The truth about Veronica

"June, remember what you told me before? Tell these two men exactly the same thing."

June repeated the same thing she told Officer Simon to Officer James and Ade, and with every word she said, the pieces began to fit in James' head.

"So you're saying that when Margret said that Sylvester left them, you girls were just covering up his death, and the day Raymond died, you girls went to the party to prevent his death?"

"Yes," June answered.

To Officer Ade, it all seemed delusional.

"Come on James, you're not saying you believe this nonsense do you?"

Officer James remained quiet which only seemed to piss him off.

"You better tell the truth if you know what is good for you." He said to June with a mean stare. "Did you girls kill them or not?"

"I don't think they did." James finally spoke up.

"What?"Officer Ade and Simon uttered.

"I don't think they killed anyone. I think someone is trying to mess with them; someone so sick that he or she decided to quench their own blood lust by fulfilling their desires, regardless if they were joking or not."

"Hmm, so who then is the killer genius?" Ade asked

"I don't know, but I bet it is someone close to you girls... We need to talk to your friends immediately. Who else was there that night?"

"No one, it was just us," June answered.

"Are you sure?"

** ** **

"So you said you are my daughter's friend," Abike said as she settled on her chair close to Veronica. "Tell me, how is she doing over there?"

They were the only ones in the shop now. Mrs. Badmus had sent everyone away including her sales girls outside for some privacy.

"She is doing pretty well ma," Grace answered. "Although she doesn't have many friends in our school because she is always by herself most of the time."

"That's typical of her, her father and I expected it from the very beginning."

"Well, it's a bit complicated in high school because many rumors about her spread around the school as a result of that."

"Is that what you meant about my daughter being in danger?" Mrs. Badmus asked in a tone that hinted at disappointment.

"No ma, it's not that..." Grace paused to clear her throat. "When we became friends with her she told us that she was sick as a child and because of that she was homeschooled but soon after she started attending a boarding school but she was a bad student so your husband decided to punish her by sending her to Ketu."

"What? She told you that?" Mrs. Badmus asked in disbelief.

"That's not even the whole part of the story... She told everyone that her surname was Bello but when I saw Veronica Badmus on her driver's license."

"Oh my--"

"I knew that if I confronted her, she would probably deny it with another lie so I decided to track you down myself to find out the truth."

A brief awkward silence fell on them for a moment before Mrs. Badmus found the courage to speak.

"It's not her fault," She said. "I can understand why she did it."

"What are you saying? That it was okay for her to lie?"

"You see, Mike's father was psychologically sick. One time he would be one person and the next moment it would be like another person entirely, it was like a whole personality shift. The doctors said it was dissociative identity disorder and back then medicine and technology wasn't as developed as it is right now so there was very little we could do to help him... He killed himself with his own pistol from his military days."

"I'm sorry." Grace sympathized.

"Don't be... What we didn't know was that this disorder tends to be hereditary and although it skipped my husband, it caught up with my daughter."

Grace's eyes got wide in shock.

"We were all horrified when it happened eighteen months ago. She started calling herself Cassandra to us and even her friends too. But it didn't end there, there were certain behavioral changes too."

"Like what?"

"She started acting out bad and wild, getting in fights and torturing everyone that was under her. We kept her under the supervision of some doctors in our house until it the night she tried to stab me in my sleep, it was then we were convinced that Cassandra had fully taken over her."

Mrs. Badmus paused for a minute but Grace knew she wasn't done yet.

"So what did you do?"

"We took her to a mental facility where she stayed for six months. The doctors said she responded well to all the procedures they administered to her and that she was free to leave. They were right, Veronica was back finally and it was like Cassandra was never there before... She didn't even know most of what happened before. Of course, we kept monitoring her for a while until we were certain she was okay, and soon enough, Veronica decided it was time for her to continue her life and head for college."

"But your husband decided it was best if she went to Ketu to see if she could handle secondary school one more time before sending her to the university."

"Yes, I didn't agree to it but whatever his royal highness says is final." Mrs. Badmus replied. "So you see, Veronica lost all of her friends after that incident. Maybe she thought you guys were going to think she was a mad person and then leave her too so she decided it was best to leave the past in the past."

Grace let out a huge sigh. Where does this leave her now? Hearing the truth only made her sorry for Veronica rather than pissed. And how does it help with their killer? Somewhere inside her, she had hoped that what she would learn from Mrs. Badmus would somehow tie Veronica to the killings but it only brought her back to square one. Unless...

"You said that Veronica came back. But how do you know if Cassandra was really gone?" Grace asked. "What if she was just suppressed?"

"Why would you think that?" Abike replied. "Is that why you said she was in danger?"

"I don't know honestly," Grace admitted. But what if she was right? From what Mrs. Badmus had told her, Cassandra was dangerous and it was clear that if she still had control over Veronica, she could do dreadful things. What if she did? What if she found a way to turn it on and off like a switch and was able to mask her presence all this while.

Grace placed a hand on her mouth as soon as a realization dawned on her. It wasn't just the four of them that were alone in Veronica's living room that night, Cassandra was there too. She had always been there throughout everything; throughout every problem solving and every plan they made. That was why she was always ten steps ahead of everything they did and the worst of it all was that Veronica didn't know this.