Kiss the Girls

CHAPTER 81.

MORNING HAD BROKEN AGAIN; nothing had really changed about the ghoulish investigation. Kate was still my partner in crime. That was her choice, but I approved. She knew Casanova better than the rest of us combined.

She and I spied on the big, beautiful Sachs house from the triangle of dense fir woods off Old Chapel Hill Road. We had already seen Wick Sachs once that morning. Our lucky day.

The Beast was up bright and early. He was tall and professorial-looking, with sandy blond hair brushed straight back and horn-rimmed glasses. He appeared to have a very good build.

He had ventured out to the porch at around seven to pick up the Durham paper. The headline read: Casanova Watch Continues. The local newspaper editors could have had no idea, no clue, how accurate those words were.

Sachs glanced at the front page, then casually folded it under his arm.

Nothing of interest for him today. Another ho-hum day at the serial-killer office.

At a little before eight, he came out with his children in tow. He had a big toothy smile turned on for the kids. The good father was taking them to school.

His little boy and girl were outfitted as if they belonged in the front window of Gap For Kids or Esprit. They looked like adorable little dolls. The FBI would follow Sachs and the children to the school.

“Isn't this a little unusual, Alex? Two surveillance jobs in a row like this?” Kate asked me. She was analytical and her mind never stopped working all the angles. She was as obsessive about the case as I was. That morning she was dressed down as usual. Tatty jeans, a navy blue T-shirt, sneakers. Her beauty shone through, anyway. She couldn't hide it.

“Investigations of repeat killers are almost always unusual. This one is stranger than most,” I admitted. I talked about the twinning angle again. Two badly twisted men with no one to talk to, to share with. No one to understand, until they met each other. Then a powerful connection between the two killers. Kate was a twin, but she'd experienced a benign form of twinning. With Casanova and the Gentleman, it was something else.

Wick Sachs came right back from the drop-off at school. We could hear him whistling cheerfully as he strolled to his perfect house. Kate and I had talked about the fact that he was a doctor after all, though a doctor of philosophy.

Nothing much happened for the next few hours. There was no sign of Sachs, or his wife, the lovely Mrs. Casanova.

Wick Sachs left the house on the hill again at eleven. He was blowing off his teaching classes today. He had already missed his ten o'clock tutorial, according to the schedule I had from Dean Lowell. Why was that? What slick game was he playing now?

There were two cars in the circular driveway. He chose the burgundy one, a Jaguar XJS convertible with a tan top, twelve-cylinder engine.

The other car was a black Mercedes sedan. Not too shabby on a professor's salary.

He was heading out now, hitting the road. Was he going to visit his girls?