by Brenda Novak
“So? I’ll play dumb.”
“It won’t be that easy. Let’s do things right to begin with. That will save us from having any problems later.”
“But Emmett is freaking out, threatening to leave. He’s giving us through Friday night. That’s it. Even if you take off tonight, you’ll have travel time and … and you should be prepared in case there are any delays. Let’s do it while we can!”
Lyman stared at the television without really seeing the program that was playing.
Terry lowered his voice. “Don’t you hear me? If we wait, Emmett might set Evelyn Talbot free. This could be your only chance.”
Lyman had spent the majority of his time since the hemorrhage trying to rebuild his mind and strengthen his body. At first he could barely open and close the hand on his weak side and wiggle his toes, but he’d come a long way since then. The past year or so he’d been limping into the bathroom, where he wouldn’t be observed, using the grab bars to steady himself while he did basic exercises, building enough muscle to do calisthenics and other, more intense therapy. He never missed a day. Sometimes he added a night workout, too. Now he was stronger than anyone would imagine. He hadn’t regained all of his fine motor skills or all of his mental acuity, but it didn’t matter. Evelyn would be there to give him the love and comfort he’d need to continue to improve.
The thought of touching her again gave him an erection, which was even more encouraging. These days it was extremely difficult to get his body to function properly, and he was far from old. He wasn’t ready to give up that aspect of his life.
She was going to make a big difference, he promised himself. He’d never had a woman like her, and he’d never considered kidnapping one. Accomplished, intelligent females, especially ones who were also beautiful, drew too much attention when they went missing. But Evelyn had so many enemies the authorities wouldn’t know which way to turn.
All of that gave him a distinct advantage when it came to her.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” Terry cried.
Maybe Terry was right. Maybe he should leave tonight. Even if he disappeared only two days after Evelyn, Minneapolis was so far removed from Alaska it was entirely possible the police would never connect the two events. Especially because he’d been careful not to let anyone see his progress. No one would ever dream he’d be capable of pulling off something like this.
“Yes, I can hear you,” he replied, his mind made up. “Go do the rest of your cleaning. Make sure you stay on that side of the hospital so no one sees us together, and I’ll be gone when you come back. But you don’t want to be the one to report me missing.”
Terry looked as befuddled and stupid as he was. “Why not?”
“Because tomorrow, when they contact you, you’re going to tell them I was here when you left.”
“And you’ll get the cash you owe me and give it to Emmett when you get there as planned, right?”
Greed was so many people’s downfall. “I’ll make sure you get what’s coming to you,” he said. “I’ll make sure you both do.”
8
Anchorage, AK—Wednesday, 10:00 p.m. AKDT
Emmett had tried to ignore what Evelyn Talbot had said. He’d told himself it was none of his business. If he did his job, he’d get paid and whatever happened from there wasn’t on him. And he’d stuck by that for hours. He’d drowned out her cries by listening to music with headphones and working out. Then he’d gone out and checked on the dogs. He’d even filled the van up with gas and gotten a few more groceries. Now he was slumped in front of the television.
But the memory of her voice—You’re working for a man by the name of Lyman Bishop. Do you know who he is? Have you heard that name in the news? He’s a psychopath and a serial killer! You need to go to the police right away!—kept coming back to him.
Finally, unable to push those words out of his brain any longer, he used a search engine to look up the name. Terry hadn’t told him who they were working for. It wasn’t that he’d kept it a secret; he just hadn’t volunteered the information, and Emmett hadn’t asked for it. He preferred less information to more. Keeping things impersonal prevented his conscience from getting too engaged.
But if Evelyn was right …
He scanned the links.
Cancer Researcher at University of Minnesota Arrested for Murder …
Fruit Fly Geneticist Indicted …
Panties of Eight Murder Victims Found in Attic of Geneticist Lyman Bishop …
Authorities Say the Zombie Maker Used Ice Pick to Perform Lobotomies.…
“Son of a bitch!” he muttered. Surely he wasn’t working for someone called the Zombie Maker.
He tried to call Terry, but Terry didn’t answer, so he went back to those links and read the articles. Most claimed Bishop had cut into his victims’ brains to make them more docile. If a victim died during or after the procedure, he’d simply kidnap someone else and try again—until one survived whom he could keep as his captive. Hence the nickname.
This time when he tried to call Terry, Emmett left a voicemail message: You’d better get back to me right away. Do you hear? I mean right away!
While he waited, he did a Google search on transorbital lobotomies. He hoped they sounded a lot worse than they actually were, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. From what he learned, an American neurologist named Dr. Walter Freeman, a Yale graduate no less, began scrambling his patients’ frontal lobes in the late 1940s in an attempt to cure them of various psychological complaints. He believed an excess of emotion caused mental illness and severing certain nerve connections would relieve that emotion.
He started out by drilling six holes into the top of a patient’s head. Later, he streamlined the process by shoving a regular, kitchen-variety ice pick through the patient’s eye sockets, where the bone was much thinner.
Emmett shook his head in amazement as he read one survivor’s account of how his stepmother took him to Dr. Freeman to have the procedure done because he was “a bad kid.”
“What a bitch!” Emmett muttered. He hoped she got what was coming to her. His own stepmom had hit him in the face with a Jack Daniel’s bottle when he was fourteen, which nearly cost him his eye. He’d always hated her. But this kid had it even worse. And, according to another article, he was only one of thousands who underwent the procedure. Most were older, but Dr. Freeman performed over thirty-five hundred ice-pick lobotomies during his career—some in front of spectators.
Lyman Bishop had used an ice pick in the same way, but he hadn’t been putting on a show and he hadn’t done it with the intention of helping anyone—except himself.
Emmett had hung out with some pretty tough dudes, especially while he was in prison. But what Bishop had done was barbaric.
Or … was he innocent?
As Emmett dug deeper, he found other links and articles that suggested Bishop might not be the Zombie Maker. The detective who’d investigated the case had planted the panty evidence that convicted him. Bishop had been sent to Hanover House but was released after only a short time. Extensive media coverage labeled his conviction a tragedy that never should’ve happened, especially to a highly educated scientist and distinguished advocate of medical progress like Bishop. Their take: an overly ambitious cop tried to make a name for himself by solving the high-profile case.
Emmett jumped when his phone rang, startled by the sound. Caller ID showed his brother-in-law’s number.
He started to pace as he punched the Talk button. “There you are!”
“What’s up, man?” Terry’s voice was wary.
“I need to talk to you.”
“You need to chill out! I just lost my fucking job, okay?”
Damn. That wasn’t going to go over well with Bridget. “What happened, dude?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I work for a bitch who’s been trying to get rid of me since she started. And now that she has, I’m especially glad we’re about to get paid. Our guy should be there tomo
rrow or the next day. He’s coming early, so this is almost over.”
Terry was talking fast, in hushed tones, and he sounded stressed—for good reason—but Emmett was stressed, too. “Did you know that we’re working for a serial killer? A psychopath who cuts into the brains of his victims to control them?”
“No, no, no. That Zombie Maker shit is all wrong. He didn’t do any of that.”
This was exactly what Emmett had hoped to hear, but he was far from convinced. “How do you know?”
“Because I’ve talked to him about it. And I’ve told you why he wants Dr. Talbot. He needs her to sign something so he can get his retarded sister back. Would a psychopath even care about a sister like that? Who’d want to take on such a burden? That makes him a saint, not a psychopath.”
Emmett rubbed the beard growth on his face with his knuckles as he considered Terry’s response. “How do you know he doesn’t want revenge on Dr. Talbot? From what I’ve read, she fought his release even when everyone else was rushing to apologize and kiss his ass.”
“Maybe she believes he’s a psychopath, but who’s to say she’s right?”
“Her degree says she should know a little something about that!”
“A degree doesn’t always mean anything—just that she spent a hell of a lot of years taking classes that may or may not have taught her a thing or two.”
“Still, you should’ve told me about all this bizarre shit in advance.”
“Look, Emmett. Stop worrying. Bishop’s not out for revenge—he’s already got revenge. He won. He’s a free man.”
Emmett grabbed the remote and shut off the television. The noise was getting on his nerves. “One article I read said he tried to kill Evelyn.”
“That isn’t true,” Terry argued. “That was Jasper Moore, the dude who tried to kill her before. You know her background, right? Bishop was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all.”
Could that be true? Emmett didn’t generally believe in coincidences. But he had seen the photos of Bishop that went with those articles. The guy didn’t look dangerous. The way he hunched in on himself as if he didn’t want to be seen gave Emmett the impression he was like a dog who’d been kicked too many times and skittered away at the first sign of confrontation.
“I don’t know.…” He crossed over to the small kitchenette and opened a bag of chips. “Something about this doesn’t feel right to me.”
“This isn’t about what you feel, dude. You need the money and so do I, especially now. I’ve got bills to pay. What else am I supposed to do?”
Emmett didn’t have a good answer. He was in a similar situation.
“Anyway, Bishop is hardly dangerous,” Terry went on. “Jasper Moore beat him to within an inch of his life the night they both showed up at Dr. Talbot’s. Bishop has been in the hospital where I work ever since. That’s how I met him. I’m telling you, it was Moore who tried to kill Evelyn Talbot.”
Swallowing a mouthful of barbecue-flavored potato chips, Emmett stepped back to glance at the cooler door separating him from his prisoner. He could so easily open it and let the psychiatrist go.
He was tempted, but Terry was right. They both needed the money. Besides, they were so close to the end of this thing!
He popped another chip into his mouth and spoke around it. “If he doesn’t let her go after a day or two, I’ll make him do it.”
These words were met with silence. But, after a moment, Terry said, “You planning to double-cross him?”
“I won’t be double-crossing him. I’ll be holding him to his word.”
“That’s true, I guess. Okay. As long as we get paid, I don’t care.”
“He’s bringing the cash with him, isn’t he?”
“That’s the plan. He won’t have access to it until he gets out of here, and he can’t come anywhere near me after that in case someone sees us together. So he’s bringing it all to you.”
“Good. I’ll give you your share when I get back. But before I leave here, I’ll make sure he releases the pregnant shrink.”
“You shouldn’t have any trouble. He’s a weird little man—think Danny DeVito but without the personality—and he’s had a stroke because of that beating I mentioned, so the left side of his body doesn’t work very well. You could easily overpower him.”
“I was never worried about that,” Emmett said, and hung up.
Anchorage, AK—Wednesday, 10:15 p.m. AKDT
Dax O’Leary was quite a bit younger than his brother. He still had his hair and he wasn’t wearing glasses, but he looked emaciated. Amarok was fairly certain he was an addict, which explained the way his wife felt about him and what his brother had said, too.
“Elroy told me you wanted to talk to me.” He stepped outside an old duplex wearing a T-shirt with a stretched neckband, a pair of holey jeans and no shoes. “It’s about time the police did something to find my van.”
Amarok heard a television blaring inside, got the impression others were there—Dax’s roommates, no doubt—but they were minding their own business, didn’t seem to care about what was going on at the door. “Your van wasn’t stolen in my jurisdiction.”
“What does that mean?”
He glanced back at his truck to see his dog staring out the window at him as though he wasn’t pleased to have been left behind. “It means I’m here because I believe it was used in the commission of another crime.”
Dax seemed mildly surprised. “What kind of crime?”
“An abduction.”
“Really? Don’t tell me it was one of the dancers!”
“At the strip club you visited that night? No. Have you ever heard of Dr. Evelyn Talbot?”
“I haven’t.” Dax sounded completely confident in his answer but a second later looked a bit uncertain. “Wait, yes, I know the name. She runs that prison for psychopaths in Hilltop, right?” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve been thinking about applying there, as a correctional officer.”
Amarok decided not to mention the drug testing that would be required. “Dr. Talbot’s been kidnapped, and the person who took her was driving your van.”
He blinked several times. “Wow, no kidding?”
“No kidding. Does anything stand out in your mind about the night it was stolen? Did you meet anyone suspicious? See anyone eyeing your van after you parked it?”
Dax glanced at Amarok’s swollen and aching hand. “No one. There were some guys hanging out by the door, talking to the bouncer. But I didn’t think anything of it. There’re always a few smokers there.”
“The man I’m looking for has a scar on his face right here.” Amarok indicated his eye. “I’m guessing he was in some sort of accident, maybe a car accident where he went through the windshield.”
Dax’s face lit up. “Yeah, I saw that dude. I remember wondering if he was blind in that eye.”
“Could be.”
“Looked that way to me. He was one of the men who was out talking to the bouncer. I did a double take when I passed him and noticed that scar over his eye. Thought it was tough luck, since he would’ve been a fairly handsome dude otherwise.”
“Did you talk to him? Have any interaction with him?”
“No, but he had to be as tall as you, and he was completely yoked. I assumed he was a new bouncer, going through training.”
“What strip club was this?”
“Roxanne’s, down on Spenard Road.”
“Who was working the door that night?”
“Greg. He’s always there on Saturdays.”
“Did he seem to know our friend with the scar?”
“Hard to say. I got only a general impression of them.”
Amarok peered closer at him—or as close as his blurry eyesight would allow. “You’re not lying to me, right?”
Dax stiffened. “Lying to you?”
“You didn’t loan this guy your van and then report it as stolen when he didn’t bring it back so you could cash in on the insurance? Or sell i
t to him and then report it as stolen so you could get paid twice. Nothing like that?”
“God, you sound like my brother. No! I didn’t loan out my van. Didn’t sell it, either.”
Amarok pinched the bridge of his nose. He was struggling to keep his head clear, to remember the answers he’d already been given and connect them into a cohesive whole. “Good, because Dr. Talbot is supposed to marry me this summer and I’m still counting on that happening. You hear what I’m saying?”
Dax flicked a mosquito off his arm. “I didn’t know you had a personal tie to her, but, either way, I’m not lying. I wouldn’t do that to you. And if I were going to accuse someone of stealing my car who didn’t, I wouldn’t pick a man who looks like a gladiator. That dude could probably tear me apart with his bare hands.”
“If I find out you know this guy, that you could’ve led me right to him but didn’t, it won’t take a gladiator,” Amarok said.
Dax’s jaw dropped. “You threatening me?”
“That’s my plan A.” Amarok was too exhausted to be diplomatic.
“What kind of cop are you?” he asked, rallying.
“The kind who cares about only one thing—and that’s getting my fiancée back.” Amarok handed him his card. “Call me if you change your mind about what you had to say, or if you remember anything else.”
Amarok started his truck as soon as he climbed in. He was afraid if he didn’t keep pushing himself, if he sat there for even a few seconds, he’d succumb to the bone-deep weariness that was slowly dragging him down.
Makita made a questioning sound, not quite a growl or a bark.
“I’m all right,” he muttered.
Anchorage, AK—Wednesday, 10:30 p.m. AKDT
Emmett couldn’t stand being at the abandoned ranch knowing he had a pregnant woman in the cooler—one who thought she was going to be turned over to a serial killer, no less. He kept walking down the dim corridor to tell her what Terry said—that she was wrong about Bishop—but he never actually opened the slot in the door to do it. He was afraid she’d quickly convince him of the opposite. And he didn’t need that, didn’t need her getting into his head. He’d already decided what he was going to do—he was going to see this through. He couldn’t blow it. Now that Terry had lost his job, the shit was really going to hit the fan with Bridget.