Hanover House: Kickoff to the Hanover House Chronicles

by Brenda Novak

  They’d had to sedate him. That was what the marshals told Evelyn. They’d said he was so difficult and dangerous, to himself and others, that the only way to get Anthony Garza safely from one place to another was to medicate him. A registered nurse at ADX Florence in Colorado where he’d been incarcerated before had administered 300 milligrams of Ryzolt four hours ago.

  There was a note of it on his chart.

  But the tranquilizer had worn off by the time he arrived at HH. According to the correctional officers in receiving he’d come in slightly agitated and, despite his chains and cuffs, had quickly grown violent, going so far as to head-butt an officer. At that point, someone had sounded the alarm while others wrestled him to the ground and replaced his cuffs with a straightjacket, further restricting his range of motion. Now he had four officers flanking him instead of two.

  Although they stood with him in the holding cell across from her, even had to support him so he wouldn’t trip on his ankle chains, he wouldn’t settle down. He was raving like a lunatic, threatening to dismember anyone he came into contact with.

  “I won’t stay in this Godforsaken place!” he cried. “You’ll all be fucked if you make me. Do you hear?”

  “Should we take him to his cell?” It was Officer Whitcomb who asked. He obviously doubted she’d be able to get anything meaningful out of Garza when the man was in such a state, and she had to agree. She’d been about to suggest they take him away and give him a chance to cool off. But the second Mr. Garza realized she was on the other side of the glass, he fell silent and went still.

  “Who are you?” His dark eyes shined with anger-induced madness as they riveted, hawklike, on her.

  Prepared for an ugly encounter, should it go that way, Evelyn fixed a placid expression on her face. She couldn’t, wouldn’t show this man how unsettled he made her. If he thought he was the first to use intimidation, he was sadly mistaken. Even the sudden reversal in his behavior came as no surprise. Sometimes the men incarcerated at HH reminded her of actors in a play with how quickly and easily they could slip in and out of whatever character suited them best.

  “Ah, you’re coherent after all,” she said. “So what have you been doing, Mr. Garza? Putting us on notice that you’re no one to be messed with?”

  He didn’t answer the question. “Who are you?”

  She put on the glasses she used to alleviate eyestrain and jotted a note on his chart. Low frustration tolerance. Possibly disorganized thinker and yet...seems more calculating than that.

  Aggressive when fearful or uncertain or presented with unfamiliar stimuli—

  “Hey! I asked you a question!” He half-dragged the C.O.s along with him so he could shuffle up to the glass.

  The guards started to yank him back, to show him that he’d better not get out of control again. No doubt they were angry about before. One of their fellow officers had been shuttled off to medical nursing a broken nose because of Garza hitting him with his head. But, lowering her clipboard, Evelyn motioned for them to leave him be. She was here to study, not punish. That distinction was important to her own humanity. “I’m your new doctor.”

  “No, you’re my next victim,” he said. Then he made kissing noises and smiled, revealing the jagged, broken front teeth he’d gotten from gnawing at the cinderblock wall of his last cell.

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  Turn the page for the first chapter of WHITEOUT, the next book in the exciting new Hanover House series, due out September 2016.

  WHITEOUT: Chapter 1

  “We are all evil in some form or another.”

  –Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker

  He’d kill her if he could. She had to remember that.

  Dropping her pen on top of the notepad she’d carried in with her, Dr. Evelyn Talbot slipped her fingers under her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night; she’d had another of her terrible nightmares. “The Plexiglass is there for a reason, Hugo. It will always be between us. And we both know why.”

  This wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping for. Impatience etched lines in his face, with its wide forehead and brown eyes that could, if she wasn’t watching carefully, look quite innocent. But he was careful not to raise his voice. In fact, he did the opposite: He lowered it in appeal. “I won’t lay a hand on you, I swear! I just have to tell you something. Come over to this side so I can whisper. It’ll only take a minute.”

  It would take even less time for him to get his hands around her throat....

  Reclaiming her pen, she replied in the same measured tone she always reserved for her subjects. “You know I can’t do that. So say what you have to say. Do it right here, right now. We’ve been going around and around with this for over an hour.”

  He twisted to look up at the camera being used to monitor his behavior. Whenever she met with an inmate, a correctional officer in a room down the hall viewed the proceedings on close-circuit TV. The inmates thought they were being watched for security purposes, but these sessions were also recorded. The video enabled her to study the nuances in their body language, which was, in addition to their speech patterns, the focus of her research.

  “I can’t,” he insisted. “Not in front of the cameras. I’m a dead man if I do.”

  Someone had him convinced. She believed that much. Although, with the way her subjects lied, she could easily be wrong. Maybe he was making it all up. “But who would harm you?” She leaned closer. “And how?”

  Evelyn had been studying Hugo Evanski since Hanover House opened three months ago, in November. He’d been among the first of the psychopaths transferred here, had scored a whopping thirty-seven out of forty on The Hare Psychopathy Checklist, or PCL-R. But, most days, to look or talk to him, no one would know he was capable of murder. On the whole, Evelyn had found him to be intelligent, tractable and, for the most part, polite. He was even helpful, when he could be.

  The thought made her a bit uneasy, but if she’d developed a friend among the psychopaths she analyzed, it would be this former middle school teacher. Maybe that was why she was tempted to trust him, even though he’d attacked her the first time they met at San Quentin.

  “I was right about Jimmy, wasn’t I?” he said.

  A month and a half ago, he’d warned her that another inmate was planning to hang himself with a sheet. If not for Hugo, Jimmy Wise would be dead.

  “Yes, but you didn’t demand I risk my life to get that information.”

  “Because Jimmy was no threat to me!”

  “So who is?”

  Squeezing his eyes closed, he tapped his forehead against the glass.

  Evelyn waited.

  “What can I do?” he asked when he spoke again. “How can I get you to believe me? To give me just a moment of privacy?”

  He’d stalked and murdered fifteen women. She’d never forget the picture in his file showing the remains of the woman his wife had found. That meant there was nothing he could do because she wasn’t stupid enough to put herself in jeopardy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I truly am.”

  His gaze fell to the four-inch-long scar on her neck. “It’s his fault.”

  She touched the raised flesh. She supposed, in a way, Hugo was right. “Yes. Although you attacked me once, too, remember?”

  Getting up, he paced the length of the small cubicle that comprised his half of their meeting space—what constituted her “couch.” “I remember,” he said. “But I’ve apologized for that. I would never hurt you now. I wouldn’t allow anyone else to, either, not if I could help it.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment,” she responded, but that didn’t mean she’d change her mind.

  He stopped and pivoted to face her. “You don’t understand. You’re not safe.”

  The intensity of his voic
e and expression made the hair on her arms stand on end. Is that what Hugo was hoping to do? Frighten her?

  She had to admit it was working—but only because he’d never taken this tact before. And he seemed so convinced, so sincere.

  Apparently, even she could still be taken in....

  Grabbing her pad and her pen, Evelyn stood. “I’m afraid we’ll have to end our session early. You’re so obsessed with...whatever it is that’s causing your agitation we can’t make any progress.”

  “Wait!” He rushed the glass. “Evelyn...”

  When she gaped at him for using her first name as if they were familiar enough for him to do that, he seemed to realize his mistake and reverted to the usual formalities.

  “Dr. Talbot, listen to me. Please. This prison houses psychopaths, right? Men who take lives without hesitation or remorse.”

  She made no reply, didn’t see where one was necessary. He was stating information they both knew to be accurate.

  “I’m trying to tell you that—” he glanced at the camera again “—not every killer at Hanover House is locked up.”

  This was the last thing she’d expected. “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s all I’ll say. Unless...unless you can give me a chance to speak to you in private. I’ll explain what I know, what I’ve seen and heard. And I won’t hurt you. I’m trying to help!”

  Evelyn refused to listen to any more of this. Clearly, Hugo was hoping to gain some type of control in their relationship by acting like her protector at the same time he chipped away at her peace of mind. No way would she allow him to do that. At just sixteen, her life had nearly been taken when she fell in love with a man like Hugo. After becoming a psychiatrist eight years ago, she’d devoted her life to unraveling the mysteries of the antisocial mind. She knew more about psychopaths than anyone else in the world, except maybe Dr. Robert D. Hare, who’d developed the PCL-R and had been researching the subject for thirty or more years. But, sadly, even she didn’t know as much as she wanted, not nearly enough to protect the unsuspecting.

  “We’ll meet at our regular time day after tomorrow,” she told him. “Do what you can to relax. You’re growing paranoid.”

  She walked out, but he didn’t let it go at that. “You’ll see,” he called after her. “You’re going to wish you’d believed me!”

  ***

  With a sigh of bone-deep exhaustion, Evelyn tossed her notepad on her desk and slid into her chair.

  “What’s wrong? Another headache?”

  The sound of Lorraine Drummond’s voice at her open door brought Evelyn’s head up. “No, I just left a session with Hugo Evanski.”

  Lorraine, whom she’d hired out of the newspaper when she and the warden began staffing the center last September, was heavyset, in her mid-fifties and recently single. She had a small house in Anchorage an hour away, two grown children and no education beyond high school. She hadn’t even worked until her divorce, but she did a terrific job of running the center’s food service program.

  “You’ve never complained about Hugo before.”

  “Are you kidding? You haven’t heard about how we met? He rushed me at San Quentin and caused me to hit my head so hard I wound up in the hospital.”

  “I mean since you both came here to Alaska.”

  Evelyn let the past go. “He’s agitated. Acting strange.”

  “Why not pass him along to Dr. Fitzpatrick or one of the others? Give yourself a break?”

  “Dr. Fitzpatrick is already using him for some of his studies—and has been since we opened. I can’t ask him to do more. Not since Dr. Brand quit and Dr. Wilheim came down with the shingles. We’re barely managing with only five productive members of the team left. Who knows how long it’ll be before we can find someone to replace Ely and Stacy’s able to come back to work?” Besides, Evelyn felt duty-bound to carry the heaviest load. She was largely the reason they were all stuck in the middle of nowhere with thirty-seven of the worst serial killers in America. The other 213 inmates were also diagnosed as psychopathic but were in for lesser crimes and would one day be released.

  “You could if you wanted to,” Lorraine insisted.

  “I don’t want to. I can handle Hugo.” The men she’d come here to study manipulated her constantly, or tried to. Why should she expect Hugo to be any different?

  “He’s very nice whenever I see him in the dining hall.” Lorraine put a sack lunch on the desk. She came up to the administration offices quite often to make sure Evelyn had food to eat, regardless of the meal.

  Evelyn peeked in at her lunch: carrots, an apple, a cup of chicken noodle soup and a chocolate-chip cookie. “You can’t trust nice.” Not only had Hugo shown her a very different side of him the day they first met, Jasper had once been nice, too. She’d loved him! And look what he’d done...

  Lorraine adjusted an earring that was hanging too low. “Dr. Fitzpatrick says everyone dons a mask. With psychopaths, that mask is more like a mirror. Whatever they think you want to see, that’s what they reflect back at you. They’re empty.”

  No, not empty. Evelyn didn’t believe that for a second. She’d once seen the bared soul of a psychopath, stared into his eyes in a way Dr. Fitzpatrick never had and, God willing, never would. The men they treated were far from empty; empty was too synonymous with neutral, harmless. If she were a religious person she might substitute soulless and find it quite fitting, but she hadn’t been to church in over a decade.

  “They know how to blend in,” she corrected. “How to appear as emotionally invested as those around them. They’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, which is why they’re able to cause so much pain and destruction.” And why the truly caring individuals involved in their lives usually suffered for it.

  Lorraine seemed to measure Evelyn more closely. “Are you sure it’s only Hugo that’s got you down? You look frazzled.”

  And it was only Monday. Not a great way to start out the week. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

  “Why don’t you go home and lie down, get some rest?”

  Evelyn waved her off. “It’s not even noon.”

  “Listen, this place won’t fall apart if you take a couple of hours. Everyone admires your commitment—no one more than me—but you’ll run yourself into a brick wall if you don’t slow down.”

  Evelyn shook a daily vitamin from the bottle she kept in her desk and tossed it back with a drink of water. “Don’t be so dramatic. I’m fine. And I can’t leave.” She checked the clock hanging on her wall. “Our new inmate will be here any minute.”

  “Anthony Garza? I thought he wasn’t due until four.”

  “Weather report says we’ve got another storm coming in. So they caught an earlier flight. You didn’t get the message?”

  Lorraine adjusted her hair net. “I haven’t checked my email this morning. I’ve been too busy in the kitchen.”

  “One of the federal marshals called just before I met with Hugo. The plane’s already landed in Anchorage.” Because of the amount of security required to move the high-profile killers they often received, arrivals were always a big deal. The entire onsite staff was alerted...just in case—although Lorraine’s presence wasn’t as high of a priority as the warden, the correctional officers and the mental health team. The last thing they needed was for someone to make a careless mistake that would result in an escape or injury. As the first institution of its kind, Hanover House was a radical new approach to the psychopathy problem. They had to prove themselves professional and effective or risk losing the public support they’d worked so hard to achieve. Just because the citizens of Hilltop hadn’t mounted much resistance to having a maximum-security mental facility built on the outskirts of town—nothing like the other locations the government had considered—didn’t mean they wouldn’t rally at the prodding of an inciting event.

  “What do we know about Garza?” Lorraine asked.

  That question made Evelyn uncomfortable. The inmates at Hanover House were hand-sele
cted for the type of crimes they’d committed and the behavior they exhibited. That was one of the details that made their institution unique, besides the friendly name (“house” instead of “prison”) and the focus on research and treatment as opposed to simple incarceration. But Evelyn had chosen Garza just because he was so difficult to handle. Had the team been asked to weigh in on some of the details, as they probably should’ve been, they would’ve rejected him on the grounds that he was too antagonistic to be considered for their program. Not only had he attacked every cellmate he’d ever had, he’d nearly killed a guard.

  But Evelyn thought that anger, that level of hatred and vocal interaction, might bring insights they’d been missing so far.

  “We know he killed the first three of his four wives. That he’s egocentric, feels no real human attachment, has delusions of grandeur and lies like a rug.” She straightened her blotter. “He also has a penchant for self-mutilation, but that’s another thing.”

  “How’d he murder his wives?” Lorraine’s grimace suggested she didn’t really want to know but had to ask.

  His file lay on the corner of the desk. Evelyn had read the documents inside it several times. She slid it over and flipped through the pages as she spoke. “He didn’t do anything uniquely gruesome. Knocked them out with a hammer before setting the bed on fire.”

  “He did that to all three?”

  When she came to a picture of the burned remnants of a mobile home, Evelyn paused. She didn’t want to imagine what’d happened to the poor woman who’d been inside but couldn’t stop the heartbreaking images that flashed before her mind’s eye. “Yes.”

  “He wasn’t afraid it would raise his chances of being caught?”

  Evelyn managed a shrug as she closed the file. She had to keep some distance between her emotions and what she encountered every day or she would never survive her work environment. Even if she couldn’t maintain that separation, she faked it. Otherwise her colleagues would be all over her—cautioning her, giving advice, telling her she was taking her job too seriously. What she didn’t understand was how they could take the men and issues they dealt with any less seriously, how they could look at their jobs as just a nine-to-five grind. “He nearly got away with it, was only tried two years ago, five years after the death of his last known victim. By then, he was already separated from his fourth wife. I guess he found something that worked and stuck with it.”