“Ragen admits the robberies,” Judy said.

“Yeah, but denies the rapes. I mean, the whole thing is strange. Can you imagine, three different times within a two-week period Ragen drinks and takes amphetamines and then in the early hours of the morning jogs eleven miles across town to the Ohio State campus? And then after selecting a victim, he blacks out—”

“Leaves the spot,” Judy corrected.

“That’s what I mean.” He held his cup out for a refill. “So in each case he leaves the spot, and the next thing he finds himself in downtown Columbus with the money in his pocket and figures he committed the robberies he set out to do. But he doesn’t remember doing it. Any of the three. As he says, someone stole time in between.”

“Well, there are pieces missing,” Judy said. “Someone was tossing those bottles into the pond and taking target practice. ” Gary nodded. “That proves it wasn’t Ragen. According to the woman, he couldn’t get the gun operating for a few seconds. I mean, fooling with it until he got the safety catch off. And then missing a couple of the bottles. An expert like Ragen wouldn’t miss.”

“But Arthur says the others are forbidden to handle Ragen s guns.”

“I can just see us explaining that to Judge Flowers.”

“Are we going to?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s dumb to use an insanity defense for a multiple personality, since it’s classified officially as a neurosis and not a psychosis. I mean, the shrinks themselves say multiples are not insane.”

"Okay,” Judy said, “why not just a straight not guilty without calling it insanity? We attack the notion of purposefulness of the acts, like the multiple personality case in California.” "That was a minor offense,” Gary said. “With a notorious case like ours, a multiple personality defense just won’t fly. That’s a fact of life.”

She sighed and stared into the fire.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” Gary said, stroking his beard. “Even if Judge Flowers sees it the way we do, he’s going to send him to Lima. Billy heard about the kind of place Lima is when he was in prison. You remember what Ragen said about euthanasia? About killing the children if he’s sent there? I believe he would.”

“Then we get him sent somewhere else!” said Judy. “Southwest says Lima’s the only place for treatment before trial.”

“He goes to Lima over my dead body,” she said. “Correction,” Gary said, raising his cup. “Over our dead bodies.”

They clinked their cups and then Judy refilled them. “I can’t accept that we don’t have a choice.”

“Let’s find a choice,” he said.

“Right you are,” she said. “We’ll find a choice.”

“It’s never been done before,” he said, wiping the cream from his beard.

“So what? Ohio has*never had a Billy Milligan before.”

She pulled her well-thumbed copy of the Ohio Criminal Law Handbook from the shelf, and they both went over it, taking turns reading aloud.