“It can’t harm you, Anna,” he told her truthfully. “Its mouth is sewn shut. I sewed it myself. The snake is harmless. I would never hurt you.”
“You’re sick and vile,” Anna suddenly snapped at hi
m. “You’re a sadist!”
He merely nodded. He had wanted to see the real Anna, and there she was: another snapping dragon.
Casanova watched the milk as it slowly dripped from her anus. So did the small black snake. The sweet fragrance of the milk drew it forward across the wooden two-by-fours of the bedroom floor. It was quite magnificent to observe. This truly was an image for beauty and the beast.
The cautiously alert black snake paused, then suddenly jutted its head forward. The head smoothly slid inside Anna Miller. The black snake cleverly gathered itself in folds and slid farther inside.
Casanova closely watched Anna’s beautiful eyes widen. How many other men had ever seen this, or felt anything like what he was experiencing now? How many of those men were still alive?
He had first heard of this sexual practice for enlarging the anus on his trips to Thailand and Cambodia. Now he’d performed the ceremony himself. It made him feel so much better—about the loss of Kate, about other losses.
That was the exquisite and surprising beauty of the games he chose to play at his hideaway. He loved them. He couldn’t possibly stop himself.
And neither could anyone else. Not the police, not the FBI, and not Dr. Alex Cross.
CHAPTER 55
KATE STILL couldn’t remember much from the actual day of her escape from hell. She agreed to be hypnotized, at least to let me try, though she thought her natural defenses might be too strong. We decided to do it late at night in the hospital, when she was already tired and might be more susceptible.
Hypnotism can be a relatively simple process. First, I asked Kate to close her eyes, then to breathe slowly and evenly. Maybe I would finally meet Casanova tonight. Maybe through Kate’s eyes I’d see how he worked.
“In with the good air, out with the bad,” Kate said, keeping her good humor most of the time. “Something like that. Right, Dr. Cross?”
“Clear your mind as much as you can, Kate,” I said.
“I don’t know about the wisdom of that.” She smiled. “There’s an awful lot bumping around in there right now. Rather like an old, old attic filled with unopened dressers and portmanteaus.” Her voice was beginning to sound a little sleepy. That was a hopeful sign.
“Now just count back slowly from a hundred. Begin whenever you feel like it,” I told her.
She went under easily. That probably meant that she trusted me somewhat. With the trust came responsibility on my part.
Kate was vulnerable now. I didn’t want to hurt her under any circumstances. For the first few minutes, we talked as we often did when she was fully conscious and awake. We had enjoyed talking to each other from the start.
“Can you remember being kept in the house with Casanova?” I finally asked her a leading question.
“Yes, I remember quite a lot now. I remember the night he came into my apartment. I can see him carrying me through some kind of woods, to wherever I was kept. He carried me like my weight was nothing.”
“Tell me about the woods you went through, Kate.” This was our first dramatic moment. She was actually with Casanova again. In his power. A captive. I suddenly realized how quiet the hospital was all around us.
“It was too dark, really. The woods were very thick, very creepy. He had a flashlight with him, kept it on a string or rope around his neck…. He’s unbelievably strong. I thought of him as an animal, physically. He compared himself to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. He has a very romantic view of himself and what he’s doing. That night… he whispered to me as if we were already lovers. He told me he loved me. He sounded… sincere.”
“What else do you remember about him, Kate? Anything you recall is helpful. Take your time.”
She turned her head, as if she were looking at someone off to my right. “He always wore a different mask. He wore a reconstructive mask one time. That was the scariest one. They’re called ‘death masks’ because hospitals and morgues sometimes use them to help identify accident victims who are unrecognizable.”
“That’s interesting about the death masks. Please go on, Kate. You’re being incredibly helpful.”
“I know that they can make them right from a human skull, pretty much any skull. They’ll take a photo of it… cover the photo with tracing paper… draw the features. Then they build an actual mask from the drawing. There was a death mask in the movie Gorky Park. They aren’t usually meant to be worn. I wondered how he’d gotten it.”
Okay, Kate, I was thinking to myself, now keep going about Casanova. “What happened on the day that you escaped?” I asked her, leading her just a little.
For the first time, she seemed uncomfortable with a question. Her eyes opened for a split second, as if she were in a light sleep and I had woken her, jarred her. Her eyes shut again. Her right foot was tapping very rapidly.
“I don’t remember very much about that day, Alex. I think I was drugged out of my mind, off the planet.”