Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  Feigleman gently offered her his hand and coaxed. She had stopped wailing but was still snuffling and hiccupping. Shyly she took his hand, got to her feet and he led her to a seat.

  “Comfy?” Feigleman said.

  Jim wanted to throw up.

  She nodded. “I wanna Coke.” Her eyes were round and looked soft green.

  Feigleman turned expectantly to the detectives. Dominguez went to fetch the soda.

  When he placed the Coke before her, she stared at it in disdain and said she never drank soft drinks. Sitting up straight and looking for all the world like a suburban housewife, she said she would like a cup of coffee. When it was placed before her, she tasted it, closed gray eyes, wrinkled her nose and pronounced it terrible.

  “Doesn’t anyone around here know the proper way to brew coffee? This place is disgusting,” she announced, emptying the ashtray into a wastepaper basket. She wiped it out compulsively with a tissue as the stony-faced detectives and the absorbed doctor watched. “And that light fixture hasn’t been dusted in years,” she said indignantly.

  It was a long night.

  At dawn they booked her into the women’s detention center on charges of murder and attempted murder.

  Francis Albert Feigleman considered himself extremely fortunate. He had talked at some length to the adoptive parents, but the growing suspicion that now excited him had never even crossed his mind until witnessing the woman’s sudden, split-second shifts of personality and demeanor. Even her eye color and physical appearance seemed to change.

  Though he had gone without sleep, he felt too energized to go home. He returned to his office, brewed a pot of coffee and sat down to review his notes and the tapes he had recorded during the night.

  What the Trevelyns knew about Laurel’s early life was that it had been hideous. When she was three years old, her mother committed suicide. When Laurel was five, her father was arrested on sex charges. She was the victim. He went to prison, and Laurel went to the paternal grandparents who blamed her for their son’s trouble. When he died in prison, killed by another inmate, they gave her up to the state.

  The adoptive father owned and operated a successful furniture store. He and his wife were childless and lavished love on the forlorn little girl. Parenthood was not easy for them, however, and became increasingly more difficult because Laurel was a strange and erratic child.

  “She seemed to have a mean streak that would come on for no reason at all,” the mother told Feigleman. Though Laurel was highly intelligent, even scoring 146 on one IQ test, she had problems at school and often wandered off in a daze. At the start of one fall semester she reported to the fifth-grade classroom, insisting she belonged there, even though she had successfully completed fifth grade the prior spring. She frequently forgot people she knew and suffered bouts of apparent amnesia, depression and childish behavior far below her age level and abilities. At other times she was bright, efficient and cheerful, an athletic tomboy.

  Hospitalized for three months when she was twelve, she was tested for epilepsy and treated with drugs and psychotherapy to deal with her mood swings. She returned home “cured,” but the old patterns quickly reestablished themselves. The occasional mean streak commingled with promiscuous escapades as she blossomed into stunning adolescence.

  Police had arrested her twice as a teenager. She was caught shoplifting in a Bal Harbour store, stealing items she had no need for, men’s underwear, in fact. The second arrest was more serious, behind the wheel of a stolen car after a police chase. The car belonged to a neighbor. Luckily, Laurel was a juvenile at the time and did not incur a permanent police record. “She always lied,” the mother said. “Even when she was caught red-handed she always claimed that it wasn’t her, that somebody else did it.” When she was younger her parents assumed she had “imaginary playmates.” As she grew older, they concluded that she was a chronic liar.

  After years of trying failed, after spending thousands of dollars on counselors, therapists and tests, the Trevelyns, in desperation, tried to solve their problem by throwing money at it, the theory being, give her what she wants so she won’t get into trouble. They bought her a car so she would not steal one. They gave her money and credit cards. They continued to pour their resources into the maw of the monster, who still waxed erratic and unhappy. In their late sixties now, they were tired of trouble and a their wits’ end, when she seemed to settle down a bit. They were aware of no unusual episodes for several months, then Rick entered the picture and their prayers were answered.

  They held their breath until the couple moved in together. It had worked out. They decided their daughter’s problems were all just phases she went through after all. Safely living with a man certainly capable of handling her, she even seemed happy, so they sighed with relief and moved to Orlando. There they could lounge around the pool with new friends, enjoying their retirement, talking about their daughter in Miami and waiting for a wedding and perhaps grandchildren to spoil, from a safe distance. “We did everything we could. Didn’t we, Doctor?” the father asked plaintively.

  Feigleman listened to the tapes over and over, stopping and replaying sections. She sounded like different people talking. He was barely able to contain his excitement. He would videotape the next session, to capture those physical transformations on tape. The parents, shaken and weary, had checked into a hotel. He looked at the time and wondered if it was still too early to call them. He would invite them to brunch or lunch. He had to make certain that they trusted him and hired no one else. This case had to be his exclusively. He was increasingly convinced that he had encountered a case so rare that it was the stuff of dreams, a patient to build a career on.

  Forty-Four

  Rick was sitting up in bed, his color good. “You look a helluva lot better,” Jim said.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you had been here when they took out the chest tube. I thought they were pulling my whole lung out of that little hole.”

  “You’ll be back to work in no time.”

  “Who are you kidding, Jim? You know I can never come back.”

  “Whaddaya mean? You’ll be going home in a day or two, the doc says you’ll be a hundred percent in a couple a weeks.”

  “The department says my injury is not service related. The chief hasn’t been by to see me. You know what that means. Christ, every cop who stubs his big toe gets a hospital visit from the chief. They’re treating what happened to Dusty and me as a love triangle, a domestic. I’m an embarrassment to the department.”

  “Hell, all you have to do to embarrass this department is hand the chief a microphone.”

  “The handwriting is on the wall.”

  “It ain’t fair,” Jim said bitterly. “The whole fucking thing is just not fair. There’s something else. Another body.”

  “What do you mean? Who?”

  “Barry, that aerobics instructor from the fitness center. The guy with the ponytail. Tawny Marie found him. Mutilated. Went by and got his landlady to open the door.”

  “You don’t think…”

  “Yup. Ballistics isn’t finished, but it was a .38 and I’m betting it was from your off-duty gun. The last visitor his neighbors saw sounds like little Laurel. Wearing a leather miniskirt. We found one in a closet at your place.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’d been dead more than a week. It was bad. Looks like they were partying and things got out of hand. Somebody used a really sharp blade to take off his three-piece set. Haven’t found it yet.”

  “Christ almighty.”

  “You should consider yourself lucky that all you took was a bullet in the chest. Watch,” he said grimly. “She’ll get kid-glove treatment in jail and probably wind up in a hospital. Mark my words. Meanwhile, Dusty’s stuff was boxed and sent back to Iowa. So was she. The department didn’t even send anybody to the funeral. Just like that, it’s all over. We lose two of the best cops on the department…” He shook his head. �
��Something’s wrong.” He blinked and looked away. “I should’ve quit a long time ago.”

  “Hey, partner.” Rick tried to sound cheerful, but his voice was hollow. “Don’t look so grim. I’m not dead. I’ll still be around.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m still thinking about that. Maybe PI, or I could sell insurance.”

  “Oh, sure.” Jim’s voice was derisive. “You oughta fight for your goddamn job. The Fraternal Order of Police would back you.”

  Rick shook his head. “Seven years to go, to qualify for a pension, and I blew it. Boy, did I blow it.”

  “All the women in the world and you find that one. What are you gonna do about her?”

  “I’ve talked to her folks. They’re gonna hire Sloat to represent her.”

  “Sloat? That son of a bitch?”

  “I told them he was the best.”

  “You sure you didn’t get shot in the head? I hope that’s just your pain pills talking.”

  “Feigleman says she’s sick.”

  “There’s another sumbitch. He’s already playing footsie with her family. He sees a high-profile case, his name in the newspaper. And her folks, after all they dumped on you … What about Dusty?” he asked angrily.

  “I won’t ever forgive myself, Jim.” Rick sank back on the pillows and looked away, staring out the window. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I feel so goddamn guilty. She was a good woman, a fair person. She’d understand. Help me through this, will you, partner?”

  “Sure,” Jim said morosely.

  Jim stopped by the church later. Just to think, he told himself. It was empty, a weekday afternoon. He sat for a long time.

  As he walked through the courtyard garden toward the street, the young pastor called out to him. “Did you get my messages, Jim? Are you all right? You don’t look well. Your partners … It must be difficult.”

  Jim did not answer. The pastor walked with him.

  “It’s so damn unfair, and there is no justice,” Jim finally said. “All my life I’ve been part of the system—part of the problem. It’s broken down, it doesn’t work. I wasted all those years on something that’s a piece of shit.”

  “Nobody promised that life would be fair, Jim. But there is justice, if not here, then a higher justice.” Concern etched the clergyman’s broad, sincere face.

  They stood together in the shadow of the tall iron gate between the rectory and the street. “Some people don’t like to wait that long. What if this is all we ever have?”

  “You can’t think that way, Jim, not if you believe in God.”

  Jim’s brief smile was sardonic as he lifted his eyes. “If there is a God, he must be out for a beer.” He turned on his heel and left.

  Laurel was moved into a solitary cell at the women’s detention center. There were several reasons, including alleged sexual overtures to other inmates. She was already on a suicide watch because when not compulsively cleaning her quarters, cursing the guards or stalking other prisoners, she was sobbing hysterically, like a child.

  Sloat agreed to represent her after a conference with Feigleman and the parents. The lawyer met Laurel for the first time in an interview room at the center. Feigleman was also present.

  When they emerged from the interview, the faces of the two men were as radiant as those of little boys on Christmas morning.

  Forty-Five

  The psychiatrist and the defense attorney wore pinstripes to the arraignment and pale blue shirts that would photograph well on TV. Sloat had informed Laurel’s parents that he would request a psychiatric evaluation. He elaborated no further, thus avoiding the risk of being challenged on some point. Once the juggernaut of publicity began, it would be impossible to stop.

  Sloat rubbed his palms together and scanned the courtroom. Exactly the way he liked it, standing room only. The press section was packed. The usual court observers, mostly older folks sick of TV soap operas, were out in force, as well as a number of off-duty police officers.

  Laurel’s entrance created a stir among the murmuring spectators. The jailhouse beauticians had outdone themselves. Nicely manicured, perfectly made up, she wore a new hairdo, a short, boyish cut, and she wore it well. Sloat had suggested that she dress simply and demurely and she and her mother had selected a soft pink dress with a lacy collar. She looked like a schoolgirl.

  Jim stood watching just inside the courtroom door.

  The proceeding was routine. The plea was not guilty. Sloat moved that Laurel be transferred to a private psychiatric hospital for evaluation and treatment, if necessary. Instead of the usual thirty to ninety days, the lawyer requested an unspecified length of time.

  The judge raised his eyebrows. Sloat dropped his bombshell.

  “This is an unusual situation, your honor. We all have read such true stories as The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil.” Total silence reigned as Sloat turned theatrically to his client, pinky ring flashing. “You see such a case standing before you now, your honor. Dr. Feigleman had conducted some preliminary interviews, and he is convinced, as I am, that my client is a victim of multiple personality disorder.

  “We have reason to believe”—he paused for effect—“that at least five different and distinct personalities occupy the body of this young woman.”

  “Most likely the result of unbearable abuse she suffered as a child,” volunteered Feigleman, unable to contain himself any longer.

  “As to whether any of them are guilty of a crime remains to be seen. She is not,” Sloat said. “She has no knowledge whatever of any of the crimes with which she is charged.”

  “It is an illness,” Feigleman added. “A disorder that can be cured.” He continued, his Adam’s apple bobbing behind his bowtie. “In the past, multiple personality disorder may have been confused with schizophrenia. But that’s wrong. It is definitely not schizophrenia. It is something far more rare. What she suffers from is a multitude of personalities warring inside the same body, grappling for control, emerging, submerging and re-emerging in sudden unpredictable bursts.”

  The judge appeared skeptical. “What did you say would cause this disorder?”

  “Repeated abuse as a child, probably sexual abuse. A little child trapped in a painful and abusive situation copes by withdrawing, and part of the personality is shut off to deal with the horror and pain. Another part of that child goes on as if nothing happened.

  “If the trauma continues through important stages of development, it happens again and again. That explains her lack of knowledge about what occurred when one of them was in control. The transitions can be triggered by stress.”

  “The good news,” Sloat said, nodding his head sagely, “is that it is curable.”

  “Are you positive?”

  “Yes,” Feigleman said emphatically. “The treatment is called fusion therapy. I’d like to begin as soon as possible.”

  The judge ordered the evaluation but refused to leave it open-ended. He instructed Sloat and Feigleman to report on their progress in ninety days and left the bench.

  The press moved in one motion, like a great wave, toward the door.

  The pressroom stood open to accommodate the crowd that spilled out into the hall along with the glare of high-intensity camera lights. Sloat and Feigleman presided, their faces aglow. Laurel, looking bewildered, had been returned to the women’s detention center. Her parents were present, however, a bit dazzled by all the attention, but eager to assist in her cause and to make it clear to reporters that the abuse suffered by their daughter had taken place long before they ever saw her.

  Jim lingered to watch the spectacle on a TV monitor set up in a hallway by one of the local affiliates. He had not slept, had not eaten. Who could? he thought.

  Sloat was describing Laurel’s condition as “a form of posttraumatic stress disorder, such as afflicts some Vietnam War veterans.”

  Feigleman offered that “Laurel Trevelyn, the core pe
rsonality, remembers none of the abuse she suffered as a toddler and a young child. But the others do, and it fills them with rage and anger, accounting for her behavioral problems over the years.”

  He shifted his eyes to the parents for affirmation. They nodded vigorously.

  “As a small child, she was sexually abused by her natural father. The records we have been able to find indicate that the man dominated and terrorized her mother. Laurel discovered her mother’s body—in a sea of blood—in a bathtub, her wrists slashed. This little child became convinced that somehow she was to blame for her mother’s death. The child’s physician later reported her sexual abuse, and she testified against her own father. When he went to jail, our juvenile authorities, acting with their usual wisdom, released this already traumatized little girl to her parental grandparents, who then”—the doctor’s voice rose—“blamed her for his incarceration and subsequent death in prison.”

  “When this child was given up for adoption, these good people,” Sloat said, his gesture sweeping, “came into the picture, gave her a loving home and did what they could, but it was too late. The damage had been done.”

  “Doctor, how does an abused child become a multiple personality?” The questioner, a young black woman, held a radio microphone bearing the call letters of a local station.

  “Personalities begin to split off the core in self-defense to maintain safety and sanity. Painful experiences are broken into parts with which each personality can deal. Each personality has different and consistent traits. They usually emerge when the victim is angry or under stress.”

  “Doctor, isn’t it a conflict of interest for you, the police psychiatrist, to represent a defendant accused of shooting two police officers?” The thin, intense young man in horn-rimmed glasses was an investigative reporter for the morning paper. Always looking for something to expose, Feigleman thought furiously, instead of paying attention to the real story.