Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3

by Rachel Sinclair

  I thought about that movie, and how it contradicted what I knew about people with alternative personalities. I knew something about dissociative identity disorder, which was what Eve White suffered from, and DID was caused by repetitive abuse and torture, usually suffered in childhood. As I understood it, the main person would create alters because the alters would have the strength to take the abuse, where the main person didn’t have that strength. I therefore thought that it was silly that Eve White would suffer from DID just because she kissed her dead grandmother.

  I closed my eyes, seeing, yet not wanting to see, the connection between Eve White and Jack. It was inescapable. It seemed that Jack might be suffering from some kind of dissociative identity disorder himself. I never even considered that to be a possibility. I mean, Jack…

  Jack, what? What? I had known him my entire life, but, then again, perhaps there were things that I didn’t know about him. My grandparents were loving but flaky. My mother would always say that about them. My grandfather was eccentric – he never knew how to fix a car or anything around the house, but he knew about every sci-fi movie ever made and he knew his way around classical musicians and composers. My grandmother was loving and kind and hilarious.

  I couldn’t imagine either of them repeatedly abusing Jack or anybody else. Then again, sometimes abuse is well-hidden. Perhaps mom would know what, if anything, happened to Jack when he was a kid. If anything had happened to him that would cause him to dissociate, then she would know.

  I also wondered if DID could be latent. I had to admit, I didn’t know much about the disorder, aside from what I had learned about it from the movies I watched and the books I read. Sybil was a great example of a book that I had read when I was a kid. She had something like 30 different personalities, which were brought on by years of severe physical abuse at the hands of her insane mother.

  Since I still wasn’t tired, I logged onto the computer and quickly read what I could about the disorder. The web-page about DID indicated that it could be latent. Sometimes the disorder doesn’t manifest until there was a major event in the person’s life that caused so much stress that the alters would make themselves known for the first time in the person’s life.

  That made sense to me. Jack had indicated to me that he hadn’t felt normal for the past five years. His wife, Mary, was killed in a car accident five years before. That was when he started to show the symptoms of what everybody assumed was schizophrenia, but might have actually been the cracks of DID peeking through.

  As I read further, I realized that hearing voices was one of the main symptoms of DID. The voices that the person heard was the voices of the alternative personalities struggling to communicate. Jack had been hearing voices ever since Mary died. He was still hearing them. Perhaps it wasn’t an auditory hallucination, at least not a classic one that is a hallmark of schizophrenia. Perhaps it was simply Jack’s alternative personality coming through. His alternative personality talking to him.

  Mick. That was the name of his alternative personality. Mick. Mick was homosexual and in love with Father Kennedy. Mick had poor eye-sight. Mick was with us in Thanksgiving, leaving Jack behind.

  Was Mick murderous? Was Jack? Were there possibly other alters inside of Jack who were? And what happened to Jack that he would dissociate like this?

  I looked at the clock, realizing that it was presently 6 AM. I had stayed up all night watching these movies and obsessing about Jack. This worried me, because I needed to take better care of myself. In addition to taking my meds, I needed to make sure that I ate properly and slept properly. Staying up all night was possibly going to make my brain chemicals go haywire again, and I couldn’t have that.

  I went to bed and tried to sleep. I tried, very hard, but I tossed and turned and tried to get comfortable, but I just couldn’t. My mind was too wired. There were just too many questions that were bouncing around in my brain about Jack, and I hadn’t even started to think yet about his case. I was just thinking about him. About whether or not he really had alters, or perhaps he was faking it because he wanted me to try to get a “not guilty by reason of insanity,” or “NGRI” plea. Or maybe he thought that I could have him declared incompetent to stand trial.

  Surely he wouldn’t do that to me, but, then again, people do drastic things when they’re staring at the possibility of spending the rest of one’s life behind bars. Either way, you’re going to end up confined. But I did have to admit that being in a psychiatric facility had to be infinitely better than prison. So maybe Jack was faking a mental illness so that he could end up in psychiatric facility and not prison.

  As I tapped my pencil on the desk and stared at my computer screen, my mind wandered. It wandered to Jack and Mick and it wandered to Father Kennedy. I was definitely going to have to start my investigatory process on this case, sooner as opposed to later. I had to at least entertain the possibility that Jack was suffering from mental illness at the time of the murder, such that he didn’t know the nature of his acts and didn’t know that it was wrong. Therefore, I was going to have to get a psychiatrist lined up for Jack as soon as I could. Maybe the psychiatrist could explain to me if Jack was legally insane at the time of the killing, and if Jack could even stand trial.

  But first things first.

  I was going to have to talk to my mother.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Okay, Harper,” my mother said when I barged over to her house that morning. “I’ll tell you what you need to know about my brother.”

  Rina and Abby were home with Sophia, because I needed to speak with my mother alone. This was bound to be a heavy topic, one that would shed light on Uncle Jack and what I needed to do with his case. If anybody was going to know whether Jack had issues that were so strong and glaring that he needed to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, it would be my mother.

  “Thanks for letting me come over and ask you these questions,”I said to her. “They’re going to be hard for me to ask and probably harder for you to answer, I would imagine.”

  She nodded. “I wish that you would do something with that hair,” she said. “Harper, you look like a fright right now. Have you tried that Brazilian blow-out? I know that it costs a lot of money, but it’s worth it. It’s such a shame that you got the really curly hair.”

  I bit my lower lip and counted to ten. “Mom, I told you, I like my curly hair. It’s very me. It’s who I am. I have hair that frizzes in the humidity. Hair that doesn’t ever want to behave. But that’s not why I’m here, mom. I’m not here because I want to hear you lecture me about my hair. I’m here because I need for you to tell me about Uncle Jack.”

  She looked away, towards the front porch, and then looked back at me. She had a necklace on, and her right hand went to the necklace and she stroked it while she looked down at the ground. “What, what, what…” She got up and went into the kitchen. “Would you like a cup of tea, dear?”

  “No, mom. No cup of tea. I need for you to talk to me about Uncle Jack.”

  “What would you like to know?” Her voice sounded forced, like she was consciously trying to sound cheerful when, in reality, she was feeling anything but. “What would you like to know?”

  Mom was acting strangely, too. I started to wonder if she had gone outer-limits. Was everybody in this family crazy? “Uncle Jack was acting weird the other night when I saw him in the jail.”

  “Weird?” Mom’s voice shot up several octaves. “What do you mean, weird? I guess I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know that he’s been struggling with schizophrenia, and he’s been taking medicine for it. You know that.”

  “I do know that,” I said. “I realize that. Or maybe I don’t realize that. Maybe I don’t realize much of anything anymore. What I do realize, however, is that you’re stalling and hiding. You’re nagging me about my hair, you’re making yourself some tea. It won’t be long before you start telling me about how I need to eat more and how I need to get married soon to Axel. And bring you grandchild
ren. Why Rina and Abby won’t suffice for grandchildren, I’ll never know, but I’ll tell you this – Rina and Abby are going to be my only children, so you might as well know that right now.”

  Now I was the one who was getting off-topic. Mom had a way of keeping me off-balance. At the moment, she was hiding. She was hiding just as much as Jack had been hiding the fact that he had a Mick inside of him, just dying to get out.

  “Dear,” mom said. “I don’t want to talk about Jack right now.”

  “You can’t do this,” I said. “You can’t just declare Uncle Jack off-limits. He’s been arrested for murder, or did you already forget about that detail? He’s been arrested for murder, mom, and he could die with a needle in his arm if we don’t figure this out together. And if he doesn’t die with a needle in his arm, he could very well spend the rest of his life in prison. I don’t think that he could survive that. Maybe Mick could, though.”

  “Who’s Mick?” Mom asked, a slight smile splashing across her face.

  I raised my eyebrow. “Why do I think that you know exactly who Mick is?”

  She shook her head and said nothing.

  She was lying. I could tell that she was lying. She was a terrible liar, just terrible. She was even worse than me, and I could never lie about anything, ever. My face and body language would always betray me. “Mom, you need to come clean with me. You know who Mick is. I think that you know why Mick is around. Somehow, you know everything, and you’ve kept it from me all this time. Well, mom, the time is now for you to tell me everything. I’m Jack’s lawyer, so I need to know everything. Everything, mom. Everything.”

  She shook her head. “You shouldn’t put this kind of pressure on me, Harper. You know how my angina tends to flare up when I’m under a lot of pressure.” She fingered her necklace some more as she stared off into space. Her eyes didn’t meet mine.

  “Mom, I know that you don’t want to talk about this. I know you don’t. I realize that. But this is Jack’s life on the line, here. If I don’t have all the information that I need, then I can’t properly give him a good defense.”

  She sighed. “The Calhouns never talk about these things. We don’t. We don’t talk about…family issues. Family tragedies. We try to pretend that they didn’t happen, and everybody just goes on their way. That’s the way that we do it, Harper. That’s the way that our family stayed together after…”

  I was finally, finally getting somewhere. “After what, mom? After what?”

  She shook her head. “I need to make us some lunch,” she said, her voice getting high-pitched again. “I bought that wonderful prime rib roast. Very tender and juicy. Let me make you a sandwich, dear.”

  “Mom, I don’t want a sandwich.” I actually did want a sandwich, but I wanted her to focus on what I was trying to ask her. I had to get her to quit stalling, somehow, someway.

  “Well, I can’t talk about serious issues on an empty stomach. That prime rib is calling my name. Don’t you hear it, Harper? It’s calling my name. ‘Claire. Claire.’” She nodded her head and smiled. “You can’t deny the prime rib roast. When it calls out to you, you have to answer it.”

  I sighed as I saw my mother venture into the kitchen to pull out the roast. She tossed it on the counter, on top of a cutting board, and proceeded to cut into it. I saw that the meat was slightly bloody, very pink on the inside and brown on the outside. My mouth watered as I watched my mother carve up the meat. “Mom,” I said weakly. “Oh, okay, make me a sandwich. How can I argue with prime rib? But we need to talk about Jack. We need to discuss him as soon as lunch is over. Or maybe during lunch we can talk about him. Either way, we need to talk about him. I need to know about his mental health.”

  Mom continued to cut into the meat. She sliced it thin and piled it up on a plate, and then got out four slices of rye bread and carefully put the roast rib meat on the plate. “How do you like your sandwich?” she asked gaily.

  “I would like my sandwich with pickles and red cabbage, with a dab of horseradish sauce.”

  I watched her as she piled the roast beef up on my two slices of bread, then put the pickles and red cabbage on it. She then slathered an enormous amount of horseradish sauce on the meat, and I cringed. “I know you said that you wanted just a little of the horseradish sauce, but Harper, I think that you need to live a little. Indulge yourself just a little. You’re too skinny. I think that you need more horseradish sauce in your life.”

  “Mom, it’s not that I’m watching my weight. It’s just that…” I shook my head. Mom had a point. I was only asking for minimal sauce on my sandwich because I didn’t want the extra calories. She always had a way of seeing right through my ulterior motives.

  “It’s just that what?”

  “Nothing. Keep on slathering on the horsey sauce, mom.”

  She made the two sandwiches and we sat down on her covered porch to eat. “Now, mom,” I said, “you’re not getting out of this. You need to talk to me about Uncle Jack. He’s acting very peculiarly, mom. Very peculiarly.” I didn’t want to tell her my suspicions – that Uncle Jack had Dissociative Identity Disorder. If I knew my mother, she wouldn’t believe me even if I told her about that. I didn’t even believe it, really.

  She sighed. “Some iced tea, dear?” she asked me, picking up her pitcher.

  “Sure.” I didn’t like to drink a lot of caffeine – it weirded me out. But I wanted to be polite. I figured that the more polite I was with my mother, the more likely I could get something out of her. And that was all that I wanted – for her to tell me something. Something to chew on.

  She swallowed and looked down at her sandwich and iced tea. Then she sighed. “Okay. You think that Jack is acting peculiarly. I know that he is. I know it.” She shook her head. “He was only 11 when it happened. Only 11.” Then she started to cry. “And he couldn’t have survived those years after, all those years after, without the protection and care of Eli.”

  I nodded my head. “Who is Eli?”

  She sighed. “Let me just back up a little bit. Jack, while he was walking to school one day, vanished. Just vanished.” She started to cry. “My mother was frantic, my dad was beside himself, everyone was going crazy. Just crazy. Everyone in the neighborhood teamed up to look for him. There were posters everywhere, his face was everywhere on those little weeklies, like they do. Even now, when I look at those weeklies, and I see the people who were missing, I cry. You know those little bios that they put in the little newspapers you get – date missing, date of birth, picture, age regression. You know what I’m talking about.”

  I nodded my head, feeling stunned that my mom was telling me this. Uncle Jack was abducted? And who was Eli?

  “Well,” mom said. “He was gone for two years. For two years, Harper. For two years, my mother cried every single day. She would go into his room, pick up his little shirts and baseball hat and uniform and just bawl. My father just withdrew. He was a hands-on father before this all happened. You know, he took us camping and fishing and boating and all of that. He played baseball with Jack and took us to games. He was just a typical father, but, after Jack was taken, he was…void. Lost. He pretty much came home from work and went into the den to watch television every single evening, and he never said a word to any of us.”

  I felt my own tears as my mother told her story. Her story about Jack and how he went missing.

  “Then, one day, he was back. Just back on our doorstep. Only it wasn’t him. It was somebody else. He called himself Eli. He told us that Jack was gone for good, and that we needed to get used to the name Eli, because that would be the only name that Jack was going to answer to from that point on.”

  I tried to muffle a sob, but I couldn’t. The tears came and I hung my head while my mother put her arm around me and put my head on her shoulder. Just like when I was a little girl. “Who was Eli?”

  “Oh, Eli was tough. Really tough. He went out and got tattoos the second he got home. He demanded to our mother that she was going to take him to ge
t tattoos, and she did. She did anything that he asked, she was that happy to have him home. Eli was a chain smoker and he smoked marijuana and even did harder drugs. Cocaine. Heroine. Meth. My mother knew about it all, and let him do whatever he wanted, just as long as he stayed home. She was terrified about letting him out of her sight. She said that she would rather he did drugs at home than go out on the street to do them.”

  I raised an eyebrow. Uncle Jack, a druggie? And who was Eli? Was that yet another alter?

  “So, what happened? And how did Eli get free from wherever he was?”

  She shook her head. “He was held hostage by a child rapist. A pervert who lived on our street before he moved a couple of miles away. I got the story from Eli. Eli acted like he didn’t even care that he was with this guy. The pervert’s name was Steven Heaney. Steven Heaney. He kidnapped little boys and girls, raped them and murdered them. The only way that Jack was able to get out of there, the only way that Jack was able to survive this guy, was that he agreed to help this Steven Heaney in finding the victims. Eli explained that he would put on a disguise and go out and find these young girls and boys for Steven.” She shook her head. “He was used as bait for others.”

  “Why didn’t he just leave? Find a policeman and tell him what was going on? I mean, this Steven Heaney guy let him leave the house, right?”

  “Yes. I asked Eli this. Why didn’t you just leave? And Eli said that Steven said that if he just left and found a policeman that…” She shook her head. “I don’t know. It didn’t make sense to me, either, but Eli told me that he wanted to protect Steven. That he thought of Steven as a friend and he didn’t want to see him go to prison. I knew then that Jack had some serious issues. He was Eli, not Jack, and the only reason why he showed up at our house was that Steven had died in the house of a heart attack. I guess, if not for that, Jack never would have come home.”