Navarro didn’t think the drawing was helpful for the DID case, but Grace thought otherwise. She remained adamant that the smoking toaster, coupled with what Chloe had said about “burning it up,” made Maria, a known pyromaniac, not only a person of interest but quite possibly the one responsible for Rachel’s death.
“Maria wrote about murder, about killing, about hiding bodies and getting away with it, as much as Penny did,” Grace had said to him on her way out of Edgewater that day. “She deserves a closer look, especially now.”
Where Grace saw connections, Mitch saw symbols. Chloe, who had presented as a young girl, was probably taught that ammonia was poison. Many of the stories and fairy tales Mitch had read to Adam as a young boy had poisons in them. It could be the jug of yellow liquid stood for death in a child’s eyes, as poison was something a young person like Chloe could grasp.
Had Penny got the ammonia idea from Chloe through the subconscious bleeding of one alter into another? He thought there was a fascinating paper he could write on the subject of consciousness leaks between alters. He wondered if Penny was aware of these leaks and plugged the holes. At yesterday’s therapy session with Eve, he had tried to trigger another switch—either back to Chloe using the crayons again or a strong ammonia scent to see if that would get Penny back—but those efforts had gone nowhere.
Mitch had extensive experience with treating a wide range of conditions in adolescent psychology. He’d written several peer-reviewed papers, even one on dissociative identity disorder, but for all his skills and background, he could not seem to break through Penny’s defenses.
Best way to beat a good defense, Mitch knew, was to use a better offense.
From a canvas workbag, he withdrew a small white plastic bottle of a nasal-injected medicine. Spinning the dispenser around in his hand, Mitch reviewed the tiny print on the label, trying not to think of Grace out there chasing down leads （or more likely ghosts）。
He felt a spurt of anger at himself for the fantasy Grace had latched onto; one he’d had a hand in helping bring about. He had nothing, no proof that the reveals from Penny or Chloe were anything other than an elaborate fantasy—in other words, something Dr. Palumbo would argue that a person with borderline personality disorder might construct to distract and deflect blame.
Someone with professional credentials as impressive as Palumbo’s would take the witness stand and state that Penny suffered from a severe antisocial personality disorder, and the alters were an excuse to behave as she wished and nothing more. With testimony like that, Mitch had no doubt an experienced attorney would be able to convince a jury that this young woman was a psychotic killer, through and through, and had ended Rachel’s life brutally, intentionally, and with total awareness of her actions.
“Intentional” was the word Mitch turned over and over in his head. He didn’t see Penny as a true psychopath—someone without empathy, guilt, conscience, or remorse—but which of her alters either couldn’t resist the urge to kill or didn’t think killing was wrong?
None of them was the answer he kept coming back to. They’d all pass the MPC test with flying colors, which left him with one disturbing possibility: she was faking DID and Palumbo was right. The thought gave Mitch a pounding headache. After rubbing his temples, then his tired eyes, he picked up the vial once more.
Will this work?
Not only did he feel a great responsibility to help Penny avoid a lifetime in a max security prison, he felt a tremendous burden to aid Grace as well. He had a full slate of patients to attend to, other cases to manage, but no question about it—Penny now occupied an outsized portion of his gray matter. And Mitch was pretty sure he knew why.
Guilt.
Mitch felt that personal connection to Grace’s suffering and guilt that she said she felt for him. He also blamed himself for Adam’s struggles in a way similar to how Grace reproached herself for Penny’s. For those reasons alone he wanted more than anything to ease her pain. Even so, Mitch had grave doubts that he could help Penny—or Adam, for that matter.
The latest news from Clean Start was really no news. Adam was in recovery, again; going to meetings, again; doing group therapy, again—and chances were this was another ride on the opioid merry-go-round. That had been something Caitlyn did not want to hear when Mitch made that exact point on a phone call with her the other night.
“Have some faith, Mitch,” she had said. “You of all people know there’s no magic pill for this; no off switch he can just flick. I wish there was, but there isn’t. So this is all we get, okay?”