Kiss the Girls

Alex Cross at a safe distance as he walked across the Duke campus. He had read extensively about Cross. He knew all about the psychologist and detective who’d made his reputation tracking down a kidnapper-killer in Washington. The so-called crime of the century, which was a lot of media hype and horseshit.
    So who’s better at this game?
he wanted to shout out to Dr. Cross.
I know who you are. You don’t know dogshit about me. You never will.
    Cross stopped walking. He took a pad from the back pocket of his trousers and made a note.
    What’s this, Doctor? Had a thought of some consequence? I rather doubt that. I honestly do.
    The FBI, the local police, they’ve all been trailing me for months. I suppose they make notes, too, but none of them has a clue….
    Casanova watched Alex Cross continue to walk along the campus until he finally disappeared from sight. The idea that Cross would actually track and capture him was unthinkable. It simply wasn’t going to happen.
    He started to laugh, and had to catch himself since the Duke campus was fairly crowded on a Sunday afternoon.
    No one has a clue, Dr. Cross. Don’t you get it?… That’s the clue!

Chapter 23

    I WAS a street detective again.
    I spent most of Monday morning interviewing people who knew Kate McTiernan. Casanova’s latest victim was a first-year intern who’d been abducted from her apartment on the outskirts of Chapel Hill.
    I was attempting to put together a psych profile of Casanova, but there wasn’t enough information. Period. The FBI wasn’t helping. Nick Ruskin still hadn’t returned my phone calls.
    A professor at North Carolina med school told me that Kate McTiernan was one of the most conscientious students she’d taught in twenty years. Another professor at the school said that her commitment and intelligence were indeed high, but “her temperament is the truly extraordinary thing about Kate.”
    It was unanimous in that regard. Even competing interns at the hospital agreed that Kate McTiernan was something else. “She’s the least narcissistic woman I’ve ever met,” one of the woman interns told me. “Kate’s totally driven, but she knows it and she can laugh at herself,” said another. “She’s a really cool person. This is such a sad, numbing thing for everyone at the hospital.” “She’s a brain, who happens to be built like a brick shithouse.”
    I called Peter McGrath, a history professor, and he reluctantly agreed to see me. Kate McTiernan had dated him for almost four months, but their relationship had ended abruptly. Professor McGrath was tall, athletic-looking, a bit imperious.
    “I could say that I fucked up royally by losing her,” McGrath admitted to me. “And I did. But I couldn’t have held on to the Katester. She’s probably the strongest-willed person, man or woman, that I’ve ever met. God, I can’t believe this has happened to Kate.”
    His face was pale, and he was obviously shaken up by her disappearance. At least he appeared to be.
    I ended up eating by myself in a noisy bar in the college town of Chapel Hill. There were hordes of university students, and a busy pool table, but I sat alone with my beers, a greasy, rubbery cheeseburger, and my early thoughts on Casanova.
    The long day had drained me. I missed Sampson, my kids, my home in D.C. A comfortable world without any monsters. Scootchie was still missing, though. So were several other young women in the Southeast.
    My thoughts kept drifting back to Kate McTiernan, and what I’d heard about her today.
    This is the way cases got solved—at least it was the way I had always solved them. Data got collected. Data ran loose in the brain. Eventually, connections were made.
    Casanova doesn’t just take physically beautiful women,
I suddenly realized in the bar.
He takes the most extraordinary women he can find. He’s taking only the heartbreakers… the women that everybody wants but nobody ever seems to get.
    He’s collecting them somewhere out there.
    Why extraordinary women?
I wondered.
    There was one possible answer.
Because he believes he’s extraordinary, too.

Chapter 24

    I ALMOST went back to see Mary Ellen Klouk again, but I changed my mind and returned to the Washington Duke Inn. A couple of messages were waiting for me.
    The first was from a friend in the Washington PD. He was processing information I needed for a meaningful profile on Casanova. I’d brought a laptop with me and I hoped I would be in business soon.
    A