The Patient's Secret: A gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist by S.A. Falk

Author:S.A. Falk [Falk, S.A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storm Publishing
Published: 2024-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

“Are you telling me that he remembers committing these crimes?” Arlo asked me when I called him from my hotel room later that evening and told him what had happened at the prison earlier.

“In a way?” I answered. “Possibly.”

“What do you mean in a way? This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of. And let me tell you. In this job, I’ve heard just about every bizarre thing you can imagine.”

“I believe it’s part of his condition,” I said. “The dissociation. Anything that happens to him that he finds traumatic or troubling becomes compartmentalized into one of these alternate personas that he’s created. It’s sort of his way of cleaning up and organizing all this shit that’s floating around in his memory. He can’t consciously deal with it, so he dissociates himself from it and hides it behind a fictional identity so that he never has to actually acknowledge it or confront it.”

“You mean like hoarders tucking shit away in their basements and attics?”

“Kind of, yeah. He doesn’t know what to do with all of this mental garbage, so he hides it and pretends it isn’t there.”

“Meanwhile it’s festering away?” Arlo added. “Making the whole place stink to high hell?”

“Exactly.”

“So bizarre…” he said. “When do you think this even occurred?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “It could’ve started when he was a child, honestly. Almost the way kids create imaginary friends, except in Kevin’s case, the imaginary friends took on a life of their own and became so dominant that he doesn’t know which ones are real and which ones are imaginary.”

“So what of this Edward persona? You said you’ve never talked to this one before?”

“No, never. The Russell persona mentioned Eddie once, but that’s all. I imagine Kevin subconsciously tries to bury the Edward persona the deepest into his psyche because it’s where he’s compartmentalized his violent tendencies.”

“Goddamn…” Arlo breathed. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

“Never,” I said. “I’ve seen some pretty extreme cases of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but nothing like what I’ve seen with Kevin. He is a rarity, to say the least.”

Arlo sighed and silence fell over the phone for a moment.

“Where do we even go from here?” he finally asked.

“If anything, this only confirms Kevin’s defense that much more. I mean, I had my doubts for a while there, but now? It’ll be difficult for Matthews’ psychiatrist to disprove it.”

“Don’t forget where we are. This state loves its retributive justice.”

“Yeah, well, thank God you and I stumbled onto this case. I’m not saying it will be easy, but at least he has a better chance than he did a few weeks ago.”

“I hope so,” he said, although he sounded unsure. “Maybe,” he added, “I could talk to Matthews and see if we can work out a plea deal. Get the death penalty off the table if nothing else. You know, try to leverage her with the diagnosis?”

“And send him to Wyoming State Pen or some other maximum-security prison? He’ll end up dead in no time.

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