Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross 2)

Ruskin’s flashy green Saab Turbo picked me up in front of the Washington Duke Inn. He and Davey Sikes were trying to be more cooperative lately. Sikes was taking a day off, his first in a month, according to his detective partner.

Ruskin actually seemed glad to see me. He hopped out of the car in front of the hotel and pumped my hand as if we were friends. As always, Ruskin was dressed for success. Black Armani rip-off sportcoat. Black pocket T-shirt.

Things were picking up a little for me in the new South. I got the feeling that Ruskin knew I had connections with the FBI, and that he wanted to use them, too. Detective Nick Ruskin was definitely a mover and shaker. This was a career-making case for him.

“Our first big break,” Ruskin said to me.

“What do you know about the intern so far?” I asked en route to the University of North Carolina Hospital.

“She’s hanging in there. Apparently, she came down the Wykagil like a slippery fish. They’re saying it’s a miracle. Not even a major broken bone. But she’s in shock, or something worse. She can’t talk, or she won’t talk. The docs are using words like catatonic and post-traumatic shock. Who knows at this point? At least she’s alive.”

Ruskin had a lot of enthusiasm, and he could also be charismatic. He definitely wanted to use my connections. Maybe I could use his.

“Nobody knows how she got into the river. Or how she got away from him,” Ruskin told me as we entered the college town of Chapel Hill. The thought of Casanova stalking female students here was terrifying. The town was so pretty and seemed so vulnerable.

“Or whether she actually was with Casanova,” I added a thought. “We don’t know that for sure.”

“We don’t know shit from Shinola, do we?” Nick Ruskin complained as he turned down a side street marked HOSPITAL. “I’ll tell you one thing, though, this story is about to go public in a big way. The circus just came to town. See, up ahead.”

Ruskin had that right. The scene outside North Carolina University Hospital was already media bedlam. Television and press reporters were camped out in the parking lot, the front lobby, and all over the serene, sloping green lawns of the university.

Photographers snapped my picture, as well as Nick Ruskin’s, when we arrived. Ruskin was still the local star detective. People seemed to like him. I was becoming a minor celebrity, at least a curiosity, in the case. My involvement in the Gary Soneji kidnapping had already been broadcast by the local wags. I was Dr. Detective Cross, an expert on human monsters from up North.

“Tell us what’s going on,” a woman reporter called out. “Give us a break, Nick. What’s the real story with Kate McTiernan?”

“If we’re lucky, maybe she can tell us.” Ruskin smiled at the reporter, but he kept on walking until we were safely inside the hospital.

Ruskin and I were far from first in line, but we were allowed to see the intern later that night. Kyle Craig pulled the necessary strings for me. A determination had been made that Katelya McTiernan wasn’t psychotic, but that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. It seemed a reasonable diagnosis.

There was absolutely nothing that I could do that night. Anyway, I stayed after Nick Ruskin left, and I read all the medical charts, the nursing notes, and write-ups. I perused the local police reports describing how she had been found by two twelve-year-old boys who had skipped school to fish and smoke cigarettes down by the riverside.

I suspected I knew why Nick Ruskin had called me, too. Ruskin was smart. He understood that Kate McTiernan’s current state might involve me in the case as a psychologist, especially since I had dealt with this kind of poststress trauma before.

Katelya McTiernan. Survivor. But just barely. I stood beside her bed for a full thirty minutes that first night. Her IV was hooked up to a drip monitor. The bed’s siderails were up high and tight around her. There were already flowers in the room. I remembered a sad, powerful Sylvia Plath poem called “Tulips.” It was about Plath’s decidedly unsentimental reaction to flowers sent to her hospital room after a suicide attempt.

I tried to recall what Kate McTiernan had looked like before she got the black eyes. I’d seen photos. A lot of ugly swelling made her face look as if she were wearing goggles or a gas mask. There was more nasty swelling surrounding her jaw. According to the hospital write-up, she’d lost a tooth, too. Apparently, it had been knocked out at least two days before she was found in the river. He’d beaten her. Casanova. The self-proclaimed Lover.

I felt bad for the young intern. I wanted to tell her it would be all right somehow.

I rested my hand lightly on hers, and repeated the same sentences over and over. “You’re among friends now, Kate. You’re in a hospital in Chapel Hill. You’re safe now, Kate.”

I didn’t know if the badly injured woman could hear me, or even understand me. I just wanted to say something consoling to her before I left for the night.

And as I stood there watching the young woman, the image of Naomi’s face flashed before me. I couldn’t imagine her dead. Is Naomi all right, Kate McTiernan? Have you seen Naomi Cross? I wanted to ask, but she couldn’t have answered, anyway.

“You’re safe now, Kate. Sleep easy, sleep well. You’re safe now.”

Kate McTiernan couldn’t say a word about what had happened. She had lived through a horrifying nightmare that was worse than anything I could imagine.

She had seen Casanova, and he had left her speechless.

CHAPTER 47

TICK-COCK.

A young lawyer named Chris Chapin had brought home a bottle of Chardonnay de Beaulieu, and he and his fiancée, Anna Miller, were drinking the California wine in bed. It was finally the weekend. Life was good again for Chris and Anna.

“Thank God this godawful workweek is over,” sandy-haired twenty-four-year-old Ch