The Bride Collector Read online

“Because seven is the number of perfection. The number for God.”

  “Do you fear God?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you religious?”

  “Deeply.”

  “Are you a Christian?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “Protestant?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re all liars. Unable to live the life they suggest others live.”

  “But you, on the other hand, live the truth?”

  “All of it. That’s what makes me special. That’s why I kill, to be true to myself.”

  “Why seven women?”

  “I told you, because seven is a perfect number.”

  Cycling back provided a thread of intellectual honesty that mirrored normal interrogation techniques. A simple aid to both of them.

  “Okay, let’s talk about how you choose your victims. Why-”

  “They’re not victims.”

  “What are they?”

  “I’m not hurting them.”

  She paused, probably because he hadn’t answered her questions.

  “Why is Eden lost?” she asked.

  “The beauty of Eden is lost. Innocence was corrupted.”

  “Where is intelligence centered?”

  “In the mind. Innocence was lost in the mind.”

  “Are you the serpent?”

  “No.”

  “Who smashed the serpent’s head?”

  “She did.” Brad nodded at the wall of crime scene photographs.

  “She hurt you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not the serpent. Are you the serpent?”

  “No. Not always.”

  “Why do you kill her?”

  “So that I can kill again.”

  Only that’s not what Brad meant to say. He lifted his hand, considering the response.

  “Kill again, or live again?” Nikki asked. “‘She will rest in my Serpent’s hole. And I will live again.’ His poem seems to indicate that he’s doing this so that he can live again.”

  “I meant to say live again.”

  They both stared at the confession posted on the wall.

  “But if he’s playing the role of the serpent in this self-fulfilling tale of his, it does stand to reason that he kills so that he can live as the serpent and kill again,” Nikki said.

  “It does.”

  She looked at him. “So then, Temple could be right. We’re looking for a delusional schizophrenic who’s suffered a psychotic break.” She swept a long strand of dark hair from her cheek and absently touched her neck where it met her jaw. Long, delicate fingers, French manicure.

  He had always found Nikki’s attention to seemingly insignificant detail appealing. She lived her life with passion; truth be told, with far more energy than he could usually muster. Running an hour every day to bring stability, she said. Putting in long, twelve-hour days. She seemed to have energy left over to keep up an active nightlife, if all the stories were true, and he had no reason to think they weren’t.

  Their relationship had always remained purely platonic. There were times when Brad regretted his avoidance.

  “Maybe,” Brad said. “We established last night that he was probably psychotic.”

  “You might have, but I’m not convinced. A mentally ill serial killer is atypical, short of mental illness caused by severe trauma to the frontal lobe through a head injury. Otherwise, nearly all pattern killers are middle- to high-income earners, are good looking in general, and usually articulate. Nearly all kill out of either a sexual compulsion or a need for revenge. In both cases, most have been severely abused by their mothers and are reacting to that abuse through some ritualistic act, which relieves their compulsion for gratification or revenge. Environment, not psychosis, forms most serial killers. This is not the profile of the mentally ill.”

  He knew all of this, naturally, but investigative work was an exercise in rehearsing details, coaxing new truth from them.

  “And yet the note indicates delusions of grandeur, which is a form of psychosis.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He looked at the drill, pacing. “His killing doesn’t appear to be sexually motivated. It’s ritualistic. He’s courting delusions of grandeur. He’s intelligent. He’s killing so that he can kill again, because in his mind, unless he carries out his role, he can no longer play that role and live.”

  “Right,” she said. “And whatever that role is, it’s not the role of executioner or punisher. He thinks he’s serving his victims well. He’s loving them.”

  They stood in silence for a full minute.

  “So. We take an exhaustive look at the mental health facilities in the Four Corners state hospitals,” Nikki said. “Residential care facilities, nursing homes, state prisons, convictions involving the mentally ill… That’s a ton of data.”

  “Frank’s got six agents buried in the data already. We’ve put in a request for additional assistance from the field offices in Cheyenne, Colorado Springs, and Albuquerque. I’ve asked him to cross-reference the confession with all related databases. He left the note because he wants us to find something.”

  “Agreed.”

  He put his hands on his hips and studied the walls. “Meanwhile, we have the mysteries hidden here, in his place of work.”

  Nikki nodded. “You ever get tired of it?”

  “Fieldwork?”

  “Trying to see past what a person allows you to see.”

  An odd choice of words. “Can’t say that I do.”

  “I mean, think about it, we all have our mysteries, right? We live our lives letting people see only what we want them to see. It takes years, even in a marriage, to know someone. Not that you’d know that, Brad.”

  She’d said the last part with a good-natured smirk.

  “Even then,” she continued, “how many spouses are eventually blindsided by some deep, dark revelation about the person they thought they knew?”

  “No argument here,” he said, hoping he’d avoided the whole morass. “Everyone hides something.”

  She nodded. “Classic existentialism. In the end the human being is alone. We are all confronted by our own complexity, which we try to unravel, but all the while we’re confronted by our own isolation. This is what we eventually learn. It’s why so many lean on faith, a relationship that isn’t dependent on another human being.” She crossed her arms and studied him. “So how about it, Brad? What mysteries are you hiding?”

  At first he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. They’d always been candid with each other, but never probing. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” she said. “Not too deep, anyway.”

  A smile softened her face, and looking into her soft blue eyes, he suddenly wanted to tell her everything. About how he’d fallen in love with a young tennis player named Ruby while attending UT in Austin, the wild carefree days when the world was at both of their fingertips and everyone who saw them together knew it. About the way her eyes twinkled and her laugh echoed on the tennis court, about how completely he’d given himself to Ruby.

  About her suicide.

  The thought of it brought a familiar lump to his throat. It had taken Brad three years to uncover the secrets that had led to Ruby’s decision to take her life.

  “Think about it, Brad. The killer’s playing us. Probing us. Tempting us, egging us on, daring us to stop him. My job is to take his challenge and beat him at his own game. Uncover his true self. So how do you get someone to reveal their secrets?”

  She was talking about the killer, but as much about Brad.

  He motioned at the wall with a nod. “They do what they do out of pain, and a small part of me can understand that. Not the way they react to it, of course, but the pain itself. Let’s just say I’ve loved and I’ve felt the pain of a terrible loss. A woman I once knew. It’s why I can id
entify.”

  He stopped, not knowing where he was heading. Suddenly uncomfortable.

  After a pause, Nikki stepped up to him and touched his shoulder in a show of empathy. But she seemed awkward, and he felt the same. She removed her hand and faced the wall.

  “You’ve never mentioned that before. I never knew.”

  “I know. We were talking about long-harbored secrets, remember?”

  She nodded. A long pause flowed between them, one Brad made no effort to end.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she finally said.

  “It’s okay. We all do at some point.”

  But he wasn’t sure about that. The pain he’d felt had left him wishing for death. In a way, he was waging his own personal campaign against death even now. It was why he’d joined the FBI, now that he thought of it.

  “But you’re right,” he said, resuming an earlier thread, “part of understanding someone else comes from exposing yourself.”

  She looked at him, then grinned at his choice of words.

  “So to speak…” There, he thought with a surge of relief. Back on familiar ground-the tinged banter. Their usual territory.

  His cell rang and he picked it up, thankful for the interruption.

  It was Frank. The staff had registered an interesting hit while cross-referencing the killer’s note with the mental health facilities database.

  “You ever hear of a place called the Center for Wellness and Intelligence?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Hold on.” Brad asked Nikki if she’d heard of the facility. She stared upward for a moment, then shook her head.

  “It’s a private residential facility in the hills south of Boulder that only takes mentally ill patients with high IQs,” Frank said. “As far as we can gather.”

  Brad glanced at the wall. The confession. A single line expanded in his field of view.

  Where intelligence does centered.

  The Center for Wellness and Intelligence. Nikki followed his eyes and saw what he saw.

  “The program picked up on the words center-”

  “I got it, Frank. Text me the address and advise the administrator that we’re on our way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He snapped the phone shut.

  “You think it’s something?”

  “It’s a lead,” he said. “He’s playing us, right? So let’s play.”

  5

  ACCORDING TO COLORADO’S Department of Mental Health, the state’s organization had certified and currently regulated fifty-three facilities that cared for the mentally ill, ranging from state hospitals to residential care facilities and nursing homes.

  The Center for Wellness and Intelligence was listed as a referral facility, privately run and uncertified.

  State-by-state closure of state asylums and hospitals between 1960 and 1990 had flooded the streets with mentally ill patients who had no provider to take up their care or cause. Many, up to half by some estimates, wound up incarcerated.

  Over time, a range of facilities began to take up the slack, but no national care system had yet replaced the atrociously run asylums that once blanketed the country. There was more to the story, much more according to what Brad had learned while in Miami. Some said that mistreatment of the mentally ill was one of the country’s few remaining dark secrets. No one wanted to lock them up in expensive institutions. Yet no one knew how to treat them effectively through any other means. Better to sweep them all under a rug, otherwise known as the streets and alleyways of the modern city.

  They left Nikki’s car at the crime scene and headed east toward Eldorado Springs. The small town was nestled at the base of the Rocky Mountains, roughly six miles southwest of Boulder.

  Eldorado Springs Drive wound through the foothills, populated by scrub oak and smaller pines. “Never been out here,” Nikki said.

  “I haven’t, either.”

  The wheels hummed on two-lane blacktop.

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  “Peaceful.”

  “Hmmm.”

  Mental illness. Brad mulled over the words. The mystery of the mind, hidden in the folds of hills beyond the tangles of life in the city. Nothing of the placid landscape spoke to him of the killer. Less than half an hour before, they’d stood before a wall on which a madman had glued a woman whose heels he’d drilled and drained. Now they rode through God’s country. The incongruity of the two images brought a faint buzz to Brad’s mind.

  While Brad drove, Nikki glanced at the notebook where she’d jotted down notes from a conversation she’d had with the director of CWI, Allison Johnson.

  “Something strange about her.”

  “The director?”

  Nikki stared ahead. “There’s our road. Before the village, she said. South on a dirt road two miles.”

  Brad slowed, turned, and headed the BMW down a winding gravel road. “Isolated.”

  “I think that’s the idea. It’s a privately run facility for families or patients who can afford a hefty room-and-board fee. Used to be a convent run by nuns. There’s a place like this in Colorado Springs, something about the healthy air that once attracted caregivers and patients.”

  “It’s religious?”

  “Actually, I’m not sure. Wouldn’t surprise me; health care administered by the Catholic Church has a strong history.”

  “You said she was strange.”

  Nikki nodded. “Maybe strange is the wrong word. Don’t get me wrong, she was delighted to have us. She just sounded rather eccentric.”

  “Maybe she has a little of what they have,” Brad said, then added so that he didn’t sound demeaning, “Maybe we all do.”

  “She said they only accept patients who display exceptional intelligence.”

  Brad wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  They rounded a bend and saw the large gated entrance immediately. A white sign above the heavy metal gates left no doubt: THE CENTER FOR WELLNESS AND INTELLIGENCE. And underneath, a motto of sorts: LIFE NEVER SHORTCHANGES.

  A high fence ran in both directions away from the gate-the kind of fence that brought images of concentration camps to mind, complete with barbed wire and charged lines. Beyond lay a long paved driveway bordered by manicured lawns and tall pine trees. Brad chuckled appreciatively. The Center for Wellness and Intelligence might be mistaken for an upscale resort.

  He rolled up to the guardhouse and presented his identification. “Brad Raines and Nikki Holden here to see Allison Johnson.”

  The uniformed man with a badge that said he was Bob nodded and checked his log sheet.

  Brad indicated the barbed wire. “Nice fence.”

  “It’s not as threatening as it looks.” The guard handed the IDs back. “They installed the barbed wire and monitors last year after someone broke in and raped two of the residents.” He hit a switch and the gates rolled back. “Head up the driveway, visitor parking to the left. You’ll find Allison in the reception room.”

  “Thank you, Bob.”

  “No problem.” He sat down and picked up his phone, probably to report their arrival. A Brad Meltzer novel lay open at his fingertips. Plenty of time to read out here.

  They rolled past the trees toward a circular driveway that rounded a white stone fountain. To their right, a woman wearing a yellow flowered dress and a large sun hat was trimming bushes that had been sculpted into perfectly formed poodles, a larger one trailed by three smaller puppies. She waved as they passed, then stopped to watch them.

  “Nice,” Brad said.

  “Very nice.”

  “Is she…”

  “Clearly.”

  He pulled into a parking spot reserved for visitors and stepped out into clean, cool mountain air. Birds chirped above them. Shadowed by a cheerful sun, mountain ramparts towered against the near distance. A loud, distant voice carried to them from deeper inside the compound. With a glance back, Brad met the eyes of the woman in yellow, who was still staring at him with fixed interest.


  She must have mistaken his glance as an invitation, because the moment she saw his look, she started to walk toward them. Nikki got out and the woman pulled up, looking from one to the other. Cheerful and harmless looking, she was maybe in her sixties, with gray hair and bright eyes.

  Her eyes settled on Brad. “You are very wonderfully built. I could do you, right here in the bushes. Would you pose for me? You like my poodles? I started on them this morning, because Sami said he hated dogs. I love dogs and I love pigeons but it takes twenty-seven pigeons to fill one poodle. Poodles aren’t like rats, because rats breed quickly and eat crackers. My favorite crackers are sodium-free.”

  She said it all with a warm smile.

  “Thank you, Flower.” Another gray-haired woman, probably in her early fifties, had appeared from the administration building. She possessed the lean, compact features of so many foothills residents. Piercing blue eyes, slim wrists sporting a dozen silver bangles and bracelets of the most intricate design. She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse. Three silver chains, one supporting a rhinestone-studded cross, hung from her neck. She looked like someone who fully intended to take what life owed her, but she managed to pull it off without appearing gaudy.

  “I think this kind gentleman would look wonderful on our front lawn. What a nice offer.” She looked at Brad with knowing eyes and winked. “What do you say, Mr. Raines? It would only take her half an hour, she’s quite skilled.”

  He was caught flat-footed. This must be Allison Johnson. Was she serious?

  “No?” she asked. “We’re in a bit of a rush, are we?”

  “Actually, yes, we are a bit pressed for time.”

  The administrator addressed Flower, who stared motionless, awaiting a verdict. “I’m sorry, Flower, he’s in a hurry. Can you do him from memory?”

  A grin flashed on Flower’s face, and she spun away without another word. She marched toward the hedges, stopped after ten paces, and measured him up using her hands to approximate his height and dimensions, then continued in a brisk stride.

  “Welcome to CWI,” Allison said. “Please come with me.”

  Allison Johnson struck Brad as the kind of woman who’d seen it all and remained both uncompromised and unflappable, a wise woman who wore her experience with beauty and grace. He found himself immediately drawn in with an ease that unnerved him a little.