by D. J. Palmer
O’Reilly’s answer was a course of medication, and for a time, it seemed to help. You resumed playing clarinet, but when you couldn’t master a new piece with ease, you once again announced your intention to quit concert band, this time for good. Dr. O’Reilly added OCD to your growing list of conditions, which went hand in hand with a growing pile of pills in all shapes, colors, and sizes.
Once you entered the world of docs and diagnoses, of pills and ed plans, Maria entered your orbit. She was one of those kids—a troubled, dark, disturbed loner type. You two ended up in eighth-grade Spanish together, and the connection was instant. It’s like you each possessed some built-in radar for uniquely wired minds.
Even back then, Maria stood out. She dressed differently and didn’t seem to care much what anyone thought or said of her. She wore all black, dyed her long hair black, and wore so much eye shadow around her eyes that she looked more like a raccoon than a witch, which I know is the look she was after. She always wore bright red lipstick, and I don’t think any other kid in middle school had a nose ring, either. All this plus her whiter-than-white skin—she looked to me like a walking corpse. But you didn’t care one bit about Maria’s appearance, and honestly, that’s admirable.
Her nicknames—Firebug Maria, Torchy, Burning Woman (a play on Burning Man)—never fazed her. Her give-a-damn was busted. Maria was into witchcraft, that Wicca thing, something I don’t think you ever bought into—or maybe you did, who knows? Maybe there is an alter I haven’t met who tried his or her hand at casting spells.
As the protective older brother, I would tag along with you two sometimes because I didn’t trust Maria. Wasn’t hard to see why she made me uneasy. Remember that day you took me up to her bedroom, the summer before you started ninth grade, six months before you two got arrested? Her room looked like the souvenir shop at the Salem Witch Museum. The walls were plastered with tapestries and posters featuring pentacles, the talisman used in magical evocation. One hanging in particular stuck out to me—a Star of David, with interior spaces decorated in a combination of Hebrew letters and weird rune symbols. I didn’t know what to make of that, but it was eerie nonetheless.
She kept a collection of knives and swords in her bedroom (knives and swords at thirteen years old, and her mother said nothing about it—what gives?) but they were for “ritual purposes only,” or so Maria said. Now I’m wondering what kind of rituals she was conducting up there.
Of all the strange items in Maria’s bedroom—Tarot cards, weird jewelry, incense, melted candles (which blew my mind—she was a fire bug, and her mother allowed her to have matches?)—the strangest of all was her black metal cauldron. What teen girl has a cauldron? Your friend Maria, that’s who.
Her bedroom smelled like potpourri from The Twilight Zone. We didn’t stay long, thank God, but I did get a Tarot reading from her before we left. She said I was going to be very well known. I’m thinking if she’s right, it’ll be because of you, Penny, and this film of mine.
Once you got your new diagnosis of DID, Maria became even more enamored with you. I think she tried conjuring up new alters using eye of newt, or whatever herbs and spices were required to make her magic work.
You let Maria meet them all. Penny was too quiet for her. Ruby made her giggle. Chloe could be annoying but helpful with homework. The girl Maria loved the best though, without a doubt, was Eve. I couldn’t tell if you’d bring out Eve when you and Maria were together because you couldn’t control it, or if you were playing Maria the same way you may have been playing us. Either way, when you were with Maria, it was almost always as Eve.
I keep searching for moments of truth, proof that you aren’t sick but twisted. Because let’s be honest, proving you’re innocent is more than an uphill climb. I was thinking recently about that time you, Maria, and me were being aimless around town. I was doing my protector thing, pretending I wanted to hang out, but really I was keeping an eye on you. And things got pretty weird. You were Penny that day, quiet and shy. You had something on your mind, don’t know what, but it annoyed Maria, that much was obvious. She kept needling you.
“Where is Eve?”
“You’re boring me, Penny.”
“Come on, let’s have some fun.”
“Fun” for Maria usually involved some kind of fire, and we ended up behind CVS, where there was a trash can half filled with garbage. Maria took out a lighter.
“No cameras here,” she said. I got the sense she’d led us to that location knowing that fact ahead of time.
“Let’s burn it.” Her eyes glowed in the flickering flame of the Bic lighter she’d produced from a pocket.
As Penny, you were having none of that.
“No,” you said.
“Come on,” Maria urged. “It’ll be fun. You’re so lame. You won’t do anything cool. I wish Eve were here. I don’t think I like you. You’re boring, Penny. Dull. Dull. Dull.”
“Stop it, Maria,” I said angrily.
I was about to pull you away, take you home, when I saw the switch happen. There are movies that sensationalized multiple personality disorder, portraying it as a transformation from one person into another, like a lycanthrope going from man to wolf, but switching doesn’t happen that way. It’s not dramatic. Not like a seizure. A lot of times it takes careful study to tell when a switch has happened, but this time, I could see it clearly. The way you carried yourself with a more confident stance, a dark gleam in your eyes, that trademark tilt to your mouth—it was all there in a snap.
What happened next was snaplike, too.
You snatched the lighter from Maria’s hand, flicked on the flame, and put it to some paper in the trash can. I watched it happen, I’m ashamed to admit, just like with the cat—I sort of let it go on because maybe part of me, that dumb teen part, a brain not fully formed, wanted to see the burn. And up it went in no time. Flames spreading quickly, fire catching paper, all in a great chain reaction that soon had the trash can fully engulfed.
You and Maria danced around the fire like two spirits of the night trying to conjure a demon. Then we heard sirens, and that’s when we ran, you two laughing manically and me thinking what the hell did I just let you do?
Later, when I had time to reflect, another thought occurred: I realized how easily Maria had manipulated you into setting the blaze. A couple taunts, and you were part of the burn.
After your arrest, I got to thinking about those murder plans you two secretly shared, and wondered if she’d encouraged you the same way she got you to set that fire.
I’ve read all your secret correspondences with Maria, and all I can say is: What the hell, Penny? The hit list Maria sent in error to the wrong girl (big mistake there) had a lot of names on it, but the standouts were your brother Ryan, and your birth mother, Rachel Boyd.
But that wasn’t even the most chilling part. Maria was very clear in her writings about how she’d commit murder:
Don’t move the body. Leave it where it died. We should kill random people, too, because most of the time the victim is someone the killer knows. We don’t want to leave any trail back to us. If we off a stranger, it will be harder for the police to identify a suspect. And we shouldn’t do it in Swampscott. We need to pick a different town, a place that doesn’t get a lot of traffic. I hope we do it, too, because I want to know what it feels like to kill someone. It must be the most incredible feeling of power.
But it wasn’t just Maria doing the planning. You played along, too.
We’ll buy anything we need a month before we need it, you wrote back. We need ropes, gloves, buckets, and sponges. After we do it we have to live our lives like NOTHING ever happened. We’ll ride our bikes because that makes it easier to get off the road so we can avoid the police.
You two went back and forth with your planning, talking dismemberment, pulling teeth, burning off fingerprints, burying body parts, eliminating DNA, and eventually you wrote what is maybe the most incriminating piece of evidence against you:
How about
we do in my birth mother? We’d have to track her down, but that would be some weird juicy shit for a Lifetime movie or something.
Hahaha full psycho, Maria wrote back, following that with four purple heart emojis.
You wrote: I’d want it to hurt and to last. What that bitch did to me is unforgivable.
Maria: What did she do?
Maria: Helllooo?
Maria: You still there???
You: Never mind.
CHAPTER 24
ON ITS BEST DAYS, Mitch found Edgewater to be a depressingly alien place. He felt a malignant energy here, one with its own life force, feeding off the patients and employees with equal voracity.
Many of the warnings Mitch had received from well-intentioned colleagues had proved prescient. But, to his great surprise, he found himself thinking he might not be quite so eager to depart when he reached the end of his one-year commitment. It seemed that battling dark energy—his depression, Adam’s addiction, even his divorce from Caitlyn—suited him well.
Forget about leaving. He was right where he belonged.
It was early afternoon, hours before the end of the workday. He had charting to do, reports to write, and prescriptions to evaluate. Of all his cases, it was Penny’s that occupied an outsized portion of his gray matter. What Penny had shared was helpful, but not enough to get a jury to rule in her favor. He needed more. Much more.
Mitch made his way along yet another bland hallway with deliberate steps. He was doing his best to walk without a limp from the pain in his lower back and knee, the result of yet another fight he had helped to break up only an hour ago. The aggressor was a mountain of a man who’d squared off with a slender fellow, surprisingly agile, who had been suffering from paranoid delusions when he shot his mother over a nonexistent inheritance. The cause of the scuffle between the two men was irrelevant. It was the frequency of these skirmishes that inspired Mitch to take his concerns to the highest authority he could access.
“The guards need to learn how to see patients, not threats,” Mitch explained to Ruth Whitmore, a thin, no-nonsense woman in her early sixties with an officious air—which, given her responsibilities as facility director, was quite understandable. She favored good suits and quality perfume, and her office, Mitch noted, was a great deal nicer than his own, with a leather armchair, ornate rug, and no bars on the windows.
“Are you hurt?” Whitmore inquired in a raspy voice, which did not exactly sound sympathetic. She was probably thinking paperwork—or worse, worker’s comp.
“I’m fine,” Mitch said, getting that feeling he was wasting his (and her) time. “But the guards put the guy in a suitcase hold, knees pressed against his chest, which could contribute to heart failure.”
Whitmore bit the end of her pen as she studied the incident report someone had placed on her desk prior to Mitch’s arrival. At least something got done efficiently around here, he thought.
“That’s John Grady you helped take down, all three hundred pounds of him.” She gazed up at Mitch, wide-eyed. “I’m impressed. So, Dr. McHugh, tell me, how would you suggest we go about subduing someone like Mr. Grady when he starts … acting up?”
Mitch found her tight-lipped smile rather chilling.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think a dozen or so laws may have been broken during that mêlée.”
“Good thing there were no video cameras nearby.”
Mitch couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not, but he went with not.
“I’m just saying the whole incident could have been avoided if patients weren’t being overseen by people trained to be prison guards. If we had more doctors on staff, I think we could put an end to these fights that keep breaking out. We’re being reactive, not proactive.”
He recounted the incident with Darla in the hallway. “If I hadn’t been there to talk her down, that encounter would have ended with violence. Instead, we had a peaceful resolution and Darla went on her way. But I’m only one person.”
“Doctor,” Whitmore said, elongating the word. “I’m grateful you’re a member of our team. Really, I am. Your credentials are impeccable.”
She took a moment to access Mitch’s personnel file on her computer.
“Doctorate of medicine from Albany Medical College; associate medical director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center for thirteen years. Five years with the North Shore Medical Center. Board certified in psychiatry and childhood adolescent psychiatry through the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Not to mention you’ve done a fellowship in forensic psychology, an expertise that has certainly come in handy around here. You’ve quite the diverse background and skill set, Mitch.”
“Brings back good memories of lots of sleepless nights,” said Mitch.
“Reminds me how lucky we are to have you,” Whitmore said. “The fact is that Edgewater needs people like you to look after our residents. But there’s a little thing in the way of your grand vision for how it should be done, and that is money.”
She paused here to let the non-newsflash sink in. “I’m assuming you’re not going to open your checkbook to provide the necessary funds, which I promise you are a substantial amount, so I suggest you speak to the guards involved and together come up with some new protocols for engaging our more—let’s call them overly exuberant—guests like … what was her name?”
“Darla Miller.”
She typed something else into her computer, and quietly read whatever appeared on her screen.
“Oh, she’s a tricky one, that Darla,” Whitmore noted with a sharp intake of breath. “Lots of demerits there, but thanks to you she’s not getting one for her confrontation with Ms. Francone.”
Mitch knew a demerit was code around here for solitary and he was glad he’d helped to spare Darla that pain.
“Speaking of Ms. Francone,” Whitmore continued on. “I heard a bit about your experiment. Ammonia. Quite inventive.”
Mitch had no idea how word of their ammonia experiment had gotten back to her, but no matter. He knew from her reputation that Whitmore kept a close watch on all happenings at her hospital, and no doubt any developments with one of her more notorious “guests,” as she liked to call them, would attract her attention.
“We sort of stumbled on the ammonia idea and thought it might trigger a switch, which it did.” Mitch rehashed the medical details on smell he had previously shared with Grace. “Penny told us things about that night she hadn’t revealed before.”
Whitmore’s eyes sparkled in a most delighted way. “So did she confess?”
Inwardly, Mitch bristled at the glee in her voice. “No, sort of the opposite,” he said. “She talked about there being an accomplice, maybe, or someone else in the house with her. She claims she didn’t do anything wrong. The mother thinks she may be innocent.”
“Oh dear,” said Whitmore, tapping her pen against her desk like a miniature drumstick. “Optimism can be such a dreadful thing in these situations. I do hope you’ll dispel that notion sooner rather than later. Save her the pain. How is everything else going for you, Mitch? I’m so glad you stopped by.”
Mitch was about to take that as his cue to leave when he remembered the second purpose of his visit here. He had with him the medical examiner’s report and wanted to get Whitmore’s take on it.
“Everything is fine, thank you. But before I go, I’m curious to know if there are other patients here, females like Penny, of similar height and build, who have killed with such savagery.”
Whitmore sent him a sideways glance.
“Are you suggesting a woman’s not capable of the same sort of viciousness as men? Tsk-tsk, Mitch. When it comes to equality, we women deserve more respect.”
“Right,” said Mitch, almost smiling, though he was feeling a bit hot under the collar. “It’s just I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I have the pictures in the file from the state medical examiner’s office.”
Whitmore took the file and flipped through the pages, pa
using longer to study some of the more gruesome images.
“Are you trying to keep me from sleeping tonight, Dr. McHugh?” She turned the file folder around to show Mitch a colored photo of Rachel’s nearly decapitated head.
“Yeah, sorry, I probably should have warned you it was extremely graphic.”
She read on, flipping pages and studying photos, for a good five minutes. Judging from her sunken expression, it was more than enough time to gander.
“Well, this is not unprecedented. I could name five women off the top of my head that have done something equally violent. One who comes to mind used a hammer to do away with her uncle—who, by the way, had been abusing her. So, yes, with the right amount of combustible material, girls like Penny can kill just as savagely, or even more so, than any man.”
“Okay, that’s good to know,” Mitch said, a bit disappointed not to have a bombshell new theory to work with.
“However,” Whitmore said, tapping the file with one of her long, manicured fingernails. “This image sticks out to me.”
It was, of all things, a picture of Penny—a close-up of her wrists after she’d been scrubbed clean of blood.
“If there’s one thing we don’t have a shortage of around here, Mitch, it’s handcuffs. For all the times I’ve seen our guests, ah, secured, I’ve never once seen them left with marks like these. It’s a bit odd. And, while you might think I’ve grown immune to oddities while working here, I assure you—there’s an ordinary to the extraordinary. This photograph very much falls outside my standard deviation of strange.”
Mitch ruminated on her observation for a moment. “Interesting,” he eventually said, pondering what to do with this new information. Then it came to him. “You know, I have a friend from a prior position, a medical examiner—one of the best in the state, in my opinion. Maybe I should get Penny’s file to her. Get her take on it. It will get a faster look-see than going through the state lab.”
Whitmore appeared to be in full agreement. “The mother’s the medical proxy, I presume,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll need her to sign some release forms and whatnot, so see to it, will you?”