By Reason of Insanity

by Rachel Sinclair

  And she carried that vague memory with her throughout her days of hell in the orphanage.

  Of course, she always thought that she was imagining it. Of course she didn’t have a sister. If she did have a sister, where was she all this time? It didn't make any sense. After all, if she had a sister, her sister would have been brought with her to the orphanage, and she wasn't. So, Marina just assumed that this sister of hers was just a figment of her imagination.

  She took a deep breath, and took one last look in the mirror. She was going out that night. Out to dinner. And she wasn't going to be late.

  She wondered, as she looked at herself in the mirror, if she was doing the right thing. If everything went well, she would end up in an orange jumpsuit for real. Not that she minded that. It wasn't exactly going to be the best thing in the entire world for her, to say the very least. But she already had a plan. She would just go to the prison, and make sure that she took her meds. Her doctor had prescribed meds for bipolar disorder, which she didn't really have, but it was never ruled out, since Borderline Personality Disorder is so similar to bipolar in so many ways. So she convinced the psychiatrist to give her those meds.

  The plan was to take those meds, one by one, and store them in her cheeks. Sooner or later, she would accumulate enough of those pills that she could take them all at once and put herself out of her misery. It's what she wanted to do anyways. Is what she had always wanted to do.

  And if that happened, she could save her.

  She could save the one who did it for real.

  Chapter 16

  The next day, it was time to talk to Regina about her not being allowed to investigate Marina’s case anymore. I still was unclear on exactly why it was that Regina wasn’t able to do this investigation for me. All I knew was that James told me that Regina couldn’t be on the case because Marina didn't want her there.

  I went to meet with Regina at one of our favorite restaurants - In and Out. People who lived east of the Rockies didn’t know what they were missing with these hamburgers. As usual, there was a line out the door for this place.

  I got my usual, the double double cheeseburger and a large fry. Regina got the same. I looked at her, wondering where it was she put all that food, but then again, she could say the same thing about me. I was 6’2” and 170 lbs myself. I knew that the reason why I could eat like this was because I was very active. I was training for a triathlon. Every morning I rode my bike before work, or ran along the beach, or swam in the ocean.

  So, the junk food that I got at In and Out, the double double cheeseburger and the french fries, wasn’t something that I could get all the time. I didn't like the way that crap made me feel, but it was delicious, that was for sure.

  Regina seemed to already know what I was going to talk to her about. "You're firing me, aren't you?" she asked.

  I took a deep breath. "Yes. I'm sorry, I have to. For some odd reason, Marina just doesn’t want you on the case."

  "You're going to regret this. So who’s going to be doing the investigations?"

  "I am."

  Regina snorted. "You are?" Her eyes narrowed as she sat across from me. "No offense, but does this woman have a death wish? I mean, she's insisting on you taking her case, even though you don’t know what you're doing. Then she's insisting on you not having an investigator. There's something that just isn’t right about all of this. It doesn’t pass the smell test. I think I need to find out exactly what it is."

  "I wish you could. I need you on this case. I don't know what I'm doing."

  Regina got quiet as she ate her burger and fries, which was highly unusual for her. "Well," she finally said, “I guess what's done is done. So what's next in the case?"

  "Well, I was unable to have her declared incompetent to stand trial, and she's tying my hands as to whether or not she wants me to put in an insanity plea. She doesn't want me to do that."

  “Then you have to. She doesn't remember what happened the night of the murder. Right? And now that you don’t have an investigator, you probably won’t be able to find out if that chick did it or not, so you might as well plead her insane.”

  "That's right, she doesn’t remember the night of the murder.” I wanted to tell Regina about what Dr. Alan had told me about Marina. About how Marina was responsible for the death of her best friend’s fiancé. I wanted to tell Regina about how Marina dissociated. She had entire days she lost. Days where she had no idea what happened. But I knew that this was all confidential information, so I couldn’t tell Regina.

  I couldn't say a word to her.

  Regina sighed. I could tell that she was annoyed. She tapped her fingers on the table, and then looked away. "You know Aidan, I'm just so surprised that you didn’t fight for me. And I really hate the fact that I’ve been taken off this case before it's finished. Hell, I only got to talk to that one person, and I don't think that he was any help at all."

  "Brock, right?"

  "Yeah. It was the weirdest thing, that guy. I wanted to dig into it and see if I can figure out exactly who he was. And I think he had information that would've led me to who I really needed to talk to. I mean-“

  I had to interrupt her, because I was getting a phone call. It was Marina's number, so I knew I had to take it.

  "Hello, honey," Marina’s voice dripped with sweetness. I knew I was talking to her, not Malphas, the demon that Dr. Alan had told me about.

  "Hi Marina, what's up?" I asked her.

  "Listen, I want you to do what you need to do. In my case. If you think it's best that you make a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, then try that."

  I was suspicious, to say the least, and wanted to record this conversation, because I just knew that she was going to turn 180 degrees again on this situation, and come back to bite me.

  So, I turned on my phone recorder. “Okay, I'll see what I can do."

  "Well, what does that mean?"

  "It means that I will go ahead and make a plea, but I'm going to try to convince the judge to let me withdraw that plea at any time. This is an unusual case, but not really. This isn’t the first time that somebody has tried a case where he's not quite sure if the person did it or not. So, if things come to light that shows that you didn't actually do it, and then –"

  “No. I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to try to talk to the judge about withdrawing the plea at any time. I want you to go ahead and make sure that you keep the insanity plea, don't try to find anybody else who might've done this. Do you hear what I'm saying? My doctor will tell the court that I dissociated the night my husband was found, and that I did it."

  "Marina the only reason why you were arrested for killing your husband is because you were in the house at the time he was found.” Well, that and the fact that there were apparently witnesses who will testify about how cruel Marina was to her husband, but that was besides the point. “They don't know where the gun is, so there’s no way that the prosecutor can trace your fingerprints on the murder weapon. As far as I know, you don't really have a motive to have killed him. You don't remember. I'm just not convinced that you were responsible for him dying."

  "Okay, okay. Listen. I’ve been lying to you all along. I don't have any memory loss. I know exactly what I did."

  I looked over at Regina. "I'm so sorry, but I'm going to have to cut this lunch short. I think I'm going to have to meet with my client and talk to her about this. Because all of a sudden, she's singing a different tune."

  "Suit yourself," Regina said. "I'm done anyway. Although I would like to get a chocolate milkshake."

  "Marina, we need to talk,” I said to her over the phone. “We need to meet. Where would you like to meet?"

  "You can come to my house, but I really don't want you to. I just want you to listen to me. In fact, I want you go ahead and plead me guilty."

  This wasn't right. Obviously. She was suddenly changing her mind about everything.

  "Marina, I can't do that."

  "You will do that.
" Her voice was hard, cold, commanding.

  "Just sit tight. I'll be there in about a half hour."

  I hung up the phone. "That was my client. Obviously. She's freaking out, for some reason."

  "Why? What is she saying?"

  "She says she wants me to plead her guilty. But I can't do that. She has to make a factual basis to the court, and that means that she's going to have to give all the facts about what happened that night. But, considering the fact that when they brought her in for questioning, she was in a dissociative state, and she was only brought out of it the day after the murder, she can’t possibly make a factual basis.”

  “The judge won’t accept a guilty plea from her?” Regina asked.

  "No. Not under these circumstances. I suppose the judge might be able to accept a guilty plea from her if I put her under hypnosis, and she brought back the memories of that night. But, that’s not exactly scientifically sound. I don't believe it myself. She already told the cops that she had no memory, and I saw on the interrogation reel that she wasn’t with it at all. I can't see her getting on the stand and making a factual basis for the guilty plea, and the judge actually accepting it. So, we’re probably going to have to go forward with this trial, come hell or high water."

  Regina went up and got a chocolate shake, and I went up and did the same. We left the restaurant, both of us dipping our spoons into the cold concoction.

  Regina took me to my office, and dropped me off, because that was where my car was.

  I got in my car and drove off.

  Chapter 17

  "What do you mean, you can’t plead me guilty?” Marina asked me. She was shaking all over, pacing the floor. She looked like a caged animal. I looked in her eyes, and it looked like she was about ready to attack me again. Of course, if she did attack me again, I would be ready for it. The previous two times that she attacked me, I wasn't ready for her, and I was sucker punched every time. This time, I would be able to defend myself.

  "I mean that I can't plead you guilty. You told the cops that you had no memory of the night that your husband died. You’ve told me, over and over, the same thing you told the cops. You simply cannot tell the court that you killed this man. If I let you do that, I’ll be suborning perjury. If you want to plead guilty, you need to tell the court that you did it, and you can't do it. The judge won’t accept your plea.”

  “But I did do it. I remember now. I remember shooting him in the face three times. I was furious with him that day. He was cheating on me with a woman I didn't like, and you know that I'm capable of killing somebody. I know you talked to my doctor. I told Dr. Alan that he could tell you anything at all. That was the reason why Dr. Alan told you about my friend Celia and what I did to her husband. I did do that to him. So you know that I’m capable of doing absolutely anything."

  "Listen, Marina, I think that we need to go ahead with the original plan to say that you were not guilty by reason of insanity,” I said.

  "No. I don't want take any chances here. I –"

  “What do you mean, you don't want take any chances?"

  She swallowed hard. "I just mean that I don't want to take any chances that…"

  "That, what?"

  “I just want to pay for what I did. That's all. I deserve to be punished. I'm a terrible person. I did terrible things. Not just to my husband, but to a lot of other people. I'm a dangerous person. I need to be locked up."

  "Marina where is this coming from?" I kind of knew the answer to that question. Dr. Alan told me that she had an unstable sense of herself - she sometimes thought that she was great and, other times, she thought that she was worthless trash.

  "I told you, I killed that guy Frank. I was responsible for him dying. I was never punished for that. I mean, Celia moved away and never spoke to me again, so I guess I was punished that way. She knew what I did, but she could never prove it. That was the reason why nothing ever happened to me for that."

  I sighed and steepled my hands. “Marina, that's not how it works. You got away with murder once before. You can’t go to prison for something you didn't do, just because you did something else in the past. I know that probably doesn't seem like justice to you, or to a lot of people, but that's how it is. You got away with killing him. Now, you don't know if you killed your husband or not. That's legit. You're not going to go to prison if you didn't actually kill him.”

  She studied me and, while she did, she put her hand up to her chest and put her fingers between her breasts and down to her stomach. Then she touched my hand, and, in spite of myself, I felt a tingle go up and down my arm. I was feeling things I didn't really want to feel.

  Maybe I was just amped up because of my frustration with Regina.

  “Do you know why I did what I did to Frank?” she asked.

  "Yeah. Dr. Alan told me that you were jealous of him, because he took your best friend away."

  She shook her head. "No, that's not why I did it. I did it because he wasn’t a good person. I tried to tell Celia about it. I tried to explain to her about the night that he was alone with me. I was over at their house. I came over unannounced, as I always did. I was always coming around, just popping in out of nowhere. Celia was getting tired of me coming over out of the blue.”

  I thought about what Dr. Alan told me, and I knew that she was right about that. Her friend definitely was getting tired of Marina coming over unannounced, to the point that Celia had taken out a restraining order against her.

  "Well, on that day, I was there at the house. Celia wasn’t there. I forget where he said she was, maybe at the store. Usually, I would just leave and come back, but on that day, Frank told me that I could stay and wait for her to come home. I thought he was being nice for once in his life. So I took a seat on the couch."

  She got up from where she was sitting, and then started pacing the floor again. “Five minutes after I got there, Frank attacked me. He told me that he lied to me. Celia was not coming home anytime soon. In fact, she was gone for the evening. She was seeing some friends. That hurt me. That hurt me bad. She had other friends that she was seeing. She would never see me willingly. Never return my phone calls. This was my best friend. We lived together for three years. We grew up together. She was my first friend when I came to America - we met in the second grade. I was very behind in my studies, didn’t know much English, felt very afraid and out of place. She saw that I was lost and alone, and she became my friend. My only friend. And here she was, hanging out with friends, while not willingly hanging out with me anymore. That was all I could think about. That was all I was thinking about as Frank took off his jeans, and then ripped off my dress."

  I didn't know if she was telling me the truth or not. For that matter, maybe she was lying to her therapist in the first place. Maybe she was lying about killing Frank. Maybe there is never a Celia. She was the kind of person who would make up stories like that just to get a reaction from somebody.

  I wished that I had Regina's ability to read when somebody is lying. I didn't quite have that same ability, and I had never experienced being around somebody who was as gifted of a liar is this woman was. Not to mention the fact that she was, to say the very least, changeable.

  Still, I let her go on.

  "He raped me. He raped me right there on that couch. And I never told my friend about it. I didn't tell her because I didn't want her to know what kind of person she was going to be married to. She never would have listened to me anyways. Nobody ever does in situations like that. You know, when you're in love with somebody, you intend to marry them, and he’s your entire world, and somebody tries to tell you something that makes you doubt that person's love for you. You’re going to just explain it away. You’re going to say the person is mistaken. You’re going to say that the person is lying. I just didn't want him to come between us. I loved her. Not in that way, but as a best friend. I can honestly say that I don't think that I would have survived my childhood if not for her. So, I just didn't want anything to come between the tw
o of us.

  So that night, after I left their house, I was watching the news. I saw a story about a couple who had an accident in a car. I think it was a Toyota. It was defective, because the gas pedal got stuck underneath the carpet. Anyways, this couple died because the gas pedal was stuck. And I knew that I was going to have to do that to him. I arranged everything. I needed them to get into a huge fight, so it would make him less likely to notice that the gas pedal was underneath the car carpet. I tampered with the car. He crashed, just like I knew he would. And that's what happened."

  I was skeptical that the story was even true. "What did you say his name was again?"

  "Frank Cerelli."

  "I hope you don't mind, I don't want to offend you, but maybe I do. But I'm going to go ahead and Google that."

  She shrugged her shoulders. "Go ahead. You don't believe what I'm saying, go ahead and check it. You'll see."

  I did check it. I Googled the name “Frank Cerelli”, and the words “car accident.” Several stories immediately came up about the accident. According to these stories, he died because his gas pedal was stuck underneath his car carpet, and he ended up going 100 mph on the highway and ended up rolling his car into a ravine. He was killed instantly.

  But could I trust her? Maybe Marina saw this article and used it to concoct a story about her killing this guy. Maybe she never even knew him at all. I didn’t trust her any further than I could throw her.