What She Saw

by Sheila Lowe

  “Move over to the couch and lie down with your head over here on this side. I’ll put on some relaxing music before we begin. While I do that, begin to focus on your breathing.

  Close your eyes and breathe in through your nose to the count of five, hold it for three, then breathe out through your mouth for five. Listen to your breaths.”

  Jenna slipped her shoes off and stretched out on the couch, resting her head on a small throw pillow. The cushions were soft and puffy under her and she wriggled into a comfortable position. As she closed her eyes and began to tune in to her respirations she could hear the sounds of a CD drawer opening and closing.

  A few seconds later, the muted clang of a gong reverberated through the room. Then another in a different key, then another. In their echoes, the haunting melody of a flute reminded Jenna of the wooden wind chimes in the garden knocking together in the breeze.

  Dr. Gold’s voice spoke quietly from his chair behind her head. “Take a deep breath and think of something beautiful, a rose perhaps. First see the bud, then let it slowly open. Watch the petals unfold...

  “Now exhale gradually, allowing yourself to go deeper into relaxation. Know that you can open your eyes at any time you want to, but because it feels so good and you are so relaxed, you prefer to keep them closed.” He was quiet for a few breaths, giving her time to follow his instructions. He began to speak again.

  “I want you to visualize yourself at the top of a flight of steps. I’m going to count backwards from ten, and with each number, you will walk down those steps. With each step, you will become more and more relaxed....Going deeper and deeper.”

  He started to count and she imagined herself descending a basement staircase.

  In her mental image she looked down and saw that athletic shoes—white, with hot pink accents. Had she really owned a pair like that, or...

  “Ten...Nine...Eight...deeper and deeper...”

  Her eyelids began to feel as if they were weighted, her limbs made of lead. Down one wooden riser at a time. Down, down.

  “Seven...Six...deeper still...”

  Jenna started to move her fingers just to prove to herself that she was still in control of her body, but they were too heavy to bother making the effort. She sank deeper into the cushions, noticing the way they molded around her shoulders, her hips, her calves.

  The psychologist’s voice faded, then returned. “Let your mind wander in the quiet serenity and peace. Let yourself go deeper and deeper into relaxation and know that you can return to this peaceful place any time you want.”

  She felt wonderful, relaxed and decompressed, as if she had moved out of her body and was floating on a sea of well-being.

  Dr. Gold’s voice intruded on the peace. “Now we’re going back to a time you can remember.”

  Her emotional mind wanted to resist his instruction, but the logical side argued that this was what she had come here for. She must not resist. She must go where he was leading her.

  “...as if you’re watching a movie. Go back...”

  His monotone voice droned softly but Jenna was no longer listening. Behind her closed eyelids it was night and she was a passenger in a car on Interstate Five. She recognized the segment of highway and knew they were northwest of the city of Fresno.

  With detached interest she watched a glittering curtain of rain sluice down the windshield, recognizing that the vehicle was traveling too fast for the bad weather and mountainous terrain. .

  Dr. Gold had said it was just a movie, so she wasn’t afraid.

  Her eyes followed the wipers slapping noisily back and forth on the windshield.

  As if witnessing the scene from a distance, she turned her head to the left and glanced over at the man behind the wheel. He was looking over his shoulder to check the left lane. Oily black hair curled over the collar of his leather jacket. Strong hands gripped the steering wheel. A shiver of apprehension ran over her.

  Who is he?

  You know.

  No!

  “Slow down,” she urged in a slow motion voice.

  The driver turned to her, animosity burning in his eyes like red hot coals. “Fuck you.”?

  She became aware that she was as cold as if she’d jumped naked into a snow bank. Was it the trance body she was watching that was trembling so violently? Or was it her physical body in the real world? She had no idea, and it didn’t matter. She knew she was going to die.

  Reaching out, her fingers touched the buttery soft leather of his jacket. “Please, slow down!”

  His breathing was heavy with rancor and she could smell the sour fruit odor of alcohol, faint but unmistakable in the air. He tore his arm away, his right hand balled into a fist. She shrank against the car door, fully expecting him to backhand her face. His voice was a low snarl. “You have no clue what’s going to happen to you, do you?”?

  “Please just stop. I want you to stop!”

  He laughed and ground his foot down on the accelerator. The car skidded slightly on the slick road.

  “Pull over!” she ordered, her heart in her mouth.

  His voice rose to a roar, drowning out the sounds of the storm that raged outside around them. “What the fuck do I have to lose, Jessica? Tell me! What do I have to lose?”

  Her voice rose, too. “You know the answer.”

  Dr. Gold’s calm voice intruded into the scene. “It’s just a movie, Jenna, you’re safe here.”

  I’m not Jenna.

  “Tell me what you’re seeing, Jenna.”

  Not Jenna. Not—

  “I’ll fuck you twice, bitch. I’ll take you both with me.” He was screaming at the top of his voice now, flecks of spittle flying out of his mouth. If it had been lighter, she would be able to see the veins bulging in his neck.

  He gave the steering wheel a twitch and they fishtailed into the right lane. For a few seconds they were inches from the precipice and its long, steep drop. She hooked her fingers around the armrest and clung to it. “Please...don’t...”

  From the backseat the cries of a small child pierced her heart. She wanted to cover her ears and pretend she could not hear, but those cries refused to be so easily shut out.

  A movie. It’s only a movie.

  Lights from a big rig lit them up as it lumbered up the steep grade and passed by. Her driver—she stubbornly refused to allow his name into her conscious—accelerated, surging up on the bumper of a slower moving Suburban in the lane ahead of them.

  “Get the hell off the road, asshole!” he yelled as if the Suburban driver could hear him through the driving rain.

  The crying in the backseat grew louder. The man shot a poisonous glance at the rear view mirror. “Make that noise stop now, Jess, or I will.”

  That was when she felt the first tremor of primal fear. The healed bones in her right wrist were proof that he would follow through on his threat. She had shielded him then, telling emergency room personnel that she’d fallen.

  If she had been smart enough to stop believing him sooner when he swore he loved her enough to stop drinking; when he had promised for the umpteenth time that everything was going to be happy again. If only...

  None of that mattered now. Biting back the furious words she wanted to spew at him, Jessica unclasped her seat belt and twisted awkwardly onto her knees. Stretching over the seatback, she took hold of the little hands that reached out to her and somehow managed to calm her voice.

  She told him what a good boy he was and that she loved him. Setting aside for the moment her self-loathing for exposing him to this danger, she wiped the tears from his flushed baby face with her fingertips and lied to him that everything was going to be fine.

  It will be fine, once this trip is over. I promise you’ll never have to see him again.

  The wailing quieted to a whimper. He was as safe as she could keep him for now.

  She was still wriggling back into her seat when the Suburban came alongside and passed them on the right. As he hit the gas and caught up with the other veh
icle, her driver lowered the passenger window with the driver side control. Indifferent to the freezing rain that lashed her face, he bellowed across her, hurling profanities at the other driver.

  Jessica started praying then, making all the promises to God that hopeless people make when there’s nowhere left to go.

  I’ll be stronger. I’ll do anything you want me to. Just keep us safe...

  “Jenna...” Dr. Gold’s distant voice.

  Not Jenna.

  “...just a dream.”

  The tires were hydroplaning on the rain-saturated road. They swerved toward the Suburban, avoiding a sideswipe by a hair’s breadth, then veered back into their lane, chased by the long blare of the other vehicle’s horn.

  Without warning, the rear bumper of the big rig was right there in front of them, its brake lights glowing like demonic eyes. “Watch out!” Jessica shrieked, still struggling to lock the clasp of her seat belt into place.

  With a low growl, her driver spun the steering wheel and at the same time jammed on the brakes. The car slid on the wet pavement toward the embankment.

  They were suspended in space.

  Jessica’s head slammed against the roof, then smashed into the windshield.

  rolling and rolling...

  baby crying...

  cold rain...

  silence...

  t e n

  Claudia Rose fetched an Amstel Light from the refrigerator, waiting for Joel Jovanic to shrug out of his jacket before she handed it to him. Then she took his jacket and draped it across the back of a kitchen chair.

  With the beer bottle in one hand, Jovanic wrapped the other arm around her and gave her a long kiss. “I think I like this. Does it come with a pipe and slippers, too?”

  Claudia showed him a sly smile as she shimmied against him. “It comes with whatever you want, Columbo. I need a favor.” Separating herself from him, she slid into the breakfast nook and invited him to join her.

  Jovanic took a long pull on his beer, put the bottle on the kitchen table and followed her with a small groan. “I knew it was too good to be true. What do you need?”

  She told him what she knew about Zebediah Gold’s client, Jenna Marcott.

  “You referred her to Gold? What was your impression of her?”

  “You know how those conventions are. It was three months ago and I talk to hundreds of people at those things. One thing I do remember, when I told her what her handwriting said, she got all teary eyed and I’d told her things that no one else knew about her.” Claudia paused to smile. “People say that kind of thing to me all the time, but this girl was different. As it happens, I wanted to spend more time with her, but it’s impossible to get into anything deep at those events.”

  “Why did you refer her to Gold?”?

  “She said she had a serious problem and needed help. I liked her. She seemed kind of lost.”

  “And you’re a sucker for lost little lambs,” he said, though not unkindly.

  “Well, she called Zebediah, so something I said resonated with her.”

  “Do you still have her handwriting?”

  Claudia shook her head. “The client kept all the samples. They use them for marketing purposes.”

  “How likely is it that they still have them? Would they let you see them now?”

  “It’d be easier just to get her to write a new sample. The convention one was a single line and a signature. Not adequate for a proper analysis.”

  “Easier yes, but she might change her handwriting if you ask for it now.”

  “Why would she do that? What would be her motive for disguise?”

  “To support this tale she’s told your buddy Gold. Could be total bullshit. The first sample would show her natural self, right, GraphoLady? Isn’t that what you’ve always told me? The best sample is one that’s not written for the purpose of analysis?”

  Claudia opened her eyes wide in mock surprise. “Wow, Columbo, I’m impressed. I didn’t know you were actually listening.”

  He pressed his hand to his chest, pantomiming hurt. “I’m cut to the quick. I listen to every word you say.”

  “Of course you do.” She leaned across the table, offering a kiss. They had both reached the end of a long day, and his stubble was sandpapery against her chin.

  Claudia said, “If I ask her to write something now, it’s true she’d be more conscious of what she’s writing. Still, I can’t think of any reason for disguise.”

  “But wouldn’t it be better to have more writing to look at?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll call the client and ask if they kept the samples. They can either have the sample overnighted or if they don’t want to do that, I’ll go downtown and sift through them in their office to find Jenna’s. At least, that was the name she was using when I met her.”

  “That’s my point, babe. What’s up with the Jessica Mack alias?”

  “Hey, Detective, I realize that Skeptical is your middle name, but we don’t know it’s an alias.”

  “What do you call it when someone has two different IDs?”

  “Here’s a thought: maybe she’s DID.”

  “She’s what?”

  “Dissociative Identity Disorder. Used to be known as Multiple Personality. You know— when different personalities live in one person’s head, but they have independent lives; they don’t know about each other.”

  Jovanic brows knit in a frown. “You think that’s a real disorder?”

  “Psychologists are still arguing about it. Some are adamant that it’s real, others, not so much. And some are just as adamant that it’s a total fabrication. I once testified in a murder case where the client claimed to be DID.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was charged with hacking his wife to death with a bolo knife. The prosecution had a mountain of evidence, but the defense brought in his minister and a bunch of people who swore up and down that he was just a mild-mannered store clerk, wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

  Jovanic snickered. “Yeah. All defendants are innocent. Just ask them.”

  Claudia shot him a look. “You’re jaded, honeybun. The judge ordered a psych eval and in the end, even the court psychiatrist concluded the guy was DID. The defense was claiming the murder was committed by one of his alters—that’s what the other personalities are called, alters.”

  “So he used the SODDI defense.”

  “The what?”

  “SODDI—Some Other Dude Did It. But you’re saying the “other dude” was living inside the defendant?”

  “Well, yeah. The attorney gave me a stack of handwritings the client purportedly wrote while he was in various alters, and asked for my opinion.”

  “And you could tell from his handwriting that he had multiple personalities?”

  “I did some research and found some articles on how to identify it in handwriting. The first criteria: are the samples so dissimilar that they reflect totally different personalities, and the second: are there enough subtle similarities to identify that they were all written by the same hand?

  “When a person has Dissociative Identity Disorder, it’s virtually always a response to extreme abuse or neglect before the age of five. The abuse is so appalling that the child can’t handle it, so pieces of their personality ‘split off’ and deal with the abuse for them. Those pieces are their defenders. When one of the ‘defender’ parts is active, the original personality—the host—doesn’t know it. The host sort of goes to sleep and the alter takes over.”

  Jovanic looked skeptical, but Claudia could feel him paying close attention. “ ‘Goes to sleep’?” he asked. “What’s that mean exactly?”

  “The alters know about each other and about the host personality, but the host doesn’t know about the alters unless they come out and make themselves known during therapy.

  “Sometimes an alter comes out and takes over the host’s body, could be for a few minutes, hours, days, sometimes even years.” Claudia shook her head with a rueful smile. “Can you imagi
ne how it would feel when the host wakes up one day and realizes she has no idea what she’s been doing all that time? She could have been living a life altogether different from her own. Or his own. Blackouts like that are called ‘losing time.’ DID is pretty rare, but there are documented cases.”

  “You mean like in those old movies, The Three Faces of Eve, or Sybil?”

  “Well, Sybil’s been challenged. But When Rabbit Howls, or...”

  “Okay, I get the point. What happened in the case where you testified?”

  “The defendant’s handwriting samples met both criteria. Bottom line, the wrong guy was on trial. It was one of his alters who committed the crime. So the host personality, the guy sitting in jail grieving over the murder of his wife, was totally unaware of what he had done. It was as if somebody else killed her. He was the ‘somebody else’ during the time of the murder. The rest of the time he was just a nice, quiet guy, nothing like the alter, who happened to have this brutal side.”

  “That’s a lot to swallow, babe.”

  “The guy didn’t get off. He was remanded to a mental institution, which is just about as bad as prison.” Claudia twisted a long strand of auburn hair around her finger and tugged on it thoughtfully. “I’m sure Zebediah must have considered the possibility.

  Jenna was with him when he called this afternoon, so he didn’t say much, but she signed a release for him to talk to us and he faxed it over. He’s going to see her on Saturday. You and I will meet her at his office...”

  She broke off with a grin. “Assuming you agree, of course—and I’ll get the new sample from her then.

  “If I get the original sample from my client and a new one on Saturday, I’ll be able to compare them and see if there have been any major changes. I’ll also be able to see if there are signs of a head injury.”

  “You’ve got it all planned out,” Jovanic said with a slight smile, and Claudia knew that the case had ignited his interest.

  He said, “I’ll call a buddy over at Missing Persons and tell him we’ve got a Found Adult. Get me everything you can on her. Have Gold fax a copy of both driver’s licenses and any other vitals and we’ll see what pops up. If she did lose her memory, her family must be looking for her. There could be an MP report floating around out there. And if that doesn’t kick out anything, I’ll run her prints.”