Her Darkest Nightmare (32 page)

“I'm sorry.”

He changed the subject back to business. “Is the warden still there?”

She wished he was. After what she'd just learned, she wanted to talk to Ferris right away. “No, he's gone for the night.”

“Maybe I'll stop by his place after I check on those bones, if it's before ten.”

“I hope you won't be out
too
late. You need to get some sleep as badly as I do.”

“I'll get home when I can.”

“Okay.” She started to hang up, but he stopped her.

“If you don't get out of there in the next hour, wait for me to come get you. I'd rather not have you driving in this mess.”

She smiled at the grudging way he'd stated that. He couldn't help looking after her. That was just the kind of man he was. “If I were normal…”

“You wouldn't be able to resist me. I know,” he joked, and hung up.

 

21

I am deeply hurt by your calling me a women hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the “Son of Sam.” I am a little brat.

—DAVID BERKOWITZ

Evelyn listened to be sure no one was approaching the administration office. The COs knew she hadn't left. She checked out when she did. So there was always the chance that someone might come by to get an update on Hugo, to report on Anthony Garza or for a number of other reasons. Sometimes, when she was working late, various COs came by just to talk. She was, after all, a psychiatrist, and their job could be difficult.

But all was quiet. Even the cleaning crew, a team of two—at least in this part of the institution—was gone. Before they left, she'd taken their key. That hadn't been as hard to do as she'd imagined it would be, since they hung their ring on their cart in the reception area while vacuuming the individual offices. The most difficult part had been sorting through the twenty or so other keys on the same ring, since they all looked alike. She'd had to try one after another, hands shaking and heart racing, until she managed to unlock her own door.

Once she had the master, she'd slipped it into her pocket before replacing the rest.

If they'd caught her, she'd planned to say she'd accidentally locked herself out and was merely trying to get back in. But if something was left askew in Fitzpatrick's office and he happened to notice it or get suspicious in the morning, he might ask the janitors, and they might remember that she'd had the keys in her possession for a few brief minutes. So it was better,
much
better, that they had no clue. By the time they realized their key was missing it would probably be tomorrow night. They wouldn't be able to get into the mental health offices, but Evelyn didn't see where missing a night or two of janitorial service would be a big deal. They would just have to get a locksmith to change the locks and provide a new master.

Fitzpatrick's office smelled musty, like he did. There was an ornate coatrack in the back corner, where he hung his heavy wool overcoat, hat and umbrella. A mahogany desk and leather chair held court on the opposite side of the room. His degrees hung on one wall; bookshelves filled the other. But instead of a credenza, like hers, he had a tall filing cabinet.

Evelyn had always assumed he kept files from previous patients in there, or bits and pieces of research. He didn't need that big of a filing cabinet for his work at HH. They were supposed to use the file room off the reception area. That way, if a member of the team got sick or couldn't come to work someone else could pick up that doctor's caseload and would have immediate access to the patients' most recent assessments and histories.

The psych team didn't always meet that ideal. They carried various files around instead of putting them away or left them on a desk or in a briefcase because they had yet to finish a report. But Evelyn didn't think anyone else on the team crowded his or her office with such a big filing cabinet.…

So what was in it?

She tried to find out, but it was locked.

Fortunately, the desk wasn't. Although she went through it, she didn't find anything of interest, except a small key. She thought it might open the filing cabinet—but it didn't.

“Damn!” Where else would Fitzpatrick keep the key? Did he take it home each night? Surely there couldn't be anything
that
secret in those drawers. And if there was—the question was
why?

Stymied, she went through his garbage, which was the reason she'd wanted to get into his office in the first place. She was hoping to find evidence of the same kind of practicing she and her sister had done on their mother's signature in high school. Evelyn doubted he'd be dumb enough to leave ten different attempts at “Evelyn Talbot” in his trash can; surely he'd shred that. But she thought she might find the imprint of her signature on his writing pad or blotter, even another sheet of paper. She'd seen that type of thing on forensic shows. A detective would scrape pencil lead across what appeared to be a blank piece of paper to reveal what had been written on the one before it.

She examined everything she could find that wasn't shredded—and came up with nothing more incriminating than a note to Russ about her “erratic behavior.” She was just reading that when a noise made her freeze. Someone had come into the offices.…

“Dr. Talbot?”

Fear gripped her like a tight fist that would hardly allow her to expand her rib cage enough to breathe as she flattened herself against the wall. Had she been seen through the frosted glass? She'd left the door to her office open to make it look like she'd just stepped out and locked this one. Whoever it was wouldn't be able to get in.

But the light was on.…

Was it too much to hope her visitor would assume the janitors had forgotten to turn it off?

“Dr. Talbot?”

Glenn Whitcomb. He probably wanted to follow up with her on whether or not he'd been able to learn anything about the transfer order. But she couldn't let anyone know she'd been in Fitzpatrick's office, even Glenn. She preferred he be able to answer honestly if he was ever questioned about her.

When a knock sounded, she was sure he'd found her—until he moved on past Fitzpatrick's door and continued to call out.

“What am I doing?” she whispered, and slid down the wall to crawl into the footwell of Fitzpatrick's desk, where she for sure couldn't be seen.

She could hear Glenn's footfalls and the curiosity in his voice as he looked for her. Then he returned and jiggled the doorknob, making her curl into a tighter ball. She really didn't want to explain her actions; they wouldn't reflect well on her. This was going too far, even for a friend like Glenn to understand.

“Dr. Talbot? Hello? Doc, you in there?”

Covering her mouth with one hand, she struggled to remain calm and still.
He'll be gone shortly,
she promised herself, and, after a few minutes, that seemed to be the case.

She waited a bit longer, to be sure. Then she forced herself to abandon her hiding place. She needed to get out of Fitzpatrick's office as soon as possible, before Glenn could come back when he didn't find her elsewhere. But just as she was about to stand up, she spotted a flash of silver out of the corner of her eye.

It was another small key, only this one was taped to the underside of Fitzpatrick's desk drawer.

*   *   *

Amarok was worried. He hadn't heard from Evelyn, and she wasn't answering at the prison. Surely she hadn't tried to drive home in the blizzard they were having and gotten stranded somewhere.

He studied every car he passed, but even with his windshield wipers moving on high it wasn't easy to see.

“Damn it.” He was risking getting stuck himself. He hadn't had a chance to fix the hydraulic plow on his truck. But he drove out to the prison, anyway. He wasn't going home without her.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her car in its usual spot, mostly buried by snow despite the parking cover. It didn't appear that she'd been out of the building. But that didn't mean she was okay. There was possibly more danger
inside
than out, given all the shit that was going on.

Fitzpatrick better not have harmed her
, Amarok thought as he parked under the portico at the main sally port and hopped out.

The cold nearly stole his breath. But it was plenty warm inside. The COs greeted him and put him through the standard security measures before he took the elevator to the second floor.

The usual sounds of such a place seemed muted, which made him anxious. He hoped Evelyn was working at her desk, knew she often stayed late. What she'd said about searching Fitzpatrick's office had him on edge, however. What if she'd been caught?

Those fears escalated when he couldn't get into the mental health offices. Her office light was on, but everything else—the entire reception area—was dark. Why would the place be locked up if she hadn't yet left the prison?

“Evelyn?” He pounded on the glass doors.

When there wasn't an immediate response, he turned, planning to get someone to let him in. But as he started walking away, he heard a noise and went back to see her approaching those glass doors from the other side.

“I'm here.” She didn't turn on the light, but she poked her head out.

“What's the matter?” he asked. “Why's the place so dark?”

“I'll explain in the truck. Can you watch this area for a second? Don't let anyone past.”

“Why?”

“Hang on.” She disappeared again. He saw her office light go off and another office light go on and off before she let herself out.

“All set,” she said.

With only partial lighting it was too shadowy to see her face clearly, but he could tell she was anxious. “Everything okay?”

She pressed a finger to her mouth, signaling caution, but spoke plenty loud—almost too loud—when she responded. “Of course. Thank you for the lift. No way could I have made it home in this weather.”

“No problem,” he said.

“Did you make it past Tim Hancock's?” she murmured as they got into the elevator.

“Not yet. It got too late.”

“And those bones?”

“Part of a bear.”

She frowned to show her disappointment, then cursed right before the elevator doors opened.

“What?” he said.

“I hope Officer Whitcomb isn't down here.”

“Why?”

“He came up earlier to deliver a brownie to me, and I never acknowledged it, which will seem strange. I was too busy making copies.”

“You're worried about a brownie?”

“He also left me a note that no one seems to know anything about the forged transfer order.”

“Who'd he ask?”

Once again she indicated silence as the elevator doors opened. Then they stepped into the main lobby. Fortunately, Officer Bramble was stationed there instead of Glenn Whitcomb.

Amarok knew that was a good thing, although he wasn't entirely sure why.

Evelyn gave Bramble a polite smile, and Bramble wished her a good night. It wasn't until both she and Amarok climbed into the truck and he pulled away that she let that smile fade.

“Now what's this about Whitcomb and that forged transfer order?”

She cast a final glance over her shoulder at the prison as he rounded the circle and headed down the long drive. Hanover House had their own grounds crews who kept the driveways on the property clear, which made this part easy to navigate. But once she and Amarok got out onto regular roads it would be slow going with all the snow. “Don't worry about that. I'll explain later,” she said.

“You're not going to tell me now? What's going on?”

“I found something in Fitzpatrick's office tonight,” she announced. “In a locked file drawer.”

He shot her a look. “If it was locked, how'd you get into it?”

“I sort of … stumbled onto the key.”

“Which you put back, I hope.”

“Of course. But the cleaning crew is going to have a hard time getting in tomorrow.”

“They won't suspect you.…”

“No.”

“What'd you find?”

She pulled a manila folder out of her satchel. “This.”

Slowing to a stop before he could reach the guard tower, he turned on the interior light and flipped through a stack of photocopies. “What is this stuff? Some kind of background check?”

“On me!” she exclaimed. “It looks like Fitzpatrick was having me followed, watched.”

“Why would he do that?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea. It's an invasion of my privacy. Look at this picture someone took through the window of my cabin when I was changing. That's here in Alaska!”

He studied a blurry shot of her in her bra. “You don't lower the blinds?”

“Usually, yes. But I live out in the middle of nowhere. The few neighbors I have can't see into my bedroom—not unless they're creeping around, like someone obviously was. And I'm guessing that day I just wanted to quickly change my shirt.”

He glanced at a few more pages. These seemed to contain information on her family—her sister and parents and their addresses. “Did you find any files like this on the rest of the team?”

“There was a file on each of us, but the others barely contained anything besides their résumés—maybe a list of awards and accomplishments, notes from their first interview, that sort of thing. I can understand him keeping that on hand in case he has to do a write-up on the team. I keep that sort of thing available for when I go after a grant or other source of funding. But their files didn't contain anything of a personal nature—certainly not any half-dressed pictures!”

“That's true even for the other woman on the team—Dr. Wilheim?”

“Stacy? The only picture Tim has of her is a professional head shot.”