The Bride Collector

9
THE TALL SHRUB that Flower had sculpted into a statue resembling Brad was completed, but no sign of the artist. The surprisingly realistic likeness brought him to a stop for a second look on the driveway. He imagined what she could do with clay or stone. Flower was truly talented.
A man dressed in plaid slacks met him in the reception area. “You’re with the FBI?” he asked, sticking his hand out. He had a beak for a nose, but his eyes twinkled, which made him appear fun rather than snooty.
“Yes.” Brad took the hand.
“Jonathan Bryce. Allison’s waiting, follow me.”
He led Brad out to the back, where the massive maples spread their branches over the tranquil lawn, now nearly empty. They walked toward the towering wing south of the main hub in which they’d met Roudy and company three days earlier.
What stories, what mysteries, what hauntings hid behind the brick walls ahead? So quiet and peaceful, yet so far removed from normalcy. The world of the mentally ill. The gifted. A chill tickled his spine.
“You’re staff?”
“I’m one of the nurses,” the man said. “Medications mainly.”
“I thought CWI wasn’t big on medications.”
“We’re not. But sometimes it’s our best option.”
“Just not as often here as in other facilities,” Brad said.
“This way.” Jonathan turned on the sidewalk and waved at two women on a bench who were watching them with keen interest. They both waved back and flashed big smiles. “The Pointer twins. There’s a story.”
“I’ll bet. Why not medicate the way most facilities do?”
“Think about it in terms of a broken leg. Someone breaks their leg and we know how to set it so the body can heal itself. But mental illness is still a mystery.” He used his hand to form a ball, eyes bright. “First, we don’t necessarily know where gifting leaves off and illness begins, so there’s that confusion. Even when we can make a diagnosis, say severe bipolar disorder, no one knows how to set the bones, so to speak. We have no idea how to put the mind back in order. We can’t fix it, all we can do is take away some of the pain, follow?”
“So you treat the symptoms, not the illness.”
“Exactly. Relatively speaking, at CWI we give aspirin where many psychiatrists might prescribe tranquilizers.”
“And that’s better for the patient?”
“Please. You know how these drugs work?”
“Not really, no.”
“There are no drugs that specifically treat mental illness as it was once believed. The so-called miracle antipsychotic drugs like Abilify inhibit serotonin and dopamine in the brain, which can alleviate symptoms like delusions and hallucinations. Fine. But the new drugs also come with a long list of adverse side effects that many patients—not all, mind you—find intolerable.”
“But at least they’re stable, right? Better.”
“Depends what you mean by stable. Depends on the person. For some, the meds are lifesavers. For others, their overall health is worse off. A recent major study found that out of fifteen hundred schizophrenic patients, only about twenty-five percent found the side effects tolerable over the long haul.”
“What kind of side effects?”
“You name it. Seizures, severe weight gain, cardiac problems, gastrointestinal complications, paralysis of the bowels, sexual dysfunction, facial hair, skin rashes, eye disorders, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” He sounded like a medical dictionary. Then again, despite the odd clothing he was a nurse. Or at least claimed to be.
And he wasn’t finished. “But the worst may actually be the emotional problems that often present. Toxic psychosis, delirium, confusion, disorientation, hallucinations, depression, delusions. Point is, neuroleptic drugs inhibit the neural processes like sleep inhibits activity. But a person’s gotta live. They can’t sleep away their lives.” He pointed to a glass door. “In here.”
“Thank you.”
“So we use drugs, but we do so with a watchful eye, pray for better options to emerge quickly, and provide an environment that helps each feel wanted and special.”
Jonathan stopped at the door. “Interesting fact that no one seems to know what to do with: In less industrialized countries, like Colombia and India for example, over sixty percent of schizophrenic patients recover fully within two years. They depend on family nurturing, religion, and other nonmedical treatment. No drugs. In America, the recovery rate is much less than a third, and that’s using antipsychotic drugs. What does that tell you?”
“Hm.”
“She’ll meet you inside. Have a great day, sir.”
Brad thanked him again and walked into a small lobby, now vacant.
Allison walked out of a side door. “Hello, FBI.” She wore a blue dress today. Silver jewelry and cork wedges. She’d fixed her hair differently, tied back in a ponytail but not haphazardly. Same contagious smile. An angel in her own right, in the service of wounded souls.
“Well, well, well, isn’t this your lucky day?” she asked.
“Is it? I wish the same could be said for Melissa.”
Allison’s brow arched in question. “Oh?”
“The girl we found this morning.”
“Oh. Terrible. Awful. I suggest you say nothing of it to Paradise.”
“So she’s agreed?”
“She has. But it took some coaxing on my part. You have as much time as she will give you. Unfortunately I’m a bit shorter on time and I’ll have to wait here while you talk to her. So why don’t we say fifteen minutes?”
“Half an hour.”
“What exactly do you plan on asking her?”
“You said she had a gift.”
Allison thought about that.
“Let’s just say I’m running out of options and time.”
She nodded. “Okay, FBI. Half an hour.”
Brad stepped through the door and entered a room with a large window, Coca-Cola and snack machines, and a sofa grouping that faced a wall-mounted flat-screen television.
Paradise stood by a counter with a sink, watching him as he shut the door behind him. She wore the same too-short jeans and canvas tennis shoes she’d had on the last time he’d seen her. A gray sweatshirt hung on her slight, five-foot frame. Her dark hair still looked stringy—he suspected she looked the same every day of the week. Not unclean, but certainly not very attentive to hygiene.
“Hello, Paradise. Good to see you again.”
“Hello.” Her voice was tight. Nervous.
He stood still for a moment, caught up in the little he knew about her history. Something in her childhood had broken her. She was bipolar, but Allison had said that her initial diagnosis of schizophrenia could be wrong. That she might not suffer from hallucinations but actually saw these ghosts. The notion seemed ridiculous now. Paradise didn’t look like anything more than a damaged young woman who needed to be told when to shower.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,” he said. “Do you mind if we sit?”
“Sure. Have a seat.”
He walked around the couch and sat down. She made no sign of joining him.
“Would you like to sit?”
“Not really,” she said.
“Okay. So you’re probably wondering why I want to talk to you.” The moment the words came out, he wanted to pull them back. “Not that people wouldn’t want to talk to you, of course. It’s just that I’m an FBI agent and I’ve come back here asking specifically to speak to you. I’m sure that’s a bit unnerving.”
“It’s okay, sir. I—”
“Call me Brad. My name is Brad Raines.”
She hesitated. “Well, then, Mr. Raines. It’s understandable why you think I’d be uncomfortable with your request to speak with me. Or with any of us. Most people would rather we didn’t exist. It’s hard for us to trust people who don’t like us, I’m sure you can understand that.”
He was surprised by how well spoken she was. Sounded a bit like Allison, clearly her mentor.
“I can understand that. Are you uncomfortable?”
“Yes. But I wouldn’t go as far as Andrea or Roudy.”
“Really? What did they say?”
“Roudy thinks you’re a conniving weasel who’s trying to cut him out. After all, he offered to help first, and everyone knows he’s pretty good at what he does.”
“What does he do?”
“Connect dots that most people miss.”
Astute. Maybe he should talk to Roudy again.
“And what did Andrea say?”
Paradise crossed her arms. “She said you’re a handsome devil and that your only interest for wanting to see me alone is to get into my pants.”
Brad failed to suppress a sharp chuckle. “Well, you can tell Andrea that I appreciate her flattery, but it won’t help her get into mine.”
Again he wanted to take the words back. But a hint of a smile registered on Paradise’s face, so rather than pull back, he pushed forward.
“On the other hand, if I wasn’t sworn off women, I might find either of you—”
“Don’t say it,” she snapped.
He blinked.
“The comment about Andrea was funny. Leave it at that. Now, please tell me what I can do for you. I’ll be as helpful as I can be.”
“Well, dear, whatever you think I meant, you were likely wrong. I’m not here to take advantage of anybody, mind, body, or spirit. I’m just trying to break the ice.”
She looked at him for a long while, and for a brief moment he wondered if she was seeing one of her hallucinations.
He let her stare. She finally lowered her arms and eased herself down onto the arm of a stuffed chair opposite him. “Sorry for that. I’m not normally so”—she waved a limp hand—“edgy. Whatever you might think, Mr. Raines, I’m not like some of the others here. Not that I’m proud of that. I wouldn’t mind having some of their gifts, schizophrenic or not. But the fact of the matter is, I’m not schizophrenic. I do, however, struggle with bipolar disorder. I assume you know the difference.”
“I do. For the most part.”
“Bipolar disorder, once called manic-depressive illness, is a mood disorder that presents with quick onsets of manic highs that yield to usually longer-lasting depressive lows. It’s inherited. Medication helps, but I hate the way the stuff messes with me, so I avoid it and work through the cycles. Some people can’t cope. Fortunately, I can.”
“That’s good.”
“Clearly. Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is a thought disorder. A form of psychosis that typically presents itself in the late teens and early twenties. It’s thought to be linked to the way dopamine and serotonin work in the brain, but no one really knows whether it’s more about chemical imbalance or the receptors in the brain.”
“You seem well studied.”
“I read the medical journals. They’re all working in a fog, trust me. Most psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia present with delusions—either paranoid or grandiose; hallucinations—visual, auditory, and so on; or other thought disorders that mess with the processing of ideas in the mind. Pressured speech, flight of ideas, word salad, that kind of thing. Does that all make sense?”
“Yes.” Brad had a new respect for Paradise already.
“Schizoaffective disorder is essentially a combination of a mood disorder like bipolar and schizophrenia. Just to clarify a few terms. I do have a mood disorder—bipolar—but I am not crazy.”
She slipped from the chair’s stuffed arm down onto the seat cushion. “So, what can I do for you?”
Sitting here looking into her brown eyes, listening to such succinct articulation, Brad saw an entirely different person than the one he’d seen a few days earlier.
“We found another victim this morning. A girl named Melissa, just a couple of years younger than you, in her early twenties.”
Paradise just stared.
“She was dead. The killer drained her blood and left her for us to find.”
“That’s pretty sick.”
“I agree.”
She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. “Who could do such a thing?” Her eyes misted and she averted them.
His own throat tightened.
“We thought the killer might have a history with the Center for Wellness and Intelligence, but nothing’s panning out.”
“Then why are you talking to me?”
“Honestly? I’m not entirely sure. I’m following my gut. Something Allison said the other day.” He crossed his legs, matching her. “Can you tell me about your gift?”
Her eyes stared into his. “My hallucinations, you mean.”
“Allison insists they aren’t just hallucinations.”
“But this isn’t Allison,” she said. “This is you and me. Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts.”
“No. I don’t. But I also know how powerful perceptions and instincts can be. In my line of work, a computer would do a better job investigating and deciphering evidence if the human equation wasn’t more important. Instinct, gut feelings. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe that some people have an extraordinary ability to perceive what others do not.”
She nodded. “Latent inhibition.”
“Which is?”
“Why are you so afraid of women?”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t have a ring on.”
“I’m not married, but that—”
“You take meticulous care of your hair and nails.”
He glanced at his fingers, thrown off by her line.
“You’re dressed in the same slacks you wore on Tuesday, and your apartment is spotless. If you could bring yourself to trust a woman you might let her in, but there’s too much in your world that you need to protect. Too much order and comfort. Your sofa is purple, the window behind you is open to another world, and if you hit it at ninety-four miles an hour, you’re there and flying through space with the angels, who ask you if you would like some tea before meeting with the Roush.”
“Roush?”
“Yes.”
They faced off in silence. He had no clue what kind of mythical creature a Roush might be, and it didn’t matter.
“Black,” he said. “My sofa is black velvet.”
“Sorry about that,” she said, blushing. “The window stuff was just a slip of the tongue. I didn’t mean to say it aloud.”
But she was right about the rest, he thought, and now she picked up on his hesitation to correct the rest of what she’d said.
“But I was pretty close on the rest,” she said. “You want to know how I know?”
“Something like that.”
“Ghosts,” she said.
“You…” He glanced to his left where her gaze had shifted earlier. “You’re seeing ghosts?”
“No, not now. Although one did walk past the window three minutes ago. But that was just my imagination.”
“So… I’m lost. Catch me up here.”
“My imagination sees ‘ghosts’ now and then”—she made quotes with her fingers—“because of my low latent inhibition. Most people’s minds inhibit the streams of stimuli that their senses are exposed to—sight, sound, feel, smell, ideas—and focus only on what the mind determines to be critical at any given moment. Like a filter. Latent inhibition is the mind’s perception filter.”
“And low inhibition, or this latent inhibition, is a breakdown in that filter,” he guessed.
“Extremely creative people—artists, writers, et cetera—often see more than others. Not all of it is real. I look at you and I see a flood of details that most would miss at first glance. I look out the window and see another universe. Some of what I see is imagined, some real. According to Allison, a high intelligence allows a person with low latent inhibition to process the extra stimulation effectively. But without high intelligence, the flood of ideas and senses can be debilitating.”
“Like the bit about the window opening to another universe…”
“Yeah, like that.”
“And the ghost you saw a few minutes ago?”
She shrugged. “But I have seen them a few times, for real, as far as I can tell.”
“But you wouldn’t know,” he pointed out. “To the observer, a true hallucination is impossible to differentiate from the real thing.”
“No, these are different,” she said in soft voice, as if afraid to disturb some unknown balance in the room. “I don’t hallucinate.”
Regardless of her true state of mind, Paradise was plainly brilliant. Into this small package, God had seen fit to deposit a mind that made Brad’s own spin with awe. He couldn’t help but feel just a little intimidated.
“Well, you’re not what I expected,” Brad said.
“Hm. What did you expect, a raving lunatic?”
“No.” He covered his embarrassment with a short laugh. “And what did you expect, a monster?”
Now she smiled in earnest, revealing perfect white teeth. Like her bipolar disorder, likely inherited.
“So tell me, Mr. Raines, what did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Not someone who is so well spoken, for starters. I understand you write novels?”
“A few. But they’re useless.”
“How do you know?”
“Even if they aren’t, they’re just my world. They’ll never leave this place. I can’t write when I’m on the meds.”
“Allison told me that you have agoraphobia?”
Her mouth fell flat and she fiddled with her fingers, absently picking at one of her fingernails, which was chewed to the nub. “That’s right.”
“You’ve never been off the compound?”
“No.”
She didn’t seem to want to talk about her fear. That certainly presented a problem, considering the idea he was toying with.
“Anything else? Other fears or special challenges?”
“Now you’re starting to sound like a shrink.”
“No, that’s not what—”
“Can I trust you?” she asked, interrupting.
“Of course you can trust me.”
“Because the last time someone told me to trust them, I unlocked the door and they shoved a shotgun barrel into my mouth.”
She said it without batting an eye.
“Then don’t trust me.”
Her eyes misted and she looked back at the window over his shoulder. “I can’t remember anything else about what happened except the gun. My father was a strict disciplinarian. Eccentric, wealthy. He was convinced we were all conspiring to steal his money and turn it over to the devil. He suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.” Her fingers trembled in her lap.
“I… I’m sorry.”
“He tried to shoot me after keeping me locked up for a month. He killed my mother and my brother and thought he’d killed me before he shot himself.” Her glassy eyes turned back to him. “But my older sister, Angie, had already moved out, so she was okay. She lives in Boulder and visits me when she can. But she knows that I have to stay here.”
The story overwhelmed him, and he couldn’t think of an appropriate response. “I’m sorry,” he offered weakly.
“It’s okay. I lived, obviously, I’m here, right? I just remember the darkness and the knocking on the door, begging me to open. Pleading for me to open because he loved me. Then the gun and that’s it. The rest I know because they told me.”
“I’m so sorry, Paradise.”
“You asked if I have any other fears, well yes, I do. Mnemophobia. The fear of memories. I can’t seem to remember the really bad things that happen.” Tears pooled in her soft brown eyes, but they didn’t run down her cheeks. “I feel the feelings, so I know something terrible happened, but I can’t remember what exactly.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“What about things that have happened since coming here? Do you remember those?”
“Yes.”
What could he say to her? He hadn’t come here expecting his heart to be broken, but seeing Paradise swallowed by such a cruel past, like the stuffed chair that enveloped her now… A part of him wanted to rush over and give her a hug and insist that she would be safe with him.
If not for her twin phobias, Paradise probably could have left the center long ago. Who knew what she would be today except for them? Married with children or working on Wall Street. Serving with the FBI—she certainly had the aptitude. In fact, Paradise’s unique perception of the world might be invaluable to any investigative body.
Yet her illness compromised her acceptance of him. As long as there was a possibility that he held the proverbial shotgun behind the door, she couldn’t trust him.
Unless he disarmed himself and gave her the shotgun.
“I was once in love with a woman named Ruby. She was beautiful. Dark hair, like yours, about the same length. Quite short, a real bundle of energy, you know. We played on the tennis team together at UT. But she didn’t think she was beautiful, so she killed herself. I don’t think I’ve ever recovered. I’ve only told this to one other person.”
He let the confession stand and watched her face.
“Do you think I’m beautiful?” Paradise asked.
Brad had expected any reaction but this, but he immediately saw the connections she was making. Suicides, death, heartache—these were all things she was overly familiar with and shut out as a matter of survival, like she shut out terrible memories. Instead, she focused on the fact that he’d lost a beautiful woman.
When he didn’t respond immediately, she spoke.
“No,” she said, “but that’s okay. I don’t have the faintest clue about beauty. All I know is that I don’t fit in anywhere but here. This is my home. My own father rejected me, the world rejects people like me, I don’t know how to be beautiful or what clothes to buy or how not to stink.”
Her words crushed him, but he didn’t know how much of what he felt was empathy and how much was respect.
“I don’t think you realize what women on the outside are like because you’ve been trapped in here for so long,” he finally said. “It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.”
She looked at him with those haunting brown eyes. “It must have hurt,” she said quietly.
His breath suddenly came hard. She had that knowing tone, and it made the hair on his neck bristle.
“You still wonder how she could have killed herself if you made her life worth living.”
The words felt like a gut punch. Emotion swelled in his throat and he turned, fighting off a wave of sorrow cresting under the force of her words.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I struggle with self-worth, too.”
And then she was quiet. But in that moment, whether or not she’d meant to, Brad felt as though she’d made them equals. Bearers of the same awful secret. Soul mates of a kind, however absurd that might sound.
And then he pushed the feeling aside, cleared his mind, and offered her a polite grin. “Don’t we all,” he said. “Life can be hell.”
She didn’t respond, but her eyes refused to move from his.
Brad brought his thoughts back to his purpose for coming. The killer was out there, and Brad was here to stop him, not wallow in his own past.
He cleared his throat. “You might be able to help me out. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I expected coming here. We’re running out of options and if we don’t find a way to stop the killer, he’s going to kill more women. But now that I’ve met you, I think maybe you can help us save an innocent girl’s life.”
“You’re trying to manipulate me. But put that way, how can I refuse?”
“I’m not… Manipulate is too strong a word. What would you do in my situation? A girl’s life is at stake.”
“I doubt I can help. You seem intelligent enough, why do you need me?”
“Because you might be more intelligent than you think. Because we’re here. Because I feel like I’m chasing a ghost and you see ghosts.”
She nodded. “Okay. What can I do?”
“Allison said you see things about the dead. We have a dead body.”
She looked at her fingers in her lap, swallowing. “Sometimes people die here, the older ones. A couple of times I saw some things. I think I saw the last things they saw.”
Crazy as it sounded, Brad had come across another report of a similar psychic phenomenon, a person’s ability to somehow connect with the freshest memories stored in a deceased person’s brain. He’d dismissed the report as rubbish.
“Ghosts,” he said.
She looked up, concerned. “I would have to be with them. In the same room. I have to touch them.”
Brad nodded. “I can assure you I would personally accompany you and…”
She stood to her feet, face white. “No. No, I can’t leave.”
He instinctively stood and stepped closer, reaching for her. But she slipped to his left and hurried around the chair like a scared rabbit.
“We could keep the shades drawn, you wouldn’t even know—”
“No. Absolutely not.” Her eyes darted toward the window. “You don’t understand, I can’t leave.”
The color had vanished from her face—now she really did look like she’d seen a ghost. She bolted toward the door and slammed it shut behind her.
Brad jerked himself from a moment of immobility, leaped over the chair, and threw the door wide just in time to see her fleeting form disappear into the hall.
Then she was gone.
Allison stood from her seat across the room, smiling.
Always smiling.
“That evidently went well,” she said. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
“Do you think?”
“No.”