The Girl Who Didn't Die--A Suspense Novel
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“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I have a question for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Here’s a scenario. A man has a split personality. His alternate personality steals a car. You put the man under hypnosis and ask him if he stole a car. Will he remember stealing the car?”
“He will if I speak to his alternate personality.”
“Will he remember stealing the car if you speak only to his main personality?”
“No, he won’t. An alternate personality has a separate set of memories.”
She could ask Teague to put her under hypnosis and find out if she had a split personality.
What if her alternate personality confessed to murdering Melissa? That would be bad.
“Can this disorder go away on its own?” Alice asked.
“Yes, in some cases it goes away without treatment.”
“What’s the best way to find out if you have a split personality?”
“Well, diagnosing dissociative identity disorder is quite a long and complex process. There is no specific definitive test. Do you think you might have a split personality?”
“No. I think a friend of mine might have it.”
“You can tell me the truth, Alice. Everything you say to me is confidential.”
Her second personality’s life (if she had a second personality) seemed to have revolved around Melissa. Maybe now that Melissa was dead, she no longer had a split personality?
“All right,” Alice said. “Yes, I think I might have a split personality.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Someone saw me in San Diego last June, and I don’t remember going there last June. I believe it was my second personality who went there.”
“Do you trust the person who saw you in San Diego?”
“Yes, but I think he might be mistaken.”
“Did he talk to you, or did he just see you?”
“He just saw me. Could you put me under hypnosis and try to talk to my second personality?”
“Yes, I could, but I must warn you some researchers believe that hypnosis can induce subjects to create alternate personalities.”
“Has it ever happened to any of your patients?”
“No.”
Alice hesitated. “If my alternate personality confesses to a crime, are you allowed to report that to the police?”
“No. Everything your alternate personality says to me is confidential.”
If she was Melissa’s killer, she should go to prison. She should turn herself in and confess; that would be the right thing to do.
But what if I create an alternate personality during hypnosis and it mistakenly confesses to Melissa’s murder? Insane people sometimes confess to crimes that they didn’t commit or never took place.
She needed to think this through.
“I know a doctor who has a lot of experience in this area,” Teague said. “Would you like to see him?”
“No. I want to try hypnosis but not today.”
“Okay. Call me when you’re ready.”
2
At seven o’clock, Alice called Kevin Munroe and left a message asking him to call her. David came to her house an hour later. Alice spent a few minutes debating whether to tell him about Melissa’s phone, and decided that it wasn’t a good idea. At her suggestion, they went to a bar in downtown Pasadena, where five shots of Jose Cuervo washed away all her worries.
The next morning, Alice went to a gun store, where she took, and passed, a firearm safety test and then bought a Smith & Wesson SD40 pistol. The clerk said that he would release the gun to her in ten days.
Chapter 31
1
“So have you found out who abducted your daughter?” David took a sip of his coffee. He had on gray knit shorts and no shirt. His wet hair was slicked back.
It was Sunday, August 6. They had woken up an hour ago and were now eating breakfast in the dining area.
“No,” Alice said.
“Did the police arrest the director of the adoption agency?”
“No. I think he didn’t know that Melissa was abducted.”
“Then who forged your signature?”
“The woman that abducted Melissa. She had a fake driver’s license in my name.”
“What about the murder case? They still have no suspects?”
Alice nodded.
“That sucks. How long have they been investigating? Almost six weeks?”
“Yeah.”
Her phone rang. It was Kevin Munroe.
Alice accepted the call. “Hello.”
She got up from the table and headed for the front door.
“Hi, Alice. This is Kevin. You asked me to call you.”
Alice opened the door and went out. “I have a question for you.” She walked to the end of the driveway. “Did you put Melissa’s phone in my desk?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Someone put Melissa’s phone in my desk.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Was it Jeb?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No.”
“If it wasn’t you, then it must be Melissa’s killer.”
“Why?”
“The killer took her phone.”
“What are you going to do with the phone?”
“I gave it to the police.”
“That was a mistake.”
“Why?”
“They might think you’re the killer. Did they ask you where you got the phone?”
“Yes. I told them Melissa’s killer put it in my desk.”
I put the phone in the drawer. I have multiple personality disorder.
I’m crazy.
“You think they believed you?”
“No. They didn’t believe me.”
“Do they think you killed Melissa?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’s not good. Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t talk to the police without a lawyer.”
I’m crazy.
Maybe this phone call was a figment of her imagination? Maybe Munroe and Jeb were not real?
Munroe must be real. She had met him three times.
I might have imagined those meetings.
She had seen Jeb’s and Munroe’s calls in her call log, which meant that they had actually phoned her.
Maybe my alternate personality made those calls.
“Can Jeb ask Melissa’s killer if he put her phone in my desk?” she said.
“No, he can’t. I think you’re right. It must be Melissa’s killer who put the phone in your desk.”
“Who killed Melissa?”
“Jeb will tell you after you perform a task for him.”
“Did I kill Melissa?”
“Do you think you killed her?”
“Did I kill her or not?”
“Jeb will tell you everything after you perform the task.”
“Ask him to hurry up. I could be arrested any day.”
“Okay. I’ll ask Jeb to hurry up.”
“By the way, why is your phone always off?”
“For security reasons.”
“Ask Jeb to call me tonight.”
“Okay. But I can’t promise he’ll call you.”
“Thank you. Goodbye, Kevin.”
Alice hung up and went back into the house. David said nothing when she returned to the table. Did he wonder why she’d taken the call outside? Did he wonder if the caller was a man she was sleeping with?
Alice checked her call history and saw that she hadn’t imagined Kevin Munroe’s call.
“Who was it?” David asked.
“My father.”
“Why did he call?”
“He wanted to know if I found Mom.” Alice ate a piece of tomato and said, “Do you think aliens helped the Egyptians build the pyramids?”
“No. But I hope they have visited Earth. It would be great if they made contact with us in my lifetime.”
“You would love to take apart their rockets, wouldn’t you?”
“You bet.” David smiled.
Chapter 32
1
If she was charged with Melissa’s murder, would David leave her?
No, he wouldn’t. David loved her, and he’d believe she was innocent. If he was charged with murder, she’d believe he was innocent.
Would David leave her if she told him her alternate personality had murdered Melissa?
He would stand by her since she had no control over her alternate personality.
Alice unlocked the door, went inside, and punched the code into the security system.
It was 5:24 p.m. If they were going to arrest her today, they would probably do it before nine. In three and a half hours, she would be able to relax a little bit, unless she was arrested, of course. David wasn’t coming over tonight, so she could mope and look miserable all night long.
She was planning to lie on the couch, watch TV, and drink wine. She should watch something funny. The Office, that was what she’d watch. She loved that show.
Alice changed into shorts and a T-shirt, then went to the kitchen and got a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the pantry. She thought about taking tequila, too, and decided not to.
As she sat on the couch in the living room pouring wine into a glass, her phone rang. It was Detective Hagan.
He’s calling to say they’ll arrest me tomorrow.
Alice accepted the call. “Hello, Stephen.”
“Hi, Alice. How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Have you talked to your friends?”
“Yes. I didn’t find anyone who can confirm I was in Pasadena that day.”
“What about a lie detector test? Will you take it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“If I passed the test, would your partner stop suspecting me of killing Melissa?”
“No.”
“That’s why I don’t want to take it.”
“I understand.”
“Can a person with a split personality go to jail for a crime committed by his alternate personality?”
“Yes. In most cases, people go to jail.”
In most cases. It meant in some cases they avoided prison.
“Did the Keeners take a lie detector test?” Alice asked.
“No, they didn’t.”
“Did you ask them to take it?”
“Yes. They refused.”
“Interesting.”
Why isn’t Detective Valdez harassing the Keeners?
Because Melissa’s phone hadn’t been found in their house.
But they had a motive. As they say in the movies, they had five hundred thousand reasons to kill Melissa.
“Did you find out who called Melissa from the disposable number you gave me the other day?” Alice said.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Did Melissa get any text messages from that number?”
“No.”
“Is Melissa the only person who received calls from that number?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Who do you think called Melissa from that number?”
“My partner thinks it was you.”
“I think it was the woman who pretended to be me, the one your witness saw with Melissa on June twenty-seventh.”
“You may be right.”
“Did you try to trace the location of that phone?”
“It’s been off since June twenty-seventh.”
The phone might be in her desk. Why hadn’t she looked there?
“Well, I’ll let you get back to work, Stephen. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
Alice put the phone on the coffee table, stood up, and went to the study.
Her heart was thumping hard as she approached the desk.
The phone is in the desk. The goddamned phone is in the goddamned desk.
She slowly opened the center drawer and began to rummage through it. She felt sweat break out on her forehead.
She found no phone. Good.
Alice pulled open the top drawer, scanned its contents, then turned over a box of business envelopes and froze.
There was a cellphone under the box.
Her mouth went dry.
She had a split personality. She had murdered Melissa.
You already knew that, didn’t you, Alice?
She was the woman in that video. She had given away her daughter thirteen years ago.
Alice stared at the phone for a long moment, then carefully, as though it were a vial of bubonic plague, picked it up with her thumb and forefinger.
Do not switch it on!
It was an LG phone with an AT&T logo printed on its back.
A wave of relief washed over Alice: it was her old phone that had broken four or five years ago.
She put the phone on the desk and resumed the search.
There were no other cells in the top drawer. Alice dug through the remaining drawers and found no burner phone there, either.
Alice wiped sweat from her forehead, then went to the kitchen and smoked a cigarette to calm her nerves.
She wished she were into pot: marijuana relieved stress much better than cigarettes.
2
Alice started with the first episode of the third season of The Office: it was the episode where Andy Bernard, one of her favorite characters on the show (she laughed every time he mentioned Cornell University), first appeared.
As she watched the second episode, Alice began to think about the role of coincidence in her life.
If her mother hadn’t gone missing, her DNA wouldn’t be in the police database and she would never have found out that Melissa hadn’t died thirteen years ago.
If Melissa’s body had been identified shortly after it was discovered, the police wouldn’t have run her DNA through their database and she would never have found out that her daughter hadn’t died thirteen years ago.
Melissa’s body would have been quickly identified if the killer hadn’t taken her phone and wallet and hadn’t smashed her face.
Maybe the killer had smashed Melissa’s face and taken her phone and wallet because he had wanted her to find out that her daughter had been abducted thirteen years ago?
Why hadn’t the killer just called and told her that Melissa had been abducted?
Alice picked up the bottle, refilled the glass, and took a big gulp.
Why had the killer wanted her to know that her daughter had been abducted?
How had he known that Melissa was her daughter?
At the time of Melissa’s murder, Melissa’s abductors had been the only ones who could have provided him with this information. The killer either had been involved in abducting Melissa or was friends with her abductors.
Or maybe my second personality is the killer.
Her phone rang.
It was Jeb.
“Kevin told me the police believe you killed Melissa,” he said.
“They’ll arrest me soon. Tell me what you want me to do.”
“Don’t talk to the police. I’ll tell you what I want you to do soon.”
“How soon?”
“A couple of weeks.”
“How do you know that the person you think killed Melissa is the killer?”
“I heard that person confess to murdering Melissa.”
“Do you have proof that he killed my daughter?”
“Yes, I do. And I never said it was a man.”
“What kind of proof is it?”
“The murder weapon with that person’s prints on it.”
“Did I kill Melissa?”
“Goodbye, Alice.” Jeb hung up.
Chapter 33
1
The next morning, Alice woke up tired, with a foggy mind. As she brushed her teeth, she wondered if she’d be arrested today.
What happened to murderers with a split personality who avoided jail? Were they sent to a hospital for the criminally insane?
/> Shortly after she got to work, Alice decided to figure out a way to detect her second personality. By the time she punched out, she had four practical ideas. The first idea was to put a GPS tracker on her car. The car traveling to a place she didn’t remember driving to would be proof that she had a split personality. The second idea was to install a camera trained on the front door to catch her alternate personality leaving and entering the house. The third idea was to remove the passcode from her phone so her alternate personality would be able to use it. The fourth idea was to put a poster on the front door reading: Did you kill Melissa? She hoped her second personality would write her answer on the poster.
Alice went to an electronics store and told a clerk that she was looking for a small surveillance camera with a motion sensor. There were a dozen models meeting the criteria. When Alice made her choice, she asked the clerk if they had GPS trackers that recorded the movements of a car. They went to the car GPS navigation aisle, and the clerk scanned the items that were sold there.
“We don’t carry them,” he said.
The camera set her back one hundred and fifty dollars. When Alice got home, she went on the Internet and ordered a GPS tracker. The tracker cost fifty dollars and the tracking service cost twenty dollars a month. It took her an hour to set up the surveillance camera; she placed it on the shoe rack by the front door. She tested the camera’s motion sensor five times by walking to the door and opening it. Each time the camera started filming about one second before she turned the doorknob.
When she was done with the camera, Alice went to the study, grabbed a sheet of paper, and sat down at the desk.
She would have to remove the poster from the door when David came over.
Alice picked up a black marker and wrote on the sheet, in big block letters: DID YOU KILL MELISSA?
If her second personality was Melissa’s killer, would she admit to that?
Why not? They were in the same body, they could trust each other.
She hung the poster just below the peephole. It was impossible to miss.
Did her second personality smoke? If she did, she might have smoked some of the cigarettes that were in the kitchen drawer.
How many cigarettes had been in the pack last Wednesday?
There had been ten cigarettes in the pack when she took it out of the drawer. She had smoked one cigarette last Wednesday, one last Thursday, and one yesterday. There should be seven cigarettes left in the pack.