Later that evening while trying to write a letter to her mother Helen trips over a chair in her bedroom and suffers the exact injuries that the caller predicted.
Scared, Helen calls her father's old acquaintance, investment councilor Paul Blackshear and asks him to come over to offer his advice.
Blackshear, retired since the death of his wife from cancer, is initially reluctant to help but upon seeing Clarvoe's distress agrees to help track down Merrick.
Hudson tells Blackshear that Merrick claimed to have modeled for a photographer named Jack Terola.
Verna disowns Douglas and leaves the house to confront Terola and, after she has left, Dougie commits suicide by slashing his wrists.
Blackshear goes to Terola's studio and finds him dead in his office with a pair of garden sheers stuck in his neck.
Through flashback it s revealed that she visited Terola and asked him to destroy the original photos he took of her as they didn't do her justice.
He tells her of Evelyn's recent activities and confides in her that he believes she developed multiple personality disorder after the break up of her parents marriage.
Evelyn arrives at the hotel along with Blackshear who has deduced that it is in fact Helen who has multiple personality disorder.
She argued that it "blazed a trail, sagely predicting and masterfully deploying crime fiction tropes of the new millennium, from an unreliable narrator to its final plot twist.
"[1] The Salt Lake Tribune called it an "enigmatic novel with enough suspense to satisfy the most placid mystery readers" and wrote that Millar "mixes an abundance of sharp descriptive narrative with six or seven distinct and unusual personalities in this book.
"[2] Nancy Barr Mavity of the Oakland Tribune wrote that the novel "will have you on to your hair and also your wits" and that Millar's "psychiatric reading here indeed stands her in good stead.
"[3] However, a reviewer with the Columbia Missourian was less positive, stating that the novel "lags in very few places and the story moves along at a sometimes too rapid pace with many unusual incidents left unexplained."