Hand Me Down Evil (Hand Me Down Trilogy) (16 page)

“What kind of research?”

“Court records.”

“What about them?”

“Every time you get arrested, the police write an incident report that becomes part of a public court file. During the past ten years, you’ve been apprehended by the authorities at least a dozen times. Most of the time when they arrest you, it’s because you’re trespassing and peeking through people’s windows dressed as a woman. I’ve seen photographs of you, too. And I’ve even got copies of all your court records, if you care to take a look at them.” The doctor rose from his chair without waiting for a reply, moved to the bookshelf, and pulled out a thick folder.

Edgar closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t believe this,” he said.

“Why not?”

“You’ve been snooping into my private life all these years.”

“I’m not snooping. The court files are public records. Anyone can access them.”

“No one goes out of their way to look up other people’s court files.”

Dr. Foster plopped down the folder on the coffee table. “Care to look at the photographs?”

Edgar did not answer.

Without looking up, the doctor started flipping through reports, photographs, and other papers. He tapped a photograph with his finger. “This is a picture of you dressed as a woman.”

Edgar shook his head in disbelief. “It looks like me, but I don’t believe it,” he said.

“This
is
you, Edgar. Face the facts. This
is
you,” Dr. Foster said as he held up the photograph and waved it in the air. “Look at yourself. You’re wearing a blue dress, a black wavy wig, and loop earrings. See this lipstick? Quite a clumsy job of putting on makeup, I would say.”

“But I don’t remember ever having dressed that way,” Edgar said, looking down, refusing to meet the doctor’s gaze.

Dr. Foster chuckled. “I’m writing a book on multiple personality disorders. You happen to be one of my case studies. I won’t mention your real name in the book, though.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Edgar said in a loud tone of voice. “How dare you write about me?” He could hardly conceal his anger and astonishment.

“Actually, you’re only a small part of the book. I began writing it after I met your father, and it is mostly about him. Over the years, I’ve kept careful notes of all of my therapy sessions with him and of my observations. Travis had another personality, who was a female named Darcy. Every once in a while, Darcy would appear and would do some strange things. Travis never had any recollection of Darcy’s bizarre actions.”

“Then how did you learn about Darcy?” Edgar asked.

“Sometimes I observed Darcy myself when I saw Travis behaving strangely, and of course, being a scientist, I recorded every single observation.”

“What did Darcy do that was so peculiar?”

“Oh, not so fast,” the doctor cautioned. He held up his hand. “I told you I’d give you information about your father after you give me information about yourself.”

“Very well. What do you want to know?” Edgar sounded dubious.

“Tell me about your other personality. What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“How often do you have episodes where your alter personality emerges?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Oh, you’ve got to do better than that, Edgar!”

”Honestly, I don’t have a clue. Sometimes I wake up in a strange place and find myself dressed in women’s clothing but don’t know what happened.”

“You’ve got absolutely no recollection as to what you could have done while dressed in strange clothing?”

“None whatsoever.”

“I know of a way to make you remember.”

“How?”

“I could hypnotize you.”

“Oh, no, that’s where I draw the line.”

“It’s the only way I know of. I learned about Darcy by putting Travis under a trance.”

Edgar frowned. “I’m not so sure I want to learn more about myself under those conditions.”

“But you said that you were looking for your father to get information about yourself. You’ve come this far. Why would you stop short of your goal?”

Edgar thought about the doctor’s proposal for a long while and then reluctantly agreed to be hypnotized. He followed the doctor’s instructions and sank back in the recliner. Edgar appeared sleepy anyway and drained of energy. He kept his gaze focused on the pencil that Dr. Foster waved from side to side until Edgar fell into a deep trance.

“Now, let’s start with Brandon’s murder in Ohio. If you will recall, Brandon was Catherine’s youngest child. You know, Catherine, don’t you? Why, yes, of course, you know her,” the doctor said.

Silence.

“Who are you,” the doctor asked.

Edgar’s eyes opened wide, and then he lifted his head up and started to laugh in a high, shrill tone, like that of a woman.

“Who are you?” Dr. Foster repeated, raising his voice.

“Why do you want to know?” asked the voice.

“I’m your doctor. I have a right to know the name of my own patient.” Dr. Foster pulled his chair up closer to the recliner.

“Shelly. My name’s Shelly,” came the shrill voice.

“Shelly, let’s start at the beginning. Do you remember going to Catherine Singleton’s house in Ohio decades ago?”

“Catherine was a stubborn woman,” Shelly said, narrowing her eyes and frowning. “Of course I remember. I recall the incident that occurred in Ohio quite well, if that’s where this conversation is heading.”

“Why do you call Catherine a stubborn woman?”

“We had to follow her around all the way to Ohio. She thought she could hide from us, but we found her. We always find her.”

“Who are we?”

“You’re asking too many questions.”

Dr. Foster cleared his throat. “I apologize. I did not mean to intrude. Shelly, you don’t have to tell me who
we
are, but can you tell me what happened in Ohio the day Brandon was killed? I heard you were there at Catherine’s house peeping through the window when it happened.”

“What do you want to know about it?” asked the high-pitched voice.

“Well, let’s start with how old you were back then.”

“Over twenty.”

“Let’s get right to the point then. I am going to be quite blunt in my question, but I think it’s important to get to the heart of the matter. Catherine had a young boy named Brandon. Shelly, when you followed Catherine to Ohio, did you kill Brandon?”

“No,” Shelly snapped, forming her hands into fists. “How dare you accuse me of murder. I did not kill him. I did not, I tell you.”

“But you were there the night he was killed?”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing there?”

Shelly hesitated and shifted her gaze toward the floor. “What do you want from me? I said I did not do it.”

“Then help me find out who did it,” Dr. Foster pleaded. “Exonerate yourself by telling me who did it.”

Shelly pouted and looked away.

“I know it’s painful for you to remember, but you’ve got to try. It’s very important. Close your eyes, relax, and think back to that day.”

Shelly put her hand over her eyes and started breathing hard.

“Now think back. Imagine yourself there in Ohio. What do you see, Shelly. Tell me everything you see.”

Instinctively, Shelly made a motion with her hands as she held them straight in front of her and moved them along an imaginary surface like a mime. She appeared to be searching for something.

“I see them through the window,” Shelly whispered.

“Who do you see?”

“Catherine’s two children in the kitchen. Brandon and Peter. They are putting together a puzzle on the table. But hush or they will hear us.” Shelly put her index finger to her mouth and repeated, “Hush. Don’t make any noise, or they will know we’re here.”

“Where is Catherine? Do you see her?”

“No. Wait a minute. Be quiet. I hear her. Catherine is talking with a man in the other room. She’s talking to Sylvester, her husband, Sylvester.” Shelly cupped her hand on her ear and strained to listen. “I hear them yelling in the living room.”

“What are they saying?”

“They are arguing.”

“About what?”

“Be quiet. You’re talking too loud. Oh, I can’t hear what they are saying, but I hear something breaking like a piece of glass.”

“Do you see anything through the window?”

Shelly bent forward, appeared to be running her hands over a flat surface. Then her eyes opened wide and she gasped. She began shaking her head vigorously from side to side. “No, stop, no, don’t kill him. The boy is hurting Brandon. Stop! Aaaaah!”

D
r. Foster stood up. “What is it? What do you see? Who is hurting Brandon? Who is he?”

But Shelly, who was now in a fetal position on the recliner, was rocking back and forth and crying.

“What did you see? Who killed Brandon?” the doctor asked again.

Silence. Shelly whimpered and sniffled but said nothing.

Dr. Foster put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t touch me!” The voice that came was Edgar’s loud and harsh and hoarse voice. Shelly was gone.

“Shelly, wait,” Dr. Foster yelled, throwing up his hands.

“What do you want from me?” Edgar asked.

“Your other personality is named Shelly,” the doctor said.

“She was about to tell me who killed Brandon in Ohio, but now she’s gone.”

“What did she say?” Edgar asked.

“She said that the boy did it, but she would not tell me who the person was. So I think we can assume that he is a male. Not a female personality, but a male.”

I gasped in my hiding spot so loud that I had to muffle the noises that came from my mouth with my hand.
The boy did it
, I thought. The only boy in the kitchen was Peter. It must have been Peter who killed Brandon. It all didn’t make sense to me. How could a child kill another child? What would be the motive? Was Shelly mistaken?

Or wait… There was yet another plausible explanation. Edgar could have had another personality, one of a boy. If that were the case, then Edgar’s boy personality could have killed Brandon.

All sorts of thoughts whirled around in my mind, but those ideas were blurred by the inescapable feeling of foreboding that I felt at the pit of my stomach. I sensed that there was something that I should be able to conclude, but my thoughts were incoherent, hopelessly jumbled. The identity of Brandon’s killer was at the edge of my subconscious, within my grasp and yet so elusive at the same time.

The fact that Amber and Tally and Mom were missing did not help me collect my thoughts or form appropriate associations between things that I learned. I decided that I needed Mark’s help. He was concerned about me and my family, but he was also detached somewhat and more objective since he was not related to us by blood. And, of course, he had that uncanny sense of intuition. If only I could find Mark and relate to him all that I had just learned.

Edgar’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Edgar told Dr. Foster as he gazed steadily at the slightly open window behind the desk.

A flash of lightening streaked through the sky and filled the room with a sudden burst of brightness. Furious, heavy drops of rain drummed upon the window pane.

“Now you’ve got to tell me about my father to keep up your part of the promise,” Edgar said.

“Your father is dead.”

Edgar opened his eyes wide. “How and when did my father die?” he asked.

“He killed himself just yesterday. The news media has not gotten a hold of the story yet, but I’m sure it’s going to be a hot topic when they find out about it, especially with all the attention surrounding you following Amber’s disappearance. Travis’ body is at the coroner’s office waiting for an autopsy,” Dr. Foster said, as he settled in the chair next to the recliner.

“It was pretty bizarre so let me start at the beginning,” Dr. Foster said. “The Family Independence Agency took you away from your parents when you were around seven years old, just after your mother died. Her death was ruled a homicide. One day when you were at school, your father Travis was eating dinner in the kitchen. He heard your mother moaning in the bathroom, and when he went to investigate, he found her in a pool of blood. She had been stabbed several times and was bleeding profusely. He was horrified and called the police. By the time the authorities arrived to investigate, your mother had died.

Travis was dressed in women’s clothing, and the detectives found his finger prints on the knife that was used to commit the crime. You mother had tried to scratch your father during the assault, and skin tissue under her nails matched your father’s DNA. There were also scratches on his face.

The police questioned Travis many times, but he seemed sincere when he said he had no knowledge of what happened to your mother. He even passed three lie detector tests with flying colors. I surmise that he passed the polygraphs because he did not know what his other personality had done.

Travis was charged with murder, and the authorities took you away from him and put you up for adoption, thereby terminating Travis’ parental ties to you. A jury convicted Travis of second degree murder, but found him mentally ill. That means he had to serve his prison sentence in a mental institution. I met your father when I came to this facility, and I was the psychiatrist who treated him for the last years of his life.”

Edgar appeared pale. “That’s some story.” His voice was barely a whisper.

Dr. Foster stood up and began pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back as he told Edgar the rest of the story. At one point, he glanced at the closet, and my heart began to beat heavily in my chest. To avoid detection, I closed my eyes, shrank back against the wall, and held my breath.

Dr. Foster’s voice droned on. “Anyway, all of these years, Travis had no idea that it was he, through his other personality, who killed your mother. He felt that the police were out to get him because he was strange, and he became even more paranoid than usual.”

Edgar blinked his eyes and swallowed hard.

Dr. Foster paced impatiently, wrapped up in his own thoughts. “When I took over as Travis’ psychiatrist, I wanted to know what his other personality was like. So I hypnotized him, and during a hypnosis session Darcy appeared. As I told you, Darcy was his other personality. She was very guarded at first.”