Her Darkest Nightmare (16 page)

“After last summer, he's got to be even angrier than he was before. He wants to terrorize me first, make sure I understand who's in charge.”

“Why take the risk of letting you get away again?”

She could see why Amarok might not understand. Psychopaths were consistently difficult for anyone with a conscience to relate to. “For the pleasure of it. To feel as if he had the last laugh. To win. You have to remember, people like Jasper—psychopaths—don't experience what we do. They want to prove their superiority. They can't even feel the loss of the love and empathy that eludes them.”

“Do they know that they're different?”

“If they do, they celebrate their differences. They view those differences as giving them a leg up in the contest of life. I've met some who claim a sense of ‘emptiness,' but most say they feel sorry for the rest of us. They consider us ‘suckers,' simply because we can be so easy to manipulate. Our desire to be a good person and to please others puts us at a disadvantage. People are mere pawns to someone like Jasper.”

“Pawns … winning. You're saying tonight was all a game?”

She pictured the one bluish finger of that hand pointing up when all the rest were taped down. “Yes, for Jasper it's like chess. He thought he had checkmate when I was sixteen—”

“But you survived, didn't let him destroy you.”

“Exactly. I fought back, carried on.”

“And you made something of your life. Something that is in direct opposition to what he is.”

“I believe that's why he came back.”

“Or he could be after revenge,” Amarok said. “Living on the run can't be easy. He could blame you for ruining his life, especially because you're still publicizing what he did, making it more difficult for him to avoid detection.”

“That wouldn't surprise me. Psychopaths often blame their victims for provoking their behavior, resisting, or merely being available to satisfy cravings for sex, murder, money, drugs”—she lifted a hand—“whatever.”

“But Jasper's smart, right? He got away with killing three people, more if you count that woman that was found in a shallow grave not far from where he took you last summer. There's got to be more. So he's having his fun. Why would he keep coming back to you and risk getting caught?”

“Because his desire to beat me, to see me demoralized, shamed and reduced to a quaking mass of fear, is too compelling. After last summer, he's probably even more obsessed with the idea of ultimate victory and has gone to great lengths to plan out how it will go. That's another reason I think it might be him. The staging. The theatrics. The scare before the kill. If what we have going on up here plays out in the media, if it goes public in a big way as this is likely to do if we can't get on top of it quickly, that would only make him feel
more
powerful.”

“He's still risking capture. Alaska has never had the death penalty, but—”

“It wouldn't matter even if Alaska
did
have the death penalty. He isn't deterred by fear.”

“Even when it comes to his own preservation? I thought psychopaths were narcissistic.”

“They are, but they often don't see their limitations realistically. Jasper considers himself too clever to get caught. He's escaped justice before—twice now. He acts out regardless of the consequences because he's too impulsive to let those consequences influence his behavior. You've heard of Dr. Hare's studies.…”

“No. I'm afraid that wasn't required reading for becoming a state trooper.”

She heard a hint of sarcasm in that statement. Was he taking a jab at her Ivy League education? Or was it merely more evidence of his cynicism toward psychology in general?

Tempted to address that cynicism, she paused but ultimately decided they had more important things to discuss at the moment. “Robert D. Hare has been at the forefront of psychopathy research for more than thirty years. He developed a checklist used by many prisons and mental hospitals to diagnose sociopathic tendencies.”

“Diagnosing someone a psychopath is as simple as a
checklist
these days?”

“Nothing in psychology is as simple as a checklist. But having a checklist can help. It gives us certain traits that seem to be common among psychopaths.”

He leaned forward. “What happens once someone's been identified? They go in for treatment?”

“There are no effective treatments … yet. That's why we need more research.” She didn't add that the treatments tried so far only made matters worse. In one study, 82 percent of the psychopaths who'd undergone anger management and social skills training before being released from prison reoffended. Psychopaths who didn't have the training had only a 59 percent recidivism rate.

“So this test you mentioned. What's it like?” he asked.

“It's a manual and rating booklet with interview instructions, and it's designed to assess the presence of twenty different personality traits.”

“And these twenty personality traits are…”

She ticked them off on her fingers. “Glib charm, sexual promiscuity, callousness, poor behavior controls, denial, a failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions, juvenile delinquency, many short marriage relationships. There are more.”

“Most of the people I know exhibit those traits. That doesn't make them psychopaths.”

“Your friends, as well as mine, may have
some
of the traits, but not all of them, at least not to a large degree.”

“Still, you realize that calling someone a psychopath has huge ramifications. What if the test is wrong? Or the results are taken too far?”

“My own research suggests the PCL-R is probably an oversimplification. There's more involved than it can cover. But it gives us a starting point. Think of all the victims who would never be victims if we could figure out why some people have no conscience. Psychopaths show a great deal of criminal versatility. As far as I'm concerned, knowledge is power against those who could or would destroy human lives without compunction.”

“But what are you willing to pay for that knowledge?” he asked. “It's the old paradox—if you want more security, you have to pay for it with less freedom.”

“Coming from someone who has never known the terror I've faced…”

He dropped his head in one hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Which makes it easy for me to say. Point taken.”

“Very young children can exhibit psychopathic traits,” she said. “I've interviewed as many parents of psychopaths as possible. The majority of them have told me that their child was always different, eerily devoid of compassion, difficult to connect with, prone to be a troublemaker from the beginning. Everyone would like to believe that such individuals must have had an underprivileged upbringing, or were abused. Why else would they harm others for the pleasure of it? But that isn't necessarily the case. Psychopaths come from strong, loving families as well as dysfunctional or abusive ones. And no one can explain why. We need to learn more, to keep attacking the problem.”

“But do you honestly think the appearance of these ‘psychopathic' traits in children can predict future behavior?”

“It's possible.”

“So why not make Hare's test compulsory? Administer it to all kids when they turn a certain age and put away anyone who doesn't score the way we'd like? Think of the crime that could be averted.”

He was being facetious. He didn't see the value in any checklist—only the danger of certain zealots taking it too far. Living up here in Alaska, he prized his freedom even more than most other people and resisted anything that might threaten it. It was the old “it could never happen to me, so don't disturb my world” response. But she was living proof that it could and did happen, and far too often.

“I don't think you truly understand what these people are capable of,” she said.

“I do. I just don't want the ‘cure' to be worse than the problem.”

She wrapped her arms around herself. She wasn't in any frame of mind to argue with him, but she felt strongly about this subject. No one could fix the problem without first understanding it. “In one of his early experiments, Dr. Hare had a group of regular people and a group of psychopaths,
as defined by his checklist,
watch a timer. When the timer hit zero, the subjects received an electric shock. Nothing truly harmful, but painful.”

“People
volunteered
for that?”

“Fortunately. Because he discovered something that sheds a bit of light on the dark mystery of the psychopathic mind.”

“And that is…”

She'd captured his interest in spite of his tendency to play devil's advocate. “The regular people would begin to sweat as the clock counted down. They were anticipating the negative result.”

“And the psychopaths?”

“Since they don't fear punishment, they had no physiological reaction. That's one reason they are so likely to reoffend. They don't learn from their actions—unless it's to figure out better ways of avoiding detection.” Which was why all that anger management training had backfired. “They want what they want, regardless, and their lives are all about getting it.”

Amarok rubbed his face. Obviously, he was as tired as she was. This was the second night they hadn't gotten much sleep. “I get what you're saying. I just … I'm not convinced any generalization can adequately cover the diversity of human nature.”

“So … what? We let it go and hope for the best? Catch whatever murderers, rapists and thieves we can and put them in prison? What happens when they get out? Someone like Jasper would just keep torturing and murdering.”

“I admit I don't have the answers you're looking for.”

“But you're pissed this is happening, and you want to blame me.”

“I want to
protect
you!”

She could hear the scowl in his voice. “Even though you knew better than to let me come to town in the first place?”

He grimaced. “You didn't want this to happen any more than I did.”

“What if Jasper followed me here, Amarok? I've pissed him off, taken away the thrill of his kill twice. You saw what he left me, the way he taped the fingers of that severed hand. This is just the beginning.”

“Flipping someone off is pretty personal. But why does that mean it
has
to be Jasper?”

“Who else could it be?”

“Anyone. One of the men in Danielle's little black book. Maybe someone who has a complex about being listed as having only three inches.”

Although he was joking, she got the point. “What would any of those men have against
me
? Why would any of them want to flip me off in such a-a terrifying way?”

“Because they're angry at something that has to do with you. Hell, when you were building that damn prison
, I
felt like flipping you off. Not like this, of course, but—”

“Why didn't you?” she broke in. He hadn't put much effort into hiding his displeasure, but he had never challenged her outright.

“I let those I cared about—the people here—persuade me that the trade-off would be worth it.” He released a sigh. “And then I met you.”

There'd been a fatalistic note in his voice. “Why is
that
significant?”

“You honestly don't know?”

She cleared her throat. “If you were attracted to me, you didn't let on—not at the very first.”

“I wasn't sure it would be wise to go after what I wanted. Then when you came to town when HH was being built to deal with the vandalism…”

“I proved you right. Last night, too.”

“I can't complain too loudly, not when I liked touching you, holding you, as much as I did.” He fell silent for a few seconds. Then he said, “And there's always the promise of the future.”

Her heart began to pound. He still wanted her. But she couldn't risk failing again,
especially
with him. If she did, maybe he'd be convinced, once and for all, that she was too damaged.

Or was she more afraid of success than failure? What if she enjoyed making love with Amarok? What if he enjoyed it, too, and they got into a relationship? That was where they were heading last summer, before she put a stop to it. Romantic relationships weren't easy and would be especially complicated with someone like her. Even if she
could
have sex with Amarok, she couldn't risk her heart. The heartbreak Jasper had caused was the worst aspect of what he'd done.

“I gave it the old college try,” she said, skirting the real issue.

He spoke softly, meaningfully. “Maybe next time you'll be able to trust me enough to go through with it.”

They would be staying together, so they'd definitely have the chance.…

“Someday I'd like to give you an orgasm,” he went on. “More than one. I enjoy thinking about that. I imagine hearing you gasp my name as I feel you shudder beneath me.”

The picture he'd just painted made Evelyn short of breath. She was suddenly tempted to make wild, animalistic love with him right here on the living room floor. How better to scream out her defiance than to fulfill her sexual potential in spite of her past? She'd love nothing more than to flip Jasper off in return and to do it in just that way.

But with the thought of Jasper came the memory of that severed limb, which reminded her of Lorraine and Danielle—and that doused all desire in an instant.

“You're a glutton for punishment,” she said dryly.

“I was in that bed, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were
so
close to going through with it.”

She couldn't argue that. “Yes.”

“And now? Are you still interested?”