However she managed, he’d come to admire her a great deal. He sincerely appreciated her continued interest in his work here, and in Penny’s case in particular. Mitch took a seat in a comfortable armchair in her spacious office. Typical of Whitmore, she skipped the small talk, somehow already knowing what was on his mind.
“I’ve spoken again with Blackwood,” Whitmore said, “and he vehemently denies writing the note.”
“Of course he does,” said Mitch. “Wouldn’t you?”
Whitmore responded by clasping her hands together, her thin fingers turning white with pressure. “Naturally,” she said.
“So what now?” Mitch asked.
“Conjecture is not enough proof for disciplinary action, Mitch,” said Whitmore.
“But I’ve come to trust your instincts, so I’ve given Blackwood a bump in pay to keep him content and reassigned him to our max security unit. He’ll have his hands full over there, and no access to Darla or Penny. That’s the best I can do.”
Mitch peered at Whitmore for a moment, mulling it over in his head. Best solution for all, he decided. As long as Blackwood was out of the picture he could assume Penny would be safe from further harm.
“Good enough,” said Mitch. “Thank you so much.”
“Speaking of Penny,” Whitmore said. “How is your assessment going? Trial is coming up, and I’m curious if you think she’ll be leaving us to stay elsewhere.”
“By elsewhere I assume you mean a prison setting.”
Whitmore nodded and peered at Mitch with keen interest. He recalled what she had said to him that day in her office when he asked her to look at the medical examiner’s report detailing the forensics of Rachel’s murder. She’d put it crassly—her word—but it made sense to Mitch. If Penny were to have a true case of DID, the sensational nature of the crime and the mystique around her condition would generate publicity for Edgewater. With that as leverage, perhaps she could access much-needed state funds to improve facility operations.
He hated to have to disappoint her.
“Do you believe Penny has DID?” she asked.
“I wish I had a clear answer for you,” said Mitch. “I’ve witnessed Penny experience dissociative states that are uncharacteristic of her known alters three times now. On each occasion she shared some memory from the night of the murder, but I think these are false narratives she’s constructed. For instance, she’s convinced she wasn’t alone that night, that someone threatened to put her head into a bucket of ammonia, and that Rachel had done something wrong or was living under the threat of going to prison. That sort of delusional thinking is typical of borderlines suffering paranoid ideation.
“It’s also possible these are stress-induced false memories or inventions to ease a guilty conscience and she is transferring her guilt to her alters. I could be wrong about Blackwood, and Penny wrote that note to Darla herself as a form of self-punishment. And there’s also the possibility that, the note, all that she’s told us, everything deliberate fabrications on her part.”
“Deliberate? Why would she do that?”
“To mislead us,” said Mitch. “To send us on a wild-goose chase, so to speak. In other words, she’s getting a thrill out of toying with us. There’s been absolutely no verification that anything she has told us is true. If it’s all make-believe and done intentionally, then Dr. Palumbo’s diagnosis of antisocial borderline personality disorder is probably the right one, and she went to Rachel’s home that night with the intent to murder.
“On the other hand, if I could verify that the things Penny has said in her dissociative states are actually true—if I could corroborate any of it—I suppose it would strongly support a diagnosis of DID. These personality states are quite real, so it wouldn’t take much for me to flip my position.”
“Oh my. Bombshells abound. Are you going to testify at her trial?”
“That’s the plan,” Mitch said, though he didn’t sound happy about it. “Greg Navarro was hoping I’d be able to confirm a DID diagnosis and demonstrate that Penny had a psychotic break.”
“And?” Whitmore hit Mitch with an inscrutable gaze.
“And I cannot,” he said. “I’ll show him my final report and he’ll have to make the call as to what he wants to do. If he wants me to take the stand, I will, but I’ll tell the truth as I see it. I know Navarro wants to prove to a jury that Penny couldn’t control herself at the time of the killing, or didn’t think what she was doing was wrong, but I can’t say that.”