“When Chalmer—”

“Yes!” she snapped. “Don’t talk about him!”

“Can you relate with Billy’s mother?”

“No! She couldn’t even relate with the boys.”

“Billy’s sister, Kathy?”

“Yes, I talked to Kathy. But she didn’t know it, I think. We went shopping together.”

“Billy’s brother, James?”

“No … I don’t even like him.”

Adalana wiped her eyes and then sat back, looking at the videotape machine, startled, sniffling. Then she was silent for a long time and Dr. George knew she was gone. He watched the glazed expression and waited to see who would come on the spot.

“It would be very helpful,” he said, gently, persuasively, “if we could talk to Billy.”

The face changed to a startled, frightened look as Billy glanced around quickly to take in his surroundings. Dr. George recognized the expression he had seen in the Franklin County Jail that day Dr. Wilbur had brought out Billy, the core personality.

Dr. George spoke to him gently, afraid he would disappear before he could make contact. Billy’s knees jiggled nervously, eyes glanced around fearfully.

“Do you know where you are?” Dr. George asked.

“No?” He shrugged and said it as if answering a yes-or-no question on a school test and uncertain whether he had the right answer.

“This is a hospital and I’m your doctor.”

“Jesus, he’ll kill me if I talk to a doctor.”

“Who will?”

Billy glanced around and saw the videotape camera pointed at him.

“What’s that?”

“That’s for recording this session. It’s a videotape machine, and we thought it would be helpful to have a record of this session so that you could see what was happening.”

But then he was gone.

“That thing frightened him,” Tommy said in disgust.

“I explained it was a videotape recorder and—”

Tommy snickered. “He probably didn’t know what you were talking about.”

When the session was over and Tommy had gone back to Wakefield Cottage, Dr. George sat alone in his office and thought about it for a long time. He knew he would have to tell the court that although William S. Milligan was not insane jn the usual sense of being psychotic (since dissociation was considered a neurosis), it was his best medical judgment that because Milligan was so far removed from reality that he couldn’t conform his conduct to the requirements of the law, he was not responsible for those crimes.

What remained to be done was to continue treating this patient and in some way make him competent to stand trial.

But with less than six weeks left of the three months provided by the court, how did you cure an illness that had taken psychoanalysts like Cornelia Wilbur in her work with Sybil more than ten years to accomplish?

The next morning, Arthur decided it was important to share with Ragen what he had learned about Adalana during Dr. George’s videotaping session. He paced back and forth in the special-care room and spoke aloud to Ragen: “The mystery of the rapes has been solved. I know now who did it.”