Kiss the Girls

over the pictures. That’s another handle we have for the case.”
    “Does Naomi Cross fit his pattern?” Sampson asked quietly. “Whatever the crisis team has established so far?”
    Nick Ruskin didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about it, or just trying to be considerate.
    “Is Naomi’s picture up on the FBI bulletin board? The Beauties and the Beast board?” I asked Ruskin.
    “Yes, it is.” Davey Sikes finally spoke. “Her picture is on the big board.”

Chapter 13

    D ON’T LET
this be Scootchie. Her life is just beginning,
I silently prayed as we sped to the homicide scene.
    Terrible, unspeakable things happened all the time nowadays, to all kinds of innocent, unsuspecting people. They happened in virtually every big city, and even small towns, in villages of a hundred or less. But most often these violent, unthinkable crimes seemed to happen in America.
    Ruskin downshifted hard as we curled around a steep curve and saw flashing red and blue lights. Cars and EMS vans loomed up ahead, solemnly gathered at the edge of thick pine woods.
    A dozen vehicles were parked haphazardly along the side of the two-lane state road. Traffic was sparse out there in the heart of nowhere. There was no buildup of ambulance-chasers yet. Ruskin pulled in behind the last car in line, a dark blue Lincoln Town Car that might as well have had
Federal Bureau
written all over it.
    A state-of-the-art homicide scene was already in progress. Yellow tape had been strung from pine trees, cordoning off the perimeter. Two EMS ambulances were parked with their blunt noses pointed into a stand of trees.
    I was swept into a near out-of-body experience as I floated from the car. My vision tunneled.
    It was almost as if I had never visited a crime scene before. I vividly remembered the worst of the Soneji case.
A small child found near a muddy river.
Horrifying memories mixed with the terrifying present moment.
    Don’t let this be Scootchie.
    Sampson held my arm loosely as we followed detectives Ruskin and Sikes. We walked for nearly a mile into the dense woods. In the heart of a copse of towering pines, we finally saw the shapes and silhouettes of several men and a few women.
    At least half of the group were dressed in dark business suits. It was as if we had come upon some impromptu camping trip for an accounting firm, or a coven of big-city lawyers or bankers.
    Everything was eerie, quiet, except for the hollow popping of the technicians’ cameras. Close-up photos of the entire area were being taken.
    A couple of the crime-scene professionals were already wearing translucent rubber gloves, looking for evidence, taking notes on spiral pads.
    I had a creepy, otherworldly premonition that we were going to find Scootchie now. I pushed it, shoved it away, like the unwanted touch of an angel of God. I turned my head sharply to one side—as if that would help me avoid whatever was coming up ahead.
    “FBI for sure,” Sampson muttered softly. “Out here on the Wilderness Trail.” It was as if we were walking toward a mammoth nest of buzzing hornets. They were standing around, whispering secrets to one another.
    I was acutely aware of leaves crumpling under my feet, of the noise of twigs and small branches breaking. I wasn’t really a policeman here. I was a civilian.
    We finally saw the naked body, at least what was left of it. There was no clothing visible at the murder scene. The woman had been tied to a small sapling with what appeared to be a thick leather bond.
    Sampson sighed, “Oh, Jesus, Alex.”

Chapter 14

    W HO IS the woman?” I asked softly as we came up to the unlikely police group, the “multijurisdictional mess,” as Nick Ruskin had described it.
    The dead woman was white. It was impossible to tell too much more than that about her at this time. Birds and animals had been feasting on her, and she almost didn’t look human anymore. There were no fixed, staring eyes, just dark sockets like burn marks. She didn’t have a face; the skin and tissue had been eaten away.
    “Who the hell are these two?” one of the FBI agents, a heavyset blond woman in her early thirties, asked Ruskin. She was as unattractive as she was unpleasant, with puffy red lips and a bulbous, hooked nose. At least she’d spared us the usual FBI happy-camper smile, or the FBI’s famous “smiling handshake.”
    Nick Ruskin was brusque with her. His first endearing moment for me. “This is Detective Alex Cross, and