Skillful Death (8 page)

“Actually, he was named after Mom. They thought it was clever because Leslie can be for boys too.”

“So their headstones must read the same then? Unless they had different middle names?”

“Family headstone. Why are you so curious about this?” His sobbing slows as he tries to figure out where I’m going with all these questions.

“No reason. Just killing time. Making conversation.”

“I have a legitimate problem,” he says. “You’re just killing time.”

“You do have a problem. I’m just waiting for you to figure out what I already know.”

“About my dead brother.”

“Yes. About Leslie, who you and your brother conspired to kill.”

“I knew it was a mistake to come here,” he says, pushing himself to his feet.

“And yet you did. You can’t leave. I’ll be on the phone with the authorities before you make it to the lobby. They’ll be interested to know who’s behind this, if they’re not already on your trail.” I shake the document in front of me. It’s the printout of the story about the arson.

“You said you wouldn’t go to the police unless I killed someone.”

“I guess I lied. Now sit back down,” I say, using my most commanding tone. For a second I think he’s going to bolt, but then he slumps back into the chair. “You use the restroom on a schedule?”

“What?”

“Do you use the restroom on a schedule? Are you on a strict schedule about when you eat, go to the bathroom, sleep?”

“Yes, I suppose. I’m a normal person. I fall into patterns.”

“And you talk to yourself a lot?”

“No more than anyone else, but yes, I’m sure I do.”

“People comment on it?”

“I don’t know. Sure. I guess a couple of people have commented that I talk to myself on occasion.”

“Do you believe in the paranormal?”

“I try not to fall into the arrogance that science has everything figured out. But, in general, I only believe what I can prove. Why?”

That’s a pretty good way to characterize an open mind, but I don’t think he’s telling the truth. I’ve dealt with enough crazies to know that Ted believes in everything he hears: ghosts, aliens, fairies, gnomes, trolls, you name it. He likes to paint himself a scientist, or at least a skeptic. He’s really just a hardcore pushover for anything that makes his spine tingle. I decide to play his gullibility.
 

“You’ve got a poltergeist attached to you,” I say.

“A what?”

“You know, a malevolent spirit. It’s tried to put you off-balance with this email thing, but what it really wants is to cast your life into turmoil by committing evil acts while it implants them in your imagination.

“What?”

“Think about it,” I say. “When all rational explanations fail, you have to turn to the irrational.” I’m going to have a hard time selling this line of bullshit, so I’m hoping that he convinces himself. Actually, the fact that he’s here means he’s already nearly convinced himself, so I shouldn’t have to do too much work. Still, I have a hard time keeping a straight face through this. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he knows the real truth about how he’s sharing a life with his brother. I need find out if he’s anywhere close to admitting that to himself.

“So will you let me help you document this thing?” I ask him. “It will get us proof that you’re not crazy.”

“But how?”

“We’re going to have to follow you into your dreams.”

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I’ve had more than one lecture from my boss on how I spend his money. My office is funded by interest from the escrow account. I run a tight ship, and regularly leave money on the table at the end of the year. I still get questioned about my expenses. I would think that coming in perpetually under budget would earn me a certain amount of freedom from scrutiny, but I would be wrong. A person doesn’t get to my boss’s financial stratum without having a nose for the monetary details.

With that in mind, I contract a team to follow Ted. As far as Ted knows, the team is on the watch for paranormal activity. They’re really looking for Leslie, Ted’s brother. I call up my lead guy, Ethan, and ask him to put together a watch-and-bag team. They’re more expensive than a watch team, but worth it in this case. Evidence alone isn’t going to convince Ted and Leslie. I have to get them in the same room until they recognize each other. That will mean muscle. The paper I got Ted to sign can’t give me carte blanche to kidnap the man. At least it will make him think twice before he tries to sue me or the foundation.

I’m not sure what Ted thinks my team will be doing. He accepted a bunch of jargon and hand waving about electromagnetic this and Gaussian that. He agreed that he would email me from his dream and we would track down the poltergeist activity as it was taking place. His acceptance of this crazy proposal is more evidence that he’s ready to reconcile himself with reality.

I get a call later that evening. It comes before any of the surveillance is even supposed to take place, at least as far as Ted knows. My team is bringing in Ted and Leslie after discovering the two linking up at Ted’s house. Per my request, they bring the brothers in separately. They put them in our interrogation space and seat them back-to-back, about three feet apart. If I’m right, only one of them will have the Ted identity at a time. I don’t want to disrupt that delusion all at once.

“Hi, Ted,” I say. The two men are strapped lightly to comfortable chairs.

“What the hell are you doing?” the one on the left says. He’s my Ted for the moment.

“My team picked you up, per our agreement.”

“Our agreement stated that you would help me track down the paranormal activity coincident with my sleep.”

“Not strictly. We talked about paranormal, but it’s not stated explicitly in the contract. We picked you up because of other reasons. I think you’ll find that I’m within my rights.”

“You can’t hold me here.”

“Given the current circumstances, I believe it would be deemed irresponsible for me to
not
hold you here.” That’s a stretch. Hopefully, by the time he figures that out, I’ll be in the clear.

“I can’t imagine those circumstances.”

“Your name is Ted, correct?”

“Yes. You know that.”

“And you first came to me on the tenth?”

“Yes.”

“You participated in a monitored sleep study in my office?”

I can’t say that I’m shocked, but I’m definitely startled when Leslie—the other brother—answers.

“Yes,” he says.

I’m watching Ted’s face when Leslie, the one on the right, answers. Ted’s face doesn’t register surprise to hear his voice come from another mouth, and he didn’t even begin to answer the question asked. When it came time for the other half of Ted to answer, the first half simply kept his mouth shut.
 

I wave to two of the guys on my watch-and-bag team and they wheel over the mirrors. Ted and Leslie are now looking at themselves in a full-length mirror. Neither seems to notice the other man bound directly behind them.

I walk up to Ted and reach forward with a marker. He turns his head to the side, but I draw a lopsided black circle on his forehead.
 

“What the hell?”

“You dreamed that you burned down a house the other night?”

“Yes,” Leslie says. Ted keeps his eyes locked on mine.

“And I assume that you dreamed this after getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom?”

“I don’t know,” Leslie says.

“But you get up a lot in the middle of the night?”

“Yes,” Leslie says.

Their chairs are on rollers, and I start to move the chairs. One turns clockwise and the other counter-clockwise as the men move the mirrors, keeping them in front of Ted and Leslie.

“That’s when you communicate, primarily. You catch each other up in the bathroom. I hate to tell you this, but there was a follow-up to the story about the arson of your childhood home. The woman who lived there had two cats. Only one of them got out. They found the other cat a couple of days later in the attic. Asphyxiated.”

“Nonsense,” Ted says.

“And my friends over at the police department tell me that they’ve collected footage from a security camera up the street. They have a man matching your description fleeing the scene just minutes before the fire was spotted by a neighbor.”

“It wasn’t me,” Leslie says. “I was asleep.”

“I believe you,” I say. We’ve got the chairs nearly turned around now, and I position myself behind Leslie so I can wheel him the rest of the way. I’m looking over his shoulder when the chairs finally face each other. We’re looking at Ted with the circle on his forehead, sitting next to the mirror that reflects back Leslie’s unmarked face next to mine.

“I was talking to him,” I say in Leslie’s ear, pointing to Ted.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Leslie says.

“Have you ever tried to read something by starlight?” I ask Leslie. “It’s really difficult because the center part of your retina, the fovea, is terrible at low-light vision. You have to turn your gaze about twelve degrees to get around your blind spot. You have a blind spot for your brother. Try looking in that mirror.”

I see his gaze shift over to the mirror and settle there for several seconds. He’s not seeing it.

“I drew a circle on your brother’s head.”

After a few more seconds, I see Leslie’s eyes start to bounce back and forth, and in the mirror I watch Leslie’s lips part as his jaw slackens. When he looks at the mirror, his peripheral vision finally sees what his brain blocks out—the image of his twin brother.

“Who are you?”

Leslie can see him now, but Ted still doesn’t understand what’s happening. As far as Ted is concerned, the question came from his own lips.

“Hey,” Leslie struggles against the straps holding him to the chair. “Let me out of these straps. Hey!”

I reach down and peel back the velcro from one of the straps. Leslie uses his freed hand to finish the job and he’s up and out of the chair. My men gather close, just in case.

“Hey! Look at me,” Leslie says. He grips his brother by his shoulders.
 

Ted looks forward at nothing. His personality is on hold, since his brother is in action.

“Hey!” Leslie says. His hand flies out and strikes Ted twice before I can grab his arms. “Who are you?”

“That’s Ted,” I say.

“I’m Ted. Me.”

“You’re Leslie.”

“Leslie died. I’m Ted.”

“You guys made up that story about Leslie dying. You’ve been sharing the Ted persona ever since.”

“That’s impossible,” Leslie says. “He died eleven years ago.”

“Leslie never had cancer,” I say. “I asked your cousins in Shippensburg. They had nothing but nice things to say about you both, but I could hear the concern in their voices.”

“Impossible,” Leslie repeats. He slumps backwards and his hands help land him back in the chair.

I watch as the animus—the Ted personality—shifts from Leslie back over to Ted.

“Impossible,” Ted says. Leslie has gone limp and the grief slides from Leslie’s face over to Ted’s as he picks up the rant. “This whole thing is impossible. I told you that Leslie died of cancer. Why would my cousins tell you different? You’re lying.”

“Ted, do you remember what I told you about the blind spot?”

“Just now? Of course.”

“And what happened when you did it?”

“I saw something. I don’t remember.”

“Try it again.” I maneuver myself behind Ted, who is still bound to his chair, and point his gaze at the mirror next to Leslie. “Focus on the mirror. Do you see the circle on your forehead?”

“Of course,” Ted says. “You drew it there.”

“Who’s in the chair?”

“I can’t tell.”

It takes longer with Ted, but after a couple of minutes, he sees it too. The brothers are now aware of each other, but I’ve still only got one conscious at a time. When one is active, the other seems to shut down. They must be independent when they’re apart, so I figure that’s the solution. I have one of my guys help me bring Leslie into the other room.
 

Leslie perks up as soon as I get him out of sight of his brother.

“You guys aren’t going to be able to be together for a while, I think.”

“Why?” Leslie asks.

“Only one of you is active at a time. The other just zonks out.”

“This is so weird,” Leslie says.
 

“Here,” I say. I dial my phone and hand it to him.

“Is that Leslie?” he asks.

“You’re Leslie,” I say. “As far as I know. The guy on the other end is Ted.”

“So weird,” Leslie says again, but he takes the phone from me and holds it to his ear.

After a few seconds of just listening to each other breathe, Leslie and Ted begin to talk. They talk logistics at first. They decide who will use the house and the car until they can find a way to separate their lives. They both seem to want a little independence, which I guess is a natural reaction.

In my years working cases, this was definitely the most interesting. I’ve dealt with plenty of people who believed their stories, but none who had a story quite as fascinating as Ted and Leslie. You see split personalities in the movies and on TV all the time, although it’s really quite rare. I think sharing a personality has to be the most rare disorder in history.