

I started to pull my shirt over my head. I half moaned, half yelled. Just taking the shirt off hurt like hell. Maybe I
was
seriously hurt.

“Oh, you’re just
fine
and
dandy,
” Dr. McTiernan pronounced with a wicked chuckle. “Can’t even get your shirt off.”

She bent in close, extremely close, and listened to my breathing with the stethoscope. I could hear her breathing without
the help of any machine. I liked the sound of her heartbeat up close like this.

Kate probed my shoulder blade. Then she moved my arm back and forth, and it hurt. Maybe I was banged up a lot worse than I
thought. More likely, she wasn’t using her gentlest touch while she examined me.

She poked my abdomen and ribs next. I saw stars, but not a peep came from me in protest.

“That hurt at all?” she asked. Doctor-to-patient talk. Detached, professional.

“No. Maybe. Yes, a little. Okay, quite a lot. Ow! That wasn’t so bad.
Ow!
”

“Getting hit by a train isn’t the way to keep the average human body in excellent running shape,” she said. She touched my
ribs again, gentler this time.

“That wasn’t my plan,” I said, offering the only defense I had.

“What
was
your plan?”

“My fleeting thought up at Big Sur was that maybe he knew where Naomi was, and I couldn’t let him get away. My ultimate plan
was to find Naomi. It still is.”

Kate used both her hands to feel my rib cage. She applied pressure, but nothing too extreme. She asked me if it hurt to take
a breath.

“To tell the truth, I kind of like this part,” I told her. “You have a nice touch.”

“Uh-huh. Now the trousers, Alex. You can keep your drawers on if it makes you feel better.” A little of her drawl was creeping
into her speech.

“My
drawers?
” I grinned.

“Your bikini underwear from
Gentlemen’s Quarterly.
Whatever you’re wearing today. Let’s see the goodies, Alex. I’d like to see a little skin.”

“You don’t have to show such obvious damn glee about this.” I was very much awake all of a sudden. I did like the way Kate
touched me, though. I liked it a lot, in fact. Different kinds of sparks were starting to fly.

I pulled off my pants. I
could not
get to my socks, not even close.

“Mmm. Not so bad, actually,” she offered her opinion of something or other. I began to feel hot, uncomfortably warm, in the
hotel room. Under these circumstances, anyway.

Kate applied gentle pressure against my hips, then against my pelvis. She asked me to slowly raise my feet off the bed, one
at a time, while she kept her hands firmly on my hip joints. Very carefully, she felt my legs from my groin area, all the
way down to my feet. I mostly liked that, too.

“Lots of abrasions,” she said. “I wish I had some bacitracin ointment on hand. It’s an antibiotic.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

Finally, Kate stopped all the probing and poking and pulled away from me. She frowned and wrinkled her nose, nibbled her upper
lip. She looked smart, academic, professional as the surgeon general.

“Blood pressure’s a little high, borderline, but I don’t think anything’s broken,” she pronounced. “I don’t like the discoloration
on your abdomen and your left hip, though. Tomorrow you’ll feel sore and stiff, and we have to go over to Cedars-Sinai and
get a few X rays taken. Do we have a deal?”

Actually, I felt a little better after Kate examined me and pronounced that I wouldn’t die suddenly during the night. “Yes.
It wouldn’t be a complete day without one of our deals. Thank you for the examination, Doctor… thank you, Kate,” I said.

“You’re quite welcome. It was an honor.” She finally smiled. “You look a little like Muhammad Ali, you know. The Great One.”

So I have been told. “In his prime,” I joked. “I do dance like a butterfly.”

“I’ll bet. I sting like a bee.” She winked and crinkled her nose again. A nice tic of hers.

Kate lay back on the bed. I stayed there beside her. Close, but not close enough to touch. We were at least a foot apart.
Very strange, but nice strange. I missed her touch already.

We were quiet for the next minute or so. I glanced over at her. Maybe it was more than a glance. Kate had on a black skirt
with black tights, a red peasant blouse. The bruises on her face had faded. I wondered about the rest of her. I held in a
sigh.

“I’m
not
Nanu the ice queen,” she said softly. “Trust me, I’m normal as they come. Frisky, fun, a little crazy. At least I was a month
ago.”

I was surprised that Kate thought I might be feeling that way about her. She was the opposite, warm and compassionate. “I
think you’re great, Kate. Truth be told, I like you an awful lot.” There, it was out. Probably an understatement at that.

We kissed gently. Just the briefest kiss. There was something right about it. I liked the feel of Kate’s lips, her mouth on
mine. We kissed again, maybe to prove that the first one hadn’t been a mistake, or maybe to prove that it had been.

I felt as if I could kiss Kate all night, but we both gently pulled away. This
was
probably more than either of us could handle right now.

“Don’t you admire my self-control?” Kate smiled and said.

“Yes and no,” I told her.

I pulled on my hair shirt again. It took some effort, and produced hellacious pain. I
would
definitely go for X rays tomorrow. Kate started to cry and buried her face in the pillow. I turned toward her and put my
hand on her shoulder.

“You okay? Hey?”

“I’m sorry. Shoot,” she whispered, trying to stop the tears. “I just… I know I don’t seem like it most of the time, but I’m
freaking out, Alex. I’ve
been
freaking out. I’ve seen so many horrible things. Is this case as bad as your last one—the child kidnappings in D.C.?” she
asked me.

I held Kate very gently in my arms. I hadn’t seen her quite so vulnerable, so open about it, anyway. Everything suddenly became
more relaxed between us.

I whispered into her hair. “This case is as bad as anything I’ve seen. It’s actually worse because of Naomi, and because of
what happened to you. I want him more than I wanted Gary Soneji. I want both of these monsters.”

“When I was a very little girl back home,” Kate said, still in a whisper, “I was just learning to talk. I was probably four
months old.” She smiled at the exaggeration. “No, I was around two. When I would get cold, and I wanted to be held, I’d combine
the two ideas. I used to say, ‘Cold me.’ It meant, ‘Hold me, I’m cold.’ Friends can do that. Cold me, Alex.”

“Friends should,” I whispered back.

We cuddled on top of the covers and kissed a little more, until we both finally fell asleep. Merciful sleep.

I was the one who woke up first. It was 5:11 A.M. on the hotel room clock.

“You awake? Kate?” I whispered.

“Mmm hmmm. I’m awake
now.
”

“We’re going back to the Gentleman’s apartment,” I told her.

I called ahead and talked to the FBI agent in charge. I told him where to look, and what to look for.

D
R. WILL Rudolph’s once orderly and pristine penthouse apartment had ceased to exist as such. The three-bedroom penthouse looked
like a state-of-the-art crime lab. It was a little past six when Kate and I arrived back there. I was pumped about my hunch.

“Did you dream about the Gentleman?” Kate wanted to know. “Your hunch?”

“Uh huh. I was processing information. It’s all processed now.”

A half-dozen or so FBI techies and LAPD homicide detectives were still on the scene. The latest Pearl Jam played from somebody’s
radio. The lead singer seemed to be in terrible pain. Dr. Rudolph’s wide-screen Mitsubishi TV was on, but with the sound turned
off. One of the techies was eating an egg sandwich off greasy paper.

I went searching for an agent named Phil Becton, the FBI’s suspect profiler. The Man. He had been called down from Seattle
to gather all the available information on Rudolph, then match it against known data on other psychopaths. A profiler, if
he or she is good, is actually invaluable in an investigation of this kind. I’d heard from Kyle Craig that Becton was “spooky
good.” He had been a sociology professor at Stanford before he joined the Bureau.

“You fully awake? Ready for this?” Becton asked when I finally located him in the master bedroom. He was at least six four,
with another three inches of wiry red hair. Plastic evidence pouches and manila evidence envelopes were spread all around
the bedroom. Becton wore one pair of eyeglasses, and had another pair on a chain around his neck.

“I’m not sure if I’m awake,” I told Becton. “This is Dr. Kate McTiernan.”

“Nice to meet you.” Becton shook hands with her, studying Kate’s face at the same time. She was data for him. He seemed a
weird man, perfect for his job.

“See there,” he said, pointing across the bedroom. The FBI had already taken apart the Gentleman’s clothes closet. “You were
right on the money. We found a fake wall that Dr. Will Rudolph Hess built behind his skinny clothes closet. There’s about
a foot and a half of extra space in there.”

The clothes closet for his suits had been too skinny and peculiar.
I’d made the connection in that strange region of the edge of sleep. The closet had to be his hiding spot. It was a shrine,
but not to his expensive suits.

“That’s where he kept his souvenirs?” I made an educated guess.

“You got it. Little waist-high refrigerator-freezer back there. It’s where he kept the body parts he collected.” Becton pointed
to the sealed containers. “Sunny Ozawa’s feet. Fingers. Two ears with different earrings, two separate victims.”

“What else was in his collection?” I asked Phil Becton. I wasn’t in a hurry to look at feet, ears, fingers. His trophies from
the murders of young girls around L.A.

“Well, as you’d expect from reading the murder-scene briefs, he liked to collect their underwear as well. Freshly worn panties,
bras, pantyhose, a woman’s T-shirt that says Dazed and Confused and still smells of Opium perfume. He likes to keep photographs,
a few locks of auburn hair. He’s so
neat.
He kept each specimen in its own plastic bag. One through thirty-one. He’s labeled them with numbers.”