Plain Jane (21 page)

She struggled to find words. There were so many of them. So many curses she wanted to hurl.

Finally she chose the one closest to the surface. “
Once
, damn it!
Once
would be a fucking start!”

His retort was instantaneous, “I’ve apologized plenty.”

“In your head? Probably,” she spat. It was time Kent had a little taste of reality. The gloves came off. “Role-playing with your therapist? Possibly.” Nicole shoved the snapshot in his face. “To a photograph? Maybe.” She threw the picture onto the floor. “To me? To my face?
Never
.”

Unflinching, Nicole stared into Kent’s eyes. Daring him to challenge her. Daring him to try and defend his actions. Daring him to say anything at all. As always, the profiler chose a silent, enigmatic response. It took a few heartbeats to realize that he really wasn’t going to answer.

More wounded by his current lack of participation now than his hurtful actions in the past, Nicole pointed to the door.

“Get out.”

“Gladly.” Kent stomped off, slamming the kitchen door behind him.

With one hand on the sink, Nicole took in each breath consciously, slowing them, guiding them. She stood strong. She wasn’t going to let Kent get to her. Break her. Break her again. It was best he left. Best he was out of her life. Then a wave of sorrow came up from her gut. A wave of hurt. A wave of disappointment. A wave of loneliness.

Once again she had gotten her hopes up. Hopes that Kent had finally realized that he needed her as much as she needed him. Hopes that he had missed her as much as she had missed him. Hopes that he would take her in his arms and tell her that he loved her as much as she loved him. That would never happen though, would it?

A sob arose from her very soul and erupted in her chest. She struggled to contain it. Struggled to hold the tears in, but it was effort in vain. Racked with sobs, Nicole couldn’t hold herself up. Even the sink became ineffective support. Nicole slumped to the floor, crying, rocking, and hugging herself. There was no one else to do it for her.

CHAPTER 82

Kent leapt down the steps and into Nicole’s car within seconds. Firing up the engine, the profiler squealed out.

He pounded his fist against the steering wheel. “Don’t take responsibility for my actions?” He hit the unforgiving plastic again. “I was voted best in group therapy for that!”

Oh, there was so much he had wanted to tell Nicole. Actually there was so much he had wanted to shout at her, yet none of it would come. What would it have mattered?

Swerving around a corner, the profiler hit the curb and just kept on driving.

Damn it, why couldn’t Nicole let go of the past? Wasn’t she always harping about
carpe diem
? She was like a freaking dog with a bone about it. But when push came to shove, she was the one who couldn’t let go. The detective had to rehash every detail of the implosion that was their breakup.

Kent couldn’t help himself, he shouted to the car as if it were Nicole. “Miss ‘I was alone. I was…’ “ Anger built until it exploded again. “How about taking responsibility for finishing a fucking sentence?”

The profiler took a corner way too fast and nearly skidded out. Nicole really should check her tire pressure a little more often. Which reminded him of another affront.

“Oh, and
broke
? My ass. They didn’t even have time to foreclose on the house,” he yelled at the dashboard.

A fist pounded the steering wheel again. The woman had some nerve. Damn it, he’s the one who had been arrested, having blood drawn every hour on the hour to check for mad cow disease and somehow she was the one that went on and on about how crappy her life had been?

“Lost your job? You were on fucking paid administrative leave!” he shouted out the window.

Mildly aware he really was starting to act like he was off his meds, Kent rolled up the window. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him in lockup again.

CHAPTER 83

Nicole’s body spasmed one last time. She had no more tears. Her breaths came in erratic gasps. Her throat swollen and hoarse. She was truly spent.

All she wanted to do was curl up in bed, however, a splayed pig, courtesy of Kent, of course, stared back at her from the kitchen table. There was no rest for the weary. Or was it the wicked?

Shrugging off philosophy, she rose and picked up an embroidered dishtowel, one her grandmother had stitched for her when she first went away to college.

Then she took a good look at the mess. These stains would not come out. Putting the gift back into the drawer, Nicole grabbed an entire roll of paper towels.

This was a job for Brawny.

At least Kent hadn’t been joking about the plastic. He had in fact lined the floor with garbage bags before he hacked open the pig. Still there was the splatter. Nicole knew she should really get the pig off the table, but she just could not face that task yet. It was huge. It covered her entire kitchen table with the expansion leaf in.

Where in the hell had he gotten such a beast? She was about to ask how the profiler had paid for it, given that pork was about two bucks a pound, then realized that was a stupid question. Kent didn’t pay for anything. Ever.

Financially or emotionally.

The profiler had some contact somewhere that not only got him a carcass in the middle of the night, but probably drove it over here for him. Someone like Dolores, or even Nicole a few years ago. If someone as brilliant as Kent wanted a pig in the middle of the night, obviously it had to be important.

Finally done with the peripheral cleanup, Nicole could no longer avoid the large porcine mess that had taken over her kitchen. She rolled up her sleeves. Kent wasn’t the neatest surgeon. Well, at least it was good to know he wasn’t perfect at everything.

As she struggled to untie the pig’s front leg, Nicole found her eyes straying to its exposed abdomen. It was truly a disgusting sight. Guts hanging out. What looked like a bladder flopped over the side of the body wall. How did doctors do it? Stare at gore like this? Worse, medical examiners had to look at the most distorted and grotesque bodies imaginable.

Yet with all this repulsion, Nicole found herself pushing her sleeve further up her arm. She couldn’t help but wonder what it felt like. To plunge your hand into a belly like that. To find the uterus and hold it in your hand? She had seen Kent’s face. Twice. Wonder and satisfaction had radiated from his normally somber features.

Had the killer practiced like this?

Had he possibly even gotten the idea of taking his very specific trophy from visiting slaughterhouses?

Focusing on the victim always opened up so many new avenues of investigation for the profiler. It was Kent’s forte. Even though he had broken over a dozen laws in 2003 by eating the homeless man’s brain, it had been just such a bizarre feat that had led Kent to the killer.

How else besides eating fresh brain would the profiler have thought to look up exotic New Zealand spice importers?

Nicole was about to put her fingers into the belly when she remembered Kent hadn’t stopped there. He had gone on to eat the killer’s brain as well.

“No,” she said to herself as she rolled her sleeve back down. Kent had been right when he said she had started down the slippery slope by blackmailing him. If she stuck her hand in this pig, where would it stop? Obviously the profiler didn’t know where, but she did.

“I am not going there,” Nicole said as she freed the pig and slid the carcass inside a garbage bag. She didn’t need to act like a psycho to catch one.

CHAPTER 84

The killer watched as Nicole struggled to lift the pig by herself. Her man had driven off after the fight, leaving her with the mess. No great surprise. From the cracked-open door of the pantry, the killer had seen it all.

From the aborted seduction to the soul-tearing fight to the gut-wrenching departure. Through it all, the killer had eyes only for Nicole. Her former lover, the
supposed
profiler, was nothing. He strutted, and he patted himself on the back, but he wasn’t even close.

The profiler hadn’t even known the killer was only ten feet away. If this was the best opponent the police could find, the killer was not worried. Not a bit.

The detective walked back in, cheeks tear-streaked and flushed from the exertion of hauling the carcass outside. How perfect she looked. Masculine enough to clean up the mess the profiler had left, feminine enough to sob so hard the killer thought Nicole might hurt herself.

The killer snapped to attention as the detective knelt down on the floor. What was she doing? Slowly Nicole rose with the photo. Using the back of her hand, the detective wiped away some pig blood from the edge.

Would she keep it?
the killer wondered.

Nicole went to throw the picture away, but the trashcan was completely full.

“Crap,” she said. “Garbage day.”

Setting the photo down on the counter, Nicole tugged the bag out of the can and turned away from the killer. The detective’s back was ever so perfect. It sloped gently into a full buttock. And her hair was the perfect length. Just past the shoulder. The otherwise straight locks, curved upward at the very end, made the whole of Nicole’s hair bounce and sway.

Just like Mother’s. Tugging at the ends of the latex gloves, the killer made sure they were on tight.

The time was almost at hand.

Could there be a more perfect final sacrifice?

CHAPTER 85

Kent drove fifteen miles over the speed limit. He needed to just go. As fast as possible. He had controlled the impulse to spontaneously shout out the window, but still he mumbled to himself. That was the one big drawback to being such a loner. When the only person you can talk to kicks you out, there is no one else to grumble to.

“Never told her I’m sorry? What a crock…”

With a glimmer, the profiler imagined making Nicole a tape. A tape of him saying over and over and over again that he was sorry. He’d put it to that old Thompson Twins song, “Hold me now.” Or maybe it was “The Gap?”

Whatever the song, it was the one where the singer laments that he’ll say he’s sorry even though he doesn’t know what he’s sorry for. Kent could relate to that guy.

A thousand apologies weren’t good enough for her.

Would saying it tonight, one more time, really have made a difference? Had it ever made a difference all the other times he’d said it?

Kent perked up. That’s right. She hadn’t accepted his apology before. He could throw that fact back in her face. His mind raced, trying to remember the last time he had said he was sorry. Oh, to be able to go back to her with proof of his rebuked contrition.

As he made another right turn, the profiler tried to picture it in his mind. The last time, or hell,
any time
he had been rebuffed when saying he was sorry. Come on, just once was all he needed.

Kent had said those words to her before. Right?

Out loud, to Nicole, right?

With her in the same room, right?

The car slowed as his foot slipped from the gas pedal. In all this time he’d said he was sorry, right? He must have. Sure, he’d said it in therapy. Sure he’d said it to her picture, then kissed it with tears on his lips. The more his mind sorted through their history, the more and more certain he became that he had in fact never, ever, ever apologized to her.

No wonder she was pissed.

Flipping an illegal U-turn, Kent raced back to Nicole’s. It might not make a bit of difference. It might not matter at all. Yet at the very least, after everything he had put her through, he would actually say he was sorry.

With her in the room and everything.

Luckily his haphazard route had not taken him far from her home. A left, then a quick right brought him to her driveway. The profiler hopped out and took the stairs two at a time to her front door.

He had to hurry before he rationalized himself out of it. Like somehow an e-mail apology might suffice. Shoving those thoughts from his mind, he picked the lock and rushed inside.

“Nic,” he said as he made his way to the kitchen.

He arrived to find the pig gone, but blood still pooled in the plastic bags. Okay, Nicole was slacking. In the old days this room would have been spick-and-span by now.

Where had she gotten to? He crossed the room and noticed his favorite picture of Nicole tossed on the floor. It was smeared with blood. Had she desecrated it on purpose? Or was it an accident? And why did the answer to that question matter so much to him?

“Nic?”

Hearing a sound, Kent turned, but not fast enough.

A blow came, throwing him forward. He tried to torque to see his assailant, Plain Jane. He knew it had to be, even though his attacker was shrouded in shadow.

Feeling incredibly stupid, Kent lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 86

Nicole raised a hand. “Did you hear something?”

Ruben looked back at her house. He had heard something, but he wasn’t about to admit it. For once he had Nicole alone. Granted it was in the middle of the night, under the guise of official business, in her backyard out by the trash cans, and there was a huge hog carcass sticking up out of the trash. A sight they both chose not to mention.

But they were alone, damn it.

“No,” he said, trying to sound definitive.

He tapped her shoulder, pulling her attention back. He had no doubt Kent was back. He was like a fucking boomerang. Ruben knew this was probably going to be his only window of opportunity.

Getting back to the matter, he continued, “I’m here to talk to you about something you aren’t going to like.”

“Please, Ruben. I can’t. Not tonight.”

“We have to.”

Nicole wiped a stray hair from her face. She looked as beat as she sounded. “I’m sure you think we have to, but I’ve had a really shitty day.”

“Me too,” Ruben said before he thought it through. “You know, even before we became…” Given Nicole’s distant look, he decided that he best not get too specific. “More than friends, on a night like this we could go out for a beer and commiserate.”

“Those days…” Nicole could not look him in the eye. “And
nights
. They’re over, Ruben. I’m sorry.”