She kept hearing creepy noises all around her in the house. Old creaking wood. Banging shutters. Wind chimes she had put on
an old elm tree outside. The chimes reminded her of the cabin in Big Sur. They had to come down tomorrow—if not sooner.
Kate finally fell asleep with the wineglass, which was really an old Flintstones jelly glass, balanced in her lap. The glass
was a holy relic from the house in West Virginia. She and her sisters used to fight over it sometimes at breakfast.
The glass tipped and spilled onto her bedcovers. It didn’t matter. Kate was dead to the world. For one night at least.
She didn’t usually drink much. The Pinot Noir hit her like the freight trains that used to rumble through Birch when she was
a kid. She woke up 3:00 A.M. with a throbbing headache, and hurried into her bathroom, where she got sick.
Images of
Psycho
flashed through her mind as she bent over the sink. She thought of Casanova in the house again. He was in the bathroom, wasn’t
he?
No—of course no one was there… please, make this stop. Make this end… right… now!
She went back to bed and crawled under the covers. She heard the wind rattling the shutters. Heard those stupid chimes. She
thought about death—her mother, Susanne, Marjorie, Kristin. All gone now. Kate McTiernan pulled the blanket over her head.
She felt like a little girl again, afraid of the bogeyman. Okay, she could handle that.
Trouble was, she could
see
Casanova and the horrifying death mask whenever she closed her eyes. She held a secret thought buried in the center of her
chest:
He was coming for her again, wasn’t he?
At seven in the morning her phone rang. It was Alex.
“Kate, I was in his house,” he said.
A
ROUND TEN the night we returned from California, I drove to the Hope Valley residential area of Durham. I went alone to see
Casanova. Doctor Detective Cross was back in the saddle again.
There were three clues that I considered essential to solving the case. I reviewed them again as I drove. There was the simple
fact that they both committed “perfect crimes.” There was the aspect of twinning, the codependence of Casanova and the Gentleman.
There was the mystery of the disappearing house.
Something had to come from one, or all, of those bits of information. Maybe something was about to happen in the Hope Valley
suburb of Durham. I hoped so.
I drove slowly along Old Chapel Hill Road until I reached a formal, white-brick, protal-type entrance into the upscale Hope
Valley estates. I got the feeling that I wasn’t supposed to intrude beyond the gate, that just maybe I was the first black
man not in workingman’s overalls to pass through here.
I knew I was taking a chance, but I had to see where Dr. Wick Sachs lived. I needed to
feel
things about him, needed to know him better, and in a big hurry.
The streets of Hope Valley didn’t run in straight lines. The road I was on didn’t have curbs or gutters, and there were not
many streetlamps. The neighborhood was unpleasantly hilly, and as I drove I began to have the sense of being lost, of moving
in a great looping circle. The houses were mostly upscale Southern Gothic, old and expensive. The notion of the killer next
door had never been more powerful.
Dr. Wick Sachs lived in a stately red-brick house set back on one of the highest hills.
The shutters were painted white, matching the gutters. The house looked too expensive for a university professor, even one
at Duke, the “Harvard of the South.”
The windows were all dark and looked as shiny as slate. The only lights came from a single brass carriage lamp dangling over
the front door.
I already knew that Wick Sachs had a wife and two small children. His wife was a registered nurse at Duke University Hospital.
The FBI had checked her credentials. She had an excellent reputation, and everyone spoke very highly of her. The Sachses’
daughter, Faye Anne, was seven; and their son, Nathan, was ten.
I figured that the FBI was probably watching me as I drove up to the Sachses’ house, but I didn’t much care. I wondered if
Kyle Craig was with them… he was deeply involved in the grisly case, almost as much as I was. Kyle had also gone to Duke.
Was this case personal for him, too? How personal?
My eyes very slowly ran up and down the front of the house, then along the well-tended grounds. Everything was extremely orderly,
actually quite beautiful, perfect as could be.
I had already learned that human monsters can live anywhere; that some of the clever ones chose ordinary all-American-looking
houses. Just like the house I was examining now. The monsters are literally everywhere. There is an epidemic running out of
control in America, and the statistics are frightening. We have nearly seventy-five percent of the human hunters. Europe has
almost all the rest, led by England, Germany, and France. Mass murderers are changing the face of modern homicide investigations
in every American city, village, and town.
I studied everything I could about the house’s exterior. The southeast side had what was known as a “Florida room.” There
was a patio, which was living-room size. The lawn was fescue, and it was extremely well kept. There was no moss, no crabgrass,
no weeds.
The cobbled-brick walkway from the driveway was carefully edged, and not a single stray blade of grass peeked through the
stones. The bricks of the walk perfectly matched the bricks of the house.
Perfect.
Meticulous.
As I sat in the car, my head was pounding from too much tension and stress. I kept the motor running, in case the family Sachs
suddenly came home.
I knew what I wanted to do, what I had to do, what I’d been planning to do for the last few hours.
I needed to break into his house.
I wondered if the FBI would try to stop me, but I didn’t think they would. I believed that maybe they actually wanted me
to break inside and look around. We knew very little about Dr. Wick Sachs. I still wasn’t officially involved in the Casanova
manhunt, and I could try things that the others couldn’t. I was supposed to be the “loose cannon.” That was my deal with Kyle
Craig.
Scootchie was out there someplace, at least I prayed that she was still alive. I hoped that all the missing women were alive.
His harem. His odalisques. His collection of beautiful special women.
I shut off the motor and took a deep breath before I climbed out of the car.
I walked quickly across the springly lawn in crouch. I remembered something that Satchel Paige used to say: “Keep the juices
flowing by jangling around gently as you move.” I was
jangling.
Shaped boxwoods and azaleas ran along the front of the house. A child’s red bike with silver streamers on the handlebars lay
on its side near the porch.
Nice,
I was thinking as I hurried along.
Too nice.
Casanova’s child’s bike.
Casanova’s respectable house in the suburbs.
Casanova’s fake, perfect life. His perfect disguise. His big, ugly joke on all of us. Right in the city of Durham. His middle
finger extended to the world.
I carefully made my way around to the patio, which was built with white tile. It was bordered with the same brick as the house
and the front walk. I noticed that creeping tendrils had invaded the red-brick walls. Maybe he wasn’t so perfect, after all.
I quickly crossed the patio, moving toward the Florida room. There was no turning back now. I’d done a little breaking and
entering in the name of duty before this. That didn’t make it right, just easier.
I broke a small windowpane in a door and let myself in. Nothing. Not a sound. I didn’t think that Wick Sachs would have any
use for an alarm system. I seriously doubted that he wanted the Durham police to investigate a breaking and entering.
The first thing I noticed was the familiar cloying smell of lemon furniture polish. Respectability. Civility. Order. It was
all a façade, a perfectly designed
mask.
I was inside the monster’s house.
T
HE HOUSE was as neat and orderly as the outside grounds. Maybe even more so.
Nice, nice, much too nice.
I was nervous and afraid, but that didn’t matter anymore. I was used to living with the feelings of fear and uncertainty.
Carefully, I roamed from room to room. Nothing seemed out of place, even with two small children living there.
Strange, strange, very strange.
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’ 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 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 J. 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 his 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 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!