Kiss the Girls

soft drug-induced haze, she thought of the other women who had disappeared in Orange and Durham counties. She’d heard on the news that another body had been found. A young mother of two children.
    She had to get out of the house. Maybe the fresh air would help to revive her. She stumbled to the front door.
    Something was blocking her way.
He had pushed the sofa against the door! Kate was too weak to shoulder it away.
    In desperation she screamed out again. “Peter! Come help me! Help me, Peter!”
    “Oh, shut up, Kate. You don’t even see Peter McGrath anymore. You think he’s a bloody fool. Besides, his house is seven miles away. Seven point three miles. I checked.” His voice was so calm and rational. Just another day at the office of psychopathology. And he definitely knew her, knew all about Peter McGrath, knew everything.
    He was somewhere close behind her in the electrifying darkness. There was no urgency or panic in his voice. This was a day at the beach for him.
    Kate moved quickly to her left, away from the voice, away from the human monster inside her house.
    Excruciating pain suddenly shot through her body, and she let out a low groan.
    She’d clipped her shin on the too-low, too-dumb-for-words glass table her sister Carole Anne had given her. It was Carole’s well-meaning effort to class up the place. Ohhh, Christ, god-dammit, how she hated that table. There was a shooting, throbbing pain in her left leg.
    “Stub your toe, Kate? Why don’t you stop trying to run around in the dark?” He laughed—and it was such a normal-sounding laugh—almost friendly. He was enjoying himself. This was a big game for him. A boy-girl game, in the dark.
    “Who are you?”
she screamed at him…. Suddenly, she thought:
Could it be Peter? Has Peter gone mad?
    Kate was close to passing out. The drug he had given her left her little strength to run anymore. He knew about her karate black belt. He probably knew she spent time in the weight room, too.
    She turned—and a bright flashlight shone right in her eyes.
Blinding light was beaming at her face.
    He moved the flashlight away, but she still saw residual circles of light. She started to blink, and could barely make out the silhouette of a tall man. He was more than six feet tall, and had long hair.
    She couldn’t see his face, just a glimpse of his profile.
Something was wrong with his face. Why was that? What was the matter with him?
    Then she saw the gun.
    “No,
don’t,
” Kate said. “Please… don’t.”
    “Yes, do,” he whispered to her intimately, almost like a lover.
    Then he calmly shot Kate McTiernan point-blank in the heart.

Chapter 19

    E ARLY ON Sunday morning it got even worse on the Casanova case. I had to drive Sampson to Raleigh-Durham International Airport. He needed to be back on The Job in Washington that afternoon. Someone had to protect the capital while I was working down here.
    The investigation was getting hotter and nastier now that the third woman’s body had been found. Not only local police and FBI, but also field-and-game officials had joined in the physical search at the homicide site.
Deputy Director Ronald Burns had been here last night. Why was that?
    Sampson gave me a bear hug at the American Airlines security gate. We must have looked like a couple of Washington Redskins linebackers after they won the Super Bowl, or maybe after they didn’t even get into the play-offs in 1991.
    “I know what Naomi means to you,” he whispered against the side of my skull. “I know some of what you’re feeling. You need me again, you call.”
    We gave each other a quick kiss on the cheek, like Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas used to before their NBA basketball games. That drew a few stares from the peanut gallery milling around the metal detectors. Sampson and I love each other, and we’re not ashamed to show it. Unusual for tough-as-nails men of action like the two of us.
    “Watch out for the Fed Bureau. Watch your back with the local folk. Watch your front, too. I don’t like Ruskin. I
really
don’t like Sikes,” Sampson continued to give me instructions. “You’ll find Naomi. I have confidence in you. Always have. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”
    The Big Man finally walked away, and never once looked back.
    I was all alone down South.
    Chasing monsters again.

Chapter 20

    I WALKED from the Washington Duke Inn to the Duke campus at around one o’clock on Sunday afternoon.
    I had just eaten a real North