Hello Again

by Brenda Novak

  “Don’t feel bad. The ones I killed … they deserved to die. There are so many stupid women out there, too many,” he said, but she could hardly breathe, wasn’t calming down.

  He could tell there would be no convincing her.

  “My God! It’s our fault. Evelyn tried to tell us, to warn us. Now there’s no way to make what we’ve done right. That blood is on our hands, too. What am I going to do?” She was straining to get away from him, to reach her cell phone. But he couldn’t have that.

  “You’re not going to do anything,” he said, and calmly dragged her over to the counter, where there was a nice selection of kitchen knives.

  * * *

  As soon as Stan got home, he pulled into the garage and lowered the door. He didn’t want the sight of his car to act as an invitation to visit for any of the neighbors who might be out walking a dog or pushing a stroller. He so rarely got to see his son that he was loath to let anything interrupt. He and Maureen couldn’t afford for anyone to know they had a special visitor in the first place. Jasper had already taken a risk in coming here.

  He wondered how Maureen felt about seeing their son. Stan had told her that he could not be the kind of lifelong murderer Evelyn insisted he was. What’d happened in high school was a freak thing, a terrible tragedy caused by the influence of mood-altering drugs. Jasper had outgrown that experimental teenage phase; they had no reason to worry about him continuing the behavior.

  After today’s visit, maybe she’d believe him. She’d been so despondent lately, so unsure that they’d been right to help Jasper stay out of prison. Stan had watched her take Sergeant Murphy’s card from her purse, had seen the way she stared at it when she thought he wasn’t paying any attention. So he’d stolen it when she wasn’t looking and thrown it away. He wouldn’t allow her to call the cops. He’d never loved anything so much as the blond-haired, brown-eyed boy they’d created together, would do anything to protect him. Like he told her, being a parent was never easy, but loyalty—that was what mattered in a family.

  After grabbing his briefcase, since he wasn’t expecting to return to work until after the weekend in Vegas, he pocketed the keys to his Lexus and went in through the mudroom, past the laundry room and his wife’s craft room, to the large family room and kitchen that looked out on the backyard.

  No one was there.

  Where could they be? He hesitated, listening, but he couldn’t hear voices. Of course, the house was seventy-five hundred square feet, big enough that he wouldn’t be able to hear his wife and son, or anyone else for that matter, if they were in the far reaches. Although he couldn’t see Maureen taking Jasper on in a game of billiards, he figured they could be upstairs in the rec room. Or they could be in the library with the door shut. Maybe Jasper felt less exposed there.

  “Maureen?”

  He received no answer, but he didn’t dare call his son’s name instead. The silence was so complete that he was beginning to fear the cops had figured out Jasper was in town and had busted in to arrest him and Maureen.

  Depositing his briefcase on the floor near the couch, Stan pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He was about to call his wife when he noticed some red drops that weren’t normally on the wall in the kitchen.

  What was that?

  His heart began to chug with the rhythm of a steam engine as he stared. The same red drops were everywhere—on the refrigerator, the wall, even the ceiling.…

  A moment later he realized they weren’t merely “red drops”—they were blood.

  “What the hell?” Something terrible had happened. But what?

  As he rounded the bar, an ominous, terrible feeling swept through him, smashing the eagerness and confidence with which he’d walked into the house.

  “Maureen?” he called again, this time in panic, but he found her only two steps later. She was on the floor near the kitchen table, lying in a pool of her own blood.

  “No!” With her head cocked at such an odd angle and her eyes open but seeing nothing, he could tell it was too late. She was dead.

  He dropped to his knees so he could scoop her into his arms and scream out the pain he felt at her loss. But as he gathered her to him, he saw the knife protruding from her chest. Jasper had to have done this. He was the only one here with her. But why? Why would their son turn on them?

  And where was he now?

  15

  Evelyn stood on the other side of the two-way mirror, watching as Lido Thomas finished up the pretest interview, which was intended to acquaint the subject with the procedure, and began hooking Lyman Bishop to the polygraph equipment attached to her computer. Evelyn hoped they hadn’t rushed this too much, that they’d prepared adequately for such a smart subject. Strategy was everything when using a lie detector test, but she’d been so afraid that Bishop’s lawyer would intervene or Bishop would change his mind, she’d had to move fast.

  Jim Ricardo stood beside her in the secret observatory. Since he’d made it clear that he didn’t agree with what she was doing, she wasn’t pleased to have him there. But she decided not to ask him to leave. She knew that wouldn’t come across well, and she hated to get into another adversarial relationship, like she’d had with Fitzpatrick. Finding good psychologists and neurologists, ones who were willing to leave their friends and family in the Lower 48 and come to Hilltop, was too hard.

  “Please state your full name.” Now that Lido had Bishop attached, she was beginning the in-test phase.

  “Lyman Roosevelt Bishop.”

  Bishop seemed perfectly relaxed, despite all the cords and sensors.

  “Can you tell me where you were born, Mr. Bishop?”

  “That’s Dr. Bishop,” he replied. “I have my doctorate, just like your esteemed lead psychiatrist. I’d appreciate you affording me the same respect you give her.”

  Taken aback, Lido cleared her throat. Fortunately, she resisted the temptation she must’ve felt to look toward the two-way mirror. “Okay. No problem. Dr. Bishop it is. Can you please tell me where you were born?” she asked again.

  “Minneapolis.”

  Lido gave him a few more irrelevant questions to make sure they were both comfortable before diving in. Then she threw in a control question. “Have you ever told a lie to get yourself out of trouble, Dr. Bishop?”

  “Yes.”

  Ricardo nudged Evelyn. “Honest so far.”

  He was joking, but Evelyn didn’t think it was funny. So much depended on the control questions. They could’ve used a yes there, needed Bishop to tell a white lie so that they could get some standard by which they could measure his other responses.

  “Have you ever hurt anyone?” Lido asked.

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t elaborate, didn’t attempt to excuse himself by clarifying that he hadn’t caused any physical damage or that the pain had been incidental, like accidentally hitting someone with a door. Evelyn got the impression that he understood not to embellish his answers, that he’d prepared for this. What with all the information on the Internet, it wouldn’t be hard to learn the techniques that worked best. He could’ve done some research after he was first arrested, in case he had to face a polygraph somewhere down the line. Maybe that was why he’d agreed to take the examination—he was curious to see if he could beat it, wanted to test his prowess and gain some experience.

  To Lido’s credit, she moved on as if she wasn’t disappointed by that admission. “Have you ever harmed an animal?”

  “No.”

  Evelyn wished she could see the graph that was appearing on Lido’s computer. Many psychopaths first acted out by torturing animals.

  “Have you ever tortured a human being?”

  His gaze shifted to the wall behind which Evelyn stood, as if he could see her watching him. He was looking right at her. Did he know she was there? Many tests were performed in places where subjects could secretly be observed, but neither she nor Lido had said anything to give that away. “No.”

  “Have you ever committed any
other kind of crime?” Lido asked.

  “No.”

  This time Evelyn nudged Ricardo. “We got one there. He’s done something at some point—lied on his taxes, jaywalked, thrown garbage out the car window, used a park for which he skipped the fee.”

  “We’ll see if it makes a difference,” Ricardo responded.

  “Are you hoping against me?” Evelyn asked.

  “Of course not. I’m just not certain this is worth our time, like I told you before.”

  It didn’t have to take his time. Evelyn almost mentioned that he was free to go on about his business but, once again, chose to keep her mouth shut.

  “Did you know Jan Hall?” Lido asked.

  Bishop scratched the side of his face. “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Jan Hall?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where her body is?”

  “I don’t even know that she’s dead.”

  “You know she’s been missing for two years.”

  “Yes.”

  “You also know that she went missing a year before you were brought up on murder charges.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know Patricia Vanderbilt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you kill Patricia Vanderbilt?”

  “No.”

  Lido didn’t need to ask about Patricia’s body. That had been found. It was her autopsy that proved she’d had a lobotomy, that whoever had killed her had first cut into her frontal lobes.

  Lido went through the rest of the “ice-pick” victims, and he answered the same for all—confidently, without any hesitation.

  “Did you collect any trophies from your victims?”

  “I didn’t have any victims,” he replied.

  Smooth …

  “So you didn’t put those panties in your attic?”

  “No, ma’am. I think it’s become clear that Detective Gustavson, who investigated the case, planted that evidence. Obviously, he had an agenda, needed to put someone away.”

  “Wait a sec,” Evelyn murmured to Ricardo. “Why is he starting to open up and talk when he’s been so careful not to?”

  “I’d say he’s gaining confidence,” Ricardo responded. “That or he’s trying to prove he’s not afraid of this, of you.”

  Evelyn was willing to bet it was the latter. He thought he could outsmart her.

  “Is it true your mother was shot at point-blank range in her own driveway?” Evelyn heard Lido ask in the lab.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Bishop replied.

  “Is there something about the question that’s unclear?”

  “I wasn’t there. But, according to what I’ve heard, she was shot at point-blank range in her own driveway.”

  Lido took a moment to study what his physiological responses indicated on her computer screen. Then she said, “Did you ever go visit your mother at the house where she was killed?”

  “No.”

  “Did you love your mother, Dr. Bishop?”

  He set his jaw, but his voice didn’t change. “No.”

  “Were you sad when she was killed?”

  He paused; then he said, “Yes.”

  “If you didn’t love her, why were you sad?”

  “Because she was supposed to love me.”

  “Do you believe she did love you?”

  “Her actions proved she didn’t.”

  “So you had no contact with her before she died.”

  “Not for a number of years.”

  “That means you were never at her house, that there would be no reason for your DNA to be there. Is that correct?”

  A smile curved his lips as he once again turned his gaze toward the two-way mirror. “As I’ve learned the hard way, sometimes the police plant evidence in order to win a conviction. Now that the authorities have my DNA, I can’t be sure where it might turn up.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?” Lido pressed.

  “That’s a no. My DNA would have no reason to be there, not without some sort of intervention on the part of someone else.”

  The questions continued for twenty minutes. Lido asked all the things Evelyn had spoken to her about. She even rephrased questions she’d already asked, hoping to get a better reading. Evelyn had to hand it to her—she was good. But a signal she gave with her right hand, one they’d agreed to use before, indicated that the test wasn’t working out the way they’d hoped.

  “It’s inconclusive,” Ricardo guessed, catching that sign, too.

  Lido was winding down. The examiner didn’t have anything else to ask. But Evelyn wasn’t ready to let Bishop escape the machine, wasn’t about to let the results be “inconclusive”—not if she could help it. She had one more question, one she hadn’t discussed with Lido. Just in case Bishop was innocent, she’d thought it would be going too far.

  “Desperate times demand desperate measures,” she muttered, and, ignoring Ricardo’s surprise, she hurried out of the room and into the lab, where she whispered in Lido’s ear. After that, instead of leaving, since Bishop obviously understood she’d been observing him anyway, she stood behind the examiner.

  “How old was Beth when you gave her the lobotomy?” Lido asked, repeating what Evelyn had told her to say.

  His eyes flared wide, then narrowed as they focused on Evelyn. She’d managed to surprise him, to throw him off balance. But he didn’t answer the question. He started to take off the sensors and other equipment. “I’m done,” he said. “You’re not interested in the truth. You’re only trying to trap me.”

  “Why would a question about your sister be a trap, Dr. Bishop?” Evelyn asked.

  He didn’t answer that, either. “I’ve tried to be your friend, Evelyn. I’ve tried to give you what you want. And this is what you do?”

  “You didn’t indicate the test would be restricted to certain questions,” she said.

  That evil, frightening look she’d witnessed once before, when Jennifer Hall was visiting, stole over his face again. “You’re no better than my mother,” he whispered. “And you deserve the same thing—a bullet right to the face.”

  That blast of hate felt like a gale-force wind. Evelyn steadied herself with one hand against the wall. “You did it,” she said. “You killed your mother and all those other women, too.”

  “You’re crazy,” Bishop said.

  “Am I?” she challenged. “Then how did you know where your mother was shot? The police have never revealed that to the public.”

  He jumped up so fast that the few cords still attached to him jerked Lido’s laptop off the table. It went crashing to the floor as he shouted, “You’re the monster! Here’s hoping Jasper Moore finally gets it right.”

  Stunned by the vehemence of those words, Evelyn blinked in surprise. “You’re being recorded. You realize that.”

  “Not by this,” he said, and stomped on the computer until he’d mashed it.

  Evelyn called for COs. They poured into the lab within seconds, but by then she feared it was too late to save the data from the polygraph.

  “You have nothing on me!” Bishop called as they dragged him out. “In another week or two I’ll walk free, and you won’t be able to do anything to stop that!”

  * * *

  A pair of bloody footprints led out of the kitchen.

  Had Jasper left?

  Stan could only hope he’d been spooked by his own horrific act and run. But that didn’t make much sense. Jasper had killed before. And Maureen had been stabbed over and over, well beyond what was necessary to take her life. Obviously, Jasper wasn’t bothered by his own actions. He had to be the psychopath Evelyn had long accused him of being. He knew that Stan was on his way—that Stan would find Maureen dead and finally understand how badly he’d been played. In spite of all the help they, as parents, had given him, Jasper had killed his own mother. He’d destroyed any chance he had of getting future help, which was what made this situation so dangerous.

  Careful not to make any more noise, Stan scooted awa
y from his dead wife. He couldn’t bear to look at her any longer. He was as much to blame for her death as Jasper was. He’d refused to see their son as he truly was, even when she’d tried to get him to look at the situation more objectively.

  His own culpability made him cringe. He’d left his wife of forty years vulnerable, and she’d suffered a tragic end—one that he would now likely suffer himself.

  If he didn’t want that to happen, he had to call for help, get the police to come as soon as possible, he told himself. He needed to think beyond the betrayal, the confusion and the pain. But he no longer had his phone in his hand. He couldn’t even remember what he’d done with it. It was almost as if he was in shock.

  Maybe he was in shock. He felt nauseous, cold, clammy.

  His phone, he reminded himself. He must’ve dropped it. The darn thing couldn’t be far.…

  As he wiped his hands on his suit coat to rid them of Maureen’s blood, his eyes darted around the kitchen. No cell. But he didn’t hear any noise, either. Did he have a chance to get out of the house, to run to a neighbor’s—or hide? He doubted Jasper had left, at least for any length of time, but he could be upstairs, ransacking the house, looking for valuables. Maureen’s purse had been dumped out not far from her body. That told Stan her murder had been as callous as a murder could be, that Jasper had stabbed his mother thirty or forty times and then gone through her purse as if it were nothing.

  So had he killed her for the money?

  No, that couldn’t be it. They’d given him money many times and would’ve given him more if only he’d asked.

  Stan winced as he glanced back at his wife, but he couldn’t allow what he saw—the terror and heartbreak it brought—to incapacitate him. Already he felt like he was about to throw up, and he was shaking so badly he wasn’t sure he had the strength or coordination to move.

  Don’t think. Don’t feel. That’s not Maureen lying there. This is a nightmare. The only way to make it stop is to get out.

  Afraid that Jasper would come into the family room as he was getting to his feet, he crawled around the bar. Then he leaned to the left, so he could see around the couch to where he’d left his briefcase. His phone should be somewhere in between him and that case. He’d had it when he walked in. But he saw no sign of it, and he wasn’t going to take any more time to look.