Leland and his friends had two ATVs with them. Even if the Expedition got stuck, they’d get out. They had to come back, because if they didn’t …
She couldn’t let herself think about what might happen if they didn’t. She’d have to get help somehow. Their lives could depend on it. And she had to tell the authorities about the body in the shed. That woman did not die of natural causes. The ligatures and the injuries—terrible injuries—indicated murder. That meant there was a killer on the loose, and a brutal killer at that. What had been done to the woman wasn’t what any normal person would do, even in a rage.
Just when Sierra thought her nerves couldn’t take any more waiting, not with that battered, frozen body so close, she spotted a glimmer of light in the darkness.
What was that? Headlights? Could Leland, Peter and Ted finally be back?
Pulse racing, she pressed her palms to the glass and stared into the inky blackness.
What she’d seen was gone, just that fast. And she couldn’t hear a motor. Had she imagined it? Could that glimmer have been a flash of lightning instead? The sun penetrating the storm clouds for a few seconds?
“Come on, come on.” She stood, transfixed, for probably fifteen minutes, hoping and praying that her long vigil would be over at last. But she never did see any more light, couldn’t see anything at all.
Why not? Leland and his friends should be tramping through the front door by now.
It wasn’t until she heard the doorknob rattle at the back of the cabin that she realized she’d been right about someone being outside. Only a human could make that sound, not the wind. But Leland and the others wouldn’t come through the back. There’d be no reason for them to do that.
So who was trying to get in?
*
“What are you doing?”
Evelyn tilted her head to the side as Amarok came up from behind and bent to kiss her neck. He’d been on the phone with Phil Robbins, a middle-aged local who assisted him in the capacity of Public Safety Officer during the summer. In the off-season, with most of the hunters and fishermen gone for the winter, Phil manned a plow and helped with snow removal, so Amarok had been trying to coordinate with him to make sure the streets were cleared well enough that everyone could get home from work. While Amarok talked in the kitchen, she’d picked up a psychology book and propped her feet up on the coffee table. Makita, Amarok’s Alaskan malamute, sat nearby, hoping for more of the scratches she’d been giving him periodically, and Sigmund, her cat, played with the drapes of the big window that showed nothing but black outside. It wasn’t like her to take a day off. Although she’d done quite a bit of work from home after she got back from her doctor’s appointment, she’d never made it to the prison. She hadn’t cared to fight the weather. And she was happy to stay in for the night now that Amarok was back. “Just flipping through a book I’ve been meaning to reread,” she told him.
He turned her wrist to see the cover. “Mask of Sanity?”
“Yeah. It’s an older title, but I like comparing what I’ve found through my own studies with what’s been published in the past, and some of the pioneers in my field were right about a lot of things.”
“Like this Hervey M. Cleckley? He was a pioneer?”
“Yes. Bob Hare—you’ve heard me talk about him, since he’s the one who developed the psychopathy test we use, the PCL-R—based some of his findings on Cleckley’s work.”
He indicated the other book—Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door—waiting on the table next to her feet. “Looks like you’re planning to be up late.”
“Not really. I’m just skimming.” She and the rest of the mental health team at Hanover House—which, besides her, consisted of five psychologists and one neurologist—kept a selection of the most popular titles on psychopathy in the conference room, where they met once a week to recap and plan. Evelyn wasn’t sure why she’d decided to bring a couple of the books home with her last night. “To be honest, I’m almost becoming more interested in ambulatory psychopaths than—”
“Ambulatory?”
“Garden-variety psychopaths, the subclinical ones who purposely submarine a friend, lie without compunction, take advantage of others, that sort of thing. Not the kind who rape and kill.”
He came around and nudged Makita to move a bit so that he could sit next to her. “I like where this is going. These other psychopaths have to be safer. But it’s the criminal ones you’re trying to stop. That’s why you started Hanover House. So why the interest?”
“I find it surprising that there are so many people without a conscience, and that so many of the rest of us still believe everyone else is basically empathetic, like we are. That allows us to be blindsided when we run into either kind of psychopath, and we’re bound to run into one eventually. Our society is facing a pandemic. The rate of incidence for anorexia is lower than that of psychopathy!”
“Which stands at four percent.”
“According to our best estimates. Wow, you do listen when I talk about my work.”
He grinned at her. “I was thinking it’s a damn good thing not all those people are the kind of psychopaths who kill.”
“Even the subclinical ones are harmful. They empty bank accounts. Break hearts. Lie, steal, cheat and use. They can make life difficult for anyone they come into contact with, and do it without a single regret.” She put her feet down so she could lean forward. “Here’s a shocking statistic. The rate of psychopathy is one hundred times greater than the incidence of colon cancer in the United States. We hear about colon cancer all the time, and yet the general populace knows very little about psychopaths, except for what they associate with ‘serial killer,’ and that isn’t the whole picture.”
“That’s why, in addition to all the murderers you’ve had transferred to Hanover House, you’ve got a couple hundred psychopaths there who haven’t killed anyone.”
“Yes. Alan Harrington says—”
He raised a hand in the classic stop gesture. “Who’s Alan Harrington?”
“He wrote a book called Psychopaths. I don’t have it with me tonight, but I’ve read it. Although his views have been highly criticized, his claims are food for thought. He believes psychopaths are being produced by the ‘evolutionary pressures of modern life.’”
Amarok shook his head. “I don’t buy that.”
He didn’t buy a lot of things when it came to psychology, and he didn’t hesitate to let her know it.
“There may be a whole bunch of these monsters out there, but humanity in general seems to be getting gentler and kinder,” he said. “They used to hang people in public, for crying out loud—to the cheers of a large crowd that included children. They also dreamed up new ways to torture ‘heretics’ for their religious beliefs or lack thereof.”
“In some places they still torture unbelievers,” she said dryly.
“I’m talking systematic torture, which they carried out for five hundred years. During the Inquisition, they tried to police people’s thoughts. Think of the progress we’ve made with the rights of women, minorities, even animals.”
“Maybe most of the population is evolving, developing a more refined conscience, but some people are losing theirs entirely.”