At Rope's End

by Edward Kay

  “Rachel recommended a stuffed tiger that a portion of the price goes to the World Wildlife Fund. I thought it looked a bit ferocious for a five-year-old, but Rachel said to tell my niece that it was a ‘watch tiger’ designed to watch over little girls and protect them when they slept. So I got it for her.”

  Verraday smiled slightly. “What did your niece think of it?”

  “She loved it. Especially the part that Rachel made up about it being a ‘watch tiger’ that would look after her. My brother said Tabitha took it to bed with her the very first night and it’s been beside her pillow ever since.”

  “And how did you and Rachel become involved?” asked Verraday.

  “As I was paying for the tiger, I spotted these Mega Bloks. You know, those construction toys that are sort of like Lego? I was feeling good by then, a lot better after talking to Rachel, so I made this dumb joke to her asking whether Mega Bloks were anything like mental blocks. Rachel laughed so hard she snorted. And I just thought, wouldn’t it be amazing if my life were always this good? To have a beautiful, intuitive girlfriend who laughs at my jokes? I tried to build up the courage to ask her out. But I’m really bad at stuff like that. My mouth went dry and my heart started racing. I mean, I’m confident about my work, but I’m sort of on the shy side when it comes to putting myself in situations where people can reject me.”

  Verraday nodded agreement. “Risking rejection isn’t exactly my strong suit either.”

  Kyle allowed himself a nostalgic smile as he continued. “My stomach was full of knots, and I hesitated. Then I saw this family walking toward the store. I knew once they came in, I’d miss my chance. So I asked her point blank if she’d go out with me. She said, ‘Yes, as long as you don’t have any mega mental blocks.’”

  Verraday saw a complex mixture of affection and loss in Kyle’s expression. “And when did you two go out?”

  “The next evening.”

  “How did the relationship develop after that?” asked Verraday.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean did you see much of each other?”

  Kyle looked like he was about to speak, then hesitated, like he was searching for words. “It was a whirlwind. We had sex on our first date. I’ve never done that before. Ever. But she made me feel so relaxed. And so wanted. After that, we were together pretty much all the time. She basically moved in after our second date.”

  Verraday raised an eyebrow. “Did that seem a little fast to you?”

  Kyle reflexively rubbed his chin like he was pulling something out of his memory. “Dating Rachel was like being hit by a hurricane. She liked to have sex twice a day. She was just so intense, totally present. At first. I felt like maybe she was the one, you know? One night, I was watching her light some candles for a dinner we made together. And I could picture spending the rest of my life with her. Having kids. Grandkids. Having this amazing life together. I would never have imagined it would end like this.”

  “Did you ever ask her to marry you?”

  “It was weird. The same week that I was planning to propose to her, she started to change. She began to have these mood swings for what seemed to be no reason. Started complaining about her job situation, how she wasn’t getting paid enough. She’d criticize me for my work, said I was a pawn of the system. She began to ask questions about how much I earned with my projects, which isn’t all that much really, but it was more than what she made at the store. She’d get angry and say it was so unfair that she was paid so much less than everybody else and that her life was degrading.”

  “Did she want expensive things?” asked Maclean.

  “No. It wasn’t that she wanted to live like the Housewives of Beverly Hills. Her anger seemed to be more about having low social status. I think if she’d even earned enough to put a decent roof over her head and not be dependent on other people financially, that would’ve been enough for her. But she had this rage that just kept growing.”

  “Did you ever fight about it?” asked Verraday.

  “Not at first. She had been so upbeat when we first met that I thought it must be something temporary getting her down. She didn’t have her career sorted out, but I mean, who does nowadays? You get your degree and all it guarantees you is that you’ll be paying down your student loan for the next ten years. I thought she’d work her way through it. So I tried to be patient with her. But over the next few weeks it escalated more and more, blaming me for her problems, blaming me for everything. She was constantly picking fights.”

  “Was Rachel living at your apartment when she was murdered?” asked Maclean.

  “No. Around the same time she began to get angry, she started spending less time here.”

  “Whose idea was that?”

  “Hers. I hoped it was something we could work through and that I would get the old Rachel back. She was worth it. But it became impossible. She stopped wanting to have sex. Like not just ‘not in the mood,’ but getting upset when I even touched her. Saying I was oppressive, boring. I was still in love with her but I just couldn’t figure out what to do to make things work.”

  “How did it end between you two?” asked Verraday.

  “She called me up one night and asked me to meet her in a bar. She sounded happy, like her old self. I was hoping that, you know, maybe Rachel had worked through her feelings and things would be the way they used to be. So even though I was on a deadline, I agreed to go out. But when I got to the bar, she was sitting there at a table with some guy, looking drunk, flirting with him.”

  “That sounds awkward,” said Verraday.

  Kyle blew a breath out through his teeth. “Awkward isn’t the word for it. I’ve never had anybody pull anything like that on me before.”

  “Was there any kind of a confrontation?” asked Maclean.

  “With the guy? No. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. As soon as he realized I was ‘the boyfriend,’ he found the first excuse he could and got up and left.”

  “What did Rachel have to say about it?”

  “She told me she’d just started talking to the guy in the bar while she was waiting for me. Said he was gay and was having problems with his boyfriend that she was helping him work through. It was a total bullshit story. She just wanted the attention. So I called her on it.”

  “And what happened?”

  “She laughed at me and started shouting in the middle of the bar that I was a pathetic asshole.”

  Kyle ran a hand through his hair and tugged on a lock of it. “Everybody in the place was looking around to see what the commotion was. I’d finally had enough. Of all of it, I mean. Her rejections, her insults, her moods. So I got up and walked out. I could still hear her laughing this crazy, maniacal sort of laugh as I left the bar. That was the last time I ever saw her in person.”

  Verraday leaned forward toward Kyle. “How’d you take it? I know I’d be furious.”

  “It was degrading. But when I saw that look on her face, heard her screaming, I finally saw past my own shit and realized that this wasn’t about me, that whatever was bothering her had to be some kind of psychological issue. So I called her the next day to tell her so. Before I could say anything, she apologized. Profusely. I accepted her apology. But I also told her I would only see her from now on if she got professional counseling and that I’d help her get it.”

  “And?”

  “She went totally ballistic. Screamed at me that I was just like her parents and that I was even more of an asshole than she had thought. Then she hung up.”

  “What day was that?” asked Maclean.

  “It was a Sunday, second week of August, I think.”

  “But you didn’t file the missing persons report until September thirtieth. What happened in between?”

  “At first, I just tried to forget about her. Get on with my life. But then she started calling me.”

  “She called you? You didn’t call her?”

  “That’s right. I hoped that if I backed off, it would
make her realize that I was serious about insisting that she got some help. But she refused.”

  “How did she sound when she called? What did she talk about?”

  “She was always upbeat and energetic, but in kind of a forced, artificial way. Like she was high. Or manic. She said she was getting her act together. She told me she had quit her job at the store so she could focus on becoming famous. She said she was going to build an ‘online following’ and become a web personality.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Maclean.

  “She was always a little short on details, but she told me she had been accepted as a model on an online site called Assassin Girls and that she had a lot of admirers. She was really proud of that.”

  “Assassin Girls?” said Verraday. “I’ve never heard of it. What is it?”

  “It’s an alt-erotica website. Pinup girls with tattoos, piercings, scarification, that sort of thing.”

  “Can you show it to us?” asked Maclean.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Kyle moved to his computer and started typing.

  “Did you ever look at her profile there?” asked Verraday.

  “Just once, when she first told me about it.”

  “Why only once?”

  “You’ll know in a second when this page loads.”

  A moment later, the monitor was filled with images of young, scantily clad girls with tattoos and piercings.

  Even now, Kyle only looked at the screen long enough to confirm that the page had loaded, then he looked away.

  “I found it depressing that Rachel’s sense of self-esteem was dependent on exposing herself to strangers like this. And that whatever I could give her, it wasn’t enough.”

  Maclean nodded sympathetically. “Is her profile still on the site?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Kyle. “Like I said, I only saw it the one time.”

  “Mind if we check?” said Maclean.

  Kyle sighed. “Sure. No problem.”

  A moment later, Rachel’s profile page appeared on the screen. She was identified only by her first name. Verraday noticed that Kyle’s face was momentarily frozen in grief at the sight of her. Even in death, she still had a powerful hold on him.

  In one of the photos, she was making a flirty, pouting expression and pulling on her necklace, touching the tip of an ankh to her lips seductively. Verraday was certain that whoever had killed Rachel must have seen this portrait and mentally filed it away to devise his own response to it. In another photo, Rachel stood in front of a mirror wearing nothing but a seductive smile, a pair of black over-the-knee boots, and her beaded ankh necklace. She had a lot of tattoos and piercings, the jewelry all rings and studs except for one unusual piece that caught Verraday’s eye. It was a tiny version of a Native American dream catcher that hung from a piercing in her navel.

  “Did she always wear that dream catcher?” asked Verraday.

  “No,” replied Kyle. “She got her navel pierced after we split up.”

  Another photo featured a close-up of the scripted tattoo beneath her left breast. “Rachel got that after we split up too,” said Kyle. “I never saw it ’til she was on this site. She said that was her new motto.”

  Maclean read it off the screen. “‘If you don’t live for something, you’ll die for nothing.’”

  “Yeah,” said Kyle. “A lot of those piercings are new too. She said she was going to reinvent herself.”

  Down one side of Rachel’s page was a comments section showing the profile pictures of her admirers. The assortment included art school boys, alternative musicians, guys with jail tattoos, gang bangers, and even doughy middle-aged family men who looked like they had written their urgent declarations of passion with the door to their den locked, in between shuttling their broods to and from Chuck E. Cheese’s.

  Verraday read some of their predictable comments to himself. Seeing Rachel’s so-called admirers, and the sorrowful expression on Kyle Davis’s face reflected in the monitor, put him in a melancholy frame of mind.

  “Thanks,” said Maclean gently. “You don’t have to show us any more.”

  Kyle closed the Assassin Girls page. “Like I told you, I only looked once. That was enough for me,” he said. “I never looked at her page after that until just now with you.”

  “You said earlier that after that night in the bar, you never saw her again ‘in person.’ What exactly did you mean by that?”

  “Rachel texted me about a month before she disappeared and asked to have a Skype call.”

  “And did you agree to it?” asked Maclean.

  “Yes. When we connected, I saw that she was in her studio apartment. She looked high. She was acting flirty, leaning forward toward the screen, twisting her hair around her fingers. She said she was starting a new business and she wanted me to be her focus group.”

  “What was the business?” asked Verraday.

  “When Rachel stood up and backed away from her webcam, I saw that she was wearing a black latex dress and high heels. Then I noticed that there was a blonde girl in the background sitting on the edge of Rachel’s bed. Rachel put some music on and started dancing. Then she gestured to the other girl to join her. They started close dancing together and making out in front of the camera. Then she said this was going to be her webcam business, putting on shows for her ‘fans.’ Rachel asked me if I was turned on.”

  “And were you?” asked Verraday.

  Kyle hesitated before answering. “What guy wouldn’t be? But I was sort of pissed too, because it was another one of her control things. You know, keeping me hanging on.”

  “Did it make you feel angry?”

  “Yeah, but not at her. At myself. For being such a loser.”

  “Did you record any of the video call?” asked Maclean gently.

  Kyle hesitated again. He bowed his chin slowly and looked at his feet. “Yeah.”

  “Nobody’s judging you,” said Maclean. “We’re just trying to find her killer. Do you know who the other girl was?”

  “No, I don’t. Rachel never mentioned her name.”

  “It could help the investigation if we can identify who she was,” said Maclean. “Do you still have the screenshot?”

  “Yes,” said Kyle, rubbing his cheek. “I can e-mail the file to you.”

  “Thanks, I know this isn’t easy, and we really appreciate it,” said Maclean. “Now, can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her?”

  “No. We were so caught up in each other at first that we didn’t socialize at all. My friends even began to joke that I was turning into a recluse and started asking if this girlfriend of mine even existed.” Kyle hesitated. “I just can’t figure out why somebody did this to her. It’s hard to imagine someone being such a sick fuck.”

  And Kyle Davis would be shocked to his core, thought Verraday, if he knew just how many sick fucks there actually were out there and how sick they could be.

  Maclean looked at Verraday. “Any other questions you want to ask?”

  “Just one. Do you remember what superpower the boy said he’d pick if he were a dragon?”

  “Yeah,” replied Kyle. “He said he wanted to read people’s minds.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Maclean was silent and seemed distracted as they headed back to the Interceptor. Verraday was glad for it. He was distracted by memories that had been stirred up by hearing Kyle talk about Rachel. He had had one such relationship. Nikki, his girlfriend for three and a half months when he was working on his doctoral thesis. She was an up-and-coming singer he had met when her band was playing at the campus pub. He was taken by her stage presence and soulful voice. He had met all his previous girlfriends in class or research labs, where introductions occurred naturally and you could generally tell in advance if your overtures would be favorably received.

  That was not the case with Nikki. He had taken a chance and introduced himself to her at the bar during a break between sets. He had told her how much he loved her voice. She smiled easily and t
hanked him. To his surprise, instead of talking about herself, she asked him about his studies. When he told her he was working toward his doctorate in psychology, she raised an eyebrow appraisingly.

  “So you think about what other people are thinking?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “Good luck with that,” she had replied with mock skepticism.

  But her teasing was playful, the kind of teasing meant to entice someone with the right sort of nerve to take it to the next level. He asked for her number, and she gave it to him. He called her later that week. At her suggestion, their first date was at a disco where the DJ was playing heavy electronic grooves.

  “Do you dance?” she had asked.

  Verraday didn’t. Not well, anyway. But he had quipped, “Sure, when I’m not thinking about what people are thinking.”

  “Then stop thinking and come dance with me,” she had responded, slipping off the barstool, hips rolling seductively to the beat, not giving him a chance to deliberate or even take the lead. She didn’t look back until she was in the center of the dance floor. Then she turned around, a Cheshire-cat grin already on her face, knowing he would follow.

  They had gone back to his apartment afterward. He had planned to offer her a drink. But the moment he closed the front door behind them, he saw an expectant, feral smile on her face again. So he slipped his arms inside her jacket and pulled her toward him. Her pupils were dilated with desire, but even as he drew her in, she still had that grin on her face, right up until the moment he pressed his lips against hers.

  The Cheshire cat became a tigress. They made love twice that first night, and again in the morning, five hours later. He had never had a lover so voracious before. For the next three days, his pelvic bone was bruised and sore. But he savored it as a reminder of that consuming look on her face when she came hard, how instead of closing her eyes, she had locked her gaze with his and urged him on.

  Just like Kyle, Verraday ruefully thought, he believed he had found the love of his life. And he had been as wrong as it was possible to be.

  Two months after they started dating, Nikki’s band was offered a spot as an opening act for the West Coast leg of a Foo Fighters tour. The tour would wrap up with a finale in LA, with all the major record label executives in attendance. It was an incredible break.