The Girls He Adored

4

Dr. Irene Cogan had only interviewed a patient under full restraints twice before. The first, Paul Silberman, was a nineteenyearold who'd murdered his mother up in Woodside. Hacked her to pieces in the tub. The papers had called it the Psycho murder, though in fact Mrs. Silberman had been bathing, not showering. Paul claimed he hadn't known it was really happening, that everything seemed so strange and distorted that he thought he was dreaming. Claimed he was as powerless to stop himself as he would have been in a dream.

Irene, a specialist in dissociative disorders, had been called in by the defense to testify that Paul suffered from a depersonalization/ derealization disorder. Her testimony had been effective-the boy had been found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was now receiving treatment in a private, locked facility in Palo Alto.

But Irene Cogan was neither a patsy nor a defense whore. When a murdering pedophile named David Douglas Winslow claimed to be suffering from dissociative identity disorder, Irene had testified for the prosecution that the similarity of optical functioning among Winslow's alleged alter personalities, along with their nearly identical GSRs-galvanic skin

responses-indicated that he was feigning DID.

Winslow's current address was death row, San Quentin. Dr. Cogan, though she opposed the death penalty, would shed no tears for him when his appeals finally ran out-she'd already cried herself out for his tiny victims.

Dr. Cogan was not a forensic psychiatrist, however-she had been called into the current case because the prisoner was claiming dissociative amnesia. It was too early to say for sure whether he was feigning, but she suspected he was. The victims of dissociative amnesia she'd treated had presented very different affects than this prisoner; you didn't need a medical degree to read the abject confusion and uncertainty in their eyes.

But why fake amnesia? For a man as intelligent and well versed in psychology as the prisoner appeared to be, paranoid schizophrenia, for instance, would be a much easier symptomology to feign- and a more viable defense as well.

Suddenly she realized that the prisoner had asked her something. “Excuse me?”

“Spaced out, eh?” The prisoner chuckled. “I asked if you'd brush my hair back the way you did before.”

“Why? It's not in your eyes.”

He met her gaze boldly-Irene wondered if those mildly amused gold-flecked eyes had been that poor eviscerated girl's last sight on earth. “Just for the touch.”

She was momentarily jarred. His use of the word touch was somehow striking in its intimacy. “I'm sorry, I don't think that's appropriate,” she managed, after a moment.

“Please. It's important.”

“Why? Why is it important?”

“It just is. Please, trust me. I won't hurt you-I give you my word.”

Tough call. It was a small enough request, but there was the physical danger to be considered, as well as a potential skewing of the doctor-patient relationship. On the other hand, by asking for her trust he was, in effect, offering her his. And his trust was something she was going to need if she hoped to make an accurate evaluation.

Or so she told herself as she leaned across the desk. Gingerly she brushed the comma of hair back from his brow, then quickly drew her hand back as his eyes rolled up and to the right, and his eyelids began to flutter. By the time Irene had settled back in her chair, the prisoner's cockiness, his certainty, the gleam in his eye and the set of his jaw, had all disappeared, leaving behind a small pathetic figure slumped over and sobbing like a child, knees drawn up, shoulders heaving, chains rattling.

Here it comes, thought Irene. He is going to change his symptomology. But not to schizophrenia. She composed her features to hide her suspicion, and waited patiently for the weeping to end.

And sure enough, when the prisoner looked up, he was a different man. His heart-shaped face had grown more oval as the set of his jaw relaxed. His eyes were wider, rounder, lighter. And his voice, when he apologized, was tremulous, and pitched an octave higher.

“I'm sowwy.”

So it was to be DID after all. Dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. And she had to admit, if he was faking it, he was good. Better than good, certainly better than the monstrous David Douglas Winslow.

But perhaps that was to be expected, with the prisoner's apparent background in psychology and his obvious talent for impersonation. He knew that eye movement was a classical marker for a switch between personalities, commonly referred to as “alters,” hence the roll and flutter. He knew that extreme facial and vocal changes between alters were to be expected, and that many alters were juveniles, so he'd raised the pitch of his voice, let his cheeks go slack, widened his eyes to take in more light.

If, on the other hand, he wasn't faking it, Irene understood that this might prove to be the most important case of her career. For the moment, she decided to proceed as if the DID was genuine. If he were faking, she might not get to the truth quite as quickly, but if he were not, this approach would do the least harm.

“Hello,” she said softly. “What's your name?”

Panic, confusion. The eyes rolled, the lids fluttered-and the child was gone.

“Excuse me?” The first alter again. A quick, wary glance around the room; the prisoner's manacled hands nervously patted his thighs. Both the glance and the self-touching Irene recognized as grounding behavior, orienting gestures commonly seen after a switch of personalities.

And indeed, the prisoner appeared to be unaware that his face was ashen beneath its olive complexion, and tear-streaked, with a bubble of snot in one nostril-he seemed surprised when Irene handed him a tissue from her purse.

He grasped the situation quickly, though. “Guess I kinda wimped out on you.”

He drew his knees up, hunched his shoulders under the orange jumpsuit, and ducked his head in order to blow his nose. When he came up his voice had changed yet again-this appeared to be yet a third alter, roughly the same age and appearance as the first, but more vulnerable, with less of an edge. “It's just so hard keeping up that front all the time.”

Irene waited, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“You can't let them see any weakness, you know. If they sense weakness, they'll tear you apart. Even the guards.” He let the tissue fall to his lap. “Especially the guards. Now what was it you asked?”

“I asked what your name was.”

This time the eye roll and flutter was so quick and short-lived only a therapist with extensive experience treating DID patients would have noticed it.

“How quickly they forget,” said the prisoner, in the voice he'd used originally. “You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette on you, would you?”

Irene knew better than to ask him his name again-this was clearly Call-me-Max. “I believe the entire building is nonsmoking.”

The prisoner laughed easily. “Realistically speaking, what's the worst they can do if they catch us? Hell, we're risking a death sentence every time we light up.”

“Good point.” Irene was intrigued-and encouraged. Whether he was faking the DID or not, the patient's- prisoner's — use of the first-person plural was a good sign, as was his evident warmth toward her. They seemed to be moving toward a rapport that usually took much longer to establish-she definitely wanted to encourage it.

And frankly, a cigarette right about now didn't sound like the worst idea in the world. Irene rummaged around in her purse for her pack of Benson and Hedges and her lighter, then went through the desk drawers looking for an ashtray. Finding none, she took an empty Sprite can out of the wastebasket, placed it on the desk in front of the prisoner, placed two cigarettes between her lips, lit both, and handed him one, aware as she did so that it was an inappropriately intimate gesture.

The prisoner inhaled deeply, squinting to keep the smoke out of his eyes. “I feel better already.”

So did Irene; she leaned back in her chair and took a deep drag of her cigarette, drawing the smoke luxuriously through her nostrils. It felt deliciously sinful and retro to be smoking with a patient again. When she leaned forward to tap her ash into the Sprite can, she caught the prisoner looking her over appreciatively.

Irene sat up, drawing the lapels of her suit jacket together over her chest and tugging her skirt down over her knees, though her legs were out of sight beneath the desk. It occurred to her that she was losing control of the interview.

“All right, I trusted you,” she said. The voice-activated Dictaphone began to whir again on the table between them. “Now will you trust me?”

“With what?” he replied, exhaling a thin blue stream of smoke along with the words.

“With the truth.”

“What do you want to know?”

“To start with, do you ever feel as if you were more than one person?”

“You say you want the truth?”

“Yes, of course.”

He ducked his head down to his hands to take the cigarette out of his mouth, then popped back up with a maniacal grin.“Well you caan't haandle the truth!” he declared in an exaggeratedly flat monotone, his eyebrows drawn up into devilish peaks.

Irene let out a startled laugh. “So you worked in that Jack Nicholson imitation after all.”

“Pretty good, huh? Want to see my-”

“No!” She cut him off sternly; time to get back to business. “When I asked you your name earlier, you told me to call you Max. Is Max your name?”

“That depends,” he said pleasantly.

“Depends on what?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Why not?”

“I can't tell you that, either.”

Irene tried a different tack. “When you came into the room this morning, you told me your mood was appropriate to the circumstances. A young girl died horribly, apparently at your hands. How does that make you feel?”

He had ducked down again; he came back up with the cigarette between his lips. His face was blue-tinged under the fluorescent lights.

“Lost,” he said softly. Irene had the impression he'd switched personalities again, down where she couldn't see the eye roll. This was the third alter, the handsome, vulnerable young man. “Lost and frightened. And alone-at least until this morning.”

“What happened this morning?”

“I met you.”

His cigarette had burned down almost to the filter. When Irene reached forward to take it out of his mouth for him, she felt his lips brush the back of her fingers as delicately as butterfly wings. So light and ephemeral was his touch that Irene wasn't entirely sure contact had even taken place, much less whether it had actually been a kiss.

But in her heart she knew it had. She felt a pang of excitement, close to fear but so quick and sharp it was almost sexual-and decidedly inappropriate. It occurred to Irene that when she next saw her therapist, they would have something juicier to discuss than they'd had in weeks. Months. Years. She took a hard pull on her cigarette, and inhaled a mouthful of burning filter.