The Bride Collector

2

FBI FIELD OFFICE, Stout Street, Denver, 9:00 PM.

Nikki Holden stood next to Brad beside the stainless-steel examination table in the basement morgue. Watching Kim gingerly turn the body onto its back, she noted the pathologist’s care not to disturb the shoulder-blade skin they’d cut to release it from the wall.

The victim was a twenty-one-year-old named Caroline Redik. The name had surfaced when the lab ran her prints through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, better known by its acronym, AFIS. The ever-expanding database now included anyone who’d applied for a passport, which Caroline had done before taking a trip to Paris one year earlier, for reasons yet unknown.

Calm and delicate, Kim labored with a plastic face shield in place. Not much could ruffle the forty-three-year-old. She was as comfortable dipping her hand into a bloody gunshot wound as, when it mattered, peeling back the layers of society’s skin with a well-placed question. She kept her blond hair short. Easier to keep out of the way. If there was a mother in the office, it was Kim. Her manner created an interesting but somehow fitting contrast with her well-known love for a smorgasbord of men.

Nikki turned her attention back to the body. The skin was very pale, translucent, showing the blue veins beneath. She lay prone, looking like a dressmaker’s dummy, displaying perfectly formed breasts, a flat belly, and well-defined hips. Nikki found her rather bony, actually. While affixed to the wall, her flesh had settled over her bones and given her a less emaciated appearance. On her back, however, she looked quite gaunt.

The eyes stared up at the ceiling, blue but lifeless. Her makeup was far more obvious under the bright halogen lights than it had been before the evidence team illuminated the shack. The eyeliner and eye shadow had been carefully applied, evidence of a steady, experienced hand. Was the killer a cosmetologist? Or a drag queen, even? Nikki could just see vertical streaks running down from the corners of her eyes and ruining the perfect surface, as if poor Caroline had cried before the final application.

Nikki recalled a memory of her father holding her shoulders when she was twelve. He’d knelt and brushed a tear from her right cheek, where a dime-size birthmark had once darkened her skin. “You are beautiful, Nikki, and your birthmark makes you even more beautiful. You don’t need to cover it up. And if the boys don’t see that, it’s only because they’re foolish, prepubescent puppets of the system.” Then he’d kissed her on the cheek.

The memory still brought a tightness to her throat, maybe because his noble ideals hadn’t really survived him. She’d had the brown mark surgically removed when she was eighteen.

If she had it to do over again, would she remove it today?

“… drugs in her system,” Kim was saying. “Benzodiazepine, the same psychoactive sedative he’s used on all four. More than enough to make her susceptible to suggestion.”

“No sign of sexual contact?” Brad said.

“None.”

Nikki caught Brad’s sharp look. “That doesn’t mean this wasn’t a sexual act,” she interjected.

He offered her a slight nod. Just that, a simple gesture of acknowledgment and appreciation for her input. Funny how he could lighten her mood without the slightest knowledge of his overall effect on her.

The other women in the office insisted he was a dead ringer for a blond-headed George Clooney, ten years younger, perhaps. She could see the similarities. The dark, perpetually smiling eyes, probing deep. The short hair, the soft boyish face, slightly elongated. The quintessential look of a perfect gentleman reinforced by his often thoughtful and polite demeanor.

But her closer working relationship had taught her that those qualities didn’t make Brad a soft or pliable man. If anything, his edges were rougher than they first appeared. Clean on the outside, giving great attention to detail, but confident enough to say what was on his mind whenever he saw fit.

His unapologetic talent for drawing women with his boyish good looks and strong conviction was tempered only by his notorious refusal to commit. Which, in turn, made him a considerable mystery.

To Nikki’s way of thinking, he carried all the markings of a man with a past so deeply scarred that he was compelled to build walls of self-preservation. Which was why she had resisted her own attraction to him for so long. Even if he was interested in her, as she suspected, she wasn’t sure she was interested in a man she couldn’t quite peg. As a psychologist, it was her job to analyze people down to their uttermost depths. The fact that she could not do so with Brad nagged her with an unshakable sense of wariness.

His eyes were soft and kind, but what lay hidden behind those eyes gave her pause. The unknown. She’d misjudged a man once before and wasn’t eager to do it again. Her training in behavioral science hadn’t made her any more trusting.

“He wouldn’t grow impatient,” she said. “He would relish his time with her.”

Another nod, this time looking at the cadaver. “He would.”

Kim looked up, then turned to the victim’s other side and dramatically ran her index finger over the foot, tracing each toe. Always one for theatrics when the opportunity presented itself.

“She took care of her feet. The toenail polish is fresh, applied in the last twenty-four hours. But she’s taken care of her feet, her whole body for that matter, for a long time.”

“He likes to apply makeup and give pedicures,” Nikki said.

A half-inch hole, now bloodless and black, ran up into the heel. “He used the same half-inch bit size, maybe the same bit. Ran it directly through the skin, the calcaneus bone, severing the peroneus longus tendon, and into the anterior tibial artery. Everything’s as it was with the other three, except for this.” Kim traced her finger down to the victim’s right heel. “This is what’s new.”

She picked up a small roll of bloody paper, maybe two inches long, and held it up between her thumb and forefinger. “This time he left this in the right heel.”

Brad stepped forward. “Writing?”

“I can see some markings, yes. But I haven’t unrolled it yet. I thought you would want a look before I sent it up to the lab.”

Brad’s face lightened a shade.

The killer had left them a message.

SPECIAL AGENT IN Charge James Temple sat against the edge of the secretary desk on the conference room’s north end and gazed at them with brown, glassy eyes, hands folded up by his chin. Nikki leaned against the wall, arms crossed, fixated on the enlarged photograph of the Bride Collector’s note on the screen. Two other agents, Miguel Ruffino and Barth Kramer, lounged in chairs, their focus divided among the note, the SAC, Nikki, and Brad, who paced at the head of the conference table.

There was a reason these two would always be good, but not great, at their jobs, Brad thought. They lacked the obsessive personality required to bring inordinate focus to any single task.

“So this is it,” Temple said to Brad’s left. “We have us a certified wacko. A freaking lunatic from some funny barn who’s out there drilling holes in women to make a point.” He looked around with a bemused look. “No pun intended, of course.”

Ruffino and Kramer guffawed, just as Nikki shot the SAC a sharp look. “I wouldn’t put it like-”

“Spare me the psychobabble.” Temple stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. “If this isn’t certified crazy, I don’t know what is.”

The man stood maybe three or four inches shy of six feet, wiry as a bull snake. He shaved his head and took pride in his body, which he regularly and rigorously brought into submission at the gym. The man was a misfit in Denver, Brad thought. In the Southeast, from which he’d been transferred a month earlier, his attitude would have been less of a problem. But up here, gunslingers were frowned upon, and James Temple was most definitely a gunslinger-hotheaded, quick to conclusions, and choleric to the bone.

“On balance, most pattern killers are mentally stable,” Nikki said. “They are well educated, financially stable, often good looking, seemingly well-adjusted people. Unlike mass murderers, whose delusions feed beliefs of supremacy, serial killers act for personal gain or revenge. They do so in a calculated, thoughtful way. Hardly your freaking lunatic.”

“Read it.” Temple frowned and jabbed his sharp, dimpled chin in the direction of the screen. “Any idiot can see that this religious nutcase slobbers on himself. You’re saying you see something different?”

Nikki’s face reddened, but she didn’t point out the man’s blunder in essentially calling himself an idiot. She looked at the screen.

The note was written in black lettering, with a fine ballpoint pen. The two-by-three-inch piece of white paper had been cut using a straightedge, then was folded several times before being rolled and inserted into the hole in Caroline’s heel, at least several days after it had been written.

Brad read through the poem again.

The Beauty Eden id Lost

Where intelligence does centered

I came do her and she smashed da Serpent head

I searched and find the seventh and beautiful

She will rest in my Serpent’s hole

And I will live again

“He can hardly spell.”

Brad regarded the man. “I’m sorry, James, but I don’t see an imbecile.”

The SAC raised a brow and pulled out a chair to sit in. At times like this, Brad’s reputation proved useful. And he’d hailed from Miami before dazzling the Four Corners. That made James Temple basically kin, at least in Temple’s mind. He would think twice before dismissing anything Brad had to say.

“Is that right? Well, please…” He opened a palm of invitation. “Fill us in.”

Nikki shifted her gaze to the dark window, struggling to hide her frustration.

“I think Nikki’s assessment is right,” Brad explained. “We’re dealing with a highly intelligent individual who knows exactly what he’s doing within the context of his own world.”

“Just because he knows how to drill holes and clean up after himself doesn’t mean he’s not barking mad.”

“No,” Nikki interjected, “but even if he is suffering from psychosis, it doesn’t mean he’s an animal.”

“I see motivation and intention,” Brad continued, nodding at the note on the screen. “But it would be a significant mistake not to assume the author knew exactly what he was writing and why he was writing it.”

“You’re saying he’s broadcasting his next move,” Temple said, glancing back at the note. “How so?”

“Assume with me that this was written by a scholar; a poet with the intelligence of Hemingway. And written for our benefit, with some bad grammar thrown in to make himself look less intelligent.”

“Grammar has little to do with intelligence,” Nikki said.

“I realize that. But go with me. What’s he really saying?”

“The beauty of Eden is lost,” Nikki read. “The fall of innocence.”

Temple closed his eyes momentarily in a show of impatience. “Fine. Something less obvious.”

Brad nodded at Nikki. She exchanged an inquisitive look with him, nodded her appreciation, and looked up at the screen.

“He’s saying that where once beauty, innocence, and intelligence were found, this Eden, it’s now lost. The serpent-read evil or the devil-is responsible. Not sure about the third line-‘I came to her and she smashed the Serpent’s head’-doesn’t make sense to me.”

She glanced at Brad.

“Motivation,” he said. “He, the serpent, destroyed beauty but was wounded in the process. He’s upset. Go on.”

Nikki nodded. “I can go with that. The last three lines seem straightforward. He’s after a replacement for the beautiful one who fell, so he can live again.”

“He’s looking for a wife,” Brad said. “A new Eve.”

“And this helps us how?” Barth Kramer asked.

The SAC ignored him entirely, having stood again to pace. “Okay, I’m with you. Tell me more.”

Brad walked behind the conference table, keeping his eyes fixed on the words, written in the killer’s own hand. He could see it all: The desk. Neatly arranged. Perfectly ordered. A pen poised over the paper just so, while the words he had recited to himself a thousand times flowed through his mind, sung by a choir, a chorus in a symphony. A requiem that thundered the truth, demanding to be heard.

Now such truth was reduced to mere words on a simple piece of white paper, for his greatest enemies to see. It was like being stripped naked, both terrifying and thrilling at once. The killer was coming out. His whole life was here, on this piece of paper.

Brad cleared his throat. “His killings are ritualistic, leading him to life. He’s not doing it out of anger. None of the crime scenes has shown signs of rage.”

Local authorities had found the first victim three weeks ago in a barn just south of Grand Junction, in the arid Grand Valley near the border of Utah and Colorado. Serena Barker had been twenty-three, and the police had assumed her to be a victim of satanic ritual. She’d been dead for three days, and a coyote had gotten to her left foot.

The Denver FBI office hadn’t been engaged until the second body was found sixty miles northeast of Denver, in an apartment near the plains cattle town of Greeley. Karen Neely, twenty-four. Again carefully preserved, nearly flawless in her final presentation. Brad had been assigned the case and immediately requested copies of the file from Grand Junction. A studious detective, Braden Hall, had meticulously documented the case. There was little doubt that they had a serial killer on their hands.

The Bride Collector killed his third woman a week later in Parker, south of Denver. Julia Paxton was twenty and had been found less than eight hours after her death, a vision of twisted beauty glued to the wall of her own house.

All women under the age of twenty-five. All exceptionally beautiful. As of yet, only one murder had been publicized-that of Julia Paxton, who was a well-known model for Victoria’s Secret. Other than the distinctive circumstances of death, they could determine no connection among the women.

As for the killer, recovered evidence from the previous scenes put him at 180 to 200 pounds based on the depth of his shoe indentations in soil. No DNA to run through CODIS-the Combined DNA Index System. No hair or cell samples. No saliva, blood, semen, or latent prints tied to the killer.

He was essentially a ghost.

“His motivation is in finding life,” Brad continued, “not in delivering death. He believes he’s leading the women into life.”

Temple stared at him. “You see, now there’s where my psycho-nutcase warning bells start going crazy. Forgive me if I don’t see torturing and killing someone ‘into life’ as nothing less than barking mad.”

“Psychotic, maybe,” Nikki said. “Mentally ill, maybe. But not necessarily less intelligent than any of us. The direct link between psychosis and intelligence is well documented in some subjects. We should assume that the Bride Collector is more intelligent than anyone in this room. If we don’t, we risk seriously underestimating him.”

“That’s your profile? Our man’s a genius?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

Temple crossed his arms and settled back against the desk. “Okay, I’ll let you go with that.”

“There’s more,” Brad said. “He wants us to know he’s going after beautiful women, that much is unmistakable in his writing. I would say he knows we’ll see through his attempt to look unintelligent. He wants us to look for a supremely intelligent person who has a penchant for killing beautiful women because he’s been jilted by one. In reality, that’s not the case. Sound right to you, Nikki?”

Her blue eyes widened. She nodded, lost in thought. “Eerily right.”

Temple drummed his fingers on the desk. “Okay, so we play his game his way. We look for the most beautiful women in and around Denver.”

“That’s what he wants us to do,” Frank said.

“I’m open to suggestions. In the absence of any, we keep him engaged, even if it means playing things his way. Keep it under wraps. We don’t need everyone who thinks they’re decent looking in a panic. Any tire tracks lifted at the shack scene?”

“None.”

“Other evidence processed?”

“So far he’s clean. The fresh hair, bodily fluids, and fingerprints match the victim. Three other hair samples we’re running now. Could be from anyone messing around in there.”

Temple nodded at Frank and glanced at the others. “Any other ideas?”

Nikki shifted off the wall and paced. “You want to play his way, start with all known cases of mental illness in Colorado.”

“So now he’s a wacko again?”

“You’re not listening. Again, being a genius and mentally ill are not mutually exclusive.”

“But you’re willing to concede that he could be nuts.”

She breathed out slowly. “I think our guy could be deeply disturbed, just not nuts. Maybe psychotic and delusional, maybe suffering from acute schizophrenia, but he doesn’t slobber.”

“Then until we learn differently, we assume he’s both mentally ill and a genius. Fair enough?”

She nodded. “The ones that aren’t complete loners tend to congregate on the Internet, in psychiatrists’ offices, psychiatric wards. It’s a starting point.”

“As of now we start looking for records of any anomalies or patterns in mental health facilities, residential care homes, whatever.” Temple turned quickly to Brad. “Pull whatever resources you need, cross-check what we know of the Bride Collector against the files of every known psycho released from any facility in the last”-he looked at Nikki-“ten years?”

“Too many cases. Mental illness is more widespread than you think. Nearly seven hundred thousand mentally ill are jailed each year in this country. Start with a year.”

Temple looked stunned. Brad found it odd that the man wasn’t already familiar with this statistic. “God help us all.” He glanced up at the wall clock, which was closing in on ten. “A year then. I have to go.”

Brad spoke before the man could move. “We should also assume he intends to kill seven women. The seventh and most beautiful may refer to his final target.”

That brought a pause.

“Unless he’s killed three others without anyone’s knowledge,” Frank said.

“As long as we’re assuming the worst, he has three more to go.” Eyes on Nikki. “And being the smartest mind in the room, he knows that we know that. He wants us to know that he’s going to kill three more women.”

“It fits.”

Brad pushed on quickly. “He’s going to go again in a few days. If it takes him a few days to kill, then he’s likely already engaged. It’s a short cycle for a pattern killer who kills to satisfy compulsion. But our guy’s method is based on reason, not raw compulsion.”

They stared at him, arms crossed.

“Okay. I gotta go.” Temple grabbed his cell phone and walked toward the door. “We assume our guy’s out there now, outwitting us morons, stalking a beautiful woman he intends to kill in the next few days.” He turned back at the door. “For the love of all that is holy, stop him.”