Chapter 2

After she was processed out of the city lockup, I drove Aunt Margie home and escorted her into her house with my arm around her shoulder.

I got her settled on the couch and asked, “Can I fix you some tea, Aunt Margie. Or I’d be happy to make you a snack, if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks, but no, sweetheart. You’ve done enough. I think I just need a little nap right now. It’s been such a stressful day.”

“Of course, Aunt Margie. You get some rest now while I track down those boys and try to get some answers to why they would level such awful accusations against you. I can’t imagine what could have possessed them.”

Aunt Margie suddenly got really agitated. She grabbed me by my shirtsleeves and begged, “Oh, Marty, please don’t go bothering those boys. They’re just kids. I’m sure they already regret what they said.”

I sat beside her and took her hand. “But I have to! When we go back to court in two weeks, those boys recanting their stories is what we’ll need to end this thing once and for all. Judge Wilmer will dismiss the charges. And anyhow, those kids aren’t too young to appreciate the fact that lying has consequences. I don’t intend to charge them with malicious slander since they’re juveniles, but we can’t let them get away with this kind of behavior scot-free.”

Whoa! Without any warning whatsoever, Aunt Margie just lost it! She pushed me away and shouted, “NO! NO! NO! NO! I won’t have it! You just leave those boys alone! Do you hear me!?” Then she covered her face with her hands and wept.

Well, I was shocked. SHOCKED!

“Aunt Margie, take it easy! Try to relax! I know it’s been a hard day. Look, why don’t you lie down here on the couch and take a little nap. I’ll come back later this afternoon after I close the office and see how you’re doing, okay?”

And then the most peculiar thing happened. She stopped crying and looked up at me with this weird expression on her face. I mean, so weird that I hardly recognized her! An expression like something I’d never seen before! She had this amused, smug look, like I’d just told a bad joke or something, and when she spoke, I didn’t recognize the voice either. At least, she didn’t sound like the Margie I knew!

She reached out and patted my face with her hand, and said, “So, you’re Margie’s favorite nephew. Lawyer, right?”

“Huh?”

“She says you’re a lawyer. I hope you’re a good one, because this little shit storm I got her into is gonna get kinda ugly.”

By now I’m totally confused. “Aunt Margie, what the heck is going on with you? Why are you acting like this?”

“Oh, honey,” she says with a chuckle, “I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. I’m not your Aunt Margie. I’m Dagmar.”

Okay, this was totally out of left field. It had to be some kind of reaction to all the stress she was under, a temporary brain fart or something!

I grabbed her shoulders and pleaded, “Aunt Margie, get ahold of yourself! You’re acting all weird on me!”

She shrugged my hands off and said, “Hey, easy with the paws, buster! You’re gonna have to pay big money to treat me like that.” Then, tossing in yet another jolt and adding to my dismay, she ran her hand up my leg and started rubbing my crotch!

She kind of snickered, “But if you wanna play, I think we can work something out. Margie has some very wicked thoughts about you, you know. Do you have wicked thoughts about her?”

I grabbed her wrist to stop what she was doing. “Aunt Margie, what do you think you’re doing? And who the hell is Dagmar?”

She leaned back and smirked. “Dagmar is me, and I am Dagmar. Unfortunately, I have to share this hot body with that wimpy little do-gooder you call your Aunt Margie. Believe me, sweet cheeks, I’m a LOT more fun than she is, and there’s any number of cute boys in the neighborhood that’ll back me up on that.”

Holy fuck! I’m thinking, She has completely gone over the edge! Did she actually do it? Did she actually screw those boys?

When I got my mouth to working again, I asked straight out, “Did you do it, Aunt Margie?”

She snapped, “I’m Dagmar, I told you! You deaf or something?”

“Okay, Dagmar, then! Did you, um, have sex with those boys?”

She hits me with this sardonic grin, and actually boasts, “Oh, it was more than just sex, honey buns. I taught those little fuckers things that will change their lives forever! I bet some of those kids know more about having sex now than their folks do.”

I buried my face in my hands and groaned, “Oh, my god! She actually did it! We’re fucked!”

I was struggling hard to unscramble my brain. I looked into her face and tried to explain, “Um, you do appreciate the fact that you’re under investigation for possible sexual assault on a child, right?”

She laughed, “Child? Honey, not a one of those young men is a child! Every single one of them has a dick that gets hard and squirts cum. Especially that Dennis Leary! Shit, that dude has a piece of meat that’d make a New York City street whore run for cover!”

Through all the chaotic thoughts, confusion and disbelief, a degree of rationality began forcing its way back into my brain, and I knew very well that I wasn’t equipped to handle what was happening. I stood and said, “Um, would you excuse me Aunt ... I mean, Dagmar? I need to make a phone call.”

And that’s when she just suddenly ran out of steam. As her body sort of wilted into the couch, she managed a weary smile and said, “Hey, you do your thing, kid. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just lie back here for a minute and rest my weary eyeballs.”

I think she was asleep before her head hit the throw pillow. It occurred to me that all this weirdness could have been caused by a stroke or something, so I checked her pulse and he breathing. Everything seemed just fine, physically.

I punched a number on my speed dial. It was for a psychiatrist I sometimes referred clients to when I was working on an incompetency plea. When his receptionist picked up, I covered my mouth and whispered as loud as I dared, fearing I might wake Aunt Margie (or Dagmar), “Clinic? Yeah, this is Marty Brenner. I need to speak to Dr. Milton, please. It’s urgent!”

After a few seconds: “Hello? Dr. Milton? Um, this is Marty Brenner, and I’m calling from my Aunt Margie’s house ... Yeah, Margaret Brenner ... So, you’ve heard about the, uh, legal thing ... Well, that’s kinda what I’m calling about. See, I was sitting here in her living room talking to her, and, like, all of a sudden, she turns into somebody else ... No! I mean it! Just listen to me! She started talking in a different voice and acting like a totally different person ... You want to speak to her? ... Um, well she’s sleeping right now, and I’d just as soon not wake her up. So, what should I do?”

Even over the phone, I could hear the disbelief dripping from Dr. Milton’s voice, but he was ethically obligated to follow proper medical procedure and try to get her into the hospital for evaluation. Ten minutes later, an ambulance arrived, the paramedics gave her a shot of some kind of sedative without even waking her up, and then loaded her onto the gurney. I would meet them at the emergency room.

Milton told me to make sure I brought her I.D. and insurance cards, so I searched through her purse for them. There was nothing there, so I poked around the house looking for them and finally found a wallet with all her ID’s in a dresser drawer in her bedroom.

And that’s not all I found. I picked up a red, leather-bound journal half hidden under her panties, and flipped it open. On the first page was written, “Dagmar’s Diary”. My first impulse was to take it with me as proof, or at least evidence of Dagmar’s existence, but on second thought, reading it first was probably a wiser course. It was very possible, even likely, that the diary was going to be pivotal in Margie’s court case.

By the time I got to the emergency room, Aunt Margie was Aunt Margie again, but she was dopey from the sedative, and she was totally confused about why she was in the hospital. All Dr. Milton had told her was that she’d had a fainting spell, probably due to all the mental stress she was under. She seemed to buy that.

Later, in his office upstairs in the psych ward, I explained in detail what went on at the house. I guess I impressed him as being sincere enough that he had to at least believe that I believed it.

I asked, “So, isn’t it kind of unusual for a person to go schizophrenic at her age? I was under the impression that it usually comes on in the late teens or early twenties. She’s thirty-seven.”

He gave me one of those indulgent looks doctors are so good at, and said, “First of all, if this went down as you described it, odds are that it’s just a temporary stress response. Think some variation on PTSD. If it happens again, we’ll have to consider other possibilities. Anyway, what you described wouldn’t be schizophrenia, it would be DID, dissociative identity disorder. Schizophrenia is an organic problem, while DID is nearly always a response to an inability to cope with a highly stressful insult to one’s psyche.”

“But, Doc, this other identity, this Dagmar person actually admitted to having sex with several underage boys! If what the prosecutor said is true, that means it’s been going on for quite a while, now.”