by Brenda Novak
Evelyn laughed. “I’m not one for pickles, even now that I’m pregnant.”
The moment they heard Lyman returning, Edna scrambled away. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, couldn’t even bear to look at him. And that gave Evelyn no choice. She had to be the one to remain at the slot, had to get him to talk to her. Otherwise, they’d learn nothing.
“Here it is.” Lyman shoved two large hamburgers with grilled onions through the slot. There were no potato chips or cheese, but two triangles of watermelon sat beside the burgers on their makeshift cardboard tray.
Evelyn took the food and handed it back to Edna. “Dinner looks amazing,” she said. “Thank you.”
He seemed gratified by her response. “I added soup mix to the meat. That’ll make it more flavorful.”
“I can’t wait to try it. Are you having a burger, too?”
“I ate mine while making yours.”
“I see. So … have you found another place for us to go?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
Her stomach tightened. They couldn’t leave here! “Where is it?” she asked. And if he’d found what he was looking for, why the heck was he in such a foul mood?
“In the interior.”
“The interior?”
“That’s what they call it, isn’t it? It’s inland.”
“Do you mean Fairbanks?” There were other towns in Alaska’s interior, but that was the largest.
He hesitated, obviously reluctant to get specific, but then he said it was Fairbanks, as if he couldn’t see any danger in telling her that much.
Evelyn’s heart sank when he confirmed it. That was so far away. “Why there?” she asked.
He bristled. “You have something against Fairbanks?”
“It’s just … it’s so cold.”
“I know.” He sounded a little less unhinged. “But we’ll have a heater. We’ll be fine.”
“When will we be leaving?”
“As soon as I can get the darn paperwork so I can sign it and take possession. It’s hard to rent a house these days.”
“The owner probably expects you to see it first, right? And to meet you. Are you going up there?”
“I’ve been talking to a leasing company. They only care about the money. They want to know I’ll be a good credit risk, so I’m working on that. It’s tricky when you’re using a fake ID.”
That he might have to use his own Social Security number, which would help Amarok trace him, gave her hope. But then he added, “Terry assured me I’d be able to do whatever I wanted with the ID he got me, so … we’ll see.”
“Who’s Terry?”
He suddenly whipped around as though someone were coming up behind him.
“What is it?” Evelyn asked.
“The dogs are barking,” he said, and slammed the slot closed.
Evelyn looked back at Edna. “Do you think someone could be here?”
She seemed horrified instead of hopeful. “If there is, I pray it isn’t my daughter.”
Hilltop, AK—Tuesday, 4:45 p.m. AKDT
Jasper couldn’t open his eyes. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness while listening to a couple of disembodied voices and the steady, annoying beep of a machine. Where was he?
“He’s coming around,” a woman said as a hand covered in latex lifted his arm. Whoever had spoken seemed intent upon doing something to him, but he couldn’t tell what—taking his blood pressure?—and he didn’t really care.
“Can you hear me, Inmate Moore?”
Inmate? He wasn’t an inmate. He was a prison guard in Arizona, living with his nurse wife and her two girls, all of whom he hated. He’d spent a lot of time trying to decide how he’d eventually kill the older daughter, who got under his skin the worst. They’d had a pool, so drowning had seemed like his best alternative. But then he and his wife had broken up, and she’d been so nice about the whole thing—conceding on every issue—that he’d let her go, let them all go.
No, he’d let her go because he couldn’t afford any trouble at that particular juncture in his life. He’d just been hired at—
Suddenly much more recent memories tumbled forward like a rockslide, and he realized that he’d momentarily forgotten the past eighteen months. He wasn’t a prison guard anymore. He’d succeeded in getting on at Hanover House, where he’d worked for a time. But then, when the torture chamber he’d been building in his basement was complete and he’d finally made his move on Evelyn Talbot, he’d been caught and prosecuted.
He was a prison inmate now, and unless he could devise a way to escape, which he hoped to do eventually, he was stuck behind bars until the day he died. All he had to look forward to, all he had to break the tedium, were his meetings with Evelyn and—
Evelyn! She was gone. Someone had taken her. That popped into his memory, too, as well as the fact that he’d been jumped in the showers.
Was he even alive? Or was this what happened after death?
He certainly hadn’t expected to survive. The last thing he remembered was seeing that shiv—and then what?
Had he been stabbed?
He didn’t know. Someone must’ve kicked him in the head. He was already down on the floor when he blacked out, and that was only a second after he realized he was about to be stabbed.
With extreme effort, he managed to open his eyes. He wasn’t dead, not unless hell had hospital beds, doctors and nurses just like those in the land of the living.
He wanted to ask where he was and how long he’d been out, but he couldn’t move his jaw. The best he could do was moan.
An older man with white hair, wearing scrubs and a mask, leaned over him. “Take it easy. You’re really banged up.”
Banged up? Hadn’t he been knifed as well as beaten?
He tried to feel for any bandages on his stomach and chest, but the nurse on the other side of the bed caught his hand before he could move it much. “Don’t touch anything. You could yank off your monitors or pull out your IV, and you wouldn’t want that,” she said. “That’s how we’re administering your pain meds.”
Yeah, well, the pain meds weren’t doing their job. He wished he could tell them that, too. He hurt everywhere, felt as though he’d been run over by a bus. “Where am I?” he croaked, but the question didn’t come out as he’d intended. He heard only a bunch of unintelligible grunts.
What was going on? Why couldn’t he talk?
“Shh.… You have a broken jaw. We had to wire your mouth shut. Don’t try to speak,” the nurse said.
But he had to communicate. He had to have answers, to at least learn if he was expected to survive. What else was wrong with him? Being stabbed could easily be worse than a broken jaw and yet she hadn’t mentioned it.
He struggled to sit up, but the doctor forced him back. Then darkness encroached, and he closed his eyes again, wearily surrendering to it.
23
Minneapolis, MN—Tuesday, 7:50 p.m. CST
“What did you find?” Phil asked.
“It’s a receipt,” Amarok replied.
“That’s what I thought you said. But for what?”
Amarok wished Edna Southwick had written an address or any other details on the receipt she’d sent to John Edmonson in care of Emmett Virtanen. But the only thing he’d found in the envelope he’d taken from Emmett’s apartment manager was a preprinted receipt from a standard receipt book, like one would buy at an office supply store, with the words “June Rent” written on it and an amount—five hundred dollars. Who was John Edmonson? Was he Emmett? If so, what could Emmett have rented for only five hundred dollars? That figure didn’t seem large enough for a house or an apartment.
Was it a storage locker?
God, he hoped not. He hated the thought of what that would likely mean.
“We need to find out. Head over to the address I’m about to give you right away and speak to an Edna Southwick. Ask her how she knows Emmett Virtanen, what she rented to him and where it’s loca
ted.”
“Will do.”
Amarok thought of Bridget’s refusal to share any information with him or Lewis. “And just in case she’s a friend or an extended family member, don’t tell her why. Just say that we’re looking for Emmett because we have a few questions we’d like to ask him about an accident we believe he witnessed.”
“I’m happy to drive over there, Amarok, but if it’s in Anchorage, wouldn’t Anchorage PD be able to get there quicker? Are you planning to involve them?”
Amarok didn’t want to let the investigation get out of his control. He couldn’t afford to have someone mess it up now that he had a solid lead. “No. It’ll only take you an hour or so.” He gave Phil the address. “Head there now and call me as soon as you can.”
“On my way.”
After he disconnected, Amarok was tempted to call Lewis to see if Emmett’s phone records had come through. He started to scroll for the number, but then he set his phone aside. The way things had gone at Virtanen’s apartment, he needed to give Lewis some space. Calling wouldn’t help. Lewis probably wouldn’t answer and, even if he did, pressing him now might only guarantee that Lewis wouldn’t work with him even after he cooled off.
This was when being in Minnesota instead of Alaska was difficult, Amarok decided. He wanted to be the one racing over to see what Edna Southwick knew. Once Phil had the address associated with the receipt, it might be possible to find Evelyn.
Amarok shoved a hand through his hair as he walked over to the window. Would she still be alive? And, if she was, would they be able to save her before Bishop subjected her to one of the lobotomies for which he was infamous?
If Bishop was already there in Alaska with her, if he’d arrived and joined Emmett, that didn’t seem likely. A frontal lobotomy took just ten minutes.
Anchorage, AK—Tuesday, 5:15 p.m. AKDT
Ada watched anxiously as the police officers she’d summoned spoke to the same man she’d met at the door an hour or so earlier. They’d been reluctant to listen to her when she called in, had tried to convince her that her mother was probably off on a vacation and would be back in a few days. But she’d been so adamant that something strange was going on with her mother’s new tenant, they’d agreed to swing by the chicken ranch and talk to him.
Although Ada couldn’t quite hear what was being said, she didn’t care to go any closer. Something about the short, soft man with the thick glasses and the paralysis on the left side of his face gave her the heebie-jeebies. One officer actually had had the nerve to ask if she was afraid of him simply because he’d suffered a stroke or something and looked a little different.
She’d found the suggestion offensive. Why would that bother her? But she supposed they met all types and had to ask. Mr. Edmonson didn’t appear threatening, and she’d admitted that to them.
Still, he had a disconcerting stare. The way he looked at her for so long without blinking made her uncomfortable.
Something was … off. That was the bottom line. After she’d left the first time she’d tried talking herself out of it, but she couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling he gave her, even though he hadn’t really done anything wrong, nothing she could point to. It could be that she’d simply been watching too many true-crime shows and was imagining it all.
She wrung her hands, hoping she hadn’t dragged the police out here for nothing. But the encounter ended too soon for her to believe otherwise.
She was waiting for them to return to where she’d parked and speak to her before they left when she caught sight of Mr. Edmonson just before he closed the door. He was glaring at her with such malevolence it stole her breath.
The lead police officer, Officer Daniels, saw her reaction and glanced back, but by then Mr. Edmonson was gone, and she knew Daniels probably wouldn’t give a dirty look a whole lot of credence. No one had ever died from a dirty look. But her mother’s tenant was obviously furious that she’d brought the police to his door.
“What did he say?” she asked.
Tall and thin, Daniels was somewhere in his thirties, with blond hair shaved close to his head and a bored expression. “Says he hasn’t seen her.”
“He would say that,” she said. “That’s what he told me, too. Did you ask if you could look around?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“He said no.”
“So that means you’re leaving?”
He frowned. “I’ve already explained this to you. We don’t have any choice, not without a warrant, and your, um, intuition doesn’t give me enough grounds to get one.”
“But he knows something! He must. Why else would he have a problem with letting you look around?”
Daniels’s partner, Officer Brown, who was about the same age but shorter and wider, with a pockmarked face, spread his hands wide. “Who knows? Maybe he’s got drugs on the premises, or stolen property, and he’s afraid we’ll find it.”
“It’s a privacy thing,” Daniels chimed in. “Could be he just wants to be left alone. Doesn’t have to mean he’s kidnapped or hurt your mother.”
“A lot of people, even those who haven’t done anything wrong, aren’t comfortable with letting the police go through their house or yard,” Brown agreed.
“So that’s it?” she asked. “We all just … believe him, whether he’s lying or not, and drive away?”
“If you’ll come down and fill out the missing person report like we discussed, we’ll follow up.”
“And that’s all you can do?”
Daniels sighed. “Look, we shouldn’t have come out here until you’d done that, but you were so worried and so convinced, I didn’t dare put it off for fear we’d miss something important.”
Close to tears again, she gazed back at the building where she’d often gone to help her father as a little girl. Had something terrible happened here at the ranch, where she’d always felt so safe and happy?
The place no longer looked the same. Now that everything had been shut down, it looked sad, neglected and even a little sinister.
“I don’t like him,” she said, speaking of her mother’s renter.
“I can see why,” Officer Daniels admitted. “But not being particularly friendly to authority isn’t a crime.”
Ada felt sick inside as she opened her car door. “I’ll follow you to the station,” she said, as though she’d let it go with that.
But she knew she couldn’t just sit back and wait for them to come to the rescue. By the time they realized what she already knew—that her mother would never go anywhere without saying something to her or one of her siblings—and began to investigate in earnest, it could be too late.
Anchorage, AK—Tuesday, 5:30 p.m. AKDT
Lyman Bishop stood to the side of the window, watching to be sure Edna’s bitch of a daughter left with the police. She was causing trouble, just as he’d feared she would. He had to get Evelyn to a place where she wouldn’t be discovered, where he wasn’t constantly having people coming to the door, asking if he’d seen his landlady.
But he didn’t yet have the house in Fairbanks.
The taillights of the police cruiser disappeared from view as he tried to think beyond the adrenaline and anger pouring through him. What should he do? Where should he go?
He’d kill Edna, he decided, and dump her body in the chicken coop to rot with Emmett’s. He could leave her alive and locked in the cooler, but it was less risky to get rid of her once and for all, and it would be much more satisfying. As far as he was concerned, she deserved it. Her daughter deserved whatever he could devise for her, too. But he wouldn’t let himself be sidetracked by a desire for revenge.
He could exercise patience when necessary. He’d waited years to get even with his mother, hadn’t he?
He shifted to get a better view of the road. It appeared clear, but he couldn’t take anything for granted. The police, or Ada, could turn around. They might even start surveillance. He’d seen one of the officers eyeing the van. The officer had
seemed satisfied with what he saw. At first glance, it looked legit. But if he’d memorized the license plate and was planning to run it, he’d find it didn’t belong to a van at all.
The possibility made Lyman paranoid. He’d seen the suspicious way Ada looked at him. She’d be back. But it would be too late. Once he was rid of Edna, he’d bind and gag Evelyn and take her away from this place. They’d sleep in the van until he could get the house in Fairbanks or find another one—which could mean performing the lobotomy much sooner than he’d planned. In his diminished state, it might be too hard to contain and control her without a secure place to keep her. But, with any luck, she and the baby would survive the procedure.
If it didn’t, he’d just have to figure out a way to get her pregnant again. Now that he’d decided he wanted a child, he wouldn’t settle for anything less. Finding a man who’d have sex with a woman who looked like Evelyn wouldn’t be hard. Once he did the lobotomy, he’d be able to take her anywhere and pass her off as his wife or his sister, whichever served his purposes at the time. He could take her to a bar, invite someone to come home with them and keep at it until she was pregnant. If that didn’t work—or he was afraid she’d be recognized—he could always buy sperm and use a turkey baster to artificially inseminate her as many times as it took.
Maybe he’d turn her into his own brood mare.…
That was an interesting thought, one he hadn’t considered before. The idea of forcing her to give him several children, a large family, made him take heart. He couldn’t have children with Beth. He’d gotten a little too experimental with her when they were both younger. Now that he’d matured, he’d be careful to keep Evelyn’s reproductive organs intact.
Everything was going to be okay.…
Blowing out a sigh, he shook his hands to bring some feeling back into them. Ever since the hemorrhage, whenever he got upset or anxious his hands went numb. Changing his plans wasn’t convenient, wasn’t easy. But he didn’t have any choice. He couldn’t risk getting caught. He’d go to prison for sure the next time, and they’d never let him out.
Finally assured that both the police and Edna’s daughter were really gone, he limped back to the staff room and found the sleeping pills he’d saved at Beacon Point. Unfortunately, he’d just fed Evelyn and Edna. No way were they hungry right now, and they would have to be famished to eat everything he put in front of them even if it tasted weird. He also wanted it to be dark when he dragged Evelyn out to the van in case someone was watching the place.