by Sara Shepard
Suddenly, a cry rose up in the crowd. “Cops!” a boy’s voice bellowed.
Everyone screamed. Costumed kids scurried in every direction, bolting for the doors and windows, slamming into one another and pushing the crowd forward. Ava struggled to move against the tide, trying as hard as she could to find where Julie had gone.
Before Julie killed again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MAC RACED FROM ROOM TO room, screaming Claire’s name. Please let her still be inside, please let her still be inside, she thought frantically. People were streaming out in the opposite direction, fleeing from the police. Outside, cop cars were parked on the curb, sirens blazing. Mac heard screams and thundering footsteps, but they were fading away. Everyone was heading for the woods, desperate not to be caught. Was Claire there, too?
She stumbled into the front yard. The officers were forming a loose circle around the lawn, trying to contain the sprawling mess of running kids. One officer had a bullhorn to his lips. It echoed with feedback. “If you have been drinking or are otherwise impaired, do not get behind the wheel of your car. We will get you home. I repeat . . .”
“Claire?” Mac called out, thinking she saw her old friend’s head in a clump of kids. No one turned. More kids whooshed past. Mac looked around for Julie, too, but she’d also vanished. Her heart thudded hard.
Mac still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that Julie thought Parker was still alive—and more than that, that Parker had been with them, a fifth girl in their group. She’d claimed that Parker had been the one who named Ashley in film studies that day, but Julie had said Ashley’s name herself. So . . . what did that mean? Was Parker a personality of Julie’s? Did Julie walk around half the time thinking she was in Parker’s skin?
Mac was astonished that they’d missed something so severe right under their noses. In hindsight, there had been times where it had seemed like Julie was contradicting herself, but Mac had just thought she was arguing a problem through from both angles. And it wasn’t like Julie had any parents to notice what was going on—her mom probably never even knew where she was. She could slip here and there as she pleased. If only they’d kept better tabs on her. Looked out for her more. Could they have prevented this? And worse, where was Julie now?
A shadow darted past Mac on the street, headed in the opposite direction of the cop cars. Mac took in the colorful costume and gasped—it was Claire, and now she was standing all alone in the middle of the road, staring at something on her phone.
“Hey!” Mac called out, running toward her. “Claire!”
Claire looked up, but her eyes were glassy. Her nose wrinkled at the sight of Mac. “Go away, already,” she said in a bored voice.
“Get out of the street!” Mac screamed.
Claire made a face. “Why?”
Just then, Mac heard the rumble of a car engine. “Claire!” Mac cried as she advanced. The car revved again. An acid-like smell rose in the air. And suddenly, from out of nowhere, a car shot forward, straight for Claire’s body.
“No!” Mac sprinted for Claire. Headlights blazed in the road as bright as a flashbulb, illuminating them both in the glare. The car was moving fast, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the cops were only a hundred or so yards behind them. Finally, Claire looked up. She seemed blinded by the white light. Her mouth hung open and her limbs were slack.
“Move!” Mac screamed. She reached Claire a millisecond before the car did, throwing herself against Claire’s body and tackling her to the grass. They landed together on the other side of the street, slamming into the curb with painful force. Claire screamed. Mac momentarily couldn’t breathe. The car screeched past them, just inches away, down the block and around the corner.
Mac heard a low whimpering behind her and turned. Claire had sat up, but she was hunched over, looking dazed. She cradled her left hand in the crook of her right arm. Then she turned and stared at Mac, her eyes widening as she seemed to realize that Mac had saved her.
Wordlessly, Claire looked back at her hand. Mac looked, too. Claire’s fingers were mangled, twisted over one another in an unnatural configuration. Her pinky stuck out at a horrible angle, clearly broken in more than one place.
“Oh my god,” Mac said. “Claire. Your fingers.”
Claire’s face was pale. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but then her eyelids fluttered closed, and she slumped to the grass.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
AN HOUR LATER, CAITLIN STOOD with Mac and Ava in the lobby of the police station. Officers were rushing here and there, and the place seemed in pandemonium, phones ringing and printers blaring and everyone talking at once. Caitlin’s heart was still racing. She’d been by Mac’s side shortly after Claire was mowed down by that car, but the EMTs and police officers had shooed them all out of the way, sending them home. But they couldn’t go home. They had to come here . . . and tell the truth.
McMinnamin appeared in the doorway, his gaze settling over the girls. “Come on back,” he said gruffly.
Wordlessly, everyone followed him. Caitlin’s nose twitched with the stench of stale coffee and too-sweet pastries. She searched the officers’ faces for signs of what had happened that night. Was Claire okay? No one had heard anything after she was loaded into the ambulance. Had it really been Julie who’d tried to hit her? Surely the cops didn’t still suspect them, did they?
The officer led them into an empty room and gestured for all of them to sit. “So. Busy night, huh?”
Everyone nodded. Ava’s breaths came out in little gasps.
McMinnamin put his hands on his hips. “You know something, right? Is that why you’re here?”
Caitlin eyed Mac and Ava. Everyone nodded. It was time, Caitlin knew, but she still felt a pang. It felt wrong to give Julie up. They had promised to stick together.
Mac took a deep breath. “We think it’s Julie Redding.”
McMinnamin nodded. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Okay, then.”
Caitlin stared at the floor. “She kind of . . . confessed,” she admitted.
It was still hard to process what had happened . . . and who Julie was . . . and what had actually gone down in Nyssa’s house. But yes, Julie had confessed. Sort of. She’d said Parker had done it, but Parker wasn’t here.
“But then she ran off,” Ava added. “We’re afraid she was the one who hurt Claire Coldwell.”
McMinnamin nodded. “That’s what we’re afraid of, too.”
Caitlin whipped her head up. “Wait. You are?”
“Yes, we’ve been watching Julie for some time.”
Caitlin squinted at the cop, still so disoriented. “I’m sorry, but how did you figure all this out?”
As if on cue, Dr. Rose, the psychological profiler, appeared in the doorway. She wore a tan pantsuit and a serious expression, and held a cup of Starbucks in her hand. “Detective. Girls.” Dr. Rose nodded at each of them as she crossed the room.
McMinnamin gestured for her to sit. “Caitlin was just asking me how we knew Julie Redding was our suspect, Doctor. Would you like to fill them in?”
“Sure.” The doctor sat down and collected her thoughts for a moment before speaking. “When Julie and I had our private session at the precinct the other day, I got a sense of what might be happening with her. She lives in a chaotic, abusive home. She’s looking for some sort of anchor and stability. I’ve worked with a lot of patients who have what we call ‘dissociative identity disorder,’ and I recognized the signs in her immediately.”
“Is that, like, when people think they’re more than one person?” Ava asked.
“Yes, Ava. It’s what we call it when someone—in this case Julie—believes she has two or more distinct and separate identities. And not just two names, but two separate personalities. It’s almost like having two entirely different people living in one body. And for Julie—”
“The other person is Parker,” Caitlin interjected.
“Yes. Julie is Julie, and she is Parker, at different ti
mes—and sometimes at the same time, too.”
Caitlin swallowed hard, the antiseptic smell of the hospital suddenly making her sick. She’d hoped there was another explanation besides this. But here it was. And in a way, it made sense. She recalled that strange, sullen, totally un-Julie-like Julie she’d met in Julie’s front yard yesterday. Had that been “Parker” she’d met? Caitlin had known something was wrong. Should she have done something about it? Alerted someone? Then again, how was she to know it was something so . . . extreme?
Dr. Rose shifted in her seat. “When she told Detectives McMinnamin and Peters the other day that her alibi the night of Ashley’s disappearance was hanging out with Parker, well, that basically confirmed my suspicions,” she said. “Julie most likely hears Parker in her head—and probably sees her as sort of a hallucination. She’s as real to Julie as I am to you right now. And I’m guessing,” Dr. Rose went on, “that if you girls think about it, you’ll remember incidents when you thought you were talking to Julie, but you were really with Parker—or, the Parker identity of Julie.”
Caitlin nodded reluctantly. Then Mac. Then Ava. They all looked so guilt-stricken. Caitlin sensed they felt as duped as she did.
“Why do you think this happened to her?” Mac asked quietly.
Dr. Rose sighed. “Julie didn’t help Parker the night Parker’s father killed her. My guess is that she assumed Parker’s personality soon after Parker was killed because she couldn’t handle the guilt. Becoming Parker was a way of keeping her alive—and Parker served as an outlet for the angrier parts of Julie’s personality. It’s my understanding that Julie was a very popular, high-achieving—dare I say perfect—student at Beacon Heights High. Is that correct?”
Everyone nodded mechanically. “That’s an understatement.” Caitlin let out a dry, sad laugh. “She was amazing.”
“Smart, pretty, friendly . . . everyone loved her,” Ava said.
Dr. Rose took a sip of coffee. “Well, that fits. Julie couldn’t break the rules, because she was protecting her own secrets—about her mother, her house. So she needed to keep a very pristine exterior. She couldn’t skip school or mouth off or otherwise step outside the lines. Everyone needs to let off steam, but Perfect Julie could never allow herself to do such a thing. She had too much at stake. Parker, on the other hand, was free to do and say whatever she wanted. Including get her revenge on people who hurt her or those she is close to.” She looked around at the girls. “Nolan Hotchkiss, yes, but also Ashley Ferguson, who was ruining her life—police haven’t found her yet, but we fear the worst.”
“She hurt my stepmother, Leslie, too,” Ava said in a choked voice. “I told her how awful Leslie was. But I never thought she’d . . .”
“And Claire, obviously.” Mac pressed her hands over her eyes. “Claire tried to sabotage my Juilliard audition. But I would have never wanted to hurt her.”
Rose exchanged a surprised look with McMinnamin, then nodded. “She was acting out your frustrations because she could,” she said. “For ‘Parker,’ there were no rules. She crossed the line many times, broke all kinds of boundaries. I’m sure you can think of things that Julie said that seemed a bit . . . out of place, perhaps?”
Caitlin flashed back to that day in film studies. It had probably been “Parker” who’d started the conversation, not Julie—because Julie wouldn’t have dared. But Julie had backed “Parker” up quickly, she remembered, adding Parker’s dad’s name to the list almost instantly. It was disturbing to think that every time she’d sat across a table from Julie, there were two people looking back.
She shifted in the uncomfortable interrogation-room chair. “Does Julie realize she has two different personalities?”
“Do you think there are more personalities besides those two?” Ava said at the same time.
Dr. Rose cocked her head, considering this. “As far as we know, it’s just Julie and Parker. But I’d have to work with her over a significant period of time to say for sure.”
Everyone fell silent. A phone rang loudly outside. An officer passed by, muttering to himself.
“Okay,” said Ava, leaning closer to the detective and the doctor. “I get why Julie—or Parker—would kill Nolan, Parker’s dad, even Ashley. But, assuming all this is true, then why did she kill Granger? Because he was picking on me and all those other girls?”
“We think it had something to do with this.” McMinnamin pulled a mud-caked envelope scrawled with JULIE REDDING from his folder. “We found it in Granger’s yard Friday night.”
He slipped a finger under the flap and tugged out a stack of papers. It was a report, handwritten by Mrs. Keller, Beacon High’s counselor, during grief counseling after Parker’s murder. “Ms. Redding displays a worrisome, fragmented personality,” he read aloud. “She seemed to conduct a conversation with someone else who wasn’t in the room. When asked about it, Ms. Redding became very agitated and secretive.”
Caitlin shut her eyes. “Why didn’t Mrs. Keller report this to a doctor at the time?”
“I don’t know,” McMinnamin said. “Maybe she didn’t recognize what was happening. Or maybe she just thought Julie was being dramatic.”
Mac’s head shot up. “If you found this at Granger’s house, then that means . . .”
“He knew.” Ava’s eyes were huge. “About Parker, I mean. Or, well, maybe not that Julie’s other personality was Parker, per se, but that something was going on.”
“That’s right.” McMinnamin rubbed his eyes with his hands. “This report is highly confidential and should have been carefully guarded. But, given what we know now about Lucas Granger’s questionable ethics, we believe that he noticed something off about Julie and stole the report from the counselor’s office. What he was going to do with it is anyone’s guess.”
Caitlin squinted, trying to put the pieces together. “So this is why Julie—or Julie as Parker—killed Granger? To keep the secret safe?”
McMinnamin nodded. “Julie’s fingerprints are on the envelope, so we know she handled it at some point—whether as Julie or as Parker, we don’t know. We figure she found it at Granger’s house the night you ladies were there.”
“Julie was afraid Lucas Granger was going to out her, and then she’d be forced to seek treatment,” Rose added. “You see, most of my previous patients with dissociative identities are very resistant to treatment. They’ve created these other personalities to survive and fill some significant holes in their lives. The tiny little lucid part of them that still exists inside their original personality knows that losing one of these other identities would be like a death. In Julie’s case, if she were forced to get help, then Parker, as Julie understands her, really would die. Julie would lose her best friend—again. It would be absolutely devastating for her.”
Everyone nodded calmly, but inside, Caitlin’s feelings were raging. On the one hand, Caitlin thought they should be angry—Julie had murdered three people and set the rest of them up to take the blame. But on the other hand, how could she hold Julie responsible when she was so sick?
McMinnamin cleared his throat. “I’m sorry we kept you girls as suspects for so long. But there are still some holes we need you to fill. Like what you really were doing at Granger’s house. And what was happening the night of Nolan’s party? I know you girls were involved. Too many signs point to you.”
Caitlin felt a dart of nerves, and she lowered her eyes. Her friends shifted, too. “It was meant to be a prank,” she eked out.
“We never thought he’d die,” Ava whispered.
“It was a terrible thing to do,” Mac added.
And Caitlin looked at the detective pleadingly. “Will this get us in trouble?”
McMinnamin crossed his arms over his chest, heaving a sigh. “After everything that’s happened, all I want is a confession. And I need you to help us find Julie. She’s very sick. She needs to be in custody before something else happens.” He coughed into his hand. “It’s why we came to the party tonight. We suspected Julie m
ight be there. And we’ve just confirmed that she isn’t at her residence. Can you girls think of anyone else she’s close with, somewhere she might be?”
Ava frowned. “Well, she went on a few dates with a new boy at school, Carson.”
McMinnamin shook his head. “Carson Wells. We already checked with him. He hasn’t heard from her in days, and he’s worried—especially when he found out that the friend Parker she kept referencing died last year. We have our guys looking for her everywhere. But until we find her, she’s on her own.”
Hot tears flooded Caitlin’s eyes. Julie was out there somewhere, with no one—no one real, anyway—to help her. How would she take care of herself? Did she even have any money for food or a place to sleep? “We have to find her,” she whispered.
“You don’t have to hunt me down,” said a small, choked voice.
Everyone’s head shot up. Julie stood in the hall; who knew how she’d gotten past the front desk? Caitlin stifled a gasp. Julie wore a dirty hoodie. Her hair was matted and messy around her face. Her skin was pale, her makeup smeared, and there were deep hollows under her eyes. Caitlin couldn’t help but wonder who was staring back at them—Julie or Parker. She felt sorry for both.
“I’m here. And—you’re right. I’m sick. I need help.” Julie choked back a sob. “But I have one request, okay?”
“We’ll try and honor it,” Rose said quickly.
She looked back and forth, her jaw trembling. “I want to talk to my therapist—and only him. His name is Elliot Fielder.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“PASS THE MUFFINS, WOULD YOU?” Ava mumbled through her already-full mouth.
Caitlin snatched the basket off the coffee table and passed it across, leaving a trail of gluten-free Paleo morning glory crumbs across Ava’s sprawling L-shaped couch. “Thanks,” Ava said gratefully, stuffing one in her mouth. “These are my favorite.” She was about to wax poetic about how the muffins were both decadent and fairly healthy when Caitlin shushed her, pointing to the TV across the room.
