by Rachel Lucas
When I got back to my small apartment, I dropped my heavy backpack on the table next to the door and reached down to pet my new black kitten that came to the door to greet me. He was just a few months old and completely black from head to toe with bright yellow-green eyes. A neighbor had found him after he’d been abandoned by his mother so I had taken him in. I guess I had always had a soft spot for strays. Besides, it was really nice having a friendly greeting when I came home and his playful antics were great at cheering me up. I had decided to call him Jynx.
Slipping off my tennis shoes, I curled up on my small stuffed sofa and thumbed through the mail I’d brought in on my way. The kitten happily played with my shoelaces and was glad for the company.
Junk mail. School loan bill notice. Power bill. More junk mail. Nothing interesting until the last envelope. It was addressed to me in a familiar, hand-written print. I opened it up and scanned the note. It was written on small, plain notebook paper. There were two pages.
“Caitlyn,
“I’ve missed you so much. Why haven’t you visited me lately? Dr. Ross says he put you on the visitor’s list. But you haven’t come.
“I’m running out of time. You know that. I really need you to help me. I’ve told you I didn’t kill my mother. I told you she was alive when I left that night. You have to prove my innocence. You’re the only one that cares enough about me to help. You’re all that I have left now. I can’t do it without you. If you don’t help me, I’ll end up locked up for the rest of my life.”
The words broke my heart. She had so much faith and trust in me, but what could I really do to help? The evidence against her was strong, despite what she said. I felt hopeless, useless. It was then that I looked at the second page.
“Cate, we need to talk.”
The handwriting was clearly different. I scanned through my memory to try to remember whose handwriting this was.
“There are things you need to know. We need to talk about Barbara. We didn’t kill her. We can prove it. There are some things about the Dragon that you should know. Look forward to seeing you.”
The note wasn’t signed, and that disturbed me as much as the handwriting. I took the note and went into my bedroom and sat down on the floor next to my bed. Reaching underneath, I pulled out a shoebox that was old and yellowing and opened up the lid. Inside were numerous letters in careful piles, each were in chronological order from the first one I had received from Lisbeth all those years ago to the last one I had received at my parents house. I filed through them, careful not to get them out of order.
They were in various kinds envelopes and written on several types of paper. From nice stationary with fancy borders to generic college rule lined paper. The printing could be anything from smooth ink to the texture of a rough wax crayon.
I scanned through them all, travelling back in time to those months when she was first adjusting to being at the state hospital.
She felt alone, isolated, lonely. She thought the other patients were really crazy, while she was just dealing with having a lot of stress in her life. She’d started smoking to fit in with the other “inmates”. She hated the medications that the “shrinks” were putting her on. She was tired of feeling like a guinea pig, or like a stoned burn-out.
She was careful not to make many friends. She thought they were all so much crazier than she was. Besides, she didn’t plan on being in there for long. And why would she want to be friends with any of them after she was released? It wasn’t as though any of them were going to be accepted to one the major universities she still planned on attending some day.
The handwritings often changed from paragraph to paragraph. Lisbeth’s familiar scrawl was the most common and prominent. Sometimes it would be Lizzy’s child-like print when she was feeling especially fearful or threatened. Liz had a broad, flowing cursive that appeared when she wanted to give an especially snide comment on a certain member of the staff that was irritating her.
Jade had little tolerance for the whole idea of being institutionalized, and her quick-slashed rants were easy to pick out. I knew most of the handwritings of the family, and the one in this letter wasn’t familiar. Of course, not all of them had written in the previous letters. Vesper hadn’t appeared in any of the letters, to my knowledge. And there were still a few members of the family I wasn’t as familiar with. It could be any one of them.
I was still sitting cross-legged on the floor with the letters spread out around me when my cell phone rang in the other room. I sprinted to answer it before it went to voicemail.
“Hi, Logan,” I answered after I had dug through my purse to find it, almost missing the call.
“Hey, just wanted to check to see if you got my text.” He sounded casual but I sensed an urgency in his voice.
“I did. I was going to call you back tonight but-“ I looked out the window of my small front room and realized it was already getting dark. “Sorry, I guess I lost track of time.” I finished lamely.
“That’s ok.” My mind was still back on the letters, so I admit, I wasn’t paying very close attention. “I haven’t spoken to you since that day we met at the diner. I thought I’d check to see how you were doing.”
“I’m doing good. Staying really busy with school. How have you been doing?”
“About the same. Staying busy at work. Got a pretty big caseload right now.” Somehow he seemed to want to say more than to just exchange pleasantries. “I was wondering, have you been back to visit your friend Lisbeth lately?”
“No, not since I talked to you last.” I walked into my small kitchen while I held the tiny cell to my ear with one hand and opened my fridge with the other, looking for something quick to eat. I hadn’t told him about my visit with Dr. Ross. I was still deciding what to do about it. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I got an email today from Mark Jacobs, Lisbeth’s public defender.” I shut my fridge and sat down on the bar stool next to my kitchen counter. He had my attention now.
“Really? What did it say? Are you allowed to tell me?”
“I’d tell you anyway, whether I was allowed to or not.” He gave a soft laugh that I had to admit, I liked. “He said that he’s been working with her psychiatrist, Dr. Ross. He said that with the doctor’s help he might have enough to go to the court and have her declared incompetent to stand trial. He’ll have her plead not-guilty by reason of insanity.”
My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. What was going on here? Was this some kind of manipulation by Dr. Ross? If I didn’t come back and visit her, help him with his case study, he’d take matters into his own hands and have her declared incompetent? Acid churned through my stomach as I fought the feeling of being controlled.
“Caitlyn, are you still there?”
“I’m still here.” My voice sounded dull even to my own ears.
“Are you ok? I thought you’d be thrilled. Do you know what this means? She’ll be spared the trial. Isn’t that what you wanted?” He sounded hopeful.
“Logan, pleading not guilty by reason of insanity is basically the same thing as pleading guilty. She’ll still be considered guilty of killing her mother, but instead of a jail she’ll be in an institution for the rest of her life.” Somehow, the idea of that seemed so depressing. I couldn’t imagine having nothing more to look forward to for the rest of your life than the same four walls and bars on the windows.
“But Caitlyn, isn’t that the only two options she really has? Be honest with yourself, the evidence against her is strong. Isn’t a room in a psych ward an improvement over prison?” He asked, trying to see things logically.
“What if she really didn’t do it?” I pressed. “What if they’re really putting away an innocent person and there’s a real killer out there on the loose?”
I heard him sigh on the other end of the line.
“There’s no evidence of anyone else being present at the crime scene, you know that. Face it Caitlyn, this might be the best you can hope for.”
; I felt deflated as I walked back through my apartment to my bedroom. I paused in the doorway and looked at the piles of letters on the floor. Reaching down, I picked up the letter I had received that day. I looked again at the unfamiliar handwriting on the second page, hoping it would somehow jar my memory. Still nothing.
“Logan, I got a letter from Lisbeth today.” I glanced down at the bottom left corner of the second page, noticing something I hadn’t seen before. It seemed to be a kind of symbol or marking written faintly in dark ink. It looked like small letter “a” and an upside down letter e with a squiggly line in the middle.
“She still insists that she’s innocent.”
“We’ve been through all this before. Can you trust her? Can you ignore the evidence?”
“Logan, it wasn’t just Lisbeth writing the letter I got today. One of her personalities was writing it too, one whose handwriting I’m not familiar with. They said they needed to talk to me about Barbara, that there was something I needed to know about her. They said that they were all innocent and they could prove it.”
I went silent after that, wondering if Logan would think I was losing my mind too. He was quiet for a moment and I wondered just how crazy I sounded. Just when I thought it was a lost cause, his quiet voice came across the line.
“Then I guess you’d better go back and visit her.” I smiled to myself, more relieved than I could admit to have someone finally believing in me for a change. His support meant so much to me I could hardly speak.
“I guess I’d better call and make an appointment with Dr. Ross.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I sat across the desk from Dr. Ross and signed the waiver in silence. I had read through the document and insisted on a few changes. If the case were used in any publication or documentary my face and identity would be protected. The last thing I wanted was any kind of notoriety or publicity from my friendship with Lisbeth. The other thing I insisted on adding was that Dr. Ross couldn’t dictate what we discussed during my visits. I was free to talk with Lisbeth about anything I wanted to as long as it didn’t put either one of us in danger. That might be interesting to try to do.
The last thing I insisted on was that if anything was said during my visit to prove her innocence, I could use the taped footage to take to the court to help with her case.
Dr. Ross agreed willingly and even offered to contact Mark Jacobs and postpone her plea hearing. Just as I thought, Dr. Ross had been manipulating the situation. I had a feeling her lawyer had just naively gone along with the highly educated doctor.
After I slid the signed paper back across the desk towards the doctor, I tried to shake the feeling that I had just given my soul to the devil. He happily took it, filed it away in a drawer of his massive desk, and led me from the office and down the hall to what I was starting to think of as the “observation room”. I was glad he didn’t expect any pleasant chatter from me, because he just might get a rude reply in return.
The room was empty when I entered. It didn’t look any different from the last time I was here. Same furniture, same landscapes on the walls. I knew for certain that we’d be watched and filmed this time. Dr. Ross had even volunteered that there would be several medical school students and residents observing the session. I was never very comfortable being in the spotlight. And this was even worse. The only way I could get through this was to pretend they weren’t there. Easier said than done.
The door opened and Lisbeth walked in. I was amazed by the difference in her. Her eyes were clear and bright, her hair combed and even slightly styled into a soft curl around her face. The sweater she wore looked almost new and was a deep forest green that really brought out her eyes. It was overly large and almost went to her knees, the sleeves stretched to her fingertips. But it looked comfortable. The jeans looked a bit worn but had no holes. Her feet were still shoeless, but her socks were a matching green and looked thick and warm.
Her face lit up when she saw me and she hurried across the room to give me a hug.
“You came!” She stepped back and grinned at me. The smell of cigarettes was still there but more faint and covered up by a flowery body spray. “I missed you so much. Things have been much better since you were here last, except that I missed you.”
We sat down together on the couch each facing the other. The cameras had a good view this time, I realized, but I tried not to care.
“They’ve taken me off all my medication. Everything! The only thing I have to take every day is a vitamin and they even let me open the bottle and the seal to prove that’s what it really is.” She chatted like an excited child. It had been a long time since I’d seen her so animated. “It feels so good to be able to think clearly again, Caitlyn. I can draw all the time if I want. They’ve given me my own private room and let me decorate it any way I want. I have so many pictures I’ve been working on. I’ve almost got one whole wall covered. Dr. Ross has even given me some art supplies to use as long as it’s in the big room and one of the staff is watching. He says it’s more to make sure no one steals my stuff than because he doesn’t trust me.”
She barely took the time for a deep breath before she continued.
“He’s says that I’m doing really well. I’m proving to him how safe and well-adjusted I am. He says that the longer I can be this healthy the better chance I’ll have of being able to testify if we go to court. I can prove my innocence if they just let me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, just to be able to speak for myself and tell them all that I’m innocent. If I can just get up on that stand, I can prove to them that I didn’t kill my mom.”
She was off medication but in a manic phase, I knew. It was something I had to be very careful with. She could swing back and forth from an excited frenzy to a near-suicidal depression in the blink of an eye. It was sometimes like dealing with a very powerful, very sensitive nuclear device.
“I’m so glad you’re doing better, Lisbeth.” I smiled reassuringly when she finally gave me a chance to speak. “I’ve missed you too.”
“You have to tell me what you’re doing with your life now. Every time we talk it’s all about me. Me, me, me, me, me. You must think I’m so self-absorbed. I’m really not. I really want to know how you’re doing. I’m trying to remember what you told me the other times you visited me. You divorced that jerk, Lewis, right?” She continued before I could reply. “If only you’d listened to me. I could see right through him the first time I met him. He was always so arrogant, the way he kept bragging about how important his job was and how he was going to be the vice-president of the company someday. Well, anyway, I’m glad you’re rid of him now. You deserve better. He was never good enough for you anyway. So, did I hear right? Are you back in school?”
“Yes,” I smiled at her rapid-fire words. I was never going to get anywhere with her being this manic. “I’m back in school. I’ll have my associate’s degree in the spring.”
“That’s great!” She smiled then couldn’t seem to sit still. She stood up and circled the couch I still sat on, sometimes talking to me, sometimes to the room at large. “I really need to get back into school and finish my degree too. Once I get this trial out of the way I want to go back to school and major in commercial art. I think I might do a minor in Literature too. I always loved writing. At one time I’d wanted to go into psychology. I could show these shrinks around here a thing or two, believe me! But I’m getting too old now, and medical school would take so long at this point. There’s this great art school in Seattle that I always thought sounded interesting. I know it rains a lot up there, but it’s supposed to be one of the best in the country. I guess I could put up with a little rain if the school was good enough.”
I was trying not to get dizzy as I followed her laps around the couch. Between that and her hyper-conversation I was struggling not to get a headache.
She stopped mid-sentence and I looked to see what had stopped her. She stood a few feet away, staring at my purse. It took me a moment to realize that she was staring at the note tucked halfway into the front pocket of my purse. It was the last letter she sent me. I had brought it along to see if she would tell me whose handwriting was on the second page.
“You got my letter.” She smiled then her expression seemed to change. She looked a little puzzled and confused. The manic phase seemed to be draining out of her. I had to be very careful how I approached this.
“Do you remember writing me the letter?” I gently asked. Instead of rambling, she just nodded. I pulled out the letter and handed her the first page. She read through the short message, recognition in her eyes. I held out the second page. Confusion. “Do you know who wrote this page?”
She shook her head back and forth, a look of helpless fear coming over her features. I didn’t want to lose Lisbeth. She was always the one most open and honest with me. I put the letter away for now and looked directly into her eyes.
“It’s ok, Lisbeth,” I reassured her as I would a child, “don’t be afraid. How about we talk about something else, ok? Can we talk about your mother? Is it ok if we talk about Barbara?”