has finished breaking the last egg into the last bowl, and given them a verbal command accompanied by a hand signal, do they rush forward to begin eating.
When they are finished, the woman lets the dogs out through the front gate via the sally port. They split up in six different directions to do their business as far from the kennels and each other as possible, and return within minutes without having to be summoned.
“Good dogs,” says the woman, locking the front gate behind them and leading them back into the kennel, leaving the door between the kennel and the sally port open. “Now give me my lovies.”
As she drops stiffly to her knees, the dogs line up before her like obedient schoolchildren and present themselves one at a time to be petted by those skeletal fingers and kissed through that silken mask until the woman's heart is eased and her fear of abandonment temporarily assuaged.
Now only one chore remains, her least favorite: a visit to the drying shed. She decides to put it off until after lunch.
4
Dr. Irene Cogan had only interviewed a patient under full restraints twice before. The first, Paul Silberman, was a nineteenyearold who'd murdered his mother up in Woodside. Hacked her to pieces in the tub. The papers had called it the Psycho murder, though in fact Mrs. Silberman had been bathing, not showering. Paul claimed he hadn't known it was really happening, that everything seemed so strange and distorted that he thought he was dreaming. Claimed he was as powerless to stop himself as he would have been in a dream.
Irene, a specialist in dissociative disorders, had been called in by the defense to testify that Paul suffered from a depersonalization/ derealization disorder. Her testimony had been effective-the boy had been found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was now receiving treatment in a private, locked facility in Palo Alto.
But Irene Cogan was neither a patsy nor a defense whore. When a murdering pedophile named David Douglas Winslow claimed to be suffering from dissociative identity disorder, Irene had testified for the prosecution that the similarity of optical functioning among Winslow's alleged alter personalities, along with their nearly identical GSRs-galvanic skin
responses-indicated that he was feigning DID.
Winslow's current address was death row, San Quentin. Dr. Cogan, though she opposed the death penalty, would shed no tears for him when his appeals finally ran out-she'd already cried herself out for his tiny victims.
Dr. Cogan was not a forensic psychiatrist, however-she had been called into the current case because the prisoner was claiming dissociative amnesia. It was too early to say for sure whether he was feigning, but she suspected he was. The victims of dissociative amnesia she'd treated had presented very different affects than this prisoner; you didn't need a medical degree to read the abject confusion and uncertainty in their eyes.
But why fake amnesia? For a man as intelligent and well versed in psychology as the prisoner appeared to be, paranoid schizophrenia, for instance, would be a much easier symptomology to feign- and a more viable defense as well.
Suddenly she realized that the prisoner had asked her something. “Excuse me?”
“Spaced out, eh?” The prisoner chuckled. “I asked if you'd brush my hair back the way you did before.”
“Why? It's not in your eyes.”
He met her gaze boldly-Irene wondered if those mildly amused gold-flecked eyes had been that poor eviscerated girl's last sight on earth. “Just for the touch.”
She was momentarily jarred. His use of the word touch was somehow striking in its intimacy. “I'm sorry, I don't think that's appropriate,” she managed, after a moment.
“Please. It's important.”
“Why? Why is it important?”
“It just is. Please, trust me. I won't hurt you-I give you my word.”
Tough call. It was a small enough request, but there was the physical danger to be considered, as well as a potential skewing of the doctor-patient relationship. On the other hand, by asking for her trust he was, in effect, offering her his. And his trust was something she was going to need if she hoped to make an accurate evaluation.
Or so she told herself as she leaned across the desk. Gingerly she brushed the comma of hair back from his brow, then quickly drew her hand back as his eyes rolled up and to the right, and his eyelids began to flutter. By the time Irene had settled back in her chair, the prisoner's cockiness, his certainty, the gleam in his eye and the set of his jaw, had all disappeared, leaving behind a small pathetic figure slumped over and sobbing like a child, knees drawn up, shoulders heaving, chains rattling.
Here it comes, thought Irene. He is going to change his symptomology. But not to schizophrenia. She composed her features to hide her suspicion, and waited patiently for the weeping to end.
And sure enough, when the prisoner looked up, he was a different man. His heart-shaped face had grown more oval as the set of his jaw relaxed. His eyes were wider, rounder, lighter. And his voice, when he apologized, was tremulous, and pitched an octave higher.
“I'm sowwy.”
So it was to be DID after all. Dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. And she had to admit, if he was faking it, he was good. Better than good, certainly better than the monstrous David Douglas Winslow.
But perhaps that was to be expected, with the prisoner's apparent background in psychology and his obvious talent for impersonation. He knew that eye movement was a classical marker for a switch between personalities, commonly referred to as “alters,” hence the roll and flutter. He knew that extreme facial and vocal changes between alters were to be expected, and that many alters were juveniles, so he'd raised the pitch of his voice, let his cheeks go slack, widened his eyes to take in more light.
If, on the other hand, he wasn't faking it, Irene understood that this might prove to be the most important case of her career. For the moment, she decided to proceed as if the DID was genuine. If he were faking, she might not get to the truth quite as quickly, but if he were not, this approach would do the least harm.
“Hello,” she said softly. “What's your name?”
Panic, confusion. The eyes rolled, the lids fluttered-and the child was gone.
“Excuse me?” The first alter again. A quick, wary glance around the room; the prisoner's manacled hands nervously patted his thighs. Both the glance and the self-touching Irene recognized as grounding behavior, orienting gestures commonly seen after a switch of personalities.
And indeed, the prisoner appeared to be unaware that his face was ashen beneath its olive complexion, and tear-streaked, with a bubble of snot in one nostril-he seemed surprised when Irene handed him a tissue from her purse.
He grasped the situation quickly, though. “Guess I kinda wimped out on you.”
He drew his knees up, hunched his shoulders under the orange jumpsuit, and ducked his head in order to blow his nose. When he came up his voice had changed yet again-this appeared to be yet a third alter, roughly the same age and appearance as the first, but more vulnerable, with less of an edge. “It's just so hard keeping up that front all the time.”
Irene waited, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
“You can't let them see any weakness, you know. If they sense weakness, they'll tear you apart. Even the guards.” He let the tissue fall to his lap. “Especially the guards. Now what was it you asked?”
“I asked what your name was.”
This time the eye roll and flutter was so quick and short-lived only a therapist with extensive experience treating DID patients would have noticed it.
“How quickly they forget,” said the prisoner, in the voice he'd used originally. “You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette on you, would you?”
Irene knew better than to ask him his name again-this was clearly Call-me-Max. “I believe the entire building is nonsmoking.”
The prisoner laughed easily. “Realistically speaking, what's the worst they can do if they catch us? Hell, we're
