I quickly crossed the patio, moving toward the Florida room. There was no turning back now. I’d done a little breaking and entering in the name of duty before this. That didn’t make it right, just easier.
I broke a small windowpane in a door and let myself in. Nothing. Not a sound. I didn’t think that Wick Sachs would have any use for an alarm system. I seriously doubted that he wanted the Durham police to investigate a breaking and entering.
The first thing I noticed was the familiar cloying smell of lemon furniture polish. Respectability. Civility. Order. It was all a façade, a perfectly designed mask.
I was inside the monster’s house.
CHAPTER 80
THE HOUSE was as neat and orderly as the outside grounds. Maybe even more so. Nice, nice, much too nice.
I was nervous and afraid, but that didn’t matter anymore. I was used to living with the feelings of fear and uncertainty. Carefully, I roamed from room to room. Nothing seemed out of place, even with two small children living there. Strange, strange, very strange.
The house reminded me a little of Rudolph’s apartment in Los Angeles. It was as if no one really lived there. Who are you? Show me who you really are, fucker. This house isn’t the real you, is it? Does anyone know you without your masks? The Gentleman does, doesn’t he?
The kitchen was right out of Country Living magazine. Antiques and other beautiful “things” were in almost every room.
In a small study, the professor’s notes and papers were strewn everywhere, covering every available surface. He’s supposed to be very orderly and neat, I thought, and stored the conflicting data. Who was he?
I was searching for something specific, but I didn’t know exactly where to look. Down in the basement I saw a heavy oak door. It was unlocked. It led into a small furnace room. I searched the room carefully. On the far side of the furnace room, I found another wooden door. It looked like a door to a closet, to some small, insignificant space.
The second door was closed with a hook, which I removed as quietly as I could. I wondered if there could be more rooms in here? Maybe an underground space? Maybe the house of horror? Or a tunnel?
I pushed open the wooden door. Pitch-blackness. I switched on the lights, and entered a single room that must have been twenty-five by forty. My heart skipped a beat. My knees got weak and I felt a little sick.
There were no women in here, no harem, but I had found Wick Sachs’s fantasy room. It was right in his house. Hidden in a secret comer of his basement. The room didn’t fit in with the design of the rest of the house. He had built this room specially for himself. He liked to build things, to be creative, didn’t he?
The special room was laid out like a library. There was a heavy oak desk, and two red leather club chairs were on either side of it. The four walls of bookcases were filled with books and magazines from floor to ceiling. My blood pressure must have soared fifty points. I tried to be still inside, but I couldn’t.
This was a collection of pornography and erotica, the most extraordinary I had ever seen or even heard described. There were at least a thousand books in the room. I read titles as I quickly roamed from wall to wall, shelf to shelf.
Strangest Sex Acts in Modes of Love of All Races—
Illustrated Cherries. Printed for the Erotica Biblion Society of New York
Humiliations of Anastasia and Pearl
The Harem Omnibus: a reader
Until She Screams
The Hymen. A Medico-Legal Study in Rape
I concentrated and tried to focus on what I needed to do here. First, I tried to quiet the roaring noise in my head.
I wanted to leave Wick Sachs a sign that I had been here; that I knew about his dirty little secret place; that he had no more secrets. I wanted him to experience the same kind of pressure, stress, and fear that all of us were going through. I wanted to hurt Dr. Wick Sachs. I hated him beyond anything I could have imagined.
On the desk was a copy of a pamphlet from a supplier of erotic books and magazines: Nicholas J. Soberhagen, 1115 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, N.Y. By Appointment. I made a quick note. I wanted to hurt Nicholas Soberhagen, too.
Sachs, or someone else, had checked off several books on the pamphlet’s pages. I leafed quickly through it, reading with an ear cocked for sounds of a car on the street. Time was short now.
The Special Orders of St. Theresa. Not to be missed! This reprint of an extremely rare original edition was issued in the 1880s. Here are actual recollections on the proper use of the rod at a Spanish nunnery outside Madrid.
The Lovemaster. Lively sexual adventures of a dancer in Berlin; the various sex maniacs she encounters. For every serious collector!
Release. An interpretive first novel based on the actual and imagined life of the French serial murderer, Gilles de Rais.
I scanned the rows of wooden shelves directly behind the work desk. How long should I push my luck inside the house? It was getting late for Sachs and his family to be out. I stopped at a shelf behind his chair.