The Bride Collector

21

SHE WASN’T COOPERATING the way Quinton had hoped. Her spirit was too strong and she had a rebellious nature, making him second-guess his choice to take her. The psycho-sedative was starting to kick in now, but he always preferred to get at least a nod of appreciation for God’s plan before he gave the brides the rest of the drugs. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been easily convinced of her opportunity.

The reason for her stubbornness was quite plain. Unlike the others, she was a psychologist, and therefore her mind was badly bent in the wrong direction. To complicate matters, she was full of antagonism toward him for taking the other favorites, and she didn’t seem to be able to grasp that this was all in her best interest.

Which presented a problem for Quinton. As God’s messenger sent to find the bride, much like Isaac’s servant had been sent off to find Rebecca, Quinton had to convince the bride. She had to become a willing participant, like the other five favorites. But Nikki wasn’t submitting to her destiny as she should, perhaps because she was mentally ill.

“Now, listen to me, Nikki,” he reasoned, standing over her restrained form on the gurney. “You’re not listening very well. I’m going to give you one more chance, but then I’m going to have to become more persuasive, and you won’t like that.”

The makeup he’d applied had smeared. He would have to touch it up. Time was running out. He couldn’t risk lingering with her forever just because she wasn’t right in the head. God would take one flawed bride for the sake of all those in the world who were equally flawed. And there were a lot of them. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen this one.

“Why is it so difficult to understand God’s love for you?” he asked. “Why don’t you want to be his bride?”

She’d finally settled down after the phone call to Rain Man and now seemed stoic. Perhaps she was ready to accept her fortune.

“You don’t want to be his bride?”

“It’s my choice, not yours,” she said quietly. Her face was flat and emotionless.

“It is. But in saying that, you’re only highlighting the fact that you’re choosing to turn your back on him. I could understand your rejection of him if you didn’t understand how much he’s taken with you. You do understand that you are his favorite. Is that where your confusion comes in?”

“God loves me, so he wouldn’t force me. I am his favorite. We all are. Which is why he doesn’t force us.”

“I’m not forcing you. The choice is yours. Do you want to be with him?”

She refused to answer this question. There was no hope for her twisted mind.

“You need me to agree, don’t you?” she asked.

“It would be nice, yes.”

“And you think I would do something because you think it’s nice? After what you’ve done to me?”

“Your incompetence is outrageous,” Quinton said. And again he wondered if he’d made a mistake by plucking such a dim-witted goof from the sea of women who would be grateful to be chosen. “You’re trying to stall, I understand. You think that because Rain Man now knows the sun has come out and is shining on his precious little lamb, he’ll come running. Even now, he might be on his way. But I doubt Rain Man and those retards he’s working with are as smart as all that. Although I will say, the women there put you to shame.”

She didn’t get it, of course. She truly was a mental case.

“I get that I am his favorite,” she said, in an obvious attempt to keep the discussion going. “But I don’t want to die.”

“So all of heaven and earth is waiting with bated breath to see what the favorite one will do, and you’re willing to put it all on hold because all you can think about is yourself. Nikki wants to live longer. To milk small pleasures from another hour, another day, week, month, year. Well, excuse me while we all sit and wait for the selfish little brat to suck down as much ice cream and strawberries she can before taking the trip down the aisle for a much better life. He loves no one more than you. Why so greedy?”

Fresh tears slipped from her eyes and ran back toward her ears. “Going down that aisle doesn’t feel right to me, Quinton,” she whispered. “I’m scared.”

“Of course you’re scared. You’re so busy, busy, busy in your tiny mind, obsessed with this puny life. But once you know the truth, Nikki, it will set you free.”

Her lips quivered, and for a moment he thought she might start to sob again, which would effectively end the discussion, this time forever.

Instead she said something else that required him to end the discussion.

“Even the demons know the truth, and they tremble. It doesn’t make them any less evil. God loves me, and he wouldn’t do this to me.”

And then she followed it up with an even more outlandish claim.

“You’re jealous, aren’t you? You are afraid that God hates you, and you will do anything to be his favorite, like us, like the women you’re killing. No matter what you keep telling yourself, you really think God hates you. You’re jealous. You want to be God’s favorite, too.”

Quinton stared at her, stunned by her audacity. Was she really so dense?

The buzzing in his mind grew so loud that he had to press back a growing panic. There was something truthful about what she was saying, he thought, but then he dismissed that thought as a plant from the evil one.

It occurred to Quinton that the seventh bride, the most beautiful woman in the world, whom he’d already selected and who put this woman to shame in every conceivable way, might be strong in spirit as well. What if she, too, resisted her invitation?

The thought made him feel ill. It wouldn’t happen, of course. Rain Man would see to that. He was sure of it. But the thought still made him nauseated.

Quinton picked up the syringe, pressed the needle into the vein in Nikki’s right arm, and pressed the plunger to the hilt. The large dose of sedative would make this easier for all of them. She had at least recognized God’s great love for her. That would have to do.

“Please, Quinton,” she whispered. Her eyelids looked heavy. “Please don’t kill me.”

She really was beautiful, Quinton thought. And then he taped her mouth shut and went to fetch the drill.

THE DASHBOARD CLOCK read 4:02 when Brad cut across two lanes, ran the red light despite the blare of horns, and turned onto Simms Street. Nikki’s apartment was on the right over the railroad tracks, just after 72nd Avenue.

His palms were wet and his shirt drenched with sweat no amount of air-conditioning could stem. Backup was on the way.

Two thoughts drummed through his mind, driving him faster. The first was that Nikki was alive. She had to be alive. The killer could not know they’d found his jack. The woman who’d fallen into his clutches because of Brad’s involvement with her, however thin that connection, was still alive. She simply had to be, because he couldn’t go through this again.

The second thought drumming through his head was that the killer wouldn’t kill her. He couldn’t kill her, not for the sake of killing, because his psychosis demanded he follow a ritual that couldn’t be satisfied with a bullet. He might try to kill Brad when he broke in on the act, but he wouldn’t turn his gun on Nikki.

She was meant to bleed and remain angelic.

It was as much a hope as a conclusion, but Brad depended on it now as he wove in and out of traffic on Simms, headed for the Golden Hills Luxury Apartment complex just now visible two blocks ahead.

An eighteen-wheeler pulled into Brad’s lane and braked. The same one he’d cut off at the intersection, now that he thought about it. Cars on both sides limited his options.

Brad laid on his horn and was immediately repaid by a loud honk from the truck in front of him. The eighteen-wheeler came to a stop at the red light at 72nd Avenue.

Panic lapped at his mind. He slammed his steering wheel with both palms. “Come on, come on, come on!”

NIKKI LAY PERFECTLY still, fighting off the effects of the drug. He’d hovered over her or sat in the chair watching her nearly every waking moment. Twice he’d retreated to the corner and urinated into a large plastic bottle. Once he’d left her alone in the room while searching out the rest of the apartment, and once he’d tinkered with his tools on the table across the room for an extended period, maybe half an hour. Preparing.

Each time she’d fought through the haze and gone to work on the strips of cloth that fastened her arms and ankles to the gurney.

Her first sliver of hope had come when the killer left the fingernail clippers on the edge of the mattress after he manicured her nails and painted them with a ruby-red polish. She’d managed to snake her fingers over them and tuck them under her back.

She’d spent desperate minutes unsure if the clippers would prove any use at all. Then he’d turned his attention to his tools, and she’d cut away at the cloth that tied her right wrist to the aluminum frame. She’d nearly cut through the strip before stopping and considering her intentions. She couldn’t sit up and cut her legs free without being found out.

Armed with the knowledge that she had the capacity to cut herself free, she bided her time.

Then he’d left the room. She’d sat up and frantically went to work on her ankles, sure he would walk back in at any second. And she couldn’t cut all the way through. Not yet, he would see it! Not until she knew she had a path out, when he least expected it.

He had to be in the room, unprepared, when she made her break.

And now that moment had come.

For the first time in half an hour, Quinton turned his back to her and walked back to the table of tools. To get the drill, she thought. He was going to get the drill and go to work. This was it. She had to get out now.

The only problem was the lock. He’d fixed a padlock to the door, and the key was in his right pocket, she’d watched him use it twice now. Unless she disabled him and broke out with force or using the key, she didn’t stand a chance.

But it was now. She had to go now, before the drugs wiped her out completely.

Nikki turned her head and saw that he was plugging an orange extension cord into the wall while humming softly. She jerked both feet up toward herself, tearing them free with a soft ripping sound. The haunting violins in the music he’d played over and over helped to mask the tear, but she quickly straightened her legs so he couldn’t see what she’d done.

Quinton glanced back. “You’re a strong one,” he said. “I’m going to have to numb your legs. I don’t want you to feel any pain. It’s all going to be okay.” He bent over a black case for the Novocain and a syringe.

Head swimming in whirlpool of fear and drugs, Nikki took a deep breath, rolled out of the gurney, took two steps to the table, snatched up the hammer that lay there and, with her final reserves of strength, she threw herself at him.

THE LIGHT TURNED green but the truck was taking its time and Brad was starting to lose perspective.

The car on his right was a Lincoln Continental, and its driver apparently felt no need to teach him the same lesson the truck driver had. The moment the Lincoln surged forward, Brad lay on his horn and whipped the BMW into the right lane, before the Honda behind the Continental could close the gap.

He squeezed into the vacant spot without being hit, shoved the accelerator to the floor, and shot past a cursing truck driver on his left.

He clamped his mouth shut, letting the heat of frustration wash over his face. None of this mattered at the moment. What did matter was that he was able to veer back to his left in front of the stalled eighteen-wheeler, accelerate the BMW to full speed without a single car to slow his progress, and whip into the apartment complex’s gated entrance without being held up again.

He flashed his badge at the guard. “FBI, you got the call?”

“Yes, sir.”

The gate was opening already. Thank you, Temple.

He gunned through, heard his tires squeal, and immediately backed down. The killer might hear beyond her walls. Brad had made it clear that the police should not use sirens. His greatest advantage, maybe his only advantage, was coming in unexpected. The Bride Collector wasn’t ready for him, not this soon after the call.

He took the BMW down the side street fast, ignoring the speed bumps. Two police cruisers sped past, headed north on Simms-backup was here.

Hold on… Hold on, Nikki.

THE BLOW CAME from behind, glancing off the side of his head with such force that Quinton wondered if he might be dying. He’d heard her grunt and started to turn when it landed, otherwise he might have taken the blow full on his skull.

Surprised, he leaped to one side as the favorite’s naked form flew by him and slammed into the wall. Other than her underwear, she wore only four strips of cloth, one tied to each wrist and one on each ankle.

Quinton knew immediately what had happened. She’d pulled herself off the gurney and come at him like a plucked goose. And she’d hit him on the head with his own hammer, the one with a fiberglass head that he never used but brought in the interest of being prepared for every eventuality.

She spun around, hammer still in hand, eyes fired like stars.

She’d smeared more of her makeup! “What are you doing?” he demanded.

The favorite swung again, but Quinton blocked her arm with his own. The hammer hit her own leg and she cried into her tape.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, angry now. “I had you nearly perfect and you’re messing this all up! Stop this!” He snatched the hammer from her hands and tossed it into the corner. “You’re acting like a child.”

She sagged against the wall, sobbing under the influence of drugs and hopelessness. A glance back at the gurney and he saw the fingernail clippers on the mattress. He’d been careless. He deserved the extra work she was forcing upon him.

Nikki slipped down to her seat, pulling the extension cord free, then she drew quiet. It was amazing that she’d managed an escape attempt despite being drugged. None of the others had tried to resist like this. Perhaps that was why she was so luckily chosen. She was a strong one, physically and mentally, even if she was a bit of an idiot. The tough, stubborn type of woman, blessed also with true beauty.

This was the kind of woman who did well on Wall Street, he thought. The executives of the world. Beautiful and strong. He understood why God loved them so much.

Quinton hauled her up, carried her to the gurney, and flopped her facedown. He would drill her now, apply the glue to her back, and place her on the wall. Then he would redo her makeup as she gave up her ghost and became his bride.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have caused a real mess.

Quinton had decided to use the new Black and Decker electric drill he’d bought for this occasion. He wanted to see how it compared with his previous choices.

He plugged the orange extension cord back into the wall, picked up the drill and approached Nikki, God’s favorite.

BRAD LEFT HIS BMW parked two buildings south of Nikki’s second-floor apartment and ran under the causeway. A car squealing up to the front door would alert anyone keeping an eye out.

He took the outdoor stairs two at a time, checked to see the police cars pulling in behind his, and swung onto the landing. Brass numbers above the door: 7289. A stained panel door with a one-foot square beveled glass panel at eye level. The tenants had their own locks, he’d checked already. Management didn’t have access. The only way in was to break down the door.

Shoot out the deadbolt.

He slipped out his FBI-issued Glock, chambered a round, and approached the door on the balls of his feet. Shoes padded up the stairs behind him.

Brad swung around, gun in both hands trained on the deadbolt, fighting the urge to go in on his own now because every second felt like an hour and Nikki might have seconds or minutes but not hours. Now. Now!

He waited. The two uniformed police were by his side in seven seconds, sidearms ready. They’d been briefed, and if they hadn’t he didn’t have time to do it now.

He nodded once, pressed the Glock’s muzzle close to the wood directly in line with the deadbolt, and pulled the trigger.

Boom! The gun bucked hard and he threw his full weight into the door. But the door was stronger than one deadbolt and he didn’t break through on the first attempt.

The Bride Collector was now aware that someone was trying to shoot their way in. He was setting up for a shot in the hall or climbing out the back window where the two other cops would pick him up. Or he had something else up his sleeve.

The thoughts only pushed Brad’s sense of urgency. He pulled back and pulled the trigger four more times, obliterating the lock, the bolt. This time a single kick swung the door in silently on well-oiled hinges.

Brad went in with his weapon extended. Chips from the backside of the door lay scattered on the floor. On the wall, a painting of Vail shattered by a bullet hung askew. Dust filled the air from the splintered wood.

Nothing else was out of place. The tan couch, the large-screen Samsung television, the ornate table lamps, the walls with the rest of the paintings-all undisturbed, unmarked.

No sign of the killer.

Brad ran to the hall on his left, hesitated one second against the wall, then jabbed his head around the corner. Nothing but hall. It was a two-bedroom apartment, she’d told him once. Both rooms down this hall.

Not a sound. No sign of any disturbance at all. What if he was wrong? What if Andrea’s jack in the whole was just a big mistake and Paradise had sent him on a wild-goose chase?

He stepped around the corner and ran down the hall. The doors to both bedrooms were open. He knew then… He knew but he could not say it or even think it. Something was wrong.

The first room on his left looked like a bedroom. Empty. He ran past, down the hall, into the room at the end. The shades were pulled up and bright light illuminated a queen-size bed with a brown comforter and matching lamps on the nightstands. Paintings of castles in rich English meadows.

Nikki was not in her home.

The blow was so unexpected that Brad didn’t react. They had been wrong. They had come to the wrong place. Nikki…

Nikki would pay the price.

“Sir!”

He spun at the sound of the officer’s voice, calling from back down the hall.

“Sir, I think you want to see this.”

He pushed past one officer who’d followed him down the hall and saw that his partner had turned the light on in the first room.

“What is it?”

The room was decorated in rich purples and greens, larger than the one at the end. At its center was a king-size bed neatly dressed in a silk comforter with six or seven decorative pillows and two beautiful chiffon lamps. This was the master. Nikki’s room.

The officer was looking at an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper folded in half and set atop one of the silk pillows. It was addressed with red ink and it read, RAIN MAN.

The killer. He’d been here. Which meant that Andrea was right, this was the jack in the whole. A note from the killer addressed to Rain Man. To him.

“Call Temple at my office. Get a forensics team out here immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

He grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand and used it to pick up the note, then opened it gingerly to the Bride Collector’s familiar handwriting:

The jack is in the whole, but today the jack is the joker and he’s got a smile. So sorry, Rain Man, but the sun has come and things are looking bright. I have taken God’s favorite back to him. He waits for his bride. You’ll have to find your own.

P.S. We are at 2435 4th Street. Boulder. #203.

He stared at the words trying to think past the voices screaming in his mind. The killer had outwitted them, played them in a fixed game. Nikki was gone. Gone!

But that wasn’t true… No, the man couldn’t know that they’d broken his code so quickly. He was sure to think he had some time. Brad had heard Nikki’s voice only twenty-five minutes ago.

He pulled out his phone as he ran. Temple picked up on the first ring. “I have a team on the way, Brad. I… I…”

“He’s got her in an apartment in Boulder,” Brad cut in. “I’m half an hour away-more, it’s rush hour! Get the Boulder PD out there now! And tell them to go in silent. He doesn’t know we’re on the way, he can’t, not…” Brad ran out of breath as he took the stairs at a run.

“You’re saying she’s alive?”

“I don’t know. Twenty-four-thirty-five Fourth Street in Boulder. Number Two-oh-three.” He shoved the note in his pocket. “Hurry, Temple. Please hurry.”

Temple would make the call, but local response time would be five, seven, ten minutes. Depending on where the closest cruiser happened to be. Depending on how fast the dispatcher got the interagency message. Depending on everything but him.

No longer concerned about stealth, Brad took out of the apartment complex on screaming wheels. He headed east on 72 and took the Foothills Highway north. The cards were now dealt, the bets made. They would either reach Nikki in time or they would find her dead.

Brad had faced death. Victims. Ruby. He’d grown accustomed to the stench of it. But that stench never faded, not for him, and particularly not if it arose off someone like Nikki.

Yet something had happened deep in his psyche these past ten minutes. Something he recognized. He’d rushed into her room and assumed that he was too late. That Nikki was dead.

He was horrified, yes. But she wasn’t Ruby. No one had been Ruby. No pain had come close to shutting him down the way he’d shut down following her death ten years earlier. And this, he thought, was because he had given himself to Ruby, heart and soul. When someone you love dies, something inside of you dies. You die. She is you. You are her.

He shook the thought from his mind and called Allison at the CWI.

“Well, young man, you’ve certainly left the place buzzing.”

“Hello, Allison. Sorry about-”

“Don’t apologize. You’ve put all three on the top of the world. Did you find her?”

“Not yet. But they were right. Tell Paradise we found another note from him. I want you to write it down and ask them to study it for… anything. Can you do that?”

“Tell me.”

He read the note to her.

“God’s favorite,” she said softly, repeating to herself. “Interesting.”

“Does it mean something to you?”

“Well… In general, yes. Basic theology. So besides this note, you found nothing?”

“No. Boulder PD is on their way now. I have to go, Allison.” He hesitated. “You used to be a nun?”

“Yes.”

“You still believe in God.”

“Of course. I’m not terribly religious, I’m afraid, but I do what I do because of that belief. And yes, I will pray.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t count her out, Brad. She still has that image locked in her head somewhere.”

Paradise. He never would have guessed that Allison, of all people, would push for him to exploit her own patient.

Then again, Allison saw the exploitation as her patient’s salvation.

A tone in his ear indicated an incoming call. He glanced at the phone screen. Temple.

“Nikki’s seen him, too,” Brad said to Allison. “We’re going to get to her in time. Gotta go.”

He switched over to Temple. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed since he’d made the call to dispatch Boulder PD. This had to be it. His heart pounded in his rib cage like a fist.

He brought the phone back to his ear. “Yeah, hello…”

“Brad…”

And he knew immediately by Temple’s tone that it wasn’t good.

“What is it?” he demanded, flushing with anger.

“I’m sorry, Brad. They found her.”

His vision blurred. “Found her? How?”

When Temple answered, his voice was all too matter-of-fact. “On the wall.”

Images of Melissa and Caroline, white on the wall like angels, flashed through his mind. He couldn’t form an image of Nikki like that.

“Brad, I’m sorry, I know you two were close…”

He switched the phone off and set it in the cup holder. There was something wrong. They’d come too close to lose now. Andrea had figured it out! Roudy had paced all day and exposed the jack. Paradise had told him that Nikki was home. And they had been right, he’d found the note…

They’d cracked it wide open, it couldn’t end like this! Not after what they’d accomplished.

Brad pushed the BMW to its limits, ignoring the repeated horns from all sides, weaving in and out of traffic as he raced toward the crime scene. His head was in a drum, knocking around in the darkness. He wasn’t thinking straight.

At least half a dozen cruisers had beat him to 2435 4th Street. Lights were flashing on four of them. Yellow tape already formed a barrier around the entrance to the courtyard inside. Spectators hung back on the street and under two large trees, watching. Low-rent district. The rental information would take them nowhere; the Bride Collector was too careful, too smart.

Brad stepped over the yellow tape and flashed his badge at an officer. He might have said, “FBI,” but he wasn’t sure. His eyes were on the open door across the courtyard, up on the second floor where several more police stood talking quietly.

He ran. Through the entrance, up steel stairs, down the walkway, past two uniforms at the door, into an unfurnished apartment. Someone was saying, “Hey, hey!” behind him, telling him to slow down. But he couldn’t get to the room quickly enough.

And then he was there, in the room down the hall marked as the crime scene. The room was empty except for a plainclothes detective, a uniformed officer. And Nikki.

She was on the wall and she was wearing a white lace veil.

“FBI, out!” He flashed his credentials. “Both of you, out now.”

“Now, hold on just-”

Brad grabbed the detective by his shirt and shoved him toward the door. “This is my partner, this is my case, now get out!”

They stumbled out and he slammed the door behind them, breathing as heavily from what was on the wall as from the run. He turned slowly and faced her.

Nikki’s skin was like ivory, drained of life. Naked except for her underwear. Her arms were spread wide and her head tilted to her right so that her dark hair draped over her shoulder. Eyes closed, lips ruby with lipstick, fingernails manicured and polished.

She’d been positioned exactly as the others. But she was in an apartment. And there was a small pool of her blood on the carpet beneath her feet. The Bride Collector had left without plugging her wounds. He’d taken the bucket of blood and left her dead.

Brad slid down the door to his seat, gripped his face with both hands, and cried.