by D. J. Palmer
He remained primarily interested in the viciousness of the wounds, and decided Ruth Whitmore, the facility director at Edgewater, should take a look at the files. She’d been there for quite some time, seen a lot of crazed patients over those years. Perhaps she could offer some insight, maybe an example of another female patient of Penny’s stature who’d inflicted injuries like the ones that had been administered to Rachel’s body.
Before Mitch could take that thought any further, his cell phone rang. The number was one he did not recognize, but when he answered the call, he was only somewhat surprised to hear Grace Francone on the line. She spoke for five minutes before Mitch agreed to her request.
“I’d be happy to meet with your lawyer,” he said.
CHAPTER 16
THE LAW OFFICE OF Greg Navarro occupied two rooms in a former industrial complex in downtown Salem that had been converted into an office park. His tidy, nicely appointed conference room featured views of boats gliding across the slate-gray water of Salem Harbor and seagulls levitating above it in search of a meal.
Grace kept interactions with her attorney to a minimum. Every minute in this office or on the phone with Navarro was a drain to the pocketbook. Soon, the equity line she had secured would run out and Grace might have to mortgage the house, maybe start a GoFundMe campaign or seek donations elsewhere. Whatever it took, she would find the money to pay for Penny’s defense, no matter if it meant baking pies well into her eighties.
“Hello, Grace. Good to see you,” Navarro said, looking dignified in a blue suit, blue shirt combo. “And Dr. McHugh, nice to meet you in person.”
Everyone took seats at the circular conference table.
“So, how are you doing this morning?” Navarro asked.
“Good,” Grace said without elaboration, because it was a much easier answer than the truth. “I think we should get right to it.” She resisted the urge to add that in this case, time was literally money. “Have you given any further consideration to what we discussed on the phone?”
Navarro glanced down at a blank page on his legal pad.
“I have, and I think it’s probably not in Penny’s best interest to pursue it.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
“Why not?” Grace pleaded. “If there was someone else in the house that night, couldn’t it lessen her culpability?”
“In terms of mens rea, a guilty intent, an awareness of a crime being committed, understanding the crime was wrong, then no. I mean maybe we hope for murder in the second. Could be that,” Navarro admitted. “But Grace, there’s no proof your daughter was with another person. None whatsoever.”
“There was other DNA at the crime scene,” Grace reminded them.
Navarro said, “Right. Vincent Rapino, the boyfriend—or the cheating asshole, if you ask Vincent’s wife—but he’s not a suspect.”
“Well, maybe he should be,” said Grace. “After all, isn’t it always the husband or the boyfriend? And Rapino is hardly a saint.”
Grace was familiar enough with Rapino’s impressive criminal resume. A onetime petty thief, Rapino graduated to grand larceny and assault and battery, and even did time behind bars before straightening out (allegedly) to become a car mechanic and small business owner in Lynn. Grace didn’t get the impression he was flush with cash, but Rapino made enough money to keep his paramour sheltered in an apartment rented in his name, which gave them a safe place to enjoy their liaisons.
“What if Vince was there?” Grace said to the faces staring back at her. She pushed on. “Penny went to Rachel’s place and didn’t tell me because Rachel told her not to say anything. That was clear from the Facebook messages they exchanged, and I get it, it’s complicated—birth mother, her mother, it’s a tricky dynamic. Anyway, they’re together in Rachel’s house, reconnecting, doing whatever. Vincent shows up, maybe unexpectedly, and there’s a fight. Maybe he killed Rachel and Penny doesn’t remember any of it. She has no memory of being in the pizzeria when her father died. No memory of what happened to her before I found her in the park. I’m just saying, it’s not such a stretch given her history. If that’s the case, she’d be innocent.”
Navarro sent a questioning glance Mitch’s way. “Dr. McHugh, is it possible that one of Penny’s alters is suppressing some of her memory?”
Mitch massaged his beard in thought.
“Possible, yes,” he said. “Likely, no. I think it’s as I told Grace, an information overload, one alter bleeding into another. It made Penny feel like someone else was in the room with her when in actuality, she was alone.” Mitch took a long pause. “I guess given the gravity of the situation we shouldn’t discount anything, but I wouldn’t pin our hopes on it.”
“Understood. Regardless of what we think of his alibi, Rapino’s ex-wife insists they were together that night, and the police bought it. Let’s change gears,” Navarro said to Mitch. “We could really use you as an expert witness at the trial.”
A dark cloud seemed to pass before Mitch’s face as he shifted uneasily in his chair.
“Yeah, I’ve been giving that a lot of thought.”
“And?”
“And…” Mitch let the word hang in the air, while Grace, sensing trouble, curled up inside. “And I keep coming back to the fact that this case was lost when it was allowed to go to trial.”
“It’s just not a very high standard for competency,” Navarro said. “The forensic psychologist gave Penny the evaluation at the courthouse and later again at Edgewater. She understood the charges against her and could assist with her defense—like I said, not a high standard. We argued that one of Penny’s alters might have been responsible and that alter might not meet the competency criteria, but Judge Lockhart was concerned we were elevating her personalities to the status of persons.”
“Which is exactly how it should be,” Grace replied bitterly.
“The judge doesn’t agree, and there’s no room for negotiation there,” said Navarro, offering his assessment in a neutral voice.
“Right,” said Mitch. “Which puts us back to the trial and an insanity defense—which, to be perfectly honest with you all, no psychiatrist I know could argue and win.”
For Grace, it felt like the air had been sucked out of the room in a single rush.
“Why do you say that, Mitch?” Navarro asked. “The murder appears disorganized, frenzied. Penny didn’t bring a weapon, made no attempt to escape even when Rachel called nine-one-one. It shows lack of planning and total lack of awareness on her part.”
“She wrote a hit list that had Rachel’s name on it,” Mitch reminded the room, as if everyone had forgotten the obvious. “Rachel abandoned her, and there will be no shortage of psychologists willing to testify that long-simmering resentment could have triggered extreme violence. Penny may have gone there with murder on her mind, and in the aftermath, she froze. You’re the expert on the law, Attorney Navarro, but that seems like a winning argument for the prosecution to me.”
“Our focus is on her different personality states,” Navarro said. “We know the Eve persona is dark. She’s the one who wrote the hit list, not Penny. We’ve got witnesses to testify to that effect, and I’ve got an expert lined up to talk about DID, because I know the ADA will argue it’s not a valid diagnosis, but I’d rather it be you, Mitch. Having Penny’s doctor on the stand, someone who is also an expert on the condition, would help us tremendously, I think.”
“I could be convincing about DID being a real condition,” Mitch said. “But I can’t at this time give Penny that diagnosis until I work with her some more. She could have a borderline personality disorder … or…”
“Or you think she’s psychotic,” Grace said in a sharp tone. “That she just … what? Murdered Rachel in cold blood for the damn fun of it?”
Grace could feel the anger well up inside her.
“I can’t get on the stand and simply go by what’s in her medical file unless I am in full agreement. I need to have time with Penny to form my own conclusion, which coul
d be that she has DID, or … it could be something else.”
Grace bit her lip to keep from saying something she’d later regret. Mitch wasn’t telling her anything new, he was simply confirming her worst fears. She also understood that the insanity defense was rarely used, and for good reason—it seldom worked. Of all court cases, only 1 percent attempted that defense, and of those, it was successful only 25 percent of the time.
“Where is your comfort level with helping us?” Navarro asked the question Grace was thinking.
Mitch drummed his fingers rhythmically on the conference table before turning his attention to Navarro.
“The standard for being put on trial might be quite low, but it’s a high bar to win an insanity case. To do that you’ll need to show that Penny was unable to understand the criminality of her conduct or unable to conform her conduct to the law. That’s the standard set by the MPC, the Model Penal Code Test.
“Even if you argue that Penny committed the crime while in a dissociated state, and that Eve is the most likely perpetrator of the violence, those old correspondences with Maria are proof that Eve knows right from wrong. Why else keep them secret? All the prosecution has to do is show that Penny, or any of her alters, had partial comprehension of their actions. That’s why those murder fantasies deeply hurt this case.”
And there it was—the big rub, the thing that kept getting in the way.
Maria. Damn Maria. Firebug Maria.
That’s when a thought struck Grace, jarring as a splash of cold water. A tingle started in her feet and worked right up her body as a new theory came to her and began to take root.
“Look, Penny told us she wasn’t alone,” Grace said, her voice and eyes both pleading. “Forget Vincent, okay, forget about that for a second. Doesn’t it make the most sense that Maria was with Penny that night? When you read those documents, Mitch, you’ll see Maria is as twisted as they come. Could it be that Penny didn’t kill anyone, but Maria did?”
For Mitch’s benefit, Grace recounted Maria’s troubled past. At five years old, Maria started setting fires in the woods around her house, and then started setting them inside her house. She was on all sorts of medications to control her impulse behaviors. She and Penny went to school together and they’d bonded over their mental health struggles. At the time, Grace had thought it was good that the girls had each other—Lord knows each needed a friend—but she had no idea how toxic that friendship had become until they were arrested.
“Why wouldn’t Penny tell us about Maria’s involvement?” Navarro asked.
Grace had her answer at the ready. “Maria and Penny—really, Eve—were extremely close,” she said. “Best of friends. We tried to keep the girls separated after the arrest, but it was impossible. They reconnected as virtual friends … what am I going to do? Ban Penny from the Internet? Then, as they got older, more independent, they started seeing each other again. I could see Eve sacrificing herself to protect Maria. Don’t you get it? That’s what Eve does. She protects. It had to be Maria with Eve that night. Had to be.”
“What’s her alibi?” Mitch asked.
“The mother says she was home sick in her bedroom,” Navarro answered.
“Mother lying for daughter,” said Grace. “Or maybe she just thought Maria was in her bedroom. I could go hours not checking on my kids when they were teens. How difficult would it have been for Maria to sneak out, catch a ride to Rachel’s home with Penny, and then walk back after the murder? It’s a two-and-a-half-mile trek at most, which would have taken her maybe an hour. She could have been gone three or four hours and Maria’s mother—assuming incorrectly that her daughter was resting in bed the entire time—wouldn’t have had the faintest idea.”
“Grace, I hear you, but there’s no evidence linking Maria to this crime,” Navarro said.
Grace was buzzing. Connections she hadn’t made before were coming to her fast and furious. “That’s because Maria researched how to pull off the perfect murder. She must have known Penny would go catatonic under extreme stress. It all makes sense now—we never knew the whole story because Eve didn’t know it. But Penny does, and she’s remembered. She told us the truth. ‘I wasn’t alone.’”
“No, what we have is Penny’s word versus Maria’s, and let’s face it—your daughter is not the most credible witness.” Navarro delivered that kill shot with stinging authority.
“Jessica Johnson will pounce all over that argument, if she’s half the prosecutor you say she is,” Mitch added. “And either way, even if Maria was there, Penny was too, and she’ll argue that Penny and her alters all knew right from wrong—and we’ll still lose.”
Nobody seemed to disagree.
“Our choices here are limited,” Navarro said somberly. “We’ll keep Vince and Maria on the table, explore them as possible perps. Fine. But we have to try for the insanity defense because it’s our best option.”
“But you said that defense is hopeless, Mitch.” Grace’s voice sliced through the room sharp as a knife’s edge. “We need to do better for my daughter. What Penny said changes everything.”
“No, really, it confuses everything,” said Navarro.
“So, what then? We’re going to let the prosecution steamroll us at trial and try to fight on appeal?” Grace was outraged. “That’s not good enough for me—and it shouldn’t be for you either.” She directed her ire at Navarro. “We have new information here, and we have to act on it. Now!” Grace punctuated her demand with a slap of her hand against the conference room table. The thunderclap turned the room silent, but nobody seemed ruffled by the outburst. Open emotions were to a law firm as an open wound was to an ER.
“You make a good point, Grace,” Mitch said, “and I think if we hadn’t talked it out, I might have missed an important angle.”
“The two-killer theory?” Grace asked, sounding hopeful.
“No, something else,” said Mitch. “Except for that one glimpse of Penny we just had, from the night of the arrest on, it’s only been Eve. From my understanding—and Greg, correct me if I’m wrong here—to win in court, it depends on whether the personality controlling Penny was unable to appreciate the criminality of her conduct or conform to law.”
“Not exactly. We need to prove in court that Penny has DID and then make the case that one of her alters did the crime, which is why she has no memory of the murder. There’s precedent for that sort of strategy, but it’s no guarantee we’ll get the verdict we’re after,” Navarro clarified.
“What if we can strengthen the case by finding the killer?”
It took Grace a moment for the implications to sink in. “You’re talking about getting through Eve, aren’t you? Reaching her other alters.”
Mitch nodded. “If I can observe this other personality—maybe it’s Eve in an altered, psychotic state, or it’s Chloe, Ruby, or someone we haven’t met yet, a fourth alter. If I can observe them under the right conditions, I could testify that one of Penny’s alters meets the test for lack of criminal responsibility, which really means that Penny meets the standard.”
Navarro steepled his hands together, looking intrigued. “Go on,” he said.
“I looked at the ME report of the murder. The crime scene photos … they were utterly savage.” Mitch screwed up his face in a grimace, as if seeing those pictures in his mind.
“I didn’t think a girl of Penny’s size and stature could inflict such carnage, but I’m making some inquiries to see if it’s possible. It’s also possible she has a male alter, or an avenging personality that we’ve never met, one that not only gave her a feeling of rage-enhanced strength but changed her physiology during the attack. There are stories of an entire-body stress response giving people superhuman strength in life-and-death emergencies.
“I guess what I’m suggesting is this: if I can demonstrate that Penny can enter a dissociative state in which she cannot conform to the law or reasonably know that killing is wrong, we might have a stronger case in court. But it means I’ll need to conne
ct with all of Penny’s alters, including ones she may be keeping hidden from us.”
“Can you do that? Contact them?” Navarro made it sound like Mitch was going to attempt some kind of séance.
“I can certainly try,” he said.
“I’m good with that,” Navarro replied curtly. He, too, understood that time was money. “Whatever I can do to support you, I’m happy to do it.”
“Thank you,” Mitch said.
“But Mitch,” Navarro continued, “the trial is three weeks away. You’d better hurry.”
CHAPTER 17
MITCH GOT LOST ON his way to the therapy room, making him late for what he assumed would be a session with Eve. Maybe Penny, Chloe, or even British-sounding Ruby would surprise him and show up in her place. Perhaps his efforts would be too effective, and one of them would snap, try to break his neck—but then, assuming he didn’t die, he’d have what he needed for the trial. If Edgewater had taught him anything, it was to always expect the unexpected.
When he arrived, Mitch locked eyes with the guard keeping watch over his patient. In forty minutes, this same guard, or another like him, would return to escort Penny back to her cell—though Mitch could see at a glance that it wasn’t Penny awaiting his arrival. The girl, seated at the table in her green uniform, projected a confident air, greeting Mitch with something of a cruel smirk. Her blue eyes held all the warmth of ice chips. Her hair hung loose, cascading well past her shoulders.
Before Mitch could take his seat, a strobe light began to flash and a familiar siren wailed. No doubt a fight had broken out somewhere in the complex. Guards, including the one keeping watch over his patient, were quickly on the move. Mitch covered his ears to block out the piercing sound, noting that Eve kept her hands rooted on her lap. The sudden noise and flashing lights did not unnerve her, perhaps because she’d grown accustomed to it.
“Fight in the cafeteria,” Mitch heard a guard yell as he went sprinting down the hall, followed closely by half a dozen personnel surging in that direction.