by Brenda Novak
He closed his eyes as he conjured up the tiny town and the feel and smell of Evelyn. Then he had to lower his chair and shift, because he didn’t want the warden’s assistant, when she came to get him, to notice that he had a major woody. Dreaming about getting a job at Hanover House and working with the only woman who’d ever gotten away, without her even realizing he was there, always gave him an erection. She’d be ripe for the taking. Since she hadn’t seen his face when he’d made his last attempt, she didn’t know about the cosmetic surgery his parents had paid for years ago, when he was in Europe.
“Officer Smith?”
He came to his feet as soon as Devon Shirley called his name.
“The warden is ready to see you,” she said.
After looking her up and down, he grinned to suggest he liked what he saw, and she flushed. She was married and hadn’t yet lost all the baby weight from her last pregnancy, but she was mildly attractive. He could have an affair with her.…
No, he refused to threaten what he had going. All he needed or wanted from Florence Prison was a sterling recommendation; he could get laid anywhere.
“He in a good mood?” he whispered to Devon, still flirting with her.
“He’s not happy about the stabbing this afternoon.”
“That was unfortunate.” But entertaining …
The way she flipped her hair and looked up at him from under her eyelashes indicated she found him attractive. But that came as no surprise. He made sure to stay fit, stay appealing. His innocent-looking face was probably his best lure.
“Having an inmate die in such a violent way doesn’t make the institution look good,” she said.
It did, however, save the taxpayers a shitload of money. As far as Jasper was concerned, that wasn’t a bad thing.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” the warden bellowed.
Jasper hadn’t realized his boss had come to stand in the doorway.
“Nothing.” He adopted a much more solemn expression as he crossed over to the inner office.
The warden looked like George S. Patton—and came off as tough and determined. His scowl didn’t disappear, but he backed away so that Jasper could get past him and gestured toward the chair positioned in front of his desk. “Sit your ass down.”
“Yes, sir.”
With a sigh that suggested he was nearly at his wits’ end, he took his own seat and glared at Jasper. “What the hell happened today?”
“One inmate shanked another. There was nothing I could do to stop it.”
The warden studied him closely. “This is the third time someone has been stabbed while you were in the vicinity.”
So what if Jasper overlooked a weapon here and there or occasionally passed a shank to an inmate? As far as he was concerned, they could all kill one another. “Bad luck on my part.”
“Are you telling me there isn’t more to the story?”
Jasper didn’t like the tone of his voice. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me,” he said. “You’ve seen the security tape. I had nothing to do with it.”
The warden stretched his neck as if he was trying to offset a headache. “Yeah, I’ve seen the tape. I’m not accusing you. It’s just damn coincidental that you’ve been at Florence for only fifteen months and yet you’ve been on the scene of three of these publicity nightmares.”
“Only two inmates have died. I managed to save the other one.” He hadn’t had any choice. The security cameras would’ve revealed his lack of action had he not broken up the fight.
“We still lost two men,” the warden said.
“That’s better than losing all three.”
The warden sat in silence for several seconds, but he seemed more frustrated than truly suspicious. He merely wanted someone to rail against. “I have to retain control of this prison,” he said.
“I understand that, sir. I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time on three separate occasions.”
“Damn violent inmates,” he muttered.
Jasper leaned forward. “Are you okay, sir? You’re a little pale.” Word had it he’d had a heart attack in the months before Jasper started at the prison. From what Jasper could see, it looked as if he was ready to have another one.
The grizzled old warden glanced up. “I should be asking you that. You should see a psychologist to help you deal with what you’ve witnessed.”
He reached for the phone on his desk, obviously intending to see to that right away, but Jasper came to his feet. “That won’t be necessary, sir. I don’t believe a psychologist can do anything for me, so I’d rather not waste my time and the state’s money.”
He lowered his hand, leaving the phone alone. “You’re okay without any help? Really?”
“I feel fine. Going through something like a stabbing … it’s upsetting, of course, but I knew when I started at the prison that I might see some harrowing things.” Although he drew his eyebrows together so he’d look pained as well as sincere, he didn’t feel remotely bad. Why would he? At least the stabbings were interesting to watch.
“I’m glad you can be so objective,” the warden said. “But I hear you’re thinking about leaving us. That you’d like to work for that psychopath prison in Alaska—what’s it called? Hanover House?”
“Yes. I’ve applied online.”
“Why leave here just to do the same thing somewhere else?”
“The beauty and freedom of Alaska appeals to me. I think I’d love it up there. Why?” His heart beat faster. “Have you heard from them?”
“Not yet.”
Jasper tried not to get discouraged. It’d only been a week or so. “If you do, I hope you’ll give me a good recommendation. I can cope with this kind of work. I think I’ve proven that.”
“Considering the inmates they have up there, they need officers with nerves of steel. Anyway, what do I do with you now? Do you go back to work or head home for the day?”
“I was hoping to take a couple of days off to … to come to terms with the stabbing. You know, go on a short vacation, get a change of scenery. Then I’ll be good as new.”
“Of course. A vacation sounds ideal. Take the rest of the week—with pay.”
“Are you sure? I’d hate to cause a scheduling problem.” It was only Monday. That gave him four weekdays and the weekend.
The warden made a shooing motion with his hands. “I’m positive. I wish every correctional officer was as diligent as you are,” he added.
Jasper bit the inside of his cheek so he wouldn’t smile again. He’d turned this around so handily he couldn’t help being proud of himself. And now he had six whole days to spend exactly how he wanted—doing what he loved best. “Thank you, sir. You don’t know how much your good opinion means to me.”
Jasper waited until he was out of the prison and to his car before releasing the mirth bubbling up inside him. But then he put the top down on his wife’s Mustang despite the cold—even Arizona could chill off in January—and laughed all the way home. He was brilliant. If only he could tell his wife about this. She wouldn’t be happy he was going out of town, but she had to work, so she’d live with it.
* * *
Amarok rubbed his eyes. He’d been sitting at his desk, reading crime reports, for so many hours the words were beginning to run together.
“Hey, Sarge.”
He glanced up as Phil Robbins opened the door and stomped the snow off his boots. Phil was one of the Public Village Safety Officers who helped Amarok keep the peace in spring and summer, when Hilltop received its usual influx of hunters and fisherman. He also manned a truck like Amarok’s that had a shovel on the front and helped clear the roads in the winter. “What’s going on?”
“Storm’s gettin’ bad.” Phil peeled off his gloves and made a beeline for the coffeemaker. “Shit, it’s cold out there.”
“You able to keep up?”
“So far I’m managing. After I defrost a little, I’ll make another pass.”
“You need an
y help?”
“Will later. Someone needs to plow out by the prison to make sure those folks can get home. Unless you’d rather I go out there so you can handle the roads here in town.”
“No, I’ll take the prison.” He wanted to pick up Evelyn anyway.
“Okay.” Phil’s spoon clinked against his cup as he stirred in cream and sugar. “What’re you working on?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, but he was working on the same thing he’d been working on since he’d fallen in love with Evelyn Talbot. And Phil wasn’t fooled. Evelyn didn’t know how much time he spent trying to track Jasper down, but Phil did. Phil was in the trooper station too often; there was no hiding it from him.
“Jasper Moore again, huh?” he said.
Amarok sifted through several crime scene photos. They turned his stomach. As a police officer, he was willing to do what he had to do, but he wouldn’t have asked to be included in this dark shit. He hated seeing what one person could do to another. The callous disregard for human life made him angry, which was probably why he preferred to remain in Hilltop, where he’d been born, rather than move to a more urban area. The wide-open Alaskan countryside still seemed safe and innocent by comparison.
But he wasn’t going to allow Jasper to continue to terrorize the woman he loved. That dragged him into Jasper’s fucked-up world, even if he didn’t care to be there. “Yeah.”
A skeptical expression settled on Phil’s ruddy face. “Do you think you’ll ever really find the bastard? You’ve been searching for months—an entire year—and it doesn’t seem as if you’ve made much progress.”
“When you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, you have to sift through a hell of a lot of hay,” Amarok said.
“You’re devoted. I’ll give you that.”
“Process of elimination. I’ll find him eventually.”
Phil came to stand over Amarok’s shoulder while sipping his coffee. “By contacting every police department in America and asking about any unsolved murders?”
“That’s right.” Evelyn herself said that Jasper wouldn’t stop killing on his own. He had to be stopped or he’d go on and on. That meant if they were hoping to find him they had to look for the carnage he left behind. Given all the unsolved murders out there, identifying which ones could be attributed to Jasper wasn’t easy. Even Amarok had to admit that. He was using his intuition, which meant he could be wrong—about so many things. But he had to do something.
Fortunately, he felt fairly safe making some assumptions. If Jasper was obsessed with Evelyn, it fell to reason he’d target women who looked like her. Also, because he fancied himself to be something special, Amarok doubted he’d bother with the unattractive or the old. That left Amarok searching for pretty female victims, age twenty-five to forty, with dark hair and hazel eyes who’d been tortured extensively before death. The real problem came in when the victim’s remains were found in such a state that no one knew what the woman had looked like. Amarok had to pass over those even if they could be what he was searching for. “Determination can make a big difference.”
“I agree. But if the experienced detectives who investigated Dr. Talbot’s case couldn’t come up with anything…”
At only thirty years old, Amarok didn’t have a lot of homicide experience. Until Hanover House was built, Hilltop hadn’t had a murder for over a decade, and that’d been a domestic dispute that his predecessor hadn’t had to do a whole lot to solve. “Most of those detectives have a lot of other cases to work at the same time. They don’t know Evelyn, don’t care about her personally. And, since it’s winter, I’ve got time. As long as everyone around here behaves themselves, I may break up a drunken brawl at the Moosehead once in a while and help you clear the streets.”
“You do a lot more than that. There’s always someone who’s after you for help with one thing or another.”
Amarok didn’t answer. He didn’t want to think about the devotion he felt to Evelyn because he wasn’t sure he could rely on her in the end. She made no secret of the fact that she planned to move back to the Lower 48 eventually.
“In any case, I’ve learned not to bet against you once you set your sights on something,” Phil added.
“I’ll find him,” Amarok confirmed. “It’s just a matter of time.”
* * *
“It’s too late for me to call Bishop’s sister, don’t you think?” Evelyn held a glass of Salmonberry Wine—her and Amarok’s favorite—loosely in one hand as she sat with him on the couch of his cabin-like bungalow, high heels off, feet up, in front of a roaring fire. They’d just returned from the prison and yet Sigmund, her cat, had already managed to find her lap. Amarok’s Alaskan malamute, Makita, had been with Amarok all day as he was most every day. But now Makita slept at the periphery of the room, well away from the heat of the flames. He much preferred the cold.
“Didn’t you say she lives in Minnesota?” Amarok asked.
“Yeah.”
He had one arm around her. The fingers of that hand toyed with pieces of hair that’d fallen from her ponytail. “What’s the time difference?”
“Three hours.”
He checked his watch. “Yeah. Definitely too late.”
“Darn,” she said, although she couldn’t help feeling a bit of relief that she was really off work for the night. “It took the detective on Bishop’s case several hours to get back to me, and then I was so busy that I couldn’t call, and yet I’ve got a twenty-five-year-old Jennifer Hall, who’s eight months pregnant and weathering her first Alaskan storm, waiting for word from me at The Shady Lady.”
“Ms. Hall should be safe. Margaret Seaver at the front desk will take care of her if she gets nervous. Just call Bishop’s sister first thing in the morning. That should be good enough.”
She finished her wine and set her glass on the coffee table before snuggling closer to Amarok. Living with him was so nice. She’d never forget the fear that used to cause her stomach to cramp every time she entered her empty house or condo. With Jasper on the loose, she never knew when he might strike, had to check every closet, every nook and cranny, before she could relax. Of course, she’d gotten a lot more take-home work done when she lived alone. But that was because she didn’t have a life. “I’ll have to wait. It’s nearly midnight there.”
He took a sip of his own wine. “How’d the brain imaging go?”
They hadn’t been able to talk much on the drive home. The wind had been howling, the snow falling, and Amarok had mostly been on his radio, checking in to see that Phil had finished the final plow for the night. “We ran into some complications and had to start over a couple of times, so we managed to get only a few scans done,” she told him.
“You can handle the rest tomorrow, can’t you?”
He spoke with a wry smile, and she understood why. He always teased her about how driven she was, told her she needed to relax and pace herself. “I’ve got my regular appointments with various inmates in the morning, but I’ve blocked off most of the afternoon to be able to continue the experiment.”
“You’ll get it done.”
“Eventually,” she agreed. “How was your day?”
“Better than most.”
“In what way?”
He stared thoughtfully into the fire as he took another sip of his wine.
“Amarok?”
“I found something that feels … right. The type of thing I’ve been looking for all along.”
She leaned away from him so that she could look into his face. She loved the contrast of his blue eyes with his black hair and dark beard growth, the strength of his jaw, the fullness of his lips. But right now she was more interested in what he was saying than his good looks. “What do you mean?”
“Three weeks ago, the bodies of five women, aged twenty-eight to forty-three, were found not far from a burned-out barn on an abandoned farm a few miles into the desert outside of Phoenix, Arizona.”
The image of the shack where Jasper had tortured her im
mediately was conjured in her mind. “Why would you be interested in these particular murders?”
“I wasn’t overly interested at first. I considered this case one of several possibilities. But I followed up with the detective who’s investigating it this afternoon. And now that the victims have been identified, I’m almost certain the person who killed them was Jasper.”
“Why?”
“All five women have the same physical characteristics you do.”
Chills rolled down Evelyn’s spine. Amarok wanted to catch Jasper as much as she did. She was fairly certain he spent quite a bit of time searching, but he didn’t typically mention what he found. She understood that he didn’t want to drag her through the hills of hope and valleys of disappointment. Finding anything of value was such a long shot. But this … this sounded promising.
“Did you bring home the photos?”
“I brought home all the information I’ve been able to glean so far.”
“Then why are we sitting here drinking wine? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Because it can’t be healthy to keep forcing you to relive the past. I was thinking I’d see what more I could find out before bringing it to you. Determine if there’s any way to eliminate these murders from my list of possibilities. But that would be much harder to do without your unique perspective.”
“I relive the past every day, Amarok. I can’t escape it. That’s why we need to catch him. And that’s why you need to quit trying to preserve my peace of mind. Five victims who resemble me? That’s got to be more than a coincidence.” She nudged Sigmund off her lap and stood. “Where’re the pictures?”
“In my satchel.”
She retrieved his satchel—and spread out the photographs on the table.
“What do you think?” He carried his glass over and poured himself more.
Evelyn could hardly breathe. The corpses were in varying stages of decomposition. The one that had been dead the longest had been reduced to bones. The most recent victim, however, wasn’t. The ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, and the fact that her hair and eyebrows were burned off, even some of her fingers, made Evelyn ill. Jasper hadn’t done those same things to her, but they were things he would’ve done had he thought of them—things she wouldn’t put past him.
