Kiss the Girls

CHAPTER 97.

THE FBI and Durham police decided to bring Dr. Wick Sachs in for questioning early the next morning. This was a big deal; a pivotal decision in the case.

A special investigator was flown down from Virginia to do the delicate interrogation. He was one of the FBI's best, a man named James Heekin.

He questioned Sachs throughout most of the morning.

I sat with Sampson, Kyle Craig, and detectives Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes. We watched the interrogation through a two-way mirror inside Durham Police Headquarters. I felt like a starving man with his nose pressed against the window of an expensive restaurant. But there was no food being served inside.

The FBI interrogator was good, very patient, and as crafty as a star district attorney. But so was Wick Sachs. He was articulate; extremely cool under verbal fire; even smug.

“This fucker is going down,” Davey Sikes finally said inside the quiet observation room. It was good to see that he and Ruskin cared at least. In a way, I could empathize with them in their role as local detectives: they had been on the outside looking in for most of the frustrating investigation.

“What do you have on Sachs? Tell me if you're holding anything back,” I said to Nick Ruskin at the coffee machine.

“We brought him in because our chief of police is an asshole,” Ruskin told me. “We don't have anything on Sachs yet.” I wondered if I could believe Ruskin, or anyone else connected with this case.

After nearly two hours of tense parrying back and forth, Agent Heekin's interrogation had established little more than that Sachs was a collector of erotica, and that he'd been promiscuous with consenting students and professors over the last eleven years at the university.

As much as I had wanted to bust Sachs, I couldn't really understand why he'd been brought in at this time. Why now?

“We found out where his money comes from.” Kyle told me part of the answer that morning. “Sachs is the owner of an escort service working out of Raleigh and Durham. The service is called Kissmet. Interesting name. They advertise ' modeling' in the Yellow Pages. At the least, Dr. Sachs will have some serious problems with Internal Revenue. Washington decided we should apply pressure now. They're afraid he's going to run soon.” “I don't agree with your people in Washington,” I told Kyle. I knew that some agents called headquarters up there Disney-land East. I could see why. They could be risking the investigation right now, and by remote control.

“Who does agree with Washington?” Kyle said and shrugged his wide, bony shoulders. It was his way of admitting that he wasn't in full control anymore. The case was too big now. “By the way, how is Kate Mctiernan doing?” he asked.

I had already been on the phone three times with Duke Medical Center that morning. They had a number for me at the Durham station, in case Kate's condition changed. “She's listed as grave, but she's still hanging in there,” I told Kyle.

I got the chance to talk to Wick Sachs just before eleven o'clock that morning. It was Kyle's concession to me.

I tried to put Kate out of my mind before I had to be in the same room with Sachs. Anger thundered and roared inside my body all the same. I didn't know if I could control myself. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to anymore.

“Let me do this one, Alex. Let me go in there with him.” Sampson held my arm before I went inside. I broke away from him and went to meet Dr. Wick Sachs.

“I'm going to do him.”