Hanover House: Kickoff to the Hanover House Chronicles

by Brenda Novak

  He rolled his eyes as if that sounded positively boring. “Who cares about speech?”

  “I do. It could lead us to other discoveries.” Studies had already shown that psychopaths sometimes had difficulty monitoring their speech...

  “You’re willing to risk your life to figure out why I speak differently than you?”

  “Someone’s got to do it.”

  He made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Good Lord, you’re foolhardy. Can you imagine what might happen with so many ruthless killers under one roof?”

  She’d been confronted with these scare tactics before—not only from the psychopaths themselves but from her detractors in the media. “There will be plenty of security, I assure you.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He shook his head as if she didn’t quite get it. “All it takes is one breach, and...it’ll be a bloodbath.”

  Evelyn folded her arms. “The potential alone should fill you with excitement. Have I convinced you? Are you now eager to join me in Alaska?”

  The corners of his lips turned up. “Absolutely.”

  Chapter 3

  Jasper Moore had changed his identity several times over the years. He now went by the name Andy Smith, which was far more common and unremarkable than “Jasper.” He’d changed his face, too. Considerably. So considerably that sometimes he regretted the surgery. But he’d probably be in prison right now if he hadn’t taken advantage of what his parents had afforded him.

  Although he was home alone, he made sure the door to the bathroom was locked before taking the tattered old prom picture from his wallet. He was a fool to keep anything that connected him to the past. But he hadn’t been able to let go of this one item. Not only was he the boy he used to be in that photograph, which he sort of missed, Evelyn was with him. It was the only tangible thing he’d had to remember her by during all the years he’d waited to come into contact with her again.

  Filled with longing, he touched her face. Studying it brought him such exquisite pleasure, so much that all of his victims looked like her. The woman he’d picked up last week especially. From a distance, he would’ve sworn it was Evelyn.

  Too bad the bitch had opened her mouth and ruined the illusion...

  “Andy? I’m home!”

  Shit! He’d thought he had another hour, at least, before his wife got off work. After leaving the woman who was bound and gagged at his little hideaway, he’d spent too much time watching Evelyn’s parents’ house, hoping her mother or father would lead him to where she was living these days.

  “Hey, where are you?” Hillary called.

  With a grimace, he put his precious picture back inside the secret compartment in his wallet and turned on the shower so she’d think he was unavailable. He didn’t care to see her, didn’t want her to bring him down with her complaints about his inability to maintain steady employment. After he’d found that envelope from Evelyn’s parents in his father’s study, he’d convinced her to move to Boston by telling her he’d been promised a good job there. So she wasn’t happy that in the month since they’d been living in Massachusetts no job had materialized.

  She’d also be angry that he hadn’t picked up her two brats from their friends’ house after summer camp...

  She surprised him by knocking instead of waiting until he was out of the bathroom. “Andy?”

  When he didn’t answer, she knocked louder.

  “Andy!”

  He quickly removed his clothes and stepped into the shower so he could respond without sounding as if he was right on the other side of the door. “What is it?”

  “How’d your interviews go?”

  “Not so good,” he replied.

  There was a pause as she dealt with her disappointment. “What went wrong?” she asked at length.

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “So you didn’t collect the girls?”

  “My last interview ran late, and after hearing so many no’s, I wasn’t in the mood to see anyone.”

  There was another long silence. She used to show some sympathy, tell him he’d have better luck tomorrow, that she loved him anyway, that sort of thing. But she was becoming less and less understanding. Now she wanted to let him know that she wasn’t happy with the kind of husband he’d turned out to be.

  He wished she’d leave, just walk away and start dinner. He was hungry. Or she could go get the kids, if she was so damn worried about them. But she didn’t. He heard her voice again. “Can I come in? I’d like to talk to you while we have some time alone.”

  And air all of her complaints? He’d had enough of that. “Not right now,” he said. “Can’t you give me a chance to rebound a little first? I feel like shit as it is.”

  Besides, he hadn’t yet had the chance to wash up properly after leaving the woman he was keeping in the shack he’d built. It was going to take some time to get all the blood out from under his fingernails...

  ***

  It was late when Evelyn’s father picked them up from Logan International Airport. Grant embraced them. Then he took one look at her stitches and cast a sidelong glance at her mother, who’d no doubt spent every minute Evelyn had been preoccupied with work complaining to him about what’d happened at San Quentin and how it could so easily happen again in Alaska.

  “How was the trip?” he asked as he put the luggage in the back of the SUV.

  Lara didn’t answer even though the question had been thrown out to both of them, so Evelyn jumped in. “Necessary. Informative.”

  Grant closed up the back. “But did you have any fun?”

  Evelyn couldn’t claim it’d been fun. Instead of the enjoyable shopping, eating and sightseeing experience she and Lara had hoped for, it’d been strained, especially after that incident with Hugo. Her mother would look at her and shake her head, or she’d reach out and touch the bandage covering Evelyn’s stitches. Most of the time, she wouldn’t say anything. A stark expression conveyed her concern. But if they did talk, the conversation invariably turned to Hanover House and her work and why she insisted on doing what she did.

  “I’m glad we had some time together before I have to leave,” Evelyn said, trying to remain positive.

  “Speaking of leaving, how much longer do you have left—five weeks?” her father asked.

  “Only four.”

  “That’s coming right up. Do you have to do more traveling before you go, or will you be home until you move?”

  Evelyn got into the back seat; her parents climbed into the front. “I have to go to Pennsylvania next week, but at least that isn’t as far away as California.”

  “You’ve been working so hard,” he said. “You’re determined, I’ll give you that.”

  She was determined. She’d had to be, or that experience with Jasper would’ve destroyed her. The memory was always there, a constant threat to her peace of mind. Maybe that was why she fought so hard every day. Her parents didn’t realize it, but she was hanging on by a very thin thread. If she didn’t continue to march forward, and take more ground in her battle against psychopathy, she was afraid she’d backslide into the broken person she’d been right after the incident, despite all the counseling and hard-won self-healing.

  Besides, what else was there for her except work? She couldn’t meet a nice man, fall in love and start a family, like other women. Jasper had seen to that when he’d destroyed her trust of the opposite sex.

  “It’s taken a tremendous amount of effort to make HH a reality,” she said, but even ‘tremendous’ seemed like an understatement. Not only had it been necessary to sell the need for such study to the right politicians, she’d had to petition for the funding, research the psychopaths who might be able to teach her the most, and recruit a mental health team she believed in and who were willing to follow her into the wilderness—literally and figuratively. And, while she did all of that, she’d had to prepare for the move by closing down her psychiatry practice, putting her condo up for sale and having a bungalow built on the outski
rts of Hilltop so that she’d have a comfortable place to live when she arrived.

  Fortunately, the bungalow was ready and waiting for her. She’d stayed in it and furnished it when she went back to hire the warden who would be running the prison side of the facility. She was just waiting to have the alarm system installed, and the contractor she’d hired had promised it would be in before she moved there.

  “We’ll help you pack, of course, but”—her father pulled through the gate surrounding her complex—“what are you going to do if the condo doesn’t sell before you have to go?”

  “I’ll have no choice except to leave it empty and hope my Realtor will be able to sell it after I’m gone.”

  “I guess that type of thing isn’t too uncommon.” He parked in a visitor’s stall. “Let us know if we can do anything to help.”

  Although she wasn’t excited about covering two house payments, she earned enough to make it possible, so she refused to stress over the condo. Part of her was tempted to rent it out, anyway, in case she didn’t like Alaska and wanted to come back. But she was afraid that having a bail-out plan might make it too easy to give up. “I will. Thank you. I appreciate the support.”

  “What’s the latest word?” Grant asked, his hand on the door latch. “When will Hanover House be finished?”

  She released her seat belt. “We’re hoping to open November 1st.”

  “You’re going back so early, I thought that must’ve changed.”

  “No. I need to help the warden staff the place, and that’ll take a while. I plan to be fully prepared when my subjects arrive.”

  “You mean the murderers, rapists and con-artists who are currently incarcerated elsewhere,” her mother supplied.

  At the bitterness in Lara’s voice, her father reached over to rest his hand on her mother’s knee. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but he didn’t say anything and neither did Evelyn. Thank goodness the “fun” trip with her mother was over. Now she just needed to unwind and get some sleep before she had to start another day with an endless list of details.

  “I’ll get your luggage,” Grant said and climbed out.

  Evelyn stared up at the light shining through her living room window. She left it on whenever she was gone. Because she was so eager to get a break from her mother, it beckoned to her, promised solitude. But the thought of being alone also made her uneasy. As cautious as she tried to be about keeping her personal information private, she couldn’t live completely off the grid and continue to be a fully-functioning individual. She wouldn’t sacrifice a normal life for anything, not even safety. That meant there would always be some way for the men she worked with to find her.

  Only a few years ago, an ex-con she’d once evaluated for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections had broken in and nearly raped her before her neighbor heard all the thumps, bumps and cries. The police arrived in time, but Carl Jenkins, her attacker, would never reveal how he’d come by her address. His silence on the subject sometimes made her wonder if she’d overlooked something obvious, something Jasper could easily dig up...

  Stop. That was the paranoia talking. Jasper had to be living abroad. After all the money she’d spent on private investigators, and the many, many times she’d followed up with the Boston Police Department, demanding they do everything possible, they would’ve found him by now if he was in America.

  Her father rapped on her window as he carried her suitcase to the sidewalk. “You coming?”

  She was tempted to ask if she could spend the night with them. She was so tired. She wanted to feel safe for a change. But such an admittance would only convince them that she wasn’t doing as well as she pretended. So she got out and opened her mother’s door to say goodbye. “I hope you’re not going to stay mad at me.”

  “Maybe I will,” her mother responded with a pout. “Why do you have to worry me so much?”

  “When I suffer, you suffer. I get that. I’m sorry I didn’t turn out to be a...a nurse or a real estate agent. But...as long as Jasper’s still out there, would anything be safe?”

  Her mother said nothing.

  “I believe in my work,” Evelyn added. “Knowledge is power.”

  Lara held out for another second. Then she pulled Evelyn into her arms and hugged her fiercely. “Please be careful.”

  “I will.” Evelyn breathed in the familiar floral scent of her mother’s perfume. “I promise. You know I have a gun inside, and I know how to use it.”

  When her father brought her suitcases into the house, Evelyn almost asked him to look through every room, even the closets, despite the fact that her security system indicated no one had been inside the condo since she’d been gone. The little girl in her still craved Daddy’s protection, she supposed. But she’d quit having him do stuff like that after graduating from college, when she’d bought her Glock.

  “Your mom loves you, you know,” he said.

  She nodded, absently looking for anything that might be out of place. “We’ll work through it.”

  He propped his hands on his hips as if he might say more. But he must’ve realized that nothing would convince her to change her mind. She was going to Alaska no matter what. So, after a sigh, he put his arms around her.

  “We both love you,” he said. Then he was gone and she was left to lower the blinds and listen to the settling noises of her condo while wishing she’d insisted they take the time to stop by her sister’s to pick up her cat. The house felt so empty without Sigmund...

  Evelyn wondered how many women, like her, had to feel afraid, even inside their own homes. Probably not a lot per capita. But there were other survivors out there. They understood.

  She took her gun from the kitchen drawer and went through her nightly ritual where she checked every nook and cranny that could possibly hide a human being. Only when she felt confident that no one was going to jump out at her did she put her gun on the counter, slip off her shoes and turn on the TV.

  The nightly news came on. She watched for a few minutes, trying to relax so that she could sleep. She wanted to see if anything about her experience at San Quentin would be reported. But hearing about a missing woman and then a murder downtown didn’t help her anxiety. She kept glancing at the darkness beyond her windows, wondering if someone was out there—and if that someone might try to get in before morning.

  She’d just walked over to fix herself a drink when her phone rang.

  The Alaskan area code told her it had to do with Hanover House. It was four hours earlier there, so not too late to be calling someone. But Bob Ferris, the warden she’d hired, had taken his family to Hawaii for two weeks, before he had to start work in earnest, so who could this be? A member of the mental health team who’d gone to Alaska to oversee the building of his or her home?

  “Hello?”

  “Dr. Talbot?”

  The deep voice on the other end of the line gave the caller’s identity away before he could provide his name. It wasn’t a member of the team. It was Benjamin Murphy—or Sergeant Amarok, as the locals called him—the handsome Alaskan State Trooper who served as Hilltop’s only police presence, other than the two part-time Village Public Safety Officers he designated each summer to help him enforce the hunting and fishing regulations, which was the bulk of his job.

  “Sergeant, what can I do for you?” She caught her breath, feeling that odd rush of excitement that came over her whenever he was around. She wasn’t often attracted to someone like she was attracted to him—and had been from the first moment she’d set eyes on him. Especially someone who didn’t particularly like her in return.

  “I’m afraid there’s been some vandalism at the prison,” he replied. “I received a call from the construction crew this morning, and went out to have a look. I left you a voicemail, but when I didn’t hear back, I thought I’d better try again.”

  She’d been flying all day, hadn’t yet checked her messages. “Some vandalism?” she echoed nervously. She didn’t need trouble. What she was tryin
g to accomplish was difficult enough...

  “Yes. The copper pipes, tubing and wiring have been ripped out,” he explained.

  “That sounds more like theft.”

  “Except they didn’t steal it. They dumped it on site. And they smashed the windows on the office side, knocked over the portable johns, which created a sickening mess, and spray-painted the walls with...I’ll just say...unfriendly messages.”

  “Geared toward who or what?”

  “‘Keep your crazies in the lower forty-eight,’ that sort of thing, only with slightly more explicit language.”

  “So it was directed at me.”

  “Since one word began with a ‘C’ and was used repeatedly, I can only assume whoever did this wasn’t directing their remarks to the men involved in this project.”

  “I see.” She rubbed her arms, feeling chilled even though it wasn’t cold. Some of the people in Hilltop were leery about the kind of facility she was building in their backyard, but it was primarily Sergeant Amarok who’d revealed express opposition. Did that mean anything here? It certainly jumped out at her right away. He’d lobbied against the prison—quite vocally—until the mayor and a handful of other key citizens managed to convince him to back off for the sake of the jobs Hanover House would create.

  At that point, Amarok had gone silent, as if he’d considered himself outvoted, but Evelyn wasn’t under the illusion that he’d changed his mind. He didn’t want her in his town. He scowled if they ever happened to bump into each other, or had occasion to attend the same meeting—and there’d been several instances when she’d found it necessary to sit down with the mayor and the city council, as well as various prominent Hilltop “influencers.”

  Once, when she’d gone to eat at the local diner, Amarok had been there too. She’d thought he might approach her, as a professional courtesy if nothing else, but he hadn’t. He’d remained in his own booth, watching her as if he didn’t trust her a whole lot more than she trusted the psychopaths she studied.