“Are you there?” the dispatcher asked, her voice betraying increasing concern. “Scratch or tap the phone if you’re in trouble. Can you do that?”
In the recording you can hear a tap, tap, tap, like the sound of footsteps, only softer.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Are you bleeding? Are you hurt? Tap the phone again for yes.”
Three more taps sounded.
The call came in at 7:08 that night. Police have to respond to all 911 calls—even the ones that are silent, or disconnected.
The dispatch system in Lynn has an automatic location identifier, so the operator knew where to send patrol cars. The cops had to break down the front door using a ram—a pared-down version of the same battering rams from the days of knights and castles, like the one in the picture book I used to read to you when we were little.
When the police entered the home, they found you standing in the doorway to Rachel’s bedroom, bathed in her blood, holding a bloodstained knife in your hand.
You say you don’t remember anything about that night, but it wasn’t all blackout time for you though, was it? You shared a fuzzy memory （as Eve） with the police: looking out Rachel’s grimy apartment window, trying to figure out where you were, why you might be covered in blood. You thought you saw somebody standing across the street, someone who seemed familiar to you, but you couldn’t say more. You couldn’t say if it was a man or a woman. You couldn’t see a face or describe height or weight. None of it was stored in your memory bank, but you did recall checking again. When you did, nobody was there.
That’s your mind, though, isn’t it, Penny? How confusing it must be to live like that, with your thoughts and memories always shifting, like the sandcastles we loved making together on Eisman’s Beach: here one minute, gone the next. Who can trust that brain of yours?
I was the closest to you growing up. In a way, I’m the one who found you, the reason we adopted you, and I was the first to see that you could be different people at different times.
So who is this person that could commit cold-blooded murder? I again ask: Are you truly evil?
I didn’t know about dissociative identity disorder back then. According to the DSM-5 （the bible for psychiatric disorders）， the condition can be diagnosed with the presence of two or more distinct personalities, or “alters,” shorthand for alternate personalities. In cases of DID, there is the primary self and then there are the alters. You certainly presented that way, or so we all believed. Day to day, we never knew which Penny you’d be.
When you first got diagnosed, you were what? Thirteen, or thereabouts. I thought it explained all of your strange behaviors: those frequent memory gaps, your bizarre moods nobody understood. But what explains the violence, the death threats you made with Maria, the brutal murder of Rachel Boyd? DID doesn’t explain any of that. The idea of an “evil alter” is a myth. It’s the stuff of movies—and if there’s one thing I know about, it’s movies. So if there’s no such thing as an “evil alter,” how can I understand what you did that night?
Maria told the police she was sick in bed on the night of Rachel’s murder, and her mother backed up that story. She insists you acted alone. Maybe. Maybe not. But let’s say she’s not fibbing and you went to Rachel’s house alone and you lost control, that you were （as your lawyer intends to argue） legally insane at the time of the killing. I can imagine it. You saw Rachel for the first time since you were a little girl, and it triggered a memory buried deep inside your subconscious; some traumatic, unspeakable horror of what she did to you in the years before you came to live with us. We don’t know anything about that time. You would never speak of it. But in that moment when you finally met face-to-face, terrible memories came at you like a flash flood.
Maybe it was you, Penny, holding that knife, or maybe it was one of your alters—a new one even, an avenger-type personality we haven’t yet met, keeping in their rage for years like a powder keg awaiting a match.
Was Rachel that match? I read the Facebook messages that she sent you.
Hope it’s okay to contact you this way …
Hope you don’t mind …
I know this is hard for you, but I had to reach out …
Was she feeling you out, Penny, testing to see how’d you respond? You were hardly upset in your replies.
OMG! It’s so crazy. I’m freaking out, you wrote to her.
Rachel wanted her messages to you to stay a secret. You can’t tell anyone we’re in touch, not yet. Okay??