Kiss the Girls

themselves? Creating grandiose romantic fantasies around the mundane exchange of seminal fluids?
    He was at his final destination before he knew it. He stopped the car under a towering, old elm and switched off the headlamps. Two black men were standing on the porch of Kate McTiernan’s house.
    One of them was Alex Cross.

Chapter 91

    A T A little past ten, Sampson and I rode down a dark, winding street on the outskirts of Chapel Hill. It had been a long day in the tank for both of us.
    I’d taken Sampson to meet Seth Samuel Taylor earlier that evening. We had also spoken to one of Seth’s former teachers, Dr. Louis Freed. I gave Dr. Freed my theory about the “disappearing house”; he agreed to help me with some important research for the investigation on where it might be located.
    I hadn’t told Sampson too much about Kate McTiernan yet. It was time for them to meet, though. I didn’t know exactly what our friendship was about, and neither did Kate. Maybe Sampson could add a few thoughts after he saw her. I was sure he would.
    “You working late hours like this every night?” Sampson wanted to know as we eased down Kate’s street, Old Ladies Lane, as she called it.
    “Until I find Scootchie, or admit that I can’t,” I told him. “Then I plan to take a whole night off.”
    Sampson chortled. “You devil, you.”
    We hopped out of the car and went to the door. I rang the bell. “No key?” Sampson deadpanned.
    Kate flipped on the outdoor light for us. I wondered why she didn’t keep it on all the time. Because she would save five cents a month if she didn’t use the light? Because the light would attract bugs? Because she was stubborn, and maybe wanted another shot at Casanova? That was more like it, knowing Kate the way I was starting to. She wanted Casanova as badly as I did.
    She came to the door in an old gray sweatshirt, tatered, holey jeans, bare feet with playfully red toenails. Her dark hair was bobbed at shoulder length, and she looked beautiful. No getting away from that.
    “It’s like a damn bughouse out here,” Kate commented as she looked around her porch.
    She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I had a thought about the two of us holding each other the night before. Where was this going? I wondered. Did it have to be going anywhere?
    “Hi, John Sampson,” she greeted him with a pumping handshake. “I know a few things about you, ever since you two met when you were ten. You can fill me in on the rest over a cold beer or two. Tell your side.” She smiled then. It always felt good to be on the other side of one of her smiles.
    “So you’re the famous Kate.” Sampson held on to her hand, and stared into the deep pools of her brown eyes. “I hear you worked your way through medical school at a truck stop, or some such apocryphal nonsense. Second degree black belt, too. A Nidan.” He started to smile and bowed respectfully.
    Kate grinned at Sampson as she bowed back. “Come in out of the eternal bugs and the infernal heat. Looks like Alex has been talking behind our backs. We’ll get him for that. Let’s both gang up on him.”
    “That’s Kate,” I said to Sampson as I followed him inside. “What do you think?”
    He looked back at me. “She likes you for some strange reason. She even likes me, which makes a lot more sense.”
    We sat in her kitchen and the talk was easy and comfortable, the way it usually was around her. Sampson and I drank beer, and Kate had several ice teas. I could tell that Kate and Sampson liked each other fine. There was nothing not to like about either of them. They were both independent spirits, very smart, generous.
    I filled her in on our latest day of detective work, our disappointing meeting with Ruskin and Sikes, and she told us about her day at the hospital, even some verbatims from her off-service notes.
    “Sounds like you have an eidetic memory to go with the black belt,” Sampson said with a raised eyebrow about the size of a boomerang. “No wonder Dr. Alex is so impressed with you.”
    “You are?” Kate gave me a look. “Well, you never told
me
that.”
    “Kate, believe it or not, is not self-centered enough,” I told Sampson. “Rare, rare disease in our quarter-century. It’s because she doesn’t watch much TV. She reads too many books instead.”
    “It’s not polite to analyze your friends in front of your other friends,” Kate said to me with a little slap on the arm.
    We talked about the case some more.