“So we watch Dr. Rudolph, and we watch Dr. Cross watch Dr. Rudolph?” Agent Asaro said.
“You got it, partner.”
“Maybe Dr. Cross and Dr. McTiernan will provide us with a little entertainment at least.”
“Hey, you never know about these things,” Raymond Cosgrove said. He was smiling now. He thought this whole thing was probably a wild goose chase, but it wouldn’t be his first one. This was a huge, nasty case no matter what. It was interstate now, and every possible lead was being chased down with a vengeance. A coast-to-coast serial squirrel connection!
So he and his partner, and two other FBI agents, were going to hang around in the dark woods of Big Sur all night and into the morning, if need be. They would dutifully watch the summer cabin of a plastic surgeon from L.A., who maybe was a real bad killer, but maybe was just a plastic surgeon from L.A.
They would watch Alex Cross and Dr. McTiernan, and speculate about the two of them. Cosgrove wasn’t really in the mood for any of this. On the other hand, it was a big case. And if he did happen to catch the Gentleman Caller, he might just become a glory hound himself. He wanted Al Pacino to play him in the movie. Pacino did Spanish guys, right?
CHAPTER 68
KATE AND I moved back a safe distance from the cabin. We ducked behind a stand of thick fir trees.
“I heard him scream,” Kate said when we got into the deeper woods. “What did you see back there, Alex?”
“I saw the devil.” I told her the truth. “I saw an absolutely crazy and evil man talking to himself. If he isn’t the Gentleman, he does a great imitation.”
The two of us took shifts watching Rudolph’s hideaway over the next several hours. That way, we both got some rest. Around six in the morning I met with the FBI team, and they gave me a pocket-sized walkie-talkie in case we needed to talk in a hurry. I still wondered how much they’d told me of what they knew.
When Dr. Will Rudolph eventually made another appearance outside, it was past one o’clock on Saturday afternoon. The silver-blue nimbus of sea mist had finally burned off. Scrub jays swooped and hollered overhead. Under different circumstances, it would have been a nice setting for a weekend in the mountains.
Dr. Rudolph cleaned up in a whitewashed outdoor shower behind the house. He was muscular, with a washboard stomach, and looked agile and fit. He was extremely handsome. He cavorted and danced around in the nude. His bearing seemed a little formal. The Gentleman.
“He’s so unbelievably sure of himself, Alex,” Kate said as we watched Rudolph from the woods. “Just look at him.”
Everything seemed very odd and ritualistic. Was the dance part of his act? His pattern?
When he finished his shower, he walked across the backyard to a small wildflower garden. He picked about a dozen flowers and brought them into the house. The Gentleman had his flowers! What now?
At four in the afternoon, Rudolph came out of the back screen door of the cabin again. He was dressed in tight black jeans, a plain white pocket T, black leather sandals. He hopped in the Range Rover and drove toward Highway 1.
About two miles south on the coast road, he pulled into a restaurant and café called Nepenthe. Kate and I waited on the sandy road shoulder, then we followed the Range Rover into a large, crowded parking lot. Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland” was playing loudly from speakers hidden in the trees.
“Maybe he’s just your average horny Los Angeles doctor,” Kate said as we finally entered the parking area and searched for a space.
“No. He’s the Gentleman, all right. He’s our California butcher boy.” I was sure of it after watching him the night before, and now today.
Nepenthe was busy, filled mostly with good-looking people in their twenties and thirties, but also a sprinkling of aging hippies, some of whom were sixty or more. Stone-washed jeans, the latest West Coast swimsuit creations, colorful flip-flops, expensive hiking boots were everywhere.
So were a lot of attractive women, I noticed. All ages, all sizes, all ethnic castes. Kiss the girls.
I had heard of Nepenthe, actually. It had been hot and famous in the sixties, but, even before that, Orson Welles had bought the desirable, breathtakingly beautiful property for Rita Hayworth.
Kate and I watched how Dr. Rudolph operated at the bar. He was polite. A smile for the bartender. Shared laughter. He looked around and seriously checked out several attractive women. Apparently they weren’t attractive enough, though.
He ventured out onto a large fieldstone terrace overlooking the Pacific. Rock music from the seventies and eighties was playing from an expensive sound system. The Grateful Dead. The Doors. The Eagles. This was Hotel California.
“It’s a beautiful spot for it, Alex. Whatever in hell he’s up to.”
“He’s up to six. He’s looking for victim number seven,” I said.
Far below, on an inaccessible beach, we could see sea lions, brown pelicans, cormorants. I wished that Damon and Jannie were here to see them, and I wished the circumstances of my being here were completely different.
Out on the terrace, I took Kate’s hand. “Makes us look like we belong,” I said and winked at her.
“Maybe we do.?