Terror on the Beach (9 page)

I walked over in front of Sarah and squatted down.
She stared straight ahead. The little boy personality couldn’t see.

I looked up at Dr. Anna, “How could Judith have missed this?”

“When Judith met him he might have been just mute, he might have cut off the other two senses afterward. My guess is that as more and more things are coming to the surface, more and more of the personalities are going to come out and some of them may even alter. It’s rare but has been known to happen.”

“Robert, why don’t you get us all some coffee while I try to see who all we got here.
I could use a good cup of coffee.”

“I’ll have to go down the street for a good cup.
What we have here is awful.”

“That’s okay
it will give me more time.”

I hated missing anything and I hurried as fast as I could.
Several deputies stopped me on the way out and I almost took their heads off.

Simon caught me outside as he was coming in and reversed directions.
We walked together to TJ’s.

“I’ll be leaving soon to go back to Atlanta,” he said as he jogged along trying to keep up with me, “Since the case is over I’m being reassigned.”

I stopped and shook his hand, “Thanks for all your help, Simon. Let’s get together for a week-end fishing trip when all this is over.”

He agreed and headed back to his motel room to get packed.

When I got back to the cell with the coffee, Sarah was Sarah and she was saying to Dr. Anna, “The memory lapses are the worst. Am I becoming senile like an old lady?” She put her hand over her mouth.

Dr. Anna laughed, “It’s all right, Sarah.
I am an old lady. You’re not getting senile. So what do you think about coming and spending time with me in Florida?”

Sarah noticed me, “Robert, thanks for bringing in Dr. Anna.
I didn’t think I would like anyone more than Dr. McCain, but I really like her. She wants me to go into a psychiatric hospital. I think it would be better than here, but what about my shop? Did you check with Tory?”

I didn’t know what to say.
I had forgotten to tell Dr. Anna about Tory being murdered.

Dr. Anna picked up on my discomfort right away and, as I was passing around the coffee, said, “Don’t worry about anything but getting better, Sarah.
We are going to work on your memory and then you can worry about everything else.”

As soon as Sarah filled her mouth with coffee, she spit it out, “Ew, I don’t drink coffee,” She said in a little girl’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “Do you want a soft drink?”

She nodded and once again I had to be errand boy and I was going to miss some more.
When I walked through the squad room Freddy stopped me, “What’s she saying in there, sheriff? I know it hurts to admit it but you know she’s snowing you.”

“Step aside before I knock you aside,” I said and his face turned bright red as he looked around the room to see who had heard.

I got an orange soda out of the vending machine and went back to the cell. When I went in I noticed Sarah had pulled her hair back into a severe bun.

She saw me carrying the orange drink and she frowned.
“Is that the best you can do? I want a vodka tonic and bring me some cigarettes while you’re at it. This is the weirdest hotel I’ve ever stayed at and I want to be moved to another room immediately or I will check out.”

I don’t know if it was the stress of the last few days or what but, to see Sarah acting like a duchess or a queen or whatever she was supposed to be just cracked me up.
I laughed and laughed until Dr. Anna quietly said, “That’s enough, Robert.”

It had the effect of a slap that gets someone out of their hysteria.
I could feel tears gathering in my eyes and Dr. Anna came over and gave me a hug.

“Rober
t, I want you to meet Elizabeth,” she said. Then she said under her breath, “Whatever you do, don’t call her Liz.”

I walked over and shook her hand, “Don’t worry, Elizabeth.
We are arranging a much nicer room for you.”

“I don’t want a nice room, I want a suite.
I’m surprised at this establishment offering someone like me a room like this. I am a proper lady after all.”

“Of course,” I said, “How clumsy of me.”
I never really thought about it before but how someone acts can change their whole appearance. This woman I was seeing now was one I didn’t think I would have been attracted to.

The child, Beth I would love as a daughter
, she was so sweet. The little boy, I didn’t know much about. And the only thing I knew about Twoon was that he was a monster, although I had never met him.

Before we left the cell, Sarah came back out and we said goodbye.
Dr. Anna said she had to make a call to Ocean Sands, the psychiatric hospital in Jacksonville, Florida to see when a bed would be available.

Dr. Anna wanted to walk to the B&B so we could talk but she didn’t say anything.
When we got almost there I stopped and asked, “Have you met Twoon, Dr. Anna?”

“No, I haven’t and that’s got me both worried and puzzled.
Judith told me she was worried that the Twoon personality was trying to be the dominant personality since he had begun coming out more and more during the murders.

“But she hasn’t met him yet either.
I need to talk to your deputy who brought her in when she was Twoon in the morning. Can you set that up, Robert?”

“Yeah, what time?”

“Is eight too early?”

“No, he’ll be there when I tell him to.”

When we got to Lily’s she hugged me and invited me to supper.

“We’d love to have you and you know I always cook enough for an army.
We’re having beef stew with homemade biscuits and sweet iced tea.”

She was making my mouth water and I thought it would be a good time to talk some more to Dr. Anna so I agreed.

Lily ran her bed and breakfast more like a boarding house. She served three meals every day because she loved to cook. She charged so much for the rooms that she could afford to feed everyone.

I think she liked to pretend all her guests were her family.
She had no family of her own. As the meal progressed I could see that Dr. Anna and I would have to talk after supper, so I joined in the “family” get together like it was Thanksgiving.

After supper Dr. Anna and I took our coffee out on the porch.
She sat in a rocker and I sat on the swing.

“What’s bothering you about the Twoon personality, Dr. Anna?”

“It’s the fact that only your deputy has actually met him. Both Judith and I are usually very good at drawing out all the personalities of a person with MPD. In fact it’s so easy sometimes there’s a danger in the patient creating another personality during the therapy.

“Creating new personalities has become the defense mechanism
the patient with MPD has gotten so good at using that, during the therapy process, more will develop.”

I thought about this, “But Dr. Anna, if psychotherapy is to enable the person to heal, how is creating more personalities going to help them?”

“This is the best analogy I can come up with right now. Suppose you have built a barricade made of big rocks to hide behind to keep yourself safe from some enemy. Now suppose that the enemy is no longer a threat but you see someone coming toward you that you believe to be a threat.

“You’ve learned to pile on more bricks to protect yourself, so that’s what you do.
Say the person coming toward you only has your best interest at heart. Maybe they’re going to bring you food or medicine to help you.

“They start tearing down your wall of bricks to get to you to help you
, but you’re scared and feel threatened, so every time they take a rock down, you put two up.

“Eventually, you become so tired because they are taking the rocks down faster than you can put them up
. Despite all your work to protect yourself, they finally get to you with food or medicine or whatever you need.

“If you had understood they were going to make your life better, you would have let them tear down your wall of rocks right away and you could have gotten what you needed.
But you have been hurt too badly in the past and you can’t trust them no matter how much they tell you they will help you.”

“So, for an MPD, new personalities are their rocks as you talked about in the analogy.
So what, you have to first get Sarah’s trust before she will drop her defenses?”

“That’s exactly right.
As far as I can tell she created this personality, Elizabeth, as an adult to help Sarah. But there’s one main thing that’s worrying me about this Twoon personality.” She stared off into the night like she was trying to decide how to say what she was going to say.

“How long have you been a policeman?
I understand you were on the police force in Atlanta before coming here? How long have you been a lawman all together?”

“About fifteen years all together.”

“How many serial killers have you come across during that time?”

“Personally this was my first one but I’ve studied about them a lot.”

“Isn’t it true that most all of them think they are invincible and will never get caught? In fact, from what I’ve read, don’t some of them try to taunt the law and challenge them to catch them if they can?”

“Yeah, all that seems to be true.
Sometimes they will send notes to the police giving them hints to make the game more challenging.”

CHAPTER 19

We had talked sitting on the porch until very late and Lily had kept the coffee coming.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the stress of the case plus all the coffee, but I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

When I got to the office the next morning, Dr. Anna was already there.
She was in the conference/lunchroom with Freddy. This was a room with tables and chairs and vending machines with awful coffee and junk food.

They were eating takeout from TJs.
“Come on over, Robert, I brought enough coffee and sausage biscuit for all three of us,” Dr. Anna said when she saw me. “I was just getting to know your deputy here. He is quite charming.”

Freddy looked up
at me and smiled. “What I’ve been telling her was in my report. Have you had a chance to read it yet, sheriff?”

“Not yet, Freddy,” I said as I grabbed a biscuit and cup of coffee.
We sat and talked small talk until we finished our breakfast.

“I’m going to see Sarah,” I said as I stood up.

“I’ll go with you, sheriff,” Dr Anna said and then she did something that surprised me. She turned to Freddy and said, “Will you join us, Freddy?”

He looked uncomfortable and left abruptly saying he had a lot to do.
When we started down the hall to the cell I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.

“Okay, here’s what happened.
When I got here this morning Beth was out. She told me her cousin, Bucky had been to see her and she was scared. When I asked her to describe him, she said he looked like Bucky.

“I asked Freddy just now to join us in hopes we could bring Beth out and see if he is her cousin.
It had to be a deputy that visited her, right?”

This was very disturbing.
It had to be a deputy. Freddy had been here only a few months, about the same amount of time the murders had been taking place. What did I know about Freddy?

“What do you know about Freddy?” She asked as if she read my mind.

“He’s only been with me for a few months. He came highly recommended. He had letters from the chief of police and the mayor in Augusta, Georgia. I needed a deputy real bad at the time and didn’t check out the letters. I know I should have.”

Elizabeth was out when we got to the cell, “Where is my coffee? And when am I going to get my new room?”

“As a matter of fact, Elizabeth”, Dr. Anna said, “we will be moving you today. I had to call and check on your room last night and it is available. You and I will be leaving for Florida tonight and get you checked in. How does that sound?”

“Thank you so much.
By the way, did you ever consider wearing your hair down and cut shorter? I’ll tell you what, when we get to Florida, I’ll give you a complete makeover.”

“That would be nice.
Do you think I could talk to Sarah for a minute?”

Elizabeth closed her eyes and when she opened them it was Sarah.
She looked alarmed, “I’ve lost some more time. You’re wearing something different. Is it another day?” She asked Dr. Anna.

“Yes, this is Thursday afternoon.
Sarah I’m going to ask you some questions and they may seem strange to you, but just answer them okay?”

Sarah smiled like Dr. Anna was going to
play some kind of game with her. “Go ahead,” she said. “You’re the doctor.”