Rose exchanged a surprised look with McMinnamin, then nodded. “She was acting out your frustrations because she could,” she said. “For ‘Parker,’ there were no rules. She crossed the line many times, broke all kinds of boundaries. I’m sure you can think of things that Julie said that seemed a bit . . . out of place, perhaps?”
Caitlin flashed back to that day in film studies. It had probably been “Parker” who’d started the conversation, not Julie—because Julie wouldn’t have dared. But Julie had backed “Parker” up quickly, she remembered, adding Parker’s dad’s name to the list almost instantly. It was disturbing to think that every time she’d sat across a table from Julie, there were two people looking back.
She shifted in the uncomfortable interrogation-room chair. “Does Julie realize she has two different personalities?”
“Do you think there are more personalities besides those two?” Ava said at the same time.
Dr. Rose cocked her head, considering this. “As far as we know, it’s just Julie and Parker. But I’d have to work with her over a significant period of time to say for sure.”
Everyone fell silent. A phone rang loudly outside. An officer passed by, muttering to himself.
“Okay,” said Ava, leaning closer to the detective and the doctor. “I get why Julie—or Parker—would kill Nolan, Parker’s dad, even Ashley. But, assuming all this is true, then why did she kill Granger? Because he was picking on me and all those other girls?”
“We think it had something to do with this.” McMinnamin pulled a mud-caked envelope scrawled with JULIE REDDING from his folder. “We found it in Granger’s yard Friday night.”
He slipped a finger under the flap and tugged out a stack of papers. It was a report, handwritten by Mrs. Keller, Beacon High’s counselor, during grief counseling after Parker’s murder. “Ms. Redding displays a worrisome, fragmented personality,” he read aloud. “She seemed to conduct a conversation with someone else who wasn’t in the room. When asked about it, Ms. Redding became very agitated and secretive.”
Caitlin shut her eyes. “Why didn’t Mrs. Keller report this to a doctor at the time?”
“I don’t know,” McMinnamin said. “Maybe she didn’t recognize what was happening. Or maybe she just thought Julie was being dramatic.”
Mac’s head shot up. “If you found this at Granger’s house, then that means . . .”
“He knew.” Ava’s eyes were huge. “About Parker, I mean. Or, well, maybe not that Julie’s other personality was Parker, per se, but that something was going on.”
“That’s right.” McMinnamin rubbed his eyes with his hands. “This report is highly confidential and should have been carefully guarded. But, given what we know now about Lucas Granger’s questionable ethics, we believe that he noticed something off about Julie and stole the report from the counselor’s office. What he was going to do with it is anyone’s guess.”
Caitlin squinted, trying to put the pieces together. “So this is why Julie—or Julie as Parker—killed Granger? To keep the secret safe?”
McMinnamin nodded. “Julie’s fingerprints are on the envelope, so we know she handled it at some point—whether as Julie or as Parker, we don’t know. We figure she found it at Granger’s house the night you ladies were there.”
“Julie was afraid Lucas Granger was going to out her, and then she’d be forced to seek treatment,” Rose added. “You see, most of my previous patients with dissociative identities are very resistant to treatment. They’ve created these other personalities to survive and fill some significant holes in their lives. The tiny little lucid part of them that still exists inside their original personality knows that losing one of these other identities would be like a death. In Julie’s case, if she were forced to get help, then Parker, as Julie understands her, really would die. Julie would lose her best friend—again. It would be absolutely devastating for her.”
Everyone nodded calmly, but inside, Caitlin’s feelings were raging. On the one hand, Caitlin thought they should be angry—Julie had murdered three people and set the rest of them up to take the blame. But on the other hand, how could she hold Julie responsible when she was so sick?
McMinnamin cleared his throat. “I’m sorry we kept you girls as suspects for so long. But there are still some holes we need you to fill. Like what you really were doing at Granger’s house. And what was happening the night of Nolan’s party? I know you girls were involved. Too many signs point to you.”
Caitlin felt a dart of nerves, and she lowered her eyes. Her friends shifted, too. “It was meant to be a prank,” she eked out.
“We never thought he’d die,” Ava whispered.
“It was a terrible thing to do,” Mac added.