Beauty vs. the Beast Read online

  “A kind of recurring amnesia.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say the clash between the two personalities began about six years ago because this Lee personality that was subordinated started to come out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did Lee start to come out?”

  “Because the previously dominant personality—Roy—had been steadily getting weaker over the years, and Lee had been steadily getting stronger.”

  “Ah, it was like a tug-of-war between them.”

  “In a manner of speaking. Only, since neither knew about the other, each was tugging, as you put it, against an unknown.”

  “Tugging against an unknown,” Kay repeated, trying out the words in an attempt to better grasp the elusive concept. “I’m striving to relate this to something familiar in my own personal experience, but I confess I’m having trouble finding anything.”

  “I doubt you ever will. This phenomenon is hard to relate to normal experience. The individual I treated was born LeRoy Lyle Nye on August 20, 1952. That means his body is in its forties. But Lee, the man who came to me for treatment, can remember very little personal history before six years ago.”

  “Because he only came to life six years ago?”

  “In some respects, yes, but he is an adult. He views himself as a man in his early thirties and behaves consistent with that view.”

  “Surely this Lee personality must have suspected something was amiss when he could only remember back such a short time.”

  “He thought very little of his past. The present and future claimed his primary focus. His blackout episodes were far more disturbing to him than his lack of earlier personal memories. The latter he accepted as a mere inconvenience.”

  “He only felt inconvenienced? I would think a normal person would be frantic.”

  “Because a normal person would feel the loss. But when Lee thought about his lack of memories, which wasn’t often, he merely assumed others had the same difficulties remembering as he did.”

  “Is Lee’s reaction typical for someone with his disorder?”

  “There is very little that is ‘typical’ in a multiple-personality case. Each is as individual as the mind from which it evolves. These cases were once thought to be rare. Now, most in the field believe they are far more common than any of us imagined. The literature is growing on the subject, but we still have much to learn about diagnosis and treatment.”

  “You realize, I expect, that the concept of two separate and distinct personalities existing in the same mind is rather an unusual one for the layperson to envision, much less accept.”

  His left hand swept across the thick, unruly hair at the side of his head. It was a rough, square hand, a tool for the impatience that she sensed had set it into motion. But it was also a servant to the disciplined mind that returned it to the arm of his chair. As she had earlier sensed, this psychologist could be just as complicated as his subject.

  “Kay, multiple personality disorder or MPD still seems like science fiction to many people, even many psychologists. Some postulate that the affected individuals possess not many personalities, but many fragments of one personality.”

  “Which approach do you consider more accurate?”

  “I’m a pragmatist. I don’t fixate on disputing or embracing labels or adhering to hard-and-fast data.”

  “So how do you approach treatment?”

  Damian rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, the heels of his shoes disappearing into the thick mustard-colored carpet, his long, lean legs crossing at the ankles.

  “I believe achieving results is what is important, not how the results are achieved. Patients come to me or any psychologist because they want to eliminate their disruptive feelings or behavior, sometimes both. I try what I believe will work, and if my method doesn’t work, I drop it and try something else until I find what does work.”

  “What did you try with Lee when he came to you?”

  “Lee wanted to eliminate his disruptive blackouts. Nothing in his present life appeared to be causing them. His lack of memories strongly pointed to the possibility of past trauma. I hypnotized him to discover what that past trauma might be. It was under hypnosis that Roy emerged.”

  “So up until the time you hypnotized Lee, you didn’t know Roy, the second personality, existed?”

  “That’s correct. Actually, Roy never came out in my sessions with Lee unless Lee was under hypnosis.”

  “Are you saying he had to be hypnotized into being Roy?”

  “No. What I’m saying is that under hypnosis, the control Lee exerted over the shared mind was relaxed sufficiently to allow Roy to be called out at will.”

  “At your will, as opposed to Lee’s or Roy’s.”

  “Yes. The first time it happened was quite unexpected. I had hypnotized Lee and asked him to tell me about his blackout periods, reasoning that an unconscious part of his mind must know. And it did. That unconscious part was Roy.”

  “He popped up and introduced himself?”

  Damian smiled. “Not exactly.”

  “Then how did you know you were talking to this other personality?”

  “Frankly, I didn’t know who I was talking to at first. The experience of finding another personality inside one’s patient is unnerving. It takes some adjusting and reflection on the part of a therapist not used to the phenomenon.”

  “Lee was the only multiple case you had seen?”

  “At that time, yes. I was eager to get up to speed on proper diagnosis and treatment. After I discovered Roy, I videotaped every subsequent session in order to be certain that I wouldn’t miss anything. That proved very fortunate. If I hadn’t had the tape to replay for Lee, I doubt he would have believed in the reality of Roy. You see, even people with multiple personalities have difficulty accepting the concept.”

  Damian smiled at her with warm understanding for her reservations. “I know it must be difficult to take all this in,” he said.

  Kay found herself wanting to immediately release her skepticism and accept whatever this man said. She caught herself just in time and shook herself mentally. Damn, but this psychologist was good at getting one’s defenses down. She’d have to be careful. Very careful.

  She sat up straighter in her chair, cleared her throat. “How can a person’s mind become separated into these different personalities as you’ve described?”

  “Psychological research connects the development of multiple personalities to a traumatic fragmenting of the core personality.”

  “And the English version of that translates to...?”

  He grinned at her, a very attractive grin.

  “Perhaps an analogy would be helpful. If you think of our early-childhood personalities as rough diamonds and life experiences as the diamond cutter, then a multiple-personality individual is the result of life’s diamond cutter clearly missing its mark. The personality ends up shattered into pieces—sometimes two, far more often into many different pieces.”

  “And in the case of your patient, the different fragmented personality piece that emerged as a young child was Roy.”

  “He was chosen by the mind to exist in the hostile childhood environment.”

  “What was the hostile environment that fragmented the personality?”

  “Roy’s mother became pregnant as a young teen. Her parents arranged for the baby to be adopted by a childless couple they knew. However, when Roy was two, his teenage mother kidnapped him from his adoptive parents and fled the state with a guy she had just met. The man physically and emotionally abused the child.”

  Kay sagged into the back of her chair. She had had to deal firsthand with the emotional devastation of child abuse in her first year as a lawyer in the King County prosecutor’s office. The anger and repulsion she’d felt at hearing such stories, along with her frustrated efforts to gather enough evidence to put away so many of the abusers, had finally driven her out of the prosecutor’s office and into civil law at a priva
te firm.

  She knew she was tough. But she no longer kidded herself that she would ever be tough enough to deal with such horrors and inhumanity with the dispassion the profession demanded. She forcibly refocused her attention to the issue at hand.

  “Why didn’t the child’s mother protect him?”

  “I don’t know for certain. Maybe due to fear for herself. But by turning her back to the abuse, she contributed to it.”

  “You say Roy’s mother did this. But wasn’t she also Lee’s mother?”

  “Physically, yes. Emotionally, no. Lee remembers little of his childhood. He seems to have nearly total amnesia for his own life events occurring before approximately six years ago.”

  “But earlier you said that he views himself as a man in his thirties. How can he sense thirty-plus years of existence when he only remembers six?”

  “It’s like Lee was sitting in front of a window opening to the world. He can tell you about the social and cultural changes that have occurred during most of his lifetime, including names of presidents and world events. He just can’t relate them to anything personal that happened to him until about six years ago.”

  “Because six years ago was when he began to interact with life and not just watch it.”

  “Yes, very well put, Kay. The Lee personality existed in early childhood only as an observer. He lived in a kind of mental attic where he felt protected and safe. Then six years ago, he came down from his mental attic and began to take over from the Roy personality.”

  Despite the fact that Kay was still having difficulty getting her mind to accept the bizarre nature of this disorder, she couldn’t help but be fascinated by it. Two people inside one mind—each compartmentalized into separate memories and identities. It was literally mind-boggling.

  “You said Lee Nye came to you for help. Did Roy Nye also seek help?”

  “No. Roy Nye attributed his memory losses to alcoholic stupors.”

  “And when he learned about Lee?”

  “When I showed him the videotape of the sessions with Lee in control, he erupted first into denial, then anger.”

  “How does he handle the situation now?”

  “He doesn’t. Roy Nye is dead.”

  Kay blinked in surprise. “Dead?”

  “Yes. He died four years ago. Which brings me to why I’m here, Kay. Mrs. Roy Nye has filed a three-million-dollar wrongful-death lawsuit against me.”

  “Your patient was married?”

  “No, Lee wasn’t married. Roy was.”

  “And Roy’s widow blames you for Roy’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of your treatment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were formal charges ever brought against you in connection with Roy Nye’s death?”

  “No.”

  “Did the police ever consider you a suspect?”

  “The police were never involved.”

  “If Roy died of natural causes or an accidental death, how can his wife—”

  “Roy died neither by accident nor by natural causes.”

  Kay leaned her forearms on her desk, trying to bore past the solid wall of secrecy in those deep green eyes.

  “Okay, I confess I’m confused. How did Roy Nye die?”

  His eyes never left hers. His deep voice did not alter a decibel as he delivered the news.

  “I killed him.”

  Chapter Two

  Damian watched his admission rivet Kay’s spine into stiff attention.

  He had intentionally shocked her. He wanted to find out who the woman was inside that delicately petite five-foot two-inch frame.

  From the moment he’d walked into her office, he’d sensed that Kay Kellogg was nothing like the image she presented.

  Not that the image she presented was at all hard to take. Her long, honey-gold hair strained against its imprisonment beneath a silver barrette at the top of her head. Her eyes floated like plump blueberries in her milk-white face. She moved as gracefully as a slim willow, her soft voice sifting through the office like a gentle breeze rustling leaves.

  And when she had taken his hand and his body had registered the strong current passing between them, he knew no woman had ever affected him so immediately or so thoroughly.

  No doubt about it. Kay Kellogg possessed that kind of natural, land-mine femininity that instantly and spontaneously detonated deep in a man’s body, forcibly reminding him why he was happy to be a man.

  She knew it, too, and the knowledge did not make her happy. That was evident by her lack of makeup and jewelry and the formalness and formidability of her dark blue linen suit and the high collar of her light blue cotton blouse.

  She wore her clothes like armor. She was making a mistake. All that starched formality only served to accentuate the soft, beckoning woman beneath.

  This valiant need she had to try to hide her femininity was far more disturbing and deadly to Damian than even all that land-mine femininity, because it stirred up all his protective instincts.

  She didn’t react to his news, except for that initial and instant rigidity of spine. Her eyes remained focused on his, her hands steady, her soft voice absolutely even. She recovered exceptionally fast.

  “Are you saying that the police don’t know you committed this murder?”

  “I don’t consider I have committed a murder, Kay.”

  “You just told me you killed Roy Nye.”

  “I did.”

  “Then it was an accident?”

  “No, I deliberately set out to do it.”

  Her eyes still remained glued to his; her composed voice did not falter. He was being deliberately obtuse. Yet she continued to deal with him calmly and coolly. She had an amazingly determined and disciplined mind within that delicate packaging.

  “Kay, perhaps the situation will become clearer to you when I say that although Roy Nye is dead, Lee Nye is still very much alive.”

  The small frown reappeared between her fawn-colored eyebrows. “How can one identity be dead and not the other?”

  “Because I consciously sought to extinguish him. I was successful.”

  “Are you saying you ‘killed’ the personality that was Roy?”

  “We term it ‘extinguishing’ in psychological parlance. Once Lee Nye realized there was another personality inhabiting his body and taking over during the blackout periods, he was eager to be free of him.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “After I got to know Roy. He was in a self-destruct mode, inflicting ever-escalating harm. He was not amenable to change. If he had been allowed to continue, he would have taken Lee with him by killing off their shared physical self, as well as their separate personalities.”

  “So you’re saying that to save Lee, you killed Roy.”

  “Yes.”

  “And now Roy’s widow is suing you in a wrongful death suit?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat back in her chair and pursed her lips in a moment of quiet contemplation. She had inviting lips—naturally pink and soft-looking. Still, they were deliberately unpainted and she definitely wasn’t pursing them in invitation. Good thing, too. Damian resolutely refocused his eyes on her small hands, resting steady and composed on her desk.

  “Well, when Adam warned me that your case would be a surprise, he certainly didn’t exaggerate. This one is an original. A suit filed on behalf of a widow of a man who isn’t even really dead.”

  “Make no mistake, Kay, Roy is dead. When I was successful in extinguishing him, Lee subsequently divorced Roy’s wife and shed all ties with Roy’s past, including having his name formally changed from LeRoy to Lee. The two individuals shared a body, but never a life. Roy is, as a matter of record, gone.”

  “Psychologically speaking, Damian, I bow to your terms. But, legally at least, I think we should begin by attempting to dispute that fact.”

  Her eyes were bright with possibilities. She tapped her fingers on the desk to an ever-increasing beat. Damian had the strong
impression that they were impatiently trying to keep pace with her racing thoughts.

  “I assume Mrs. Roy Nye knows all about your treatment of Lee and your part in extinguishing the Roy personality?”

  “Yes. Lee fully explained the circumstances in court when he filed for divorce. Mrs. Nye didn’t contest the divorce. Lee told me later that she even seemed relieved.”

  “Then why is she bringing this wrongful-death suit?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You said Lee first came to you five and a half years ago?”

  “Yes. I saw him for a year and a half before Roy was extinguished. However, Mrs. Nye didn’t file the wrongful-death suit until recently.”

  “Any idea why she waited this long?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever met her in person or talked to her over the phone?”

  “No.”

  “Even though you treated her husband?”

  “I considered Lee to be my real patient. Her husband, Roy, was a destructive and dysfunctional personality fragment. I feel fortunate that I was successful in extinguishing Roy, thereby freeing Lee to take control of his life.”

  Damian watched Kay inhale a deep breath and let it out with a shake of her head.

  “Well, it’s certainly a unique cause of action Mrs. Nye will be bringing to court.”

  “Will it stand up?”

  “Logically, it shouldn’t. But with all the crazy things going on in the legal system these days, it’s hard to second-guess what a judge will let a jury hear. When were you served papers on this suit?”

  “Four months ago.”

  Her voice rose perceptibly. “Four months ago?”

  “The pretrial motions are scheduled for this Friday. The trial is scheduled to begin a week from today.”

  She leaned forward. “This Friday? A week from today? Why did you wait so long to seek legal representation?”

  “I didn’t. I’ve been relying on the lawyer who represents my malpractice insurance company. After months of answering my frequent questions with vague assurances that he had everything under control, he finally called me into his office last week to tell me he was going for an out-of-court settlement.”