Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

by Patterson, James

  The house reminded me a little of Rudolph's apartment in Los Angeles.

  It was as if no one really lived there. Who are you? Show me who you really are, fucker. This house isn't the real you, is it? Does anyone know you without your masks? The Gentleman does, doesn't he?

  The kitchen was right out of Country Living magazine. Antiques and other beautiful “things” were in almost every room.

  In a small study, the professor's notes and papers were strewn everywhere, covering every available surface. He's supposed to be very orderly and neat, I thought, and stored the conflicting data. Who was he?

  I was searching for something specific, but I didn't know exactly where to look. Down in the basement I saw a heavy oak door. It was unlocked. It led into a small furnace room. I searched the room carefully. On the far side of the furnace room, I found another wooden door. It looked like a door to a closet, to some small, insignificant space.

  The second door was closed with a hook, which I removed as quietly as I could. I wondered if there could be more rooms in here? Maybe an underground space? Maybe the house of horror? Or a tunnel?

  I pushed open the wooden door. Pitch-blackness. I switched on the lights, and entered a single room that must have been twenty-five by forty. My heart skipped a beat. My knees got weak and I felt a little sick.

  There were no women in here, no harem, but I had found Wick Sachs's fantasy room. It was right in his house. Hidden in a secret corner of his basement. The room didn't fit in with the design of the rest of the house. He had built this room specially for himself. He liked to build things, to be creative, didn't he?

  The special room was laid out like a library. There was a heavy oak desk, and two red leather club chairs were on either side of it. The four walls of bookcases were filled with books and magazines from floor to ceiling. My blood pressure must have soared fifty points. I tried to be still inside, but I couldn't.

  This was a collection of pornography and erotica, the most extraordinary I had ever seen or even heard described. There were at least a thousand books in the room. I read titles as I quickly roamed from wall to wall, shelf to shelf.

  Strangest Sex Acts in Modes of Love of All Races Illustrated Cherries.

  Printed for the Erotica Biblion Society of New York Humiliations of Anastasia and Pearl The Harem Omnibus: a reader Until She Screams The Hymen. A Medico-Legal Study in Rape I concentrated and tried to focus on what I needed to do here. First, I tried to quiet the roaring noise in my head.

  I wanted to leave Wick Sachs a sign that I had been here; that I knew about his dirty little secret place; that he had no more secrets. I wanted him to experience the same kind of pressure, stress, and fear that all of us were going through. I wanted to hurt Dr. Wick Sachs. I hated him beyond anything I could have imagined.

  On the desk was a copy of a pamphlet from a supplier of erotic books and magazines: Nicholas]. Soberhagen, 1115 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, N.Y. By Appointment. I made a quick note. I wanted to hurt Nicholas Soberhagen, too.

  Sachs, or someone else, had checked off several books on the pamphlet's pages. I leafed quickly through it, reading with an ear cocked for sounds of a car on the street. Time was short now.

  The Special Orders of St. Theresa. Not to be missed! This reprint of an extremely rare original edition was issued in the 1880s. Here are actual recollections on the proper use of the rod at a Spanish nunnery outside Madrid.

  The Lovemaster. Lively sexual adventures of a dancer in Berlin; the various sex maniacs she encounters. For every serious collector! Release. An interpretive first novel based on the actual and imagined life of the French serial murderer, Gilles de Rais.

  I scanned the rows of wooden shelves directly behind the work desk. How long should I push my luck inside the house? It was getting late for Sachs and his family to be out. I stopped at a shelf behind his chair.

  My heart tightened when I saw several books on Casanova! I read the titles under my breath.

  Memoirs by Casanova Casanova. 102 Erotic Engravings The Most Wonderful Nights of Love of Casanova I thought of the two small children who lived in this house, Nathan and Faye Anne, and I felt badly for them. Their father, Dr. Wick Sachs, had his delirious, evil fantasies in this room. Stimulated by his dirty books, his collection of erotica, he decided which fantasy to act out in real life, didn't he? I could feel Sachs's presence in this room. I was getting to know him, finally.

  Was it possible that he kept the women somewhere nearby? Somewhere in town, where we would never expect to look? Was that why none of the searches had uncovered the house of horror? Was it somewhere right in suburban, highly respectable Durham?

  Was Naomi close by, waiting for someone to find her? The longer she was kept, the more dangerous her situation would become.

  I heard a noise upstairs, and listened closely, but there was no other sound. It might have been an electrical appliance, or just the wind, or a loose part in my skull.

  It was past time to get out of the house. I hurried upstairs and back out across the patio. I had been tempted to draw a cross on the pamphlet on Sachs's desk, to leave my mark. I resisted the impulse. He knew who I was. He had contacted me as soon as I arrived in Durham.

  But I was the one in heat now! I was back in my hotel room at a little past midnight. I felt empty and numb. Adrenaline was pumping through my body at a furious rate.

  The phone rang almost as soon as I walked in the door. A nasty, insistent hotel phone ring that demanded to be picked up.

  “Who the hell?” I muttered. I was half crazed by now. I wanted to race out into the Southern night, to search helter-skelter for Naomi. I wanted to grab Dr. Wick Sachs and beat the truth out of him. Whatever it takes.

  “Yes. Who is this?” I spoke a little too loudly into the phone.

  It was Kyle Craig.

  “Well?” he began. “What did you find out?”

  Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

  CHAPTER 81.

  MORNING HAD BROKEN AGAIN; nothing had really changed about the ghoulish investigation. Kate was still my partner in crime. That was her choice, but I approved. She knew Casanova better than the rest of us combined.

  She and I spied on the big, beautiful Sachs house from the triangle of dense fir woods off Old Chapel Hill Road. We had already seen Wick Sachs once that morning. Our lucky day.

  The Beast was up bright and early. He was tall and professorial-looking, with sandy blond hair brushed straight back and horn-rimmed glasses. He appeared to have a very good build.

  He had ventured out to the porch at around seven to pick up the Durham paper. The headline read: Casanova Watch Continues. The local newspaper editors could have had no idea, no clue, how accurate those words were.

  Sachs glanced at the front page, then casually folded it under his arm.

  Nothing of interest for him today. Another ho-hum day at the serial-killer office.

  At a little before eight, he came out with his children in tow. He had a big toothy smile turned on for the kids. The good father was taking them to school.

  His little boy and girl were outfitted as if they belonged in the front window of Gap For Kids or Esprit. They looked like adorable little dolls. The FBI would follow Sachs and the children to the school.

  “Isn't this a little unusual, Alex? Two surveillance jobs in a row like this?” Kate asked me. She was analytical and her mind never stopped working all the angles. She was as obsessive about the case as I was. That morning she was dressed down as usual. Tatty jeans, a navy blue T-shirt, sneakers. Her beauty shone through, anyway. She couldn't hide it.

  “Investigations of repeat killers are almost always unusual. This one is stranger than most,” I admitted. I talked about the twinning angle again. Two badly twisted men with no one to talk to, to share with. No one to understand, until they met each other. Then a powerful connection between the two killers. Kate was a twin, but she'd experienced a benign form of twinning. With Casanova and the Gentleman, it was something else.


  Wick Sachs came right back from the drop-off at school. We could hear him whistling cheerfully as he strolled to his perfect house. Kate and I had talked about the fact that he was a doctor after all, though a doctor of philosophy.

  Nothing much happened for the next few hours. There was no sign of Sachs, or his wife, the lovely Mrs. Casanova.

  Wick Sachs left the house on the hill again at eleven. He was blowing off his teaching classes today. He had already missed his ten o'clock tutorial, according to the schedule I had from Dean Lowell. Why was that? What slick game was he playing now?

  There were two cars in the circular driveway. He chose the burgundy one, a Jaguar XJS convertible with a tan top, twelve-cylinder engine.

  The other car was a black Mercedes sedan. Not too shabby on a professor's salary.

  He was heading out now, hitting the road. Was he going to visit his girls?

  Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

  CHAPTER 82.

  WE FOLLOWED Wick Sachs's sporty Jaguar onto Old Chapel Hill Road. We eased through Hope Valley, passing very substantial houses that had been built in the twenties and thirties. Sachs didn't seem to be in a hurry.

  So far, this was his game. We didn't know the rules, or even what game he was playing.

  Casanova.

  The Beast of the Southeast.

  Kyle Craig was still working on a financial investigation of Sachs with Internal Revenue. Kyle also had half-a-dozen agents filling in all the dots that might connect Sachs and Will Rudolph in the past. The two had definitely been classmates at Duke. High honor students. Phi Beta Kappa. They had known each other but weren't close friends in school, at least they didn't seem to have been. Actually, Kyle had been at Duke then, too, in the Law School. Phi Beta himself.

  When had the actual twinning taken place? How had the strong, freakish bond occurred? Something wasn't making sense to me about Rudolph and Sachs yet.

  “What if he lets that XJS out?” Kate said as we discreetly followed the monster to what we hoped was his lair in the woods, his harem, his “disappearing house.” We were tailing Sachs in my old Porsche.

  “I doubt he wants to draw a lot of attention to himself,” I told her.

  Although the XJS and the Mercedes kind of worked against that theory.

  “Besides, a Jaguar isn't much of a test for a Porsche.” “Even a Porsche from another century?” Kate asked.

  “Ho,” I answered her, “ho.” Sachs drove down Interstate 85, then turned onto 40. He got off at the exit for Chapel Hill. We followed him for another two miles through town. He finally stopped and parked near the University of North Carolina campus on Franklin Street.

  “All of this is making me feel so weird, Alex. A professor at Duke University. A wife and two beautiful children,” Kate said. "The night he grabbed me, he probably followed me off the campus. He watched me.

  I think he chose me right here.“ I glanced over at Kate. ”You okay?“ I asked her. ”Tell me if you're not up to this."

  Kate looked at me. Her eyes were intense, troubled. “Let's get this the hell over with. Let's get him today. Deal?” “Deal,” I agreed.

  “We've got you, Butt-Head,” Kate muttered into the car windshield.

  The quaint and pretty Chapel Hill street was already busy at quarter to twelve. College kids and profs were sliding in and out of the Carolina Coffee Shop, Peppers Pizza, the newly rebuilt Intimate Bookstore. All the favorite Franklin Street haunts were doing a pretty good business.

  The college-town atmosphere was appealing; it took me back to my days at Johns Hopkins. Cresmont Avenue in Baltimore.

  Kate and I were able to follow Wick Sachs from about a block and a half away. It would be easy for him to lose us now, I knew. Would he run to the house in the woods? Would he go to see his girls? Was Naomi still there?

  He could easily duck into the Record Bar, or into Spanky's restaurant on the corner. Come out a side door and disappear. A game of cat and mouse had begun. His game; his rules. Always his rules, so far.

  “He seems too smug, too self-satisfied,” I said as we tailed along at a reasonable distance. He hadn't even turned to see if he was being followed. He looked like a tweedy, jaunty prof on a lunchtime errand.

  Maybe that was all this was.

  “You still okay?” I checked on Kate again.

  She was watching Sachs like a scrap yard dog with a grudge to settle.

  I remembered that she took karate lessons somewhere near here in Chapel Hill. “Mmm, hmm. Lot of bad memories stirred up, though. Scene of the crime and all that,” Kate muttered.

  Wick Sachs finally stopped in front of the nicely retro Varsity Theatre in downtown Chapel Hill. He stood next to a community billboard covered with all sorts of handwritten notices and posters, mostly aimed at university students and faculty members.

  “Why would that scum be going to a movie?” Kate whispered, sounding more incensed than ever.

  “Maybe because he likes to escape, as in sublimate. This is the secret life of Wick Sachs. We're watching it.” “I'd kind of like to go after him right now. Rumble,” Kate said.

  “Yeah, me too. Me too, Kate.” I had noticed the cluttered community billboard on one of my walks here before. There were several notices about missing persons in the Chapel Hill area. Missing students. All of them were women. It struck me that this was a cruel plague that had come to the community, and no one had been able to do anything to stop it. No one had the cure.

  Wick Sachs seemed to be waiting for something or somebody. “Who the hell is he going to meet here in Chapel Hill?” I muttered.

  “Will Rudolph,” Kate said without missing a beat. “His old school chum. His best friend.” I'd thought about Rudolph coming back to North Carolina, actually.

  Twinning could be an almost physical addiction. In its negative form, it was based on co dependency or enabling behavior. The two of them abducted beautiful women, and then tortured or killed them. Was that their shared secret? Or was there even more to it than that?

  “He looks like Casanova would look without the mask,” Kate said. We had slipped inside a small cutesie-pie shop called School Kids. “He has the same color hair. But why wouldn't he disguise his hair?” she muttered. “Why only a mask?” “Maybe the mask isn't a disguise at all? It might mean something different in his private fantasy world,” I suggested. “It's possible that Casanova is his real persona. The mask, the whole human-sacrifice aura, the symbolism all of that would be very important for him.” Sachs was still waiting in front of the community billboard. Waiting for what? I had a gut feeling that something wasn't right with this picture. I sneaked a peek at him through the binoculars.

  His face was unconcerned, almost serene. A day in the park for the vampire Lestat. I wondered if he might be high on some kind of drug.

  He certainly knew about sophisticated tranquilizers.

  Behind him on the community board were all sorts of messages. I could read them with the binoculars.

  Missing Carolyn Eileen Devito Missing Robin Schwartz Missing Susan Pyle Women for Jim Hunt for Governor Women for It. Governor Laurie Gamier The Mind Sirens at the Cave All of a sudden, I had a possible answer. Messages! Casanova was sending out a cruel message for us for anyone who was watching him, anyone who dared to follow him.

  I slammed my hand down hard against the dusty window-sill inside the small store.

  “The son of a bitch is playing mind games!” I nearly shouted in the crowded shop where we were watching Wick Sachs. The elderly shopkeeper eyed me as if I were dangerous. I was dangerous.

  “What's wrong?” Kate was suddenly peering over my shoulder, leaning her body against me, trying to see whatever it was that I saw up the street.

  "It's the poster behind him. He's been standing under it for the past ten minutes. That's his message, Kate, to whoever's following him.

  That bright orange-and-yellow poster says it all."

  I handed her the binoculars. One poster on the bulletin board was larger a
nd more prominent than the others. Kate read it out loud.

  “Women and children are starving ... as you walk by with loose change in your pocket. Please change your behavior now! You can actually save lives.”

  Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

  CHAPTER 83.

  OH, JESUS, Alex,“ Kate spoke in a tense whisper. ”If he can't go out to the house they'll starve, and if he's followed he won't go out to the house. That's what he's telling us! Women are starving ... change your behavior now."

  I wanted to take out Wick Sachs right there. I knew there was nothing we could do to him. Nothing legal, anyway. Nothing sane.

  “Alex, look.” Kate sounded an alarm. She handed me the glasses.

  A woman had come up to Sachs. I squinted through the binoculars. The noonday sun was bright off shiny glass-and-metal surfaces up and down Franklin Street.

  The woman was slender and attractive, but she was older than the women who had been abducted. She had on a black silky blouse, tight black leather slacks, black shoes. She was carrying a briefcase loaded with books and papers.

  “She doesn't seem to fit his mold, his pattern,” I said to Kate. “She looks in her late thirties.” “I know her. I know who she is, Alex,” Kate whispered.

  I looked at her. “Who, for God's sake, Kate?” “She's a professor in the English Department. Her name is Suzanne Wellsley. Some of the students call her “Runaround Sue.” There's a joke about Suzanne Wellsley throwing her underwear against the wall, and it sticks.”

  “They could tell the same joke about Dr. Sachs,” I said. He had a nasty reputation as a rake on campus. He'd had the bad rep for years, but no disciplinary action was ever taken. More perfect crimes?

  He and Ms. Suzanne Wellsley kissed in front of the “hunger” billboard.

  A tongue kiss, I could see as I watched through the binoculars. A very hot embrace, too, with no apparent concern about the public venue.

  I had second thoughts about the “message.” Maybe it was just a coincidence, only I didn't believe in coincidences anymore. Maybe Suzanne Wellsley was involved with the “house” that Sachs kept. There could be others, too. Maybe this whole thing involved some kind of adult sex cult. I knew they existed; even in our nation's capital they existed and flourished.