Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross #2)(85)

Was I looking into the eyes of Casanova? I wondered. Could he possibly be the human monster?

“My name is Alex Cross,” I said as I slumped down on a shopworn metal chair. “Naomi Cross is my niece.”

Sachs spoke through gritted teeth. He had a mild drawl. According to Kate, Casanova had no noticeable accent.

“ I know who the hell you are. I read the newspapers, Dr. Cross. I don’t know your niece. I read that she was abducted.”

I nodded. “If you read the papers, you must also be aware of the handiwork of the scum who calls himself Casanova.”

Sachs smirked, at least it looked like that to me. His blue eyes were filled with contempt. It was easy to see why he was widely disliked at the university. His blond hair was slicked back, not a strand out of place. His horn-rimmed glasses helped make him seem officious and condescending.

“There is no record of violence anywhere in my past. I could never commit those horrifying murders. I can’t even kill palmetto bugs in my house. My aversion to violence is well documented.”

I’ll bet it is, I thought. All of your clever fronts and fa?ades are neatly, perfectly in place, aren’t they? Your devoted wife, the nurse. Your two children. Your well-documented “aversion to violence.”

I rubbed my face with both my hands. It took all my strength to keep from hitting him. He remained haughty and unapproachable.

I leaned across the table and spoke in a whisper. “I looked through your erotic book collection. I was there in your basement, Dr. Sachs. The collection’s full of perverse, sexual violence. The physical degradation of men, women, and children. That might not constitute a ‘record of violence,’ but it gives me some subtle hints about your true character.”

Sachs dismissed what I said with a wave of his hand. “I’m a noted philosopher and sociologist. Yes, I study eroticism just as you study the criminal mind. I don’t suffer from libertine dementia, Dr. Cross. My erotic collection is the key to my understanding the fantasy life of Western culture, the escalating war between men and women.” His voice level went up. “I also don’t have to explain any of my private affairs to you. I’ve broken no laws. I’m here voluntarily. You, on the other hand, entered my house without a search warrant.”

I tried to keep Sachs off balance by asking him about something else. “Why do you think you’re so successful with young women? We already know of your sexual conquests of students at the university. Eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year-olds. Beautiful young women; your own students, in some cases. There’s a record of that, certainly.”

For a moment his anger surfaced. Then he caught himself and did something odd, and maybe very revealing. Sachs showed his need to exert power and control, to be the star of the show, even to me. Insignificant as I was to him.

“Why am I successful with women, Dr. Cross?” Sachs smiled and he let his tongue play between his teeth. The message was subtle, but also clear. Sachs was telling me that he knew how to sexually control most women.

He continued to smile. An obscene smile from an obscene man. “Many women want to be freed from their sexual inhibitions, especially young women, the modern women on campuses. I free them. I free as many women as I possibly can.”

That did it. I was across the table in a second. Sachs’s chair tumbled over backwards. I landed heavily on top of him. He grunted in pain.

I pressed my body down hard on his. My arms and legs were shaking. I held back from actually throwing a punch. He was absolutely powerless to stop me, I realized. He didn’t know how to fight back. He wasn’t very strong or athletic.

Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes were inside the interrogation room in a flash, and Kyle and Sampson were right behind them. They jammed into the room and tried to pull me off Sachs.

Actually, I pulled myself away from Wick Sachs. I didn’t hurt him, never intended to. I whispered to Sampson. “He isn’t physically strong. Casanova is. He isn’t the monster. He isn’t Casanova. ”





Chapter 99


T HAT NIGHT, Sampson and I had dinner together at a pretty good spot in Durham. Ironically, it was called Nana’s.

Neither of us was especially hungry. The overly large steaks with shallots and mountains of garlic mashed potatoes went to waste. It was late in the game with Casanova, and we seemed to be falling all the way back to square one.

We talked about Kate. I had been told by hospital officials that her condition was still poor. If she lived, the doctors believed that she had little chance of full recovery, of ever being a doctor again.

“You two were more than, you know, good friends?” Sampson finally asked. He was gentle with his probing, the way he can be when he wants to.

I shook my head. “No, we were friends, John. I could talk to her about anything, and in ways I’d mostly forgotten. I’ve never been so comfortable with a woman so quickly, except maybe for Maria.”

Sampson nodded a lot, and mostly listened to me air it all out. He knew who I was, past and present.

My beeper sounded while we were still pushing around the generous portions of food on our plates. I called Kyle Craig from a phone downstairs in the restaurant. I reached him in his car. He was on his way to Hope Valley.

“We’re about to arrest Wick Sachs for the Casanova murders,” he said. I almost dropped the receiver. “You’re about to what ” I shouted into the phone. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard.