“Can you tell me anything about Kate’s chances?” I asked as the emergency ambulance slowly pulled away from the nightmare scene in Chapel Hill.
“That’s a tough question, I’m afraid. She’s alive, and that’s a miracle in itself.” He spoke in a low, respectful voice. “There are multiple fractures and contusions, some with open gashes in them. Both cheekbones are fractured. She may have a sprained neck. She must have played dead on him. Somehow, she had the presence of mind to trick him.”
Kate’s face was swollen badly and cut. She was almost unrecognizable. I knew the same was true all over her body. I clung gently to Kate’s hand as the ambulance sped toward Duke Medical Center. She had the presence of mind to trick him? That was Kate, all right. I wondered, though.
I held on to another mind-blowing thought. It had hit me hard outside the house. I thought I knew what had been wrong in Kate’s bedroom.
Will Rudolph had been in the bedroom, hadn’t he? The Gentleman Caller had been there for the attack. He had to be the one. It was his style. Extreme, graphic violence. Rage.
There was little evidence of Casanova. No artistic touches. There was such extraordinary violence, though…. They were twinning! Two monsters bonding to make one. Perhaps Rudolph resented Kate because Casanova had loved her. Maybe she had come between them in his twisted perception. Maybe they had left Kate alive on purpose—so she could be a vegetable for the rest of her life.
They were working together now, weren’t they? There were two of them to catch, to stop.
CHAPTER 97
THE FBI and Durham police decided to bring Dr. Wick Sachs in for questioning early the next morning. This was a big deal; a pivotal decision in the case.
A special investigator was flown down from Virginia to do the delicate interrogation. He was one of the FBI’s best, a man named James Heekin. He questioned Sachs throughout most of the morning.
I sat with Sampson, Kyle Craig, and detectives Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes. We watched the interrogation through a two-way mirror inside Durham Police Headquarters. I felt like a starving man with his nose pressed against the window of an expensive restaurant. But there was no food being served inside.
The FBI interrogator was good, very patient, and as crafty as a star district attorney. But so was Wick Sachs. He was articulate; extremely cool under verbal fire; even smug.
“This fucker is going down,” Davey Sikes finally said inside the quiet observation room. It was good to see that he and Ruskin cared at least. In a way, I could empathize with them in their role as local detectives: they had been on the outside looking in for most of the frustrating investigation.
“What do you have on Sachs? Tell me if you’re holding anything back,” I said to Nick Ruskin at the coffee machine.
“We brought him in because our chief of police is an asshole,” Ruskin told me. “We don’t have anything on Sachs yet.” I wondered if I could believe Ruskin, or anyone else connected with this case.
After nearly two hours of tense parrying back and forth, Agent Heekin’s interrogation had established little more than that Sachs was a collector of erotica, and that he’d been promiscuous with consenting students and professors over the last eleven years at the university.
As much as I had wanted to bust Sachs, I couldn’t really understand why he’d been brought in at this time. Why now?
“We found out where his money comes from.” Kyle told me part of the answer that morning. “Sachs is the owner of an escort service working out of Raleigh and Durham. The service is called Kissmet. Interesting name. They advertise ‘lingerie modeling’ in the Yellow Pages. At the least, Dr. Sachs will have some serious problems with Internal Revenue. Washington decided we should apply pressure now. They’re afraid he’s going to run soon.”
“I don’t agree with your people in Washington,” I told Kyle. I knew that some agents called headquarters up there Disneyland East. I could see why. They could be risking the investigation right now, and by remote control.
“Who does agree with Washington?” Kyle said and shrugged his wide, bony shoulders. It was his way of admitting that he wasn’t in full control anymore. The case was too big now. “By the way, how is Kate McTiernan doing?” he asked.
I had already been on the phone three times with Duke Medical Center that morning. They had a number for me at the Durham station, in case Kate’s condition changed. “She’s listed as grave, but she’s still hanging in there,” I told Kyle.
I got the chance to talk to Wick Sachs just before eleven o’clock that morning. It was Kyle’s concession to me.
I tried to put Kate out of my mind before I had to be in the same room with Sachs. Anger thundered and roared inside my body all the same. I didn’t know if I could control myself. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to anymore.
“Let me do this one, Alex. Let me go in there with him.” Sampson held my arm before I went inside. I broke away from him and went to meet Dr. Wick Sachs.
“I’m going to do him.”
CHAPTER 98
HELLO, DR. SACHS.”
The lighting in the small, impersonal interrogation room was even brighter and harsher than it had looked from behind the two-way mirror. Sachs was red-eyed, and I could tell he was as tense as I was. His skin looked stretched taut over his skull. But he was as confident and smug with me as he’d been with James Heekin of the FBI.
Was I looking into the eyes of Casanova? I wondered. Could he possibly be the human monster?
“My name is Alex Cross,” I said as I slumped down on a shopworn metal chair. “Naomi Cross is my niece.”
Sachs spoke through gritted teeth. He had a mild drawl. According to Kate, Casanova had no noticeable accent.
“I know who the hell you are. I read the newspapers, Dr. Cross. I don’t know your niece. I read that she was abducted.”
I nodded. “If you read the papers, you must also be aware of the handiwork of the scum who calls himself Casanova.”
Sachs smirked, at least it looked like that to me. His blue eyes were filled with contempt. It was easy to see why he was widely disliked at the university. His blond hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place. His horn-rimmed glasses helped make him seem officious and condescending.
“There is no record of violence anywhere in my past. I could never commit those horrifying murders. I can’t even kill palmetto bugs in my house. My aversion to violence is well documented.”
I’ll bet it is, I thought. All of your clever fronts and façades are neatly, perfectly in place, aren’t they? Your devoted wife, the nurse. Your two children. Your well-documented “aversion to violence.”
I rubbed my face with both my hands. It took all my strength to keep from hitting him. He remained haughty and unapproachable.
I leaned across the table and spoke in a whisper. “I looked through your erotic book collection. I was there in your basement, Dr. Sachs. The collection’s full of perverse, sexual violence. The physical degradation of men, women, and children. That might not constitute a ‘record of violence,’ but it gives me some subtle hints about your true character.”
Sachs dismissed what I said with a wave of his hand. “I’m a noted philosopher and sociologist. Yes, I study eroticism—just as you study the criminal mind. I don’t suffer from libertine dementia, Dr. Cross. My erotic collection is the key to my understanding the fantasy life of Western culture, the escalating war between men and women.” His voice level went up. “I also don’t have to explain any of my private affairs to you. I’ve broken no laws. I’m here voluntarily. You, on the other hand, entered my house without a search warrant.”
I tried to keep Sachs off balance by asking him about something else. “Why do you think you’re so successful with young women? We already know of your sexual conquests of students at the university. Eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-olds. Beautiful young women; your own students, in some cases. There’s a record of that, certainly.”
For a moment his anger surfaced. Then he cau
ght himself and did something odd, and maybe very revealing. Sachs showed his need to exert power and control, to be the star of the show, even to me. Insignificant as I was to him.
“Why am I successful with women, Dr. Cross?” Sachs smiled and he let his tongue play between his teeth. The message was subtle, but also clear. Sachs was telling me that he knew how to sexually control most women.
He continued to smile. An obscene smile from an obscene man. “Many women want to be freed from their sexual inhibitions, especially young women, the modern women on campuses. I free them. I free as many women as I possibly can.”
That did it. I was across the table in a second. Sachs’s chair tumbled over backwards. I landed heavily on top of him. He grunted in pain.
I pressed my body down hard on his. My arms and legs were shaking. I held back from actually throwing a punch. He was absolutely powerless to stop me, I realized. He didn’t know how to fight back. He wasn’t very strong or athletic.
Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes were inside the interrogation room in a flash, and Kyle and Sampson were right behind them. They jammed into the room and tried to pull me off Sachs.
Actually, I pulled myself away from Wick Sachs. I didn’t hurt him, never intended to. I whispered to Sampson. “He isn’t physically strong. Casanova is. He isn’t the monster. He isn’t Casanova.”
CHAPTER 99
THAT NIGHT, Sampson and I had dinner together at a pretty good spot in Durham. Ironically, it was called Nana’s.
Neither of us was especially hungry. The overly large steaks with shallots and mountains of garlic mashed potatoes went to waste. It was late in the game with Casanova, and we seemed to be falling all the way back to square one.
We talked about Kate. I had been told by hospital officials that her condition was still poor. If she lived, the doctors believed that she had little chance of full recovery, of ever being a doctor again.
“You two were more than, you know, good friends?” Sampson finally asked. He was gentle with his probing, the way he can be when he wants to.
I shook my head. “No, we were friends, John. I could talk to her about anything, and in ways I’d mostly forgotten. I’ve never been so comfortable with a woman so quickly, except maybe for Maria.”
Sampson nodded a lot, and mostly listened to me air it all out. He knew who I was, past and present.
My beeper sounded while we were still pushing around the generous portions of food on our plates. I called Kyle Craig from a phone downstairs in the restaurant. I reached him in his car. He was on his way to Hope Valley.
“We’re about to arrest Wick Sachs for the Casanova murders,” he said. I almost dropped the receiver. “You’re about to what?” I shouted into the phone. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.
“When the hell is this going to happen?” I asked. “When was the decision made? Who made it?”
Kyle kept his cool as always. The Iceman. “We’re going into the house in the next couple of minutes. This time it’s the Durham police chief’s game. Something he found in the house. Physical evidence. It will be a joint arrest, the Bureau in cooperation with the Durham PD. I wanted you to know, Alex.”
“He’s not Casanova,” I said to Kyle. “Don’t take him down. Don’t arrest Wick Sachs.” The level of my voice was high. The pay phone was in a narrow corridor of the restaurant, and people were filing in and out of the nearby restrooms. I was drawing stares, both angry and fearful looks.
“It’s a done deal,” Kyle said. “I’m sorry about it myself.” Then he hung up the car phone on me. End of discussion.
Sampson and I rushed to Sachs’s house in the Durham suburbs. Man Mountain was quiet at first, then he asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: “Could they have enough to convict, without you knowing anything?” It was a tough question for me. His meaning: How out of the loop was I?
“I don’t think Kyle has enough for an arrest now. He would have told me. The Durham PD? I don’t know what the hell they’re up to. Ruskin and Sikes have been off doing their own thing. We’ve been in their position ourselves.”
When we arrived in Hope Valley, I found out that we weren’t the only ones who had been called to the arrest scene. The quiet suburban street was blocked off. Several TV station trucks and minivans were already there. Police cruisers and FBI sedans were parked everywhere.
“This is really fucked up. Looks like a block party,” Sampson said as we got out of the car. “Worst I’ve seen, I think. Worst screwup.”
“It has been from the beginning,” I agreed. “A multijurisdictional nightmare.” I was shaking like a wino in winter on a D.C. street. I had taken one body blow after another. Nothing completely made sense to me anymore. How out of the loop was I?
Kyle Craig saw me coming. He walked up to me and firmly grabbed my arm. I had the feeling he was ready to body-block me if necessary.
“I know how damn upset you are. So am I” were his first words. He seemed apologetic, but Kyle also appeared angry as hell. “This wasn’t our doing, Alex. Durham blindsided us this time. The chief of police made the decision himself. There’s political pressure right up to the statehouse on this thing. Something smells so bad I want to put a handkerchief over my nose and mouth.”
“What the hell did they find in the house?” I asked Kyle. “What physical evidence? Not the dirty books?”
Kyle shook his head. “Women’s underwear. He had a large cache of clothes hidden in the house. There was a University of North Carolina T-shirt that belonged to Kate McTiernan. Casanova apparently kept souvenirs, too. Just like the Gentleman in L.A.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He’s different from the Gentleman,” I said to Kyle. “He has the girls and plenty of their clothes at his hideaway. He’s careful, and obsessive about it. Kyle, this is fucking crazy. This isn’t the answer. This is a huge mess-up.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Kyle said. “Good theories aren’t going to stop this from happening.”
“How about good logic and a little common sense?”
“That won’t work, either, I’m afraid.”
We started to walk toward the back porch of the Sachs house. TV cameras whirred into action, shooting anything that moved. It was a full-scale, three-ring media circus; a disaster of the highest order in progress.
“They searched the house sometime late this afternoon,” Kyle told me as we walked. “Brought dogs in. Special dogs from Georgia.”
“Why the hell would they do that? Why suddenly search the Sachs house now? Goddammit.”
“They received a tip, and they had reason to believe it. That’s what I’m getting from them. I’m on the outside, too, Alex. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
I could barely see two feet ahead of me. My vision was tunneled. Stress will do that. Anger, too.
I wanted to shout, to scream out, at somebody. I wanted to punch out lights on the Sachses’ veranda-style porch. “Did they tell you anything about this anonymous tipster? Jesus Christ, Kyle. Goddammit to hell! An anonymous tip. Awhh goddammit!”
Wick Sachs was being held hostage inside his own beautiful house. The Durham police apparently wanted this historic moment recorded on local and national TV. This was it for them. North Carolina law-enforcement hall-of-fame time.
They had the wrong man, and they wanted to show him off to the world.
CHAPTER 100
I RECOGNIZED the Durham chief of police right away. He was in his early forties and looked like an ex-pro quarterback. Chief Robby Hatfield was around six two, square-jawed, powerfully built. I had a wild, paranoid thought that maybe he was Casanova. He looked the part, anyway. He even fit the psych profile of Casanova.
Detectives Sikes and Ruskin were flanking the prisoner, Dr. Wick Sachs. I recognized a couple of other Durham detectives. They all appeared nervous as hell but jubilant, and mostly relieved. Sachs looked as if he’d taken a shower in his clothes. He looked guilty.
Are you Casanova? Are you the Beast after all
? If so, what the hell are you pulling now? I wanted to ask Sachs a hundred questions, but couldn’t.
Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes joked around some with their brother officers in the crowded foyer. The two detectives reminded me of a few professional jocks I’d known around D.C. Most of them like the spotlight; some of them lived for it. Most of the Durham police force seemed to operate like that, too.
Ruskin’s hair was shiny and slicked back, combed back tight against his skull. He was ready for the spotlight, I could see. Davey Sikes looked ready, too. You two bozos should be checking your list of doctor suspects, I wanted to tell them. This thing isn’t over! It’s just starting now. The real Casanova is cheering for you right now. Maybe he’s watching from the crowd.
I made my way up closer to Wick Sachs. I needed to see everything here, just as it was. Feel it. Watch and listen to it. Understand it, somehow.
Sachs’s wife and the two beautiful children were being kept in the dining room off the vestibule. They looked hurt, very sad, and confused. They knew something was wrong here, too. The Sachs family didn’t look guilty.
Chief Robby Hatfield and Davey Sikes finally saw me. Sikes reminded me of the chief’s favorite bird dog. He was “pointing” at me now.
“Dr. Cross, thank you for your help on all this.” Chief Hatfield was magnanimous in his moment of triumph. I had forgotten that I was the one here who’d brought back the photo of Sachs from the Gentleman’s apartment in Los Angeles. Such great detective work… such a convenient goddamn clue to discover.
This was all wrong. It just felt wrong and it smelled wrong. This was a setup of the first order, and it was working perfectly. Casanova was escaping; he was getting away right now. He would never be caught.
The Durham chief of police finally put out his hand. I took the chief’s hand and squeezed it tight, held on to it.
I think he was afraid I was going to walk out into the camera lights with him. Robby Hatfield had seemed like a hands-off administrator up until now. He and his star detectives were about to parade Wick Sachs outside. It would be a big dazzling moment under a full moon and the blazing klieg lights. All that was missing were the baying bloodhounds.