“I’m her family tonight,” I said. I pushed past him and climbed into the rear of the ambulance. He didn’t try to stop me. He couldn’t have, anyway.
I felt numb all over. Kate lay amid the solemn monitoring and resuscitation equipment in the close quarters of the rescue ambulance. I was afraid that she had died as I was getting into the ambulance, or when they were carrying her outside.
I sat beside Kate and held just the tips of her fingers. “It’s Alex. I’m here for you,” I whispered to her. “Be strong right now. You’re so strong, anyway. Be strong now.”
The same doctor who had told me I couldn’t get into the ambulance came in and sat next to me. He felt obliged to tell me the rules, but he didn’t care to enforce them. His name tag said Dr. B. Stringer, Duke University EMS Team. I owed him a big favor.
“Can you tell me anything about Kate’s chances?” I asked as the emergency ambulance slowly pulled away from the nightmare scene in Chapel Hill.
“That’s a tough question, I’m afraid. She’s alive, and that’s a miracle in itself.” He spoke in a low, respectful voice. “There are multiple fractures and contusions, some with open gashes in them. Both cheekbones are fractured. She may have a sprained neck. She must have played dead on him. Somehow, she had the presence of mind to trick him.”
Kate’s face was swollen badly and cut. She was almost unrecognizable. I knew the same was true all over her body. I clung gently to Kate’s hand as the ambulance sped toward Duke Medical Center. She had the presence of mind to trick him? That was Kate, all right. I wondered, though.
I held on to another mind-blowing thought. It had hit me hard outside the house. I thought I knew what had been wrong in Kate’s bedroom.
Will Rudolph had been in the bedroom, hadn’t he? The Gentleman Caller had been there for the attack. He had to be the one. It was his style. Extreme, graphic violence. Rage.
There was little evidence of Casanova. No artistic touches. There was such extraordinary violence, though…. They were twinning! Two monsters bonding to make one. Perhaps Rudolph resented Kate because Casanova had loved her. Maybe she had come between them in his twisted perception. Maybe they had left Kate alive on purpose—so she could be a vegetable for the rest of her life.
They were working together now, weren’t they? There were two of them to catch, to stop.
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 ‘lingerie 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 Disneyland 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.”
CHAPTER 98