The Bride Collector Read online

  “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.”

  10

  “WHAT DO YOU mean you said no?” Roudy demanded, marching across the lawn. He frantically pulled at his goatee with both hands. “This is an outrage, my dear, they ask you for our help and you turn them down?” He spun back and glared at Paradise. “Your selfishness and insensitivity will ruin my reputation!”

  I see you and your ghosts, Sherlock, and at the moment your ghosts are shouting at me so I will ignore them. Begone, ghosts, or I’ll dispatch you all with a word of power that lives deeper in me than in you. It sits on your shoulder like a butterfly, so watch out, Sherlock…

  She thought the words as if they were water flowing through her mind. Fuel for her soul. Ideation was her lifeblood. She’d long ago exchanged hopeless attempts to stem her imagination for the challenge of focusing it.

  … because that butterfly is truly a dragon!

  “Your reputation doesn’t extend beyond this place, Roudy,” Paradise said quietly. “They want me to leave this place.” Her throat felt as though it had been tied in a knot, and if she wasn’t careful she would burst out in tears right here. “You know I can’t do that.”

  Andrea flung her arm out, flushing red. “Yeah, you insensitive lobster! How dare you try to convince Paradise to leave us!” Her face twisted, pained. “That’s what’s selfish. All you can think about is your…”

  She whirled to her right and yelled at empty space. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  Paradise didn’t pay any attention to the imagined voice that was upsetting Andrea. Likely
a voice telling her something about how stupid she was, the most common of her auditory hallucinations. But there was nothing there.

  I can’t, I won’t, it would kill me. I am dirt out there. I am cow dung on the outside. The thoughts crowded Paradise’s head.

  The difference between Andrea’s hallucinations and the ghosts that Paradise “saw” was that Andrea’s mind couldn’t distinguish between real and imagined. Paradise could. Most of her ghosts were simply the product of an overripe imagination. Like the “ghost” she’d seen in the window while talking to the FBI agent. And the thoughts entering her mind now were not audible voices.

  But on some occasions she had actually seen, not imagined, the so-called ghosts. Six times to be precise. Two of those times had been when she’d touched the dead.

  They stood under one of the aspens on the south side of the compound, where Paradise had agreed to meet them when her meeting was finished. The space offered some privacy and a wrought-iron bench, which was now empty. Enrique wasn’t here yet-probably trying to coax a vixen into his bed, though they all knew that any hanky-panky had to be approved by Allison.

  Roudy pushed a pair of round, lensless spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “I may do my work here, but don’t think for a moment that the entire investigative community doesn’t benefit from my methods. They likely study my cases in every university and FBI field office in the country. Not to mention the English, the French, the Israelis… all of them! They need me. Don’t try to steal that from them.”

  Andrea was in a tizzy. “You can’t leave me, Paradise!”

  “I’m not leaving. And I’m not saying that your work isn’t appreciated on the outside, Roudy. But are you willing to go out there yourself? Would you leave this place and start lecturing in the universities?”

  “If I were called upon, of course! Each of us must rise to the challenge. I have no doubt that the day will come when they ask me to travel to Moscow or London to put a halt to the dastardly deeds of some impervious rogue who’s eluded the best of the best.” He was breathing heavy, agitated. “This is your call to greatness, Paradise. Rise!” He made a fist and shook it as if he were a general trying to rouse the troops.