by Hadena James
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.” She said after I shut up.
“Yes,” I replied. “Mostly, I have a history degree and I’m fascinated with the societal aspects of religion. Satan only exists because Christianity is a religion of duality, there can be no good without evil. Therefore, God had to have an adversary and he found it in the leader of the angelic rebellion. Before the Judeo-Christian tradition, almost no religions dealt with duality, good versus evil just wasn’t a thing for them. However, modern people have to interpret the works of ancients through their own filter of experience. Modern society loves duality, we apply it everywhere even in our understanding of things past, and so Set who was not feared by the Egyptians anymore than they feared Osiris or Horus had to be cast as evil in modern understanding because we practically require a showdown of good versus evil. Any time someone decides to appropriate an ‘evil’ deity for their own religious purposes one has to ask why. Why Set instead of Anubis? Anubis is better known, but Anubis is associated with death and modern depictions of Anubis don’t have him as ‘evil.’ In modern movies like The Mummy, Anubis is a guardian against evil. Whereas in Gods of Egypt, Set was depicted as a power hungry oppressor, but Set’s only truly evil deed in Egyptian mythology was motivated by jealousy, not a power grab. He did murder and chop up Osiris, his brother, and toss him into the Nile. However, he did this because he was jealous that Isis had married Osiris, not because he wanted Osiris’s followers. Since the beginning of time, jealousy has been a strong motivator for murder. It doesn’t necessarily make a person evil to experience jealousy, it makes them human.”
“But we don’t see the Egyptian gods as the Egyptians did, because we are obsessed with duality?”
“Exactly, if it wasn’t Set, it could have been Shiva, another deity that modern people see as ‘evil,’ but actually isn’t. She’s just the goddess that controls chaos, destruction, and rebirth. But we ignore the fact that Hinduism does not contain duality and therefore one of their most revered goddesses must be evil.”
“Parker Carr picked imagery to scare his flock based on their modern understandings of things they don’t understand because we can’t conceive of a religion that does not contain duality anymore?”
“Yep,” I sighed. “It’s amazing how much our perspective has been distorted by the idea that good can only exist if evil does.”
“You don’t believe in evil?”
“No. I believe every human is in control of their own actions, up to a point. There are aspects of behavior that are controlled by things out of human control, like our killer. Evil isn’t making them kill, mental illness and extreme emotional trauma is. Even their brutal killings of innocents up to today is not a condition of evil but rather mental illness and emotional trauma. However, I have no doubt that they thought they were doing the work of the righteous, that is, propagating good by killing evil. One of the side effects of duality is that there will always be people who see killing those they see as evil as a good thing. That’s why they looked like hate crimes. To the killers, the randomly selected victims were perceived as being evil, even when they weren’t. And they are justified in seeing evil in the everyday occurrences that dictate the human condition.”
Seventeen
I stood in Rockhill Park with an animal control officer. We were staring at a black Jaguar that had resulted in a serious miscommunication. The caller had said her sister stole a black Jaguar and they were in Rockhill Park. The police had sent animal control, because they didn’t realize the caller had meant the car brand.
The call hadn’t been recorded. The caller had called her sister Caroline, though, according to the report the sergeant had filed. A woman with a floppy eared goldendoodle was talking to Lucas and Gabriel. She had spoken with a woman who said her sister kept getting her in trouble and her sister didn’t have a body. That had been only a few minutes before the first officers and animal control responded to the call about the Jaguar.
We were staring at the car because, so far, no one had reported it stolen. I felt it provided insight into Amber or Caroline. It hadn’t been Martha that had called, that was for sure. Especially not if the car was stolen. She wouldn’t have reported it and it’s location. I wondered by how many minutes we had missed them. Had they been leaving the park when officers arrived? Or had they stayed around to watch the drama unfold?
The steering wheel and passenger’s seat were smeared in drying blood. The keys were in the ignition. The police had run the plates and gotten the name of the owner. A squad car had gone to pick up the owner and see what they had to say about the car being missing and being recovered in this park streaked with blood.
They were starting to fall apart. Car theft is risky when you’ve been killing people. Car thefts get reported and police issue notices about them. Every cop in town could have been looking for this car. If it had been reported and spotted, they would have been taken into custody for the car theft, ending the killings. It wouldn’t have taken long for the police to realize they were the prime suspect in several homicide cases. So why steal a car?
I wondered if it was the blood. Had one of them realized the body couldn’t wander around covered in blood? Had that one thought trumped the risk of getting caught for stealing a car? What about coming to a park and talking to a stranger about a sibling that didn’t have a body?
“You seem to be thinking very hard,” Fiona said to me. I hadn’t even heard her come up behind me.
“I am. I can’t figure out why they would steal a car. Or why they would allow either Amber or Caroline to report it to the police. We theorized that one of them has to be in charge, probably Martha, but Martha should be concerned about self preservation like all killers, not allowing the hijacked personalities to report their deeds to the police.”
“Maybe Martha has lost control.” Fiona suggested.
“Yeah, I had considered that as well. I did a search last night on articles about multiple personalities. I’m wondering if Amber and Caroline are becoming aware of Martha and the other.”
“Does that happen?”
“It’s rare, but it can happen, usually when they face some sort of traumatic event. If Amber and Caroline aren’t killers, and I don’t think they are, then maybe having one or two personalities that are killers triggered a trauma that allowed Amber and Caroline to become more aware, creating this havoc and internal civil war, in which Amber can report Caroline for stealing a car.” I looked at my reflection in the tinted window. I was wearing sunglasses, my hair was pulled up in a severe bun at the back of my head. I had no expression on my face. I didn’t even have resting bitch face. Sometimes, when I looked at my reflection, it didn’t register it was me. I had read that people with DID also had this problem, but to a greater degree than me.
My eyes latched onto a scar on my neck, some asshole doctor had broken a hypodermic needle off in it. The skin had been burned closed and Xavier had watched it for a while to make sure I wasn’t bleeding out internally. The main arteries and veins had been fine, just barely nicked and the needle staying in my neck had basically sealed the injury off. That incident had been surreal. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have those kinds of experiences all the time. They were all victims. Even if it was their own body doing the victimizing at this point. I turned away from the window and my reflection. Yes, Amber and Caroline were victims, but they were also not full people, not in the sense that Fiona or Lucas or any of my other team members were full people. This somehow made it worse.
Wasn’t personality what made a person a person? Were Amber and Caroline responsible for the actions of Martha and the other? I wasn’t sure they were. I felt that might be like holding me responsible for the actions of Eric.
“The woman with the goldendoodle says the girl she spoke with on the bench had lots of cuts and scratches on her hands and they had bleed. That’s why she stopped to talk to her, she wanted to make sure she didn’t need help. But the woman had sounded crazy. She was going
to walk away and call the police, thinking the girl might have escaped from a mental institution. But by the time she got far enough away that she thought the girl wouldn’t hear her, the girl was gone. We showed her a picture of Amber and she sort of identified it as the woman she had spoken to.”
“Sort of?” I asked.
“She said it looked like the girl, but there was something a little different, just different enough that she said they could be twins, but might not be the exact same girl. She says she can’t put her finger on what it was exactly, except that the girl was squinting.” Lucas said. “Amber requires glasses, but Martha and Caroline don’t. Perhaps the photo is of Caroline, not Amber and because Amber needs glasses and wasn’t wearing them, the face looked slightly different.”
“That’s complicated.”
“Yes, it is.” Lucas said. “But I think complicated is going to be the standard in this case.”
“Me too. Could Amber be in the process of becoming aware of Caroline, Martha, and the other?”
“It seems unlikely, but it’s not impossible.” Lucas said. “The fact that they stole a car is bothering you, isn’t it?”
“You’ve just beaten, sodomized, and decapitated a man in his own church and put his body on display. You wash up and walk away, you don’t steal a car and drive to a random park to call the police and report it.”
“She didn’t report the murder.” Lucas said.
“No, she reported the stolen car.” I agreed. “That doesn’t answer the question, though. Even Amber would have to realize that car theft could put her in jail. Why was she willing to risk going to jail to report the car theft? She has cuts and scratches on her, but that doesn’t explain this amount of blood and she should know that too. Does Amber suspect that Caroline is hurting people?”
“You think Amber knows about Caroline?”
“We know Amber has some understanding about Caroline. She tells her aunt Caroline kidnaps her. That wording sticks out to me. If Amber thinks of Caroline as a kidnapper, could she also suspect that Caroline is dangerous to people beyond Amber?” I paused. “Is it possible that Amber made that phone call to try and get Caroline arrested?”
“Gotcha,” Lucas said.
“I don’t know that I think Amber is aware of Martha, the other, or anything they’ve been doing, but I think she has to be aware of how weird things are when Amber suddenly takes over. Since Amber believes Caroline kidnaps her, could Amber also think the reason she wakes up with cuts and covered in blood is because Caroline is kidnapping or hurting others? And if so, how does she process that? Does Amber, being a weak personality, have the self preservation instincts that fully formed people do?”
“Probably not. She probably has a few areas that she is good with and the rest of the time, she’s a background character in her own body. It is possible that she doesn’t have that understanding to the degree that Martha or the other has.”
“Does Caroline then?” I asked.
“She may not.” Lucas nodded. “However, Martha or the other should and they should have some control over Caroline and Amber, to stop them from making these kinds of phone calls.”
“Exactly.” I nodded.
“You think she’s faking?” Lucas asked.
“It may have crossed my mind before I learned that Amber was left-handed and needed glasses while the other personalities were right-handed and didn’t need glasses, but I’m not sure that can be faked effectively enough to fool someone you live with full-time, like her aunt.”
“It’s hard to think like four people at once, isn’t it?” Lucas said after I had been silent for a long time.
“Yes, even with one of them being a psychopath. If you’re a psychopath, you’re a psychopath all the time and you act like a psychopath all the time. But that body doesn’t act like a psychopath all the time, so I can’t predict what they are going to do.” I said. “Because I don’t know what the non-psychopathic parts are going to do. Like I wouldn’t have believed Amber would call and report that Caroline stole a car.”
“Maybe that’s Amber’s self-preservation.” Lucas suggested. “Maybe she thought that if she reported Caroline, she wouldn’t get in trouble for it.”
“That is where my brain starts to stutter. Amber is aware of Caroline, she called her a sister without a body. She may not always know what Caroline does, but she knows she exists within her own body. Reporting that Caroline stole the car, doesn’t free Amber of responsibility.” I stopped. “Or maybe it does and that’s my problem with it. Maybe I feel like Amber and Caroline are not guilty of the murders that Martha and the other are committing. Maybe I don’t think Amber is guilty of car theft regardless of whether it was Caroline, Martha or the other that actually stole the car.”
“You think of Caroline and Amber as hostages,” Lucas said to me.
“Yes, I was thinking earlier they were victims of Martha and the other.” I said.
“Drop that internal struggle, you’ll just make yourself crazier if you pursue it. Even for those of us with a decent connection to the world, it’s difficult to not feel sorry for them as a collective whole and for the non-involved personalities as individuals. This type of full development of alternate personalities is very rare, but it doesn’t mean we can give Amber or Caroline a pass on the crimes. We can’t predict when Martha or the other will begin to express themselves and start killing.”
“That is what we are missing, well what I’m missing.” I said. “Serial killers have catalysts. Something that takes them from fantasizing about killing people to actually killing people. And the catalyst is nearly always an external factor. What happened to Amber, Caroline, Martha, and the other in the last couple of months to make them start killing? If we find that, maybe we understand where they are going and what they are doing.”
Eighteen
Night had blanketed the city in darkness. I stood on the balcony of my hotel room, cigarette between my lips, enjoying the warmth. It had been a long cold winter. Now late spring was bringing heat already, something I could appreciate. I felt stiff from spending most of the day in the car or sitting at a table in the conference room at the police department studying files. Gabriel was with me. He’d been on his own balcony next to mine smoking when I came out. He’d leaned over and asked if he could come over. I had agreed and he’d foregone the doors and climbed from his room to mine via the balcony. We were only four floors up. If he’d fallen, it would have hurt, but I’d noticed he had become more adventurous lately.
“You doing okay?” He asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You have acted like you were avoiding me since we got back from Maine. And that’s difficult given that I’m your boss.”
“I’m not avoiding you because of Maine. I don’t hold you responsible for Raphael.” I told him. “I’m avoiding you because I want you to be happy.”
“That doesn’t exactly make sense to me.”
“You’re my neighbor. We both have security cameras. I don’t know whether to tell you to run away or not. It’s a difficult position for me to be in.”
“Oh,” Gabriel said and exhaled a plume of smoke. “Yeah, we thought you might know.”
“Nyleena avoiding me was the first clue, but then I saw her sneak into your house when my mom got back from Australia. I’ve seen it a few times since. It isn’t like I need a degree in rocket science to figure it out.”
“You disapprove?” Gabriel said.
“Yes and no. I do, but I suspect my reasons for disapproving are different than what you expect.”
“You’re worried about our cases being marked as tainted if someone finds out?”
“That’s what I thought you might think, but that isn’t my issue with it. Nyleena isn’t the settle down and get married type. I love her, but happily ever after for her involves a good book, some Thai take-out, and going to bed alone. She’s more walled off than I am, which is saying something. I’m worried she will cut and run if things start getting serio
us and I don’t want her to hurt you.”
“My ex-wife shot me, maybe my happily ever after involves the same thing.”
“I haven’t ruled that out as a possibility, that’s why I said yes and no, implying I was still on the fence about it. Nyleena is beautiful on the inside and out, I can see why you’re attracted to her. I just worry that further down the road, you’ll be like every other guy that has come into her life. She’ll tire of you and begin to push you away. She isn’t incapable of love, she just doesn’t believe it conquers all. She is committed to a lot of things all the time, most of them not relationships with others. Most men last a year or two and then its over, as if she has become bored and tire of them.”
“You worry I won’t be able to handle it if she does it to me?”
“Not exactly. I think you can handle it, but I have ASPD Gabriel. I won’t lie and tell you it’s about you or about Nyleena. I am solely concerned about my own interests here. I worry that when she throws you over, I will be left to deal with the repercussions.” I looked out over the small manicured yard that surrounded the hotel. “Essentially, your relationship with Nyleena affects our relationship, yours and mine. And I worry about the consequences of it.”
“I see.” Gabriel stubbed out his cigarette.
“I know it’s selfish to think this way. I should be happy for you and her. You’ve found a few bright moments in this world. But, at the end of every day, I’m still a narcissist and my main concern is always going to be me. Your relationship with Nyleena does affect me, it always will, regardless of how it turns out. And for that reason, I can only see it through the filter that promises me problems because of it.”