Part 26 (1/2)

”YOU GOT here just just in the nick of time,” I muttered to Sampson under my breath. We climbed out of the car very slowly and carefully. in the nick of time,” I muttered to Sampson under my breath. We climbed out of the car very slowly and carefully.

”Looks like it,” he said. ”Be cool now. Don't get us shot or beat up, Alex. I wouldn't appreciate the irony.”

I thought I knew what was happening and it made me incredibly angry. Sampson and I were ”suspects.” Why were we suspects? Because we were a couple of black males riding on the side streets of Chapel Hill at ten o'clock in the G.o.dd.a.m.n morning.

I could tell that Sampson was furious, too, but he was angry in his own way. He was smiling thinly and shaking his head back and forth. ”This is rich,” he said. ”This is the best yet.”

Another Chapel Hill detective appeared to a.s.sist his partner. They were tough-looking studs, in their late twenties. Longish hair. Full mustaches. Hard, muscular bodies from workout central. Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes in training.

”You think this is funny?” The second officer's voice was disembodied, so low I could barely hear the words. ”You think you're a laugh riot, Home?” he asked Sampson. He had a lead sap out and was holding it close to his hip, ready to strike.

”Best I could come up,” Sampson said, keeping his smile turned on low. He wasn't afraid of saps.

My scalp was crawling and sweat dribbled slowly down my back. I couldn't remember being rousted recently, and I didn't like it one bit. Everything bad I had felt since I'd been here fell into place. Not that rousting black males is peculiar to North Carolina or the South anymore.

I started to tell the cops who we were. ”My name is-”

”Shut the f.u.c.k up, a.s.shole!” One of them popped me in the small of the back before I could finish. Not hard enough to leave a bruise, but it stung like a good rabbit punch. It hurt in a couple of ways, actually.

”This one looks f.u.c.ked up to me. Eyes are bloodshot,” the low-voiced patrolman said to his partner. ”This one is high.” He was talking about me.

”I'm Alex Cross. I'm a police detective, you motherf.u.c.ker! motherf.u.c.ker!” I suddenly yelled at him. ”I'm part of the Casanova investigation. Call detectives Ruskin and Sikes right now! Call Kyle Craig from the FBI!”

At the same time, I spun around fast and hit the closest one in the throat. He dropped to the ground like a stone. His partner jumped forward, but Sampson had him on the sidewalk before he could do anything too dumb. I took away the first stud's revolver easier than I could disarm a fourteen-year-old hugger-mugger in D.C.

”a.s.sume the position?” Sampson said to his ”suspect.” There was no merriment in his deep voice. ”How many brothers you pull that s.h.i.+t on? How many young men you call 'homes' and humiliate like that?-like you might f.u.c.kin' understand what their life is about. Makes me Sampson said to his ”suspect.” There was no merriment in his deep voice. ”How many brothers you pull that s.h.i.+t on? How many young men you call 'homes' and humiliate like that?-like you might f.u.c.kin' understand what their life is about. Makes me sick. sick.”

”You know d.a.m.n well the serial killer Casanova isn't a black man,” I said to the two disarmed Chapel Hill cops. ”You haven't heard the last of this particular incident, gentlemen. Believe me on that one.”

”There been a lot of robberies in this neighborhood,” the deep-voiced one said. He was contrite all of a sudden, doing the Corporate America step'n'fetchit, the old two-step backstep.

”Save the sorry bulls.h.i.+t!” Sampson said, jabbing out with his own gun, letting the two detectives feel a little humiliation of their own.

Sampson and I got back into our car. We kept the detectives' guns. Souvenirs of our day. Let them explain it to their bosses back at police headquarters.

”Son of a b.i.t.c.h!” Sampson said as we pulled away. I hit the steering wheel with the heel of my palm. I hit it a second time. The bad scene had shaken me more than I had realized, or maybe I was just too ragged and frayed right then.

”On the other hand,” Sampson said, ”we did take those boys down like snap. snap. Little bulls.h.i.+t racism gets my adrenaline flowing, blood boiling. Gets the demons going. That's good. I have the proper Little bulls.h.i.+t racism gets my adrenaline flowing, blood boiling. Gets the demons going. That's good. I have the proper edge edge now.” now.”

”It's nice to see your ugly face again,” I said to Sampson. I had to smile, finally. We both did. Then we were both laughing out loud in the car.

”Nice to see you, too, Brown Sugar. You'll be happy to know you've still got your looks. Strain's not showing too bad. Let's go to work. You know, I pity the poor psycho if we catch him today-which is likely, I might add.”

Sampson and I were twinning, too. It felt as good as ever.

Chapter 88.

SAMPSON AND I found Dean Browning Lowell working out at the new faculty gym in Allen Hall on the Duke campus. The gym was filled with the latest and greatest muscle-building and toning equipment: s.h.i.+ny new rowing machines, StairMasters, treadmills, Gravitrons.

Dean Lowell was working with free weights. We needed to talk to him about Wick Sachs, doctor of p.o.r.nography.

Sampson and I watched Browning Lowell do a tough set of lateral raises, then some leg curls and presses. It was an impressive workout, even by the standards of two dedicated gym rats like ourselves. Lowell was quite a physical specimen.

”So this is what an Olympian G.o.d looks like up close,” I said as we finally strolled across the gym floor toward him. Whitney Houston was playing from speakers in the gym's walls. Whitney was getting all the professor types pumped up to the max.

”You're walkin' with an Olympian G.o.d,” Sampson reminded me.

”It's easy to forget in the presence of the great, yet humble, ones,” I said and grinned.

Dean Lowell looked as he heard our street shoes tatooing on the gymnasium floor. His smile was friendly and welcoming. That nice guy Browning Lowell. Actually, he did seem like a nice man. He went out of his way to create that impression.

I needed as much insider's detail as I could get from him in a hurry. Somewhere in North Carolina there had to be a missing puzzle piece that would begin to make sense out of all this murder and intrigue. I introduced Sampson and we skipped the polite small talk. I asked Lowell what he knew about Wick Sachs.

The dean was extremely cooperative, as he'd been on our first meeting. ”Sachs is our campus skell, has been for a decade. Every university seems to have at least one,” Dean Lowell said and frowned deeply. I noticed that even his frown lines had muscles.

”Sachs is widely known as 'Doctor Dirt.' He's got tenure, though, and he's never been caught at anything completely untoward. I guess I should give Dr. Sachs the benefit of the doubt, but I won't.”

”You ever hear about an exotic book and film collection that he owns, keeps at his house? p.o.r.nography masquerading as erotica?” Sampson decided to ask my next question for me.

Lowell stopped his vigorous exercises. He looked at both of us for a long moment before he spoke again. ”Is Dr. Sachs a serious suspect in the disappearances of these young women?”

”There are a lot of suspects, Dean Lowell. I can't say any more than that right now.” I told him the truth.

Lowell nodded. ”I respect your judgment, Alex. Let me tell you some things about Sachs that might be important,” he said. He had stopped exercising by now. He began toweling off his thick neck and shoulders. His body looked like polished rock.

Lowell continued to talk as he dried himself meticulously. ”Let me start at the beginning: There was an infamous murder of a young couple here a while back. This was in nineteen eighty-one. Wick Sachs was an undergrad at the time, a liberal arts student, very brilliant mind. I was in the graduate school then. When I became dean, I learned that Sachs had actually been one of the suspects in the murder investigation, but he was definitely cleared. There wasn't any evidence that he was involved in any way. I don't know every detail, but you can check it for yourself with the Durham police. It was in the spring of 'eighty-one. The murdered students were Roe Tierney and Tom Hutchinson. It was a huge scandal, I remember. In those days, a single murder case could still actually shock a community. Thing is, the case was never solved.”

”Why didn't you bring this up before?” I asked Lowell.

”The FBI knew all about it, Alex. I told them myself. I know that they talked to Dr. Sachs several weeks ago. It was my impression that he wasn't under suspicion, and that they had decided there was no connection with the earlier murder case. I'm absolutely sure of it.”

”Fair enough,” I said to the dean. I asked him for another big favor. Could he dredge up everything on Dr. Sachs that the FBI had originally requested? I also wanted to see the Duke yearbooks from the time when Sachs and Will Rudolph had both been students. I needed to do some important homework on the cla.s.s of '81.

Around seven that night, Sampson and I met with the Durham police again. Detectives Ruskin and Sikes showed up, among others. They were feeling heavy-duty pressure, too.

They pulled us aside before the update on the Casanova investigation. The stress had gotten to them, cooled their jets a little.

”Listen, you two have worked big, bad cases like this before,” Ruskin said. As usual, he was doing most of the talking. Davey Sikes didn't seem to like us any better now than he had the first day we met.

”I know that my partner and I got a little territorial at first. I want you to know, though, all we want to do is stop the killing now. stop the killing now.”