by D. J. Palmer
“You’re using a lot of dangerous language with me,” he said darkly. “DNA, blackmail, murder, investigations … but hell, I’ll give you points for your creativity. Look, I’ve got a business to run, obligations to take care of. You two show up to my place of work, threatening all that … that ain’t cool with me.” He cocked his head sideways. “Not cool at all.”
Vince opened his mouth and tossed the bent swab inside. He swished it around, getting it covered in his saliva, before he spat it onto the floor.
“You want my DNA?” he said to Grace. “Go and get it.”
Grace stared at the swab like she would a venomous snake. To get it, she’d have to take her eyes off Vince, but the payoff was too hard to resist. Bending at the knees, Grace sank down, lower and lower, never averting her gaze from the man looming above. She reached for the swab, but had to look away for just a second. A blur of something black streaked into her field of vision, and Grace jerked her hand away a millisecond before the heavy sole of Vince’s work boot would have crushed her fingers underneath.
“Actually, I came up with another idea,” Vince said as Grace stood up. “Why don’t you two ladybirds turn yourselves around and get the fuck out of my garage.”
The anger in his eyes, the heat he gave off, told Grace to get out—and fast. She took a single step backward, sending Annie a look that got her to follow. She didn’t turn around completely until she felt sunshine hit her face, and then she and Annie hurried to the car. She half expected Vince to come barreling out of the garage with a gun drawn, but instead he and his crew emerged merely to watch them drive away, standing in a line, staring straight at them. Only when the repair shop was out of sight did Grace feel like she could breathe again.
“Well, that was a total fail,” said Annie shakily.
“Not exactly.” Grace pushed down on the gas pedal, still reeling from what she’d seen.
“Um, what am I missing here?” asked Annie. “We went to get his DNA and we nearly died.”
“You didn’t see it?”
“See what?”
Grace returned a smile as she left the narrow, crumbling neighborhood for a more populous and prosperous one.
“Are you going to share with me, Miss Mysterious?” asked Annie, sounding annoyed.
“Did you see Vince’s necklace?” asked Grace.
“Yeah,” Annie said before shaking her head. “I mean no. I was too busy trying not to shit my pants.”
Grace sent Annie a fractured smile. “Well, I did,” she said. “And it was a silver chain with a large anchor pendant attached.”
CHAPTER 41
RUTH WHITMORE MADE TIME in her busy schedule to meet with Mitch and discuss his lunchtime seminar. Edgewater doctors, nurses, and corrections officers had come together as Mitch introduced alternative approaches to patient restraints including new techniques for de-escalation and improved processes for collaboration. By way of example, Mitch dedicated some portion of his talk to the contrast between his violent altercation with John Grady, the Mountain Man, and the encounter between Darla and Grace, in which words had been enough to calm her.
CO Blackwood wasn’t one of those in attendance. Mitch noticed that, but everyone who was there seemed eager to learn, and the concentration and pointed questions from his audience revealed another side of Edgewater. For the most part, the people who worked here were capable, caring professionals. Despite their limited resources, they wanted to do the right thing, make a difference in the lives of patients, and be better than they were yesterday.
He hadn’t planned it, but the lecture took place on the day Darla got out of solitary. She’d been arraigned on two counts of assault and attempted murder. Despite curtailing of her privileges, keeping Darla away from Penny would be the correction officers’ responsibility, so before Mitch got into any specifics about the seminar, the first item he wanted to discuss concerned CO Blackwood.
Whitmore greeted Mitch in an impeccably styled navy suit, though her short hair, normally coiffed to precision, appeared somewhat unkempt today. Then again, Mitch figured if he had her job, he’d have no hair at all. He had no idea how Whitmore juggled the many responsibilities and constant crises with such aplomb.
However she managed, he’d come to admire her a great deal. He sincerely appreciated her continued interest in his work here, and in Penny’s case in particular. Mitch took a seat in a comfortable armchair in her spacious office. Typical of Whitmore, she skipped the small talk, somehow already knowing what was on his mind.
“I’ve spoken again with Blackwood,” Whitmore said, “and he vehemently denies writing the note.”
“Of course he does,” said Mitch. “Wouldn’t you?”
Whitmore responded by clasping her hands together, her thin fingers turning white with pressure. “Naturally,” she said.
“So what now?” Mitch asked.
“Conjecture is not enough proof for disciplinary action, Mitch,” said Whitmore.
“But I’ve come to trust your instincts, so I’ve given Blackwood a bump in pay to keep him content and reassigned him to our max security unit. He’ll have his hands full over there, and no access to Darla or Penny. That’s the best I can do.”
Mitch peered at Whitmore for a moment, mulling it over in his head. Best solution for all, he decided. As long as Blackwood was out of the picture he could assume Penny would be safe from further harm.
“Good enough,” said Mitch. “Thank you so much.”
“Speaking of Penny,” Whitmore said. “How is your assessment going? Trial is coming up, and I’m curious if you think she’ll be leaving us to stay elsewhere.”
“By elsewhere I assume you mean a prison setting.”
Whitmore nodded and peered at Mitch with keen interest. He recalled what she had said to him that day in her office when he asked her to look at the medical examiner’s report detailing the forensics of Rachel’s murder. She’d put it crassly—her word—but it made sense to Mitch. If Penny were to have a true case of DID, the sensational nature of the crime and the mystique around her condition would generate publicity for Edgewater. With that as leverage, perhaps she could access much-needed state funds to improve facility operations.
He hated to have to disappoint her.
“Do you believe Penny has DID?” she asked.
“I wish I had a clear answer for you,” said Mitch. “I’ve witnessed Penny experience dissociative states that are uncharacteristic of her known alters three times now. On each occasion she shared some memory from the night of the murder, but I think these are false narratives she’s constructed. For instance, she’s convinced she wasn’t alone that night, that someone threatened to put her head into a bucket of ammonia, and that Rachel had done something wrong or was living under the threat of going to prison. That sort of delusional thinking is typical of borderlines suffering paranoid ideation.
“It’s also possible these are stress-induced false memories or inventions to ease a guilty conscience and she is transferring her guilt to her alters. I could be wrong about Blackwood, and Penny wrote that note to Darla herself as a form of self-punishment. And there’s also the possibility that, the note, all that she’s told us, everything deliberate fabrications on her part.”
“Deliberate? Why would she do that?”
“To mislead us,” said Mitch. “To send us on a wild-goose chase, so to speak. In other words, she’s getting a thrill out of toying with us. There’s been absolutely no verification that anything she has told us is true. If it’s all make-believe and done intentionally, then Dr. Palumbo’s diagnosis of antisocial borderline personality disorder is probably the right one, and she went to Rachel’s home that night with the intent to murder.
“On the other hand, if I could verify that the things Penny has said in her dissociative states are actually true—if I could corroborate any of it—I suppose it would strongly support a diagnosis of DID. These personality states are quite real, so it wouldn’t take much for me to flip my position.”
“Oh my. Bombshells abound. Are you going to testify at her trial?”
“That’s the plan,” Mitch said, though he didn’t sound happy about it. “Greg Navarro was hoping I’d be able to confirm a DID diagnosis and demonstrate that Penny had a psychotic break.”
“And?” Whitmore hit Mitch with an inscrutable gaze.
“And I cannot,” he said. “I’ll show him my final report and he’ll have to make the call as to what he wants to do. If he wants me to take the stand, I will, but I’ll tell the truth as I see it. I know Navarro wants to prove to a jury that Penny couldn’t control herself at the time of the killing, or didn’t think what she was doing was wrong, but I can’t say that.”
“So are you going to tell Grace about your conclusion?” Whitmore’s eyes moved a little.
“She won’t take it well,” said Mitch. “But as I see it, no matter the diagnosis, without the ability to show a psychotic break, it will be a long shot to prove her not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“I think ‘won’t take it well’ is soft-shoeing it a bit,” said Whitmore. “Grace wants you to unequivocally denounce Palumbo’s diagnosis and go with DID. I spoke to her on the phone the other day. She thinks there’s a hidden alter that may be an avenger-type personality. That Rachel abused Penny in the past, and seeing her for the first time in years unearthed some repressed memories that caused this alter to come out and, well … we all know the rest. Has she spoken to you about that?”
A wave of sadness tore through Mitch. He had wanted to do more for Grace, and he had let her down.
“We’ve discussed it at length. I have no proof of an avenger-type alter, or of any abuse or traumatic experience that Penny may have suffered that would have contributed to her developing DID. None whatsoever. I’m afraid Grace might be suffering delusions of her own.”
That seemed to pique Whitmore’s interest. “How so?”
“She called me, too, but with a new theory,” Mitch said. “Apparently, she found out that Vince Rapino, Rachel’s boyfriend, wears an anchor pendant necklace.”
Whitmore stared back blankly.
“Penny has a thing for anchors,” Mitch clarified. “She had a necklace that she remembered from when she was a little girl living with Rachel. Grace is quite in tune with her daughter’s feelings, and began buying these pendants for Penny as birthday presents and such. It’s become something of a totem for her. Chloe, the perfectionist alter, even uses anchor symbols to sign her name on her artwork, which is how we reached her. It’s a powerful motif for her, that’s for sure.”
Mitch didn’t have the drawing Chloe made on his person, but he did have pictures of it on his phone. He showed Whitmore the scene she’d drawn: the house; the tire swing attached by a brown crayon-line rope to a tree on a wide green lawn; a woman with Xs for eyes near a jug of what he presumed to be ammonia; and a little girl in an upstairs room getting ready to take a bath. She’d been drawn with an anchor pendant around her neck, holding a blue square—probably that missing book featuring water and boats.
“Grace thinks Rapino might be Penny’s birth father,” Mitch added. “And she either had a matching necklace like his, or she saw it draped around his neck way back then. If you think like Grace, Penny may have seen it again when Vince was killing Rachel.”
Whitmore’s eyes widened with surprise. “So she thinks Rapino is the killer?”
“Either that or Penny’s friend Maria is somehow involved. She’s grasping here,” Mitch said. “Not that I can blame her. She’s doing what any parent would do, what I would do, fighting for every inch on the battlefield.”
“But she’s going to lose the battle?” Whitmore’s mouth formed a tight-lipped frown.
“No,” said Mitch. “She’s going to lose the war.”
A knock on the office door drew both Mitch’s and Whitmore’s attention.
“Come in,” Whitmore said gruffly.
A correction officer entered, holding a large white envelope in his right hand. “This came into the mail room marked ‘Urgent,’” he said, striding over to her desk. “You said you wanted anything marked ‘Urgent’ brought to you right away.”
“Indeed,” Whitmore said, taking the envelope from him. He remained standing by her desk.
“This isn’t the army. You don’t need me to dismiss you.”
The CO gave a nod and departed quickly as Whitmore opened the envelope. She took out a familiar file folder, and Mitch remembered her instructions regarding its contents. The Edgewater mailroom wasn’t the most efficient, Whitmore had cautioned, so Mitch had the medical examiner reviewing Penny’s file send it back to Whitmore’s attention, not his. It was also marked “Urgent” to ensure proper delivery of the important documents.
“Give me a moment, will you?” Whitmore said, leafing through the pages. The ME might have been Mitch’s contact, but it was Whitmore’s prerogative to have the first look.
Mitch took the opportunity to text Caitlyn, who’d gone to Clean Start to have a visit with Adam. If this were old times, they’d have wine with dinner that night and talk about the case. She’d listen carefully, encourage him, and make him feel like everything was going to be okay. But Mitch wasn’t so sure—not with Adam, or with Penny. What if his diagnosis was wrong? Could Penny be a true case of DID? Could there be a fourth alter, an avenger type, someone else locked inside her—a boy, a girl, young or old, black or white, a person within a person who carried the darkest of intentions—someone Mitch had failed to reach?
“Well, this is interesting,” Whitmore said.
Mitch’s attention was on his text chat with Caitlyn, who assured him that things with Adam were as good as they could be. He had talked to her about becoming a master gardener after tending the rosebushes at Clean Start, maybe even starting a landscaping business when he got out. An eye to the future was progress for sure. Mitch promised himself that he’d visit his son on the weekend.
But first, the file.
“What is it?” asked Mitch.
Whitmore removed two photographs from the folder. Mitch recognized them: they were pictures of Penny’s arms, taken after her arrest. His medical examiner friend had circled the marks around Penny’s wrists (which everyone had assumed were abrasions from the handcuffs) in bright red marker and put a sticky note directly on the photograph next to the circles.
“Have a look,” Whitmore said, sliding the photograph across the desk for Mitch’s review. “She shared my assessment—doesn’t believe those marks around Penny’s wrists were put there by handcuffs.”
Mitch read the note with widening eyes, keying in on certain words that jumped out at him. Dark brown color … red band on both sides of the mark … slight bruising visible … wearing of the skin … indicative of ligature marks.
“She was tied up,” Mitch said with a gasp. He peered at Whitmore over the top edge of the photograph.
“Tied up,” Whitmore repeated. “I’m not surprised the police and forensics missed it. Handcuffs can leave marks so it’s natural they’d have dismissed them, but I’m nothing if not observant, have to be in this job, and I hadn’t seen marks like those before. What is it that Penny told you?”
“She wasn’t alone,” Mitch said breathlessly.
“Wasn’t alone,” Whitmore repeated. “Meaning maybe Penny’s telling us the truth, Mitch. I guess there’s the proof you were after. Assuming she didn’t bind her own wrists together, she wasn’t alone that night.”
“I’ll get this to the lawyer and call Grace right away, let her know. This has the potential to change everything.”
CHAPTER 42
WHEN MITCH CALLED WITH the shocking news, he was more excited than Grace had ever heard him. His explanation was so breathless and quick that it took her a moment to grasp what he was saying.
“So if your medical examiner is right, and Penny’s wrists were bound, then Mitch—that means she’s been telling us the truth all along.” Grace felt light on her feet and in her head.
> “So who was with her?” she asked.
“That I don’t know, and wish I did,” Mitch said.
He offered to meet in Swampscott to discuss the ramifications, and they settled on the war room at Annie’s house. Mitch got there before Attorney Navarro, giving Grace just enough time to review the ME’s report and the photographs for herself before the fireworks started. No defense attorney would welcome an entire strategy being blown apart days before trial.
“Look at these marks,” Grace said, waving one of the photos like a pennant before Mitch’s eyes. “The rope had to have been very tight to leave marks like these. Is there any way to access Penny’s memory to find out who tied her up? Hypnosis? Another dose of ketamine perhaps? Anything?”
“Might be worth a try, but she’s got strong defenses, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” Mitch said. “I will concede that this cements for me that Penny isn’t delusional. I had no proof that what she’s been telling us was true. Honestly, I thought she was playing us for fools or engaging in magical thinking. But now … now it’s a different story. She’s not role-playing here, she’s not using alters as an excuse for her behavior. I’m not flat out rejecting Dr. Palumbo’s take, as there are aspects of Penny’s mental illness that align with borderline personality disorder, but right now I fully support Dr. Cross’s diagnosis.”
Grace’s face broke into a bright smile that Mitch mimicked to a lesser degree.
“Are you saying…?” Her voice was full of hope.
“My official diagnosis for the trial will be that Penny has a dissociative identity disorder … meaning she has more than one personality state. Even if Dr. Palumbo was partially right, he was wrong to have assumed an antisocial aspect to her disorder. Your daughter is not depraved.”
Relief washed over Grace and gratitude flooded her heart, so much so that she strode over to Mitch and gave him a long, warm embrace. When they broke apart, a thin film of tears coated her eyes.