Kiss the Girls

Was that how they committed their perfect crimes?
    These questions were rolling around in my head.
    I fingered an index card in my trouser pocket. I had begun to keep a “shortlist” on both Casanova and the Gentleman. I would add or subtract what I considered key attributes to the profile. I carried the card with me at all times.
    CASANOVA
    Collector
    harem
    artist, organized
    different masks… to
    represent moods or personas? doctor?
    claims to “love” victims
    gaining a taste for violence
    knows about me
    competing with Gary Soneji?
    competing with the L.A. Gentleman?
    GENTLEMAN
    gives out flowers—sexual?
    extremely violent and dangerous
    takes beautiful young women of all types
    extremely organized
    not artistic in terms of his killing
    doctor
    cold and impersonal as a killer… a butcher
    craves recognition and fame—
    possibly wealthy—penthouse apartment
    graduated Duke Medical School, 1986
    raised in North Carolina

    I thought some more about the connection between Rudolph and Casanova as Kate and I twiddled our thumbs outside the apartment. A relevant psychological condition had occurred to me. It was called twinning, and it could be a key. Twinning just might explain the bizarre relationship between the monsters. Twinning was caused by an urge to bond, usually between two lonely people. Once they “twin,” the two become a “whole”; they become dependent on each other, often obsessively so. Sometimes the “twins” become highly competitive.
    Twinning was like an addiction to
couple.
To belong to a
secret club.
Just two people and no passwords. In its negative form, it was the fusing of two people for their own individual needs, which weren’t mutually healthy.
    I ran it by Kate. She was a twin, too.
    “Quite often, there’s a dominant figure in a twinning relationship,” I said. “Was that true of you and your sister?”
    “I probably was with Kristin,” Kate said. “I got the good grades in school. I was a little pushy sometimes. She even called me ‘Push’ in high school. Worse names than that, too.”
    “The dominant twin can act in a male role-model behavior structure,” I said to Kate. The two of us were talking doctor to doctor. “The dominant figure might
not
be the more skillful at manipulation, though.”
    “As you could imagine, I’ve read a little about the phenomenon,” Kate said and smiled. “Twinning creates a uniquely powerful structure within which the bonded pair can operate in complex ways. Something like that?”
    “That’s correct, Dr. McTiernan. In the case of Casanova and the Gentleman, each would have his own bodyguard-cum-supportive person. That could be why they
achieve
so well. Perfect crimes. They each have a built-in, and very effective, emotional support system.”
    The question ringing loudly in my mind was—
how had they originally met?
Was it at Duke? Had Casanova been a student there, too? It made some sense. It also reminded me of the Leopold-Loeb case in Chicago.
Two very smart boys, special boys, committing forbidden acts together. Sharing evil thoughts and dirty secrets because they were lonely and had no one else to talk to… twinning at its most destructive.
    Was that the beginning of the solution to this puzzle? I wondered. Were the Gentleman and Casanova twinning? Were they actually working together? What was their nasty little game all about? What game were they playing?
    “Let’s go smash in his picture window with a tire iron,” Kate said. She was feeling it, too. We were both ready to rumble.
    We wanted to take down this grown-up Leopold and Loeb.

Chapter 65

    E IGHT O’CLOCK came and went on the surveillance watch. Maybe Dr. Will Rudolph wasn’t the Gentleman Caller. The
Los Angeles Times
reporter Beth Lieberman could have been wrong. There was no way to ask her about it now.
    Kate and I had been gabbing about the Lakers without Magic Johnson and Kareem, about Aaron Neville’s latest album, Hillary and Bill Clinton’s life together, the merits of Johns Hopkins versus University of North Carolina medical school.
    Strange sparks were still flying between us. I’d had some unofficial therapy sessions with Kate McTiernan and I had hypnotized her once. I also understood that I was afraid of any kind of fire starting between us. What was wrong with me? It was time to start my life again, to get over the loss of my wife, Maria. I thought I had something good with a woman named Jezzie Flanagan, but she had left an emptiness