At Rope's End (A Dr. James Verraday Mystery #1)(69)

He wondered if she had responded to his text message. Then he recalled that in his haste to lie down, he had left his cell phone in the living room. Still fighting to shake off the fatigue, he made his way across his bedroom, surprised to find himself unsteady on his feet. As he crossed the threshold of the bedroom doorway into the hall, he saw a faint flickering of orange light from downstairs and realized he’d forgotten to turn the gas fireplace off.

In the next moment, a searing sensation shot down his neck and arm. He felt like his breath was being squeezed out of him, like hot, stinging tendrils had plummeted through his shoulder blade toward his chest. He stumbled forward and hit a bookcase, then collapsed backward onto the carpet.

It took a moment for Verraday to grasp what had happened. Someone was moving in the hallway behind him. He was unnaturally groggy and in excruciating pain. He looked at his shoulder and saw the blood now seeping out onto the floor.

But even through the waves of pain, he was stunned to the marrow when his tormentor stepped out of the shadows, identity now revealed: it was Jensen, the mousy-looking student, the one with the unfashionable glasses who seemed to live in a bulky sweater and baggy jeans. Only she no longer looked anything like the girl who sat quietly in his classes four times a week. She wasn’t wearing glasses. Her black hair wasn’t pulled back in the usual way that made it look short and severe. It hung loose, and Verraday could see that it was much longer than he’d realized. Neither was she wearing the bulky sweater and baggy jeans. She was dressed in black leggings and a clingy sweater under a motorcycle jacket. If she hadn’t been standing there right in front of him, he would never have believed the transition. She had transformed into a lithe vixen who wouldn’t have gone unnoticed for more than a second in any crowd.

“Jensen, what are you doing?” he croaked.

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m killing you.”

“Killing me?”

“Well, I didn’t start out the evening with that idea. I originally came by to seduce you.”

“What would possess you to do something like that?”

“Because I know how much you like me and how much you’re attracted to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on. All those times you looked at that Bettie Page site?”

Verraday felt hopelessly confused by this new information. His brain was foggy, and the pain from the knife wound was so overwhelming that Jensen’s statement sounded like a puzzle wrapped inside a non sequitur.

“That site you kept going to. I made it up. There’s no fucking Bettie Page exhibit at the MoMA. Those thumbnails you kept looking at were of me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know about any Bettie Page exhibit.”

“Don’t lie to me!” shouted Jensen. “I have your IP address from our e-mails. And it turned up on that fake web page I made. A whole bunch of times. Each one of those photos had a code encrypted in it. And I know from it that you even looked at the pictures of me more than you looked at Bettie Page.”

“Pictures of you?”

“Yes, the thumbnails? Where you couldn’t see her face. All of those were me. And you loved it. I know you did because you clicked on all of them. Over and over. You were hot for me. So don’t deny it.”

Through the dim light of his memory, Verraday now realized that Jensen had concocted an elaborate test for him.

“You went to my site seven times this week. Seven fucking times. Do you know how good that made me feel, when I saw that you clicked on those thumbnails and knew that you were fantasizing about me? That you kept coming back to see me? Not even Bettie Page, but me.”

“I didn’t know it was you,” said Verraday.

“But you wanted me. Whether you knew it was me or not. You were obsessed with me, Professor. And you could have had me too. But you screwed everything up.”

Even through his stupor, he could see that Jensen was becoming agitated. She was pacing, making jabbing motions at him with the hunting knife. He tried to placate her. “It’s not surprising that I was attracted to you,” he said. “You’re an extremely beautiful . . .”

“Girl? Is that what you meant to say? Girl? Fuck you. Don’t try to talk your way out of this. You had your chance and you chose someone else.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Jensen’s voice rose with anger. “Like hell you don’t. And not just anyone, but a cop. A fucking cop. So much for all your anti-authority bullshit. And to think I even killed for you.”

“What do you mean, killed for me?” asked Verraday, alarmed. He had a sudden horrifying fear that she might have done something to Maclean.

“Robson. Do you really think he died in a gun-cleaning accident? Do you have any idea how much work went into that? I drugged his whiskey, just like I drugged your brandy. And when he saw me coming for him, he looked at me helplessly, with this stupid expression on his face. Like he was so fucking surprised. He couldn’t believe that he was a big bad cop and he was about to be killed by a girl.”

She glared at Verraday.

“Robson was a coward. That’s why he ran away from what he did to your family when you were a kid. He couldn’t face up to what he had done. He was the worst kind of killer. Weak. Gutless. Disgusting. When I made him hold that gun in his own hand and turn it on himself while I pulled the trigger and blew his brains out, I had the biggest rush of my life. And I haven’t lost a moment’s sleep over it. He deserved everything he got and more. Don’t you agree? I would have shot him in the spine and let him spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, if I’d been able to figure out a way to keep him from ever saying who did it to him. Can you even imagine someone wanting so badly to make you happy that they killed for you? Because that’s what I did, James. I killed for you. I would have done anything for you. Anything. But instead, you had to ruin it by kissing that cop. Do you have any idea how I felt when I saw that?”