At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(14)
The next morning she told him she had quit the band. They weren’t good enough, she said, and she didn’t want to undermine her reputation by having record company execs see her in a band that wasn’t up to snuff. He knew there was nothing wrong with the other musicians in her group and that she had bailed because of her own insecurities. He had tried to say as much as gently as he could, and just like Rachel Friesen, she had become furious. Nikki had stormed out of his apartment, cursing him so loudly that his neighbors opened their doors to see what the commotion was.
He was awakened by the sound of her key in the lock around four AM that night. She slipped quietly into the bedroom and, in the dark, stripped down to her panties and slid in under the sheets next to him.
“Make love to me,” she whispered in his ear.
He resisted at first. She hadn’t apologized, and she reeked of bourbon and cigarettes. Then she pressed her pelvis against his leg.
“Touch me. Please.”
He had reached down tentatively and caressed her thigh. She slipped his fingers under her panties. She was wet, but not the way he expected. It was semen. Not his.
“What the fuck?” he had exclaimed, throwing back the sheets as he recoiled from her.
She snorted with amusement, then began laughing maniacally. “You’re such an asshole. You think you know what people are thinking with all your psychology crap. But you know fuck all about anything.”
He’d had a sudden urge to backhand her, to wipe that crazed smirk off her face. And Nikki knew it.
“Go ahead. Hit me, you piece of shit. I know you want to. You act so superior, so in control, but you’re just a fuckup like everybody else. So go ahead, big fucking mind reader, hit me.”
Instead, suppressing the violent impulses that he knew she was trying to provoke, he grabbed his pillow and headed for the sofa.
On the way out, he looked over his shoulder and said as calmly as he could, “I want you out of here first thing in the morning.”
“Fine,” she had replied, smirking. “It’ll be a pleasure. Asshole.”
He had awakened the next morning feeling exhausted and morally hungover. Nikki on the other hand was already up and dressed, manically energetic despite having slept for four hours at most.
“Give me the key,” he had said.
“Gladly,” she had responded, flinging it at his feet.
He held the door open and gestured to the hall. “Now get the fuck out of my place and don’t ever, ever call me again.”
“You can count on it,” she said, giving him a mocking version of the Cheshire-cat grin that he had once loved.
She rolled her hips as she strode out, to torture him, to remind him exactly what he would be missing from this day on.
*
Verraday was embarrassed to think he’d ever been as needy as Kyle Davis, and when Maclean finally broke the silence, he was relieved to be extracted from his angst-ridden reverie.
“So? What did you think of Kyle Davis?” she asked.
“He’s not your serial killer,” replied Verraday. “He doesn’t have any of the markers. I’m not hearing much anger from Kyle toward her. Just sadness and frustration with himself. He was head over heels for her, even when she was horribly abusive to him. And did you notice that he didn’t have the Assassin Girls page bookmarked? He had to type in the search.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment: let’s suppose that the Carmichael and Friesen cases aren’t connected. Couldn’t Kyle still be an angry, jilted boyfriend who became homicidal? You know, an ‘If I can’t have her, nobody can’ kind of guy?”
“No. He doesn’t exhibit any jealousy. But he did present a lot of dependency, and if he killed Rachel, he wouldn’t ever get to see her again. A guy that dependent would never be able to throw away the object of his fixation.”
“And what about her? What’s your take?”
“My best guess is that she suffered from some kind of mental illness precipitated by stress. That coupled with some other personality traits could have gotten her into trouble. Sounds like she had a narcissistic streak. Also exhibitionism, anxiety, and a tendency toward risk-taking behavior. She was emotionally needy.”
“As needy as Kyle?”
“Yes, although their neediness manifested itself in different ways. That’s why their relationship was so intense. ‘At first.’ Notice how many times Kyle said ‘at first’? Everything was amazing ‘at first,’ and then it suddenly fizzled.”
“Well, maybe it fizzled because there was something he did, something about him that she didn’t like.”
“Correct. What she didn’t like about him was that he was an ordinary human being. Rachel’s diminishing interest in Kyle wasn’t cognitive. It was biochemical.”
“In plain English, meaning what?”
“The intensity of the sort of love he describes is common in people with insecure attachment issues. Check into his background, and you’ll find a father who was distant or not present at all and a mother who was inconsistent in providing for her children’s emotional needs. Someone unpredictable, who blew hot and cold without warning, so he never felt certain of her love. He would have to be insecure to fall that hard for somebody he hardly knows. Rachel was beautiful, intuitive, and passionate. So with that combination, for a while, they both felt like they’d found what they’d always been looking for, a ‘soul mate.’ No more insecure attachment for him, and for her, the high of being totally adored by another human being. But it couldn’t continue at that level of intensity.”