At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(15)

“Why not?”

“Chemistry. When we fall in love, our nerve cells release dopamine, a neurochemical transmitter. It makes people feel so good that they want to believe that person really is the love of their life, because they don’t want it to ever stop, any more than a crackhead can let go of a rock and a pipe.”

“That sounds awfully clinical.”

“It is. But that’s nature. Touching and orgasms release oxytocin—that’s why it’s called the love hormone. If you inject oxytocin into a vole, it will fall in love with whatever other vole it’s looking at.”

“But a vole doesn’t have the power to think rationally like a human.”

“You think Kyle Davis and Rachel Friesen were thinking rationally when they were living in their little bubble together?”

“Point taken, but if Rachel Friesen and Kyle Davis were so head over heels in love, full of oxytocin and neurotransmitters, why did she suddenly get tired of him but he didn’t get tired of her?”

“Rachel had anxiety issues combined with an underlying narcissistic nature. The positive interaction—adulation from the kids and from Kyle—made her feel good and kept her anxiety at bay ‘at first.’ But like all chemical addictions, over time you need to increase the dose to get the same effect. Rachel had a strong sex drive. All that lovemaking would stimulate those neurotransmitters that kept her anxiety under control. And for Kyle, having a beautiful girlfriend with a powerful sexual appetite like Rachel would have been enough to keep him in oxytocin for months. He was over the moon.”

“But he wasn’t enough for her?”

“Exactly. He couldn’t be. No matter how hard he tried. Rachel’s brain chemistry gave her a compelling need for novelty and stimulation to counteract her anxiety and depression.”

“So Rachel’s body stopped releasing oxytocin sooner than Kyle’s did because she needed a new thrill?”

“That’s right. In the end it came down to circumstance and biochemistry. Ironically, Kyle’s endorphin level would have peaked just around the time Rachel’s had already dropped off. Since Rachel Friesen had a much greater need for novelty than Kyle Davis did, then in order for her to continue to feel the endorphin high at the same level that he did after the first few months, she needed new experiences.”

“Like going out and flirting with strangers? Or putting her photos up on Assassin Girls?”

“Exactly. But his endorphin would have dropped eventually too. If she’d walked out of his life after two years of working part time in toy stores and bitching about her parents and her student loans, he probably would have been glad to see her go.”

“Oxytocin and endorphins aside, don’t you think that sometimes people just know they’re right for each other? I mean, my father proposed to my mother when they’d only known each other two months.”

“And you’re going to tell me that they just had their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary?”

“Actually, no. My dad died when I was eleven.”

Verraday squirmed inwardly, annoyed at himself now for his flippant remark.

“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling awkward and inept. “How did it happen?”

“He was a firefighter. He went out to a call at a warehouse on a three-alarm blaze. Place belonged to a company that wanted to knock it down and turn it into condos. But it was zoned historical, so they couldn’t—that is, until it conveniently got torched. My father and two other firefighters were trapped when a floor collapsed. The fire inspectors thought it was arson, but the city quashed their investigation because the developers were major contributors to the mayor’s campaign. They collected five million dollars in insurance and were able to build their condos after all.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Well, I guess you know what it feels like.”

“That I do,” he replied, “It’s toxic.”

Maclean nodded. “And the worst thing is,” she said, “that’s when you suddenly discover that your life and the lives of the people you love are just this one tiny, tiny corner of the universe. And even though this terrible injustice has been committed, the world moves on.”

Verraday glanced across at Maclean. She never took her gaze off the road, but he saw vulnerability in her eyes. He wasn’t sure if they had a slight sheen to them now or if he was imagining it. He felt impolite and invasive gazing at her, so he turned and stared out the window into the night, the storefronts and apartments and people flashing past them like incomplete fragments of a zoetrope sequence that would never be shown again.

“This Assassin Girls site,” he said at last. “It seems like it’s tailor-made for predators to find victims. You ever hear of it before?”

“It’s been around for a couple of years now,” said Maclean. “Mostly it’s girls looking for attention. But some of them try to work it too. The site pays them sixty dollars per set of nude selfies. They can post up to four sets a month.”

“Two hundred and forty dollars a month to post nude pictures of yourself on the Internet? Are you kidding me? That’s what, less than three grand a year for giving the world unlimited access to nude photos of yourself. I wonder how much the owners of the site make.”

“Probably millions. Welcome to the digital economy.”