Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross #2)(53)

“What does he look like?” Kate asked. She was eager to help. I couldn’t blame her. The FBI had flown her to Los Angeles, then stuck her in a hotel room for most of the day and night.

“I know how you feel, Kate. I’ve talked to the FBI, and you’re going to ride with me tomorrow. You’re going to see him, probably in the morning. I don’t want to set up any bias in your mind. Is that okay?”

Kate nodded, but I could tell her feelings were hurt. She definitely wasn’t happy about her level of involvement so far.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to act like a tough detective, a controlling bastard,” I finally said. “Let’s not fight about it.”

“Well, you were distant. Anyway, you’re forgiven. I guess we better get some sleep. Tomorrow’s another day. Big day maybe?”

“Yeah, tomorrow could be a big day. I really am sorry, Kate.”

“I know you are.” She finally smiled. “You really are forgiven. Sweet dreams. Tomorrow we nail Beavis. Then we get Butt-Head.”

I finally went off to my room. I hit the bed and thought about Kyle Craig for a while. He’d been able to sell my unorthodox style to his confrères for one reason: it had worked before. I already had one monster’s scalp on my belt. I hadn’t played according to the rules to get it. Kyle understood and respected results. In general, so did the Bureau. They were certainly playing according to their own rules here in Los Angeles.

My last semiconscious thought was of Kate in those khaki shorts. Take your breath away. I had a passing thought that she might come down the hall and knock, knock, knock on my door. We were in Hollywood, after all. Wasn’t that the way it happened in the movies?

But Kate didn’t come knocking on my hotel door. So much for Clint Eastwood and Rene Russo fantasies.





Chapter 63


T HIS WAS going to be a big day in Tinseltown. The manhunt of manhunts was playing in Beverly Hills. Just like the day they finally caught the killer-strangler Richard Ramirez out here.

Today we get Beavis.

It was a few minutes past eight in the morning. Kate and I were sitting in an arctic-blue Taurus parked half a block from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. There was an electrical sound in the air, as if the city were being run on a single, huge generator. A play on an old line ran through my head: Hell is a city much like Los Angeles.

I was nervous and tense; my body felt numb, and my stomach was queasy. The burnout factor. Not enough sleep. Too much stress for too long a stretch. Chasing monsters from sea to shining sea.

“That’s Dr. Will Rudolph climbing out of the BMW,” I said to Kate. I was so wound up, I felt as if strong hands were squeezing me.

“Good-looking,” Kate muttered. “Real sure of himself, too. The way he moves. Doctor Rudolph.”

Kate didn’t say another word as she intently watched Rudolph. Was he the Gentleman Caller? Was he also Casanova? Or were we being set up for some sick, psychopathic reason that I did’t understand yet?

The morning’s temperature hovered in the low sixties. The air had a crisp snap, like fall in the Northeast. Kate had on an old college sweatsuit, high-topped running shoes, dimestore sunglasses. Her long brown hair was bunched back in a ponytail. Sensible stakeout attire and grooming.

“Alex, the FBI’s all around him now?” she asked me without looking away from the binoculars. “They’re here right now? That scum can’t possibly get away?”

I nodded. “If he does anything, anything that shows us he’s the Gentleman, they’ll grab him. They want this arrest for themselves.”

But the FBI was also giving me whatever rope I needed. Kyle Craig had kept his promise. So far, anyway.

Kate and I watched as Dr. Will Rudolph slid out of the BMW coupe, which he’d just parked in a private lot on the west side of the hospital. He wore a European-style charcoal-gray suit. It was cut well and looked expensive. It probably cost as much as my house in D.C. His brown hair was held back in a fashionable ponytail. He had on dark glasses with round tortoiseshell frames.

A doctor in an exclusive Beverly Hills hospital. Smug as hell. The goddamn Gentleman Caller who was setting this city on fire?

I ached to run across the parking lot and hit him, take him down right now. I ground my teeth until my jaw was stiff. Kate wouldn’t take her eyes away from Dr. Will Rudolph. Was he Casanova, too? Were they one and the same monster? Was that it?

We both watched Rudolph as he crossed the hospital lot. His stride was long and quick and buoyant. Nothing bothering him today. Finally, he disappeared inside a gray metal side door of the hospital.

“A doctor, ” Kate said and shook her head back and forth. “This is so weird, Alex. I’m shaking on the inside. ”

The static on the car radio startled us, but we could hear agent John Asaro’s deep, raspy voice.

“Alex, did you guys see him? Get a good look? What does Ms. McTiernan think? What’s the verdict on our Dr. Squirrel?”

I looked across the front seat at Kate. She looked all of her thirty-one years right now. Not quite so confident and assured, a little gray around the gills. The prime witness. She understood the deadly seriousness of the moment perfectly.

“I don’t think he’s Casanova,” Kate finally said. She shook her head. “He’s not the same physical type. He’s thinner… carries himself differently. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I don’t think it’s him, goddammit.” She sounded a little disappointed.