by D. J. Palmer
“Trust me, you’re in good hands, Grace,” Navarro answered with assuredness. “I provide the gamut of legal services, but I specialize in criminal defense.
“I guess I haven’t really shared my professional background with you, so let me do that now. I believe I told you that I grew up in Weymouth, graduated from Weymouth High. I gave the navy four years of my life, and they helped me pay for college. After I got out of the service, I went to law school at Suffolk and became a public defender here in Essex County. Worked in that office for fifteen years, and was chief public defender for eight of them. Plenty of lunches with the mayors. It was a great job, and I defended a lot of murder cases. Too many, sadly. The ones I couldn’t win outright, I always got the best deal for my client.
“After my divorce I decided I needed a change, so that’s why I went out on my own. I had a good reputation, and unfortunately a lot of past clients of mine were serial offenders. Some could afford a private attorney and they wanted the best, so they came back to me.”
Navarro fixed Grace with a look that somehow managed to convey both empathy for her plight and confidence in his own ability.
“Okay, then,” Grace said shakily. “Good. That sounds really good.” Conversations about money and her concerns over how she’d pay for Navarro’s fees could wait. “I guess though, well, there’s something you should know about Penny before we speak to her. She’s … been arrested before.”
If the reveal were at all concerning, it did not register on Navarro’s face.
“Okay, but is it relevant to these charges? Otherwise—”
Grace cut him off quickly.
“It think it’s pretty relevant,” she said. “A few years back, when Penny was only in ninth grade, she exchanged messages with a friend from town. A girl named Maria Descenza, who, like my daughter, has some mental health troubles.”
“What kind of messages?” asked Navarro.
“They were dark, violent fantasies. Murder fantasies. Worse—dismemberment. It was all awful.” She took a deep breath, then dove in. “They were really graphic and quite unsettling to read.”
Grace didn’t bother to share the weighty guilt she still felt for not keeping closer tabs on what her daughter did online. But did every parent read each text, track down every secret place kids went to hide private correspondences? True, she had more responsibility than most parents, given her daughter’s illness, but still, Penny was a teen and entitled to some privacy.
“The girls wrote about how to commit the perfect murder, the methods of killing, all of it described in gruesome detail, the weapons they’d use, how they’d get away with it, that sort of thing, and they kept their exchanges hidden using Snapchat, Kik, and some vault app called KMSS—that stands for Keep My Secrets Safe.”
“If it was so secret, how’d they get caught?” Navarro asked.
“Maria accidently sent a Snapchat message—a hit list the girls had made of potential targets—to the wrong person, another classmate at school. That girl shared it with her mother, who called the police.”
“Naming specific targets is going to get you in a lot of trouble with the law no matter your age.”
“Exactly. The police had no problem getting warrants to search the girls’ phones and they found all the other messages, all the details.”
“So was the charge attempted first or second degree murder?”
“Yes,” said Grace, pleased to see Navarro had no trouble pinpointing what law they’d violated. “Second degree was the initial charge, got plea-bargained down to reckless endangerment, but that’s not what’s most relevant here, I think. The potential targets on that hit list included my son Ryan, who had a difficult relationship with his sister for reasons we don’t have to get into right now, and also … Rachel Boyd.”
Navarro blanched, and his Adam’s apple jumped as he took a gulp of air.
“Rachel, the victim? Your daughter previously threatened the victim’s life?”
Grace nodded grimly.
“Oh wow,” he said, scratching at a spot on his scalp while reining in a grimace. “That’s not great news for us,” he said, a dip in his voice. He took a quiet moment to collect his thoughts, and Grace could almost see him get centered again.
“Okay,” he said. “It’s good information to have, and let’s leave it at that. We’re not going to focus on it right now. First thing I need to do is speak with Penny—alone. This is an attorney/client room, no recording devices, no cameras. The officer outside can take you to another room while Penny and I converse. Then I’ll come get you after we’re through.”
“Another room? No,” Grace said forcefully. “That’s not happening. I need to see my daughter. I need to be in here when you talk to her.”
Navarro took in Grace’s demand with a tight-lipped expression, but he didn’t look like he was about to acquiesce.
“Grace, I understand your desire here,” he answered calmly. “But I don’t want you to become a witness. I have no idea what’s going to happen or what she might say. I have attorney-client privilege with Penny because she’s my client, but you’re not, so that privilege doesn’t extend to you. It’s possible you could be asked to testify against your daughter in court. It’s too great a risk.”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” Grace said, having no second thoughts about her stance. “She might be your client, but she’s my daughter and I need to lay eyes on her. Either I stay in here with you, or I’m getting myself another lawyer.”
Navarro took a moment to think it over, and Grace liked that he was listening to her, really listening. She also liked the relaxed manner in which he seemed to process his options.
“Okay, okay,” he said eventually, letting his broad shoulders relax. “Let’s bring Penny to you. You talk to her. See her. Give her a change of clothes. I’m assuming they’ve got the DNA they need. But no talking about the case, about what happened. Promise me that, Grace. You can’t go there with her.”
“I promise,” Grace said.
“I’ll do my interview in private, then come get you when it’s over. If she gives me permission, I’ll tell you what was discussed. Sound good?”
“Nothing about any of this sounds good to me,” Grace answered bitterly. “Greg … there’s something else you should know, something about Penny. When you see her, you may have to address her as Eve.”
“Eve … is that a nickname?”
“Not exactly,” said Grace, feeling an anxious flutter in her chest. She wasn’t sure how this news would be received.
“My daughter has a disorder called DID, dissociative identity disorder.”
Nothing registered in Navarro’s eyes.
“You probably know it as multiple personality disorder,” Grace clarified.
“Oh,” he said, and those arched eyebrows of his raised a notch higher.
“She’s one person, and different people. I’m sure it was Eve, one of my daughter’s personalities, who wrote those terrible things with Maria. And if she’s somehow involved in the murder of Rachel Boyd, if she did it, I’ll bet anything it was Eve, not my Penny, who committed the crime.”
“I understand.”
Grace gave a sad little laugh. “Then you may be the only one. Now, please … tell the police to go get my daughter.”
CHAPTER 3
WHY DID YOU KILL?
That’s the question I keep asking myself. That’s what I have to figure out. It’s the only thing that matters to me.
I’m working on a film about you. What I’m writing here are my memories, my musings—call it a diary of sorts—on the subject of you. According to Warren Brown, my film teacher at Emerson, these recollections and thoughts will help me separate feelings from facts, and allow me to put the events into some sort of logical sequence. Professor Brown says until I finish the exercise I won’t know for sure how to structure my movie. He also said it’s for my eyes only, he won’t read a page of it, so I can be completely honest here.
I can tell m
y secrets, too.
Professor Brown thinks the film will get picked up for some big festivals, but I’m not making it to see my name, Jack Francone, on the big screen. I’m doing it because a jury isn’t going to tell me what I need to know.
Are you ill … or are you evil?
I have no doubt in my mind that you are a murderer. The evidence against you is irrefutable.
You were alone in the house with the victim when the police arrived. They found you with blood all over your body, sticking in your hair, caked on your hands, on your clothes, holding the murder weapon—a massive, bloodstained kitchen knife. That knife was used to stab Rachel twenty-five times. Twenty-five! It cut her throat so deeply, she’d almost been decapitated.
I’ve read all the reports, Penny. Mom got them from the lawyer and gave them to me to study when I told her about this project. I’ve also listened to the 911 call from Rachel’s apartment so many times, I’ve got the transcript memorized.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
On the recording the dispatcher’s voice sounded calm and professional. She had no idea this was the call that was going to dominate headlines in Boston and around the nation for months to come. Sensational. Unprecedented. It was a newspaper’s dream come true—and our family’s worst nightmare.
“Nine-one-one … what’s your emergency, please?”
All anyone could hear on the other end of the call was heavy breathing. It was a sound to make your skin crawl—in and out, slow and tortured, like each breath was going to be the last. The sound of death.
The dispatcher did her job admirably, tried to get the pertinent details, but to no avail.
“Can you talk? Can you tell me your name or location?” she asked. “What’s the nature of your emergency?”
Now we know it was Rachel breathing heavily on the phone, but she couldn’t answer, not with blood pouring through the opening you cut into her windpipe.
“Are you there?” the dispatcher asked, her voice betraying increasing concern. “Scratch or tap the phone if you’re in trouble. Can you do that?”
In the recording you can hear a tap, tap, tap, like the sound of footsteps, only softer.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Are you bleeding? Are you hurt? Tap the phone again for yes.”
Three more taps sounded.
The call came in at 7:08 that night. Police have to respond to all 911 calls—even the ones that are silent, or disconnected.
The dispatch system in Lynn has an automatic location identifier, so the operator knew where to send patrol cars. The cops had to break down the front door using a ram—a pared-down version of the same battering rams from the days of knights and castles, like the one in the picture book I used to read to you when we were little.
When the police entered the home, they found you standing in the doorway to Rachel’s bedroom, bathed in her blood, holding a bloodstained knife in your hand.
You say you don’t remember anything about that night, but it wasn’t all blackout time for you though, was it? You shared a fuzzy memory (as Eve) with the police: looking out Rachel’s grimy apartment window, trying to figure out where you were, why you might be covered in blood. You thought you saw somebody standing across the street, someone who seemed familiar to you, but you couldn’t say more. You couldn’t say if it was a man or a woman. You couldn’t see a face or describe height or weight. None of it was stored in your memory bank, but you did recall checking again. When you did, nobody was there.
That’s your mind, though, isn’t it, Penny? How confusing it must be to live like that, with your thoughts and memories always shifting, like the sandcastles we loved making together on Eisman’s Beach: here one minute, gone the next. Who can trust that brain of yours?
I was the closest to you growing up. In a way, I’m the one who found you, the reason we adopted you, and I was the first to see that you could be different people at different times.
So who is this person that could commit cold-blooded murder? I again ask: Are you truly evil?
I didn’t know about dissociative identity disorder back then. According to the DSM-5 (the bible for psychiatric disorders), the condition can be diagnosed with the presence of two or more distinct personalities, or “alters,” shorthand for alternate personalities. In cases of DID, there is the primary self and then there are the alters. You certainly presented that way, or so we all believed. Day to day, we never knew which Penny you’d be.
When you first got diagnosed, you were what? Thirteen, or thereabouts. I thought it explained all of your strange behaviors: those frequent memory gaps, your bizarre moods nobody understood. But what explains the violence, the death threats you made with Maria, the brutal murder of Rachel Boyd? DID doesn’t explain any of that. The idea of an “evil alter” is a myth. It’s the stuff of movies—and if there’s one thing I know about, it’s movies. So if there’s no such thing as an “evil alter,” how can I understand what you did that night?
Maria told the police she was sick in bed on the night of Rachel’s murder, and her mother backed up that story. She insists you acted alone. Maybe. Maybe not. But let’s say she’s not fibbing and you went to Rachel’s house alone and you lost control, that you were (as your lawyer intends to argue) legally insane at the time of the killing. I can imagine it. You saw Rachel for the first time since you were a little girl, and it triggered a memory buried deep inside your subconscious; some traumatic, unspeakable horror of what she did to you in the years before you came to live with us. We don’t know anything about that time. You would never speak of it. But in that moment when you finally met face-to-face, terrible memories came at you like a flash flood.
Maybe it was you, Penny, holding that knife, or maybe it was one of your alters—a new one even, an avenger-type personality we haven’t yet met, keeping in their rage for years like a powder keg awaiting a match.
Was Rachel that match? I read the Facebook messages that she sent you.
Hope it’s okay to contact you this way …
Hope you don’t mind …
I know this is hard for you, but I had to reach out …
Was she feeling you out, Penny, testing to see how’d you respond? You were hardly upset in your replies.
OMG! It’s so crazy. I’m freaking out, you wrote to her.
Rachel wanted her messages to you to stay a secret. You can’t tell anyone we’re in touch, not yet. Okay??
And you were all for it.
Yes. Okay. Promise.
And you posted a picture of the fingers crossed emoji.
Did Rachel interpret your giddy glee as indication you’d forgotten how you’d suffered at her hand? Was that the last mistake she made in her messed-up life?
All this is just one possibility to consider: you, or your avenging alter, took vengeance on your past abuser. And if it can be proven in court that you couldn’t control yourself, then you, Penny, will be found not guilty due to your mental illness. They’ll sentence you to a secure psychiatric hospital where you’ll receive the kind of care you need, and maybe one day you’ll get better. Maybe all of your alters will go away, become integrated (that’s the clinical term) into you, Penny, the host person. You may even get out of the hospital in time to have some sort of independent life.
But there’s another possibility, one that I’ve considered carefully, as have many others, according to the blogs, social media posts, opinion pieces, and news reports about you and your crime: that you don’t have DID, and you never did. That’s not to say there isn’t something wrong with you. Clearly there is. You might just be a psychopath, a person who chooses evil for evil’s sake, a violent individual who doesn’t care, who shows no remorse, the sort of person who deserves a lifetime behind bars.
It’s not a stretch to think a psychopath would invent alternate personalities to justify and explain away all sorts of crimes, including murder.
So which is it? Have you been playing us all along? Was DID your invented excuse to d
o as you wished, until your wish included murder? Or is your condition real, and you took Rachel Boyd’s life in a fit of uncontrollable violent rage to avenge some abuse you suffered long ago?
Are you deranged or damaged?
Sick or evil?
In the end, I pray my film will help me answer these questions.
CHAPTER 4
AT THE SOUND OF the doorknob’s metallic jangle, Grace took in a breath and held it. She dreaded this moment and yearned for it at the same time. She had to see her daughter, to set eyes on her, but would it be Penny who greeted her, or somebody else?
A young uniformed police officer brought Penny into the room as nonchalantly as if he were delivering a package. Grace had to suppress a gasp of utter horror, as it looked to her as if Penny had crawled through a slaughterhouse on hands and knees to get here. Dark blood was everywhere—on her jeans, soiling her blue tee, staining her hands as if she’d dunked them into buckets of paint. The pungent smell of death that followed her into the room was something Grace thought she’d never forget.
“How could you leave her like this?” Grace seethed to the baby-faced officer, who merely shrugged his shoulders in response.
“Sorry, nothing we could do about it. She didn’t have a change of clothes.”
“Well, someone could have found her something to change into, for goodness’ sake,” Grace scolded him.
“This isn’t Walmart, ma’am,” he said, in a calm and even voice that belied his years. “We’re a police station; we don’t have clothes to give her.”
Or compassion, thought Grace.
She turned her attention back to the girl standing by the doorway. She certainly looked like Penny, tall and thin-limbed, with thick bands of straight hair held together in sticky clumps of dried blood. If someone were to scrub off the damn blood, she’d look like a normal teenager: round, smooth face unworn by years of experience, cheekbones on the cusp of being enviable, glimpses of the beautiful young woman she’d become.