Secrets Amoung The Shadows

by Sally Berneathy

  "You don't have to answer anything you don't want to," Roger reminded him when he hesitated.

  But a refusal to answer would be the same as an admission.

  "No," he said. He wasn't, after all, positive Edward had made the call.

  "Did you attend school with the deceased, Kay Palmer?"

  "Maybe. I'm not sure. I went to school with a woman named Kay Becker, but I haven't seen her in almost twenty years."

  "We checked. Kay Palmer's maiden name, two marriages ago, was Becker. She went to the same school as you through the ninth grade. Anything you want to tell us now?"

  "No." Were they kidding? What could he possibly want to tell them?

  Easton came to stand behind Eliot and lean over him. He exuded the odor of stale cigarette smoke. The smell expanded in the small, airless room. "She caused you some grief, didn't she?" he said in a hoarse whisper. "She dumped you and told the other kids you were crazy, that you still had some kind of an imaginary playmate."

  "I advise you not to answer that," Roger said.

  They already knew. Refusing could only make him sound guilty. "I don't mind answering the question. We were both children at the time, and children can be cruel."

  "Is that a yes?"

  "Yes." His voice was firm, irritation at the detectives' attitude replacing some of his fear. "Kay broke my teenage heart and humiliated me. Then she moved away and I never saw her again. I'm sure that happens to a lot of teenagers, but I don't think it constitutes a motive for murder."

  "You never saw her again?"

  "No."

  Stockton leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his stomach. "Kane, we know you're lying about that. How do you expect us to believe anything you tell us if we know you're lying about any part of this deal?"

  Eliot clenched his hands in his lap. He wanted to pound them on the table and shout in this man's complacent face.

  Maybe he should admit that he'd been seeing Kay. Maybe then they'd believe him when he said he hadn't killed her. Or maybe they'd then trap him into admitting something else.

  "On the advice of my attorney, I refuse to answer that question," he said.

  Stockton nodded. "I see." He leaned forward, shuffled some papers on the table and ran a stubby finger over the buttons on the recorder.

  Maybe this was over. Maybe they'd let him go now.

  "Tell us about Kay's fingernails."

  Eliot's breath caught in his lungs. For a moment he couldn't breathe. He swallowed, hoping his voice wouldn't quiver when he spoke. "What about her fingernails?"

  "The caller this morning gave us some details about the crime that haven't been released to the public. I'd just like to find out if you're familiar with those details."

  Details like two bright red tips snapping off to lie beside the body? Eliot licked his suddenly dry lips. "I don't know anything about Kay's fingernails. I haven't seen her in twenty years."

  Easton clutched Eliot's shoulders from behind, and it took all Eliot's control not to flinch. "You dated her, Eliot. Her co-workers told us. Her neighbors told us. Your card was in her apartment." He leaned closer to Eliot's ear, so close Eliot thought he might gag from the smell of the cigarette smoke. "We're coming after you, Kane. We know you did it, and we're gonna get you."

  "You're harassing my client," Roger said, then stood. "If you're not going to charge him with anything, we're leaving."

  Eliot shook off Easton's hands and rose, turning to face the man. He wanted to tell him to back off, to leave him alone. He wanted to threaten to punch him, to slap him with a lawsuit.

  But he couldn't do any of those things. The detective might be right. A stone of guilt lodged in his stomach.

  He reached the door and grabbed the knob, grateful to feel it turn in his fingers.

  "You still got that imaginary playmate, Kane?" Easton asked.

  Eliot pushed through the door, left the small, confining room and strode down the hallway and out the front door. Only then was he able to breathe.

  "Whew!" Roger sighed, and Eliot realized he had momentarily forgotten his attorney's presence. What had the man thought of his guilt or innocence when Eliot ran from the police station as if pursued by the devil himself?

  "I think my deodorant has failed me," Roger said. "I sure made the right choice, going into civil law instead of criminal. Good buddy, I'm in way over my head here. We need to find you a good criminal lawyer."

  Roger thought he was guilty. Or at the very least that he had a major problem.

  "As long as you've got to drop me by my office anyway," Roger said as they reached Eliot's car, "do you want to come up and sign your new will and power of attorney? I know you aren't scheduled to come in until next week, but when I told my secretary I was meeting you today, she promised to have them typed up by the time we got through."

  Eliot froze in position as he leaned over the car, his key halfway in the lock. "My new will? What are you talking about?" But he had a sick feeling he knew what Roger was talking about. This could only be something else Edward had done.

  Roger looked at him strangely. Eliot made an attempt to smile, to buy some time while he tried to figure out what to do next...something that wouldn't necessitate telling the whole story. "I just didn't realize you'd have everything finished so soon. Yes, I'd very much like to come up and see those documents."

  As they drove across town, Eliot tried to force his mind to release to him what Edward was up to now. If Edward and he shared the same brain, if Edward could reach his part of that brain, why couldn't he reach the part Edward used?

  He suspected the power of attorney would give Edward control in case of Eliot's absence...or imprisonment. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He was doing it again...thinking of Edward as a separate entity. The power of attorney wouldn't do Edward any good if Eliot went to prison.

  But the will was another story. Who could Edward be planning to inherit Eliot's possessions? Himself? Was that why his house was leased and furnished so temporarily?

  If Eliot didn't go to prison for Kay Palmer's murder, did Edward plan to kill him and inherit everything?

  A cold chill zigzagged down Eliot's spine though his face felt flushed.

  What he was thinking about was totally insane! And that word was the clue. Was he so insane one part of him planned to kill himself in order to take over that part's life? Was he so insane he needed to be in a mental hospital...or a prison?

  Was his life over...all the things he'd worked so hard for...including the woman he'd found so recently who touched a part of him he hadn't known existed? Was all this being destroyed by a part of his own brain he couldn't control?

  He set his jaw determinedly, unable to accept that inevitability. There had to be some way to fight this, to regain possession of his own mind.

  "Eliot—" He started at the voice beside him. He'd completely forgotten Roger's presence. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, but it seems to me there's a lot more going on here than you've told me so far."

  Eliot sighed. The fewer people who knew about his problem, the better. Mental illness wasn't something to brag about. But, as his lawyer, Roger needed to know something to allow him to handle Eliot's affairs.

  "I'm not exactly sure what's going on," Eliot said, feeling his way as he spoke. "Apparently someone who looks a lot like me is going around impersonating me, causing a lot of problems. He's the one who dated Kay Palmer."

  "Is this somebody you know?"

  "No. Definitely nobody I know. But he sometimes uses the name Edward Dalman. You might want to watch out for him."

  "Edward Dalman?" The shock in Roger's voice told Eliot that his warning had come too late.

  Eliot almost missed the turn into the parking garage of Roger's office building. He swerved at the last minute, barely dodging the concrete pillar. "Have you met him?"

  "Why, Eliot, that's the beneficiary under your new will. You said he was your long lost brother."

  Eliot p
ulled into a parking space and shut off the engine.

  Edward was clearly insane...clever but insane. Clever enough to realize that passing himself off as a relative would make it simpler to become the beneficiary of Eliot's will. But so insane he didn't realize if Eliot died, Edward would die, too. There would be no beneficiary.

  "Roger, I don't have a brother. You know that. How did he explain that we had different names?"

  Roger's eyes widened, and his placid face furrowed in concern. "'How did he explain?'" he repeated. "Are you saying the man who came to my office and asked me to draw up these document wasn't you?"

  "No, that was not me."

  Roger blew out a long breath. "My God. He looks just like you."

  "I know. That's how he gets away with impersonating me."

  "You—he—said you'd been adopted by different families when you were babies and just now found each other. I knew you had been adopted, so the story sounded believable. How could he know so much about you?"

  "I can't explain it all right now, but, trust me, that man in your office was Edward Dalman. When did he come in and arrange all this?"

  Roger blinked rapidly, apparently trying to take in the fact that he'd been deceived. "Last week. Thursday, I think. You—he—insisted on meeting at seven in the morning. That seemed a little odd, but I know what long hours you keep at the office."

  Seven o'clock on Thursday morning. Eliot made a frantic search of his memories. Where had he been at seven o'clock on Thursday morning? Getting dressed? Just leaving home? Driving to work? Threading his way through rush hour traffic? All automatic actions that he had no conscious memory of.

  He had no idea where he'd been at seven o'clock on Thursday morning.

  At least, he hadn't had any idea until Roger told him.

  Disposing of his estate. Planning his own imprisonment...or murder.

  Chapter 19

  At precisely six thirty that evening, the time for their scheduled appointment, Eliot pulled up in front of Thurman's house. Across the street a light came on in Leanne's living room. He thought of the homey atmosphere inside, the comfortable furniture, Greta curled in his lap, Leanne in a comfortable robe that tied at her slim waist and hugged the curves of her body...and all of him yearned to be over there. If only he could pretend he was a normal man, relax in her normal world, take her into his arms and do what normal people did when a fire burned the way it did between them.

  With a curse he shoved open the car door, got out and strode up the walk to Thurman's porch.

  When Thurman opened the door in response to his knock, the older man took an involuntary step backward, and Eliot realized his turmoil must show on his face. He tried to smile. "I'm me," he assured him, and Dixie pranced up, tail wagging, to affirm his identity.

  "I'm sorry," Eliot apologized as he entered, gave Dixie's ears a scratch, and strode to the middle of the room. "If I look desperate, it's because I am. I can't take any more of this civil war going on in my own brain with half of me plotting the destruction of all of me."

  Thurman nodded. "Have a seat, try to relax, and we'll get started."

  Eliot chose an arm chair rather than the sofa where he had held Leanne so recently. He'd never be able to relax there.

  "Tell me what's been happening," Thurman encouraged, leaning back in his battered recliner.

  He told Thurman about the day's events...the phone call to the police, his visit with them and his lawyer's revelation about his new will and power of attorney.

  Eliot watched Thurman's reactions closely as he talked. Even Thurman couldn't hide a brief expression of shock at the implications of the will.

  "You have no recollection whatsoever of being there? Not even after you went today and saw the document?"

  "Nothing. Not a flicker."

  "When were you there? Surely you didn't go to the lawyer's office in the night when you're normally asleep. Did you finally have a time lapse?"

  "I don't know. I would have been getting ready for work or driving to work. I'm always thinking about other things, my plans for the day, what the stock market did yesterday." Eliot thrust up from the chair, threw his arms into the air and began to pace back and forth across the room. "I don't know! Do you have any idea what it feels like to have things going on in your own mind that you don't know anything about, do things you don't remember? Isn't there something you can do? They have so many drugs now."

  Thurman shook his head. "I don't know of any drugs to cure MPD. I can give you an anti-depressant, but that's as far as I think we should go at this point."

  Eliot shook his head. "Something experimental, then. I don't care if it could be dangerous! Nothing could be worse than this. Electroshock therapy. What about that? Anything. Just tell me, and I'll do it." He slammed his fist against the wall.

  "I'd like to try some more hypnosis," Thurman said calmly, ignoring the outburst.

  Eliot flopped back into his chair. "Fine. But only if you'll plant a post-hypnotic suggestion that Edward will die."

  Thurman studied him for a moment. At least he didn't immediately dismiss the suggestion. "I'm not sure what kind of a result we'd get with that tactic. What you need to do is accept the situation that generated Edward, get him out in the open, and then we can deal with him."

  "I've accepted my parents' death. We went through that under hypnosis. What more can I do? Edward's still running around on his own, causing problems, plotting to get me in prison or dead, and I'm not sure which one would be worse. How am I supposed to accept somebody like that as a part of me?"

  Thurman stroked Dixie's head as she sat on the floor beside his chair. The gesture was slow and soothing...as Eliot knew the man doubtless meant it to be. That made him wonder if Thurman was getting ready to say something disturbing, something that required a little soothing first.

  "I want to take you further back than the car wreck. That may not be the first time Edward appeared."

  Eliot stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment. "You mean everything we've done so far may be wasted? We may have the wrong event?"

  Thurman shook his head. "Certainly it's not wasted. This sort of treatment doesn't work overnight. It takes time."

  Eliot leapt from his chair. "But I don't have time!" He paced the length of the room then back again. "The police are after me for something I don't know if I did. This Mr. Hyde I've somehow created is spending my money, changing my legal documents, plotting how to get rid of me, and stalking Leanne. Time is running out. It may have already run out!"

  "Then we'd better get started right away." Thurman's calm voice reached through Eliot's panic, and he sank back down.

  "All right," he agreed wearily.

  But for the first time he couldn't find the hypnotic trance necessary for the memory search.

  "I'm sorry," he said when it was obvious the effort was a failure. "I just can't relax right now."

  "You've been this tense before. Tonight I think maybe you're rejecting the therapy. You're either convinced it won't work...or afraid it will. Right now I don't think you really want to meet Edward."

  Eliot smiled without humor. "No, I don't want to meet him. And no matter how hard I try, no matter how much proof I see, I just can't accept that he's a part of me. I want to kill the bastard. Just like he wants to kill me."

  "Let's talk about that," Thurman suggested. "When did you first notice that your friendship with Edward was turning to hatred? Try to go back beyond the obvious, before this latest episode. How about when you stopped playing with him as an imaginary friend? How did that make you feel?"

  Eliot shifted uncomfortably. "I know this is going to sound crazy, but I felt guilty. I actually felt like I was rejecting an old friend. It was like he'd talk to me, and I'd refuse to answer. I dreamed about him, and at first he was sad in those dreams, then he got angry because I was deserting him. Finally he was gone. No more imaginary playmate, no more dreams of him."

  Thurman stroked his mustache. "So you deserted him for a woman, and
now he hates—hated—not only that woman but any woman you're interested in. Including Leanne."

  Eliot drummed his fingers on the chair arm. "Yes, that's apparent." And old news, he thought impatiently.

  "So instead of wanting to dispose of Edward, you need to accept him back into your life, let him know he's still a part of you no matter what. Once you've done that, you remove his motivation for his anger, for the things he's doing, for wanting to get rid of you."

  They talked for a while, but Eliot's heart wasn't in it. He didn't want to psychoanalyze and placate his alter ego. He only wanted to get rid of it.

  When he left Thurman's house, his gaze was inexorably drawn to Leanne's. But as desperately as he wanted to see her, he wasn't going to further endanger her.

  Determinedly he inserted his key into the car door lock.

  From across the street he heard a sound and looked up to see her standing on her porch. He looked back to where Thurman and Dixie still stood in the open door of their house, watching him. He could go over and say hello to Leanne. Surely it would be all right to stand on her porch in public view and tell her what was happening. She'd want to know. She deserved to know.

  She waited as he walked across the street toward her, a slim silhouette in front of her lighted living room door. In the darkness he couldn't see any details, except that her hair shone even in that minimal light. She wore a pair of slacks and a light sweater, and in his memory he felt those soft curves, the curves he wanted to touch, to stroke.

  As he stepped up on the porch, he could see her expectant, radiant smile. She was glad to see him. Oh, God, if only he hadn't seen that. How could he possibly walk away now?

  "I just wondered how the session went," she said.