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“Ten-four,” Daniel said as he placed his radio back into its pouch and shook his head at that evening’s events. Then he walked over to the ambulances where the news media was beginning to show up and just in time for the ten o'clock news. “We'll follow you to Mount Sinai to take a full report.”
“Okay, folks, let's clear the area!” Tom was commanding, his hands cupped around his mouth to amplify the order. “Back! Move back!”
The news-hungry reporters, jockeying for position just behind the yellow police-line tape reluctantly moved back when some of the officers had begun taping off the area to keep them away from the crime scene. The EMT nodded as they lifted the stretcher with the first victim, Brandon Hartwig, into the ambulance. The siren immediately began screaming into the night as the vehicle sped off towards the local hospital. Another stretcher containing victim number two, Audrey Devereaux, rolled along the damp ground as the woman visibly shook and shuddered.
The perpetrator, Vera Willis, sat in the back of the locked squad car staring straight ahead as if all of the chaos around her was not happening. She did not stir, she did not speak, just tilted her blonde head slightly as she looked to her left and they were all rewarded with a megawatt smile from her. Daniel could see her lips moving as if she were talking to someone next to her, but there was no one there. Vera Willis had gone off the deep end.
***
In Douglaston, Queens at that very moment Marianne Willis stared at the ten-o'clock news on the seventy-two inch, LCD television in shock as Hank grabbed the remote to turn up the volume. There her daughter was, her face plastered on television for all to see, the mug-shot not doing her a bit of justice despite her recent attempts to improve her appearance.
“.......Twenty-nine-year-old Vera Willis of Manhattan, who is currently under arrest for the kidnapping and attempted murder of her former employer, thirty-six-year-old Brandon Hartwig in Astoria, Queens just a short while ago. Willis' other victim and co-worker, twenty-eight-year-old Audrey Devereux, was also taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in Astoria for treatment for hyperthermia, shock, and minor physical injuries. It is unknown yet what the motive was, but we will keep you posted with this exclusive story, which is still breaking..."
The perfectly coiffed reporters continued, as Vera's picture faded from the screen and they moved on to the next segment. Marianne dropped the glass she had been drinking from as Pauline covered her mouth in shock.
“I'll get the car,” Hank promised as Marianne stifled a scream behind her fist. “We've got to get down there and straighten this all out, okay Mom? We’ll get Vera the help she needs.”
Marianne tuned her son out as he went on about realizing that his sister had been struggling and that he had told her that Vera needed psychological help.
That girl.
That damned girl.
She had always been an odd one, that Vera, but even this was beyond anything she had ever done to them. Marianne's eyes moistened as she thought of Bradford and what he would do if he were here. What he would say. But he probably would have disowned Vera, because after all it was the other one that always had his attention and she was all he had ever cared about. Marianne wasn't stupid. All these years she had kept the details to herself, not quite knowing what to do or how to deal with the information she had. Marianne knew that the two girls had snuck out of the house after stealing the car keys. Vera, so meek and timid hadn't wanted to, but Victoria could sell ice to an Eskimo and off they went. They were both running away because one never did a thing without the other. It had always been like that with the sisters. Bradford had begun sneaking into their daughters' shared bedroom late at night, the minute they had reached puberty if she recalled. Marianne had seen the guilty look on Victoria's face every time she'd come down to breakfast wearing a trendy new outfit or show up at dinner with some new trinket or bauble that Bradford had gotten her. He spoiled his daughter rotten to make up for all that he was doing to her. To ensure her silence.
Marianne knew early into their marriage that Bradford was not interested in her sexually. She also knew that he had tons of affairs, with particularly young girls, but for the greater good, she kept quiet. She had hoped he would settle down once the children came, but they didn't stop him. Marianne knew something was going on when Bradford began lavishing gifts on both girls and then after a time, it was just Victoria. Vera understood what was going on and refused to be a participant and Bradford held it against her. Marianne could cut the tension with a knife anytime the child was in the same room as her father. But Vera had also looked at Bradford with longing while he was content to disregard her as if she didn't even exist unless he was disappointed or frustrated with his daughter. This obvious disconnection between father and daughter was quite excruciating to see, and it was more painful when Vera began to shrink into herself more and more each day.
She was such a sad little person.
That night, the last night Victoria had been alive, had been the worst for them all. Vera had caught him at it and had threatened to tell everyone, which set Bradford off and he had brutally struck her. As he had grabbed his oldest daughter by the throat, it was only Victoria's screaming as she beat her father about the back, neck, and head that had stopped Bradford from losing control and killing the girl. Very late that night, after Bradford had taken out his sexual aggression on Marianne, the girls had stolen the keys to their father's car and left the house. She had tried to stop them, but a small part of her just wanted them both gone and out from Bradford's sight, away from his constant touching and groping. And although she had not truly meant that awful and nasty thought about her own daughters, Marianne had been utterly punished in losing one of them that night.
Now she was losing her other one, albeit years later.
God help me.....just let it all be done.....I can't take it anymore...
***
There was a loud, buzzing sound as the heavy, glass door unlocked and the two men wearing white lab coats came into the small chamber and sat at the long table in the center of the room. They spread out their papers, notepads, pens, and pencils. Next came the wires as they set up a laptop computer in the center of the table. A few clicks of the mouse and images of a lone, blonde woman sitting in a padded room came up on the screen. The heavier doctor, Martin White, brought out a tape recorder and labeled a miniature cassette tape Vera Willis before popping it into the machine before he began recording the session.
“Okay,” Dr. White said as he peered at the flat, digital screen. “Vera Elizabeth Willis is the patient. She is twenty-nine years of age and diagnosed with a dissociative identity disorder. Vera suffered the loss of her identical twin sister, Victoria Joy Willis when she was twelve years old. Parents were unresponsively absent toward Vera during the immediate time after the loss of her sister, so there was no emotional support given to the surviving twin to help her progress forward through the trauma. Vera created multiple personas to fill this void and help herself through the tremendous grief alone, which lay dormant until an incident triggered three months ago at the patient's workplace by the immediate supervisor, Brandon Hartwig, which activated them. One of these personas was a blonde woman called ‘Lizzie Juhl’, which is a play on both her and her sister's middle names. The twins were born six minutes apart. Vera dyed her brown hair back to her original blonde color and began dressing and acting with the bold confidence and exuberance of Victoria, a polar opposite of her normal, timid self”
Vera had kicked up a fuss when she’d been brought in, sedation necessary right off the bat. They had briefly allowed her to dress in whatever clothing she wished as they worked with Vera to determine the other personas. The doctor paused his recording as he looked over his notes, glancing at the photos they had taken of the patient dressed in a military fatigue jacket, she had ripped the sleeves off of the white tee-shirt she wore baring her pale skin to show an elaborate tattoo of an American flag on her upper right bicep, a United States Marine Corps tattoo on her left and a lit cigarette dangling from her lips as she seemingly glared at the camera. They looked at another photo of the patient wearing an expensive red couture dress, Vera's hair and makeup flawless as she gave a sexy pout to the camera, beguiling them with her bubbly personality. White looked back at his sheaf of papers before speaking again.
“Uh....let's see....'Aaron Sambourg' is another persona, based on her immense obsession with films featuring extremely violent, militant subject matter in which enemies are brutally tortured, the name derived from a childhood crush that did not return her affections. The real Aaron made fun of her for finally expressing her romantic feelings to him, which opened the door for relentless teasing and ridicule by her peers. The obsession with the strict, military background comes from the father's service in the United States Marine Corps as a young man. Bradford Willis ran a very strict household and often doled out corporal punishment to both girls and their older brother, Henry. Despite this treatment at a young age, the older boy has two small children of his own and appears to be a loving and doting father. This factor coincides with the incident involving Brandon Hartwig and the attempt at water-boarding as a form of torture. When prompted, Vera displayed three or four other personas to us, one of which was a little girl who when asked stated that she was nine years of age. Let it be noted that is when the sexual abuse from the father started with both girls and continued until they were approximately twelve years of age, which ended with a vehicular accident killing Victoria Willis immediately afterward. The other personas were that of various people, including an obese building superintendent, which the patient called Michael DelVecchio. She couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us much about him, but Vera expressed an imminent dislike of him. Initially, Vera stated that she had killed Michael DelVecchio back at her apartment by shoving him from the kitchen window when he attempted to sexually assault her on the night of the Hartwig incident. Let it be noted that there is no record of any such person ever having worked there, based on questioning the building's owner and management personnel by the NYPD detectives handling the case. There was no positive identity match for the name Michael DelVecchio that also fit the description that the patient gave law enforcement of this person, although there were signs of a struggle in the patient's apartment according to the report from the NYPD. Upon testing, however, the visible blood spatters appear to be the patient's own blood. There was no other discernable blood spatters matching any other person at the patient's residence.”
The doctor clicked a button on the tape recorder and nodded to the female doctor who was just outside the door. The door buzzed and the plump, dark-haired woman entered the room with a notepad as she removed her reading glasses from the breast pocket of her white lab coat.
“How is it going?” she asked, sitting across from her colleagues as she set down a styrofoam cup of hot coffee.
“So far, so good.”
“Has the mother arrived yet?” Adele Kramer asked as she picked up a manila folder on the table with Vera's mug-shot photo stapled to the outside and looked through it.
“She's been here since this morning, waiting to see her daughter.”
The woman nodded.
“We can try again, but my priority here is Vera. She is in a very fragile state right now. What with the media all over the story, the newspapers....it's all over the country now.”
“Agreed.” The blonde-haired doctor, Kenneth Bermen, finally spoke as he looked up from his notepad in which he had been silently scribbling away while Dr. White had been recording the case notes. “This whole thing has driven Vera Willis mad. The paranoia of thinking her boss was out to get her, the failed familial relationships with her mother, father, and other family members, the lack of socialization with her peers... then that whole incident with the brutal attack and abduction of Audrey Devereaux two days before Hartwig...."
“Awful. I heard that she's not doing too well either. Complete nervous breakdown. She'll be hospitalized for a while, if not permanently.”
“Yeah, a real shame,” Martin said, shaking his head sadly.
“I think the theft that Devereaux attested to when the state called the office about the unemployment benefits, is what drove Vera over the edge as far as that whole thing goes.”
“Devereaux was in a sexual relationship with Hartwig, so she would have done anything for him. His wife filed for divorce already based on that and the whole embezzling scheme he had going on.”
“Can you believe that Hartwig was embezzling money from the company through his expense account? Pilfered nearly a million dollars in his short time there. Vera was his assistant and she saw everything he did, or at least Hartwig thought that she did. Of course, Hartwig fired her because he thought that she knew about it and was going to turn him in.” Dr. Kramer said as White and Bermen nodded.
“Hartwig admitted everything to the police and the banker boxes in the trunk of his car had all the evidence needed to put him away for a long time. Some other c-level employees have been implicated in this thing too.”
“Yeah..” Bermen said, “Valdez, Edelmann and Watson. I think Watson was the CFO...an awful mess. He's being arraigned tomorrow. The media is having a field day!”
Dr. Bermen shook his head as he rubbed his beard thoughtfully, “The fact that some part of her wanted to just let Hartwig go, while the other parts of her wanted to nail his ass to a wall for what he had done is amazing. This is an exceptional case where Vera literally disassociated herself from both the Lizzie and Aaron personas to try and protect herself from getting taken down with Hartwig. Vera must have been going out of her mind trying to control all three simultaneously.”
Adele nodded.
“And then he threatened to report her if she didn't amend the expense reports. I mean, that's just gross misuse of authority against someone like Vera. I would say that both the loss of the job and the coveted promotion all at once were definitely the triggers here, even though she finally agreed to help him. She trusted him and he screwed her.”
The other doctors nodded in agreement.
“In more ways than one. Let's not forget the sexual assault that took place in Hartwig's office a few weeks ago.” Martin recapped them, as Adele's blue eyes widened.
“He finally admitted that he raped Vera?” she asked, as Martin nodded.
“He admitted everything. Said all that he could to victimize himself so that he would not go to jail. He's planning on appealing everything and suing Vera for what she did to him. Claims their relationship was consensual.”
“It'll never stand,” Kenneth said, looking at the screen and at Vera, who sat staring off into space. “We all know about the long-term sexual abuse from the father, the mother looking the other way, but for this girl to remain undiagnosed for all of these years after the accident is inexcusable.”
“Well, you know how that always is, Ken. Especially in cases like this one. The parents simply didn't want to think something was wrong with their daughter so they just ignored it.” Martin said, matter-of-factly.
“What caused the car accident in the first place?” Adele inquired, as she rifled through her papers.
“Victoria stole the father's car keys, wanting to run away but not wanting to leave her twin to the danger so she dragged Vera along. Victoria was the more dominant between the two, despite being the younger twin. Vera never had a chance once Victoria took control. Victoria was the one driving when the accident happened, killed on impact after she lost control of the vehicle. They were barely able to get Vera out of the passenger seat alive. The father needed someone to blame, other than himself, of course, so he picked on the person least likely to stand up to him. Vera.”
Katherine shook her head as she stared at the young woman on the security camera, slouched on the floor of the padded room as she muttered to herself now. For her safety after the incident with Marianne Willis a few days before, they had placed Vera in a straightjacket. She had lunged at her mother, screaming at the top of her lungs about wanting to kill her. It had taken more than one orderly to pull her off of the hysterical woman and the staff hours to calm her down, but Vera was slowly adjusting to the medication they had administered to regulate her moods.
“A real shame," Kenneth murmured sadly, as they watched Vera sit and talk to herself conversationally.
