When She Was Bad: A Thriller

by Jonathan Nasaw

  “Just fine,” he replied, glancing over to Dr. Al to see how he was doing, phatically speaking.

  Dr. Al gave him a circled-thumb-and-forefinger okay sign and an encouraging nod. “Lyssy knows the arboretum like the back of his hand,” he told Lily. “Perhaps he’d, ah, be willing to show you around.”

  “My pleasure,” said Lyssy, crooking his arm the way he’d seen men do it in old movies. But Lily made no effort to take it, leaving him standing there with one elbow awkwardly akimbo for a few seconds, before he turned and limped away up the gravel path. After a frightened-doe backward glance toward Dr. Cogan, who gave her an encouraging nod, Lily followed Lyssy. Wally started after them, but Corder caught his arm.

  “Let’s give them a little time to get to know each other, Walter,” he said.

  “It’s not so bad here, really,” Lyssy explained, when Lily had caught up to him. “Everybody on the staff is nice—the mean ones don’t last long. And the patients on 1-East aren’t even very crazy. Dr. Al calls them the Desperate Housewives—some of them come here more for a rest than anything else. If they have enough money, of course.

  “Then there’s the ODDs and CODs—those are teenagers with oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder. Dr. Al says their parents send ’em here either as a voluntary alternative to military school or an involuntary alternative to reform school. They’re mostly on 2-East, where the game room is. He treats ’em with behavior mod—he says the smart ones usually figure it out pretty quick.”

  He was interrupted by maniacal laughter from somewhere overhead. They looked up, saw a bird with a round red cap clinging vertically to the trunk of the oak. “That’s an acorn woodpecker,” Lyssy explained. “The other day I saw one of ’em fly into a wire—”

  Lily flinched.

  “No, no, it didn’t hurt itself,” he added quickly. “Just clipped it with a wing, caught itself in midair, then it was all like—” He puffed out his chest, darted his head around stiffly—a dead-on imitation of an embarrassed woodpecker: “‘I meant to do that, really I did.’”

  “That’s pretty good,” said Lily, smiling tentatively.

  “Want to hear my imitation of Dr. Al?”

  “Sure.”

  He glanced around to make sure the other three were out of earshot, then drew his chin back against his chest to double it. “‘Perhaps, ah, Lyssy would be willing to, ah, show you around.’”

  Lily’s smile faded as a tall, unshaven man shuffled toward them wearing a seersucker bathrobe over pajamas and slippers. Instinctively she dropped back and ducked behind Lyssy. “Don’t sweat it,” he whispered, proud at how she’d sought his protection. “That’s Colonel Lamp. He’s a schizo. Completely harmless—they keep him medicated to the gills. Here, watch this.” As he passed the old fellow, Lyssy snapped off a salute.

  Stiffly, the colonel drew himself up to his full height to return the salute, but missed his forehead by a few inches, hitting himself in the side of the jaw instead. “Carry on,” he said thickly, spittle flying.

  “Boo-yah,” replied Lyssy.

  The path looped and forked and curled in on itself so many times that after walking for a few minutes, they were only twenty or thirty yards from the entrance, as the crow flies. By then Lyssy’s limp had grown more pronounced—he had to use the railing to help him across the wooden footbridge, red-lacquered like the entranceway, that arched steeply over a little streamlet with cement banks bordered by flower beds.

  On the far side of the bridge, terraced steps led up to a cozy-looking little domed gazebo with flowering vines climbing the trellised sides. They sat next to each other with a good eighteen inches of marble bench separating them. Try as she might to convince herself that it would okay to ask him about his limp, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. They sat in silence, listening to the maniacal laughter of the woodpeckers. “Have you seen your room yet?” he asked eventually.

  “Just for a second. It’s on the second floor of the front building? Kind of peach colored, with an adjoining bathroom?”

  “That’s just the observation suite,” Lyssy told her. “It’s only temporary, until they decide how close of an eye they need to keep on you. A word to the wise, though: there’s a reason they call it the observation suite.”

  But the warning did not fully register—nor would it, until the following morning. “Can I ask you a personal question?” Lily asked him after another uncomfortable pause.

  Lyssy’s heart sank. Here it comes, he thought. For a few minutes there, he’d allowed himself to hope that she hadn’t recognized him, that she didn’t know anything about his murderous past. “Go ahead,” he said, bracing himself.

  “Is it true you used to have DID, and Dr. Corder cured you?”

  “Oh, that,” said Lyssy, almost giddy with relief. “Yeah, sure—I haven’t had an alter switch in like, two years or something. No fugue states, no blackouts. Sometimes, though…. “But he caught himself just in time. No sense scaring her, when Dr. Al would have wanted him to be as encouraging as possible. Besides, out here in the sweet air of a summer afternoon, it was easy to believe he’d only imagined the dark place and the muttering voice.

  And even if he hadn’t, divulging the existence of either would have been risky—if the girl passed his misgivings on to Dr. Al, it would mean an end to Lyssy’s hard-earned privileges. No more trips to the game room to hang out with the ODDs and CODs, no more meals in the dining hall, and worst of all, no more visits to the director’s residence to visit Alison and Mrs. Corder—Lyssy would be spending his remaining time at the Institute in a locked room on the locked ward.

  “Well, you know, sometimes, it seems like it’s almost too good to be true,” he finished awkwardly.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” said the girl. Then those dark round eyes narrowed. “But if you’re better, how come you’re still here?”

  “Actually, I’m due to leave pretty soon,” said Lyssy, truthfully enough.

  “And you’re cured? You’re really, really cured?”

  “A, ah, paragon of mental health,” replied Lyssy, once again mimicking Dr. Al.

  5

  Alan Corder had long maintained that the standard setup for a modern psychiatric evaluation—two people sitting on opposite sides of a desk; one asks questions or administers tests while the other responds—left much to be desired.

  Once she’d recovered from her initial shock at finding herself face-to-face with the man who still figured in her nightmares, Irene had to agree. Walking with Lyssy in the pleasant pocket forest after she and Corder had caught up to their patients at the gazebo, observing him as he interacted with the enriched sensory environment, she found that the disarming awkwardness of his body language, his mercurial attention span, his childish delight in the magical appearance of a hummingbird, as well as his eagerness to share that delight with his companions, all spoke volumes—volumes that would never even have been opened in the usual office setting.

  What she didn’t see was equally as important. As a multiple, Maxwell had almost always exhibited an upward, rightward eyeball roll when changing alters, and the new alter had frequently exhibited grounding behavior afterward, rubbing a thigh as if to verify that he (or in the case of one alter, she) was in fact in the body.

  But Irene observed none of this behavior during their walk. When she made eye contact with Lyssy, even when she caught him unawares, there was no sign of Max or Kinch, the Maxwell alters she’d learned to fear—with good reason.

  “I have to admit, I’m impressed,” she conceded to Corder when they were alone in his office, sitting in matching leather armchairs in front of the fireplace. “How long since an alter has surfaced?”

  “Just under two years,” replied Corder.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I can show you the optical exams if you’d like.” Variations in optical functioning were among the most reliable indicators for a personality switch: a 1989 study had confirmed that DID subjects had clos
e to five times more such changes than control subjects who’d been asked to feign the disorder.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” said Irene, smoothing the travel wrinkles from her skirt. “What about the possibility of co-consciousness?” That was a state of being, uncommon but not unknown, where one alter was able to directly and simultaneously experience the thoughts, feelings, and actions of another. (Researchers still weren’t exactly sure how the mind managed the feat, but one thing they all agreed on was that the human brain seemed to have evolved with redundancy as one of its basic design principles: there was more than enough gray matter in there to operate two personalities simultaneously.)

  “There’d have been some indication—confusion, mini–fugue states, contradictory responses.” Corder grinned suddenly, then slapped the arm of his chair. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to face it sooner or later, Irene: I can treat DID successfully.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me how, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.” Corder grabbed a poker from the brass stand by the fireplace and prodded at the neatly stacked logs—a bit of fidgeting that would have been less revealing if there’d actually been a fire going at the time. “And for good reason. I’m sorry to have to be so mysterious about this, but the last thing I want to do is get caught up in a debate about my methodology until I have my ducks in a row and I’m ready to publish.”

  “At least give me a hint—I’m feeling badly enough about leaving Lily, as it is.” The decision to have Lily committed to Reed-Chase had been made by her new guardian, her uncle Rollie, who’d learned about Corder’s success with multiples from various DID websites. Irene’s feelings had been hurt, of course—her first inclination had been to wash her hands of the whole damn case. She and Lily had grown too close over the last dozen years anyway, she’d told herself—it would probably be a relief to have all that weight off her shoulders.

  But that was sour grapes, and she knew it. And in the end, she couldn’t leave Lily to be hunted down and dragged off to an asylum by strangers. So she’d enlisted Ed Pender in the cause. Pender in turn had brought in a skip tracer from Santa Cruz who’d tracked Lily to Shasta County; the rest of the story had played itself out in the coffee shop in Weed.

  “All right, one hint,” said Corder, begrudgingly. “But you have to promise not to tell anybody anything until I publish.”

  “I swear on my DSM.” A little professional humor: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was sometimes referred to as the clinical psychiatrist’s Bible.

  “Okay, here it is: screw integration.”

  That brought Irene up short. The standard approach to treating multiples was to integrate the alter identities with the original personality to the greatest achievable extent. And the alternative to that would be…?

  “Good lord, Al—you’re not talking about somehow eliminating the alters instead of integrating them, are you?”

  Corder’s response consisted of a wink so smug and feline Irene could practically see canary feathers floating behind him as he led her up to Lily’s provisional quarters on 2-South. The security precautions were impressive as always—he had to punch codes into keypads to gain entrance to the glassed-in elevator lobby, again to summon the elevator, and a third time to gain access to the observation suite, a largish room decorated in shades of peach, apricot, and burnt umber. Lily lay on a comfortable-looking single bed—not a hospital bed—with her head turned resolutely toward the wall.

  “Good seeing you again, Irene,” said Corder, framed in the doorway. “I’ll leave you two alone to talk—when you’re done, just press that intercom button over there. And Lily, you have a good night, don’t be shy about asking the nurses for anything you need.” He stepped backward as the door slid closed again.

  “What a lovely room,” said Irene, approaching the bed. “And look, you have your own television!” As if that were something entirely new and marvelous. Attagirl, Irene told herself, perching on the edge of the bed. Could you possibly be any more fatuous?

  “What do you care?” Lily’s elation at learning that Corder might be able to cure her DID had been short-lived, disappearing as soon as the door to her room had closed and locked behind her. “If you cared, you wouldn’t go away and leave me here.”

  “Please don’t make this any harder than it is already.” Irene reached out to pat the girl’s shoulder. She was sorely tempted to blurt out the unspeakable truth—that bringing Lily here hadn’t been her idea—but didn’t want to take a chance on upsetting the girl even more, or on selfishly undermining Lily’s relationship with her new doctor.

  Lily stiffened at the touch, then wrenched herself around almost violently, turning a tear-streaked face toward Irene. “I miss them, Dr. Irene—Grandma and Grandpa, I miss them so much. And I’m so scared. Please don’t leave me here. Something terrible is going to happen, I know it is.”

  “Ssh, ssh, it’s okay, I won’t let anything bad happen to you,” Irene crooned soothingly, taking the girl into her arms and hugging her tightly—something she’d never have been able to do before her ordeal with Maxwell. Awkwardly, one-handed, she fumbled around in her enormous purse for her card case and a pen, scribbled her home and cell numbers on the back of one of her business cards, and handed it to Lily. “Here, take this,” she said. “I’m no farther than the telephone. You can call me anytime you like, even if it’s just to talk, and if you really need me, just say the word and I’ll come running.”

  A tear plopped onto the card; carefully, so as not to smear the ink, Lily brushed it away with her sleeve. “Is that a promise?” she said, slipping the card into the tight back pocket of her jeans.

  “Cross my heart,” said the psychiatrist. They hugged for a few seconds, then Irene pressed the intercom button. Lily flinched when the door slid open, then lay back and turned her face to the wall; when she turned around again, she was alone.

  Welcome to the snake pit, Lily told herself. She knew why they used to call mental hospitals snake pits: because—no lie!—doctors once thought the best way to cure people of certain disorders was to hang them upside down over a pit filled with poisonous snakes!

  Of course, there were no snakes here at the Reed-Chase Institute—or if there were, they were very expensive, exclusive snakes, she thought wryly.

  But no amount of pampering could pad the shock of finding yourself living out the single worst fear of your life. Ever since she could remember, Lily had been terrified of being locked up in an asylum—and now here she was. Talk about the other shoe dropping, she thought. In a way, it was like that old cliché about careful what you wish for because you might get it, only with a new twist. Be careful what you’re afraid of, is what they should say, Lily decided. Be careful what you’re afraid of, because someday it might get you.

  6

  As much as he disliked the responsibilities that came with being the director of an institution the size of Reed-Chase—the administrative details that threatened to swamp him on a daily basis, the weight of all the people, staff and patients alike, whose welfare depended on his decisions—Al Corder had to admit that you couldn’t beat the commute.

  It was close to six o’clock when he left Irene Cogan and Lily to say their good-byes. Only minutes later he unlocked and ducked through the arch-topped door set into the ivy-covered brick wall bordering the northern end of the arboretum, strolled across the lawn, passed the disused swing-and-slide set, and let himself in through the back entrance of the eighty-year-old, half-timbered, Tudor-style fieldstone manor that came with the director’s job. End of commute.

  “Home is the hunter, home from the hills,” he called.

  “Hi, I’m in the kitchen.”

  As he passed through the dining room, Corder noticed the table was set for two. “The princess does not deign to dine with the commoners this evening?”

  Cheryl Corder was at the stove, wooden spoon in one hand, kettle lid in the other, her dark blond hair limp from the steam. “The
princess,” she replied over her shoulder, “is a little down in the dumps.”

  “Boy trouble?” Corder gave her a peck on the back of the neck, then peered over her shoulder into the kettle and inhaled greedily.

  “What else?” She replaced the lid, set the spoon down carefully on a folded paper towel.

  “Should I have a fatherly chat with her?”

  “I suppose you might as well give it a shot—Lord knows she won’t confide in me.”

  Knock, knock. “Allie? Allie, it’s Dad.”

  “Yeah, I guessed from your voice.”

  She can’t help it, Corder reminded himself, she’s an adolescent. “May I come in?”

  “If you promise not to act like a psychiatrist.”

  “Word,” said Corder; it sounded lame even to him, so he hastily added, “On it, you have my word on it.”

  His quintessentially fifteen-year-old daughter lay facedown on the bed, her right hand under her cheek, her left hand dangling just above the carpet. She was wearing a pair of skintight, below-the-navel jeans and a cutoff top. She edged her legs away from the side of the bed to give him room to perch—a major concession.

  “Speaking not as a psychiatrist but as a father—you want me to beat him up?”

  He was rewarded with a giggle. “Oh, Daddy, he’s a football player.”

  “I was on the track team—I could pop him one, then run away quick.”

  As Alison rolled over and sat up, it struck Corder once again that somehow, almost overnight, his little girl had metamorphosed into, for want of a better word, a hottie.

  “How come boys are such a-holes, Daddy?”

  “Hormones, sweetie—at that age, they’re a raging stew of hormones. Speaking of which, your mother is cooking up a heavenly beef bourguignonne—if there’s beef bourguignonne in heaven. I’m, ah, thinking about cracking a real nice-looking ’98 Napa cabernet to go with it.”

  She cocked her head like a curious jay. “Aaaand…?”