By Reason of Insanity

by Randy Singer

  The deputy sheriff guided Catherine into a secure hallway and through a connecting cinder block tunnel to the city jail. To Cat, it felt like the walls were already squeezing in on her.

  They passed in silence through a series of limited-access steel doors with bulletproof glass windows. Each time, the guard had to wait for the door to be opened by remote control. Cat was mindful of ceiling cameras following their every move.

  The male deputy passed her off to a gruff female deputy for processing. The woman--Janet Tompkins according to her name badge--didn't seem to realize that Cat wasn't one of the real criminals. She rolled Cat's fingerprints, cataloged her personal belongings, gave Cat a number to hold just under her chin, and lined her up for a mug shot.

  Next, Tompkins escorted Cat into a small cell and told her to strip for a full-body cavity search as if Cat were a notorious drug runner.

  "Do you know what I'm in for?" Cat asked indignantly.

  "No, and I don't care," Tompkins responded, snapping on rubber gloves. "Now shut up and take off your clothes so we can get this over with."

  Cat snorted and did as she was told. After the cavity search came the battle of the undergarments. "These are colored and frilly," Tompkins said, critiquing Cat's underwear.

  "And?"

  "And you're only allowed white underwear. No markings." Tompkins plopped a pile of clothes on the metal bench attached to the wall. Five sets of white underwear, five T-shirts, five pairs of socks, one towel, and two orange jumpsuits. "Get dressed," she demanded, pointing to the clothes. "Flip-flops are in your cell."

  "How do you know my size?"

  "We eyeball it. This isn't a fashion show."

  As Cat changed into her prison garb, Tompkins filled her in on the protocol. "Prisoners who've earned trustee status wear green. The rest of you wear orange. You get a clean set of clothes once a week. The store is open once a week on Wednesdays."

  It was Thursday, apparently the worst possible day to start a jail sentence.

  "You wake up at 4:30 a.m., and we'll bring you breakfast. We bring you a razor and soap for your shower, and we collect the razors every morning. You're one of the lucky ones in solitary, so you shower alone--with guards watching, of course. Each morning, you get a mop and bucket. Cell inspection is at 8:00 a.m. Lunch at 10:30. Dinner at 3:30. Lockdown at 11:00."

  Cat slid into her oversize jumpsuit, composed of a harsh and worn-down fabric. She rolled up the sleeves.

  "Let me see your left wrist."

  Cat held out the wrist, and Tompkins snapped on a plastic bracelet containing Cat's picture.

  "Don't ever take that off," Tompkins said.

  "And if I do?"

  Tompkins froze and stared at Cat. "Don't ever take it off."

  Tompkins escorted Cat back to a small cinder block cell. It had a bolted-down bed with a thin mattress against one wall and a small metal washbasin and a metal toilet on the other. A metal rod for hanging towels was just over the toilet.

  "Do we ever get to go outside?" asked Cat.

  "Not when you're in solitary confinement, sweetheart."

  Tompkins locked the cell door with a loud clang, increasing Cat's sense of claustrophobia. There were no windows in the small cell. I might not see the sun for a week.

  "Can I have visitors?" Cat asked.

  "Depends," said Tompkins, and she headed down the hall.

  16

  Time crawled as Catherine endured her afternoon in Cell G17. She was still jittery from the way she'd been treated at booking and was concerned about how long she might be confined. She knew her editor and attorney were pursuing every political and legal avenue to free her, but she also knew there were no guarantees. She could be here for a week, a month, maybe even a year. The thought of sitting in this same cell for a year was depressing beyond words. She actually wondered if it would drive her insane.

  After an hour or so, she used the toilet on the opposite wall of her cell. A deputy walked by and glanced at her. An inmate three cells down was constantly hollering incoherently about one issue or another, causing others to yell at her and tell her to shut up. The language was as filthy as anything Cat had ever heard.

  She hoped her editors would figure out a way to get some books to her as well as a notepad and pen. She had already decided to propose an impromptu idea to her editor--a jailhouse journal. If nothing else, it might make her a celebrity with the inmates and keep the deputies a little more vigilant so that they wouldn't look bad in the press--the pen being mightier than the sword and all.

  She sat on her bed and stared at the wall. One hour. Two hours. The inmates were herded out for rec time to a small asphalt basketball court surrounded by high cinder block walls topped by barbed wire. But Cat wasn't allowed to join them. An hour later, they returned. For Cat, the seconds clicked by in slow motion until . . .

  Her first visitor came wearing a three-piece pin-striped suit with a gold pocket watch. He had a trim, gray beard and a long, gaunt face. His skin seemed to hang on protruding cheekbones that underscored freakish eyes devoid of pupils. He took his place against the far wall, holding an inmate number over his chest.

  He smiled, exposing the blackened remains of rotted teeth. A camera flashed, causing Catherine to blink. She blinked a second time, but the apparition remained.

  A second man entered, younger and more robust, with dark hair and a short goatee. He also had an inmate number draped around his neck, and Catherine felt like she should know this man, but she couldn't quite place him. He took his spot next to the first man. A second flashbulb exploded, and the background noise started.

  Frightened, Catherine moved back a little on the bed, still transfixed by the figures standing before her. She heard the sounds of court proceedings, of gavels banging and the excited murmurs that accompany the announcement of jury verdicts. She shook her head, blinked hard, and tried to force herself awake.

  A third figure walked toward the others. He was younger than the first and older than the second, dressed in a suit with yet another inmate number, pushing a double baby stroller. In the stroller were two infants whom Catherine recognized immediately--the cute chubby faces and bright round eyes of the Carver twins. The man pushing the stroller took his place between the other men and turned to face Catherine. A third flash went off and Catherine focused on the twins, her stomach sickened by a sense that something awful was about to happen.

  Before she could move to them, the stroller morphed into something less definable, like a chair, and then came into sharper focus. It was an electric chair, with a metal hood replacing the pink cap for Cail Ying, the blue cap for her brother, Chi. Catherine heard the clunk of a lever being thrown, and sparks flew from the hoods.

  "No!" She leaped forward and rushed the wall, grasping for the kids.

  Cat jerked awake, startled to find her hands clenching the sink. She brought them to her mouth, struggling to catch her breath, paralyzed with fear.

  Out of nowhere, the fingers of a man's hand appeared and began writing on the wall just above the sink. The words were red, like blood, the handwriting neat and flowing. Cat felt herself go weak as she watched the words form, the blood rushing from her head.

  I will visit the iniquities of the fathers

  unto the third and fourth generations.

  The hand disappeared. The words remained, then seemed to melt, dripping down the wall in streaks of red that trickled into the washbasin and slithered down the drain. Striving to maintain balance, Cat stumbled back to the bed, where she sat nervously on the edge until the red fluid disappeared.

  It was a dream, she told herself. A hallucination. A vision caused by the trauma of being imprisoned and the tension of covering the Carver kidnappings. The electric chair, she realized, had been seared into her mind by Quinn Newberg's description the night before.

  She tried to stop shaking. But somehow the vision seemed more real than life itself, more solid than the bars of her cell.

  It was just a dream. It was just a dr
eam. She repeated it like a mantra until her heartbeat returned to some semblance of normal. She repeated it until the goose bumps started to disappear and the chill crawling up her spine went away.

  Just a dream, she told herself.

  Just a dream.

  Though she had never been asleep.

  * * *

  That evening, Cat was a hot item during visiting hours. The whole experience seemed surreal and, like everything else in jail, impersonal. Cat sat alone in a booth, talking into a telephone, looking at her friends on the monitor in front of her. Her visitors sat in a large room adjacent to the lobby of the jail among a maze of cubicles with telephones and closed-circuit television monitors.

  "Did you talk my mom out of coming down?" Cat asked one of her friends. Cat's mom and sister lived in central Pennsylvania, and Cat's friends had already told them about the results of the hearing. Cat loved her mom, but the woman knew how to fret.

  "I think I can hold her off for a day or two."

  "Thanks," Cat said, and immediately felt guilty.

  Like a lot of families, the dynamics between the O'Rourke women were complicated. Cat's dad had deserted the family for another woman when Cat was in junior high. The divorce became final the following year. Cat had seen him only three times since.

  Cat's younger sister, Kelsey--the "good sister" in Cat's mind--had stayed close to home to take care of their mom and raise a family. Meanwhile, Cat had chased after her own selfish dreams. Compounding Cat's guilt, her mom seemed to think that Cat could do no wrong and at the same time found ample reason to criticize Kelsey. For her part, Kelsey often returned fire, arguing frequently with her mom while Cat held her tongue, feeling like an awkward visitor even among her own family. Cat couldn't remember exactly when it happened, but the burden of being her mom's "perfect" daughter had somehow stolen her ability to be transparent and authentic, even around her own mom.

  She wondered how her mom might react to this latest mess.

  * * *

  Halfway through visiting hours, Marc Boland showed up, and the guards escorted Cat into a booth reserved for attorney conferences. Cat sat on the opposite side of a sheet of bulletproof glass from Bo. The lawyer's tie was undone, and his eyes were bloodshot, as if he had been up three straight nights working on Catherine's case.

  "We filed our petition for cert with a justice of the Virginia Supreme Court at 5:00," he said, pulling out a bound document too thick to fit through the slot at the bottom of the glass. "We have a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. tomorrow. We should have a decision by the end of the day. If not, I'm pretty sure we'll get something on Saturday."

  Though this was supposed to be good news, Cat's heart sagged a little. "So the most likely scenario is that I'll be in here for at least one more day and maybe two?"

  Bo hesitated. "I'm afraid that's right."

  "I can't post a bond and get out like violent felons do?"

  Bo looked unsure as to whether Cat was kidding. "You can't get bonded out for contempt of court."

  "Can you at least get me a few things to read and something to write with?"

  "We can make that happen."

  They talked for a few minutes about the procedural challenges. Cat asked Bo to call her mom and calm her down a little. Bo frowned but took down the phone number. He seemed antsy to get back to work, so Cat tried to keep her questions to a minimum. She wanted to talk to somebody about the vision she had experienced, but she didn't want to sound like a wacko to Bo.

  "Are they treating you okay?" Bo asked, his big round eyes expressing real concern.

  Cat looked at the tired warrior and decided he had enough to worry about. "Like a queen," she said.

  17

  Quinn Newberg pulled up to the black wrought-iron gate that protected the Schlesinger estate and entered the security code. As the gate swung open, Quinn goosed his Mercedes-Benz S350 down the winding driveway, jerking to a halt in front of the four-car garage. He glanced around as he climbed the marble steps to the front entrance of the stone-and-brick mansion. As usual, everything about the place--the waterfall out front, the lush green landscaping in the middle of the Vegas desert, the manicured lawn--was painfully immaculate. At one time or another, various parts of the house had been displayed in Vegas lifestyle magazines.

  He rang the doorbell, greeted the Schlesingers' butler, and gave Allison Schlesinger a polite, high-society hug. He wanted to tell her that she looked good in her new face-lift but kept his mouth shut. The lady was thirty-five and, by Quinn's count, already on her third plastic surgery.

  "Just in time for dinner," Allison said, as if she'd been cooking all day. "You want to go up and get Sierra?"

  "Where's the old man?" Quinn asked.

  "In the den, watching Mad Money."

  Quinn groaned. Wayne Schlesinger was giving Trump a run for his money in Vegas real estate, but still he insisted on directing his own investments.

  Control. Wayne Schlesinger was all about control.

  About two years ago, Quinn had represented Schlesinger's firstborn son, the black sheep of the family, on charges of racketeering, money laundering, and fraud. The prosecutor had offered Andrew Schlesinger a deal in exchange for testimony against some higher-ups in the Vegas crime circles, but Andrew had refused and gone to trial. Quinn won the case, and Dad Schlesinger told Quinn that if he ever needed anything, he should call. "Anything," Schlesinger had stressed.

  When Quinn's sister was arrested and Quinn learned that Judge Strackman had been assigned to the case, he had decided to call in the favor. Rookie lawyers might settle for researching a defendant's background or a judge's prior legal decisions when preparing for a bond hearing. But Quinn researched campaign contributions. His firm might not have any juice with Judge Strackman, but Wayne Schlesinger had juice to spare.

  At Quinn's request, Wayne and Allison Schlesinger had agreed to take care of Sierra until Annie's trial was over. All of Wayne's children by his first marriage were grown and out of the household. He and Allison had no other kids.

  And Quinn had a quasi-legitimate reason for asking. Possibility of flight was always a factor for the judge to consider at a bond hearing. Quinn had argued that Annie would never think about leaving the jurisdiction without her daughter. The Schlesingers would be sure to keep a good eye on her. Quinn didn't even have to mention how much money Sierra's proposed guardians had provided to Strackman's campaign. The result--Strackman had set Annie's bond at $250,000, imposed a few conditions like electronic monitoring, and ignored Carla Duncan's protests about an accused murderer getting bail.

  "I'll go and get Sierra," Quinn told Allison Schlesinger. He took the stairs two at a time and headed straight for Sierra's room. The door was locked. Quinn knocked loudly and waited a moment before the door cracked open.

  "Uncle Quinn!" Sierra exclaimed. She swung the door open, and Quinn entered the disheveled room, closing the door behind him.

  Sierra gave Quinn a quick hug, and he felt the bones from her shoulder blades. Even before her mom was arrested, Sierra had been thin and gangly, all elbows, knees, braces, and long strawberry blonde hair. But she had been losing weight the last few months and had Quinn worried.

  He threw some clothes off the bed and took a seat. "Are they treating you all right?" he asked.

  Sierra made a face, then apparently decided to make the best of it. "They're okay."

  "That doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement."

  Sierra shrugged. She started absentmindedly picking up some clothes, throwing them on the floor of her closet. "I'd rather stay with my mom; that's all."

  Annie felt the same way, Quinn knew. But in order to get Annie out on bond, Quinn had agreed that she wouldn't have custody or unsupervised time with Sierra until after the trial. Annie had been second-guessing that decision ever since.

  "Can we talk about it after dinner?" Quinn asked.

  "Sure. I guess so."

  * * *

  Dinner was a stilted, formal affair where e
veryone avoided talking about the one subject on everyone's mind--Annie's retrial. The waiters cleared each dish as if Quinn and his hosts were dining at a five-star restaurant. Wayne Schlesinger opened a bottle of his best Chardonnay and tried to impress Quinn with how much he knew about it. Cognizant of Sierra's presence, Quinn stuck with ginger ale.

  For the most part, Sierra kept to herself, politely speaking only when somebody asked her a question. She picked at her food, following the example of Allison Schlesinger, who gave herself such miniature portions that Quinn was certain she must sneak down to the refrigerator at midnight to eat a snack under cover of darkness.

  After the meal, Quinn and Sierra went for a walk around the gardens in back of the main house.

  "I hate it here," Sierra said. "I want to come live with you."

  "What's so bad about this place?" Quinn asked. "Other kids your age would give anything to stay one night in a place like this."

  "I might as well be in prison," Sierra scoffed. "They won't let me talk on my phone or IM until my grades get up. Plus, they won't let me watch TV because they think I might freak if I see something about Mom." She shuffled a few steps in silence. "It's not like I don't go online at school. Or hear my friends talk about it."

  "Sierra, I know it's not ideal, but it's the only way I thought we could keep your mom out on bail. The judge made it a condition that you stay here. I guess the judge figured that if you stayed with me, I might let your mom take you someplace far away."

  "That's stupid."

  "I know. But we can't change it."

  In truth, Quinn thought he probably could talk the judge into letting him have custody. But did he want to? He could prepare for trial better without the responsibilities of being a surrogate father. The best thing for Sierra was to have Quinn focused on the case. That way, she could get her mom back for good.

  But Quinn couldn't deny that there was another reason he didn't want custody right now--a less admirable one. Having Sierra around would definitely cramp his lifestyle. Quinn thought about his place--an elegant suite on the forty-second floor of the Signature Towers, a high-rise of luxury condos linked to the MGM Grand by a long, covered walkway. His condo featured Italian marble in the foyer and bathroom. A view of the Vegas strip. A flat-screen HD television hanging in the living room. He had decorated his suite with stark and contemporary furniture. Luxurious, yes, but not exactly designed for a thirteen-year-old girl.