by P. J. Vernon
41
Nina
Mary-Ann Conner’s practice sat downtown on a corner in a black-shuttered single-story building painted pink. A wooden sign swung from a post out front, reading PALMETTO STATE INTERNAL MEDICINE. Dr. Conner’s name, second from the top.
I left my phone in the car so Burton couldn’t reach me. Matthew had called him, and Jim’s voicemail had been blistering.
“You’re done, Nina,” he’d bellowed. I could picture the beet-red splotches across his cheek and brow. “You’re off. Goddamnit, you are fucking off this case!” I’d hung up then. He was right. Completely right. But I decided to maintain deniability for one last interview before passing it off to someone whose judgment wouldn’t be clouded—along with the tidbit about Joanna calling the police that night.
Entering the waiting room, the citrus scent of mopped linoleum replaced the rain-soaked pine from outside. A heavy-set woman at reception swiveled in her chair as I approached.
“Sign your name on the sheet and indicate which doctor you’re here for.” She tapped a clipboard with her pen. “If you’re a new patient, there’ll be additional paperwork.”
I reached into my pocket and produced my badge. “Detective Nina Palmer. I need to speak with Mary-Ann Conner, please.”
My badge rendered the woman speechless. She’d likely never seen one this close before. Seeming to gather her thoughts, she replied, “Dr. Conner’s with a patient now. Can I set you up in her office?”
“That’d be perfect.”
I followed her through a side door and down a narrow hall. As the receptionist closed the office door behind me, I took a seat in one of two deep leather chairs before Dr. Connor’s desk.
Moments later, the office door opened, and I turned around.
“Good afternoon, Detective Palmer,” A silver-haired woman said in a voice like sweet tea. “I’m Mary-Ann Conner.” The enormous diamond on her ring finger contrasted with the green costume jewelry around her neck.
“Thanks for taking the time, Dr. Conner,” I replied, brushing my thighs with my palms. She removed her white coat and hung it with the others. Taking a seat behind her desk, she adjusted thick-rimmed glasses—the sort that might be fashionable if you squinted.
“Certainly. I’m not sure what I can possibly help you with, but I’ll do my best,” she said, smiling.
“I appreciate that,” I said, pausing for a moment. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ve been the King’s family doctor for decades. I’m here to talk with you about the family. I have serious concerns.”
Mary-Ann appeared to freeze. I’d never seen someone go so pale so quickly. Except perhaps Charlotte.
“Gray King Godfrey, specifically,” I added, prodding for a reaction.
Her silence grew uncomfortably long. Finally, she shifted in her chair and spoke up, voice catching at first. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss any patients of mine.” She drew a deep breath, “Not from any point in time.”
I leaned forward. “I’m aware of patient-doctor confidentiality. I’m also aware that when the well-being of a child is at stake, the confidentiality contract becomes void. In fact, you’re legally obligated to report what you know.”
“Mrs. Godfrey isn’t a child.”
“She was at the time you were her doctor.”
Dr. Conner’s face went from shocked to irritated. “I’ve served the King family for quite some time. They trust me because I respect their privacy. Now, you’re clearly here without Mrs. Godfrey’s consent. She may have been a minor when I saw her, but she isn’t anymore. If she needs information about the care I’ve provided, she can request it.”
I brushed her response aside. “Let me try this another way. When medical disclosure is in the public’s interest, you’re also compelled to relay that information to authorities.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Public interest?”
“If there’s a sexual predator—a pedophile—at large, for example.”
The woman swallowed loudly.
Training my eyes onto hers, I continued, “Gray has made some allegations to me privately. Disconcerting allegations regarding her cousin, Matthew. She claims he sexually assaulted her when she was nine.”
“That doesn’t involve me.”
I sharpened my tone “Except it does, doctor. As I’m sure you’re aware, my Auntie Tilda was caretaker—among other things—to Gray and Charlotte. It turns out she made some allegations of her own. When she discovered what had occurred—multiple times, mind you—she went straight to Seamus and Joanna.”
Dr. Conner’s chest began to rise and fall more rapidly. Her reaction dashed any doubt that she hadn’t known the truth about Auntie’s samples.
I went on. “Mr. and Mrs. King had their own concerns. Seamus was readying a presidential bid. Beginnings are important, and the attention from a story like that would’ve sunk his chances. Especially at a fragile time.” I folded my hands across my lap. “That’s not to say they wanted to sweep the whole thing under the rug without at least some thought for Gray’s well-being. According to Auntie, they barred Matthew from Piper Point. Seamus threatened to blow the boy’s brains out if he ever came near Gray again.”
Dr. Conner’s voice trembled, “I still don’t know what this—”
“Charlotte Barfield confirmed you were in the habit of making house calls for the Kings,” I interrupted. “And Auntie told me you made one the night it all came out. You tested Gray for sexually transmitted infections, didn’t you, Dr. Conner? You tested a nine-year-old girl for STIs, and you didn’t report it.”
The woman’s face hardened. “That’s not true. There are records. I tested Matilda Palmer, not Gray. Your Aunt asked for the exam herself.”
Imploring me to check records? This woman knew. She knew exactly whose samples she’d run.
I shook my head. “Drop it, Mary-Ann. You labeled Gray’s samples with my Aunt’s name, but Joanna knew the results would be her daughter’s. I’m sure you all breathed a heavy sigh of relief when they came back clean.”
Dr. Conner stood. “I have to ask you to leave now. I don’t want to talk to you any longer. You’re welcome to speak with Joanna yourself, but—”
“I’m not going anywhere. Not without answers from you. You broke the law. You endangered a child. Because of your inaction, who knows who else Matthew assaulted. How many little girls he’s hurt. You know he’s got a daughter, himself? She’s about the age Gray was when all this happened. Name’s Susannah.”
Dr. Connor rested her hands on her desk as though to steady herself. Veins in her brow grew engorged. “Stop it.”
“Did you know Gray can’t go a day without a drink? That she nearly killed herself in a car wreck down the street from this office earlier this week? Then there’s the sister, Charlotte. Trust me, doctor, you don’t even want to know what she’s become.”
“I said stop it.” Her whole body quaked, knuckles white on the edge of her desk.
I kept my eyes locked onto hers. “Look at the damage you’ve caused by staying quiet. Auntie, also. She even took checks from Joanna for her silence. If I was a betting woman, I’d wager you have, too.”
“You need to leave this office.”
I leaned back, arms crossed, shaking my head. “At least Auntie didn’t let things go. She took matters into her own hands and made sure the world knew exactly what sort of folks the Kings were. But you? You were in a position to change everything, and you did nothing.”
“Goddamnit!” Mary-Ann shouted, slamming her fists on her desk once, twice.
The outburst knocked several photographs onto the floor, breaking their frames.
“I made sure Gray was okay. I made sure there wasn’t anything physically wrong with her.”
I couldn’t believe her excuses. Her reaction suggested she didn’t believe them herself. “Physically wrong? What about psychologically?”
Dr. Conner said nothing. She released a heavy breath, regained her composure.
I got up f
rom my chair, straightening my back. “You need to tell me what you know, Dr. Conner. You’ve known her since she was very young. Through the ordeal with Matthew, through everything. Did you know about her alcoholism, too?”
Wiping her brow, she stooped to pick up the pictures she’d knocked over, then muttered, “Alcoholism? That’s hardly all of it.”
“All of what?”
“Gray’s problems.” Dr. Conner’s unsteady hands dropped one of the frames a second time.
I knelt down to give her hand. This woman knew something. Something I didn’t. The back of my skull tingled “What are you trying to say?”
“What happened to that girl was terrible. No doubt about it.” She hesitated for a moment. “But it changed her.”
“Something like that changes a person, Dr. Conner. I’m not sure—”
She spoke slowly, “Changed her in ways I couldn’t quite put my finger on, at first. It’s almost like Matthew—” another long pause. “Like what he did blackened her soul.”
An interesting turn of phrase. I saw the Devil. I knotted my brow. “Blackened her soul?”
“She became given to all sorts of outbursts and behaviors. She lied, too. That girl became the most destructive liar.”
“What sorts of things would she lie about?”
Dr. Conner brushed the front of her floral skirt and returned to her chair, broken frames now piled at the edge of her desk. “Absurd things. Some small, others not so much so.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She paused, said, “Like those cats for instance. A litter of kittens went missing one by one that year at Piper Point. Gray suddenly had scratches all up her arms, and when Joanna questioned her, she lied about where they came from. Every damn cat disappeared except the one Gray had taken a liking to.”
Hattie.
“Now I don’t know if she really had anything to do with the kittens disappearing, but that wouldn’t be her most absurd lie. Once, when she was sixteen, she stood in this very office and lied about her name. About who she was.”
I reclaimed my own seat. “I don’t follow—”
Dr. Conner seemed to grow tired, perhaps even frustrated. “She told me, tried to convince me rather, that she wasn’t Gray King, but another little girl. An alter, she called it. She insisted she had a particular dissociative disorder. Dissociative identity disorder, it’s termed. And that Gray wasn’t who I was speaking with.”
“That sounds a bit far-fetched.” An understatement, but something stirred in my mind, the inklings of something new. Something frightening.
“I couldn’t agree more. DID is exceedingly rare and pervasively exploited.” Dr. Conner tapped her nail to her bottom lip. “After the media popularized the notion in the eighties, everyone seemed to have it all of a sudden. Everyone uncovered traumatic memories, buried deep.”
I finished her thought. “And used them as defenses in criminal cases.”
“Correct. But I’m not inclined to believe it. I’m not a psychiatrist, of course, but the chances that Gray had more than one personality were too cosmically small to consider. But Gray, she simply would not drop it. She’s a liar, but to go to such lengths? To keep up a charade for years? As she aged, Gray’s lying became pathological.”
The wheels in my brain began to turn faster. Pieces started to click into place, or at least drew closer to where they fit. If Gray was a liar, pathological, as the doctor suggested, then everything she’d ever said to me would be in question.
“You mentioned trauma,” I said. “Trauma that catalyzes a disorder like that. Liar or not, her account of abuse has been confirmed by others.”
“Detective,” Dr. Conner leaned in, lowered her voice, “you said yourself folks use dissociative disorders and buried pasts in criminal defenses. I don’t need to remind you that what you’re dealing with here in Elizabeth, with Paul Godfrey, it’s criminal.”
A sense of dread took hold, its claws squeezing my heart. As a question bubbled up in my mind, the walls of Dr. Conner’s office darkened and closed in. The ground swayed and swooned as though a fierce undertow had taken hold. Was it me who’d walked into a trap? A realization come far too late as it sprang shut?
“The alter … the person Gray pretended to be in your office … What was her name?”
Lips pursed, Dr. Conner paused for a moment, appearing to think.
“She called herself Annie.”
42
Nina
I slammed my hands against my steering wheel two, three times. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have overlooked Gray? But then again, how could I have known this? In what universe would I even have suspected it?
She’d been too drunk to do or remember anything on Christmas Eve. Everyone said so. Charlotte. Jacob. Jonas Hatfield. She’d admitted it herself right off the bat. But had I underestimated her tolerance? After all, she’d been unbelievably intoxicated after leaving Cirilo’s and yet still able to somewhat operate a vehicle.
Of course, Annie never showed up at the fucking restaurant.
Different rivers of thought—each flowing separately since Christmas—began to merge. Auntie’s checks from Joanna. Paul’s disappearance and murder. Annie. Matthew’s history of sexual assault. They were all one narrative. The story of one, single person: Gray.
As I reached to start my car, my cell phone vibrated on the passenger seat cushion.
My racing heart stopped. Nineteen missed calls. One from Burton and the rest from Sammie. I dialed Sammie back, not bothering with the messages.
He answered on the first ring. “Nina!” His voice was loud, loud and desperate. I started to reply—to tell him what I’d uncovered—but he wouldn’t let me speak.
“The IMSI-catcher,” he exclaimed. “The device we used to tap the cell phones at Piper Point…”
I held my breath.
“Annie called Gray again,” he said. “Annie used Gray’s own cell phone to do it. How’d she—”
“Gray is Annie.”
Silence on his end.
“Dr. Conner claims Gray used to call herself Annie. When she was little.”
“Nina, this is too far. Burton’s on the war path. He’s taking you off—”
“Sammie, listen to me! Annie called from Gray’s phone—”
“Forget the phone for a second. How the hell would anyone prosecute something like this? And Matthew … He rang up Burton, ya know—”
Matthew. What had he said when I’d confronted him at the club? I’d brushed the comment aside, too focused on little Susannah King.
“In fact, Gray called me earlier today. Said she wants to catch up.”
Nothing about the woman I’d sat beside in her hospital room suggested a desire to see the man who’d molested her. But the woman who’d stabbed her jealous husband in the neck … that woman would want to catch up with Matthew. That woman would want nothing more.
“I hate this.” Sammie swallowed. “This kills me, but Burton took you out. And—”
Don’t say it, Sam.
“I agree with his call.”
“Sammie, I fucked up. I will answer for all that. I promise. But we need to move fast. Right now. Please listen to me.” I steadied my voice. “Gray isn’t finished. We need to get tabs on Charlotte and Joanna. Maybe Dr. Conner. And get Matthew on the phone. Tell him to stay put.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Sammie asked, stunned.
“Get uniformed officers to King, Floyd, and Powers. Then get in your car. Meet me at Piper Point. I’ll explain when you’re on your way.”
“I’ll get it done, Nina, but this is it,” he replied. “This is the last one.”
“That’s on me, Sam.” My engine cranked with a smoky, coughing fit. “Right now, get to Piper Point. And bring backup.”
43
Annie
The legs of the Queen Anne chair scraped against the foyer’s planked floor. My broken shoulder popped, and electric pain crackled down my arm. Wincing, I
pushed through.
Matthew might wake any moment.
I didn’t bother precisely calculating Joanna’s Valium, but I wasn’t careless, either. I’d read the drug was mostly safe in large doses. Safe and alcohol-soluble. Gray had assumed her mother removed the pills from the medicine cabinet, but in fact I’d needed something to make Matthew compliant. Or at least dead weight.
Matthew arrived just after Charlotte took off. Right on schedule and long before Joanna’s planned return. With everything going on, he was unable to resist a drink and a peace offering. Unable to resist me. On a table in the salon sat the half-empty martini I made for him. Complete with a single speared olive. Joanna might’ve locked the liquor cabinet, but the piece was a flimsy antique.
I’d taken a hammer to it.
Matthew stirred as I dragged the chair toward the staircase. Like the liquor cabinet and everything else in this house, Joanna’s hearth chair was outdated. But it served my purpose: strong enough to contain a grown man, but weak enough to tip when he inevitably struggled.
I placed the chair at the bottom of the staircase and turned it to face the front door. I wanted the possibility of escape, of safety, to remain in his mind. Hope would make his final moments the most excruciating of his life. Perhaps more than the physical pain I’d planned. My heart fluttered. The prospect of watching him slowly come to, piecing together what happened to him—who happened to him—filled me with almost unbearable joy.
“Hello, Matthew.” I smiled, welcoming him back to the waking world.
In an instant, any residual grogginess from the drugs evaporated. His eyes opened, bulging as though they might pop—just like Paul’s. A tingle ran up the inside of my thigh. His eyes and the protruding vein crossing his forehead gave him a savage appearance. Savagely frightened.
A thump-thud followed frantic breathing through flared nostrils. Matthew began to rock in the chair, fighting against countless layers of duct tape around his legs and wrists, encircling his chest, across his mouth. He shook violently, and the chair tipped over. He moaned as his left temple struck the floor.