Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls (9 page)

“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.

The question had stung Mary Ellen. She took a deep breath before she answered me. “Six days ago, Alex. We drove down to Chapel
Hill together. We were doing work there for Habitat for Humanity.”

Habitat for Humanity was a community-service group that rebuilt houses for the poor. Naomi didn’t mention that she did volunteer
work for them. “Did you see Naomi after that?” I asked.

Mary Ellen shook her head. The gold dancing bells around her neck jangled softly. I suddenly got the feeling that she didn’t
want to look at me.

“That was the last time, I’m afraid. I was the one who went to the police. I found out they have a twenty-four-hour rule on
most disappearances. Naomi was gone almost two and a half days before they put out any all-points bulletins. Do you know why?”
she asked.

I shook my head, but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it in front of Mary Ellen. I still didn’t know exactly why there
was such a band of secrecy surrounding the case. I’d put in calls to Detective Nick Ruskin that morning, but he hadn’t returned
any of them.

“Do you think Naomi’s disappearance has anything to do with the other women who have disappeared lately?” Mary Ellen asked.
Her blue eyes were pierced with pain.

“There could be a connection. There was no physical evidence at the Sarah Duke Gardens, though. Honestly, there’s very little
to go on, Mary Ellen.” If Naomi was abducted at a public garden right on the campus, there were no witnesses. She had been
seen in the gardens half an hour before she missed a class in Contracts. Casanova was scarily good at what he did. He was
like a ghost.

We finished our walk, ending up full circle where we had begun. The dormitory house was set back twenty to thirty yards from
a graveled path. It had high white columns, and the large veranda was crowded with shiny white wicker rockers and tables.
The antebellum period, one of my favorites.

“Alex, Naomi and I really haven’t been as close lately,” Mary Ellen suddenly confided in me. “I’m sorry. I thought you should
know that.”

Mary Ellen was crying as she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. Then she ran up the polished whitewashed stairs and disappeared
inside.

Another troubling mystery to solve.

C
ASANOVA WATCHED Dr. Alex Cross. His quick, sharp mind was whizzing about like a sophisticated computer—possibly the fastest
computer in whole Research Triangle.

Look at Cross,
he muttered.
Visiting Naomi’s old friend! There’s nothing to be found there, Doctor. You’re not even warm yet. You’re getting colder, actually.

He followed Alex Cross at a safe distance as he walked across the Duke campus. He had read extensively about Cross. He knew
all about the psychologist and detective who’d made his reputation tracking down a kidnapper-killer in Washington. The so-called
crime of the century, which was a lot of media hype and horseshit.

So who’s better at this game?
he wanted to shout out to Dr. Cross.
I know who you are. You don’t know dogshit about me. You never will.

Cross stopped walking. He took a pad from the back pocket of his trousers and made a note.

What’s this, Doctor? Had a thought of some consequence? I rather doubt that. I honestly do.

The FBI, the local police, they’ve all been trailing me for months. I suppose they make notes, too, but none of them has a
clue….

Casanova watched Alex Cross continue to walk along the campus until he finally disappeared from sight. The idea that Cross
would actually track and capture him was unthinkable. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

He started to laugh, and had to catch himself since the Duke campus was fairly crowded on a Sunday afternoon.

No one has a clue, Dr. Cross. Don’t you get it?… That’s the clue!

I
WAS a street detective again.

I spent most of Monday morning interviewing people who knew Kate McTiernan. Casanova’s latest victim was a first-year intern
who’d been abducted from her apartment on the outskirts of Chapel Hill.

I was attempting to put together a psych profile of Casanova, but there wasn’t enough information. Period. The FBI wasn’t
helping. Nick Ruskin still hadn’t returned my phone calls.

A professor at North Carolina med school told me that Kate McTiernan was one of the most conscientious students she’d taught
in twenty years. Another professor at the school said that her commitment and intelligence were indeed high, but “her temperament
is the truly extraordinary thing about Kate.”

It was unanimous in that regard. Even competing interns at the hospital agreed that Kate McTiernan was something else. “She’s
the least narcissistic woman I’ve ever met,” one of the woman interns told me. “Kate’s totally driven, but she knows it and
she can laugh at herself,” said another. “She’s a really cool person. This is such a sad, numbing thing for everyone at the
hospital.” “She’s a brain, who happens to be built like a brick shithouse.”

I called Peter McGrath, a history professor, and he reluctantly agreed to see me. Kate McTiernan had dated him for almost
four months, but their relationship had ended abruptly. Professor McGrath was tall, athletic-looking, a bit imperious.

“I could say that I fucked up royally by losing her,” McGrath admitted to me. “And I did. But I couldn’t have held on to the
Katester. She’s probably the strongest-willed person, man or woman, that I’ve ever met. God, I can’t believe this has happened
to Kate.”

His face was pale, and he was obviously shaken up by her disappearance. At least he appeared to be.

I ended up eating by myself in a noisy bar in the college town of Chapel Hill. There were hordes of university students, and
a busy pool table, but I sat alone with my beers, a greasy, rubbery cheeseburger, and my early thoughts on Casanova.

The long day had drained me. I missed Sampson, my kids, my home in D.C. A comfortable world without any monsters. Scootchie
was still missing, though. So were several other young women in the Southeast.

My thoughts kept drifting back to Kate McTiernan, and what I’d heard about her today.

This is the way cases got solved—at least it was the way I had always solved them. Data got collected. Data ran loose in the
brain. Eventually, connections were made.

Casanova doesn’t just take physically beautiful women,
I suddenly realized in the bar.
He takes the most extraordinary women he can find. He’s taking only the heartbreakers… the women that everybody wants but
nobody ever seems to get.

He’s collecting them somewhere out there.

Why extraordinary women?
I wondered.

There was one possible answer.
Because he believes he’s extraordinary, too.

I
ALMOST went back to see Mary Ellen Klouk again, but I changed my mind and returned to the Washington Duke Inn. A couple of
messages were waiting for me.

The first was from a friend in the Washington PD. He was processing information I needed for a meaningful profile on Casanova.
I’d brought a laptop with me and I hoped I would be in business soon.

A reporter by the name of Mike Hart had called four times. I recognized his name, and I knew his newspaper—a tabloid out of
Florida called the
National Star.
The reporter’s nickname was No-Heart’s Hart. I didn’t return No-Heart’s calls. I’d been featured on the front page of the
Star
once, and once was enough for this lifetime.

Detective Nick Ruskin had finally returned one of my calls. He left a short message.
Nothing new on our end. Will let you know.
I found that hard to believe. I didn’t trust Detective Ruskin or his faithful sidekick Davey Sikes.

I drifted off to a restless sleep in a cozy armchair in my room and had the most vivid, nightmarish dreams. A monster right
out of an Edvard Munch painting was chasing Naomi. I was powerless to help her; all I could do was watch the macabre scene
in horror. Not much need for a trained psychotherapist to interpret that one.

I woke up sensing that someone was in the hotel room with me.

I quietly placed my hand on the butt of my revolver and stayed very still. My heart was pounding. How could someone have gotten
into the room?

I stood up slowly, but stayed low in a shooting crouch. I peered around as best I could in the semidarkness.

The chintz window drapes weren’t completely drawn, so there was enough light from outside for me to make out shapes. Shadows
of tree leaves danced on the hotel room wall. Nothing else seemed to be moving.

I checked the bathroom, Glock pistol first. Then the closets. I began to feel a little silly stalking the hotel room with
my gun drawn, but I had definitely heard a noise!

I finally spotted a piece of paper under the door, but I waited a few seconds before I flipped on the light. Just to be sure.

A black-and-white photograph was staring up at me. Instant associations and connections jumped to mind. It was a colonial
British postcard, probably from the early 1900s. At that time the postcards had been collected by Westerners as pseudoart,
but mostly as soft pornography. They had been a racy turn-on for male collectors in the early part of the century.

I bent down to get a better look at the old-fashioned photo.

The card showed an odalisque smoking a Turkish cigarette, in a startling acrobatic posture. The woman was dark, young, and
beautiful; probably in her mid-teens. She was naked to the waist, and her full breasts hung upside down in the posed photograph.

I flipped the card over with a pencil.

There was a printed caption near where a stamp could be placed:
Odalisques with great beauty and high intelligence were carefully trained to be concubines. They learned to dance quite beautifully,
to play musical instruments, and to write exquisitely lyrical poetry. They were the most valuable part of the harem, perhaps
the emperor’s greatest treasure.

The caption was signed in ink with a printed name.
Giovanni Giacomo Casanova de Seignalt.

He knew that I was here in Durham. He knew who I was.

Casanova had left a calling card.

I
’M ALIVE.

Kate McTiernan slowly forced open her eyes inside a dimly lit room…
somewhere.

For a couple of blinks of her eyes, she believed she was in a hotel that she couldn’t for the life of her remember checking
into. A really weird hotel in an even weirder Jim Jarmusch art movie. It didn’t matter, though. At least she wasn’t dead.

Suddenly, she remembered being shot point-blank in the chest. She remembered the intruder. Tall… long hair… gentle, conversational
voice…
sixth-degree animal.

She tried to get up, but thought better of it immediately. “Whoa there,” she said out loud. Her throat was dry, and her voice
sounded raspy as it echoed unpleasantly inside her head. Her tongue felt as if it needed a shave.

I’m in hell. In a circle from Dante’s Inferno, with a very low number,
she thought, and she began to shiver. Everything about the moment was terrifying, but it was so horrible, and so unexpected,
she couldn’t orient herself to it.

Her joints were stiff and painful; she ached all over. She doubted that she could press a hundred pounds right now. Her head
felt huge, bloated like aging fruit, and it hurt, but she could vividly remember the attacker. He was tall, maybe six two,
youngish, extremely powerful, articulate. The images were hazy, but she was absolutely certain they were true.

She remembered something else about the monstrous attack in her apartment. He’d used a stun gun, or something like it, to
immobilize her. He’d also used chloroform, or maybe it was halothane. That could account for her bruising headache.

The lights had purposely been left on in the room. She noticed they were coming from modern-looking dimmers built into the
ceiling. The ceiling was low, possibly under seven feet.

The room looked as if it had recently been built, or remodeled. It was actually decorated tastefully, the way she might have
done her own apartment if she had the money and time…. A real brass bed. Antique white dresser with brass handles. A dressing
table with a silver brush, comb, mirror. There were colorful scarves tied on the bedposts, just the way she did them at home.
That struck her as strange. Very odd.

There were no windows in the room. The only way out appeared to be through a heavy wooden door.

“Nice decor,” Kate muttered softly. “Early psycho. No, it’s
late
psycho.”

The door to a small closet was open halfway and she could see inside. What she saw made her feel physically ill.

He’d brought her clothes to this horrible place, this bizarre prison cell. All of her clothes were here.

Using her remaining strength, Kate McTiernan forced herself to sit upright in the bed. The effort made her heart race, and
the pounding in her chest frightened her. Her arms and legs felt as if heavy weights were tied to them.

She concentrated hard, trying to focus her eyes on the incredible scene. She continued to stare into the closet.

Those weren’t actually her clothes, she realized. He’d gone out and bought clothes
just like hers!
Exactly to her taste and style. The clothes displayed in the closet were brand-new. She could see some of the store tags
dangling from the blouses and skirts. The Limited. The Gap in
Chapel Hill.
Stores she actually shopped in herself.

Her eyes darted to the top of the antique white dresser across the room. Her perfume was there, too. Obsession. Safari. Opium.

He’d bought all of it for her, hadn’t he?