Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross #2)(69)

Perfect.

Meticulous.

As I sat in the car, my head was pounding from too much tension and stress. I kept the motor running, in case the family Sachs suddenly came home.

I knew what I wanted to do, what I had to do, what I’d been planning to do for the last few hours. I needed to break into his house. I wondered if the FBI would try to stop me, but I didn’t think they would. I believed that maybe they actually wanted me to break inside and look around. We knew very little about Dr. Wick Sachs. I still wasn’t officially involved in the Casanova manhunt, and I could try things that the others couldn’t. I was supposed to be the “loose cannon.” That was my deal with Kyle Craig.

Scootchie was out there someplace, at least I prayed that she was still alive. I hoped that all the missing women were alive. His harem. His odalisques. His collection of beautiful special women.

I shut off the motor and took a deep breath before I climbed out of the car.

I walked quickly across the springly lawn in crouch. I remembered something that Satchel Paige used to say: “Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.” I was jangling.

Shaped boxwoods and azaleas ran along the front of the house. A child’s red bike with silver streamers on the handlebars lay on its side near the porch.

Nice, I was thinking as I hurried along. Too nice.

Casanova’s child’s bike.

Casanova’s respectable house in the suburbs.

Casanova’s fake, perfect life. His perfect disguise. His big, ugly joke on all of us. Right in the city of Durham. His middle finger extended to the world.

I carefully made my way around to the patio, which was built with white tile. It was bordered with the same brick as the house and the front walk. I noticed that creeping tendrils had invaded the red-brick walls. Maybe he wasn’t so perfect, after all.

I quickly crossed the patio, moving toward the Florida room. There was no turning back now. I’d done a little breaking and entering in the name of duty before this. That didn’t make it right, just easier.

I broke a small windowpane in a door and let myself in. Nothing. Not a sound. I didn’t think that Wick Sachs would have any use for an alarm system. I seriously doubted that he wanted the Durham police to investigate a breaking and entering.

The first thing I noticed was the familiar cloying smell of lemon furniture polish. Respectability. Civility. Order. It was all a fa?ade, a perfectly designed mask.

I was inside the monster’s house.





Chapter 80


T HE HOUSE was as neat and orderly as the outside grounds. Maybe even more so. Nice, nice, much too nice.

I was nervous and afraid, but that didn’t matter anymore. I was used to living with the feelings of fear and uncertainty. Carefully, I roamed from room to room. Nothing seemed out of place, even with two small children living there. Strange, strange, very strange.

The house reminded me a little of Rudolph’s apartment in Los Angeles. It was as if no one really lived there. Who are you? Show me who you really are, fucker. This house isn’t the real you, is it? Does anyone know you without your masks? The Gentleman does, doesn’t he?

The kitchen was right out of Country Living magazine. Antiques and other beautiful “things” were in almost every room.

In a small study, the professor’s notes and papers were strewn everywhere, covering every available surface. He’s supposed to be very orderly and neat, I thought, and stored the conflicting data. Who was he?

I was searching for something specific, but I didn’ know exactly where to look. Down in the basement I saw a heavy oak door. It was unlocked. It led into a small furnace room. I searched the room carefully. On the far side of the furnace room, I found another wooden door. It looked like a door to a closet, to some small, insignificant space.

The second door was closed with a hook, which I removed as quietly as I could. I wondered if there could be more rooms in here? Maybe an underground space? Maybe the house of horror? Or a tunnel?

I pushed open the wooden door. Pitch-blackness. I switched on the lights, and entered a single room that must have been twenty-five by forty. My heart skipped a beat. My knees got weak and I felt a little sick.

There were no women in here, no harem, but I had found Wick Sachs’s fantasy room. It was right in his house. Hidden in a secret corner of his basement. The room didn’t fit in with the design of the rest of the house. He had built this room specially for himself. He liked to build things, to be creative, didn’t he?

The special room was laid out like a library. There was a heavy oak desk, and two red leather club chairs were on either side of it. The four walls of bookcases were filled with books and magazines from floor to ceiling. My blood pressure must have soared fifty points. I tried to be still inside, but I couldn’t.

This was a collection of pornography and erotica, the most extraordinary I had ever seen or even heard described. There were at least a thousand books in the room. I read titles as I quickly roamed from wall to wall, shelf to shelf.

Strangest Sex Acts in Modes of Love of All Races

Illustrated Cherries. Printed for the Erotica Biblion

Society of New York

Humiliations of Anastasia and Pearl

The Harem Omnibus: a reader

Until She Screams

The Hymen. A Medico-Legal Study in Rape

I concentrated and tried to focus on what I needed to do here. First, I tried to quiet the roaring noise in my head.