Anyway, Hugo didn’t need to look mean. He’d proven his capacity for violence in a way she wouldn’t soon forget. The warden had told her he was so cunning and cruel no one dared mess with him. He rarely responded at the time of a confrontation, but he always figured out a way to get even afterwards.
The warden had also said he spent the majority of his time reading, writing or creating clever cartoons parodying law enforcement, which was the reason Evelyn had put him on her list to begin with. He was smart. She couldn’t help thinking that he might be able to teach her something none of the other psychopaths she’d studied could—by being self-aware enough to analyze his own actions or describe his mental processes in less vague terms.
“You don’t want me in Alaska,” he said.
His voice held a low warning, but since the interview had progressed as she’d hoped so far, Evelyn was feeling a little more confident and a little less shaken. “Because you’re so dangerous? Was that the message you were sending me?”
When the guards chuckled again, a muscle moved in Hugo’s cheek. He had an overinflated view of who and what he was—most psychopaths did—so he didn’t take kindly to being laughed at. “No, I hit you for the fun of it.”
“But don’t you see?” She put down her clipboard. “That’s precisely what makes you such a great candidate for my program.”
“Studying me would be a waste of your time,” he said. “I’m no different than any other man.”
“You scored a thirty-seven out of forty on the Hare Psychopathy test—”
“Which means nothing,” he broke in. “That test is a joke.”
The test wasn’t perfect by any means. It’d been highly criticized, even by people in her own profession. And, if it wasn’t properly administered and applied, she could see the potential damage it could do, how much it could hurt someone to be improperly labeled a psychopath. But the PCL-R, as it was called, did give mental health professionals—and prison staff too—something to work with to make sure they were all talking about the same traits.
“I’m not here to debate the work of my predecessors,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Suffice it to say that as far as I’m concerned, a thirty-seven makes you quite different, considering the average score for all incarcerated male offenders in North America hovers around twenty-three or twenty-four.”
He wiggled his fingers as if to depict a ghost or other spook. “And once you pass the magical number of thirty, you’re categorized a monster. If it were that easy to identify people like me, people like you would be out of a job.”
“Now you’re over-simplifying,” she said mildly. “The test has proven successful in calculating recidivism and other things. So why don’t you stop playing games? You murdered fifteen women without compunction, fifteen women who once attended the middle school where you taught. That can hardly be called average.”
“They shouldn’t have resisted my...ministrations,” he said with a shrug. “I warned them that I was their master, and they would submit to everything and anything I wanted, or else.”
“Making what you did their fault?”
“You could say that.”
“No. Only you could say that, which is why you scored so high on the PCL-R. You don’t take responsibility for your actions.”
Leaning back, he crossed his ankles. When the chain linking his feet rattled, the two correctional officers tensed, in case he was about to get up, and yet the movement came off quite civilized, as if he was merely sitting in a restaurant, about to have a cup of coffee. “I’ve seen you on TV, you know.”
That didn’t surprise Evelyn. Most people, at least anyone who’d ever had any interest in the criminal justice system, had seen her on TV. Like her mother said, that probably included Jasper, if he was still in the States. But it was a risk she’d had to take. “I’d guessed as much. That explains your rather...aggressive behavior from the other day, doesn’t it?”
He watched her from beneath half-lowered eyelids. “Alaska doesn’t hold much appeal for me.”
She could understand why. Living behind bars was difficult enough. Very few of those she’d selected for Hanover House wanted to be sent to Hilltop, a small town an hour outside of Anchorage, where it would be that much harder to maintain contact with friends and relatives on the outside. Besides the isolation, fear of the unknown (since her program was the first of its kind), and the lack of sunlight during the long winter, they would have less chance of escape, the hope of which kept some men going. Even if an inmate of Hanover House somehow managed to slip outside the prison, and the perimeter fence surrounding it, there’d be nowhere to go.
“I may be a hunter,” he said, “but Alaska has less women, not more.”