“It’s a tape recorder,” she replied. “I taped you while you were asleep. I needed for you to go to sleep for a while.”

  “While I was asleep? Why would you do that? To show me how much I snore?” I chuckled at my own joke. But Dr. Navarro looked sad instead of amused, which was weird. Weird in a way that creeped me out.

  “No, Shane. You and I were speaking. When you go to sleep, it’s easier for me to tease out your alter. Your mind responds to the name I use when waking you and you become it.”

  Alter? Become what? What was she talking about?

  “Shane, I have established that you suffer from DID, which is the abbreviation of Dissociative Identity Disorder. It’s a mental illness that used to be referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder.”

  “Multiple Personality Disorder? Are you saying that I have different personalities?” Was she kidding me?

  “Yes. You have at least one more personality who goes under the name Sean. So far, I have only met Sean and he is your opposite in many ways. I’m pretty sure he’s a result of what happened to you when you were sexually abused by your father. Ninety percent of people who suffer from DID have experienced severe trauma and sexual abuse as young children. Their other personality develops to protect them from the abuse. They disassociate themselves from the person they really are by assuming this other personality. Sometimes their other personality can remain suppressed for many years. It seems this is the case with you. I’m not sure what unleashed it. I sincerely hope it wasn’t the hypnosis…” She looked suddenly deeply distraught.

  “You’re actually serious?”

  “Yes, I am, Shane.” She gave a close-lipped, sad smile. “I can play the conversation I had with your other personality Sean to prove to you that he exists in you. Would you like me to do that?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” I had to hear this before I believed it.

  “Okay. But I just need to prepare you before I play it. It’s going to be very painful for you to hear this conversation. Actually, I have two conversations—the first one is from my house earlier when I initially got to meet Sean and he confessed to me that he’d killed your mother. Well, his mother. He referred to her as his mother.”

  I stared at her like entranced. So that’s why they thought I had killed Mom? Because I was… Sean when I did it? That’s why I had gotten arrested? But that was absurd. Wouldn’t I remember if I suddenly turned into Sean? I was unable to summon even the faintest memory of being a guy named Sean.

  I told her precisely that.

  “That’s because people who have DID don’t typically remember when they switch from one alter to another,” she explained patiently. “Alter is another word for identity or personality. Sean is your alter. You likely have no memory of when you were Sean, and Sean likely has little memory of Shane. At most, maybe you can sense each other. Sometimes the alters can submerge into one, or at least they’re aware of each other. Or maybe only one is aware of the other, who’s oblivious. There are no strict rules. But I don’t think that’s the case with you. That’s why all this comes as such a shock to you, Shane. I would feel as confused if I were you as I can tell you are right now.” She grabbed my hand and gazed at me pleadingly. “But please trust me that I’m telling you the truth here. I would never lie to you about something like this.”

  “Okay.” I was processing what she was telling me, but I didn’t think she was lying to me at all. I could just feel it, feel that this was what was going on with me. It explained all the memory gaps I had experienced in the last few months. Still, I wanted to hear me as Sean. Hear what I sounded like then. “Please play me the conversations.”

  “All right. Let me start with the first one, which took place at my house.”

  “Fine.”

  She pressed Play on the recorder and the conversation began.

  Fifteen minutes later, it was over, and I was stunned. So this was the guy I turned into once in a while? He sounded like a real asshole. Like a bully. I hated bullies. I’d met plenty of those while in juvie. In fact, Sean reminded me of a homophobe bully who had loved to torture weaker jail mates. Did I behave like that as Sean? Oh God, I really hoped not.

  “Are you okay?” Dr. Navarro asked, gazing at me kindly.

  I sighed heavily. “Yeah. I’m just shocked I sound like such an asshole. I hate guys like that.”

  She nodded despondently. “I know you do.”

  “Well, it sure explains why Neera had access to those videos on her computer,” I mused out loud.

  “What videos?”

  “All of a sudden, she was able to watch all kinds of nasty videos of people killing and torturing others. And lots of inappropriate violent crime shows. Never did I suspect that I had made it happen myself. And the slip pad under the rug. I must have removed it myself, too… As Sean or maybe as someone else. Maybe I even told her to pretend it was our secret or something. Because she did act weird when I brought it up to her.”

  “What are you talking about, Shane?”

  I gave a weak smile. “Just stuff I couldn’t figure out before today. It doesn’t really matter. Can you play me the other conversation we had now?”

  She bit her lip, appearing hesitant. But then she said, “Okay. But please, I need to warn you that what you’re saying on the tape is going to be very disturbing to you. I still think you need to hear it, though.”

  I swallowed hard, steeling myself. I had a sense of what she was getting at, but I needed to hear it to believe it. “Well, then let’s hear it.”

  She pressed Play for a second time.

  When it was over, I wanted to die. I blocked my eyes with my hands, pretending I was dead. I didn’t deserve to be alive for another second, I was such a monster. No wonder they didn’t want Neera to see me again. Oh God, how did I turn into such an evil being? Selling my own sister to a pedophile… Oh God. I deserved to rot in hell forever. The tears streaming down my face, I asked Dr. Navarro how I could have done something so terrible. I had to know why, and she would be able to tell me. She knew these things. It was what she did for a living.

  She patted my hands that were still over my eyes, and when she spoke, she sounded like she was about to cry any moment, her voice was so raw. “It’s a defense mechanism, Shane. It’s not your fault. It’s your parents’ fault for doing what they did to you. Your brain developed another identity in order to be able to endure all the abuse your dad subjected you to. That your mother didn’t stop. It’s a very common reaction for abuse victims. Please believe me when I’m telling you it’s not your fault.”

  Gently, she made me lower my arms.

  I stared emptily into the white wall before me, refusing to meet her gaze. “I still want to die. A monster like me should not be allowed to live.”

  “But you’re not that monster, Shane. You are a wonderful person who’s been extremely traumatized. I know you are a wonderful, kind person. Steve knows you are. He knows you’re not the mean bully who attacked him on the street. He knows that wasn’t really you.”

  I gasped, finally looking at her. “I attacked Steve?”

  “Yes. You slapped him around on the street when you two bumped into each other and he spoke to you. You didn’t like that he spoke to you in a certain way, so you hit him. Telling him to stop coming on to you and calling him a despicable fag. You were very drunk. Apparently, you’ve been Sean a few times in his presence, but it was only that night when you hit him that he knew something was very wrong with you.”

  I wanted to cover my face with my arms, but the handcuffs made it awkward, so I didn’t. Instead, I just closed my eyes.

  “That’s why we wanted to help you so badly, Steve and I,” Dr. Navarro whispered. “And there’s still help for you. You can be cured of DID. Much better at least. I can help you. Let me help you, Shane.”

  I didn’t answer. All I could think was that I wasn’t so surprised any longer that I had let Ariel die when I could have saved him. Why I had encouraged Neera to push him when they were playing. It had been so easy for me to make the decision, to watch him die. My two personalities were more fused than Dr. Navarro suspected.

  42

  A few minutes later, Agent McHenry and two strong-looking cops entered the room. I could spot Mr. Shapiro behind them, leaning against a wall, watching us with an unreadable expression as they led me out into the corridor.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked Agent McHenry, who walked beside me. I wasn’t sure why I bothered to ask as I was completely numb now. Nothing mattered any longer. It was as though I had left my body, and what remained of me was merely a shell. A shell of a human being. If you could call me human knowing what I had done to my own sister. I didn’t think so.

  “To Central Booking. You’ll be staying there until you’re processed. Then we’ll see. I’m guessing Bellevue.”

  Mr. Shapiro was suddenly walking on my other side. “Don’t worry, Shane. We will go with an insanity plea. You’ll be spending time in a psychiatric ward, not prison. And when they say you’re cured, you’ll be free again. It will all be okay in the end. You’ll see.”

  I turned to look at my lawyer, whose voice had never sounded so filled with compassion. He was even smiling kindly. And then I heard the shot, and all was right with the world again.

  43

  Epilogue

  It was the right choice. The only choice. I had to end it all, and I did. I would have killed the little girl as well if she wasn’t already dead—I had instantly been able to tell she was bad news—but I would have used poison to take care of her, not bullets. It’s a kinder way to pass. Less violent. She was just a four-year-old kid after all. I had to use a gun on Shane, though. I couldn’t be sure I would ever have access to him long enough to end his life after he was put away.

  I’m still amazed that it was so easy for me to bring the gun into the precinct, and then continue with it into the area with the holding cells. No one gave a damn what was in my small purse. Then again, I guess I shouldn’t be that amazed. People rarely suspect old, gray-haired women of being up to anything bad. They barely see them.

  Killing Shane was worth getting arrested for. I don’t have many years left anyway, and I’m alone. I don’t like being alone, I miss my husband every day; in prison I can make friends. I don’t think they’ll shun me the way everyone else has done since Shane went to prison the first time. It got even worse when everyone found out about Jennifer. Much worse. People came up to me on the streets and accused me of being a horrible mother, even threw things at me sometimes. I’ve been told by Mr. Shapiro, the lawyer Rachel Friedman so generously has paid for to handle my defense, that I will go to a good prison with friendly inmates. I’m looking forward to that.

  It’ll be almost like being in a nursing home, except not everyone will be old, he’d said while smiling kindly.

  It was good to hear that. Maybe I will get peace and quiet at last.

  I’m not much like my old self, just a shadow of who I used to be. A living ghost. The lively woman who raised Jennifer and Nick, her older brother who I now know sexually abused Jennifer, began fading when Shane was arrested for double homicide. When I learned that Jen had set up her own son to avenge her late husband, and that she and her husband were serial killers, what was left of my spirit disappeared completely. Her husband had sexually abused Shane, his own son. How could I not have seen? I would have shot him myself if I had known. I had been around twice when it happened. First with my daughter, then with my grandson. Did I just not want to see it? No, I don’t think so. I sincerely cannot remember having seen anything strange going on with either Jennifer or Shane. They had seemed like normal kids. Creative and introverted, especially Shane. Creativity ran in the family. My own father had been creative, writing beautiful poetry and singing songs he made up and played on the guitar to me and my siblings when we were small.

  I can’t say I’m particularly creative, but sometimes genes skip a generation. That was not the case with Jennifer and Shane. Come to think of it, maybe my father killed people, too, and got away with it. Considering that Shane got bad genes from both parents, it isn’t strange he turned out the way he did. It seems it was only a matter of time, unfortunately. I’m so glad I got to kill him before he could do more harm in the world. All it took was one shot and he was gone.

  A couple of days after he died, the authorities were able to conclude that Shane was the Executioner, a nickname the media had come up with for the horrible man who went to gay hangouts to meet homosexuals he could kill. Apparently, he had first raped his victims, then shot them execution-style from behind while they were on their knees. When someone saw Shane’s picture in the media, they realized they had seen him frequent gay bars in the last few months. It didn’t take long before the authorities put two and two together. For one, Shane had kept the gun used in each murder in the waistline of his pants, in the small of his back. They had removed it from him while he was sedated at Dr. Navarro’s house. His prints had been on the Prada sunglasses he’d been spotted with that the NYPD had run into one day when they were told Jennifer had been in a specific area. My testimony helped as well.

  As soon as I heard that my daughter had escaped prison, I went back up to New York and stayed a few days at a time before I went back to Florida. The third time I went there, I stayed in New York, in a room that I rented on Airbnb. Our house was long gone, sold when my dear husband passed. I wanted to keep an eye on Shane, make sure he was safe. Or maybe I already knew deep inside that he was up to something bad, and I wanted to stop him. Maybe I already knew that, sooner or later, he, too, would turn evil, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. It’s hard to say. Either way, I brought a gun with me. A gun that I could use if I spotted Jennifer, I convinced myself. It’s so easy to buy a gun down in Florida. It’s not as easy to get it up to New York, but I managed getting it there by taking the Greyhound. They don’t check for guns on old ladies before they board the bus. At least not at the station where I boarded.

  I followed Shane around as much as I could, watching out for him. I was too tired to make it every single day, but I nevertheless managed to see a lot of him, especially in that last week. I never saw what happened between him and his mother, but when I heard that she had been found murdered, I did suspect that Shane might have something to do with it.

  It wasn’t until I followed him from Astoria and back into the city the night before they found Neera that I discovered that he went to the gay places. At first, I thought he was just secretly gay himself. But when I saw him bring the man he had picked up at some obscure gay nightclub to a dark alley, where he first knocked him out, then raped him and finally shot him, I knew something much more sinister was going on. Something far more sinister was driving his actions. Shane—or Sean rather—muffled the sound of the gun by placing lots of cloth or something between the muzzle and the man’s head. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was from where I was standing behind a building, watching them.

  It was after I witnessed Shane assault and murder that poor man that I decided that he needed to die.

  His psychiatrist, Dr. Anita Navarro, came to visit me the other day. She told me she agreed with what I had done. Best for everyone involved, she’d said. Shane would have been miserable, knowing he was responsible for his sister’s death. She sincerely believed he would never forgive himself for it. Also, it isn’t really possible to cure his disorder, she explained to me. He would have had to spend his life in an insane asylum, and she doubted he would have wanted that.

  She told me that Sean had made appearances while Shane had been with his friend Steve. And he’d often been drunk, which was Steve hadn’t realized that Shane had turned into someone else until it was almost too late.

  The authorities believe Sean was the person who placed the red doll Mary Jane in Steve’s bathroom, as well as put Steve’s key next to Jennifer’s dead body in an effort to make it seem like Steve had killed his mother and abducted Neera. Sean had stolen the key from Steve’s apartment once when he was there. He hated gays and believed that Steve was secretly gay. He wanted to destroy him, set him up for murder, just like Sean’s Mom had done to him. He wasn’t nearly as good at it, though.

  The authorities also believed that Sean had planted Jennifer’s bracelet and the other red doll shoe on the roof to make it seem like Jennifer had used the roof to snatch Neera. My daughter was already dead by then. Sean had taken the bracelet from her body and the shoes from Neera’s doll. In reality, Sean had taken her. He had gone into Neera’s bedroom at some point during the night, drugged Neera, and used a rope to lower her down into the backyard. It was only twelve floors down to the ground. The next day he must have gone around the building to pick up the little girl and taken her to Astoria. The authorities have been able to trace all of Jennifer’s emails and they believe the last one in which she claims she has Neera, it was really Sean who wrote the email as Jennifer was likely already dead before it was sent.

  He kept Neera in the warehouse where he had been painting and developed photos. The cameras surveilling the streets show him handing the girl over to a man named Herman Orville, a repeat sex offender the authorities were able to arrest based on that footage. When Herman was done with Neera, he put her in a dumpster to die.

  Why Sean bothered to do all that was anyone’s guess. Dr. Navarro believes Sean, unlike Shane, simply couldn’t stand his sister and just wanted to get rid of her. She was a handful after all. And maybe he had needed all that cash he got for her and for some reason didn’t want to use any of the money in his bank account. Maybe he’d owed someone money. He did spend most of it awfully fast.

  Selling her took care of the problem and making everyone believe his mother was the culprit took all the heat away from him. Why would anyone suspect him when their psycho mother claimed responsibility? It was the perfect crime.