Kiss the Girls

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, gender discrimination, sexual violence, rape, graphic violence, illness, death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and cursing.

Using his professional identity, Casanova gets into Kate’s hospital room. She makes him feel comfortable. He hears a noise and smiles at Cross. He tells Cross that Kate’s condition hasn’t changed, and then he leaves.

Early in the morning, Cross plays blues songs on the piano in the Washington Duke Inn bar. He thinks about Sachs: His behavior is problematic, but he’s not a killer. He then considers the “disappearing house.” According to newspaper reports he read, Roe’s body was found near an abandoned farm where enslaved people once hid in underground cellars that were like houses.

Sampson and Cross hike through the woods to where Kate’s body was found in the Wykagil River. Sampson doesn’t like the woods—they remind him of morbid fairy tales like “Hansel and Gretel.” Cross jokes that Sampson isn’t afraid of the DC “projects,” but he is scared of a “nice walk” through the woods. He then tells Sampson about the Underground Railroad and the spaces below ground. Louis Freed drew Cross a map to help him locate the historical places.