Alex Cross 02 - Kiss the Girls (23 page)

Was that the beginning of the solution to this puzzle? I wondered. Were the Gentleman and Casanova twinning? Were they actually
working together? What was their nasty little game all about? What game were they playing?

“Let’s go smash in his picture window with a tire iron,” Kate said. She was feeling it, too. We were both ready to rumble.

We wanted to take down this grown-up Leopold and Loeb.

E
IGHT O’CLOCK came and went on the surveillance watch. Maybe Dr. Will Rudolph wasn’t the Gentleman Caller. The
Los Angeles Times
reporter Beth Lieberman could have been wrong. There was no way to ask her about it now.

Kate and I had been gabbing about the Lakers without Magic Johnson and Kareem, about Aaron Neville’s latest album, Hillary
and Bill Clinton’s life together, the merits of Johns Hopkins versus University of North Carolina medical school.

Strange sparks were still flying between us. I’d had some unofficial therapy sessions with Kate McTiernan and I had hypnotized
her once. I also understood that I was afraid of any kind of fire starting between us. What was wrong with me? It was time
to start my life again, to get over the loss of my wife, Maria. I thought I had something good with a woman named Jezzie Flanagan,
but she had left an emptiness in me that I could barely get over.

Kate and I finally began to cover subjects a little closer to the heart. She asked why I was shying away from relationships
(because my wife had died; because my last relationship had imploded; because of my two kids).
I asked her why she was wary of meaningful relationships
(she was afraid she was going to die of ovarian or breast cancer like her sisters; she was afraid her lovers might die, or
leave her—that she would keep on losing people).

“We’re quite the pair.” I finally shook my head and smiled.

“Maybe we’re both terrified of losing someone again,” Kate said. “Maybe it’s better to love and lose than be afraid.”

Before we could really get into that thorny subject, Dr. Will Rudolph finally appeared. I looked at the time on the dashboard
clock. It was 10:20.

Rudolph was decked out in all-black party clothes. Form-fitting blazer, turtleneck, clinging slacks, snazzy cowboy boots.
He got into a white Range Rover this time instead of the BMW sedan. He looked freshly showered. Probably had taken a nap.
I envied him that.

“Black on black for the good doctor,” Kate said with a tight smile. “Dressed to kill?”

“Maybe he has a dinner date,” I said. “Now there’s a scary idea. He sups with the women, then kills them.”

“That could get him inside their apartments at least. What a terrible creep.
Two
unbelievable creeps on the loose.”

I started up our car and we followed Rudolph. I didn’t see any FBI coverage, but I was sure they were there.

The Bureau still hadn’t brought in the LAPD on this. It was a dangerous game, but not an unusual one for the FBI. They considered
themselves the best policemen for any job, and the ultimate authority. They had decided this was an interstate crime spree,
so it was theirs to solve. Somebody at the Bureau had a hard-on for this case.

“Vampires always hunt at night, huh,” Kate said as we headed south through L.A. “That’s what this feels like, Alex. Bram Stoker’s
The Gentleman Caller.
A real-life horror story.”

I knew what Kate was feeling. I felt it too. “He is a monster. Only he’s created himself. So has Casanova. It’s another similarity
they share. Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, they wrote only about human monsters roaming the earth. Now we have sickos living out
their elaborate fantasies. What a country.”

“Love it or leave it, bub,” Kate said with a drawl and a wink.

I had done enough surveillance early in my career to get reasonably good at it. I figured I had earned a graduate degree in
tracking during the Soneji/Murphy manhunt. So far, I’d noticed that the West Coast FBI was good, too.

Agents Asaro and Cosgrove checked in on the radio as soon as we started to move again. They were in charge of the tracking
unit on Will Rudolph.
We still didn’t know if he was the Gentleman.
We had no proof. We couldn’t move on Dr. Rudolph yet.

We followed the Range Rover west through Los Angeles. Rudolph finally turned onto Sunset Drive and took it all the way to
the Pacific Coast Highway. Then he headed north on U.S. Highway 1. I noticed that he was careful to keep the Range Rover at
the speed limit inside L.A. But once he hit the open road, he started to fly.

“Where the heck is he going? My heart’s in my throat,” Kate finally admitted.

“We’ll be okay. It seems scary chasing him at night,” I said. It did feel as if we were alone with him. Where the hell was
he going? Was he hunting? If his pattern held, he was due for another killing soon. He had to be in heat.

It turned out to be a very long ride. We watched the stars brighten the coastal California night. Six hours later, we were
still tacking on Highway 1. The Range Rover finally pulled off at a quaint, wooden signpost that read Big Sur State Park,
among other things.

As if to validate that we were really in Big Sur, we passed an antique van with a bumper sticker: VISUALIZE INDUSTRIAL COLLAPSE.

“Visualize Dr. Will Rudolph having a massive stroke,” Kate growled softly.

I checked my watch as we left the main highway. “It’s past three. Getting late for him to get into any serious trouble tonight.”
I hoped that was the case.

“If there was ever any doubt, this may
prove
he’s a bloodsucking vampire,” Kate muttered. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest and had been for most of the
long ride. “He’s going off to sleep in his favorite coffin.”

“Right. That’s when we drive a wooden stake through his heart,” I told her. We were both a little groggy. I had taken a pill
during the ride. Kate declined. She said she knew too much about drugs and was leery of most of them.

We passed a complex of directional signs: Point Sur, Pfeiffer Beach, Big Sur Lodge, Ventana, the Esalen Institute. Will Rudolph
headed in the direction of Big Sur Lodge, Sycamore Canyon, Bottchers Gap Campgrounds.

“I was hoping he would go to Esalen,” Kate quipped. “Learn to meditate, deal with his inner turmoil.”

“What
in hell
is he up to tonight?” I wondered out loud. What were he and Casanova doing? So far it was impossible to figure out. “His
hideaway
might be up here in the woods, Kate,” I offered a thought. “Maybe he has a house of horror just like Casanova’s.”

Twinning,
I thought again. It made a lot of sense. They would be providing support systems for each other. Parallel tracks for the
two monsters. Where did they meet, though? Did the two of them ever hunt together? I suspected that they had.

The white Range Rover was winding along a hilly and rather rambunctious side road that branched east from the ocean. Ancient,
somber redwoods flashed on either side of the narrow ribbon of highway. A pale full moon seemed to be moving directly above
the Rover, following it.

I let him get a safe distance ahead—so that he was actually out of our sight. The huge fir trees seemed to float past out
car on either road shoulder. Dark shadows in real life. A bright yellow sign in the headlights read:
Impassable in wet weather.

“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.

D
R. 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!
”

“
W
HAT 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.”