The thoughts only pushed Brad’s sense of urgency. He pulled back and pulled the trigger four more times, obliterating the
lock, the bolt. This time a single kick swung the door in silently on well-oiled hinges.
Brad went in with his weapon extended. Chips from the backside of the door lay scattered on the floor. On the wall, a painting
of Vail shattered by a bullet hung askew. Dust filled the air from the splintered wood.
Nothing else was out of place. The tan couch, the large-screen Samsung television, the ornate table lamps, the walls with
the rest of the paintings—all undisturbed, unmarked.
No sign of the killer.
Brad ran to the hall on his left, hesitated one second against the wall, then jabbed his head around the corner. Nothing but
hall. It was a two-bedroom apartment, she’d told him once. Both rooms down this hall.
Not a sound. No sign of any disturbance at all. What if he was wrong? What if Andrea’s jack in the whole was just a big mistake
and Paradise had sent him on a wild-goose chase?
He stepped around the corner and ran down the hall. The doors to both bedrooms were open. He knew then… He knew but he could
not say it or even think it. Something was wrong.
The first room on his left looked like a bedroom. Empty. He ran past, down the hall, into the room at the end. The shades
were pulled up and bright light illuminated a queen-size bed with a brown comforter and matching lamps on the nightstands.
Paintings of castles in rich English meadows.
Nikki was not in her home.
The blow was so unexpected that Brad didn’t react. They had been wrong. They had come to the wrong place. Nikki…
Nikki would pay the price.
“Sir!”
He spun at the sound of the officer’s voice, calling from back down the hall.
“Sir, I think you want to see this.”
He pushed past one officer who’d followed him down the hall and saw that his partner had turned the light on in the first
room.
“What is it?”
The room was decorated in rich purples and greens, larger than the one at the end. At its center was a king-size bed neatly
dressed in a silk comforter with six or seven decorative pillows and two beautiful chiffon lamps. This was the master. Nikki’s
room.
The officer was looking at an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of paper folded in half and set atop one of the silk pillows.
It was addressed with red ink and it read, RAIN MAN.
The killer. He’d been here. Which meant that Andrea was right, this was the jack in the whole. A note from the killer addressed
to Rain Man. To
him
.
“Call Temple at my office. Get a forensics team out here immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
He grabbed a tissue from the box on the nightstand and used it to pick up the note, then opened it gingerly to the Bride Collector’s
familiar handwriting:
The jack is in the whole, but today the jack is the joker and he’s got a smile. So sorry, Rain Man, but the sun has come and
things are looking bright. I have taken God’s favorite back to him. He waits for his bride. You’ll have to find your own.
P.S. We are at 2435 4th Street. Boulder. #203.
He stared at the words trying to think past the voices screaming in his mind. The killer had outwitted them, played them in
a fixed game. Nikki was gone.
Gone!
But that wasn’t true… No, the man couldn’t know that they’d broken his code so quickly. He was sure to think he had some time.
Brad had heard Nikki’s voice only twenty-five minutes ago.
He pulled out his phone as he ran. Temple picked up on the first ring. “I have a team on the way, Brad. I… I…”
“He’s got her in an apartment in Boulder,” Brad cut in. “I’m half an hour away—more, it’s rush hour! Get the Boulder PD out
there now! And tell them to go in silent. He doesn’t know we’re on the way, he can’t, not…” Brad ran out of breath as he took
the stairs at a run.
“You’re saying she’s alive?”
“I don’t know. Twenty-four-thirty-five Fourth Street in Boulder. Number Two-oh-three.” He shoved the note in his pocket. “Hurry,
Temple. Please hurry.”
Temple would make the call, but local response time would be five, seven, ten minutes. Depending on where the closest cruiser
happened to be. Depending on how fast the dispatcher got the interagency message. Depending on everything but him.
No longer concerned about stealth, Brad took out of the apartment complex on screaming wheels. He headed east on 72 and took
the Foothills Highway north. The cards were now dealt, the bets made. They would either reach Nikki in time or they would
find her dead.
Brad had faced death. Victims. Ruby. He’d grown accustomed to the stench of it. But that stench never faded, not for him,
and particularly not if it arose off someone like Nikki.
Yet something had happened deep in his psyche these past ten minutes. Something he recognized. He’d rushed into her room and
assumed that he was too late. That Nikki was dead.
He was horrified, yes. But she wasn’t Ruby. No one had been Ruby. No pain had come close to shutting him down the way he’d
shut down following her death ten years earlier. And this, he thought, was because he had given himself to Ruby, heart and
soul. When someone you love dies, something inside of you dies. You die. She is you. You are her.
He shook the thought from his mind and called Allison at the CWI.
“Well, young man, you’ve certainly left the place buzzing.”
“Hello, Allison. Sorry about—”
“Don’t apologize. You’ve put all three on the top of the world. Did you find her?”
“Not yet. But they were right. Tell Paradise we found another note from him. I want you to write it down and ask them to study
it for… anything. Can you do that?”
“Tell me.”
He read the note to her.
“God’s favorite,” she said softly, repeating to herself. “Interesting.”
“Does it mean something to you?”
“Well… In general, yes. Basic theology. So besides this note, you found nothing?”
“No. Boulder PD is on their way now. I have to go, Allison.” He hesitated. “You used to be a nun?”
“Yes.”
“You still believe in God.”
“Of course. I’m not terribly religious, I’m afraid, but I do what I do because of that belief. And yes, I will pray.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t count her out, Brad. She still has that image locked in her head somewhere.”
Paradise. He never would have guessed that Allison, of all people, would push for him to exploit her own patient.
Then again, Allison saw the exploitation as her patient’s salvation.
A tone in his ear indicated an incoming call. He glanced at the phone screen. Temple.
“Nikki’s seen him, too,” Brad said to Allison. “We’re going to get to her in time. Gotta go.”
He switched over to Temple. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed since he’d made the call to dispatch Boulder PD. This had to
be it. His heart pounded in his rib cage like a fist.
He brought the phone back to his ear. “Yeah, hello…”
“Brad…”
And he knew immediately by Temple’s tone that it wasn’t good.
“What is it?” he demanded, flushing with anger.
“I’m sorry, Brad. They found her.”
His vision blurred. “Found her? How?”
When Temple answered, his voice was all too matter-of-fact. “On the wall.”
Images of Melissa and Caroline, white on the wall like angels, flashed through his mind. He couldn’t form an image of Nikki
like that.
“Brad, I’m sorry, I know you two were close…”
He switched the phone off and set it in the cup holder. There was something wrong. They’d come too close to lose now. Andrea
had figured it out! Roudy had paced all day and exposed the jack. Paradise had told him that Nikki was home. And they had
been right, he’d found the note…
They’d cracked it wide open, it couldn’t end like this! Not after what they’d accomplished.
Brad pushed the BMW to its limits, ignoring the repeated horns from all sides, weaving in and out of traffic as he raced toward
the crime scene. His head was in a drum, knocking around in the darkness. He wasn’t thinking straight.
At least half a dozen cruisers had beat him to 2435 4th Street. Lights were flashing on four of them. Yellow tape already
formed a barrier around the entrance to the courtyard inside. Spectators hung back on the street and under two large trees,
watching. Low-rent district. The rental information would take them nowhere; the Bride Collector was too careful, too smart.
Brad stepped over the yellow tape and flashed his badge at an officer. He might have said, “FBI,” but he wasn’t sure. His
eyes were on the open door across the courtyard, up on the second floor where several more police stood talking quietly.
He ran. Through the entrance, up steel stairs, down the walkway, past two uniforms at the door, into an unfurnished apartment.
Someone was saying, “Hey, hey!” behind him, telling him to slow down. But he couldn’t get to the room quickly enough.
And then he was there, in the room down the hall marked as the crime scene. The room was empty except for a plainclothes detective,
a uniformed officer. And Nikki.
She was on the wall and she was wearing a white lace veil.
“FBI, out!” He flashed his credentials. “Both of you, out now.”
“Now, hold on just—”
Brad grabbed the detective by his shirt and shoved him toward the door. “This is my partner, this is my case, now get out!”
They stumbled out and he slammed the door behind them, breathing as heavily from what was on the wall as from the run. He
turned slowly and faced her.
Nikki’s skin was like ivory, drained of life. Naked except for her underwear. Her arms were spread wide and her head tilted
to her right so that her dark hair draped over her shoulder. Eyes closed, lips ruby with lipstick, fingernails manicured and
polished.
She’d been positioned exactly as the others. But she was in an apartment. And there was a small pool of her blood on the carpet
beneath her feet. The Bride Collector had left without plugging her wounds. He’d taken the bucket of blood and left her dead.
Brad slid down the door to his seat, gripped his face with both hands, and cried.
THE BUZZ AT
the bottom of Quinton Gauld’s brain had come and gone repeatedly since the last favorite, Nikki Holden, had turned it on.
Her absurd accusation that everything he was doing was a pathetic attempt to become God’s favorite was outrageous. He was
no hunchbacked freak willing to serve his master in any capacity to win favor. She hadn’t said quite as much but he knew that
she was thinking precisely this.
He’d delivered her to God two days ago, and he was now sure that she had indeed been chosen because of her mental illness,
as God’s way of reaching out to all the world. Because God loved them all, even the densest of the dense. And especially him.
He dismissed Nikki’s claim.
Quinton walked to his kitchen and opened the refrigerator, hungry for a snack. Maybe some peanut butter on a slice of orange.
Organic peanut butter. Nature’s Choice.
He pulled out the jar, chose a particularly large orange from the fruit bowl, washed it thoroughly, and sliced it up while
thinking ahead. Back on track.
He’d done his part and now he could focus on the prize at the end of his race. On the true bride. The most beautiful woman
in the world, without exception. He’d watched her for years, waiting, knowing that in the fullness of time he would take her
and present her blameless to her suitor, a perfect bride.
Quinton knew just how perfect she was because he had known her. Not in the biblical sense, although not for a lack of trying.
But she hadn’t appreciated his advances, and now he understood that she’d been right to save herself for God. She was a virgin,
he was sure of it.
What was particularly tricky about the final bride was that she must come willingly. Not just die willingly, but join him
of her own accord.
He’d considered a thousand scenarios over the years leading up to this date. Stepping out on the sidewalk with a bright smile.
“Hello, Angel. Remember me?” She’d likely slap him and scream rape.
He might send her boxes of chocolates with sweet notes, pretending to be a handsome man with a heart of gold inviting her
to dinner. But she wasn’t the kind who met strangers for dinner.
He even considered getting plastic surgery and attempting to win her as a suitor, but he wasn’t confident in his ability to
pretend long enough to earn her trust. She undoubtedly had many potential suitors, and the only reason she wasn’t yet married
was because she could afford to be picky. Any man with more than half a brain would fall for her, not that there was an abundance
of those.
He’d eventually narrowed his options down to a couple that might work if he was very clever, one involving her family. And
now Rain Man had inserted himself into the picture, like a gift from God, allowing Quinton to settle on a plan so perfect
that it gave him chills.
The only problem was this buzzing in his brain. This
buzz, buzz, buzz
. The onset of a particularly harsh psychotic break, the doctors would say. Truth was, he was the poster child for psychosis.
But so few really understood psychosis.
Quinton sat at his table and wiped a small portion of peanut butter on a slice of orange, then placed the whole circle in
his mouth, peel and all. So many nutrients in the orange peel.
See (and he waved a finger in the air as he thought this), people didn’t understand the nature of psychosis. It was defined
as being out of touch with reality. Psychosis was a thought disorder, like schizophrenia, which disconnected one from reality,
unlike multiple-personality disorder, which caused the afflicted to split. The former was very common, the latter was extremely
rare.
Over time, the world had attempted to correct psychosis with myriad inhuman treatments, ranging from electric shock to carving
out parts of the brain with a knife. In the same way that the world now cringed in memory of such treatments, it would one
day cringe at having drugged up the afflicted and locked them in prisons as if they were witches.