Ted Dekker - The Bride Collector

He’d sworn never to follow this path with her, but that was before. Just dinner, nothing more.

“You like seafood?” The phone rang and he grabbed it. “Raines.”

“We have another body.”

THE ABANDONED BARN sat in trees at the end of a dirt road, west of Elizabeth, Colorado, and if not for a Realtor who’d taken a prospective client out to view the property that morning, the body might have gone unnoticed for a week or more.

So it appeared. Brad doubted that the killer would have allowed his work to go unnoticed so long.

Melissa Langdon’s license lay on the gray floorboards inside a ring of broken dust where a bucket had collected her blood. The crime scene read like a book.

Melissa had been abducted, presumably from the address on her license, to which Brad dispatched a team. She’d then likely been taken to a separate location, subdued and prepped, then brought here for the final act. As in the other locations, no sign of struggle.

Melissa was affixed to the wall, white and naked except for the same brand of panties found on Caroline, and an identical veil fixed neatly over her face. She was supported by a wooden peg under each armpit and glued in place.

Then drained.

Same careful arrangements, same angelic tilt of her head, same makeup application. The lipstick was likely the same brand they’d isolated-a red color called Calypso manufactured by Paula Dorf. Having drained their color, the killer was insistent about putting some back on them.

Nikki had remained at the field office with Frank and most of the team, sifting through lists that extended beyond CWI to other mental health care facilities that had discharged violent offenders in the last three years.

Kim Peterson, forensic pathologist, had joined him at the scene and was on one knee, peering under the victim’s right heel, where a plug of putty sealed the hole.

“Now?” she asked. “Or in the-”

“Now,” Brad said.

She placed a large Baggie on the floor and pried the plug free. It dropped onto the plastic trailed by a thin string of blood. The killer had likely waited fifteen or twenty minutes as gravity pulled most of the blood down, but pooling remained in the fleshy sections of the body. Horizontal veins and capillaries would not drain easily, even if massaged or milked.

“Anything?”

In answer, Kim used her tweezers to withdraw a two-inch rolled tube of paper, covered in blood.

“Can you open it here?”

She delicately peeled open the note, careful not to disturb any latent prints on the paper, though they both knew none would be found.

Kim read the message stoically. “‘Be careful who you love. I just might kill all the beautiful ones. I am more intelligent than you. Bless me, Father, for I will sin. Oh yes, yes I will.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Kim looked up at him. “This is personal?”

“No. Not that I know, no, it couldn’t…”

Surely the killer wasn’t someone from his own past come back to haunt him. The killer had simply learned who was working the case and was messing with him. Egging him on.

Be careful who you love. I just might kill all the beautiful ones.

“What else are you seeing?”

“The same as before.” She placed the note in an evidence bag and stood, motioning at the body. “Lactic acid is building, rigor mortis is setting in, but not more than, oh, I’d say ten hours. She’s still pretty flexible. I’d say she died sometime last night.”

“Four days since the last one.”

“Four days. There’s a nasty cut on her temple that he went to considerable lengths to cover up. Looks like she either hit her head or he delivered a blow.”

“No, he wouldn’t risk wounding her. He wanted her clean. Okay, process the body and the scene. Let me know if you come up with anything else. I’ll be on my phone.”

“Will do.”

Brad stepped out of the barn and flipped open his BlackBerry. It took him two minutes to get Allison Johnson at the Center for Wellness and Intelligence on the line. She was evidently with a resident and required some urging to break away.

“Hello, FBI. Did you find your man yet?”

“No. He took another girl. She’s on the wall in the barn behind me.”

The line was silent for a moment. She sighed heavily.

“I would like to speak to one of your residents again, Miss Johnson. If you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not. I don’t mind at all. Like I said, Roudy is much better than his antics might suggest.”

“Actually, I would like to meet with Paradise.”

“Oh? Not Roudy?”

“No. Paradise, if you don’t mind.”

“Chasing ghosts now?”

“No. Chasing my gut. Is she available?”

“I’m sure she could be.”

“Good. I can be there in an hour. And Miss Johnson?”

“Yes?”

“I would like to speak to Paradise alone this time.”

“That could be a problem. She’s nervous to be alone with men, as I said.”

“I realize that. You could be nearby, but I really would like to talk to her without any… interference. If that’s not possible, I’ll understand, of course.”

Allison hesitated.

“I’ll see what I can arrange.”

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.”