“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?”
Читать дальше