Erin’s eyes turned to her sister, a wonderful, innocent girl she couldn’t have loved more. She was suffering horribly. And Erin couldn’t utter even a single word to save her further pain. She felt so ashamed. But she could barely breathe through her sobs, and she couldn’t find a way to speak.

The inhuman monster raised the scalpel to strike again when Erin, out of desperation, managed to move her chin up and down a single time, hoping a nod of yes in response to his question would satisfy him.

“Good,” he replied. “Now we’re communicating. Now, do you know what anal sex is?” he asked with a warm smile.

Anal sex? Erin had a vague idea the word anal might have something to do with the butt, but she had no idea what the butt could possibly have to do with sex. Once again she was unable to speak, but she was able to—barely—shake her head no.

“No?” said the man, obviously delighted by this response. “Well, I have good news for you. You’re about to find out. Your sister here may scream, but trust me, she’s going to enjoy this. I promise. And then when I’m done, I think I’ll skin her alive. Do you know what that means?”

Erin wasn’t sure but she managed to nod. Anything to get him and his dead eyes to stop talking to her, asking her questions. The man was pure, distilled evil. How could anyone be this cruel? And he was so calm. He might have been talking about the weather as he spoke of torture and murder. He had killed her parents, two wonderful people who would never hurt anyone. And he was about to do the same to Anna and her. He would destroy their bodies and end their lives with as little thought or regret as someone else might have when turning off a light.

He reached for his waist and seconds later his pants fell down around his ankles. Erin was still sobbing but had no awareness that this was the case. All the pain and horror in the world had turned into an ice pick, stabbing at her psyche, robbing her of her mind and her will to move. Her will to live.

Deep inside her consciousness a tiny voice was ashamed of her behavior. She could easily remove the collar from around her neck. She should run. Scream. Get help. Somehow attack this monster. Find a weapon and come at him.

But she couldn’t break free from the paralysis that gripped her. And even if she could, nothing she could do would change her fate. Not against pure evil of this magnitude. The man was a snake who had hypnotized its victim, his dead, soulless eyes having completely shattered her psyche, as surely as his bullets had shattered her parents’ bodies.

As the man reached for his underwear to pull them down, one hand still clamped tightly over Anna’s mouth, the door from the pharmacy burst inward and Erin’s father stumbled into the room, making an awkward path toward the intruder and his youngest daughter. His intestines were still fully exposed, and he had lost most of his blood, yet there was a look of superhuman determination in his eyes, and Erin somehow realized that only his love for his daughters could have possibly kept him alive for this long.

The intruder reached for his gun with an untroubled expression, but as he was swinging it around, Ted Palmer stumbled and landed at the man’s feet.

The intruder lowered the gun and shook his head in mild amusement. “Don’t tell me you want to watch too?” he said.

Erin’s father lurched forward and stabbed at the man’s lower leg. He had concealed a small syringe filled with unknown fluid and he drove it deep into the intruder’s flesh, using the very last of his strength. Her father fell away from the man and an instant later allowed death to finally take him.

“Great,” the intruder complained to Erin. “Now I have to find out what he just injected me with.” He paused in thought. “I guess I’ll have to move up my timetable.”

With that he put both hands around Anna’s small head and yanked. Erin heard a horrible crack, like a thick tree branch snapping in two, and Anna’s head went limp and lolled to the side.

The man turned to Erin. “I guess it’s just the two of us now. I’ll find out what was in that syringe, and then you’ll get to experience the fun of anal sex for yourself. You’re in for a real treat.”

The man smiled, took one step, and then fell to the floor, his eyes glazing over. He convulsed a few times and then his heart stopped.

Whatever Ted Palmer had injected had finally taken its full effect.

A small part of Erin Palmer felt a shallow relief, but the intensity of her suffering remained crippling. She was vaguely aware of time passing, but everything was a blur. She continued sobbing softly until she finally fell into a welcome unconsciousness.

The next morning, Emily, her father’s nurse, came in to work to find a scene straight from a charnel house. An hour later, the building swarming with police and two psychologists, Erin still hadn’t moved, now curled up into a fetal position.

It was as though she had died inside, even though her body was still living. Her father had given every last ounce of his strength to save his daughters’ lives. And Erin had done nothing. Now she was totally alone in the world. Alone with her cowardice and shame. And alone after suffering a loss so great it nearly stripped her of her sanity.

A female psychologist cleaned Erin up gently and gathered the young girl in her arms, carrying her away from the grisly surroundings. Feeling a compassionate human touch helped Erin’s psyche reemerge from its hiding place for just a moment.

Why had this happened? a voice inside her head demanded of an uncaring universe. How could that man have taken everything from her? How could God allow such evil to exist?

Erin tilted her head and caught the eye of the counselor. “Why?” she whispered hoarsely, her voice pleading.

This would be the last word Erin Palmer would speak for the next twenty-seven days.

PART ONE

SCIENTISTS DECODE PSYCHOPATHS’ BRAINS

Science Illustrated, May/June 2012

Psychopaths suffer from an antisocial personality disorder, expressed in a marked lack of empathy, conscience, and sympathy … Psychopaths either do not feel fear or simply disregard it … Psychopaths are thought to be predisposed to commit violent crime. It has been estimated that while only 1 percent of the population are psychopaths, they make up 11 to 25 percent of all prison inmates.

… In healthy individuals, viewing morally offensive pictures activated an area in the amygdala, whereas this area was not activated at all in psychopaths. The amygdala is involved in emotional processing.

[Researchers] examined the “connecting roads” in the brains of psychopaths who had been imprisoned for murder, multiple rape convictions, strangulation … The study demonstrated that the white matter connecting the orbitofrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the vision-related centers of the brain was markedly weakened in the group of psychopaths as compared to a control group of healthy individuals.

STUDY FINDS PSYCHOPATHS HAVE DISTINCT BRAIN STRUCTURE

Chicago Tribune, May 7, 2012

The study showed that psychopaths, who are characterized by a lack of empathy, had less gray matter in the areas of the brain important for understanding other peoples’ emotions.

Blackwood’s team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of forty four violent adult male offenders in Britain … The crimes they had committed included murder, rape, attempted murder, and grievous bodily harm … The results showed that the psychopaths’ brains had significantly less gray matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles than the brains of the nonpsychopathic offenders and nonoffenders.

These areas of the brain are important for understanding other people’s emotions and intentions, and are activated when people think about moral behavior, the researchers said. Damage to these areas is linked with a lack of empathy, a poor response to fear and distress, and a lack of self-conscious emotions such as guilt or embarrassment.