CHAPTER 91.
AT A LITTLE PAST TEN, Sampson and I rode down a dark, winding street on the outskirts of Chapel Hill. It had been a long day in the tank for both of us.
I'd taken Sampson to meet Seth Samuel Taylor earlier that evening. We had also spoken to one of Seth's former teachers, Dr. Louis Freed. I gave Dr. Freed my theory about the “disappearing house”; he agreed to help me with some important research for the investigation on where it might be located.
I hadn't told Sampson too much about Kate Mctiernan yet. It was time for them to meet, though. I didn't know exactly what our friendship was about, and neither did Kate. Maybe Sampson could add a few thoughts after he saw her. I was sure he would.
“You working late hours like this every night?” Sampson wanted to know as we eased down Kate's street, Old Ladies Lane, as she called it.
“Until I find Scootchie, or admit that I can't,” I told him. “Then I plan to take a whole night off.” Sampson chortled. “You devil, you.” We hopped out of the car and went to the door. I rang the bell. “No key?” Sampson deadpanned.
Kate flipped on the outdoor light for us. I wondered why she didn't keep it on all the time. Because she would save five cents a month if she didn't use the light? Because the light would attract bugs?
Because she was stubborn, and maybe wanted another shot at Casanova?
That was more like it, knowing Kate the way I was starting to. She wanted Casanova as badly as I did.
She came to the door in an old gray sweatshirt, tattered, holey jeans, bare feet with playfully red toenails. Her dark hair was bobbed at shoulder length, and she looked beautiful. No getting away from that.
“It's like a damn bughouse out here,” Kate commented as she looked around her porch.
She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I had a thought about the two of us holding each other the night before. Where was this going? I wondered. Did it have to be going anywhere?
“Hi, John Sampson,” she greeted him with a pumping handshake. “I know a few things about you, ever since you two met when you were ten. You can fill me in on the rest over a cold beer or two. Tell your side.” She smiled then. It always felt good to be on the other side of one of her smiles.
“So you're the famous Kate.” Sampson held on to her hand, and stared into the deep pools of her brown eyes. “I hear you worked your way through medical school at a truck stop, or some such apocryphal nonsense. Second degree black belt, too. A Nidan.” He started to smile and bowed respectfully.
Kate grinned at Sampson as she bowed back. “Come in out of the eternal bugs and the infernal heat. Looks like Alex has been talking behind our backs. We'll get him for that. Let's both gang up on him.” “That's Kate,” I said to Sampson as I followed him inside. “What do you think?” He looked back at me. “She likes you for some strange reason. She even likes me, which makes a lot more sense.” We sat in her kitchen and the talk was easy and comfortable, the way it usually was around her. Sampson and I drank beer, and Kate had several iced teas. I could tell that Kate and Sampson liked each other fine.
There was nothing not to like about either of them. They were both independent spirits, very smart, generous.
I filled her in on our latest day of detective work, our disappointing meeting with Ruskin and Sikes, and she told us about her day at the hospital, even some verbatims from her off-service notes.
“Sounds like you have an eidetic memory to go along with the black belt,” Sampson said with a raised eyebrow about the size of a boomerang. “No wonder Dr. Alex is so impressed with you.” “You are?” Kate gave me a look. “Well, you never told me that.” “Kate, believe it or not, is not self-centered enough,” I told Sampson.
“Rare, rare disease in our quarter-century. It's because she doesn't watch much TV. She reads too many books instead.” “It's not polite to analyze your friends in front of your other friends,” Kate said to me with a little slap on the arm.
We talked about the case some more. About Dr. Wick Sachs and his head-games. About harems. The masks. The “disappearing” house. My newest theory involving Dr. Louis Freed.
“I was doing some light reading before you got here,” Kate told us. “An essay on the male sexual urge, the natural beauty and power of it. It's about modern men trying to distance themselves from their mothers, from the smothering cosmo logical mom. It proposes that many men want the freedom to assert their masculine identities, but contemporary society continually frustrates that. Comments, gentlemen?” “Men will be men.” Sampson showed his big white teeth. “Good case in point. We're still lions and tigers at heart. Never met a cosmological mom, so I won't comment on that part of your essay.” “What do you think, Alex?” Kate asked me. “Are you a lion or a tiger?” “I've never liked certain things about most men,” I said. “We are incredibly repressed. Monochromatic because of it. Insecure, defensive. Rudolph and Sachs are asserting their masculinity to the extreme. They refuse to be repressed by society's mores or laws.” “Ba dum bun.” Sampson did a talk-show drumbeat for me.
“They think they're smarter than everyone else,” Kate said. “At least Casanova does. He laughs at all of us. He's a nasty son of a bitch.” “And that's why I'm here,” Sampson told her, “to catch him, and put him in a cage, and lock the cage on a far mountaintop. And by the way, he'd be stone dead in the cage, anyway.” The time passed like that, flashed by real quickly. Finally, it was getting late and we had to leave. I tried to talk Kate into staying at a hotel for the night. We had been over this subject repeatedly, and her answer was always the same.
“Thanks for the concern, but no thanks,” she said as she brought us out onto the porch. “I can't let him chase me out of my own house. That will not happen. He comes back, we tangle.” “Alex is right about the hotel,” Sampson said to her in the gentle voice he reserves for friends. There it was a double recommendation from two of the sharpest cops around.
Kate shook her head, and I knew there was no sense in arguing with her anymore. “Absolutely not. I'll be just fine, I promise,” she said.
I didn't ask Kate if I could stay, but I wanted to. I didn't know if Kate even wanted me to stay. It was a little complicated with Sampson there. I suppose I could have given him my car to drive back, but it was already after
