He didn’t bother parking. He pulled under the covered sally port, rolled down his windows so it wouldn’t get too hot for Makita, told his dog to stay put and left his truck at the curb before he jogged in.

“Hello, Sergeant.” … “Amarok.” … “How’s it going?” … “What’s up, man?”

Most of the COs, even though the majority commuted from Anchorage, had grown familiar with him. Not only had he been to the prison a number of times on official business, but he also stopped by occasionally to bring Evelyn lunch, visit with her or pick her up if there was a storm.

As he put his firearm and belt on a tray so they could circumvent the X-ray machine and walked through the metal detector, he asked everyone the same questions he’d posed to the guards at the gate and received the same answers. Evelyn had left around one, she’d been alone and she hadn’t seemed upset or distressed in any way. And, yes, Jasper was locked up.

He told them to bring Moore to an interview room. Then he got on the elevator and headed straight up to Evelyn’s office on the third floor.

As soon as he pushed through the double glass doors that separated the mental health headquarters from the rest of the prison, he encountered Penny, who was agitated and moving around the office instead of sitting at her desk, working, like usual.

“Have you heard from her?” she asked right away. “I’ve tried calling her at home several times. She doesn’t pick up.”

“She’s not there,” he replied. “And I haven’t heard from her. Have you checked with the rest of the mental health team?”

“I’ve spoken to the ones who aren’t in the middle of a session with a patient or doing research that shouldn’t be interrupted.”

“And?”

“They don’t know anything.”

“Interrupt the rest,” he said. “I don’t care what they’re doing. Tell them I need to talk to them now.”

The color drained from her face. “This is that serious?”

“It appears so.”

She covered her mouth. “She’s pregnant!” she whispered between her fingers.

He could barely speak for clenching his jaw. “I’m well aware of that.”

Determined to keep a cool head, so that fear and despair wouldn’t gain the upper hand again, he dodged Penny in order to reach Evelyn’s office. “Do you know what she’s been working on lately and who she’s been working with?”

She hurried to keep up with him, but she was less than five feet and he was nearly six three. She had to take two steps for every one of his. “Do you mean inmates or—or doctors?”

“Both.”

“She interacts with all the doctors, but probably Dr. Ricardo more often than the rest. Seems like he’s always in her office for one reason or another.”

He switched on the light and crossed to the desk. “Like…”

“She says they aren’t ready to publish their findings, but he keeps pushing her. They’re also doing a lot of testing together, some of them empathy tests and … and IQ tests to determine how mental acuity might interface with psychopathy. They’ve even been doing a lot of experiments to see if psychopaths can better fool a lie detector and why that might be the case. Lots of stuff.”