I nodded my head. “He did, you know. He went on to live a normal life. Until now.”
“Yes, until now.” Dr. Wheeler shook his head. “It broke my heart to see that he had been arrested for the murder of Father Kennedy. I hope that this isn’t true. I would hate to see Mr. Calhoun have to suffer behind bars after all that he went through in that house with Mr. Heaney.”
“Is it unusual for there to be a spontaneous remission from DID like Jack had?”
“Unusual, yes, but not unheard of. And, as I noted, this was not a remission in that the personalities were integrated. It was a remission in that the other personalities were dormant for many years. A true remission would result in integration, where the alters are not dormant but, rather, are integrated with the patient’s personality as a whole. In that case, in the case of true remission, there would not be any alternative personalities, but, rather, just one personality. Just one self. That occurring – the spontaneous integration – is exceedingly rare. But what happened to Mr. Calhoun, where the other personalities went dormant spontaneously, is less rare.”
We spoke for another hour, and I felt satisfied that I had found out as much as I could about Jack’s disorder.
Now that I had this knowledge, though, I was going to have to figure out what I was going to do with it.
CHAPTER SIX
I got home that night and saw that Axel was there with the girls. They had dinner ready and waiting for me – takeout Chinese. I smiled when I saw them. “You guys,” I said. “You didn’t have to do all this.”
“Oh, we do have to do this, mom, we do,” Rina said.
Axel put his arm around me and kissed me on the cheek. “We’re a little worried about you. We know that this case with your Uncle Jack is very personal. So, we decided to do something nice for you – make it so that you don’t have to worry about cooking dinner. We got this.”
“Thanks,” I said to him as Abby and Rina came up and wrapped their skinny little arms around my waist. “I don’t know what I would do without you guys. Probably curl into a ball and die.”
We ate our Chinese while Rina did her usual gabbing and Abby sat quietly eating. I was a little bit worried about my little Buttercup. She never had the gift of the gab like her sister did, but she usually did say a few things at the dinner table. Tonight, however, she just quietly picked at her food, stabbing it with a chopstick slowly. One by one, the orange chicken went into her mouth, while she stared blankly into space.
I sighed. I was going to have to figure out what was wrong with Abby. There clearly was something amiss with her. I made a mental note to have some alone time with her and find out what was going on.
It turned out, though, that I didn’t even have to worry about that. Rina already announced what was going on with Abby. “Abby’s really quiet, mom, tonight because she’s sad.” Then she lowered her voice into a whisper, as if Abby wasn’t going to be able to hear what she was saying. “James broke up with her. He’s already moved onto another girl named Emmaline. Abby didn’t even know about it until she got to school and he was there with Emmaline. He apparently went out with Emmaline this past weekend, when Abby was trying to call him and find out if he wanted to hang out.” Rina shook her head. “The scum.”
At that, Abby got up from the table, without a word, tears in her eyes. She ran upstairs to her room and slammed the door.
Axel nodded. “You need to go and talk to her, mate,” he said. “She needs her mother right now.”
“Yes,” I said. “I guess she does.”
I went up to Abby’s room and knocked gently on the door. “Abby, Buttercup,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“No, go away. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay. I’ll just be downstairs, then. You know where to find me.”
I turned to walk away, but Abby opened up her door and then went and lay down on her bed. I heard loud sobbing and it broke my heart.
“Abby,” I said, going over to the bed and putting my arm around her. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I want my mom.”
“I am your mom.”
“No. My real mom. I want to talk to her. I want to talk to her, and I can’t. I can’t tell her about this. She never got to see me get my first boyfriend. She should have been the one who took me and James around. She should be the one who I can cry to. I love you, and I do think of you as my current mom, but I should have her around. I should. It’s not fair.”
My heart was breaking as I listened to her. She was right, of course. I was her adoptive mom, but I would never be her biological mom. I could never be that for her. That was just something that I was going to have to face. And Abby was going to have to come to terms with that, too. Rina too. Rina, thus far, hadn’t said anything like this – that she wanted her real mom there instead of me. But I knew that was coming. A girl needs her mother during periods like this – when you get your first broken heart. When you have your first kiss. First date. When you go away to college. When you get married. There were just milestones that a girl needs her mother for.
“I know, Buttercup. I know.” I continued to stroke her back while she cried. “You’ll get through this. You will. It will get better. I promise you this. There will come a day when you forget all about James. When you fall in love for real one day, James will just be a distant memory. It hurts like the dickens right now, though. I know that.”
She nodded her head into her pillow. “Thanks, mom, for coming in here. And I hope you’re not sad that I talked like that. That I talked about how I needed my birth mom.”
“Not at all. I don’t know how you feel, but I can imagine it. I love you, Buttercup. Never forget that.”
“I love you, too.”
I went downstairs and saw Rina and Axel were on the floor, playing a board game. I sat down next to them. “Is she okay?” Rina asked me.
“Yes. I mean, no. But she will be.”
“What about Uncle Jack?” she asked. “Is he going to be okay?”
I bit my lower lip. I didn’t want to talk to Rina about that. I knew that she was just a little young to be hearing about such things. She wouldn’t understand that Jack wasn’t really Jack anymore. That Jack wasn’t actually Jack at Thanksgiving, either, which was the day that Rina had met him. How could I possibly explain to her the concept of Dissociative Identity Disorder? How could she possibly understand such things? I knew that Axel would understand. He was a detective. He knew everything and had seen it all.
“He’s going to be okay,” I said. “At least, I think that he is.”
LATER ON, after Rina went to bed, I went into the sun room and joined Axel on the couch in there. He put his arm around me. “So, what’s going on, mate?” he asked me. “What’s going on with your Uncle Jack?”
I pulled a blanket over the two of us and I leaned my head against his chest. I heard his heart beating and I felt the warmth of his skin. This was comforting to me. It was comforting to be next to him like this, feeling his love radiate. There was no place else that I would rather have been than right there with him.
“He has issues,” I said. “To say the very least. Poor Jack. He’s gone through so much.” I shook my head. “So much.”
“What has he gone through?”
“I can’t even tell you about that. I will have to say, though, that I need to win this case. Full stop. I need to win it. If I don’t win it, then Uncle Jack will literally disappear. As it is, he’s hidden. He’s hidden behind somebody else. Behind several somebody elses maybe.”
Axel furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand? What do you mean by that?”
“Jack, I think, I don’t know for sure, but it certainly sounds like, has Dissociative Identity Disorder.”
Axel nodded his head. “I’ve heard of that. I haven’t actually ever encountered it, though. That’s something that’s very rare, isn’t it?”
“I think so. I need to do much more research on it.”
>
“So, what you’re saying is that your Uncle Jack might have literally been somebody else at the time that he killed that priest? Assuming that he killed that priest?”
“Yes. I think so. But I would like to think that Jack actually didn’t kill that priest. If he didn’t kill that priest, then there is a chance for a full acquittal. But if he killed that priest, even if he was somebody else at that moment, he’s going to end up either in prison or in a psychiatric institute for the rest of his life. I can’t stand that happening. I love my Uncle Jack.”
He kissed my forehead and I kissed him on the lips. “I love you,” he said. “And I’ll always be here for you. I hope that you know that.”
“I do. I do know that.”
We went upstairs then, him carrying me to my room. Being with Axel made me feel normal, for the first time in a long time.
And being normal, at this point, was the best thing in the entire world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Monday morning, I showed up in court. I had gone to seen Uncle Jack on Sunday, in the jail, and he was the same way he was before. That is, he was apparently Mick, not Jack. He had the same posture, the same cadence of how he spoke. I found out a little bit more about Mick, including the fact that the reason why he didn’t wear glasses to Thanksgiving was because he had on contact lenses.
“Love,” he said. “Of course I’m not going to wear glasses. I think that I look nerdy with them. But I am surprised that you didn’t figure out that I wasn’t Jack at Thanksgiving. I guess you’re not very observant.”
“I guess I’m not.”
When I got to court, I saw the prosecutor there. Her name was Sarah Pitts, and I knew that she wasn’t going to be the permanent prosecutor on the case. The way that the Jackson County court did it, one prosecutor showed up for all the initial appearances on that docket, but that prosecutor usually isn’t the one who ended up seeing the case through trial.
I went over to her. “What offer do you have for Jack Calhoun?” I asked her.
She went through her files and shook her head. “I don’t have an offer for you yet,” she said. “I know that he’s your Uncle, but you have to understand. This was a violent, violent murder. It looks like he did it, too.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Harper. I know how you must feel.”
No, she didn’t know how I felt. She couldn’t possibly know how I felt. Unless she had an Uncle who she looked up to, who never appeared to have a thing wrong, only to find out that said uncle was suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder that was brought on by being kidnapped by a serial killer in his youth, and then finding out that said Uncle was being accused of a brutal murder that he had no recollection of – then, maybe, she would understand how I felt.
“Well, I need to ask for a bond reduction.”
“Of course you do. But I doubt that you’ll get it. A million five is pretty standard for these kinds of first degree murder cases.”
“I know that. I realize that. But he’s hardly a flight risk. I’ll keep an eye out on him. He can go and live with my mother. She’s right over there,” I said, pointing to mom in the audience. She smiled and waved at me and Sarah. “She’ll come up and tell the judge that he can stay with her. All I want is a 10% bond. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“I know what you’re asking for,” she said. “But I’m telling you, you’re not going to get it.”
“All rise,” the bailiff said, as everybody in the court room stood up. “Court for the 32nd Division of Jackson County is now in session. God save the State of Missouri and this Honorable Court.”
The judge came on the bench. Judge McFarland was white-haired and was probably 90 by now. Yet, he still played tennis almost every day and took long walks. He insisted that he was fit as a fiddle, and, even though people had been trying to get him to retire for the past decade, he always insisted that he never would. He would die on that bench, he would say, and nobody was going to convince him to do otherwise.
I admired him greatly.
He started calling the cases, one by one, and then he got to Uncle Jack’s case. “The State of Missouri calls Jack Calhoun,” he said.
My Uncle came up to the bench, his wrists shackled. I looked into his eyes and realized that he was probably Mick right at that moment. His expression was one of levity. His blue eyes twinkled, his lips curled in a slight smirk, and, when he came up to the bench, he winked at me. “Don’t worry, love,” he whispered. “I got this taken care of. Daddy’s going to be alright.”
I groaned, but, for some odd reason, I was happy. Mick was somebody who seemed to be happy-go-lucky, whereas Jack, my Uncle, seemed like he was very depressed and down. I guessed that if Jack was going to have to spend the time before his trial in jail, he might as well do it with an alter who could actually take the punishment of being in jail.
“Mr. Calhoun, you have been charged by the State of Missouri with one count of murder in the first degree. How do you plead?”
“Not guilty, your honor.” Jack’s voice was high-pitched and his posture was ramrod straight. He raised an eyebrow and smiled at me.
“Your honor,” I said to Judge McFarland. “I would like to request a bond reduction. I would request that Mr. Calhoun’s bond be reduced to a 10% bond, so that he could possibly get out of jail.”
“On what grounds are you requesting this?” Judge McFarland asked me.
“He has no priors. He’s not a flight risk. He can stay with his sister, who is my mother. She’s right over there if you would like to speak with her, your honor.” I pointed into the audience, where my mother was sitting, smiling and waving.
“Oh, I see. This gentleman is your Uncle. Do I have that straight, Ms. Ross?”
“You do, your honor. He is my Uncle.”
He nodded his head. “Do you have any objections, Ms. Pitts?” Judge McFarland asked Sarah.
“I do, your honor. This was an especially heinous crime, and there is not a reason for the bond reduction.”
Judge McFarland looked over at my mother. “Ms. Ross, please ask your mother to approach the bench.”
I felt my heart soar as I went over to my mother. It looked like this judge was going to at least entertain the possibility that my uncle could post a 10% bond, so that he could get out of jail for the duration of his pre-trial. “Mom, the judge wants to speak with you.”
Mom stood up, gathered her purse, and eagerly walked through the little door that led to the restricted area, and she went right up to the bench. “Yes, your honor?” she asked. “My daughter, Ms. Ross here, said that you wanted to speak with me.”
Judge McFarland nodded to her as he continued to read the Statement of Information that was in front of him. “Yes. As I understand, you’re the sister of this defendant. Is that correct?”
“Well, yes, he’s my brother. Yes he is.”
“And you’re willing to take custody of him as he awaits trial?”
“Yes. I am, your honor. You see, he’s my little brother. I’ve always looked out for him, no matter what. Always. And I’m not about to stop now.”
Judge McFarland smiled broadly. “That’s a good spirit you have there. Now, is there any reason why you would believe that you would be a proper custodian of Mr. Calhoun? You understand that Mr. Calhoun will have special conditions of his bond, conditions that you will have to meet. I hope that you understand that.”
“What kind of conditions?”
“He will have on an ankle monitor, so his movements will be restricted. He won’t be able to leave your house for any period of time, except if he needs to get to court or to any special court ordered visits. And, of course, he will not be able to have any contact with any known felons or with Guardian Angels church for any period of time. He cannot have contact with anyone who is a part of that church. Do you go to that church, Ms.-“
Judge McFarland looked at me. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Ross, I didn’t get the name of your mother.”
“It’s Claire Ro
ss,” she said, with a little giggle.
I rolled my eyes. What was it with mom? She was looking at the judge with her eyes batting. Almost like she was flirting with him. A 90-year-old man. And what was up with her and dad?
“Ms. Ross, do you attend that church on a regular basis?”
“No, your honor, I don’t. I don’t attend any church on a regular basis. For that matter, my brother doesn’t, either. I really don’t know what he was doing in that church when he was apprehended. I don’t think that even he knows.”
I stepped on her foot. She was saying way too much. I hadn’t yet decided if I wanted Uncle Jack to have a mental examination, because I didn’t know if I wanted to go the NGRI route. I did know that I didn’t want my Uncle to be examined and be determined that he wasn’t competent to go to trial. If that happened, he would have to spend his time in a mental institution until the time that he would be competent for trial, and who knew when that would be? He might never be competent for trial. Ever.
I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. I knew that my decisions were clouded by my affection for my Uncle. I hoped that I was doing the right thing, though. That was all that I could possibly hope for.
The judge shook his head. “Ms. Ross, do you plan on mounting any kind of special defense for this gentleman? Do I need to order a mental examination on him?”
“No, your honor,” I said. “I do not plan on introducing any kind of a special defense. I do not plan to ask for a mental examination to determine if my client is competent for trial. No, your honor, I don’t.”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 67