By Reason of Insanity

by Rachel Sinclair

  “This is just a thought experiment, right?" Avery said.

  “Of course it is. As I said, it sounds like Pegasus is not exactly moving along too quickly with finding human test subjects for human cloning. It will become a reality at some point in the future. So let's just say that it is a reality. What would you be worried about if you wanted to have your daughter cloned?"

  "Obviously, I would be worried that my daughter was not going to be my daughter, exactly. That she would look like her, exactly like her, but she wouldn’t be her. She would be different."

  I touched my nose and pointed at her. "Exactly. You would be worried that she would be different. Because, even though she would have the exact same genetic code as the dead kid, she would have different experiences. That's the reason why in that movie, that in the book, The Boys from Brazil, they made sure that they killed the kids’ fathers at a certain age. They wanted to re-create all the conditions that created Hitler. So, you would be concerned that you would pay all this money, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, to have your daughter back, but she would be a totally different person. Just like when you often see identical twins, and they're completely different."

  "Right.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. "So, the twin study seems to be of a piece with the cloning venture. It seems that Pegasus is really interested in the impact of nature versus nurture. That's always been a question, hasn't it? They want to see what kind of impact nurture will have on people, to see how much they can give somebody who would be asking for a cloned child, if they can give their actual child back, or if they could not do that because the nurture component is just too strong."

  “I see. And so why is it that you're talking about this?"

  "I don't know. This is something that's been rolling around in my brain. I mean, a lot of places conduct twin studies. They're able to find twins who were separated at birth, and study them. Pegasus is not unique in that way. Not at all."

  I took another hit on my pipe, and then watched the waves.

  "What else are you thinking about with this case?"

  “Not much. I just need to think about it. In the meantime, I'm going to have to get my ducks lined up in a row, in case the insanity plea is going to be how I'm going to be trying this case. The judge gave me 60 days to figure out if I wanted to try for an insanity plea, or if I wanted to go ahead and try it a different way. So I have to find out, in a hurry, if there was some other person who might have had motive to have killed Lawrence."

  “What is it you have to figure out?"

  "Well, here's the thing. Marina's therapist told me that she had a business arrangement with her husband. I’m not breaking confidence in telling you that, because Marina herself told me that. He paid her a million dollars year, just to be married to him. I have always thought that was extremely odd. Don't you?"

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Avery said. “But, then again, maybe not. Sometimes men marry women for their looks. You know, trophy wife and all that."

  "Yeah, I know what you're saying. So why pay her? It's not as if it was a normal thing where she's married to him, and you know, she’s spending his money, right and left. Because she's a gold digger and all that. This is entirely different. She was getting a salary, just for being married to him. I think it's extremely odd. And I just can't quite put my finger on exactly why."

  Avery looked like she was thinking about that one for second. "Well, let's see what the possibilities are. The two of them were married because –"

  "I don't think that she loved him, at all." I didn't want to tell Avery about what the therapist told me about how Marina did not form such an attachment to her husband that she was afraid that he would abandon her. Marina was desperately afraid of being abandoned, but not by her husband. She apparently didn’t care enough to fear him leaving her. I thought that the lack of emotional attachment she had from her husband was another odd thing about her marriage.

  "Okay, let's brainstorm this," Avery said. "It could just be what she’s saying. Her husband wanted to hire her as his wife, in effect, because maybe he's gay. Maybe he's gay, and he just wanted a woman to look good on his arm when he went to cocktail parties and that sort of thing. You know, a lot of high-powered men want that. Especially if she can play the part, as Marina apparently can. Because, you have to admit, she has a certain charm about her."

  "True that. She does have a certain charm, but only when she's on. She also has a wicked, evil side to her and I don't think she can control it. In other words, Lawrence had to be always afraid that if he took her to a party, she would bring out the banshee, the Malphas. That's what she called her demon."

  "Malphas? That's kind of odd. I mean it's odd that she’s so self-aware that she knows that she has a very dark side. A lot of people in her situation, they don’t see their dark side, or they don't want to admit that they have one. They think that they’re perfectly normal. But you're telling me that Marina believes that she has a shadow self?"

  "That's exactly what I'm saying. She knows that she has a dark side. Quite frankly, I don't know which side is the real Marina. I think they're both her. Anyhow, I would think that the possibility that she would all of a sudden just start screaming and yelling at people at a cocktail party, for no good reason, and breaking things, would be a deterrent for her husband to want to take her anywhere. So, in other words, I don't necessarily think that she would be the best candidate for somebody who was wanting just to have a piece of eye candy on his arm. A guy like that, he can certainly find somebody who's, shall we say, a bit more sane? So, I'm not buying it."

  “Okay, let's just think of something else. Let's think about the good reasons, and then we’ll try to think about the bad ones. Okay. Let's just think about the possibility that maybe Lawrence took pity on Marina. Maybe he was friends with her adoptive parents, and they explained to him that she was a Russian orphan, all of that. And maybe he just had a special place in his heart for someone with a sad story. Maybe her situation just made him feel badly, so he decided to go ahead and take her in. You know, taking in an orphan. Some guys are like that. They have a savior complex. They want to be somebody’s hero.”

  "No, I don't think that's the situation,” I said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because, from everything I've heard and read about him, he's not the kind of guy who's going to just have a soft heart for an orphan, and take her in just for that reason. Besides, I kind of get the feeling that maybe the two of them were not very emotionally connected. I mean I know that they apparently had sex, because they had different sexual partners in their marriage with them. I just didn't think that there was an emotional bond between the two of them. It just doesn't seem that she cared for him at all. I don't know, maybe if he was trying to be her savior, maybe she just let him do it. I guess that might be a possibility. I just don't know."

  "Okay. Let’s think of something else.“

  "Here's what I've been thinking."

  I took a long hit on my pipe. I realized that I was thinking clear that morning, more clear than I had been in a long time.

  "I think she had something on him. I think she was blackmailing him, so that was the reason why he took her in and paid her a million dollars a year. To keep her quiet. That's what I think happened."

  Avery nodded her head. "That sounds right, to be honest with you. That sounds more like human nature than my other ideas. I just wanted to get the good scenarios out there first, before we figured out if there was something that was not such a nice scenario."

  “But why wouldn’t she tell me the truth?” I asked.

  “Because if she told you the truth, that she was blackmailing him, you might suspect that she killed him. Maybe she doesn’t want that.”

  “But she does want that. She wants to plead guilty.” I took another hit. “Well, strike that. She’s all over the map. I think that the real Marina, if she was going to be really honest with herself, doesn’t want to go to prison or to a mental institution. I think
that, underneath it all, she’s terrified. So, yeah, it would be self-preservation for her not to tell me the score on that.”

  Avery nodded her head. “I think you might be onto something there.”

  "Well, it makes a lot of sense. And it kind of sticks a fork into all of my theories that I had on this case."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, one of the theories I had was that Marina killed him, but she didn't know what she was doing. Because she was dissociated. And I still believe that there was dissociation. On her interrogation tapes, she was acting really bizarre. Like the cops asked her questions, and she would come back with something out of left field, every time. Her face had a really flat affect, too. So now we're going to think that Marina killed her husband because she hated him. Whatever it was that she had on him was making her angry, maybe angry enough to kill him. If that’s the case, then I have to accept that maybe she killed him in cold blood. That would mean that she was lying to the cops that she had no memory. It would also mean that she was acting during her interrogation, where she was answering all the questions with complete non-sequiturs.”

  “Yeah, I know what you're saying."

  "And here's the other rub about that. Why would she kill him? She was married to him for the past seven years, quietly accepting his million dollars a year. If this is $1 million a year in hush money, and she was living her life, and getting paid every year, why would she want to cut that payment off? Why would she want that to stop? She wouldn't. She would have to know that if she killed her husband that she not only wouldn’t keep getting the million dollars a year, but she would also be cut out of the rest of his estate. Both because she can’t profit from the estate of a person who she killed but also because Lawrence didn’t leave her anything in his will. Nothing. Not one penny. She had to have known that was the case, that she would be cut off from his will.

  So, all she has is the money that she put in the bank over the past seven years – $7 million. So now what? I mean, it's enough for her to live on for the rest of her life. Comfortably. If she got out of jail and she can beat this charge, she can buy a halfway decent house in this area with cash. And you know how these houses go up in value, so it would be a good investment for her. She wouldn't have to worry about money again. But, at the same time, if Lawrence would have lived, she would have kept collecting money every year. Why cut that off?”

  Avery nodded her head. "Maybe she killed him, and she figured that she would beat the rap, and she could live off the money that he'd given her over the years, without having to worry about answering to him anymore. She would have freedom from him and a lot of money to boot. That's a win-win for her."

  I shook my head. "No. That doesn’t make any sense, considering everything that's going on. She alternates between wanting me to plead her guilty and pleading her insane. If she's found not guilty by reason of insanity, she's going to be committed to a mental institution, probably for the rest of her life. If I plead her guilty, she would go to prison for the rest of her life. On occasion, she tries to tell me that she wants to go to trial and try to beat the rap, altogether. But usually she's just trying to get me to do one or the other – not guilty by reason of insanity, or guilty. In other words, she's not trying to beat the rap."

  “And, if she wanted to kill him to get him out of the way so that she could just lead her life-“

  “She would not only want to go balls to the wall, she would have hired a shark, not somebody who has never tried a murder case in his life.”

  “True,” Avery said. “So, what do you think?"

  "I don't know yet. I don't know yet. There's something that I’m missing with this entire thing. I feel like it’s staring me right in the face, to be honest with you. I just can't figure out exactly what it is.”

  Chapter 21

  When I got back to the office the following Monday, I saw a woman who was sitting in the suite. She was a tall woman, probably around 50 years old. She had the high cheekbones and wide face of an Eastern European woman. Blue eyes, delicate nose. Red hair.

  She looked vaguely familiar to me. I just glanced at her, and headed back towards my office. I just figured that she was there to see somebody else. But our receptionist, Charlotte, stopped me before I could get to the office.

  “I think you want to talk to this woman,” Charlotte said, motioning to the woman, who was reading through People magazine on our leather couch in our suite. She glanced up at me, and then looked at the tropical fish that were swimming in an enormous tank at the far end of the reception area. Then she looked back at me.

  "Charlotte, I would love to talk to this woman. But I have a lot of work to do."

  "No. You don't have that much work to do. In fact, if you speak with this woman, I think that you’ll be a lot further along in your work than if you don't talk to her. Trust me on this."

  I rolled my eyes. "Okay, you got me. Who is this woman?"

  "Her name is Olga Vasiliev. She's Marina's mom."

  Chapter 22

  "Marina's mother? Marina is an orphan. Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was three months old.”

  "I don't know what to tell you, but she says that she is Marina's mother. I don't necessarily know that she told me the truth, but if she is telling the truth, I think you need to talk to her. Now."

  Come to think of it, that was the reason why this woman looked so familiar. She did look exactly like Marina, only about 20 years older. She looked like how I imagined Marina was going to look when she was about 50.

  "Okay, this better be good. Send her into my office."

  I walked back to my office, and Charlotte stood up, and I saw her motion to the woman on the couch, who also stood up. She was wearing a pair of Chanel sunglasses that were on top of her head, and she was dressed extremely well. Leather boots, black pants, silk top. She was carrying a handbag that I knew was an Hermés. I knew that particular brand, because my sister coveted it, but she could never afford it. At least, she didn't want to pay for something like that. Because of Avery, I knew that those bags were about $6000 and up.

  I had to admit that I was pretty confused about this entire situation. All that I knew was that this woman looked like she had money.

  She came into my office, and sat down. "Thank you very much for seeing me, Mr. Collins." Her voice was low-pitched and thick with a heavy Russian accent. "You have to excuse my accent. I tried hard for many years to get rid of it. But, I just can't seem to. I hope you can understand me."

  "Yes, that's not a problem, but I am curious as to exactly what it is I can do for you at this point."

  She took a deep breath, and then she picked up a paperweight that I had on my desk. It was actually a paperweight that I had gotten from The Air and Space Museum in Balboa Park. It was a little tiny spaceship inside of a glass cube.

  I noticed that her hands were shaking. She brought one bony hand up to her eye and wiped away a tear. I silently handed her a box of Kleenex, and she gratefully took several, and then used the Kleenex to wipe away more tears. She sniffled a little bit.

  "Okay, I have to admit that I'm confused as to what's going on here. Marina told me that her parents were dead. Killed in a car accident when she was a little girl. Now, here you are, telling me that you’re her mother. I have to admit, I’m skeptical about this entire thing."

  "Of course, of course. You are going to be skeptical about me. If you need me to take a DNA test, to prove that I am her mother, then you are welcome to it. Whatever you need to do. All that I can tell you is that I am not lying about this. I am Marina's mother."

  "Does Marina know that you exist?" I thought that the answer was probably no, considering the fact that Marina said that her mother was dead. Then again, maybe Marina lied about that, too. I didn’t know what to think.

  Olga shook her head. "No. She doesn’t know that I exist. I could never have the heart to tell her about what happened. Why it is that I gave her up. Her and her identical twin sister, Oksana." />
  "She has an identical twin sister? Does she know about her?" I asked. I had spoken with Marina many times, and she never mentioned the fact that she had a sister. I wondered if she knew about the sister.

  "I don't know if Marina knows about her sister. She probably does. But they have not been in each other’s life since they were three months old.”

  "Okay, tell me the story about how it is that Marina ended up in the orphanage, and how she didn’t know that she had a sister.”

  Olga nodded her head. "Okay, here's the story. I was living in Leningrad, which is now called St. Petersburg, right before the fall of the Berlin wall. It was a time of major upheaval. Poverty, many people didn’t have a job. People living on the streets. I didn't have enough to eat, and I didn’t have enough food to give my children. I tried hard to find a job. My husband, Vladimir, was killed by the KGB, for reasons I still don't know about. He seemed to have some kind of secret life that I didn't know about. We were broke. Vlad was the breadwinner, and when he died, we didn’t have a way of bringing in money. I had two little girls who were two months old when their father died." She took another breath and then asked for another Kleenex, which I gave her. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. Her hands were shaking.

  "So, I had two little girls at home, no husband, no job, we were all starving. The two little girls, they were wasting away. I didn't really care about myself at that point. I just wanted a better life for them."

  "Okay, that's understandable. So what happened?"

  She shook her head. "A man came. He came to see me. He told me that he heard about me from some underground something or another. He said he heard about me through the streets, the grapevine, as you say. He told me that he knew what position I was in. He told me that there was a way that I could have a better life of my children, and for me.”