by N L Westaway
“Mom—stop, please,” Gwen pleaded.
“Hello, Dolly. Sorry, your mother isn’t here I’m afraid,” Rachel said in response. “Detective Franklin, I presume? How did you like finding your fellow cops that way—or I should say, ex-cops?” Rachel took a quick glance at the old guy. “Oh, and I didn’t kill that officer in the hall—he was nice to me.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Detective Franklin said, holding his gun out, pointing it directly at her.
“What? This?” Rachel said, tightening her grip on the belt. “Yes… I do. Just like I had to take care of those other two asshole-cops.”
“Your mother didn’t just die, did she?” Gwen asked, hoping somehow to reach her mother.
“Nope—I killed the bitch,” Rachel said sharply. “She had it coming—just like those two good-for-nothing cops.”
“You killed Officer Stinson,” Detective Franklin said then.
“Stinson was a gift—for me, actually,” Rachel said, producing the taser gun from behind her back. “I’d seen a photo of him and his wife in the newspaper. She’s some hotshot lawyer here in Detroit. She’s smart—but ugly, seems Stinson married someone as ugly as him. The article said something about them selling their big house in that ritzy neighborhood. That’s how I found him; hadn’t even known he was even in this part of the country.”
“They were high school sweethearts,” Detective Franklin said, as if trying to appease the Rachel he knew from when they were younger. “She’d come back to our hometown after law school, then moved the two of them here to Detroit.”
“Lucky for me, I found him in his car,” she said, “holding a rifle. He was about to off himself—but I stopped him. I needed him to tell me where Thompson was now, plus I was curious why he was going to shoot himself. Gambling debts and the wife was divorcing him over it—he said.”
“But he did shoot himself,” Gwen cut in, still standing in the doorway.
“Ya—I helped him with that. I tasered him first, then wrapped the belt around his neck and choked him until he passed out. I let the shotgun do the rest, but not before I got the details about Thompson, but you already know what he did—don’t you detective?”
Detective Franklin shot a glance over to Gwen as she came up to stand closer to him.
“Seems he followed his buddy out here, and you had gotten him a job working as an onsite cop at some private all girls’ high school. Got fired though—seems he was a bit of a creeper, liked to walk the halls outside of the gym locker room—a little too often. Lots of complaints from the girls about his watching them all the time. Stinson told me he’d gotten him a job working nights at some parking garage—rent-a-cop security or something. I found him asleep in the booth when he was supposed to be walking the levels. I banged on the glass—told him someone had broken into my car, made him come out of the booth. That’s when I got him. Easy-peasy.”
“Rachel… thank you,” Gwen said, moving to stand right next to the detective
“Thank you—for what?” Rachel turn her gaze to Gwen.
“For keeping my mother and me safe all these years.”
“You know, none of them believe me,” Rachel said to Gwen. “They all have to pay, like my father should have. No one was safe with them in this world. And this one here,” she tightened the belt again and the old man gasped. “He’s the last.” Rachel lifted the taser to the old man’s neck.
“Rachel, please… stop,” Detective Franklin said. “Don’t you recognize me?” He slowly lowered his gun.
“Jamie?” Rachel blinked, then shook her head rapidly back and forth.
“Yes… it’s me, Jamie. Where did you go? I searched for you all night,” the detective said, as if following Gwen’s lead.
“I had to run…,” Rachel began.
“Why did you leave me?” the detective asked, reaching out with words for the damaged girl he had once known. “I confronted your father that night, but he was drunk. He tried to run me off the road, but instead of him knocking me off my motorbike, he ran his car off the road and into the river. I think the impact killed him, or he drowned or both.”
Rachel loosened her grip slightly on the belt, the taser still inches from the old man’s throat.
“It was his fault—not mine, not yours,” The detective said.
“I didn't know any of this—you don’t understand… I… it broke my heart to leave you,” Rachel said, desperate, almost as if her heart was breaking again now.
“We have a daughter,” Jamie said, slicing a glance to Gwen then back to Rachel.
“You have a daughter. She’s not my daughter—she belongs to Laura.”
“I don’t know Laura, I only know you,” he said, taking a step closer and putting his gun back in his holster. He had his other hand outstretched towards her.
“Don’t come any closer, Jamie. He has to pay,” Rachel said, tightening the belt again.
“He didn’t believe you—but I did. I know what your father did to you—all of it. I read your letters.”
“My letters… yes. I was a good daughter—obedient, and still my father hurt me… and my mother abandoned me.”
“She was weak… and you are strong,” Detective Franklin said.
“She needed to pay for what she did to me. He needs to pay too.”
The detective took another step forward. “Too many people have died—have paid for the sins of your father.”
“They all deserve to die for what happened to me,” she cried out. Tears began to well in her eyes now.
“Bad people deserve to be punished—I agree, but you should not have to do it. Look at my father,” the detective said, glancing at his father. “He is an old man now—he suffers in his mind. Doesn’t know what year it is—doesn’t even know his own son.”
“He was a horrible father to you,” she sobbed.
“Yes, he was, but I’m not like him. I didn’t become my father.”
“Mom,” Gwen said then. Rachel turned and looked at her. “Mom—Rachel, please let Laura be free of all of this.”
“Rachel—you have become that which you had sought to destroy,” Detective Franklin said as Gwen took a step past him.
“But I… they had to pay… I… don’t you understand how my heart breaks… for you?” Rachel loosened the belt then, and dropped the taser, as she came to stand in front of the chair.
Detective Franklin crossed the distance to his father pulling Rachel away from him, as Gwen rushed forward to remove the belt from around the neck of the feeble and now seriously confused retired police chief.
Rachel leaned head-down into Jamie, limp in his arms. Tilting her head up then, she whispered in his ear, “I am sorry.” Then she grabbed the gun from his holster.
A single shot rang out through the room.
Epilog
September 20th, 2019
The University of Michigan Adult Inpatient Psychiatry Program
Case Study by: Dr. Marlene Branden
Patient: Rachel Rampton, A.k.a Laura Jameson, née Rampton
Case Notes:
Rachel Rampton survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was further deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial and sent to this mental health hospital within the unit for the criminally insane, where she now resides. No charges have been laid in the case of the murders committed by the serial killer known as The Small-Town Strangler, nor for the more recent murders of Professor Timothy Armstrong, the patient’s mother Muriel Rampton, and officers Stinson and Thompson. Retired Police Chief James Franklin (senior) sustained only minor injuries and remains in the care of the private retirement center for seniors with Alzheimer’s.
Based on my initial assessment, following the incident of her arrest, it appeared as though the patient at the time of the incident, had taken down the mental barrier between herself, Rachel, and that of her alter, Laura, and had shared her true memories, revealing to Laura her real past, showing her what had happene
d to her as a child and as a teenager, and sharing the truths about Jamie and Gwen and what she had done to protect them. I believe this to be the reason behind what had prompted the desire for her to attempt to commit suicide using Detective Franklin’s gun.
When I first met with Rachel, I had asked her if she remembered what age she had been when Laura had arrived.
She couldn’t recall, though she did tell me that she had chosen the name Laura. She had allowed Laura to believe her mother had given it to her and that it had been based on the name of a character in one of her mother’s favorite television shows. Rachel had never been allowed to watch TV, but she often heard her mother swearing at the TV show, and commenting about how this Laura character was so well loved by the fans, but her mother hated this character for that very reason, and it was in fact, the reasons Rachel had chosen it. She had added that she’d not had a single friend growing up, there had been no birthday parties, no sleep overs, nothing of the sort, and it had been her mother’s and ultimately her father’s idea to keep control over her.
The next inquiry had been about the day Rachel had chosen to run away.
Rachel had told me that she’d left with only the clothes on her back and the ones she had backed in her knapsack. She said eventually had to ditch Jamie’s motorcycle jacket, which she said had crushed her. But when she changed her name, she had chosen Jamison, in honor of him, the only man who had ever been kind to her. She had money from her job at the library and had used it to get away. During her time at the library, it was then that she had used the library’s law books to find out how one went about changing their name. It wasn’t that she hated Rachel, it was more that she had hated to hear her mother yell it, the way she had said it when she’d been mad at her. Rachel had been the name her father had picked, her mother had told her, and she had liked the name until her husband had told her why he had liked it. Apparently, she was named after Rachel Ward, an actress who had played a character in a movie about a woman who had fallen in love with a priest. Rachel had told me, that her mother was always jealous of other women, even of her own daughter.
Rachel had also told me that her mother hated her hair, and she worn it wild on purpose. She had had Laura lighten her hair to a strawberry blond similar to her daughter’s hair, but then had changed it back when she had chosen not to use her disguise anymore, because she wanted the police chief to recognize her when she came to kill him. Rachel had said it had been a huge disappointment for she when she had found he had lost most of his faculties and why she hadn’t killed him immediately. She had hoped he would eventually recognize her.
When asked about the birth of the patient’s daughter Gwendolyn, I had received different accounts depending on which personality I had been speaking with at the time.
Laura had referred to it as the gift she received a week after her own birthday. She had been truly happy and had taken a photo of her and the baby with the hopes of sending it to her mother. She was optimistic that her mother would be missing her and that she would be kinder to her if she knew about the baby.
Rachel on the other hand, told a different story, where she called her mother with the intent of telling her how well she was doing and that she didn’t need her or her father anymore. But on the call, her mother had cursed her name, had said her father was dead and it had been all Rachel’s fault, that he died while he had been out looking for her. Her mother had told her she had always been an ungrateful selfish daughter and considered her a whore with regards to the relationship Rachel had had with her father, and that this baby only solidified her convictions.
It is my belief that the unexpected news of the patient’s father’s death and the further verbal abuse from the mother was what potentially caused the psychotic break and further fed Rachel’s need to kill.
It had been Rachel’s statement that, she had been killing her father over and over in the murders of these professor. Rachel considered herself the abused side and Laura as the free side. Rachel had explained to me that Laura was subconsciously driven by her and without her knowledge, that she had started to write letters to her mother about the killings, and the killings had been the driving force behind moving poor Laura from town to town. She’d had Laura convinced she was being tracked by the man Rachel had set in her mind, had raped her, and was now killing for her. That was how she was to keep them safe. As Rachel’s letter to Gwen had stated, she kept Laura scared to keep her from going to the police.
The next subject had been about Laura going home to see her ailing mother.
Rachel told me that after the death of her father, her mother had remained in the house collecting his pension and insurance from the college. When she went there, she had found that her mother had kept her letters in her father’s office, only the first of them opened and read, so she had taken them, along with her father’s belt, the one he used to restrain her with when he’d molested her and then later used to beat her. She told me that she killed her mother, that I already knew, but she had also stated that for them to truly be free, for her to truly be free, she had needed to get rid of all those who had harmed her. Her father was already dead, so it meant she’d need only kill those two police officers, the ones who hadn’t helped her, and that police chief who had been so cruel to her and had been so dismissive to his son Jamie.
On my previous visit with the patient, I had addressed the question from Detective Franklin, though it had been mainly a curiosity of his regarding the murder of Officer Stinson in his laneway, and how Rachel had gotten out there and past the guard at the gated community.
Rachel had said it had been a tricky one with the gate, but the map on her phone had shown the house had been near a golf course. So, she had instructed the taxi driver to take her there, to the golf course in lieu of the house. There had been no security at the entrance, and she’d cut across the property and through the woods that came out close to the end of the block the house had been on. It was just a short distance to the house from there and it had still been dark out. She had cut along the back of the fences after, to keep out of sight, since there had been a shot gun blast and all. She said she had gotten super lucky when she had found him in his driveway. If she had been a few minutes later, she would have found him dead already, but what fun would that have been? she had stated.
During my sessions with the patient, I have found that when I am speaking with Laura, she prefers the analytical part of our sessions, and chats with me as if we were colleagues discussing a patient, though still similar in dialog to that of our original friendship.
Whereas Rachel prefers to try to shock and awe me with what her father did to her, with what she did to those men and why. She likes to ask me if I know why she did it, and if I think she liked it. Laura does the same but from the view of a physician treating a patient. She doesn’t like when I bring up Gwen or Jamie, and I have yet to find out why she won’t speak of her daughter. Rachel on the other hand, likes to ask how Jamie is doing and often tells me how he was her first. I don’t know if that is the truth, about him being her first, but something in her expression when she talks about him leads me to believe he was. This is the only time Rachel speaks sweetly, in the remembering of Jamie.
Though I have had numerous dialogs with both Rachel and Laura, I am reluctant to say who is the dominant personality now. Originally I had thought Rachel to be the dominant, but with further examination, I have found that since Laura had been the one who had worked and raised a child, who had done all the moving and was the personality shown most to the world, it became apparent to me that Laura behaved as the grownup while Rachel was the reckless one. Though it was Rachel who thought she had been taking care of Laura all these years, protecting her. Laura was the stable one, the steady and consistent personality. It hadn’t been until Laura had seen that professor at Gwen’s school bothering the female students, that Rachel’s personality had surfaced again.
I wonder now if perhaps they have merged, or if they now share domin
ants. When we meet at our scheduled time, I never know who I am initially going to be speaking with nor for how long. Upon entering the patient’s room, if I am in the presence of Rachel, she normally has her long wavy hair down and she is always standing to greet me, and her mood with me is usually rebellious, and very clever and ambitious.
If it is Laura waiting for me when I enter the room, she is always seated, with her hair pulled back and tidy. Her mood is typically much more conservative, timid but likeable, and she exudes the personality I am most familiar with, that of a smart, hardworking people pleaser.
They are both clever, they both like to give me the impression they are the smarter of the two, even smarter than myself. They even sometimes like to try to trick me and pretend to be the other.
Today, when I had entered the patient’s room, she had been standing next to the set of chairs provided for our consultations. Her dark red hair had been loose and wild, and she had addressed me with, “Hello, Dr. Branden,” giving me the impression I would be conversing with Rachel, but then the patient had sat down, and she’d secured her wild red hair back into a bun. Then she changed her greeting to, “Hey you—I was so excited to hear you were coming to see me today,” and delivered in a manner familiar to me as Laura’s.
This game, this switching of identities has had me wondering if Rachel’s mind had ever really split, or was it they—or just Rachel, who was playing a sort of game with everyone, all along.
The one thing I know for certain, beyond all other doubts, is that she—they, will never get to leave this place.
✽✽✽
THE END
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