By Reason of Insanity

by Randy Singer

  "Don't be ridiculous," said her mom. "What could be more important than proving my daughter's innocence?"

  "I'll pay you back," Cat said, wiping away the tears. "Every penny."

  "You'd better add interest to mine," Kelsey said, and they all smiled.

  Later that night, Cat curled up on her mattress, facing Tasha and Holly on the iron bunk beds, exhausted but too afraid to let herself sleep. Her mind burned with worries and doomsday scenarios, the frayed edges of her nerves catching fire from the pressures of the day and nearly forty-eight hours without sleep. She lay awake for hours, staring straight ahead. Intermittently, one of the psychotic inmates in the pod would scream a string of curse words, which would, in turn, start the other inmates yelling and cursing as well.

  At one point a deputy came around, shining her flashlight into the cell. Cat jerked her head up and stared at the blinding light.

  "Go to sleep, O'Rourke," the deputy said.

  Eventually the rhythmic breathing and congested snoring of her cellmates calmed Cat's nerves. Images blurred in her head; she saw people she knew doing bizarre things, the product of a troubled mind on the verge of sleep. She felt the last vestiges of reality slipping away, and she stopped fighting it.

  The nightmares, unbidden, were not far behind.

  Kenny and his fraternity brothers invaded her sleep again. They wore their Greek masks and ridiculed Cat, taunting her as they circled around, first one darting toward her, then another. She would turn and fend each off, ready to fight, and then someone else would come running at her from behind. She turned to face her new attacker, setting off a squeal of laughter from the others, while yet another frat boy darted toward her.

  Abruptly they stopped, and Kenny, the only one not wearing a mask, stepped forward. He walked slowly toward Cat, and the look on his face said he would not be denied. She tensed, eyeing him warily as he approached, step by agonizing step. He lifted an index finger and curled it toward himself, commanding her to come, but Cat stood her ground. Slowly, almost playfully, Kenny kept coming until he was just inches away, his finger still bidding her come, a sneer curling on his lips.

  He stood there, his breath nauseating her, while his frat brothers watched in what seemed like stunned horror, as if even they couldn't believe what Kenny was about to do. He reached out with his index finger and placed it on Cat's lip--

  She screamed.

  Heart pounding, Cat's eyes popped open, and she focused on the face in front of her, inches away. The insidious smile of Holly.

  Cat screamed again, sitting straight up. "Get away from me, you pervert!" she yelled. "What are you doing?"

  "Watching you."

  Before Cat could respond, Tasha jumped down from the top bunk. She shoved Holly, knocking her over from a kneeling position, pushing her into the wall. "You are a perv," Tasha said.

  Cat's heart pounded against her chest. She scooted back against the bars at the end of the cell, wide-eyed.

  Holly just stared at Cat, smiling. "You talk in your sleep," she said. "You're crazy."

  "You're crazy. Now get back to bed," Tasha growled.

  Holly stood up and retreated to her bed, watching Cat the entire time. "Good night, beautiful," she said. "Pleasant dreams."

  "She's harmless," Tasha mumbled, climbing back into the top bunk.

  But Cat didn't believe her.

  Shuddering, Cat crawled back onto her mattress. This time, she sat up with her back to the wall, her blanket pulled around her shoulders.

  She caught only fleeting moments of sleep that night, even after Holly had turned over on her mattress and faced the wall, snoring again. When morning came, Cat was beyond exhaustion.

  39

  The next day, as Cat finished her lunch at one of the bolted-down picnic tables, she heard an argument break out on the other side of the pod. Apparently a young Hispanic woman named Eva had accused a larger African-American woman of cheating at cards. They stood up and pushed each other a few times while the inmates gathered around, shielding the women from the guard station.

  Cat stood to get a better look and watched in horror as the larger woman grabbed Eva and threw her against the bars of a cell, holding her upright while she banged Eva's head against the steel. Eva screamed in pain, her eyes going glassy, but somehow managed to grab a hunk of the other woman's hair and pull with all her might.

  She released it when the African-American inmate brought an elbow smashing into Eva's face, causing blood to spurt from the smaller woman's nose. Cat, her sight blocked by the other inmates, couldn't see exactly what happened next, but she heard the fist of the larger woman slamming into bone. The sickening thud was audible even as the inmates cheered and the woman cursed at Eva.

  Cat glanced at the guard station--Do something! She pushed her way into the inmates who had formed a semicircle around the combatants.

  "Stop them!" Cat shouted, repulsed by the bloody face and limp body of the smaller woman. "She's killing her!"

  When nobody moved, Cat stepped in to try to stop the beating. But somebody bear-hugged her from behind and pulled her away from the brawlers.

  "It's not your fight," Tasha said, speaking into Cat's ear.

  Over her shoulder, Cat saw the larger inmate scrape her fingernails across Eva's face, spit on her, and then toss her prey to the floor. By now, six deputies had entered the cell. "Break it up," one of them ordered, shoving a few of the gawking inmates out of the way. "Fun's over."

  The deputies helped Eva to her feet and took the woman, barely conscious, to receive medical treatment. They handcuffed the other inmate, presumably to move her into isolation. Then another deputy appeared with a mop and bucket and pointed to Cat, the newest fish. "Mop up the blood, O'Rourke."

  While Cat cleaned the blood, the other inmates went back to their card games and lunches, as if they had witnessed nothing more than a verbal spat between friends. Cat trembled at the brutality of what she had just witnessed, amazed at how long the deputies had let the fight proceed before they broke it up. Cat kept her head down and mopped every inch of the concrete floor where the women had been fighting.

  When things returned to normal, Tasha pulled Cat aside and gave her some advice. "Trouble will find you soon enough," she said, her jaw barely moving. "Stay out of other people's business."

  Cat wanted to protest. She knew Tasha and this other woman were part of a gang that included most of the African-American inmates, though they were closed-lipped about it. But everyone couldn't be in that gang. How could the others just stand around and watch a fellow human being get beaten to a pulp?

  Cat already knew the answer.

  This is jail, she reminded herself. Civilized societies had complex moral codes to restrain behavior. But in here, things were basic. Raw. People were treated like animals. And, like animals, they were governed by one overriding principle.

  Survival of the fittest.

  40

  Before his scheduled phone call with Catherine O'Rourke on Tuesday, Quinn called Dr. Rosemarie Mancini. She was driving her convertible, and the noise from the wind blowing into the phone made it hard to hear.

  Quinn explained his potential involvement in Catherine's case and asked Rosemarie about the visions. To Quinn's surprise, his favorite shrink was a lot less skeptical than he was.

  "There's a substantial body of research on this type of thing," she said, speaking loudly over the sound of wind and traffic. "Both the University of Arizona and the University of Virginia have psychology professors investigating the paranormal. I hear the guy at Arizona has a government grant from the National Institute for Health for nearly two million."

  "Maybe I should apply for a grant," Quinn muttered. "Most of my clients certainly qualify as paranormal."

  Rosemarie ignored him. "You know that NBC show called Medium?"

  "I've seen the advertisements."

  "That's based on a real person. Allison DuBois. I'll give you her entire story some other time, but she's helped resolve lots
of actual cases. She's part of a study at Arizona called the Asking Questions Study--basically an attempt to communicate with dead people through mediums and ask questions that dead people never seem to answer. Stuff like, 'What do you do every day?' and 'What type of body or container for the soul do you have?' and 'Do you eat? Do you engage in sex?' That kind of stuff."

  Quinn shook his head. You could apparently get a government grant for anything. "What's the answer to that last question?"

  "Seems like all the mediums have their own take on things," Rosemarie said. "They're probably projecting their own biases."

  Quinn knew that Rosemarie had both feet firmly anchored in the present dimension, so he decided to get her take. "What about you, doc? Do you think some people actually have this ability to communicate through some other dimension--dreams, premonitions, that type of thing?"

  Quinn heard horns honking and, knowing Rosemarie Mancini, assumed she had just cut somebody off. "You asking me as an expert witness or as an individual?"

  "As an individual, based on your psychiatric training."

  Uncharacteristically, Rosemarie hesitated. "There are some interesting studies on phenomena called 'crisis apparitions,'" she said after a few seconds. "That's when somebody has a strange sense of foreboding or a dark premonition about a relative or someone else just before they die. It's basically what your potential client is saying happened to her."

  This surprised Quinn. "You believe that stuff?" For Quinn, if you couldn't touch it, then it wasn't real.

  "I'm not saying I buy it. I'm just saying there is some statistical data. Personally, my take focuses more on the spiritual angles."

  This didn't surprise Quinn. Rosemarie's diagnoses always seemed to include a spiritual dimension. "Like what?" he asked.

  "There's another realm out there, Quinn. A spiritual realm inhabited by real demons and also forces for good. I think God sometimes gives people dreams or visions about things that haven't yet happened or, occasionally, extraordinary insights about things that have already occurred. I'm not sure why, but I'm pretty certain the phenomena exist."

  Quinn thought about this for a moment. He wasn't buying this theory that hinged on Catherine O'Rourke's being an innocent conveyor of visions. In Quinn's thinking, Catherine had to be guilty. The "visions," if they were even real, were probably nothing more than manifestations from a repressed personality desperately trying to communicate with the Catherine that everybody knew.

  But if this case went to trial, and if Catherine insisted on trying to prove her innocence, it would be heard by a jury in Virginia Beach not Las Vegas. Those folks might be more open to a spiritual explanation than one based on communicating with ghosts of dead people or even "crisis apparitions." Rosemarie might not be Southern, and her northeast accent might grate on the jury, but she could speak their spiritual language. And even if O'Rourke ultimately pled insanity, an expert like Rosemarie Mancini would be priceless.

  The doctor seemed to be in a good mood. Quinn decided he might as well push his luck. "If I take this case, will you help me?"

  "I'm sure what you really meant to ask," Dr. Mancini said, her tone chiding, "was if you took the case, would I evaluate the potential client and give you my professional opinion about these visions."

  "Right. Of course."

  "Can your potential client afford me?"

  "What?" asked Quinn. "I think you're breaking up."

  "I asked if your client can afford me," Rosemarie repeated, raising her voice and speaking more slowly.

  "Absolutely," Quinn said. "We both adore you."

  Dr. Mancini laughed. "That's what I was afraid of."

  But Quinn knew she would do it, especially after the check he had just sent her for Annie's case.

  "Does that mean you're in?" he asked.

  Even over the cell phone, Quinn could hear her sigh. "Against my better judgment," she said.

  41

  The news shows on the wall-mounted television in Catherine's pod carried extensive coverage of her arrest and arraignment for the second straight day. The commentators had dubbed her "the Bikini Killer," a reference, Cat knew, to the repeated footage of her arrest on Sunday afternoon, wearing her swimsuit top and greased down in suntan oil. "Yo, woman," hooted an inmate. "That's what I call a 'killer bod.'"

  A few of the women guffawed while others watched Cat to see how she handled it. She tried to force a playful smile.

  "She's innocent!" another shouted at the TV. "What's wrong with you people? It was al-Qaeda. Barbie's getting framed!"

  Cat tried to react good-naturedly as the inmates rode the subject matter into the ground. Eventually they moved on to something else.

  While the inmates played cards or watched TV, Cat grabbed a copy of the Tidewater Times and headed into her cell. She had been dreading this moment all day. She knew it would be smart to stay abreast of developments, but the thought of her colleagues writing about her arrest as the Avenger of Blood was almost more than she could handle.

  She settled onto her mattress, alone in her cell, and digested the lead story. Front page, above the fold, the headline screamed at her: ALLEGED KILLER PLEADS NOT GUILTY. The article had a picture of Cat standing in court as well as a picture on page A7, where the story continued, of Cat being arrested in her bathing suit. Brian Radford, a young reporter who had started at the paper within six months of Cat, had written the main story.

  Today's story was much worse than yesterday's initial coverage of her arrest. In this article, Brian had detailed the evidence against her; DNA appeared at least a dozen times. An unidentified "law enforcement source" mentioned that they had found methohexital, believed to belong to Cat, in her neighbor's trash. There were comments from the families of the victims, though seeing a rapist like Paul Donaldson called a "victim" made Cat's stomach curl. It seemed to Cat that the crimes of Donaldson and Milburn were downplayed, making them seem more sympathetic.

  The more she read, the more her anger flared. To appear balanced, the article contained a few quotes from Marc Boland, who promised that Cat would be vindicated, and a few of Cat's friends, who said they couldn't imagine Cat committing such grievous crimes. But other friends seemed less willing to jump to Cat's defense, saying it seemed out of character for the Catherine they knew, or some other vague comment. Cat's duplex neighbors expressed their shock at the arrests, explaining that Cat seemed so normal they never realized they were living so close to a possible serial killer. "I guess we could have been the next victims," the husband said.

  It was trial by press, a phenomenon that Cat had experienced only from the other side. She was enraged by the way the article appeared on the surface to be so evenhanded and professional, because she recognized the cheap tricks of the trade that left every reader with the distinct impression that Cat was guilty. She thought about her mom, her sister, her college friends, and her friends at the beach. The anguish she had unwittingly caused them. If Cat read such an article about someone else, she would automatically assume the person was guilty.

  That's when she made her decision. She had always been frustrated by the way accused persons would hide behind "no comment" while the prosecutors would systematically convince the public of their guilt. Cat would call her colleagues and offer an interview. Plus, she would write more journal columns from inside the Virginia Beach jail. She would argue for needed reforms in the incarceration system. Sure, she had made the deputies mad with her last set of columns. But if they realized that Cat was writing some new columns, naming names and detailing specific abuses, maybe they would shape up and protect Cat from the other inmates. Plus, if some quick reforms occurred, Cat could be hailed as a hero in her pod.

  Survival of the fittest required the maximization of every available asset. Cat's best asset was her pen. She would fight back in the only way she knew.

  42

  Quinn talked to Catherine O'Rourke by phone on Tuesday afternoon. The potential client made a strong impression on Quinn, once Quinn convinced h
er that she didn't need to call him "Mr. Newberg." She sounded poised and articulate, very much in control for a young woman facing a possible death sentence. She answered his questions succinctly and without pretext. Like a lot of his crazy clients, Catherine sounded entirely sane. While he talked, Quinn stared at a downloaded image of her face on his computer screen. What's going on inside that head of yours, Catherine O'Rourke?

  She became hesitant only when the conversation turned to money. "I can't pay you right now," Catherine admitted. "Honestly, I can barely afford Bo." Her tone turned from embarrassed to determined. "But I'm not a charity case. I'll pay back every penny over time."

  Unless you get convicted, thought Quinn.

  In a diplomatic way, Catherine made it clear that Marc Boland would be the lead attorney. Though Quinn had expected this, it still came as a blow to his ego. Some lawyers weren't designed to sit in the second chair, and he was one of them.

  He had met Marc Boland only once, at the Regent Law School seminar, but Quinn had made a few phone calls today to get a scouting report. Boland came highly recommended--a big Southern boy with down-home charm, a former prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia, a true "courtroom lawyer" who liked to play his cases by instinct.

  For the moment, Quinn put aside his misgivings about being second chair. If Catherine pled insanity, he would end up taking the lead.

  "I'll get involved under one condition," Quinn said after he had checked off all the questions on his legal pad. "I want you to get evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist I know. She's one of the best in the country."

  "Dr. Mancini?" Catherine asked.

  At first, Catherine's answer surprised Quinn. Then he remembered that Catherine had covered Annie's case. "Yes, Dr. Mancini."

  "Agreed."

  "Good. I'll file my appearance tomorrow. I'll try to make it to Virginia to meet with you and Marc Boland early next week."