“Can you tell me more about the others?” Lauren asked.
“I can only tell you what my psychiatrist, Dr. Field, told me,” Madeline answered.
“Dr. Field?” Lauren asked, pretending to know less than she did.
“My psychiatrist—and the psychiatrist of the others as well.”
“Oh, of course.”
“In the playground, we don’t talk, and we don’t call each other by name. Somehow, we just know who we are. Dr. Field is the one who told me about Judy. Judy is the one who replaces me the most—whether I’m out in the real world, or just talking to Dr. Field.”
“But do you know the names of the others?” Lauren had a slight uncertainty in her voice.
“I’m not sure. I only know…who I know.” Madeline seemed rattled by the question—not Lauren’s intention. “There may be others in the playground when I’m not there. I’m not there all the time. It depends, you know.”
“On what?” Lauren asked.
“We are here for Mia when she needs us.” Madeline hesitated then looked down at her fingernails, which were painted a dark green. She appeared to be scrutinizing them, while biding her time and searching for the right words. “We’re are all stronger than Mia, but she is getting stronger, which is why we don’t get out as much as we used to.” Madeline giggled nervously, then did little to mask a momentary sadness.
It was a bittersweet declaration that recognized the temporary life that each alter had. The stronger Mia became, the less she would need them. When the day came that she would be able to fully cope with the horrors she had witnessed as a child and lead a long and healthy life, her best friends—her protectors––her alters—would be gone.
“Can you tell me the names of the alters that you do know of?” Lauren was giving the question another try—her empathy was evident in her tone.
Madeline looked up at the ceiling. “There’s me, Madeline, and of course, there’s Judy…then there’s Marnie. She is the one to talk to if you really want to know what happened to Mia, though Mia is afraid of her—afraid that if Marnie tells the whole truth, Mia might not recover from it. That may be why I am here and not Marnie.”
“I’m glad you came, though,” Lauren said sweetly.
Madeline looked at her and smiled, then adjusted her glasses again. “There’s also Marion and Melanie, and Lisa, though I don’t think Lisa has been around for quite some time, either.” Madeline nodded her head in affirmation, then repeated: “Yes, I’m pretty sure that Lisa hasn’t been around in a while.”
“Is that it?” Lauren asked.
“As far as I know, yes. Mia has no brothers or sisters—only Beatrice and the rest of us.”
“How has Beatrice been treating Mia lately?”
“They’re not talking. She’s mad at her because of the court matter—something to do with Dr. Field.”
Lauren felt it was time to ratchet up the questions and take the dangerous but necessary leap into the past.
As we sat around Paul’s hotel room, waiting for Lauren’s call and what, if anything, would be learned from the meeting with Madeline, I was reminded of a similar point in time during the Jones Beach investigation––a break in the action when we reassessed all we had learned and where it might take us.
Paul was making notes on a legal pad when I asked: “Why don’t we discuss what we’ve got so far? Who knows when Lauren will call?”
“My thoughts exactly,” he said.
“Yeah,” Charlie added. “Makes sense.”
Paul continued to look down at his pad as he spoke. “Let’s start with a couple of plain truths that are both consistent and inconsistent at the same time—so much so that I actually lost sleep over them. And I don’t lose sleep often.” Paul looked up and eyed us both intently. “One…young boys started going missing in and around Cartersville after Richard Holcomb was seen getting off a bus in town and walking toward his aunt’s sewing shop. Two…young boys continue to go missing to this very day.”
“You think Holcomb could still be the one responsible?” Charlie asked in disbelief.
“Doubtful,” Paul said. “If he was about fifteen while attending Mount Seneca Seminary in 1950, that would make him 83 years old today…assuming he’s still alive. No… at some point in time, someone took over where he left off.” Paul then stood up, the pad still in his hand. “Now let’s break it all down. First…we have Holcomb at Mount Seneca, having underage sex with a priest and getting assaulted by three older students. By the way, I had Jasmine find out who those students actually were, and here’s an interesting postscript. As grown men, each died of unnatural causes: One in a car accident when his brakes gave way; a second drowned; and the third supposedly committed suicide by jumping off the terrace of a high-rise apartment building in Rego Park, Queens. None of the three ever made it to the age of forty.”
“Holy shit,” Charlie blurted.
“Now, let’s go over what else we know about young Richard Holcomb,” Paul continued. “After the priest affair and the assault, Holcomb leaves Mount Seneca, graduates from a local public high school, and then heads off to Fordham University in the Bronx. After a freshman year of poor-to-mediocre grades, he transfers to Columbia University in New York City on his rich family’s dime and influence. While a student there, he gets charged with murdering his girlfriend.” Paul looked down at his notes again. “Holcomb then skips bail and is next seen walking toward a sewing shop in Downtown Cartersville. We estimate this to be around the year 1955, when young boys started to go missing in the area.” Paul took a breath, followed by a few gulps of bottled water. “Maybe that apartment behind the shop was for him. Maybe that’s where he was hiding out. Maybe that explains all the locks on the doors.” Paul thought again. “Maybe…and let’s not forget that Holcomb’s aunt lived just down the road from Charlie, when his sister, Peggy, went missing?”
Paul was theorizing and sounding much too sure of himself for my liking. “We can’t be certain of any of this,” I was quick to point out. “What about his uncle by marriage, Frank Norris? You mean to tell me that he assisted in harboring a fugitive for murder, too, risking serious jail time himself? That just doesn’t make sense to me.”
Paul answered in kind. “Me neither, except for the fact that Holcomb’s father gifted his sister, Clarice Norris, and her husband, Frank, the house. Maybe that bought him off. Either that, or maybe Frank never did agree to help his nephew—which may explain why he just happened to die of food poisoning at the age of forty-one, shortly after Holcomb was seen returning to Cartersville. According to Jasmine’s research, the coroner’s report stated that Uncle Frank’s death was the result of bad squid he had caught and eaten after he had gone deep-sea fishing off the coast of Rhode Island. Curiously, no autopsy was ever performed.”
Charlie interrupted. “So, you’re suggesting that the uncle was done away with so Holcomb could hide out up here and murder my sister, Peggy…not to mention countless young boys.”
“There is no proof he killed Peggy, but he’s certainly a person of interest as far as I’m concerned,” Paul said. “Now…back to Uncle Frank: According to Jasmine’s research, write-ups on Frank Norris depicted him as gregarious and outgoing. He was even a Syracuse U. football star in his day. There’s also reason to believe that he had an affair or two while married to Clarice, so I don’t think there was any love lost between them. And Clarice, by the way…she passed away only four years ago, at the ripe old age of ninety-eight.”
“Did she have any children?” Charlie asked.
“You continue to impress me,” Paul told him. “Turns out there is a record of her giving birth to one child, a son, two years after Frank died.”
“Then who the hell is the father?” Charlie asked incredulously.
“Don’t know,” Paul answered.
“And you got all this from Jasmine’s research?” I asked.
“Donald Riggins helped, too,” Paul said. “Not every bit of information is on the internet waiting to be hacked.”
“I could use a drink,” Charlie said wearily, while hanging his head so low I thought it was going to fall into his lap.
“Now, let’s move to facts and circumstances in real time,” Paul added, while tapping on his pad with his pen. “We have Mia—the teenage girl with her own demons to deal with and multiple personality disorder to show for it. She said that she was put in a wooden crate or box, but—and this is important—unlike the missing boys, she lived to tell about it. She also said that she was taken to a cabin in the woods. Meanwhile, the remains of three other boys are found in wooden crates: two unearthed at a construction site, a third near the bank of the Seneca River, while another boy, Billy, went missing simultaneously with our arrival here. And upon investigating Billy’s disappearance, we found a tire tread at the scene with a lump on it from mud, manure, or a maybe just a bubble. We can’t be sure. We also discovered that the boy found by the bank of the Seneca River was buried with his clothes on, along with a book entitled, Christmas Moon, published in 2005. To make matters worse, there is evidence to suggest that he was buried alive. So there goes the ‘poor family interment’ explanation, not that anyone with half-a-brain believed it, anyway. Then, upon hitting the pavement ourselves up here, we find that this town has, at best, an inept police department, no real detectives to speak of, and one particular deputy who’s an asshole floating the proposition that Billy—the boy who just went missing—might have run away from a bullying stepfather, despite neighbors’ accounts that the stepfather was anything but. Besides, no little boy would run away in the middle of nowhere and leave his bicycle by the side of the road.”
Paul took a deep breath. “In conclusion, we know that crimes were committed. We even have a suspect, but where is the proof that our suspect committed those crimes? Where is the proof that Richard Holcomb kidnapped and murdered young boys—whether it be in 1955 or at any time? Furthermore, since he’s now too old or dead, who continues to be responsible for committing those same crimes today? And where is young Billy?”
Madeline sat up straight and took a deep breath, as the topic of discussion was about to change from alters to a darker inquiry—a recounting of the madness she was witness and victim to.
Lauren began with: “What can you tell us about—”
“Marnie was the strongest of all of us,” Madeline interrupted.
“By ‘all,’ you mean the personalities?”
“We’re not personalities. I know you mean well, but we’re not personalities. We are people, separate and apart from each other, with many of the same physical characteristics, but different—inside a mind that has been severely victimized.”
“You are very articulate,” Lauren said in a flattering tone.
“I read a lot, which is why I’m the smartest. This is probably why many of us are still alive.” Madeline continued to speak with a maturity well beyond her years. “Mia’s biological mom was an actress who lived alone with Mia until Uncle Greg moved in. He wasn’t anybody’s uncle. He was just a boyfriend of her mom’s, an actor also—and a creep who had a drug problem and eventually gave her mom one as well.”
“That’s really sad,” Lauren said.
“It gets even sadder,” Madeline continued. “He was also a dealer, and when Mia’s mom had to go on tour, she would leave Mia alone with him. Over time, Uncle Greg’s drug problem got worse, but Mia’s mom loved the guy and couldn’t see past it. One night, while her mom was out of town, he hurt Mia in the worst kind of way. Mia was seven at the time, and Uncle Greg was high on coke, pills, and probably booze, too. He promised he would never do it again if Mia just kept quiet about it. But there was more. He was not only dealing drugs in the city, but outside the city as well. That’s where he made his ‘real dough,’ as he called it. He also owed some bad people a lot of money. I’m not sure exactly why. All I know is that his trips out of the city became more frequent. I’m sure of this because I was the one who almost always went with him. Melanie started going too, but then the trips became too much for her. There were mountain walls along the highway, and she was afraid that a large rock would roll down and crush her. She has an unnatural fear of things falling on her from the sky. As for me, I’m more afraid of heights, but while on the ground, I just love the outdoors, so I took over for her.”
“Was it after Uncle Greg hurt Mia that you and the others first appeared?” Lauren asked.
“As far as I know, Melanie and I were the only ones to appear right after. Uncle Greg thought Mia was just being moody, but it was us he was referring to. I wasn’t entirely crazy about those long trips Upstate, either. I remember being on the highway for hours, and once we got where we were going, I would stay in the car, while he would leave with a paper bag in his hands, meet up with someone, and return with a different bag. What was really scary, though, was when he made his first stop at the local police station. He was carrying a larger bag than usual, and parked behind the building instead of in front of it. I remember sitting alone in the car after he went inside and being deathly afraid that we would both get arrested. After he calmly returned with a package and later pulled over to open it, I saw that it was stuffed with cash. He did these transactions with the police over a dozen times as best I can remember. Then…when I thought his crimes were bad enough…they got even worse.”
“How so?” Lauren asked.
“Seems that there were these men who wanted to do terrible things to little boys. And for the right amount of money, Uncle Greg was up for just about anything. This is where it gets a bit fuzzy for me. I remember a pretty town, bright green trees, and Disney movies—but it’s almost all in slow motion, like a series of photographs. Judy would relieve me at times, and then Marnie. I remember feeling Marnie—her strength and her courage during the worst of it. I also remember Mia—and not just in the playground with the alters, but near a real playground in the real world.”
While Madeline was reciting events of a childhood that would have made any other teenager weep, she remained perfectly poised and composed as if the story was not hers or Mia’s, but someone else’s—sounding more like a seasoned detective recounting a cold case than a young victim violated by her experiences.
Then, as if an alarm went off in her head, or a buzzer sounded that she was wanted elsewhere, she stood up, said—“Sorry, I have to go now”—and left the room and the building before Lauren could even get a word in.
As we sat in Paul’s hotel room, eating pizza and washing it down with beer and ginger ale (my choice), I wasn’t sure if we were each hoping to hear something that would keep us in Cartersville, or send us home packing. A half-an-hour later, and we were still awaiting Lauren’s call. Paul eventually went on his computer, while Charlie nodded off in his chair, and I kept checking my cellphone’s ring volume. When after two notes of Moon River, I heard Lauren’s voice, I hit the speaker button and we all immediately came to attention.
“A Madeline showed up,” Lauren began.
“We were afraid that would happen,” Paul responded.
While Charlie and I listened in silence and Paul jotted down notes, Lauren filled us in on the meeting. She had been afraid to ask too many follow-up questions for fear that another alter might suddenly show up and end the conversation, which is what she figured happened when Madeline hurried off. Maybe it was Judy who came to replace her again. But as far as Madeline’s recollections went—‘in slow motion, like a series of photographs’—none of us knew what to make of it.
“That may be how you remember things when you’re drugged,” Charlie said.
“Did she recall a school, like maybe the old Mount Seneca Seminary?” Paul asked.
“Madeline did recall seeing Mia play in a real playground, but she didn’t say anything about a school, and I didn’t ask.” Lauren’s voice had a hollow to
ne to it over my cell’s speaker.
“But where’s the connection to Cartersville and Upstate New York?” Paul asked, while becoming increasingly frustrated. “A pretty town with trees could be anywhere.”
Then the bombshell came that we were waiting for.
“After Madeline left, I had many unanswered questions,” Lauren said. “Like why did she show up and not Marnie? What would Marnie have told us if she actually had shown up? Now I don’t know if this means anything, but I made a list of the alters’ names that we know of so far: Madeline, Melanie, Judy, Marnie, and even Lisa.”
“I was wondering about them, too,” Charlie said. “I mean, where did they come from? Were they random picks? Were they the names of real people Mia knew?”
“But Mia was a child when the alters came,” Lauren interrupted. “So, after Madeline left, I ran some searches on my laptop. Naturally, the first category I checked was Disney, and I thought I had hit pay dirt because Madeline said she had a vague recollection of seeing Disney movies. But that was a no-go. After exhausting a few other ideas and getting nowhere, I just plugged the names into IMDB, the online movie and television database. I did this because one name in particular stood out to me, and though I figured it was a long shot, it paid off, or at least I think it did.” Lauren paused for a moment. “For what it’s worth, and for whatever it means…the name that kept ringing in my ears was Marnie, which wound up pointing me in the right direction. Put simply, all the alters’ names, without exception, are female characters in Alfred Hitchcock movies, namely Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, Rear Window, and of course, Marnie.”
All three of us sat looking at each other, said nothing more, then gave our thanks to Lauren and ended the call.
Charlie could barely contain himself. “Holy crap!” he shouted. “Those Hitchcock posters in the back of the sewing shop! These alters—these kids—have been trying to tell us something.”
The Criminal Mind Page 19
