Alex Cross 2 - Kiss the Girls

CHAPTER 115.

NEVER SAY NEVER. That's one of my few mottos as a cop. My body was bathed in a cold sweat. My pulse was jumpy and irregular. This was it, wasn't it? I needed to believe that it was.

I waited in the hot, still darkness outside a small wood-shingled house in the Edgemont section of Durham. It was a typical middle-class Southern neighborhood. Nice middle-class houses, American and Japanese cars in about equal numbers, mower-striped lawns, familiar cooking smells. It was where Casanova had chosen to live for the past seven years.

I had spent the early part of that night at the offices of the Herald Sun. I had reread everything written in the newspaper about the unsolved murders of Roe Tierney and Tom Hutchin-son. A name mentioned in the Herald Sun helped put it together for me, confirmed my suspicions and fears, anyway. Hundreds of hours of investigating.

Reading and rereading Durham police briefs. Then, pay dirt on a single line of newsprint.

The name was in a story lost in the Durham newspaper's middle pages. It appeared just once. I found it, anyway.

I had stared for a long time at the familiar name in the news article.

I thought about something I'd noticed during the shoot-out in Chapel Hill. I thought about the whole subject of “perfect crimes.” It all fit together for me now. Game, match, set, bingo.

Casanova had blinked just once. I had seen it with my own eyes, though. The name in the news article was verification. It materially linked Will Rudolph and Casanova for the first time. It also explained to me how they had met, and why they had talked.

Casanova was sane and completely responsible for his actions. He had planned every step in cold blood. That was the most horrifying and unusual thing about the long trail of crimes. He knew what he was doing. He was a slime who had chosen to abduct beautiful young students in their prime. He'd chosen to rape and murder again and again. He was obsessed with perfect young women, with loving them as he called it.

I conducted an imaginary interview with Casanova as I waited outside his house in the car. I could see his face as clearly as the numbers on the dashboard.

You don't feel anything one way or the other, do you?

Oh, I do. I feel elation. I feel the most tremendous high when I take another lady. I feel varying levels of excitement, anticipation, animal lust. I feel an incredible sense of freedom that most people will never feel.

But not guilt?

I could see him smirk as I sat in my car. I'd seen that smirk before, in fact. I knew who he was.

Nothing that would make me want to stop.

Was there any nurturing, any love given and received when you were a boy?

They tried. I wasn't really a boy, though. I don't remember acting or thinking like a boy.

I had begun to think like the monsters again. I was the dragon slayer I hated the responsibility. I also hated the part of me that was becoming a monster. There was nothing I could do to stop it at this point.

I was outside Casanova's house in Durham. Hammers of fear tapped lightly in my heart. I waited there for four nights.

No partner. No backup.

No problem whatsoever. I could be as patient as he was.

I was hunting now.