Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross 2)

She didn’t feel it when he gave her the softest kiss good-bye. “I love you, sweet Kate. And I’m truly sorry about this. I do feel… everything.”

CHAPTER 29

I RECEIVED an urgent phone call from a law student and classmate of Naomi’s. She said her name was Florence Campbell and that she had to talk to me as soon as possible. “I really must talk with you, Dr. Cross. It’s imperative,” she said.

I met her on the Duke campus near the Bryan University Center. Florence turned out to be a black woman in her early twenties. We walked among the magnolias and well-kept Gothic-style school buildings. Neither of us looked as if we particularly belonged in the setting.

Florence was tall and gawky and somewhat mystifying at first. She had a stiff, high hairstyle that made me think of Nefertiti. Her appearance was decidedly odd, or maybe old-fashioned, and it struck me that people like her might still exist in rural Mississippi or Alabama. Florence had done her undergraduate work at Mississippi State University, which was about as far away from Duke University as you could get.

“I’m very, very sorry, Dr. Cross,” she said as we sat on a stone-and-wood bench with student memorabilia etched into its rails. “I apologize to you and your family.”

“You apologize about what, Florence?” I asked her. I didn’t understand what she meant.

“I didn’t make the effort to talk to you when you came to campus yesterday. No one had made it clear that Naomi might actually have been kidnapped. The Durham police certainly didn’t. They were just rude. They didn’t seem to think Naomi was in any real trouble.”

“Why do you think that is?” I asked Florence a question that was bouncing around inside my own head.

She stared deeply into my eyes. “Because Naomi’s an Afro-American woman. The Durham police, the FBI, they don’t care about us as much as they do about the white women.”

“Do you believe that?” I asked her.

Florence Campbell rolled her eyes. “It’s the truth, so why wouldn’t I believe it? Frantz Fanon argued that racist superstructures are permanently embedded in the psychology, economy, and culture of our society. I believe that, too.”

Florence was a very serious woman. She had a copy of Albert Murray’s The Omni-Americans under her arm. I was beginning to like her style. It was time to find out what secrets she knew about Naomi.

“Tell me what’s going on around here, Florence. Don’t edit your thoughts because I’m Naomi’s uncle, or because I’m a police detective. I need somebody to help me out. I am resisting a superstructure down here in Durham.”

Florence smiled. She pulle

d a tangle of hair away from her face. She was part Immanuel Kant, part Prissy from Gone With the Wind. “Here’s what I know so far, Dr. Cross. This is why some girls in the dorm were upset with Naomi.”

She took a sip of the magnolia-fragrant air. “It started with a man named Seth Samuel Taylor. He’s a social worker in the projects of Durham. I introduced Naomi to Seth. He’s my cousin.” Florence suddenly looked a little uncertain as she talked.

“I don’t see a problem so far,” I told her.

“Seth Samuel and Naomi fell in love around December of last year,” she went on. “Naomi was walking around with a starry-night look in her eyes, and that’s not like her, as you know. He came to the dorm at first, but then she started staying at Seth’s apartment in Durham.”

I was a little surprised that Naomi had fallen in love and hadn’t mentioned it to Cilla. Why didn’t she tell any of us about it? I still didn’t understand the problem with the other girls at the dorm.

“I’m pretty sure Naomi wasn’t the first coed to fall in love at Duke. Or to have a man over for tea and crumpets and whatever,” I said.

“She wasn’t just having a man over for whatever, she was having a black man over for whatever. Seth would show up from the projects in his dusty overalls and dusty workboots, and his leather engineering jacket. Naomi started to wear an old sharecropper’s straw hat around campus. Sometimes, Seth wore a hard hat with ‘Slave Labor’ written on it. He dared to be a little caustic and ironic about the sisters’ social activity, and, heaven forbid, their social awareness. He scolded the black housekeepers when they tried to do their jobs.”

“What do you think about your cousin Seth?” I asked Florence.

“Seth has a definite chip on his shoulder. He’s angry about racial injustice, to the point where it gets in the way of his ideas sometimes. Other than that, he’s really great. He’s a doer, not afraid to get his hands dirty. If he wasn’t my distant cousin…, ” Florence said with a wink.

I had to smile at Florence’s sneaky sense of humor. She was a little Mississippi-gawky, but she was a neat lady. I was even starting to like her high hairstyle.

“You and Naomi were fast friends?” I asked her.

“We weren’t at first. I think we both felt we were competing for Law Review. Probably only one black woman could make it, you understand. But as our first year wore on, we got very close. I love Naomi. She’s the greatest.”

I suddenly wondered if Naomi’s disappearance might be connected to her boyfriend, and maybe had nothing to do with the killer loose in North Carolina.

“He’s a real good person. Don’t go hurting him,” Florence warned me. “Don’t even think about it.”

I nodded. “I’ll only break one of his legs.”