“What if … what if it wasn’t one of her alters?”
“What do you mean?” Grace raised her knife, using it as a pointer, but lowered it when the implications occurred to her: knife, Rachel Boyd, the slice to Rachel’s throat, blood all over her daughter’s body.
“I mean,” Annie went on, “what if there was somebody else in that apartment that night?”
“Like a witness?” Grace leaned over the prep table, her gaze burning bright.
Annie leaned closer. There was a glimmer in her eyes, too, a sense of excitement dancing there.
“Maybe that … or … maybe … an accomplice.”
Grace let out a slight gasp.
“Penny’s vulnerable,” Annie continued. “Could be she was manipulated, maybe someone was playing around with her, playing head games, who knows? Or it could be Penny was the accomplice, not the killer.” Annie rattled off the potential implications like she was reading from a grocery list. While the notions were intriguing, Grace didn’t know what the legal consequences would be.
She’d find out soon enough. Tomorrow she’d call Greg Navarro and ask for a meeting. Then she’d call Dr. Mitchell McHugh to see if he could join her, because some journeys were best not taken alone.
CHAPTER 15
IT TOOK A SPECIAL request for Mitch to have a copy of the medical examiner’s report of Rachel Boyd’s autopsy sent to the records room at Edgewater. He was on his way to his office to give a review when he sent a friendly wave to a woman named Amanda, a patient of his, whom he passed in the hallway. Amanda had the haunted look of a castaway, and her frail body didn’t appear to have a violent bone in it. But Mitch knew she’d taken a hammer to her husband’s head as he slept because she was certain that aliens had abducted him and left a doppelg?nger in his place. Edgewater was full of stories like that.
Seeing the lost look in Amanda’s eyes felt like gazing into a mirror of sorts, reminding Mitch of his own sadness. He knew that the hollow sensation entering his chest was a precursor to the start of a deepening depression. And he knew exactly what had set him off: his ex-wife Caitlyn had called last night with the news that Adam had relapsed and was back in rehab. The protocols were all too familiar. It would be days before Mitch would be allowed to visit his son.
Damn drugs. Damn them all to hell.
Adam, a boy with every opportunity to succeed, chose a dark path over a bright future. How could he do this to me? Mitch thought, paraphrasing a line from a familiar Beatles song. What a waste, what a crying shame. Mitch took four deep breaths using a technique he’d picked up from a nascent meditation practice, and soon he calmed. Anger so often got in the way of his being able to support his son, as did the guilt that he could have done more to prevent Adam’s descent into addiction.
Mitch knew the brain science behind his son’s struggles, but that wasn’t enough to make him entirely forgiving. And it wasn’t just Adam he needed to forgive—it had taken Mitch’s divorce for him to realize he needed more help than the Celexa could provide, but he didn’t start seeing a therapist until Physician Health Services mandated it as part of his contract with them. The shame and stigma he felt in helping patients overcome their depression, while he struggled with his own, continued to weigh on him.
He’d given Caitlyn fifteen years and plenty of reasons for wanting out of the marriage. In return she gave him plenty of opportunities to change his ways. Instead, he had stonewalled her about his depression, as if not acknowledging it would make it go away. Then came Adam’s addiction. The marital foundation wasn’t nearly sturdy enough to withstand a hurricane of such force.
Mitch had suspected his son was still using. They’d fought just the other day, when he brought up meditation as a potential tool for Adam’s addiction management toolkit. In response, Adam gave his father a dismissive wave before pronouncing he wasn’t at all interested in any of that “New Age crap,” as he put it.
“Meditation and yoga have been around for thousands of years,” Mitch countered, “so it’s hardly new.”
He launched into a detailed explanation of the bidirectional link between substance abuse and depression, how those with the illness were more prone to addiction and those with addiction more likely to become depressed, but Adam refused to consider it.
That was when Mitch lost his temper.
“You know people are trying to help you here, but you’re just committed to flushing your life right down the toilet, aren’t you, Adam?”