Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

An Asian girl, slender and young, no more than eighteen, and gorgeous, stood legs akimbo in the doorway. She had on a black bra and matching panties, thigh-high stockings, sling backs with high-heels.

“Hi there,” she said in English,“ I'm Kym. Welcome. You very good-looking men. This will be fun for us, too.”

“You're very beautiful, Kym,”Starkey said in Vietnamese.

“And your English is flawless.” He then pulled out a revolver and pointed it between the girl's eyes. “Don't say another word or you die. Right here, right now, Kym. Your blood all over the carpet and those walls.”

He shoved the girl into a living room, where three other girls were seated on two small couches. They were also young, Asian, very pretty. They wore silk negligees, lavender, red and pink, with color-coordinated high-heels and stockings. Victoria's Secret.

“Don't speak, ladies. Not a word,” Starkey said, and pointed his gun at one then the other.

“Shhh,” Brownley Harris held a finger to his lips. “Nobody gets hurt. We don't want that either. Trust me, my little Asian dolls.”

Starkey threw open the door at the rear of the living room. He surprised an older woman, probably the voice over the intercom, as well as a husky bouncer in gym shorts and black tee-shirt with CRUNCH stenciled on it. They were greedily eating Chinese food out of cardboard containers.

“Nobody gets hurt,” Starkey said in Vietnamese as he shut the door behind him. “Hands up high.”

The man and woman slowly raised their hands, and Starkey shot them dead with the silenced revolver. He wandered over to some high-tech equipment and calmly removed a tape. The surveillance camera at the front entrance had recorded their arrival, of course.

Starkey left the slumped, bloody bodies and returned to the living room. The party had begun without him. Brownley Harris was kissing and fondling the pretty

young girl who had answered the door. He had lifted Kym up and held her tiny mouth pressed against his. She was too frightened to resist.

“May cai nay moi dem lai nhieu ky niem,” Starkey said, and smiled at his friends, but also at the women.

Memories are made of this.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixty-Six

They had done this many times before, and not just in New York. They'd 'celebrated' victories in Hong Kong, Saigon, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, even in London. It had all started in South Vietnam when they were just boys in their teens and early twenties, when the war was on and the madness was everywhere around them. Starkey called it' blood lust'.

The four Asian girls were terrified, and that was the thrill for Starkey. He totally got off on the look of fear in their eyes. He believed that all men did, though few would admit it.

"Ban too muon lien hoanl' he shouted.

We want to party now!

“CM lien hoan, the thoi.”

It's a celebration.

Starkey found out the girls' names: Kym, Lan, Susie and Hoa. They were pretty, but Kym was truly beautiful. A slender body with small breasts; delicate features -the best of a complicated heritage that could be

Chinese, French and Indian.

Harris found bottles of Scotch and champagne in a small kitchen. He passed the hootch around and made the girls drink, too.

The alcohol calmed them, but Kym kept asking about the owner. Occasionally, the bell rang downstairs. Kym's English was the best and she was told to say that the girls were busy for the night a private party. “Come back another time, please. Thank you.”

Griffin took two of the girls upstairs to another floor. Starkey and Harris looked at each other and rolled their eyes. At least he'd left two pretty ones for Brownley and himself. Kym and Lan.

Starkey asked Kym to dance. Her eyes were gleaming slants of dark purple. Except for her three-inch heels, she was naked now. An old song by the Yardbirds played on the radio. As he danced, Starkey remembered that Vietnamese women had a thing about their height, at least when they were around American men. Or maybe it was American men who had a thing about height? Or length?

Harris was speaking in English to Lan. He handed her a bottle of champagne. “Drink,” he said. “No, drink it down there, babe.”

The girl understood, either the words or lewd gestures. She shrugged, then dropped onto the couch and inserted the champagne bottle in herself. She poured the champagne, then comically wiped her lips. “I was thirsty!” she said in English.

The joke got a good laugh. Broke the tension.

“Ban cung phai wong raa,” the girl said.

You drink, too.

Harris laughed and passed the bottle to Kym. She lifted one leg and put it inside without sitting down. She kept it there while she danced with Starkey, spilling champagne all over the carpet and her shoes. Everybody was laughing now.

“The bubbles tickle,” Kym said. “I have an itch inside me now. You want to scratch it? ”she asked Starkey.

The switchblade seemed to come from nowhere. Kym jabbed it at Starkey without actually stabbing him. She screamed, “You go! Leave right now. Or I cut you bad!”

Then Starkey had his gun out again. He was so cool and calm. He reached and shut off the loud music. Silence. And dread. Incredible tension in the room. Everywhere except on Thomas Starkey's face.

“Dung, dung!” cried Kym. "Hay dep sung ong sang mot ben di boNo, no! Put the gun away.

Starkey moved toward little Kym. He wasn't afraid of the switchblade, almost as if he knew he wasn't going to die like this. He twisted the knife out of her hand, then he held the revolver against the side of her skull.

Tears ran down the girl's smooth cheeks. Starkey brushed them away. She smiled up at him. “Hay yew toi di, ank ban,” she whispered.

Make love to me, soldier man.

Starkey was there in the apartment, but his head was in Vietnam. Kym was shaking and he loved that, the total control he felt, the evil he was capable of, the electricity it could bring into his system.

He looked at Harris and his friend knew. He just knew.

They fired the guns simultaneously.

The girls flew back against the wall and then slid down onto the floor. Kym was shaking all over, very close to death. “Why?” she whispered.

Starkey just shrugged at her.

Upstairs there were two more pffthts. The sound of falling bodies, Susie and Hoa. Warren Griffin had been waiting for them. He knew, too.

It was just like in the An Lao Valley, Vietnam.

Where the madness had started.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixty-Seven

When we finished up at Colonel Bennett's house, Sampson and I checked into the Hotel Thayer, right on the grounds of West Point. I continued to think about the three killers and how they kept getting away. Force without any conscience. That was what Agent Fescoe had called it.

In the morning I met Sampson for breakfast in the hotel dining room overlooking the majestic Hudson, which appeared almost steely gray in the distance and was topped by whitecaps. We talked about the grisly Bennett murders and wondered if they were connected to the others, and if the killers had changed their pattern.

“Or maybe there are more murders that we just don't know about,” Sampson said. “Who knows how many have been killed at this point, or how far back the murders go?” He poured himself another steaming cup of coffee. “It has to come down to the three killers. They were here, Alex. It has to be the same three men.”

I couldn't disagree with him. "I have to make a few calls,

then we're out of here. I want to make sure the local police are checking into whether anybody actually saw three men who don't belong on the grounds or in Highland Falls."