“He’s right there, Alex.” Kate’s warning came a little too late. “He’s stopped!”
The Gentleman’s hooded eyes glared at our car as we passed him and the Range Rover.
He had seen us.
Chapter 66
DR. WILL Rudolph had turned into a rutted, dirt-and-gravel driveway hidden from the main road. He was stooped down inside the Rover, and was gathering an armful of who-knew-what from the backseat. He stared up at passing car with a cold, questioning look in his eyes.
I kept speeding along on the blacktop road that was accentuated by overhanging, gnarled black branches. A few hundred yards farther, just around a curve, I eased over onto the narrow shoulder. I stopped in front of a dented metal road sign that promised more dangerous twists and turns in the road up ahead.
“He’s stopped at a cabin,” I said into the FBI car’s two-way radio. “He’s on foot, out of the Rover.”
“We saw that. We’ve got him, Alex.” John Asaro’s voice came back over the two-way radio. “We’re on the other side of the cabin now. Looks dark inside. He’s turning on lights. El pais grande del sur. That’s what the Spanish called this place way back when. Beautiful spot to catch this fucker.”
Kate and I got out of the car. She looked a little pale, understandably so. The temperature was probably in the forties, maybe even the thirties, and the mountain air was bracing. But Kate wasn’t shivering just from the damp cold.
“We’re going to get him soon,” I said to her. “He’s starting to make mistakes.”
“It could be another house of horror. You were right,” she said in a low voice. Her eyes stared straight ahead. I hadn’t seen her this unsettled since I’d first met her in the hospital. “It feels like it, Alex… feels almost the same. Feels creepy. I’m not being very brave, am I?”
“Believe me, Kate, I’m not feeling particularly brave right now, either.”
The thick coastal fog seemed to roll on forever. My stomach felt icy and sour. We had to get moving.
Kate and I went into the dark screen of woods, heading toward the cabin. The north wind whistled and howled loudly through the towering redwood and fir trees. I had no idea what to expect from here on.
“Shit,” Kate whispered her summation of the night’s experience. “I’m not kidding, Alex.”
“You’ve got that right.”
El pais grande del sur at three o’clock in the morning. Rudolph had come to a lonely outpost on the edge of the earth. Casanova had a house in the South, in the deep woods, too. A “disappearing” house where he kept a collection of young women.
I thought of the spooky diaries in the Los Angeles Times. Could Naomi have been moved out here for some crazy, psychopathic reason? Maybe she was being kept in the cabin, or somewhere nearby?
I stopped walking suddenly. I could hear wind chimes, which sounded particularly creepy under the circumstances. Up ahead, a small cabin was visible. It was pink, with white doors and white window trim. It looked like a pleasant-enough summer place.
“He left a light for us,” Kate whispered behind me. “I remember that Casanova used to play loud rock ‘n’ roll music when he was in the house.”
I could tell it was painful for her to be thinking about her captivity again, to be reliving it. “You see any similarities to this cabin?” I asked her. I was trying to be very still inside, trying to get ready for the Gentleman.
“No. I only saw the inside of the other place, Alex. Let’s hope it won’t disappear on us.”
“I’m hoping for a lot of things right now. I’ll put that on the list.”
The cabin was an A-frame, and probably built to be a vacation home or weekend retreat. There were three or four bedrooms from the look of it.
I took out my Glock as we got closer. The Glock was the weapon of choice these days in the inner city; it weighed a little over a pound when loaded and was easily concealed. It would probably work fine in el pais grande del sur, too.
Kate kept behind me as we moved toward a clearing in the trees that served as a backyard. There were actually two lights glittering and drawing bugs to the house. One was the front-porch lamp. The second was in the back of the cabin. I made my way toward the second, dimmer light in back. I gestured for Kate to stay back, which she did.
This could be the Gentleman Caller, I warned myself. Take it very slow. This could also be a trap. Anything could happen here. There’s no predicting from here on.
I could see into a rear bedroom window. I was less than ten steps away from the cabin walls, and probably the mass murderer who was terrifying the West Coast. Then I saw him.
Dr. Will Rudolph was pacing around the small wood-paneled room and he was talking to himself. He appeared to be highly agitated. He was hugging himself with both arms. As I moved closer, I could see that he was perspiring heavily. Not in good shape at all. The scene reminded me of “quiet rooms” in mental hospitals, where patients sometimes go to act out their problems and volatile emotions.
Rudolph suddenly screamed at someone… but there was no one else in the room.
His face and his neck were bright crimson red as he screamed again… at absolutely no one!
He was screaming at the top of his lungs. His veins looked ready to burst.
Seeing him like this chilled me, and I slowly backed away from the cabin.
I could still hear his voice, hear the words ringing in my ears: “Goddamn you, Casanova! Kiss the girls! Kiss the fucking girls yourself from now on!”
Chapter 67
“WHAT THE hell is Cross doing?” Agent John Asaro asked his partner. They were in the thick woods on the other side of the cabin at Big Sur. The cabin reminded Asaro of The Band’s first album, Music from Big Pink. He half expected flower children and hippies to step out of the fog.
“Maybe Cross is a peeping Tom, Johnny. What do I know? He’s a guru, a squirrel profiler. He’s Kyle Craig’s boy,” Ray Cosgrove said with a shrug.
“So that means he can do whatever he wants to do?”
“Probably.” Cosgrove shrugged a second time. He had seen far too many crazy situations, too many “special accommodations,” in his Bureau career to let this one bother him.
“First of all,” Cosgrove said, “whether we like it or not, he has Washington’s blessing.”
“I hate Washington with a freaking passion that just won’t quit,” Asaro said.
“Everybody hates Washington, Johnny. Second, Cross strikes me as a pro at least. He’s not just some glory hound. Third,” the older, more experienced partner continued, “and most important, what we have on Dr. Rudolph is hardly conclusive evidence that he’s our squirrel. Otherwise, we would have called in the LAPD, army, navy, and marines.”
“Maybe the late Ms. Lieberman made a mistake when she logged his name into her computer?”
“She definitely made some kind of mistake somewhere, Johnny. Maybe her hunch was all wrong.”
“Maybe Will Rudolph was an ex-boyfriend of hers? She was just doodling his name on her PC?”
“Doubtful. But a possibility,” Cosgrove said.
“So we watch Dr. Rudolph, and we watch Dr. Cross watch Dr. Rudolph?” Agent Asaro said.
“You got it, partner.”
“Maybe Dr. Cross and Dr. McTiernan will provide us with a little entertainment at least.”
“Hey, you never know about these things,” Raymond Cosgrove said. He was smiling now. He thought this whole thing was probably a wild goose chase, but it wouldn’t be his first one. This was a huge, nasty case no matter what. It was interstate now, and every possible lead was being chased down with a vengeance. A coast-to-coast serial squirrel connection!
So he and his partner, and two other FBI agents, were going to hang around in the dark woods of Big Sur all night and into the morning, if need be. They would dutifully watch the summer cabin of a plastic surgeon from L.A., who maybe was a real bad killer, but maybe was just a plastic surgeon from L.A.
They would watch Alex Cross and Dr.
McTiernan, and speculate about the two of them. Cosgrove wasn’t really in the mood for any of this. On the other hand, it was a big case. And if he did happen to catch the Gentleman Caller, he might just become a glory hound himself. He wanted Al Pacino to play him in the movie. Pacino did Spanish guys, right?
Chapter 68
KATE AND I moved back a safe distance from the cabin. We ducked behind a stand of thick fir trees.
“I heard him scream,” Kate said when we got into the deeper woods. “What did you see back there, Alex?”
“I saw the devil.” I told her the truth. “I saw an absolutely crazy and evil man talking to himself. If he isn’t the Gentleman, he does a great imitation.”
The two of us took shifts watching Rudolph’s hideaway over the next several hours. That way, we both got some rest. Around six in the morning I met with the FBI team, and they gave me a pocket-sized walkie-talkie in case we needed to talk in a hurry. I still wondered how much they’d told me of what they knew.
When Dr. Will Rudolph eventually made another appearance outside, it was past one o’clock on Saturday afternoon. The silver-blue nimbus of sea mist had finally burned off. Scrub jays swooped and hollered over-head. Under different circumstances, it would have been a nice setting for a weekend in the mountains.
Dr. Rudolph cleaned up in a whitewashed outdoor shower behind the house. He was muscular, with a washboard stomach, and looked agile and fit. He was extremely handsome. He cavorted and danced around in the nude. His bearing seemed a little formal. The Gentleman.
“He’s so unbelievably sure of himself, Alex,” Kate said as we watched Rudolph from the woods. “Just look at him.”
Everything seemed very odd and ritualistic. Was the dance part of his act? His pattern?
When he finished his shower, he walked across the backyard to a small wildflower garden. He picked about a dozen flowers and brought them into the house. The Gentleman had his flowers! What now?
At four in the afternoon, Rudolph came out of the back screen door of the cabin again. He was dressed in tight black jeans, a plain white pocket T, black leather sandals. He hopped in the Range Rover and drove toward Highway 1.
About two miles south on the coast road, he pulled into a restaurant and café called Nepenthe. Kate and I waited on the sandy road shoulder, then we followed the Range Rover into a large, crowded parking lot. Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland” was playing loudly from speakers hidden in the trees.
“Maybe he’s just your average horny Los Angeles doctor,” Kate said as we finally entered the parking area and searched for a space.
“No. He’s the Gentleman, all right. He’s our California butcher boy.” I was sure of it after watching him the night before, and now today.
Nepenthe was busy, filled mostly with good-looking people in their twenties and thirties, but also a sprinkling of aging hippies, some of whom were sixty or more. Stone-washed jeans, the latest West Coast swimsuit creations, colorful flip-flops, expensive hiking boots were everywhere.
So were a lot of attractive women, I noticed. All ages, all sizes, all ethnic castes. Kiss the girls.
I had heard of Nepenthe, actually. It had been hot and famous in the sixties, but, even before that, Orson Welles had bought the desirable, breathtakingly beautiful property for Rita Hayworth.
Kate and I watched how Dr. Rudolph operated at the bar. He was polite. A smile for the bartender. Shared laughter. He looked around and seriously checked out several attractive women. Apparently they weren’t attractive enough, though.
He ventured out onto a large fieldstone terrace overlooking the Pacific. Rock music from the seventies and eighties was playing from an expensive sound system. The Grateful Dead. The Doors. The Eagles. This was Hotel California.
“It’s a beautiful spot for it, Alex. Whatever in hell he’s up to.”
“He’s up to six. He’s looking for victim number seven,” I said.
Far below, on an inaccessible beach, we could see sea lions, brown pelicans, cormorants. I wished that Damon and Jannie were here to see them, and I wished the circumstances of my being here were completely different.
Out on the terrace, I took Kate’s hand. “Makes us look like we belong,” I said and winked at her.
“Maybe we do.” Kate gave an exaggerated wink back.
We watched Rudolph approach a striking blond woman. She was the Gentleman’s type. In her early twenties. Shapely. Beautiful face. She was also Casanova’s type, I couldn’t help thinking.
Her wavy, sunbleached hair fell to her tiny waist. She wore a red-and-yellow flowered dress Putumayo’s that flowed down to a pair of black European workboots. She flowed when she moved as well. She was drinking champagne by the glass.
I hadn’t spotted agents Cosgrove or Asaro yet, which was making me a little nervous, a little nuts.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she? She’s just perfect,” Kate whispered at my side. “We can’t let him hurt her, Alex. We can’t let anything happen to that poor woman.”
“We won’t,” I said, “but we have to catch him in the act, nail him for kidnapping, if nothing else. We need evidence that he is the Gentleman Caller.”
I finally spotted John Asaro at the crowded main bar. He had on a bright yellow Nike T-shirt and fit in okay. I didn’t spot Ray Cosgrove or any of the other agents—which was actually a good sign.
Rudolph and the young blond woman seemed to have hit it off immediately. She appeared to be gregarious and fun-loving. She had perfect white teeth and her impression was dazzling. She couldn’t help but make an impression across the crowded room. My brain was sliding into overload. We were watching the Gentleman Caller at work, weren’t we?
“He’s hunting… and just like that” —Kate snapped her fingers— “he picks them up. Gets almost any woman he wants. That’s how he does it. So simple…
“It’s the way he looks that gets them, Alex,” Kate continued. “He has a rebellious look about him and he’s very handsome. That combination is irresistible to some women. She let him think it was his line of small talk that won her over, but it’s because he’s such a hunk.”
“So, she just picked him up?” I asked. “Our killer hunk?”
Kate nodded. She wouldn’t take her eyes off the two of them. “She just picked up the Gentleman Caller. He wanted her to, of course. I’ll bet that’s how he gets them, and why he never gets caught.”
“It’s not how Casanova works, though. Is it?”
“Maybe Casanova isn’t good-looking.” Kate turned and looked at me. “That might explain the masks he wears. Maybe he’s ugly, or disfigured, and ashamed of how he looks.”
I had another thought, another theory, about Casanova and his masks, but I didn’t want to say anything just yet.
The Gentleman and his new girlfriend ordered ambrosia-burgers, the house specialty. So did Kate and I. When in paradise…. They hung around the café until around seven o’clock and then got up to leave.
Kate and I rose from our table, too. Actually, I was half enjoying myself, considering the eerie circumstances. We had a table that overlooked the water. Down below, the Pacific crashed against a black wall of slippery rocks, and we could hear sea lions barking loudly.
I noted that there was no touching between the two of them as they walked out to the parking lot. It suggested to me that one of them was secretly shy.
Dr. Will Rudolph politely held open the door of his Range Rover, and the blond woman was laughing as she hopped in. He performed a tiny, elegant bow at the car door. The Gentleman.
She chose him, I was thinking. It wasn’t kidnapping yet. She was still making choices for herself.
We had nothing to go after him for, nothing to hold him on.
Perfect crimes.
On both coasts.
Chapter 69
WE TRAILED the Range Rover at a discreet distance, straight back to the cabin. I parked about a quarter of a mile up the road. My heart was hammering hard and loud. This was the moment of truth
, the real deal was going down now.
Kate and I ran back through the woods and found a safe spot that was well hidden from view. It was less than fifty yards from Dr. Rudolph’s hideaway, and we could still hear the musical tinkle of the wind chimes as they moved gently. The cold, damp sea mist was inching in, and I could feel a chill right up through my shoes.
The Gentleman Caller was inside that cabin up ahead. Getting ready to do what?
My stomach felt hollow and incredibly tight. I wanted to move on him in the worst way. I didn’t want to think about how many times Dr. Will Rudolph had done this before. Taken a young woman somewhere. Mutilated her. Taken home feet, eyes, fingers, a human heart. Souvenirs of his kill.
I glanced at my wristwatch. Rudolph had been inside the cabin for only a few minutes with the blond woman from Nepenthe. I’d seen movement in the woods on the other side of the house. The FBI was there. It was getting hairy.
“Alex, what if he kills her?” Kate asked. She stood close to me, and I could feel the heat from her body. She knew what it felt like to be a captive in a house of horror. She understood the danger better than anyone.
“He doesn’t grab his victims and kill them immediately. The Gentleman Caller has his routine,” I said to Kate. “He’s kept every one of the victims for a day. He likes to play. He won’t break away from the pattern.”
I believed that, but I didn’t know it for certain. Maybe Dr. Rudolph knew we were outside… maybe he wanted to get caught. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I remembered stalking the madman Gary Soneji/Murphy. It was hard not to rush the cabin. Take our chances right now. We might find physical evidence of other murders inside. Maybe the missing body parts were kept here. Maybe he did the actual killing here in Big Sur. Or maybe he was planning another kind of surprise for us. The drama was unfolding less than fifty yards away.
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