When She Was Bad: A Thriller by Jonathan Nasaw Page A

important. As a multiple, Maxwell had almost always exhibited an upward, rightward eyeball roll when changing alters, and the new alter had frequently exhibited grounding behavior afterward, rubbing a thigh as if to verify that he (or in the case of one alter, she) was in fact in the body.
    But Irene observed none of this behavior during their walk. When she made eye contact with Lyssy, even when she caught him unawares, there was no sign of Max or Kinch, the Maxwell alters she’d learned to fear—with good reason.
    “I have to admit, I’m impressed,” she conceded to Corder when they were alone in his office, sitting in matching leather armchairs in front of the fireplace. “How long since an alter has surfaced?”
    “Just under two years,” replied Corder.
    “You’re sure about that?”
    “I can show you the optical exams if you’d like.” Variations in optical functioning were among the most reliable indicators for a personality switch: a 1989 study had confirmed that DID subjects had close to five times more such changes than control subjects who’d been asked to feign the disorder.
    “I’ll take your word for it,” said Irene, smoothing the travel wrinkles from her skirt. “What about the possibility of co-consciousness?” That was a state of being, uncommon but not unknown, where one alter was able to directly and simultaneously experience the thoughts, feelings, and actions of another. (Researchers still weren’t exactly sure how the mind managed the feat, but one thing they all agreed on was that the human brain seemed to have evolved with redundancy as one of its basic design principles: there was more than enough gray matter in there to operate two personalities simultaneously.)
    “There’d have been some indication—confusion, mini–fugue states, contradictory responses.” Corder grinned suddenly, then slapped the arm of his chair. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to face it sooner or later, Irene: I can treat DID successfully.”
    “But you’re not going to tell me how, are you?”
    “No, I’m not.” Corder grabbed a poker from the brass stand by the fireplace and prodded at the neatly stacked logs—a bit of fidgeting that would have been less revealing if there’d actually been a fire going at the time. “And for good reason. I’m sorry to have to be so mysterious about this, but the last thing I want to do is get caught up in a debate about my methodology until I have my ducks in a row and I’m ready to publish.”
    “At least give me a hint—I’m feeling badly enough about leaving Lily, as it is.” The decision to have Lily committed to Reed-Chase had been made by her new guardian, her uncle Rollie, who’d learned about Corder’s success with multiples from various DID websites. Irene’s feelings had been hurt, of course—her first inclination had been to wash her hands of the whole damn case. She and Lily had grown too close over the last dozen years anyway, she’d told herself—it would probably be a relief to have all that weight off her shoulders.
    But that was sour grapes, and she knew it. And in the end, she couldn’t leave Lily to be hunted down and dragged off to an asylum by strangers. So she’d enlisted Ed Pender in the cause. Pender in turn had brought in a skip tracer from Santa Cruz who’d tracked Lily to Shasta County; the rest of the story had played itself out in the coffee shop in Weed.
    “All right, one hint,” said Corder, begrudgingly. “But you have to promise not to tell anybody anything until I publish.”
    “I swear on my DSM.” A little professional humor: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was sometimes referred to as the clinical psychiatrist’s Bible.
    “Okay, here it is: screw integration.”
    That brought Irene up short. The standard approach to treating multiples was to integrate the alter identities with the original personality to the greatest achievable extent. And the alternative to that would