Her Darkest Nightmare

by Brenda Novak

  She was preparing for her morning appointments when Penny Singh arrived.

  “Morning, Dr. Talbot.”

  Penny had removed her heavy coat, but she was still dressed in layers, including a turtleneck sweater, a jacket, a scarf and a nice pair of jeans with furry boots. It was easy to tell she’d just walked in from outside because her cheeks were flushed from the cold and she held the insulated coffee mug she carried to work every morning.

  “Hello, Penny.” Evelyn smiled at her assistant despite her preoccupation, then waved as Linda Harper, Fitzpatrick’s clerical support, came up behind Penny.

  Linda didn’t bother with “hello.” She didn’t look happy. “Is it true?” she demanded.

  Evelyn focused on her a bit reluctantly. “Is what true?”

  “What I heard on the news last night?”

  “What’d you hear?” Penny cried, immediately cluing in to her high-pitched tone.

  Evelyn hadn’t watched the news. She wouldn’t have turned on the TV last night even if she’d thought of it. After that incident with Hugo, she’d been in no condition to subject herself to the bad publicity. Public criticism was just one of the many ramifications of her current situation—the least important, which said a lot, considering it could cost her her job and her reputation.

  Still, she could easily guess what Linda was talking about. “Yes. There’s been another murder.”

  Penny’s jaw dropped and her eyes riveted on Evelyn. “It’s not Danielle.…”

  “We don’t know.” That two people they’d known and spoken to just a few days ago could be gone, and in such a grotesque fashion, was so shocking it was almost … unfathomable. “The remains have yet to be identified.”

  Penny’s hand trembled as she anchored a hank of her straight black hair behind one ear, and Evelyn couldn’t help wondering if she regretted leaving her parents’ house in Fairbanks to accept her position. When Evelyn first interviewed her, before Hanover House opened, she’d said she wasn’t cut out for college, couldn’t afford it, anyway. She’d been looking for opportunities in Anchorage when she came across Evelyn’s ad. Anchorage had more of a social life for “twenty somethings” than the smaller, outlying communities, but HH paid better than waiting tables, which was her other option. HH promised more upward mobility, too. “But … it has to be Danielle,” she said. “She hasn’t been seen for days.”

  “The anchorwoman also said you found part of a corpse in your bed,” Linda said, blanching.

  Evelyn tried to distance herself from the vision that appeared before her mind’s eye. But Linda’s bald statement conjured Sigmund gnawing on the exposed humerus of that pale, white arm as vividly as if she were looking at it this very moment. She had to cover her mouth to stop the rise of bile, which burned the back of her throat.

  Her reaction caused Linda to apologize. “I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing past Penny. “That must have been an … an awful thing to find, but … I feel like we need to know. That we deserve to know.”

  “You do,” Evelyn said. “I’m sorry, but … it’s true.”

  The color drained from Penny’s face. “You don’t think these murders could have anything to do with Hugo, do you?”

  Evelyn blinked at her. “Hugo?”

  “He obviously has a thing for you.”

  “Hugo is locked up, Penny,” she said. “He couldn’t be responsible.”

  Her assistant nibbled at her bottom lip. “But … he attacked you yesterday, didn’t he? He’s never done that before.”

  “Who told you about the attack?” Evelyn asked. “Fitzpatrick?”

  Penny looked to Linda, but Linda was too loyal to her boss to answer. “He told everyone in the office,” Penny mumbled at length.

  Evelyn could imagine the dogmatic and pedantic Fitzpatrick preaching about her mistake: Let that be a lesson to all of you. Sometimes he took great pleasure in proving her wrong, or only human, or no match for the absolutes he held so dear. But being a good psychiatrist, cop, actor, musician or writer—a good anything—meant being able to take a risk when the situation warranted it. And if she had yesterday to do over again, she’d take the same risk. Hugo heard a lot of things she didn’t and, if something was going on here at HH, he could most likely let her know—if he wanted to. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” she said dryly.

  If Penny heard the censure in Evelyn’s response, she didn’t react to it. Her voice sounded small and frightened when she said, “What’s going on, Dr. Talbot? It sounds like we have a serial killer on the loose.”

  Here we go, Evelyn thought. Now that word was out, fear and the tendency to place blame would sock the entire community like one of their many snowstorms—and this storm was bound to get worse the longer they went without an arrest.

  She remembered what the investigation had been like when she was sixteen, how upsetting for everyone involved—her family, the families of her dead friends, even Jasper’s family, regardless of whether his parents had, as she suspected, helped him escape the country. Many of the students they went to high school with, whether they’d known Marissa, Jessie and Agatha very well or not, had mourned the tragedy of their deaths.

  So many people would be impacted here, too. How would Amarok cope with such hopped-up emotions? With frightened citizens barraging him from all sides?

  “A serial killer is usually defined as someone who has killed three or more people over an extended period of time, Penny—a month if I remember correctly,” Evelyn said.

  “Various organizations define the term differently,” Linda piped up. “The FBI includes anyone who’s killed at least two people as separate incidents, with a cooling-off period in between.”

  Evelyn wished for a cup of coffee to vanquish the terrible taste in her mouth from the cup she’d had at Amarok’s, but she hadn’t taken the time to put on a pot. Penny usually handled that. “No one can say whether there was a cooling-off period between Lorraine and the second victim,” she pointed out, but she couldn’t maintain eye contact while saying it. What the perpetrator had done with the bodies convinced her they had a predator on the loose regardless of any technical definition. She would have readily admitted that except she felt she had to do everything possible to stave off the panic that would only make the situation worse.

  “So no one incarcerated here could be out killing people,” Linda said.

  “No,” Evelyn replied. “And that includes Hugo,” she added to once again reassure Penny. “If an inmate went missing, we’d know it right away.”

  “There’s someone else out there, then? Someone who…”—Penny could hardly form the words—“… who murders women and dismembers their bodies?”

  That wasn’t all he did. The killer also treated those body parts like trophies by putting them on grotesque display. But Evelyn wanted to keep all she could out of the press—and that meant preventing Penny, Linda and the other HH employees from gossiping about the more gruesome details. “It would seem that way.”

  Penny set her coffee on the edge of the desk. “Who could it be? There aren’t that many people in Hilltop.”

  “Personally?” Evelyn said. “I think it could be Jasper.”

  “Jasper?” Linda echoed.

  “The man who attacked me when I was sixteen, and came after me again five months ago. This could be a personal vendetta and not the direct result of what I’ve tried to accomplish here.”

  Linda seemed skeptical. “He’d be a stranger in these parts. He’d stand out.”

  “Not necessarily,” Evelyn said. “We’re not that far from Anchorage. Other, smaller communities lie between here and there. And who knows who’s staying in the various hunting cabins in the surrounding mountains?”

  “With the weather we’ve been having?” Linda scoffed. “There shouldn’t be anyone there this time of year!”

  “It wouldn’t be impossible to survive,” Evelyn told her. “Not if someone had the proper gear and plenty of supplies.” Feeling the constraints of the busy m
orning looming ahead, she checked her watch. “I’m sorry to cut this short. I know you’re both concerned, and so am I, but I’ve got to go or I’ll be late for my first appointment.” She also had to meet with the warden on the possible corruption. She’d received a message from him. Before he interrogated anyone, he felt as if they should just keep a close eye on those COs who were on Danielle’s list, and after what Amarok had said this morning Evelyn agreed.

  Linda went to her desk. Penny reclaimed her to-go cup but didn’t actually leave. “You’re planning to work as usual despite … despite everything?”

  Anthony Garza’s file drew Evelyn’s eye. She wished she hadn’t had him transferred here. Not because Fitzpatrick didn’t agree with her decision to do so. She just wasn’t in the frame of mind to be able to deal with him, not in addition to everything else. She’d had no idea all hell was about to break loose when she’d made the arrangements.

  “For the most part I’m carrying on as usual, largely because I believe that what I’m doing is more important than ever.” She pulled Garza’s file over and flipped it open to find the letter she’d written his last wife on top. “Have we heard anything from Courtney Lofland?”

  “Who?”

  She showed Penny the letter to jog her memory. “Garza’s last wife.”

  Penny shook her head. “Nothing’s come in. Not yet.”

  Evelyn supposed it was just as well. She didn’t dare leave, even for a few days, in the middle of their current crises, no matter how important the interview might be. She had a terrible feeling that if she didn’t stay and defend what she’d created she’d lose it for sure, and she refused to let Jasper or anyone else take more from her than she’d already lost.

  “Keep an eye out for it,” she told Penny, and closed the file. “Meanwhile, can you check my schedule and find some time I can allocate to our new transfer?”

  She pulled a face. “Ugh, everyone hates Garza.”

  “I’m afraid he’s earned that, but there might be important things he can teach us.”

  Penny held her drink in the crook of her arm while removing her gloves. “How often do you want to meet with him?”

  “Every other day.”

  “Beginning when?”

  Dare she put it off? He wasn’t going anywhere.… “I’m too busy this month. So we’ll let him settle in for a couple of weeks and put him on the calendar for February.”

  “If you want to get with him sooner, you could have him take Hugo Evanski’s slot.”

  “Hugo’s slot?”

  “You’re not going to continue seeing him after last night, are you?”

  No. She’d told him as much. But that meant she’d have to find him another therapist, and she wasn’t sure whom to ask. She couldn’t ask Fitzpatrick. Even if Fitzpatrick weren’t already meeting with Hugo on a regular basis for his own purposes—which exempted him from taking over the general therapy—he wouldn’t want to pick up the slack, seeing as he blamed her for causing the problem in the first place.

  A light went on in the office across the reception area. The others were beginning to arrive.

  “Dr. Talbot?”

  Evelyn dragged her attention back to her assistant. Maybe it would be better not to wait. Maybe she could get Garza to calm down and solve at least one problem. “That’ll work. Give him Hugo’s slot.”

  “So who’ll take Hugo?” Penny asked.

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Penny shoved her gloves in her back pocket. “This all seems so pointless.”

  “What seems pointless?” Evelyn asked.

  She motioned around them, as if to indicate the whole facility. “Everything. All the work and effort and sacrifice.”

  “You agree with those who believe we will never find a way to treat psychopaths?”

  “I’m leaning that way. I haven’t seen improvement in anyone since I’ve been here.”

  “What I’m trying to do will take a lot longer than three months, Penny.”

  “You might not have longer. We could all be brutally murdered in the next few days—”

  “No one else is going to be killed.” Praying she was right about that, Evelyn stepped around the desk to give her assistant’s arm a squeeze. “Just don’t go anywhere alone.”

  Hoping to slip out of the administration area before she could bump into any of the other doctors, Evelyn turned back to gather her files. Then she circumvented her tiny assistant and made a beeline for the double doors that led out into the prison. But Russell Jones nearly bowled her over as he came charging through going the opposite direction.

  “Whoa, sorry about that,” he said when she barely managed to jump out of the way.

  “No problem.” She reached for the handle again, but he stopped her.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine. Just running a bit behind.” She wished he’d step aside instead of blocking the exit.

  “Fitzpatrick told me what happened with Hugo Evanski yesterday afternoon. I’m sorry. That sucks.”

  As casual and sloppy as Fitzpatrick was formal and fastidious, Russ wore a tie with a chambray shirt and wrinkled chinos. A receding hairline made it difficult to guess his real age, but Evelyn had seen his file. He was only twenty-eight—the youngest member of the team. She’d always wanted to like him. With a round, soft body and droopy jowls, he reminded her of a Saint Bernard—a pleasant association but an ironic one given his dark outlook on life.

  “Whatever possessed you to trust him?” he asked, his tone full of reproach.

  In an effort to minimize the event, so that it would be more quickly forgotten, she manufactured a careless tone. “You know how it goes, how easy it is to like some of these guys.”

  “Not really,” he said. “The men on my roster are pretty scary.”

  She doubted they were any scarier than the ones she treated. But as she’d come to know Russ, she’d decided he didn’t have the right temperament for what they were doing. Psychopaths were masters at ascertaining weakness and capitalizing on it, and Russ wasn’t nearly assertive enough to oppose that. As a result, he took a lot of verbal abuse and had to adjust his roster more often than the rest of them. It didn’t help that he approached life with Eeyore-style gloom:

  Bet it’s going to storm today. We probably won’t be able to get out of the parking lot.…

  I’d get a dog, but when would I spend any time with him? Hanover House has taken over my whole life.…

  My girlfriend’s not joining me until next month. I bet she bails out again. Why would she want to come to this dreary place?

  His negative comments went on and on, which was one of the reasons Evelyn didn’t hang out with him after hours. It was hard enough to tolerate the lack of real sunshine in this remote corner of the earth. Had he not been a favorite grad student of Fitzpatrick’s she would never have hired him.

  “Maybe you’re immune to their charm,” she said. “Or you can see through them more easily than I can.” She didn’t believe that for a second, but he took her words at face value.

  “They don’t fool me!”

  “Glad we’ve got you on the team.” She hoped that would be sufficient flattery to get him to move his bulk to one side, but he wasn’t finished with her yet.

  “He claims to be broken up about the fact that you won’t see him anymore, but don’t fall for it. It’s all bullshit. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that psychopaths are so full of shit they don’t even know what’s real.”

  “Have you talked to him?” she asked.

  “Who, Hugo? No, I just came from the mail room.”

  As with any other prison, the mail coming in and out of Hanover House was carefully monitored. A CO went through most of it, but occasionally, if they had reason, the mental health team poked around down there, too. As intrusive as it felt to read someone else’s mail, Evelyn had found it to be a necessary evil. Since her recommendation was often the only way these men could be eligible for easier time, a better job inside the
prison, transfer to a minimum-security facility, even parole, they had plenty of reason to try to fake improvement. It was worth checking up on what they were sending home. They knew the mail was monitored, so it always amazed her that many slipped and divulged their true thoughts and intentions in spite of that, but they did.

  “What did you find in the mail room?” she asked.

  “A whole stack of letters Hugo has written to you. Apparently, he was up all night.”

  She blinked in surprise. She’d never gone down and read the mail of any of his patients. “You read them?”

  His chin puckered with a sheepish, lopsided smile. “Some. I couldn’t help myself. I was down there for something else, but when I saw them—”

  “What do they say?”

  “He apologizes for scaring you, says he acted impulsively. He just wanted a little kiss, never meant you any harm—yada yada.” Russell’s jowls swung as he shook his head in apparent disgust. “As if you could believe that.”

  Crazy thing was … she did believe it. She’d arrived at that conclusion before she’d even known he’d been writing to tell her. “So what’s your impression?” she asked. “What’s he hoping to achieve with those letters?”

  “He makes it obvious. He’s begging you to retain him as a patient. He says he’ll never ask you to be alone with him again, that he doesn’t need to because he already told you what he had to say.”

  That Fitzpatrick was their killer—what had to be the biggest lie he’d spun yet.

  Russell leaned close. “So … what did he tell you?”

  Evelyn waved him off. “Nothing reliable. Like you said, you can’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”

  “You’re not going to say?”

  She considered repeating what Hugo had whispered, just to see how Russ would react. She was curious to learn if there was some small part of him that might believe Fitzpatrick could be capable of such atrocities. But Danielle and Lorraine weren’t just murdered; they were hacked to pieces—and not for purposes of disposal, because they were then displayed. That brought a certain type of killer to mind—one who enjoyed it.