by N L Westaway
“She looks very happy here.” She smiled at Gwen. “I’ve never seen any photos of you as a baby. I’ve only ever seen the ones your mother keeps on her phone from your high school graduation.”
“I have only seen few of the earlier photos myself,” Gwen shared, a hint of melancholy in her voice.
“If it was Rachel doing this, and not your father? Where is he—your mother told me, he died?”
“I have no idea. I came here last night to confront my mother about my father, but she wasn’t here. She must have been with you. I had thought both photos were of my mother, so when Detective Franklin recognized his jacket in that one photo—Rachel was wearing it in the photo, I thought it was him—that he’d raped her, that he was the serial killer. I ran out of the diner before he could explain. I was obviously wrong about that—major mix-up—he’s from their hometown, he knew Rachel, but not my mother.” Gwen shook her head.
A firm Knocking sounded from the front door. “That’s probably Detective Franklin,” Gwen said, setting the icepack down and getting up to answer the door. Gwen noticed then that she hadn’t locked the door, so she just turned the knob and pulled it open.
A waft of hot summer air hit Gwen as she pulled open wide the door to find a worried and sweaty-faced Detective Franklin standing in front of her. “Hey—oh dear—that looks like a nasty hit you took there,” the detective said, wincing and stepping into the front hall, when Gwen stepped back. “Did you put any ice on it?”
“Already on it,” Gwen said. “Dr. Marlene Branden—this is Detective Jim Franklin,” Gwen added, introducing her mother’s friend, as she and the detective came into the dining area. The doctor set the letter aside and smiled up at the detective.
“Dr. Branden?” Detective Franklin said, looking from her to Gwen.
“Marlene—please. I’m a good friend of Gwen’s mother,” she said, as if hoping to clear up the detective’s confusion, standing then and putting out a hand.
Detective Franklin gave her a smile then shook her hand, and then looked to Gwen again.
“She’s a psychologist—works at the university too. She knew about the stalker, but…,” Gwen started to say.
“But Gwen has caught me up on everything,” Marlene added for Gwen.
“You can talk in front of her—like she said, she knows it all now.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Here have a seat,” Gwen said, pulling out another chair at the table, before sitting down again herself.
Dr. Branden gathered up the soggy dishtowel mess off the table then and went to the sink. “Gwen, does your mother have any resealable plastic bags?”
“Second drawer,” she said, then turned back to the detective. “Do you have any updates on my mother?”
“I’m afraid not—but there’s been another murder.”
“Was it one of the men you thought Rachel might be after?” Gwen asked.
“Yes—Robert Thompson, another past associate of my father’s. He was the other officer on site at the police station when Rachel had come in and made her report all those years ago. He had moved here shortly after Stinson. He was working as a beat cop—but he messed up and lost his job. We found him at his current job—same MO. The body was found next to the security booth in a pay-to park, parking garage in downtown Detroit.”
Dr. Branden returned to the table with a freshly made icepack of what was basically frozen peas in a resealable plastic bag. “Here—put this against your head,” she told Gwen, then sat back down into her seat.
“Are you okay—maybe you should get that checked out,” the detective said.
“She’ll be fine. I’m a medical doctor too—I just did my residency in psych.” She grinned at the detective.
“Do you have that photo, the one of Rachel?” Gwen asked the detective, redirecting all the quasi parental concerns.
“Yes,” the detective said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He slid the photo from the bill fold and handed it to Gwen.
“See here Dr. Branden, this one is of Rachel.” Gwen put the photo of her and her mother next to it.
“Detective, this is the letter from Rachel—you’re going to want to read that.” Dr. Branden said, tapping the stack of stapled pages in front of her.
“It’s pretty evident in the letter that my mother and Rachel are sisters,” Gwen said, sliding the photos over for the detective to see.
Detective Franklin glared down at the photos, then said, “Rachel didn’t have a sister; she didn’t have any other siblings in fact.”
“That can’t be right,” Gwen said, frowning.
“When Rachel had disappeared—and then her father had been killed in that car crash, the police had gone to Rachel’s house to speak to the mother. They did a thorough investigation, and there were definitely no other children living in that house. Rachel had been their only child.
Gwen shook her head and closed her eyes. Her headache was returning. “I don’t understand,” she said, pulling the aspirin bottle from her pocket and dispensing two of the tablets onto her palm.
“May I see the other letters from Rachel?” Dr. Branden asked then.
Gwen took out the letters from her knapsack and handed the stack to Dr. Branden, before getting up to get some water to take the pills. Returning to the table, Gwen and the detective watched as she opened and scanned through each of the single-page letters.
“I think I understand what has been going on.” Dr. Branden glanced up at the detective. “Are you sure you are ready for this?” she asked, turning to look directly at Gwen.
Chapter 20
Gwen had not been ready for this, not any of it, and she still had mostly questions, but there were three things she was now positive about, and largely because Dr. Branden had taken the time to explain it all.
First, her mother Laura, Gwen knew without a doubt, was in fact Rachel.
Secondly, she/they, from what Dr. Branden had described, suffered from what was known in her professional circles as, Dissociative Identity Disorder, but more commonly known as split personality.
Gwen had felt it also explained a lot about her mother’s conduct and the things that she had done over the years, those things that had stuck out as odd to her. Gwen had known that her mother worried over something, but she had not been aware of what it was, and the behaviors her mother had displayed, she had assumed were just your typical weird parental behaviors. Gwen had known her childhood was not a normal one, but they had been happy for the most part, made the best of things, and her mother had been a wonderful mom, taking good care of her. Her mother had even agreed to stay in Ann Arbor when Gwen had begged her.
This disorder, the condition, that her mother had been suffering from, also explained the photos, and how they could have looked so much alike, but still different at the same time. The first photo of the young woman in the leather jacket, the one Detective Franklin had identified as Rachel, had been taken soon after they had met, and the photo showed her with a joyful yet mischievous smile that hinted of a fiercer side, where the photo of Gwen as a baby with her mother, showed a more passive plain version of the woman Gwen knew as her mother. Detective Franklin had confirmed that Rachel had dark red hair, but it was obvious to Gwen now, that her mother had been dying hers and passing it off as a need to cover early grey, as her mother had told her. They were the same person, but the difference in their personalities shone through in those photos.
Dr. Branden had explained that Rachel must have suffered a traumatic mental break at some point causing the split, and had considered perhaps it had happened during Rachel’s early childhood of abuse, but she had said she couldn’t be more precise with the age without further observation and discussion with both personalities. Gwen understood her mother needed help, psychological help, and it was painfully obvious what Rachel, what her mother, had been doing all these years. Rachel may have been protecting Laura and Gwen, but sadly, she had also been killing people
in the process.
And the third thing, that Gwen knew for certain, was that Detective Franklin had been the man chasing after—following Rachel and following her mother and Gwen from state to state, yet not in the way it had been portrayed or interpreted by Rachel/them of course. And as part of this certainty, Gwen understood now what Rachel had meant in her letter by ‘she knew’ regarding how Laura had gotten pregnant. It hadn’t been that professor, and it hadn’t been rape. It had been Rachel’s one night of no commitment with Jamie that had indirectly created a lifetime commitment of parenthood for Laura, and that Jim Franklin was most certainly, her father.
Gwen also understood that with the help from both Dr. Branden—her mother’s only friend, and Detective Franklin—Gwen’s real father, that working together with them, was the only way they were going to find Rachel, and with any luck, keep her from committing another murder. But right now, along with finding Rachel, the main thing Gwen was focused on was making sure that in the end, her mother—Laura, would get the help she ultimately needed.
The detective had felt it best that Gwen come with him to the station, safer perhaps, not that he believed Rachel would kill her, but the last thing she needed, was another blow to the head. Dr. Branden had called and rearranged her patient meetings to free up her time and had asked to come along and help them with assessing the potential danger Rachel might be willing to put herself in. And they had stopped by Gwen’s apartment on the way so she could clean up and get a change of clothing quickly, before proceeding to the station.
“You said a stressor can trigger a change in personality, in motivation of one or more of the personalities?” Detective Franklin asked the doctor once they were all seated in his office.
“Yes, but the one personality—Rachel, has been dormant for six years it seems, so there must have been another trauma or stressor recently that may have set off Rachel’s motivation to commit these new murders,” Dr. Branden clarified.
“Could I have been the stressor—with my confronting her?” Gwen asked, looking at her phone for the umpteenth time, checking in vain to see if her mother had possibly messaged her.
“Actually, I believe I may have been the trigger to the change—the switch up of the personalities, with that fight we had,” Dr. Branden said, setting her shoulder bag on her lap. “She had come to meet me yesterday at the college pub, to talk, and it’s my understanding, that she must have overheard me talking about one of my patients to a colleague—she had thought I’d been talking about her. She thought I’d been analyzing her all this time—that we weren’t really friends,” she explained.
“That professor from your school, Gwen, that murder was not as a result of anything either of you did—that happened before either of your conversations with her,” the detective stated. “I believe Rachel is wrapping up things, killing all those who she believes could potentially hurt Laura and Gwen, as well as those who had hurt her before, like her mother, and the two officers, Stinson and Thompson, who had not believed her, about what she had told them about the abuse.” Detective Franklin leaned forward placing his forearms on his desk, steepling his fingers.
“But Rachel’s letter stated she had two more men she needed to take care of? Who’s the last man?” Gwen questioned him.
“I’m pretty confident she’s after my father now,” Detective Franklin said, pulling in a deep breath.
“Your father?” Gwen said, frowning.
“Yes—my father, he’d been the police chief at the time when Rachel had come in. I’d been there at the station, like I told you—that’s when I met Rachel. He was a good cop—but he had been a son-of-a-bitch and a hard-ass of a father, and he had been horrible to Rachel that day. He had also believed what her parents had said about her bad behavior despite the terrible injuries she’d had.” The muscles of the detective’s jaw tensed, and he ran a hand across it as if trying to calm the enraged memory of that day.
“Where is he—your father?” Dr. Branden asked him.
“He’s safe. I’ve sent an officer over to keep a watch on him,” the detective said. “He lives in a private retirement center for seniors with Alzheimer’s. My mother died ten years ago from cancer—he thinks she’s still alive—she’d been a nurse, so he mixes her up with the nurses. They have staff to keep residents in and unwelcome visitors out too though.
“Who would have of thought you’d have to protect your father from a woman he’d once pissed off when she was only eighteen years old,” Dr. Branden said, just as the detective’s office door opened.
“Sir—sorry to interrupt—but dispatch is having trouble reaching the officer on site at your father’s facility,” the twenty-something police officer said, leaning into the office still holding onto the doorknob.
At that, Detective Franklin was out of his chair and heading out the open door of his office. Both Gwen and Dr. Branden followed as the detective and the junior officer headed to dispatch.
“What’s happening officer?” Detective Franklin demanded.
“Sir—I can’t reach Officer Reynolds on his radio,” the dispatcher said, covering the mic part of his headset.
“Did you try the front desk at the facility—never mind—I’m heading over there,” the detective said, before the dispatcher could respond.
“I’m coming with you,” Dr. Branden said, wide-eyed and clutching her shoulder bag tight to her body. “I can help.”
“Me too,” Gwen added, staring back at the detective. “She’s my mother.”
“Fine!” he said, turning and heading to the doors to the precinct’s parking area.
When they pulled up to the facility, Detective Franklin was out of the car, slamming the door, and already heading up to the main entrance before Gwen and Dr. Branden had even had a chance to get out, and they only caught up with him at the front desk.
When the reception nurse hung up the phone, the detective quickly asked, “Where is Officer Reynolds?”
“Oh, he’s such a lovely young man,” the chubby-faced nurse started to say.
“Where is he?” the detective asked again, pulling his badge from his belt, flashing it in front of the nurse’s face.
“No need to get so huffy,” she said. “I saw him about forty-five minutes ago.”
The detective spoke then into the handheld radio he had brought with him, “Officer Reynolds—it’s Detective Franklin, what is your location?”
No response came through the radio from the detective’s attempt to raise this Officer Reynolds on his radio.
“Have you seen this person,” Detective Franklin asked the nurse then, pulling a photo from his badge’s leather folder.
Gwen leaned around to look at the photo. It was an image from the video footage of Rachel in disguise. “Oh-my-god-I-forgot-to-tell-you—I found the disguise in the closet,” Gwen, spewed out, rubbing at the side of her aching head now.
When the detective turned to look at Gwen, the nurse said, “No—no man, but your father’s niece is here somewhere.”
“What?” Detective Franklin and Gwen shouted at the same time, turning, and staring at the nurse.
“Yes, a lovely redheaded woman. She went to use the ladies’ room,” the nurse informed them.
“When?” the detective questioned.
“Gee, that was about thirty minutes ago, before I saw the officer doing his checks of the first floor.
“Where is the ladies’ room?” Gwen asked.
“Just around the corner, next to the center stairwell,” she said, pointing to the left.
Detective Franklin ran to the ladies’ room around the corner, with Gwen hot on his heels, but when they entered the bathroom, there was no one in there.
“The stairs,” Dr. Branden said, catching up then, indicating the door to the stairwell.
Detective Franklin pulled his service weapon from his belt’s holster and then yanked open the door to the stairs. Then holding his gun at his shoulder, he went up the stairs si
de-stepping with his back to the wall opposite to the side with the open handrail. “Tell the nurse to call for back-up,” he said in a hushed voice directed at Dr. Branden. When she nodded, he turned back extending his gun hand, and then edged around the bend in the stairs. Gwen followed him, leaving several steps between them.
At the top of the stairwell on the landing, they found Officer Reynolds. His body was face down, and next to him was what must have been a very large, now smashed vase.
Gwen bent and checked for a pulse. “He’s alive—and he’s breathing.” Gwen glanced up at the detective. “There’s a taser burn on his neck.”
Detective Franklin bent his gun hand up to his shoulder again, reaching out for the handle to the stairwell’s door with his other. Then he pulled it open, pointing his gun out in front of him and checking both ways down the hall. “My father’s room is right there,” he whispered, pointing to the door opposite and to the left of the stairwell’s entrance. Detective Franklin shifted then, crossing the hall to put his back against the wall next to door to his father’s room.
Gwen followed again, keeping a short distance between them.
Detective Franklin leaned his ear to the door and silently wrapped his hand around the doorknob.
“Is that you honey? I can’t find my glasses,” Gwen heard the slightly muffled, yet deep voice of an elderly man say, just before the detective turned the knob.
Detective Franklin burst through, shoving the door wide, his gun in two hands now held out in front of him.
Gwen stood in the doorway, and across from them she could see the back of an old man seated in a chair, facing towards a large window on the opposite wall. Her mother, Rachel, stood to the left of the chair, one hand behind her back, the other gripping the ends of what Gwen recognized as the old belt she had seen cinched around that literary textbook. But now it was wrapped around the old man’s neck.