The Bride Collector

8
THE HOURS TICKED relentlessly by, and one day stretched into two.
Brad Raines hovered over the case like a mother hen, knowing that for all he could not see, something was indeed happening. The killer wasn’t curled up in bed, sleeping. His evil harvest was proceeding apace.
The FBI team had scoured the evidence, searching for the elusive lead that would close the gap between hunter and hunted. But nothing new of significance had presented itself.
Brad stood in his office alone, staring out the window at the cars passing by three stories below. He and his team had all they needed, a mantra that Brad lived by. Somewhere in the pages of evidence on his desk hid a key that could unlock the case: a dot, an Easter egg, a word that said more than had been spoken.
Brad had returned from the Center for Wellness and Intelligence haunted by an uneasiness that lodged on the edge of his mind. Associating pattern killing with the likes of a Roudy Sparks or an Andrea Mertz—any of the residents he’d met at CWI—was like pinning a bank robbery on a ten-year-old child. They were capable of outbursts related to delusions, but the cruel illness just wasn’t consistent with calculated patterns of harm.
He’d met victims at CWI, not perpetrators capable of heinous murder. But there had been more, this haunting that was slowly creeping into his mind.
In their eyes, he’d seen a small part of himself.
The revelation came back to what Nikki had said just before they got the call to check out CWI. This notion that each human was truly alone in the world, confronted by the complexity of life. And finding themselves alone, they felt insecure. Not loved the way they should be. Not really wanted. Outcasts. Pretenders on some subtle but profound level.
Whether or not they were willing to admit it, all humans were self-contained and alone. The wisest and hardiest among them managed to acknowledge that fact and surpass it. More experienced adults had found ways to cope, but many if not most felt it still. Younger adults suspected it deep in their bones and cried out for significance. Some retreated from that insecurity as matter of survival.
Sadly, supportive examples flitted through his mind.
A wife who’d been abused as a child, unable to engage her husband in a mutually gratifying sexual relationship because she couldn’t lower the walls of protection she’d built around herself. A man told all his life he didn’t measure up, now safely encased in his own shell, afraid that even those closest to him might learn he really didn’t.
Some covered their insecurity by overcompensating with talk, talk, talk. Or food. Or athletics. Or addictions. Or ridiculous behavior to garner attention.
In the last three days, Brad’s world had become a wasteland of victims on all sides. Everyone—and not only Nikki and Frank and Kim, and Mason in the lobby and Amanda at Maci’s Café—but everyone, was a lonely victim of life’s complexity; Brad wondered what mysteries they hid behind. What secrets and fears secured their loneliness?
You’re a pretty girl, Amanda. Thin and fit. Do you constantly diet to fix yourself? Do you hate yourself? Or do you love yourself and regret that others don’t appreciate you more?
Who was the skateboarder practicing on the rails by his condo, really? A young man who was ready to begin really living because he wasn’t yet satisfied with who he was? Life for him was still practice for some real test, which lay a month or a year or maybe five years away. When he passed it, his peers would truly appreciate him. Cherish him even. He would find his significance.
Problem was, that day would never arrive. Everyone was still either telling themselves it was all just around the corner, or they were living with the haunting suspicion that the pot at the end of the rainbow was all a fantasy. That in reality they were alone in a jungle and the rainbows were just illusions.
So then, life was really just a mind game, wasn’t it? And most people really were handicapped. Mentally.
Ill.
Brad tapped the windowsill with his forefinger. Nonsense, of course. This was simply his way of dealing with his own insecurities. Unlike most, he was at least able to see the truth. Still, he was fated to face the same monsters of inadequacies, insignificance, and isolation everyone faced.
If Nikki knew the full story, the psychologist in her would say that he was a man trapped by the profound despair of never finding a woman who measured up to the one soul mate he’d loved and then lost.
A slap behind him jerked him from his thoughts. Frank stood over a manila folder he dropped on Brad’s desk.
“The rest all check out. We have three more leads we’re chasing down, but of this bunch, nine are now dead. Ten are in jail, mostly on misdemeanors that have them cycling in and out of the system like yo-yos. Five are in other assisted-living facilities, and twelve are in the mainstream, living normal lives with family or friends. Not a hint of the killer.”
At his instruction, Nikki had studied the residents on Allison Johnson’s list of discharged cases and identified forty-three whom she deemed capable of violent behavior. The team had tracked down thirty-six of them, eliminating each as a suspect.
He frowned and nodded. “Okay. Chase the other seven down.”
“Already have. Just waiting for the final report.”
Brad nodded and Frank left.
He pressed the intercom button on his phone. “Nikki, can you come to my office for a minute?”
He settled into his chair, closed two open files on his desk, and set them neatly on top of the others. Six books he’d pored over stood side by side at his elbow. The Center Cannot Hold, an autobiography of a schizophrenic. A couple of harrowing books on the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. A book that shredded the controversial atypical psychotropic drugs, another that supported them. Mad in America, a history of the treatment of mental illness in the country.
Three mechanical pencils lay in a wood tray next to the Bride Collector files. Other than these items, his desk was clear. The rest of his office was as carefully arranged.
He picked up one of the pencils, crossed his legs, and tapped the plastic casing on the desk’s Formica top.
Nikki tapped his open door. “You called?”
“Have a seat.”
She walked in and slipped into one of two chairs facing his desk. Jeans today. White sandals that nicely complemented her red toenail polish. She’d had a pedicure last night or this morning. Her foot started to swivel slowly.
He lifted his eyes and saw that she was watching him. Dressed in jeans and a white short-sleeved blouse, with her dark wavy hair she looked a bit like Ruby, he thought. For an extended moment he forgot to remove his eyes from hers, and by the time he realized that he was staring he’d betrayed himself.
Life is a mind game, he thought. And what mysteries are you hiding, my dear?
He shifted his gaze to the stack of files. “We’re running out of time.”
“If you mean he’s going to go again, you’re probably right. I don’t know what else we can do.”
“We can expand the search beyond the forty-three people you pulled out of CWI’s files.”
She nodded. “I’ll pull more, but it’s highly unlikely—”
“I realize that. But we’re missing something.”
“From CWI?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
She nodded. “The place got under your skin, didn’t it?”
“The Center for Wellness and Intelligence.” He set the pencil back down. “It doesn’t appear there’s any connection to the case.”
“But you saw something else,” she said. “You’ve been to mental health wards before. Correctional facilities for the insane. The banging of heads on toilets, the twenty-four-hour suicide watches, the cries of prophets telling the ward that Jesus is coming back at the turn of the century. But this was different.”
“They were… I don’t know…”
“Human,” she said.
It sounded so cruel.
“No, more than that.” What could he say? I felt like I was looking in a mirror? That wasn’t entirely true, but he couldn’t deny that he’d seen something oddly familiar.
Nikki stood, crossed to the door and shut it. “The thing of it is, Brad, I get you. I know you’re good at what you do because of the pain that’s driving you. I know they got under your skin, because you connected with them on a level that confuses you.” She crossed to his desk, placed her palms on the surface, and leaned over. “How am I doing?”
He suddenly wanted her to know it all. So he told her.
“She killed herself, Nikki.”
“Who did?”
“Ruby. She committed suicide. Everything was perfect. We were going to get married when we graduated. She loved me, and I was head over heels. One night, she took some pills and killed herself.” His voice strained by emotion. “She didn’t think she was pretty enough.”
Nikki sat. “I’m sorry.”
“It took me a while to figure it out—the details aren’t important now. She didn’t think she was pretty enough, but she was beautiful. Not just in my eyes.” He pulled open his top right drawer and withdrew a five-by-seven photograph of Ruby tossing her dark hair, holding a tennis racket on the court. He slid it over to Nikki.
She picked up the picture. “You’re right, she was beautiful. I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”
“It’s taken a while, but I think I’m finally understanding that her death was debilitating for me. Incapacitating.”
She pushed the picture across and leaned back in the chair. “And you see the same in the residents at CWI. It got under my skin, too.”
Her eyes lingered on his, studying him. But not the way a psychoanalyst might, unless she was falling in love with her patient. She was the only woman he’d ever told.
“What does your gut tell you?” she asked.
“About what?”
“Me.” Her lips curved gently. “About Roudy and his group, naturally.”
“Naturally. My gut? It tells me to talk to them again.”
“Then follow it. Talk to them.”
“To what end? There’s no connection to the case.”
“Use them.”
“Use them how?”
“Use Roudy. Use them all.”
“On the case?”
“The administrator seemed to think they might be useful. It takes one to know one, right? So recruit some schizophrenics to help us find a schizophrenic.”
“Assuming he really is schizophrenic.” The idea seemed a bit far-fetched, even to him. “Sounds more like a case study than an investigation.”
“Maybe. You have any other strong leads? Use Paradise. Who knows? Maybe she’s on to something.”
“Ghosts.”
Nikki shrugged. “I’m just saying, Brad, trust your instincts. They told you that the killer would leave a clue in his confession. The first place the note led us to was CWI. So run with it. I’m a psychologist, but I’ve seen some anomalies in my day that would make your hair stand on end. Seeing ghosts isn’t the worst of it by a long shot.”
“You’re suggesting I resort to a psychic?”
“Why not? You have a better path? Various law enforcement agencies have utilized psychics on countless cases with some fascinating results.”
He cocked his head, intrigued. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the psychic type.”
“I’m not, trust me. But there’s a lot I don’t understand about life. The only suggestion I’m making is that you trust your instincts. They led you to CWI. Roudy. Paradise. Follow your gut.”
“My gut tells me to forget psychics.”
“But not to forget CWI. And by extension the residents at CWI.”
Her suggestion felt more like permission to him. She wasn’t his superior, but having that permission, he felt strangely compelled to seize it.
Nikki offered him a coy smile. “We all have our hang-ups, Brad. We all see our inadequacies in others. For the record, I like you, hang-ups and all.”
The air felt heavy.
“You busy tonight?” he asked.
“Actually, yes,” she said. “But I’m free tomorrow night.”
He’d sworn never to follow this path with her, but that was before. Just dinner, nothing more.
“You like seafood?” The phone rang and he grabbed it. “Raines.”
“We have another body.”
THE ABANDONED BARN sat in trees at the end of a dirt road, west of Elizabeth, Colorado, and if not for a Realtor who’d taken a prospective client out to view the property that morning, the body might have gone unnoticed for a week or more.
So it appeared. Brad doubted that the killer would have allowed his work to go unnoticed so long.
Melissa Langdon’s license lay on the gray floorboards inside a ring of broken dust where a bucket had collected her blood. The crime scene read like a book.
Melissa had been abducted, presumably from the address on her license, to which Brad dispatched a team. She’d then likely been taken to a separate location, subdued and prepped, then brought here for the final act. As in the other locations, no sign of struggle.
Melissa was affixed to the wall, white and naked except for the same brand of panties found on Caroline, and an identical veil fixed neatly over her face. She was supported by a wooden peg under each armpit and glued in place.
Then drained.
Same careful arrangements, same angelic tilt of her head, same makeup application. The lipstick was likely the same brand they’d isolated—a red color called Calypso manufactured by Paula Dorf. Having drained their color, the killer was insistent about putting some back on them.
Nikki had remained at the field office with Frank and most of the team, sifting through lists that extended beyond CWI to other mental health care facilities that had discharged violent offenders in the last three years.
Kim Peterson, forensic pathologist, had joined him at the scene and was on one knee, peering under the victim’s right heel, where a plug of putty sealed the hole.
“Now?” she asked. “Or in the—”
“Now,” Brad said.
She placed a large Baggie on the floor and pried the plug free. It dropped onto the plastic trailed by a thin string of blood. The killer had likely waited fifteen or twenty minutes as gravity pulled most of the blood down, but pooling remained in the fleshy sections of the body. Horizontal veins and capillaries would not drain easily, even if massaged or milked.
“Anything?”
In answer, Kim used her tweezers to withdraw a two-inch rolled tube of paper, covered in blood.
“Can you open it here?”
She delicately peeled open the note, careful not to disturb any latent prints on the paper, though they both knew none would be found.
Kim read the message stoically. “‘Be careful who you love. I just might kill all the beautiful ones. I am more intelligent than you. Bless me, Father, for I will sin. Oh yes, yes I will.’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Kim looked up at him. “This is personal?”
“No. Not that I know, no, it couldn’t…”
Surely the killer wasn’t someone from his own past come back to haunt him. The killer had simply learned who was working the case and was messing with him. Egging him on.
Be careful who you love. I just might kill all the beautiful ones.
“What else are you seeing?”
“The same as before.” She placed the note in an evidence bag and stood, motioning at the body. “Lactic acid is building, rigor mortis is setting in, but not more than, oh, I’d say ten hours. She’s still pretty flexible. I’d say she died sometime last night.”
“Four days since the last one.”
“Four days. There’s a nasty cut on her temple that he went to considerable lengths to cover up. Looks like she either hit her head or he delivered a blow.”
“No, he wouldn’t risk wounding her. He wanted her clean. Okay, process the body and the scene. Let me know if you come up with anything else. I’ll be on my phone.”
“Will do.”
Brad stepped out of the barn and flipped open his BlackBerry. It took him two minutes to get Allison Johnson at the Center for Wellness and Intelligence on the line. She was evidently with a resident and required some urging to break away.
“Hello, FBI. Did you find your man yet?”
“No. He took another girl. She’s on the wall in the barn behind me.”
The line was silent for a moment. She sighed heavily.
“I would like to speak to one of your residents again, Miss Johnson. If you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not. I don’t mind at all. Like I said, Roudy is much better than his antics might suggest.”
“Actually, I would like to meet with Paradise.”
“Oh? Not Roudy?”
“No. Paradise, if you don’t mind.”
“Chasing ghosts now?”
“No. Chasing my gut. Is she available?”
“I’m sure she could be.”
“Good. I can be there in an hour. And Miss Johnson?”
“Yes?”
“I would like to speak to Paradise alone this time.”
“That could be a problem. She’s nervous to be alone with men, as I said.”
“I realize that. You could be nearby, but I really would like to talk to her without any… interference. If that’s not possible, I’ll understand, of course.”
Allison hesitated.
“I’ll see what I can arrange.”