Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (92 page)

by Brenda Novak

“The psychopaths are always around.

In calm times we study them, but in times of upheaval, they rule over us.”

--Ernst Kretschmer

California...

Prologue

He’d found what he needed. At last. After twenty years of waiting, of planning, of purposely blending in to escape notice, he had the thread that would lead him back to the only woman who’d ever really mattered in his life.

The only woman who’d ever been a challenge.

The only woman who’d ever gotten away.

Once his parents had finally gone to bed, and long after anyone would expect for them to have a visitor, Jasper Moore stared down at the envelope he’d recovered from his father’s desk. Inside was a letter from Evelyn Talbot’s father, pleading with Stanley and Maureen to come forward if they possessed
any
information on Jasper’s whereabouts. It said that Evelyn had been through enough. That the Moores should
finally
do the right thing and divulge any information they possessed.

But they never would. They were the ones who’d helped him escape in the first place, all those years ago—and they told everyone they hadn’t seen him since before the murders, even though, in recent years, he risked a furtive visit now and then, if he could do it safely.

Anyway, it wasn’t the letter that concerned Jasper. He didn’t give a shit about the Talbots’ emotional plea for justice and closure.

He was far more interested in the return address on the outside.

Four months later...

Chapter 1

She’d been attacked. Dr. Evelyn Talbot remembered that right off. From the lights and the noise, she also knew she was in a hospital. She just couldn’t recall how she’d gotten there.

“She’s moving. I think she’s coming around.”

Was that a doctor, or maybe a nurse? She didn’t recognize the voice, but her thoughts were fuzzy, and it was too difficult to open her eyes. She almost sank back into the dark void she’d just emerged from, where she could drift without worry, without having to conjure up the chain of events that had led to this. She didn’t want to fight any of the battles she’d have to fight if she woke up.

But then she heard a voice she
did
recognize, and that voice spoke directly to her.

“Honey, it’s Mom. Can you hear me? If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”

Squeeze her hand
? Surely, things weren’t
that
bad. But Evelyn didn’t yet know for sure. She could hear tears in Lara’s voice, so she felt obligated to expend the Herculean effort required to actually break the surface of consciousness.

“She’s pretty drugged. It might be a while,” the first person responded, but that person didn’t realize how much Evelyn stood to lose if her family started to make too much fuss about the risk inherent in her job. What’d happened today (if it was still “today”; she had no idea how long she’d been out) was her own fault. She knew the type of men she dealt with, understood what they were capable of. She’d studied more psychopaths than almost any other mental health professional in America. She’d merely allowed herself to be distracted at the worst possible moment.

“Mom?” she croaked, forcing the word through lips that would barely part.

“Evelyn!” Her mother leaned over her bed. “You gave us such a scare. Are you okay?”

Lara’s white hair and gently lined face, pinched with worry, finally came into focus. A nurse was in the room too—a young Indian woman with a kind smile—but no one else. Where was her father? And her sister? Surely, Lara had alerted them.

Wait...she wasn’t thinking straight. Of course they wouldn’t be here; they’d be back in Boston. Her mother had traveled with her to San Francisco, where she’d had to come on business, so that they could spend some time together before Evelyn moved to Alaska.

“I’m fine. Everything’s...fine.” At least, she hoped it was. It would help if her darn tongue wasn’t so unwieldy... That was due to the pain meds, no doubt; she recognized the effects. “What happened?”

She remembered leaving her mother at the hotel, arriving at San Quentin State Prison, passing through security and waiting to meet with one of the candidates on her list—a serial killer who’d strangled fifteen women...

Hugo Evanski. That was his name. She’d been standing up, reading his file when he was brought into the room, and then...nothing. That was where her mind went blank.

“That animal you went to see?” her mother said. “That murderer? He broke away from the guard and rushed you on sight. Hit you so hard you banged your head against the wall, then fell and hit the corner of the desk. You have several stitches in your temple.”

Evelyn licked her lips, trying to ease the dryness. She felt like the tin man from
The Wizard of Oz
, with no oil. “Did he...did he do anything else?”

Lara’s eyebrows knitted. “Isn’t that
enough
?”

“I can’t feel much. I’m...trying to ascertain the extent of my injuries.”

The nurse lifted Evelyn’s arm to take her blood pressure. “According to your chart, you have a concussion and six stitches,” she said and gave her hand a reassuring rub before putting air in the cuff.

“They got him before he could do any more damage,” her mother explained. “But you hit your head so hard that they had to check your brain to see if you were hemorrhaging.”

Not good news. “Am I?”

“No. Thank God.”

Evelyn drew a deep breath. “Then I’m going to be okay, like I said.”

“
This
time,” her mother responded. “But what about next time? What if something like this happens in Alaska, and they can’t pull the bastard off you soon enough? Or if you’re hurt even worse and they can’t get you to a hospital because of severe weather? Why you’d isolate yourself up there, in the wilderness, with so many human monsters, I have no idea.”

Evelyn couldn’t miss this opportunity, even if her mother didn’t like the idea of her living so far away. It was the culmination of her professional aspirations. “I didn’t get to choose where they built the facility, Mother.” 

The nurse removed the blood pressure cuff, made a notation on her chart and said she had another patient she needed to check on.

“They tried other locations,” Evelyn went on as the nurse hurried out. “Texas. Arizona. South Dakota. Hilltop didn’t protest quite as much.” With only five hundred people in town, they couldn’t have the political influence of a larger community, so even if they’d gone at it with more determination, it might not have made the same difference. But she didn’t add that. Neither did she volunteer that public opinion hadn’t shifted in the facility’s favor until after Hilltop had been adopted as the building site. It seemed as if those in the “lower forty-eight” liked the idea of stashing their worst criminals all in the same place, as long as it was some
other
place.

“Heaven help the people who live there,” Lara muttered.

“They won’t need heaven’s help.” She stifled a groan for how difficult it was just to talk. “Hanover House is going to be a level 4 facility. All the...the monsters will be locked up.”

The lines in her mother’s face grew deeper. “And you’ll be inside with them.”

They’d been through this... “My office will be in a whole other wing.”

“You’ll have to go to the prison section to observe or meet with your subjects.”

“When they’re brought to a session with me, they’ll be wearing cuffs, ankle bracelets and a belly—”

“Like this guy was? The man who just hurt you?” her mother broke in before she could qualify that statement, as she’d planned.

“Yes, but...I wasn’t expecting him to act as he did. He’d barely walked into the room. I had no idea he’d rush me so quickly.”

Her mother’s hands, with the cuticles around her nails torn up from the way she constantly picked at them, tightened on the bed rail. “Where was the guard, for crying out loud?”

Evelyn allowed her eyes to close. “The officer who escorted him didn’t expect it, either, I’m sure—or he...would’ve been more prepared.”

“So what are you saying?
Whoops
? It won’t happen again?” The pitch of Lara’s voice shot up an octave. “What if this psychopath had had a homemade weapon? A shank or whatever they call it? He could’ve stabbed you.
Killed
you. Is that what you’re
hoping
will happen? What Jasper did when you were in high school was...beyond a nightmare. After surviving such a horrific ordeal, why wouldn’t you do everything possible to avoid men like him? I mean...what are you thinking? Do you have some kind of death wish?”

Evelyn opened her eyes and managed a scowl. Surely by now her mother should know that what she did wasn’t really a choice. She
had
to do it; couldn’t do anything else, not after what’d happened when she was only sixteen. She’d found her best girlfriends brutally murdered—all three of them! She’d almost been killed by the same boy. After three days of torture, Jasper Moore had slit her throat and left her for dead—and it wasn’t as if he’d been a mere stranger. He was her high school boyfriend, someone she’d trusted enough to give her virginity.

But she was still struggling against the debilitating effects of the meds they’d given her, so all she could say was, “No. Of course not.”

Lara’s head jutted forward. “Then why must you surround yourself with conscienceless men who’ll do anything to hurt other people? Lust killers? You’ve told me yourself that they take pleasure in causing pain. You’re only thirty-six years old, Evelyn. And you’re so beautiful! Regular men trip over their feet when they see you. Of course the sickos behind bars are going to fixate on you.”

Many of her opponents had pointed to her gender, age and physical appearance as reason she shouldn’t be working in the criminal justice system, especially in such an impactful way, but she wasn’t about to tolerate that bias. “Those are all things I can’t change. I...I am what I am, but I won’t let the fact that I was once...terrorized get the best of me.” She could feel the pain in her head growing stronger but she was slowly regaining her faculties and was too caught up in what she wanted to say to pay that dull ache any attention. “At some point, we simply
have
to...to come to understand
why
psychopaths act as they do. How they come to be. How to stop them.” She drew a bolstering breath. “Only then can we protect the innocent.”

“And what if there are no answers?” That her mother spoke through her teeth gave evidence of her deep-seated anger—and the fact that Evelyn hadn’t gone through her painful ordeal alone. “Sometimes there isn’t a reason for what people do!”

“There’s
always
a reason, Mom.” Evelyn had to swallow to be able to continue. “Besides, the more we try to ignore the psychopaths who live and work around us, hoping they’ll...they’ll go away on their own, the more...the more power people like Jasper will possess.” She allowed the volume of her voice to drop. “And the more people they’ll hurt.”

Lara’s dangly earrings swung as she shook her head. “But there’s no understanding crazy!”

The degree of her belief in what she was about to say gave Evelyn an added shot of adrenaline. “I’ve told you before, Jasper wasn’t crazy and neither are the men I study. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that.”

Her mother straightened. “I don’t care if they’re sane or not. I don’t even care if there’s a great need for your work. You’ve done enough. You’ve convinced the government to build this study facility. Now let someone else take over.
Don’t go to Alaska
.”

Still struggling to maintain the clarity she needed to continue this argument, Evelyn shifted in the bed. “I have to.”

“
Why
?”

“Hanover House will need me in order to succeed. Nobody else seems to feel quite as passionately as I do—and, let’s be honest, I’ve been the driving force behind it from the beginning.”

“Why not let one of the other members of the mental health team you’ve assembled take over? Dr. Fitzpatrick has fifteen years on you, much more experience, and he’s a man—not someone those ghouls will be likely to salivate over and dream about raping. Let
him
take the lead.”

She put a hand to her forehead, felt the bandage. “He’ll be a great help. I couldn’t have brought Hanover House into existence without him. But I won’t relinquish control of what I’ve worked so hard to create.” Not when she was so determined to find the answers she craved: Why was there such a thing as a psychopath? How did such people come to be? Was it nature, nurture or a combination of both that created this fearful anomaly? Was the rate of psychopathy increasing, as some studies indicated? And how was it that such people could very often kill their own mothers, or even their own children, and not feel a second’s remorse?

Evelyn’s curiosity about those things in particular drove her worse than a relentless thirst. And now that the government had agreed to build a high-security federal institution where she and a team of other psychiatrists and forensic psychologists could make an in-depth study of those for whom murder was a delight instead of merely a means to an end, maybe she’d finally find out what made them tick.