My heart sunk. At first, I was excited to know the name of this fourth personality. But, when Steven told me that Sam was violent, I knew that there was a real downside to knowing about Sam. I could try to bring him out of Jack’s psyche, but what if I did, and he told me that he killed Father Kennedy? What then? At that point, I would have no choice but try for NGRI, but insanity defenses weren’t always granted on the basis of DID. Jack might go to prison, and, best-case scenario, he would be incarcerated in a psychiatric facility for the criminally insane until the day that he died.
I prayed that Sam wasn’t the one who killed Father Kennedy. I prayed that none of Jack’s personalities killed Father Kennedy.
“What’s wrong?” Steven asked me as he studied my face. “You suddenly looked extremely depressed.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m defending Jack on this murder charge, and I now know that Jack had a violent personality inside of him. I’m faced with the knowledge that this Sam was capable of violence. I…” I shook my head. “I’m afraid that Sam might have been the one who murdered that priest. That thought makes me want to vomit.”
Steven bit his lip as he examined me carefully. “I wouldn’t be that worried about that. You have to understand, this was a special thing. To say the least. My brother needed to be killed. He was going to kill that sweet young Mary. Sam came out to protect Mary. Sam knew that Jack was in love with Mary, and he knew that Jack would never be able to come out again if Mary was killed in that house. Sam had the best knowledge about Jack’s state of mind out of any of them. He knew that Jack’s long-term sanity was at risk. He knew that. That was the only reason why he killed my brother. Just because he killed Jackson doesn’t mean that he is a violent personality in general. He only did it to protect Mary and Jack.”
I knew that what Steven was saying to me made sense. It did. It made a lot of sense. Still, I couldn’t escape the fact that, out of all the personalities that were struggling in Jack’s psyche, there was one personality that was capable of violence. Granted, the violence only came out when there were lives on the line. But that personality was still violent.
“I know what you’re saying,” I said. “But I don’t know. It’s concerning.”
“Well, tell me the facts on this murder that Jack is being accused of. Tell me those facts, and I can give you advice on what I think might have happened.”
I cleared my throat and straightened up in my chair. “There was a priest, his name was-“
“Father Kennedy.” Steven nodded his head. “Go on.”
“Yes.” I furrowed my brow. “Father Kennedy. How did you know about that?”
He shrugged. “I figured. The second you said that there was a priest, and I’m assuming that you were going to tell me that this priest was the one who Jack was accused of killing, I knew what name you were going to throw at me. I just knew it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “But how? Why? How did you know this name?”
He shrugged. “My brother was obsessed with that man. Father Kennedy. See, Jackson actually went to church. He went to church every Sunday.”
Steven shook his head. “Ironic, isn’t it? That a guy like my brother, an evil guy like my brother, who was raping and murdering children, would go to church? But, here’s the thing. My brother fell in love with Father Kennedy. I actually think that he only went to church for the first time, because my mother wasn’t religious and she never took us, because Mick wanted him to go.”
My ears perked up. “Mick wanted your brother to go to church? Why would that be?”
He sighed. “I think that Mick was in love with that priest, too. That’s the only thing that I could think of.”
I bit my lower lip as I tried to think about what Steven was telling me. Mick was in love with a priest? Yet, Mick didn’t appear until he got into that house. For Mick to be in love with Father Kennedy, it presupposed that he had met Father Kennedy before he was kidnapped. Otherwise, how would Mick know to take Jackson into that church in the first place? How would he have already been in love with Father Kennedy?
And Jack was only 11 when he was kidnapped. Only 11.
The darkness started to descend upon my brain. I was coming to the conclusion that maybe something happened between Father Kennedy and Jack, when Jack was only 11, or maybe even younger.
I didn’t want to believe that. Didn’t want to think that way. I didn’t want to ever believe that Father Kennedy might have molested Jack when he was a young boy. Because if that were the case, then Jack would have had a reason to kill him.
And if Jack had a reason to kill Father Kennedy, and he actually did kill him…
I swallowed hard. “So, your brother was obsessed with Father Kennedy?”
“Yes. He was. Very obsessed with him. He talked about him all the time, and he went to church every Sunday so that he could see him. I guess that, in his day, he was quite the handsome man.”
I nodded my head, thinking of Father Mathews. Father Mathews, who was young and handsome and fit. I wondered if Father Kennedy was much the same back in the day. “He was a handsome guy, then. Was there any other reason why Jackson had an obsession with Father Kennedy?”
“Yes.” Jackson nodded his head. “He said that Father Kennedy reminded him of a teacher that he had when he was in the fifth grade. Obviously, I had the same teacher – we traded off going to school. But that teacher’s name was…” He furrowed his brow, as if he was trying to remember the name of this teacher. “Dean was his first name.” He nodded his head. “It was weird, he wanted the kids to call him by his first name. But his last name was…”
He sat in his chair, his hand on his chin, thinking about it. “I don’t know. I don’t remember his last name. But he was our teacher in the fifth grade. Our homeroom teacher. And he was good and kind and Jackson kind of saw him as a mentor. I think that Jackson saw him as the father that we never had. We literally never had a father around, because our mother, I guess she got pregnant by a one-night stand or something. So, Jackson latched onto Dean. He was the first male teacher that we had. The first person of authority who was a man. Jackson needed guidance, obviously.”
To say the least. I wondered about all that. Two boys, going through the same kind of torture day to day. One turns out to be a serial killer. The other turns out to be somebody who’s screwed up but not a bad guy at all. The two boys also literally had the same genetics. In the nature v. nurture controversy, where did the Heaney brothers fall? They had the same nature and the same nurture. Why did one go so wrong, and the other one didn’t?
“Jackson needed guidance,” Steven continued. “And Dean provided that to him. Then Father Kennedy apparently provided that to him. Guidance. Mentoring. Jackson told me all that Father Kennedy was telling him, I guess because Jackson went to see him quite often at his rectory.” He shook his head. “Now, I know what you’re thinking, but Father Kennedy wasn’t doing anything wrong with Jackson. Jackson would have told me if he were. He just said that he went to see Father Kennedy in his rectory because he could talk to him. I think that Father Kennedy tried to put Jackson on the straight and narrow, but, well, obviously he couldn’t. Jackson was just too far gone by the time he met him.” He paused. “I’m so sorry, I’m going off on a damned tangent. I just am so happy to see somebody, talk with somebody. You don’t know what total isolation can do to a person, Ms. Ross. You just don’t know.”
I nodded my head. “I can only imagine.” I put my hand on his and he smiled wanly.
“Thank you for understanding. Now, please, go on with your story about how Father Kennedy was killed and what happened.”
I took a deep breath as I thought about the statement I got from the police, and the pictures I received from the prosecutor’s office. In these pictures, Father Kennedy was covered in blood and lying across a white throw rug in his rectory. He had been stabbed in his heart. He was dressed almost completely in black, as he was wearing his robes, so the effect of seeing all that blood could have d
efinitely been worse. I didn’t want to imagine what it all would have looked like if he was wearing all white. The blood was pooled on his chest, but it didn’t spread much further, as Father Kennedy died as soon as he was stabbed, so the blood didn’t pulse for very long.
“Well, my Uncle Jack was there in the rectory. He doesn’t know quite what happened. He was unconscious, and didn’t regain consciousness until he was put in the squad car. He tells me that he doesn’t remember going into that rectory, let alone recollect what happened to the priest. The cops don’t know, either, I guess. They only knew that Jack had a knife in his hand, and this was the murder knife. And, of course, there was a body laying on the rug. The body of Father Kennedy. There are other details in there that I just can’t seem to fill in, because Jack doesn’t remember what happened. There was another personality that came out in that rectory. There was another personality that took over and brought Jack into that rectory in the first place. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. One of Jack’s personalities holds the key to this whole thing, but the frustrating thing is, Mick is the one who is out. Mick is the only one that comes out. I’m guessing that Mick took over the role of the protector, somewhere along the line, so the others can only come out if Mick lets them. And, so far, Mick isn’t letting them.”
Steven nodded his head. “I see. And the knife, you’ve done forensic analysis on it?”
“Of course. I’ve had it done independently. No prints on it except Jack’s, which looks bad. There’s not even a glove print that I can link to anyone, not that a glove print does any damned good unless you find a pair of matching gloves.” I smiled as I thought about how the glove print sunk Michael. That only worked that time because I had his gloves. In this case, if there was a glove print, I would have to have figured out who owned that pair of gloves, and then hope that I could get my hands on them. I was lucky with Michael, in that I was able to obtain those gloves. But, usually, it’s pretty complicated trying to match gloves prints to any one person.
“I see. You do know that if the killer used a pair of latex gloves, there wouldn’t be a print. Right?”
I smiled. “Of course I know that.” I cocked my head. “How do you know so much about all of this?”
Steven looked sad. “When I escaped, I knew that I was going to be doing very little for the rest of my life. I knew that I wouldn’t be in society. I was going to have to entertain myself somehow, so I took as many books from our house as I could. I was able to fit about 200 books in my car, and those have been literally my lifeline. I think that I would have gone crazy a long time ago if I didn’t have these books to escape into. Some of my favorite books are thrillers and mysteries, so I know quite a lot about evidence, although I’m quite sure that forensic evidence has come a long way since 1972.”
I nodded my head. “So, I guess that you know that there is the possibility that somebody else killed Father Kennedy and put that knife in my Uncle’s hand. I don’t know exactly when he passed out, though. That’s the other thing that is vexing me. I have several working theories. One is that my Uncle walked in while somebody else was killing Father Kennedy, got freaked out and went unconscious from the sight. The other theory is that my Uncle was in the rectory with Father Kennedy, minding his own business, when the killer came in and knocked out my Uncle with some kind of a sedative, killed Father Kennedy, and then put that knife in my Uncle’s hand.”
I took a deep breath as I contemplated the last scenario. The one that I didn’t want to even think about. “The third scenario, which is possibly my last scenario, is that my Uncle actually killed Father Kennedy. I mean, one of his personalities did, and the stress of doing this caused my Uncle to black out. But that can’t be true. If it were, my Uncle would be in prison or in a psychiatric facility for the rest of his life.”
Steven looked sad. “I know that you don’t want to consider it, but you might have to. I don’t pretend to know what could have prompted your Uncle, or any of his personalities, to kill Father Kennedy. As far as I have ever known about the Father, he was a good, kind, upstanding man who had an infinite amount of patience. Those are the conclusions that I got from Jackson and the way that he talked about his encounters with Father Kennedy. I really don’t know if your Uncle had a different impression of him, or if your Uncle had different encounters with him. It stands to reason that your Uncle knew Father Kennedy before my brother abducted him, as Mick was the person who introduced my brother to him. So there’s some history there.”
I put my hand on Steven’s again. “Thank you for your help and all your knowledge. I would like to help you in return.”
He cocked his head. “Help me? How would you be able to help me?”
“I would like to help you maybe return to society. I know that you’re frightened that you might be implicated for all that your brother did. And you’re right, you probably will be investigated. But if anything comes of it, if the police try to charge you with anything, like being an accomplice or, god forbid, actively helping your brother murder those children…” I shook my head as I thought about the innocent life that was taken by Jackson Heaney. It made me sick.
I cleared my throat. “If they try to charge you with anything at all, I’ll take your case pro bono. That means that I won’t charge you a dime. You’ve helped me more than you will ever know.”
He smiled. “You would do that for me? For a man you just met?”
“Yes.” I nodded my head. I felt a bond to this older man. I felt an affinity for him. He was wasting away, but he was a good, kind man. There really wasn’t a reason for him to have to be resigned to living in isolation for the rest of his years, however many years there were for him anymore.
He looked down at the ground. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I would fit in with society anymore. Everything has just passed me on by. The last President I’ve known about was Nixon. As far as I know, the Vietnam War is still raging. I’m in a time capsule here, and I wonder if I would be overwhelmed if I left this place.”
I had to smile. “Maybe, but I’m sure that you will adjust. And you seem to like to do a lot of reading. You’ll have all the reading material that you need on the Internet.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “The Internet? What is that?”
“Well, you get on your computer and you can have access to anything you want, all over the world. Anything you want to read, you can. Any information you want, is right at your fingertips. I think that you would like that very much.”
“Computers?” He looked mystified. “How does anybody have a computer? I mean, I know that large companies had computers and so did the government, but they were enormous. Behemoths. And they were worth thousands and thousands of dollars. Are you telling me that people actually have those monsters in their homes?”
I smiled. “Oh, you wouldn’t imagine all the technology that has happened since the 1970s. Yes, just about everybody has their own computer. In fact,” I said, bringing out my phone, “this is a computer, too. It does everything that a bigger computer does. It has the Internet and e-mail and everything I need.”
He took my phone and looked at it. “This is a computer?” His eyes got wide and then he started to laugh. “And you say that I can read anything I want on here?”
“Yes. It’s also a phone.”
“A phone? Really?”
“Yes. Really. Unfortunately, right now, it’s neither a phone nor a computer. I don’t have service for either thing out here.”
He looked perplexed. “What do you mean, you don’t have service?”
“Well, see, there’s these towers. Cell phone towers. And if you’re out of range, then you can’t make phone calls and you can’t get on the Internet. You don’t have data if you’re out of range. Which we are at the moment.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, my.” He shook his head. “Oh, my. I wonder if I can cope with all this. I never imagined that anybody could actually have a telephone outside their home, let alone a computer in their home. L
et alone having a computer the size of a phone.”
“Yes. And, by the way, the Vietnam War ended in 1975. We lost. President Nixon resigned in 1973, because he was about to be impeached for breaking into the Democratic National Headquarters to get information about his upcoming opponent. We’ve been in several wars since Vietnam, all of them in the Middle East. And the World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists some 16 years ago. I think that those are the biggest stories that have happened since you dropped out of society.”
He shook his head rapidly. “Wait, hold on. I’m glad to know that the Vietnam War ended. I’m not surprised that we lost, because it seems that our military leaders were rather incompetent. And I’m not surprised to hear about Nixon, either. I always knew that he was crooked as a dog’s hind leg. But the World Trade Center is gone? How did that happen? How could a building as large as those two buildings be destroyed?”
“Terrorists from the Middle East took over two commercial airplanes and flew them into those two buildings. It didn’t take long for them to collapse.”
He looked stunned. “Wow. Just wow. I guess the world is quite different than the one I left. Who is the President now?”
I raised my eyebrow. “Donald Trump.” I strained to remember if Steven would even know who Donald Trump was. He had been a part of the nation’s consciousness for many, many years, but I didn’t think that people back in 1972 would have even heard of him.
I could see in Steven’s face that he had no recognition of that name. “I see. Who is he?”
“He was a businessman. A billionaire.”
“He any good?”
I sighed. “The jury is out.”
He nodded his head. “You really can help me? If I get arrested for the murder of those kids, you can help?”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 78
