Kiss the Girls

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

    H ELLO, 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 caught 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