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Lucas and I were silent for several minutes after leaving Dr. Abernathy. We didn’t bother to go talk to Dr. Durant, we figured he’d be useless. We were stuck in traffic when Lucas finally spoke.
“Martha working with the fourth could be why it feels like a team killing.” He finally said.
“Agreed. What do you think of MPD?” I asked.
“It’s called DID now,” Lucas responded. “I think authentic cases of it are rare. Cases like this one I mean. Everyone disassociates now and again, but to get an entirely new personality from it, that is rare. I agree, though, with Dr. Abernathy, Amber or Melissa or whatever her name is, has the perfect background for it.”
“And Dr. Durant’s integration?” I asked.
“I don’t know, I didn’t talk to him, although I don’t believe integration is successful in most cases, I don’t know why it would be in this case, especially if the fourth is a psychopathic personality.”
“I’m inclined to think of this as a partnership killing with Martha being the subordinate who does the leg work.” I said.
“Me too.”
“It doesn’t explain why she isn’t mutilating the faces, though.”
“It might,” Lucas said slamming on the brakes as the car in front of us stopped short. “Idiot.” Lucas muttered. “When I was studying psychiatric disorders, we looked at a case where one of the girl’s alters felt gratitude towards the abuser because it created her. She even referred to it as being born and like birth. The only violence in the case was committed by the original personality who attempted to kill herself to kill her alters.”
“That seems drastic.”
“When one personality is aware of all the others, the case tends to be more drastic. That isn’t present in most cases of disassociate identity disorder, rarely is there one alter that knows about the others. As a matter of fact, that lack of knowledge is usually how we discover the alter identities exist, there are fugue states and amnesia and memory lapses and all sorts of other problems, including dreams that are in fact memories belonging to the alters.”
“Going back to the lack of facial mutilation, you think that the psychopathic fourth may not hate the mother the way the other three do, and that is why she doesn’t mutilate the face.”
“We say she, but it doesn’t have to be female just because the body is. As a matter of fact, it might make more sense if the fourth alter is male. The acid, the killing of the husbands quick, the strength, the psychopathic traits, all these would indicate a man. Remember, no one had even considered a woman until you showed up with your weird theories not based in medical knowledge or science.”
“Are there a lot of cases of different gendered alters?” I asked, having never considered the possibility.
“It isn’t rare, if that’s what you mean. It’s hard to describe it as ‘a lot’ because there aren’t a lot of cases to use for base comparisons. It happens fairly regularly among authentic cases where alters may be any gender they need be at the time of creation. If the first fracture came when she saw her father murdered by her mother, then the creation of Martha and a male protector alter make sense. Her male protector had just been murdered by the adult female in her life. I suspect Martha and her mom have some personality traits in common and that the fourth alter may share some traits with her father.”
“Situational psychopathy coupled with fractured identities.” It was my turn to silently think and maybe brood a bit.
“Why kids music and nursery rhymes for a psychopathic male alter?” I asked.
“Nursery rhymes are soothing and you are not linking them all together,” Lucas told me. “Think of them as a group, not individuals. I’m not convinced Martha is the only personality that knows all that goes on among the personalities. And I’ve seen things go very wrong with integration, which might be what woke up the psychopathic fourth personality.”
“If the psychopathic fourth killed the people at the compound before integration,” I reminded him.
“I meant other problems can arise from integration. I didn’t spend a lot of time doing clinical work with integration and SID, but since joining the SCTU, I’ve researched it quite a bit.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because we’ve had other cases pop up where a killer claimed to have multiple personalities. So far, they’ve all been faking it, but you have to understand the condition to recognize faked symptoms.”
“Oh,” I replied to this information. I had been expecting a lecture on how most people with multiple personalities weren’t dangerous and was surprised when I didn’t get one.
“What are your thoughts on it?”
“I don’t know how to react. I mean, let’s say that all in all, Caroline, Amber, and Martha as individuals aren’t dangerous, but the mystery fourth is. How does one punish the fourth?” I sighed. “It’s kind of like Siamese twins in my opinion, will Amber and Caroline understand why they are being punished? Is it cruel to punish them for something they can’t control simply because they share a body with a personality that is out of control? I’m having trouble thinking of them as a group because neither Amber nor Caroline seem to have much control over their situations, and Dr. Abernathy flat out stated she hadn’t really told Amber or Caroline about the others because they weren’t mature enough to handle the information.”
“I know.” Lucas said as we crawled through the city streets. “I don’t know any tricks to help you process it since you rarely think of life in terms of grey areas and this is unfortunately a huge grey area.”
We stopped talking, Lucas allowing me to think, to brood about the problem that lay before me. Would I feel justified in punishing Caroline and Amber for the actions of the mysterious fourth? The question was something of an existential crisis. Punishing the innocent for the actions of the wicked, was wrong. I knew this in the core of my being. It was true I probably wouldn’t lose sleep over it, I wouldn’t stress myself into knots if we did, but it would be something that plagued my waking mind now and then, I knew. In my own mind, it was no different than punishing Gabriel for the actions of his twin brother Raphael. Gabriel couldn’t control Raphael anymore than Caroline or Amber could control the Fourth.
Even as the plural “them” Caroline and Amber weren’t responsible for the actions their body committed under the influence of the fourth and/or Martha. My memory bank searched for information conjured up by the mention of Siamese twins.
Chang and Eng had been side show performers in the 1800s because it was impossible to find a job doing anything else when you and your brother literally shared important body parts, including internal organs. One of them had started a bar brawl, however, they had not been sent to prison because the judge had ruled it would be unlawful confinement for the other. That one had also been an alcoholic while his twin despised being drunk. The shared internal organ played a role in that, it must have been their liver.
“They died only hours apart,” I said out loud.
“What?” Lucas asked.
“Sorry, I was just thinking, I hadn’t mean to say anything out loud.”
“Sometimes when you think really hard about something, you do say things out loud to yourself.”
“I know.” I said. “But I don’t know why.”
“Now what was that about? Who died only hours apart?”
“Chang and Eng.”
“The conjoined twins?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. Did you know they are the reason conjoined twins are referred to as SiameseSiamese twins?”
“I did.” Lucas said. “I’m guessing you are comparing their situation to someone with DID.”
“Sort of, I know it isn’t exact, but it’s close. They shared a liver, I think, and Chang was an alcoholic, but Eng actually hated the feeling of being intoxicated.”
“I see you’re point then, two personalities, one predisposed to be mean spirited and a drinker while the other hated it but had to endure the side effects because they shared a liver.”
“Something like that,” I said after a moment. “I was actually thinking about the bar fight they got involved in. I believe it was Chang that started it, however, they didn’t serve jail time because the judge said it would qualify as unlawful imprisonment of the other if they did.”
“You agree?”
“Mostly, yes. I know the doctor that performed the autopsy said that they should have been separated regardless of the risk of mortality to one or both twins, but he was speaking from a moral base more than medical. He thought sexual relations between the brothers and wives was unnatural given their condition and they did both father a lot of children with their wives.”
“Okay, you lost me,” Lucas said.
“Well, in one situation the morality and legality of it kept Chang from being punished. But on the other, at least one doctor was of the opinion that risking the death of one or both twins was worth it for the cause of morality.
“Ah, gotcha, where does modern morality lie when it comes to punishing non-dominant personalities for crimes committed by their bodies under the influence of a dominant personality?”
“Yes.”
“Modern morality dictates that all personalities should be punished for the actions of the psychopathic personality because the non-dominant personalities Amber and Caroline can’t control when or where that personality will take control of the body and commit more crimes.”
“It doesn’t sound like something that should be sent through on the SK laws. It sounds like the responsibility should lay with an institution dedicated to treating the severely mentally ill with criminal leanings.”
“That I agree with,” Lucas said.
“Which means I can’t go in hard and strong like I normally do when dealing with a psychopath.”
“It also means you may or may not be dealing with a psychopathic personality once you are face to face with them. It may indeed be Amber or Caroline and not Martha or the fourth.”
“Will I be able to tell if the switch occurs?” I asked.
“Yes, remember Dr. Abernathy said that someone had a Bostonian type accent, they might have very different facial expressions that makes them look like a different person. Mannerisms, speech patterns, accents, hand dominance, all of that could change from personality to personality, just as Amber needs glasses, but the others do not seem to. Often the change is quick and a headache accompanies it. Surely you will recognize those telltale signs.”
“Quick how?” I asked.
“Usually it’s instantaneous. One minute you are talking to Amber and then in the blink of an eye, there is something different about the face or the way they hold themselves straighter through the shoulders and you find you are talking to Martha not Amber.”
“Or vice versa,” I said.
“Yes, but if you go from Martha or the fourth to Amber or Caroline, they may not recognize you or know what the two of you were talking about. If the fourth is aware of them all like I suspect, then the transition comes with knowledge of who you are, where they are, and your entire conversation with whatever personality you were talking with before it happened.”
“That’s complicated.”
“It can be. But I think you will find you actually have the advantage over Gabriel, Fiona, even Xavier and myself in the transitions. You are minutely observant even when you don’t try or realize it. I think you will pick up on the subtleties most people miss when a transition happens.”
“Great,” I said as we passed the police station. Lucas pulled up at the end of the block. Gabriel, Fiona, Kimberly, and Xavier were all standing there.
“That’s weird.” I said.
“I sent a text as we left the hospital. We need to go see the aunt before someone can put the wind up that her incredibly damaged niece is suspected of being the Satanist Slaughterer.”
“What a terrible name,” I said.
“Gotta love the press.”
