Kiss the Girls

by James Patterson

  We held hands for a long time in the restaurant. We sipped port wine. We were both a little quiet, letting powerful new feelings wash over us, getting used to them.

  After dinner we went back to her apartment in Chapel Hill. The first thing I did was to check around for uninvited houseguests. I had tried to talk her into a hotel room during the car ride, but, as usual, Kate said no. I remained paranoid about Casanova and his games.

  “You’re so damn stubborn,” I told her as we both checked all the doors and windows.

  “Fiercely independent is a much better description,” Kate countered. “It comes with the black belt in karate. Second degree. Watch yourself.”

  “I am.” I laughed. “I’ve also got eighty pounds on you.”

  Kate shook her head. “Won’t be enough.”

  “You’re probably right.” I laughed out loud.

  No one was hiding in the apartment on Old Ladies Lane. No one was there except the two of us. Maybe that was the scariest thing of all.

  “Please don’t run off now. Stay for a while. Unless you want to or have to,” Kate said to me. I was still standing in her kitchen. My hands were awkwardly jammed into my pockets.

  “I’ve got nowhere I’d rather be,” I told her. I was feeling a little nervous and keyed up.

  “I have a bottle of Château de la Chaize. I think that’s the name. It only cost nine bucks, but it’s decent wine. I bought it just for tonight, even though I didn’t know it at the time.” Kate smiled. “Three months ago when I made the purchase.”

  We sat on Kate’s couch in the living room. The place was neat but still funky. There were black-and-white photos on the walls of her sisters and her mother. Happier times for Kate. There was an amazing picture of her in her pink uniform at the Big Top Truck Stop, where she worked to pay her way through school. The waitressing job was part of the reason medical school had meant so much to her.

  Maybe the wine made me tell Kate more about Jezzie Flanagan than I wanted to. It had been my only attempt at a serious attachment since Maria’s death. Kate told me about her friend, Peter McGrath. History professor at the University of North Carolina. As she talked about Peter, I had the disturbing thought that maybe he was one suspect we had glossed over too quickly.

  I couldn’t leave the case alone, not even for one night. Maybe I was just trying to escape into my work again. Still, I made a mental note to check out Dr. Peter McGrath a little more carefully.

  Kate leaned in close to me on the couch. We kissed. Our mouths made a perfect fit. We had both done this before, kissed, but maybe never as well.

  “Will you stay tonight? Please stay,” Kate whispered. “Just this one night, Alex. We don’t have to be scared about this, do we?”

  “No, we don’t have to be scared,” I whispered back. I felt like a schoolboy. Maybe that was okay, though.

  I didn’t know exactly what to do next, how to touch Kate, what to say, what not to do. I listened to the soft hum of her breathing. I let everything take its natural course.

  We kissed again, as gently as I ever remember kissing anyone. We were both needy. But we were so vulnerable at that moment.

  Kate and I went to her room. We held each other for a long time. We talked in whispers. We slept together. We didn’t make love that night.

  We were best friends. We didn’t want to ruin it.

  CHAPTER 85

  NAOMI THOUGHT that she was finally losing the last pieces of her sanity. She had just seen Alex kill Casanova, even though she knew it hadn’t really happened. She’d seen the shooting with her own eyes. She was hallucinating, and she couldn’t stop the waves of delusion anymore.

  She talked to herself sometimes. The sound of her own voice was comforting.

  Naomi became quiet and thoughtful as she sat on an armchair in the darkened prison cell. Her violin was there, but she hadn’t played it in days. She was afraid for a whole new reason now. Maybe he wasn’t coming back again.

  Maybe Casanova had been caught, and he wouldn’t tell the police where he kept his captives. That was his ultimate leverage, wasn’t it? That was his diabolical secret. His final edge and bargaining chip.

  Maybe he’d already been killed in a shoot-out. How could the police hope to find her and the others if he was dead? Something’s happened, she thought. He hasn’t been here in the last two days. Something has changed.

  She desperately wanted to see sunny blue skies, grass, the Gothic spires of the university, the layered terraces at the Sarah Duke Gardens, even the Potomac River in all of its muddy-gray glory back home in Washington.

  She finally got up from the easy chair beside her bed. Very, very slowly, Naomi shuffled across the bare wooden floor, and stood by the locked door with her cheek pressed against the cool wood.

  Should I do this crazy thing? she wondered. Do I sign my own death warrant?

  Naomi could barely catch her breath. She listened for sounds in the mysterious house, any tiny, insignificant sound at all. The rooms had been soundproofed—but if you made enough noise, some sound carried through the eerie building.

  She went over what she wanted to say, exactly what she would say.

  My name is Naomi Cross. Where are you, Kristen? Green Eyes? I’ve decided that you’re right. We have to do something…. We have to do something together…. He’s not coming back.

  Naomi had thought this moment through clearly, intelligently, she hoped—but she couldn’t say the words out loud. She understood that plotting against him could mean her death.

  Kristen Miles had called out to her a few times during the past twenty-four hours, but Naomi hadn’t answered back. It was forbidden to talk, and she had seen his warning to them. The hanged woman a few days before. Poor Anna Miller. Another law student.

  She couldn’t hear anything, right now. White noise, that was all. The static of silence. The gentle hum of eternity. There was never even the sound of a car. Not a single backfire or a distant horn. Not even the boom of an airplane passing overhead.

  Naomi had decided they must be underground, at least a couple of levels down into the earth. Had he built this underground complex, this sinplex? Had he thought it all through, dreamed about it, and then done it in some burst of psychopathic fury and energy? She thought that he had indeed.

  She was getting herself ready to break the silence. She had to talk to Kristen, to Green Eyes. Her mouth was so dry. It felt like cotton wool. Naomi finally licked her lips.

  “I would kill for a Coke, I would kill him for a Coke,” she, whispered to herself. “I could kill him given the chance.”

  I could kill Casanova. I could commit a murder. I’m that far gone, aren’t I? she thought and had to stifle a sob.

  Naomi finally called out in a loud, strong voice. “Kristen, can you hear me? Kristen? It’s Naomi Cross!”

  She was shivering, and warm tears streamed down her cheeks. She’d gone against him and his shitty, sacred rules.

  Green Eyes called back immediately. The other woman’s voice sounded so good. “I can hear you, Naomi! I think I’m only a few doors away from you. I hear you fine. Keep talking, I’m sure he’s not here, Naomi.”

  Naomi didn’t think anymore about what she was doing. Maybe he wasn’t there; maybe he was. It didn’t matter now.

  “He’s going to kill us,” she called back. “Something’s different about him! He’s going to kill us for sure. If we’re going to do anything, we have to do it the first chance we get.”

  “Naomi’s right!” Kristen’s voice was slightly muffled, as if she were talking from the bottom of a well. “Do you all hear Naomi? Of course you do!”

  “I have one idea for everyone to consider.” Naomi spoke even more loudly this time. She wanted to keep this communication going now. They all had to hear her, all the trapped women. “The next time he gets us together—we have to go for it. If we rush him all at once, he might hurt some of us. But he can’t stop all of us! What do you think?”

  Just then the heavy wooden door to
Naomi’s room opened a crack. Light streamed in.

  Naomi watched in stark horror as the door swung open. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak a word.

  Her heart beat painfully in her chest, pounding, and she couldn’t get a breath. She felt as if she were about to die. He’d been there, waiting, listening all this time.

  The door opened all the way.

  “Hello, my name is Will Rudolph,” the tall, good-looking man in the doorway said in a pleasant voice. “I like your plan very much, but I don’t think it will work. Let me tell you why.”

  CHAPTER 86

  I WAS AT Raleigh-Durham International Airport at a little before nine on Wednesday morning. The cavalry was arriving. Fresh troops were here. Team Sampson was back in town.

  In contrast to the creeping terror and paranoia that were present everywhere on the streets of Durham and Chapel Hill, the early-morning businesspeople at the airport seemed oblivious to harm in their dark, pressed suits, their floral print dresses from Neiman Marcus and Dillard. I liked that. Good for them. Denial is an approach.

  I finally saw Sampson loping through the USAir gate with long, determined strides. I waved my local newspaper at him. It was characteristic of me to wave and for Man Mountain not to. He gave me a city-cool head nod, though. Bad to the bone. Just what the doctor ordered.

  I brought Sampson up to speed while we drove from the airport to Chapel Hill.

  I needed to check out the Wykagil River area. It was just another hunch of mine, but it could lead to something… like the location of the “disappearing house.” I had enlisted the help of Dr. Louis Freed, a mentor and former teacher of Seth Samuel’s. Dr. Freed was a noted black historian on the Civil War, a period I was also interested in. Slaves and the Civil War in North Carolina…. In particular, the Underground Railroad that had been used for slaves escaping to the North.

  As we entered Chapel Hill, Sampson got to see for himself what the abductions and grisly murders had done to the once-peaceful college town. The nightmarish scene reminded me of a couple of my subway trips in New York City. It also reminded me a little of home, our nation’s capital. The people of Chapel Hill now hurried along the picturesque streets with their heads down. They no longer made eye contact with one another, especially with strangers. Trust had been replaced by fear and terror. The sweet small-townness had vanished.

  “You think Casanova is enjoying this Invasion of the Body Snatchers aura?” Sampson asked as we cruised the side streets bordering the University of North Carolina campus, former home base of Michael Jordan and too many other pro-basketball stars to mention.

  “I think he’s learned to enjoy being a local celebrity, yes. He likes to play the game. He’s especially proud of his handiwork—his art.”

  “Doesn’t he want a larger venue? Larger canvas, so to speak?” Sampson asked as we climbed the gentle hills the college town had apparently been named for.

  “I don’t know about that yet. He might be a very territorial rec killer. Some recs are strictly territorial: Richard Ramirez, the Son of Sam, the Green River killer.”

  I then told Sampson about my theory on twinning. The more I thought about it, the sounder it got for me. Even the FBI was starting to believe in it a little. “The two of them have to be sharing some big secret. That they abduct beautiful women is only part of it. One of them thinks of himself as a ‘lover’ and artist. The other is a brutal killer, much more typical of serial-killer cases. They complete each other, they correct each other’s weaknesses. Together, I think they’re virtually unstoppable. More importantly, I think they do, too.”

  “Which one is the leader?” Sampson asked a very good question. It was completely intuitive on his part. The way he always solves problems.

  “I think it’s Casanova. He’s definitely the more imaginative of the two. He’s the one who hasn’t made any major mistakes yet, either. But the Gentleman isn’t really comfortable being a follower. He probably moved to California to see if he could succeed on his own. And he couldn’t.”

  “Is Casanova this kinky-assed college professor? Dr. Wick Sachs? The pornography professor you told me about? Is he our man, Sugar?”

  I peered across the front seat at Sampson. We were into the real deal now. Cop shop talk. “Sometimes, I think it’s Sachs, and that he’s so goddamn clever and smart he can let us know who he is. He enjoys watching us squirm. That could be the ultimate power game for him.”

  Sampson nodded—one nod. “And other times, Dr. Freud, what is your alternative thought process on Dr. Sachs?”

  “Other times, I wonder if Sachs has been set up. Casanova is very bright, and he’s been extremely careful. He seems to send out misinformation that has everyone chasing his own tail. Even Kyle Craig’s getting uptight and crazy.”

  Sampson finally showed his large, very white teeth. Maybe it was a smile, or maybe he was going to bite me. “Looks like I’m here just in the motherfucking nick of time.”

  As I slowed for a stop sign on the side street, a man with a gun suddenly moved away from a parked car and toward us.

  There was nothing I could do to stop him, nothing Sampson could do.

  The gunman pointed a Smith and Wesson right into my face, up against my cheekbone.

  Endgame! I thought.

  Tilt!

  “Chapel Hill police,” the man shouted into the open window. “Get the hell out of the car. Assume the position.”

  CHAPTER 87

  YOU GOT here just in the nick of time,” I muttered to Sampson under my breath. We climbed out of the car very slowly and carefully.

  “Looks like it,” he said. “Be cool now. Don’t get us shot or beat up, Alex. I wouldn’t appreciate the irony.”

  I thought I knew what was happening and it made me incredibly angry. Sampson and I were “suspects.” Why were we suspects? Because we were a couple of black males riding on the side streets of Chapel Hill at ten o’clock in the goddamn morning.

  I could tell that Sampson was furious, too, but he was angry in his own way. He was smiling thinly and shaking his head back and forth. “This is rich,” he said. “This is the best yet.”

  Another Chapel Hill detective appeared to assist his partner. They were tough-looking studs, in their late twenties. Longish hair. Full mustaches. Hard, muscular bodies from workout central. Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes in training.

  “You think this is funny?” The second officer’s voice was disembodied, so low I could barely hear the words. “You think you’re a laugh riot, Home?” he asked Sampson. He had a lead sap out and was holding it close to his hip, ready to strike.

  “Best I could come up,” Sampson said, keeping his smile turned on low. He wasn’t afraid of saps.

  My scalp was crawling and sweat dribbled slowly down my back. I couldn’t remember being rousted recently, and I didn’t like it one bit. Everything bad I had felt since I’d been here fell into place. Not that rousting black males is peculiar to North Carolina or the South anymore.

  I started to tell the cops who we were. “My name is—”

  “Shut the fuck up, asshole!” One of them popped me in the small of the back before I could finish. Not hard enough to leave a bruise, but it stung like a good rabbit punch. It hurt in a couple of ways, actually.

  “This one looks fucked up to me. Eyes are bloodshot,” the low-voiced patrolman said to his partner. “This one is high.” He was talking about me.

  “I’m Alex Cross. I’m a police detective, you motherfucker!” I suddenly yelled at him. “I’m part of the Casanova investigation. Call detectives Ruskin and Sikes right now! Call Kyle Craig from the FBI!”

  At the same time, I spun around fast and hit the closest one in the throat. He dropped to the ground like a stone. His partner jumped forward, but Sampson had him on the sidewalk before he could do anything too dumb. I took away the first stud’s revolver easier than I could disarm a fourteen-year-old hugger-mugger in D.C.

  “Assume the position?” Sampson said to his “suspect.” The
re was no merriment in his deep voice. “How many brothers you pull that shit on? How many young men you call ‘homes’ and humiliate like that?—like you might fuckin’ understand what their life is about. Makes me sick.”

  “You know damn well the serial killer Casanova isn’t a black man,” I said to the two disarmed Chapel Hill cops. “You haven’t heard the last of this particular incident, gentlemen. Believe me on that one.”

  “There been a lot of robberies in this neighborhood,” the deep-voiced one said. He was contrite all of a sudden, doing the Corporate America step’n’fetchit, the old two-step backstep.

  “Save the sorry bullshit!” Sampson said, jabbing out with his own gun, letting the two detectives feel a little humiliation of their own.

  Sampson and I got back into our car. We kept the detectives’ guns. Souvenirs of our day. Let them explain it to their bosses back at police headquarters.

  “Son of a bitch!” Sampson said as we pulled away. I hit the steering wheel with the heel of my palm. I hit it a second time. The bad scene had shaken me more than I had realized, or maybe I was just too ragged and frayed right then.

  “On the other hand,” Sampson said, “we did take those boys down like snap. Little bullshit racism gets my adrenaline flowing, blood boiling. Gets the demons going. That’s good. I have the proper edge now.”

  “It’s nice to see your ugly face again,” I said to Sampson. I had to smile, finally. We both did. Then we were both laughing out loud in the car.

  “Nice to see you, too, Brown Sugar. You’ll be happy to know you’ve still got your looks. Strain’s not showing too bad. Let’s go to work. You know, I pity the poor psycho if we catch him today—which is likely, I might add.”

  Sampson and I were twinning, too. It felt as good as ever.

  CHAPTER 88

  SAMPSON AND I found Dean Browning Lowell working out at the new faculty gym in Allen Hall on the Duke campus. The gym was filled with the latest and greatest muscle-building and toning equipment: shiny new rowing machines, StairMasters, treadmills, Gravitrons.