Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross #2)(50)

Kyle handed me a long, curling fax. He pointed to some copy at the very bottom of the sheet. The fax was from the FBI’s office in Los Angeles.

I glanced down the page and read the entry that was underscored.

Possible Casanova!!! it said. Very possible suspect.

Dr. William Rudolph. First-class creep.

Home: the Beverly Comstock. Work: Ceders-Sinai Medical Center.

Los Angeles.

“We’ve finally got our break. We’ve got a first-class lead, anyway,” Kyle said. “The Gentleman could be this doctor. This creep, as she calls him.”

Kate looked at me, then at Kyle. She had told both of us that Casanova might be a doctor.

“Anything else in Lieberman’s notes?” I asked Kyle.

“Not that we’ve been able to find so far,” Kyle said. “Unfortunately, we can’t ask Ms. Lieberman about Dr. William Rudolph, or why she made the note in her computer. Let me tell you two new theories that are making the rounds with our profilers out on the West Coast,” Kyle went on. “Are you ready for a little outrageous mind trip, my friend? Some profiler speculation?”

“I’m ready. Let’s hear the latest and greatest theories from FBI West.”

“The first theory is that he’s sending the diary entries to himself. That he’s Casanova and the Gentleman Caller. He could be both killers, Alex. They each specialize in ‘perfect’ crimes. There are other similarities, too. Maybe he’s a split personality. FBI West, as you call it, would like Dr. McTiernan to fly out to Los Angeles right away. They’d like to talk to her.”

I didn’t like the first West Coast theory too much myself, but I couldn’t completely discount it. “What’s the other theory from the wild, wild West?” I asked Kyle.

“The other theory,” he said, “is that there are two men. But that they aren’t just communicating, they’re competing. This could be a scary competition, Alex. This could all be a scary game they’ve invented.”





Part Three


The Gentleman Caller





Chapter 60


H E HAD been a Southern gentleman.

A gentleman scholar.

Now he was the very finest gentleman in Los Angeles. Always a gentleman, though. A hearts-and-flowers kind of guy.

An orangish-red sun had begun its long, slow shimmy and slide toward the Pacific Ocean. Dr. William Rudolph thought it looked visually stunning as he strolled at a leisurely pace along Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.

The Gentleman Caller was “shopping” that afternoon, absorbing all the sights and sounds, the hectic flash-and-cash of his surroundings.

The street scene reminded him of something one of the hard-boiled detective writers, maybe Raymond Chandler, had written: “California, the department store.” The description still worked pretty damn well.

Most of the attractive women he observed were in their early and mid-twenties. They had just come from the stultifying workaday world of the ad agencies, money managers, and law firms in the entertainment district around Century Boulevard. Several of them wore high heels, platforms, clinging spandex miniskirts, here and there a form-fitting Rollo suit.

He listened to the casually sexy rustle of crushed silk, the martial click-click of designer shoes, the sultry scuff of cowboy boots that cost more than Wyatt Earp had earned in a lifetime.

He was getting hot and a little frenzied. Nicely frenzied. Life in California was good. It was the department store of his dreams.

This was the best part: the foreplay before he made his final selection. The Los Angeles police were still stumped and baffled by him. Maybe one day they would figure it all out, but probably not. He was simply too good at this. He was Jekyll and Hyde for this age.

As he strolled between La Brea and Fairfax, he breathed in the scents of musk and heavy floral perfumes, of chamomile-and lemon-scented hair. The leather handbags and skirts also had a distinct scent.

It was all a big tease, but he adored it. It was so ironic that these lovely California foxes were teasing and provoking him of all people.

He was the small, adorable, fluffy-haired boy loose in the candy store, wasn’t he? Now which forbidden sweets should he choose this afternoon?

That little twit in red heels, no stockings? That poor man’s Juliette Binoche? The provocateuse in the French-vanilla-and-black harlequin-print suit?

Several of the women actually gave Dr. Will Rudolph approving glances as they wandered in and out of their favorite shops. Exit I, Leathers and Treasures, La Luz de Jesus.

He was strikingly handsome, even by strict Hollywood standards. He resembled the singer Bono from the Irish rock group U2. Actually, he looked the way Bono would if he had chosen to become a successful doctor in Dublin or Cork, or right here in Los Angeles.

And that was one of the Gentleman’s most private secrets: The women almost always chose him.

Will Rudolph wandered into Nativity, which was one of the currently hot A-rated shops on Melrose. Nativity was the place to buy a designer bustier, a mink-lined leather jacket, an “antique” Hamilton wristwatch.

As he watched the supple young bodies in the busy store, he was thinking of Hollywood’s A parties, its A restaurants, even its A stores. The city was completely hung up on its own pecking order.

He understood status perfectly! Yes, he did. Dr. Will Rudolph was the most powerful man in Los Angeles.