The Bride Collector Read Free Page A

trusting.
    “He wouldn’t grow impatient,” she said. “He would relish his time with her.”
    Another nod, this time looking at the cadaver. “He would.”
    Kim looked up, then turned to the victim’s other side and dramatically ran her index finger over the foot, tracing each toe.
     Always one for theatrics when the opportunity presented itself.
    “She took care of her feet. The toenail polish is fresh, applied in the last twenty-four hours. But she’s taken care of her
     feet, her whole body for that matter, for a long time.”
    “He likes to apply makeup and give pedicures,” Nikki said.
    A half-inch hole, now bloodless and black, ran up into the heel. “He used the same half-inch bit size, maybe the same bit.
     Ran it directly through the skin, the calcaneus bone, severing the peroneus longus tendon, and into the anterior tibial artery.
     Everything’s as it was with the other three, except for this.” Kim traced her finger down to the victim’s right heel. “This
     is what’s new.”
    She picked up a small roll of bloody paper, maybe two inches long, and held it up between her thumb and forefinger. “This
     time he left this in the right heel.”
    Brad stepped forward. “Writing?”
    “I can see some markings, yes. But I haven’t unrolled it yet. I thought you would want a look before I sent it up to the lab.”
    Brad’s face lightened a shade.
    The killer had left them a message.

    SPECIAL AGENT IN Charge James Temple sat against the edge of the secretary desk on the conference room’s north end and gazed at them with
     brown, glassy eyes, hands folded up by his chin. Nikki leaned against the wall, arms crossed, fixated on the enlarged photograph
     of the Bride Collector’s note on the screen. Two other agents, Miguel Ruffino and Barth Kramer, lounged in chairs, their focus
     divided among the note, the SAC, Nikki, and Brad, who paced at the head of the conference table.
    There was a reason these two would always be good, but not great, at their jobs, Brad thought. They lacked the obsessive personality
     required to bring inordinate focus to any single task.
    “So this is it,” Temple said to Brad’s left. “We have us a certified wacko. A freaking lunatic from some funny barn who’s
     out there drilling holes in women to make a point.” He looked around with a bemused look. “No pun intended, of course.”
    Ruffino and Kramer guffawed, just as Nikki shot the SAC a sharp look. “I wouldn’t put it like—”
    “Spare me the psychobabble.” Temple stood and shoved his hands into his pockets. “If this isn’t certified crazy, I don’t know
     what is.”
    The man stood maybe three or four inches shy of six feet, wiry as a bull snake. He shaved his head and took pride in his body,
     which he regularly and rigorously brought into submission at the gym. The man was a misfit in Denver, Brad thought. In the
     Southeast, from which he’d been transferred a month earlier, his attitude would have been less of a problem. But up here,
     gunslingers were frowned upon, and James Temple was most definitely a gunslinger—hotheaded, quick to conclusions, and choleric
     to the bone.
    “On balance, most pattern killers are mentally stable,” Nikki said. “They are well educated, financially stable, often good
     looking, seemingly well-adjusted people. Unlike mass murderers, whose delusions feed beliefs of supremacy, serial killers
     act for personal gain or revenge. They do so in a calculated, thoughtful way. Hardly your freaking lunatic.”
    “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