The Bride Collector

6
THE HUB, as Allison had referred to the central gathering place, was an atrium with couches, stuffed chairs, snack machines, floral paintings on the wall, and two flat plasma televisions glowing manically on opposite walls. Round tables with wooden chairs sat in groupings about the large room. A central gas fireplace that, according to Allison, never really got hot, and two snack stands completed the area.
On one end, a sign over an arched door indicated that a cafeteria lay beyond. A wide hallway ran into the other end of the building. Out back in the sunlight, a gleaming fishpond was sealed off for the residents’ safety.
A dozen residents hung around the main room at the round tables, near the televisions—which were both playing I Love Lucy reruns—and at a long snack bar. Half turned and stared at Brad and Nikki as they entered. The rest were too engrossed to pay attention.
“People, say hello to our guests,” Allison called out.
As one, clearly rehearsed, they all spoke in unison. “Hello, guests.”
A black man larger than most football players looked up from where he sat hunched over a chess match at one of the round tables. “Hello, guests.” His voice rumbled like a bass guitar. Several snickered.
“Way to go, Goliath,” a thin man called out from the group collected around the television. “Way to greet the guests three and a half seconds after they wanted to be greeted.”
“That’ll do, Nick,” Allison said. “You don’t think Goliath is stupid, do you?”
“I didn’t say he was stupid.”
“You looking for a rematch?”
Silence.
“He’s not so bad himself,” Goliath said. He faced Nick and broke out into a wide grin. “But I got you right, Nick. You was the best and I beat you ten straight games.”
A woman howled with laughter at the television, provoking Nick to whirl around to see what he’d missed. Goliath hunched back over his chess game; moved a pawn.
“Anyone see Roudy or Paradise?” Allison asked.
“Roudy is in his office,” someone said.
Allison led them across the room toward the hallway. An older woman, whose dark hair looked as if it doubled for a rat’s nest at night, followed Brad with her eyes.
Brad searched within himself and finally realized what about the place unnerved him the most. Somehow, the center’s oddity didn’t arise from the residents’ strangeness, but from the lack of it. Each person’s behavior plucked at a well-worn string in his own mind and resonated in countless familiar strains. He could call them childish or loud or quirky or obnoxious or a hundred other things, but these were all tendencies he recognized in himself.
“He’s good?” Brad asked.
“Goliath? World-class. He plays chess ten hours a day on a slow day. Our challenge is helping him apply his skill to other pursuits.”
“And how’s that going?”
She chuckled. “He’s been communicating with a lab doing cancer research. Turns out some parts of medicine aren’t unlike a chess game. Go figure.”
“Where are all the staff?” Nikki asked.
“Everywhere. They fit in. Here we are.”
They entered a small classroom with a whiteboard and ten desks. A couch sat beneath a window that looked out to the fountain on the lawn. Three people sat in the room: a middle-aged man lounging on the couch, dressed in a black silk bathrobe and fluffy white slippers. A young blond woman, hardly twenty, pacing by the whiteboard and biting her nails. And a goateed man dressed in corduroy pants and a bow tie, sitting back against the teacher’s desk.
The three clearly had not expected to be interrupted. For a moment, the trio stared at Allison and her two guests as though they were spotting aliens who’d landed the mother ship. The two men slowly straightened. The girl grinned.
“Hello, friends,” Allison said. “I’d like you to meet our guests.”
“Hello, guests.”
“Any concern of ours?” The one with the goatee stroked his beard.
“Why, yes, Roudy. They would like to speak to you.”
“They would? But of course they would. Did you hear that, Cass? They’ve come to speak to me.”
Cass, the man in the silk bathrobe, stood and smoothed his robe, eyes on Nikki. “She’s more interested in what I have to say.” He stepped forward, eyeing Nikki with a raised brow and crooked grin.
“This isn’t about you, Cass,” Roudy chided. “Step back, man. Show some respect. About what? Speak to me about what? Are you saying this fine gentleman and woman are with the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
The girl by the whiteboard giggled, then lifted a hand to her mouth to cover the sound. “I’m Andrea,” she said sweetly.
“We call her Brains,” Roudy said. “But I don’t suppose that plays any factor in your judgment, now does it? You’ve come to speak to me and I will decide if you interest me enough to offer my assistance.”
“What’s the matter, Sherlock?” Allison asked, entering their flow of speech as if it was wholly to her liking. “You no longer trust me? I wouldn’t have brought them if I didn’t think they would interest you.”
“True. I do trust you, madam. And they do interest me.” He toyed with his bow tie. “It was merely a figure of speech, a delaying tactic to put them on guard while I sought to ascertain whether my deduction was correct. So was it?”
Brad found it difficult to suppress a grin, but he managed. “How did you know?”
“Aha!” Roudy snapped his fingers. “I knew it! The FBI has come calling yet again. And how could I not guess? You come every day, begging for my opinion. Are we British really so clever? Is there something missing from the American mind that compels you to look across the pond?”
The man in the silk robe was interested only in Nikki, and he’d approached her while Roudy said his piece. He now took her hand, lifted it while his eyes remained fixed on hers, and kissed it.
“My name is Enrique Bartholomew. They call me Casanova. Have you heard of Casanova?”
“Cass is a ladies’ man,” Andrea said in a voice dripping with irony. She was jittery, twisting slightly like a Valley girl who needed to use the bathroom. Brains, they called her. A savant?
Still holding Nikki’s hand, Enrique faced Andrea. “Please, Brains, don’t pretend I haven’t made you the woman you are.” He turned back to Nikki with an even more lascivious glance. “You are very lovely.”
A beat of silence.
Brad smiled and inwardly gave Nikki her due; she knew how to stare down an impertinent speaker, or an awkward pause, when the occasion warranted.
“They came to speak to me, Enrique,” Roudy snapped.
“And I’m the one who told you that if you dressed the part they would believe you. Now, look who’s come to dinner.”
He touched his lips to Nikki’s hand again, then stepped back and winked at her. Brad was surprised that she didn’t object. Her fear of germs couldn’t compete with her interest in a new subject.
“Look who’s come to dinner?” Roudy said, disgusted. “They come every week, you idiot.”
“They call me Brains,” Andrea said, in her own world, eyes still on Brad, still playing the part of a shy girl. “I think I need a shower.”
The exchange had all come in a flurry of words. Then it seemed they ran out of steam.
“Has anyone seen Paradise?” Allison asked.
They just looked and shook their heads.
“Looks like you three will do just fine.” She nodded at Brad. “This is Special Agent Brad Raines and his partner, Miss Holden. I’ll leave you alone for a while. Please be helpful, Roudy. Mr. Raines and Miss Holden are indeed from the FBI, and they would like to confer with you about a case.”
“A case! Delightful.” Roudy began to pace quickly. “You’ve come to the right party, I can assure you.”
Tears sprang to Andrea’s eyes, and it appeared that she might lose her composure. She wore some carefully applied makeup, and her blond hair was brushed neatly. The first encounter had happened so quickly that Brad hadn’t absorbed her simple beauty. On second look, there was no avoiding it.
“It’s okay, Andrea,” Allison said.
Andrea’s eyes darted to an empty corner. “That’s not what Betty’s saying.”
“No. But Betty’s wrong. Listen to Brad.” She rubbed Brad’s arm. “He has a good heart.”
Andrea gave Brad a fleeting look, brushing her nose with a shaking finger.
“Auditory hallucination,” Allison whispered so faintly that Brad barely heard her. She was saying that Andrea heard voices. One of them had just told her something that made her want to cry.
“I’ll be in the reception room when you’re finished. Take all the time you need.”
The administrator left them with a smile.
Brad took a deep breath, finding the whole scenario unnerving yet fascinating. To say the least. It took him a moment to recall exactly why they’d come to the Center for Wellness and Intelligence.
Roudy, aka Sherlock, stepped forward and extended his hand. “I am now at your full disposal.”
Brad took the hand and shook it. “Thank you, Roudy. I wouldn’t mind the help of all three of you.”
Roudy, put off or hurt, Brad couldn’t tell which, glanced at the others.
“You would take the lead, of course,” Brad said. “But first I would like to know more about who we are employing. Do you mind if we ask you some questions?”
“You’re going to pay us?” Andrea asked.
Roudy stuck a finger in the air. “Of course they are. They know value when they see it. My rate is one thousand and two hundred dollars per hour.”
“That’s only eleven cents,” Andrea said.
Except for Enrique, who was still studying Nikki with a whimsical grin, they all turned to her.
“Per second,” Andrea explained defensively. “Thirty-three cents per second divided three ways. When I get out of here I’m going to buy a new car and house with some beautiful clothes.” Her face wrinkled and a tear spring from her right eye. A single sob broke from her mouth, and she wiped the wetness from her cheek.
“Sorry. Sorry, sorry.”
“It’s okay—”
“Nonsense!” Andrea cried. Then again in a soft voice. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry. I’ll shower first.”
“Have some respect, Brains. He’s put me in charge and I won’t have this.” Roudy sighed. “Fine, I’ll split the fee. One thousand two hundred dollars split three ways.”
They moved so quickly, taking new directions at the snap of a finger, emotions racing across their faces, that Brad felt flat-footed. However childlike, they each possessed faculties that rendered him somehow incompetent.
They’re likely geniuses. It was all a bit stupefying.
“I’m not sure we can offer anything more than our gratitude,” Brad said.
Both Roudy and Andrea looked taken aback. Even Enrique turned.
“But I’ll check into it. At the least you may be able to help us save the lives of the Bride Collector’s next victims.”
“The Bride Collector?” Roudy stepped forward, fully engaged. “Tell me everything you know. He’s a serial killer?”
“First our questions,” Brad said, holding up his hand. “Fair enough?”
Andrea’s eyes darted over his shoulder. Brad glanced back, provoked as much by the sense of an incoming presence as the other woman’s look.
A young, slight woman who looked to be in her midtwenties stood in the doorway. Her stringy brown hair parted down the middle framed petite features—a small nose and delicate, pouting lips—and light brown eyes that sparkled with life.
Brad glanced down her body. She was short, hardly taller than five feet, dressed in a well-worn blue T-shirt with a Nike logo on her chest. The hem on her jeans hung an inch too short above old, white canvas tennis shoes.
She stood with both arms by her sides, unflappable but light, as if a strong gust would blow her away. The skin on her arms was pale and he couldn’t see her fingernails, but her bare thumbnails were chewed short. Unlike Andrea, she wore no makeup at all, not even a dab to cover the few red spots of acne on her forehead.
The newcomer’s probing eyes seemed to peer through Brad. Her expression was flat, as if she was undecided about whether she approved of their presence.
“That’s Paradise,” Roudy said.
“Does this mean we have to split the fee four ways?” Andrea asked with a perturbed expression. “That’s only eight point three cents per second.”
“We’re going to help the FBI crack a case,” Roudy said. “And Paradise is good with dead people.”
Brad wasn’t sure if it was Allison’s earlier comments about Paradise or the way the young woman looked at him now that piqued his pulse, but he found he couldn’t remove his eyes from hers. Paradise.
She broke off her stare, walked around to Andrea’s side, and faced Brad again, eyes still undecided.
Once more, Brad couldn’t help but think he’d fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in Alice’s Wonderland. The director’s assurance that these were all highly intelligent individuals had twisted his thinking. Hearing this bizarre exchange, anyone on the street might think these four had misplaced their minds.
And so they had, he reminded himself with a now-fraying sense of certainty. The classic symptoms of schizophrenia were all here: the paranoia, the hearing and seeing things that did not exist, the voices and threats. The compulsion to shower expressed by Andrea, the delusions of grandeur demonstrated by both Roudy and Casanova.
“I don’t think Allison would mind one more joining us,” Nikki said. “Thanks for coming, Paradise. That’s a beautiful name. Please call me Nikki.”
She didn’t respond.
It was immediately apparent to Brad that this homely counterpart to Andrea might be comfortable in her own skin but uneasy with anyone else’s assessment of her. Despite her calm, vulnerability seemed to glimmer off the young woman in waves, like heat rising from a desert road.
He nodded at her. “Hello, Paradise.” Then to them all: “Let’s start over, okay? Tell us who you are. What your… gifts are.”
“Oh that, oh that!” Roudy blurted. “You want to know what makes us all bonkers, is that it?”
“No,” Nikki corrected, stepping forward. She looked completely at ease in their environment. “We know that you’re each highly intelligent. And that each of you has rare gifts. Or was the director wrong about that?”
They all stared, as if judging if she was serious. Evidently deciding that she was, all but Paradise spoke at once.
Nikki smiled and crossed her arms. “Let’s start with you, Roudy.”
“Of course.” He glanced at the new girl. “The director put me in charge, Paradise.” She said nothing, so he plowed ahead.
“I stand five foot eleven inches, am forty years old, and have been stationed here, at this secret installation, for seven years. Some would call me choleric in personality, and it’s true that I am a natural leader, but my primary skills are those of perception and deduction. Most common cases, the kind the FBI regularly seeks my advice on, are easily decoded using an algorithm that assists me in isolating key evidence. I’m involved in several longer-term operations, which I’m not at liberty to discuss.”
He paused, adjusting his bow tie. His trousers hung an inch too high, revealing black leather shoes with one shoelace missing. As part of his delusion of grandeur, he’d evidently chosen Sherlock Holmes as his fashion influence. Still, he didn’t strike Brad as the kind who would wander around with a magnifying glass and a pipe.
“Thank you, Roudy.” Nikki glanced at Casanova, who spoke with no further encouragement.
“My name is Enrique Bartholomew, thirty-two—”
“Eight,” Roudy interrupted.
Without a break, he continued: “Or thirty-eight, I forget. They say I’m schizophrenic, but I tell the ladies that all fighters and lovers are schizophrenic. Allison tells me that not all women can appreciate”—he used large hands to draw out his full meaning—“an experienced, fearless lover. But I think she’s wrong. Don’t you, Nikki?” A coy smile.
Brad wondered how many women had slapped Casanova over the years.
“I don’t know, Enrique. But the man I’m interested in is both strong and gentle.”
“Cass tried to date the president’s wife when she was visiting Denver,” Andrea said with a sly grin. “They put him in jail.”
Enrique only smiled back at her. “She wasn’t too bright,” he said. “Hardly a woman at all. I can’t recall what I saw in her. Are you busy this evening?”
“I am. But thank you for asking. What about you, Andrea?”
“Nineteen. I’ve been here a year. Manic depressive. Bipolar. OCD. Prodigious savant, but that part’s wrong.”
“Nonsense,” Roudy said. “She’s the brightest of the batch. Just because you pay attention to your body doesn’t make you their idiot.”
Andrea grinned apologetically. She wiggled her manicured nails, polished in green. “I like to… take care of myself.”
“You like taking showers.”
“Sometimes.”
“How many times?”
“Today?”
“Sure,” Nikki said.
“Two.”
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
“You do your nails and hair each time?”
“Yes.”
“She’s clean and she’s smart as a whip,” Roudy said. “Smartest informant I’ve ever come across.”
Brad looked at Paradise, who seemed content to let them speak without offering an opinion. “How about you, Paradise?”
She glanced at the others, then eyed Brad. He couldn’t tell if she felt awkward or put off. “Um… What’s happening?”
“I’m sorry, I’m Brad Raines with the FBI. This is Nikki Holden, a forensic psychologist. We’re here to see if you can help us uncover information about a killer called the Bride Collector.”
“I’ve never heard of a killer named the Bride Collector,” she said. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“That’s the name we’ve given him.”
“More details,” Roudy said, pacing again. “I need to know all that you know if I’m to help you. Shoe size?”
Brad decided to run with him. “Eleven.”
“Uh-huh. Estimated weight based on impressions?”
“One ninety, two hundred.”
“Secretor?”
“No. No bodily fluids found on any of the scenes. No hair, no skin cells, no prints, nothing.”
“You have the file on you?” He held out his hand.
“No.”
“Paradise didn’t tell you about herself,” Andrea inserted.
“No file? How do you expect me to be of any use?” Roudy demanded.
“What does he do to the women?” Enrique asked.
Brad glanced between them. “He kills them. He makes them up to look beautiful, and then he kills them and leaves their bodies glued to the wall.”
Silence engulfed them.
Andrea’s face twisted up and she started to cry into her hand. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry.”
“It’s disturbing, I know. Have any of you known any resident, present or past, who might fit this profile? Roudy, the director told us you remember everyone who’s come through here.”
“I think I should take a shower,” Andrea said. “My skin is itching, you know. Size eleven, he’s six foot one. Big hands, could break their necks pretty easy. We don’t allow anyone like that here. He uses makeup on them?”
Brad hesitated. “Yes.”
Andrea started to cry again, this time accompanied by a gentle pawing at the makeup on her face.
“It’s okay, Dre,” Paradise said. Her voice was light and sweet, but sure and authoritative. “We’re safe here. This is home. We have guards and Miss Allison. And Roudy and Enrique would never let anything happen to us, would you?”
“Never,” Roudy said. Enrique frowned.
Andrea stepped over to Paradise and offered the girl her hand. Paradise took it and rubbed her shoulder. “Don’t let them scare you. Pretend it’s just a story.”
“Paradise writes novels,” Roudy said. “But I have to say, I honestly can’t recall any resident whom I would judge as matching your description—assuming you mean a person who demonstrated a tendency toward this kind of violence. However, if you could get me the file, I could almost certainly shed some light on the case for you.”
“You’re sure you’re busy tonight?” Enrique asked. He was looking at Nikki.
“I am. But thanks again.” She smiled.
Brad took a deep breath, suddenly afflicted with an overpowering sensation of time’s passage. A serial killer was inexorably cycling through to his next murder, yet here Brad sat, whiling away the hours in the company of several mental health patients. It became abundantly clear that, however fascinating and gifted they might be, Roudy and friends weren’t going to help stop the killer.
“Paradise didn’t say what she did,” Andrea said.
Brad nodded, thinking they should leave soon. But Andrea seemed determined. “She’s right. Why don’t you tell us about yourself, Paradise.”
She blushed. “I don’t think I can help you.”
“She sees dead people,” Roudy said.
Psychotic hallucinations, Brad thought. Paradise didn’t attempt any denial.
“And spirits,” Andrea added.
“You mean ghosts?”
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
“If she touched the woman’s body, she would see who killed her,” Andrea said. “Isn’t that right, Paradise?”
“I doubt it. Please, Dre, you’re just talking now.”
“It’s true.”
“How long have you been here, Paradise?”
“Seven years. I arrived when I was seventeen.”
There was something different about the girl. The woman. Unlike the others, she held her secrets close.
“And nothing comes to mind when I describe what we know of this killer? Any men you might have gotten to know?”
She thought a second. “No.”
Andrea clearly wasn’t satisfied. “Paradise doesn’t trust men. She was hurt.” She began to cry again and Paradise comforted her.
Brad wondered what it would be like to be either of these women. What it would be like to live with them. He’d spent the last dozen years of his life mourning the loss of Ruby, an angel from heaven. She’d been ripped from him and he’d crumbled. He’d been searching for Ruby’s replacement ever since, but his memory of her spoiled him for anything less.
But his pain surely couldn’t compare to whatever secret pain Paradise was hiding. What circumstances had brought her here, to this facility for the forgotten? Who loved this lost woman? What hopes steered her journey through life?
Empathy washed over him, joined by a stab of shame. Compared with this one woman, his own life was like a king’s. Yet he spent his life alone in regret. Sorry for himself.
His emotion was so strong that for a moment he thought the others might be picking up on it, despite his best attempts to remain detached. He glanced away.
Nikki took up the slack. “Some say it’s possible to sense things about people, pick up on their… energy, even after they’re dead. Maybe that’s what you mean, Paradise.”
“I don’t know how I see it, I just do. My doctors say they’re visual hallucinations. That I’m psychotic, suffering from schizophrenia. I see an image and I can’t tell whether it’s a memory or an imagination.”
“That’s right, that’s what they would say. But you disagree?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. I only know what I see.”
“Are you on medication?”
“No.”
“I am,” Andrea said. Her pretty face twisted up again, once more threatening to burst in tears.
“She’s just come off a short manic cycle,” Paradise said without a trace of weariness or disdain. Turning to Andrea, she asked with a note of real concern, “Do you want to take a shower now?”
“I have to, Paradise. I should go now. Sorry. Sorry, sorry.”
She hurried from the room, finally allowing herself to sob.
“Does this mean we aren’t getting the one thousand two hundred dollars?” Roudy asked. “Bring me the file and lay out all the evidence. Trust me, it will be the cheapest one thousand two hundred dollars the FBI ever spent.”
“You, my lady,” Enrique said taking Nikki’s hand, “are welcome back at any time. I will wait for you and show you heaven.”
This time, Nikki hooked her hand in Brad’s elbow. “But I have a lover, Enrique. Still, it’s a nice gesture.”
His grin did not falter. Undeterred. Brad wanted to slip the unflappable resident a hidden high-five.
He looked at Paradise and saw that she was staring at him. Eyes bright, brown. Mystery caressed her face as if she were one of those ghosts she supposedly saw. The ambiguity instantly haunted him.
What was she thinking?
Nikki excused them and they made their way back to the reception area, where they found Allison. She had already prepared a list of all CWI’s residents dating back seven years, complete with diagnosis, medication, prognosis at time of departure, and all follow-up.
“So. Did our investigative team offer any help?”
“It was enlightening,” Brad said. “But no. No breakthrough, I’m afraid. Paradise is an interesting one. She claims to see ghosts?”
Allison lit up. “You met Paradise? Delightful! One touch of your victims and she might tell you how they died.” She looked away, catching herself. “But then that would be impossible. She could never work up the courage.”
“I doubt the FBI would agree to that.”
“To what? To such foolishness? That’s not the point, FBI. The point is, she suffers from two severe phobias, agoraphobia being one of them. Her fear of leaving her home here has confined her behind our gates for seven years.”
He was familiar with the debilitating fear. In fact, it was surprisingly common—he recalled a case in Miami involving a woman who had starved to death in her apartment for fear of going out for any reason, even to buy food. He’d experienced patches of it himself, immediately following Ruby’s death. The mere thought of dealing with the outside world, even the onslaught of sunshine, became oppressive. The fear dissipated after a few weeks, but it had left him with a healthy sympathy for those it afflicted.
“It’s not unheard of among our residents. They’ve been banished by the world, ostracized and made to feel so odd that they’re only comfortable alone or in a community of their own. Not unlike the devout in any religion. They stick to their churches for fear of being chastised.”
“What’s her story?”
Allison looked at him with a raised brow. “You should ask her.”
“She’s schizophrenic?”
“Truthfully, I’m still not sure. Before we got temporary custody, the psychiatrist in the state hospital diagnosed her with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Besides the agoraphobia, she also suffers from a deeply rooted distrust of men—those are her primary challenges.”
“And her delusions? These ghosts she sees?”
“Delusions?” Allison turned and led them to the door. “That’s the question, isn’t it, Mr. Raines?” She tapped her head. “Whether or not it’s just up in here.”
Flower was too engrossed in her unfinished sculpture of Brad to notice when they drove past her.