by Randy Singer
"Thanks," said Catherine. "And Mr. Newberg?"
"Quinn."
"Sorry. Quinn." Catherine paused, then made one final point. "I'm not crazy. Dr. Mancini will tell you that."
* * *
After Quinn ended the call, he asked Melanie to set up a new file. "Our client is Catherine O'Rourke. Criminal defense. Standard rates apply."
"Did you get a retainer?" asked Melanie. She was young and bookish, but she knew how to follow the money.
"Twenty-five thousand. Check's in the mail."
"In other words--no."
"This case is worth a million dollars in free publicity," Quinn argued, but even to him it sounded lame. "We should be paying her."
Melanie sighed and started filling out the new client form. "Are you trying to get fired?"
* * *
Catherine stayed busy during visiting hours, talking with her mom and sister as well as several friends and coworkers, all via closed-circuit television. Her editor, Ed Shaftner, was too busy to stop by, but Catherine's friends at the paper promised to deliver her message. She would agree to an exclusive interview with her fellow reporter Brian Radford. Also, she would be willing to write an exclusive daily column for the paper about her experience behind bars.
"Didn't you do that last time?" a friend asked.
"That was different. This will be real-time, not after the fact. It will focus on solutions and personalities, almost like a reality show, except printed."
Her friend seemed skeptical.
After a while, the steady stream of visitors wore Cat down. Her mom cried while Kelsey tried hard to stay upbeat, though her eyes were beet red too. With Cat's friends, it was the same questions, the same answers. "How are you doing?" Okay. "What's it like in there?" You don't want to know. "Is there anything I can do for you?" Not really.
When the last visitor departed, a deputy escorted Cat back to her cell.
Tasha was meeting with one of her own visitors, leaving Cat alone with Holly. Without speaking, Cat grabbed her pen and legal pad to make notes for her anticipated column. She looked for the pages she had churned out earlier. She noticed that Holly was watching her.
"Have you seen some notes I made earlier?" Cat asked.
"Yes."
"Do you know where they are?"
"Yes."
Cat raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
"We ran out of toilet paper," Holly said, smiling. "I used them and flushed them."
Cat looked at the nearly full roll of toilet paper sitting on the floor next to the toilet. Anger exploded in her head, ignited by a lack of sleep, the frustrations of the day, and her cellmate's unbridled arrogance. "You jerk," Cat said, seething.
Holly jumped up from her bed and took a few steps toward Cat's mattress. She stood there, towering over a still-seated Cat. "You gonna back that up, Barbie?"
Cat snorted in disgust. She refused to even look up at her cellmate. "Grow up."
"That's what I thought," said Holly. She took another step closer then placed her dirty shoe squarely on Cat's pillow. "Barbie's not so bad when Tasha ain't around."
Cat looked up at her and pointed to the foot. "Do you mind?"
Holly stood there for a moment, chuckled, and pulled her foot away. She walked back to her bed and sat down. Slowly, she removed her shoes. "Don't want to get my sheets dirty," she said.
43
After inspection on Wednesday morning, while the inmates were hanging out in the pod, Tasha pulled Cat into their cell. Cat noticed that a few other African-American inmates stood just outside the cell door, blocking the view from the pod.
"You're in," Tasha said. "A member of the Widows. It's mostly sisters, but we believe in equal opportunity."
Catherine hadn't anticipated this. She didn't want to join a gang, but it didn't seem like Tasha was really asking her opinion. It was more of an announcement, like Cat should be thanking Tasha for the honor.
"Just because you're a Widow doesn't mean you won't get attacked," Tasha warned. "It might even make it more likely. What it does mean, girl, is you got backup."
"How do I know who's in?" Cat asked.
Tasha glanced quickly around at the inmates standing at the door and smiled. "The mark," she said.
She grabbed a plastic cup from the sink and pulled Cat into a far corner of the cell. Tasha took another glance around and reached into a slit in her mattress. She pulled out baby oil and some matches.
"Where'd you get the matches?" Cat asked. She suspected they came from prison "trustees"-- inmates specially selected to help with prison chores.
"No questions," Tasha said gruffly.
Tasha filled the plastic cup with baby oil and made a wick out of toilet paper. She lit the toilet paper and held a funneled piece of paper over the makeshift candle for several minutes, collecting black soot on the paper. Next, she mixed toothpaste with the black soot, forming a gooey black ink.
"Amazing," said Cat.
"That part's nothin'." Tasha said. "Wait till you see the tattoo gun. You know Felicia?"
Cat nodded.
"She ripped the motor out of her cassette player and mounted it to an ink pen using dental floss," Tasha explained. "She replaced the ink cartridge with a staple attached to the end of a spring. That staple serves as the needle. This stuff is the ink."
Cat's eyes went wide with disbelief.
"Yep," Tasha said, "Felicia is our resident tattoo artist. Drop your jumpsuit. Left hip, just above the buttocks. Every Widow has a spider tattoo."
Cat thought she might pass out. She hated needles in the first place, but unsanitized prison staples? No telling how many women had been tattooed with this same "needle." Or what diseases they might have.
But how could she say no? Did she want to offend a big portion of the inmate population by refusing to be part of the Widows? How could she survive on her own if she did?
"How big is the tattoo?" Cat asked.
"On your skinny butt? Not much bigger than a real black widow spider."
A few moments later, Cat nearly scraped the cement off the walls as Felicia used her crude tattoo gun on Cat's lower back. When Felicia finally announced she was finished, Cat decided not to even look.
"Two things," Tasha instructed, as Felicia left the cell. "First, you need a weapon. Every night, begin filing down the end of your toothbrush. Also, if you ever see another inmate get careless with their razor in the morning, before the guards collect them, grab it. I'll show you how to hide those things in your mattress. Second, when that tattoo dries, go and take a shower. That way, the other inmates will know you belong to us."
"Is Holly a member of a gang?" Cat asked.
"Uh-uh," Tasha responded. "That woman's psycho. Gangs don't take no psychos."
44
As usual, the phone messages piled up before Quinn even made it to work. He ignored them all, including three messages from Annie. He sent a fax to the Virginia Beach Circuit Court, noting his appearance as counsel of record for Catherine O'Rourke, then closed his office door so he could spend a few hours researching the victims of the Avenger of Blood, searching for common links in their pasts.
There were the obvious links--two criminal defendants who had beaten rape charges and three criminal defense lawyers. One of the lawyers, Rex Archibald, had represented one of the victims, Paul Donaldson. But neither Robert Carver Sr. nor his son, Bobby Carver, had ever represented Clarence Milburn. Quinn would need to research the rape victims. Maybe they would provide the missing connection.
The entire case was bizarre, but a few things in particular really bothered Quinn. The killer was a pro. The way he or she stalked the victims and lured them out. No footprints. No DNA until the single piece of hair on the Donaldson letter.
From what little Quinn knew about her, Catherine O'Rourke did not strike him as a professional killer.
The police had released the e-mails where a person posing as the Reverend Harold Pryor had negotiated with and hired Rex Archibald. Pryor, of cours
e, vehemently denied sending the e-mails. The e-mails had originated from computers in three different public libraries, using a free AOL account set up solely for that purpose. Archibald's $10,000 retainer had been paid by five money orders, each in the amount of $2,000, procured several weeks earlier at five different Hampton Roads convenience stores. No stores kept the videotapes from store security cameras that long.
Quinn assumed that even Harold Pryor was not stupid enough to leave a string of e-mails setting up a meeting where he planned to murder a man. Unless, of course, Pryor had an alter ego, an Avenger of Blood who was not restrained by concerns about evidence trails.
More likely, thought Quinn, the Avenger tried to set Pryor up as a distraction. But this theory had its own problems. The e-mails from Pryor were sent to Rex Archibald after the Avenger sent the letter about Paul Donaldson to the Richmond Times. In other words, if Catherine was innocent, the Avenger would have been simultaneously setting up both Catherine O'Rourke and Harold Pryor, planting a piece of Catherine's hair on the Richmond Times envelope and then sending out e-mails in Pryor's name.
That seemed unlikely, though Quinn didn't like the only alternative--Catherine as the Avenger of Blood, trying to distract the authorities into suspecting Pryor. It demonstrated a level of planning that was inconsistent with an insanity defense.
Other questions also screamed for answers. If Catherine wasn't involved, what was spurring her visions about the Avenger? And why had the Avenger kidnapped babies of the first two victims but attacked Paul Donaldson and Rex Archibald directly? And finally, what was the significance of the biblical verses chosen by the Avenger, including the verse that police had found on the sign in front of the North Williamsburg Baptist Church?
Quinn's head ached as he tried to wrap his mind around these questions. He obsessed over them, turning them this way and that like a jeweler looking at a fine gem under a brilliant white light. The Avenger was crazed but not stupid. In fact, everything pointed to the Avenger having a brilliant tactical mind.
But even brilliant tacticians could make mistakes. Clever criminals could sometimes get away with a single kidnapping or murder, but serial killers eventually tripped up. In Quinn's opinion, it was usually part of their psyches. They needed to make mistakes. Somewhere deep in their subconsciences, they wanted to get caught. They craved the attention.
Quinn walked over to his window and glanced out at the plaza in front of the high-rise office building. The press trucks were beginning to converge. They had obviously caught wind of Quinn's involvement in Catherine's case. He would wait ten minutes, until the reporters reached critical mass, before he showed his face and proclaimed his client's innocence. Quinn didn't need the attention. But in his opinion, Catherine O'Rourke was getting slaughtered in the press. They needed to turn that tide soon or there would be no point in even having a trial.
His phone rang. An internal call. "Mr. Espinoza is here to see you," said Melanie.
"Tell him I'm busy."
The door opened, and Espinoza burst in. "We're all busy," he said, shutting the door behind him.
Quinn braced himself.
For ten minutes, Espinoza paced around the office and griped about Quinn's taking on Catherine O'Rourke as a client. As usual, he had his facts straight and his arguments in order. Catherine O'Rourke had no ability to pay. Quinn had not sought the approval of the firm's case-acceptance committee. The firm's clients would frown on one of their lawyers representing a serial killer.
"An alleged serial killer," Quinn said.
"Don't try that on me," Espinoza countered.
Quinn held out his hands, palms up, the universal sign of surrender. It did no good to argue with Espinoza when he was in one of these moods.
"The problem now is that you pulled the trigger," said Espinoza. "The entire world thinks we're in this case. How do you unscramble the egg?"
"Fire me," said Quinn. And he meant it. "I'm tired of apologizing for being a good-enough criminal defense lawyer that people actually want to hire me."
"That's not the point. Represent all the criminals you want. But they need to have money. And I don't care how good you think you are--you're not above following firm policies."
"Okay, I'm sorry." Quinn starting packing up his briefcase. "What do you want? A pound of flesh? Two?"
"I need you to tell me that you won't pull a stunt like this ever again," Espinoza said, his jaw tight with frustration. "And I don't want you taking any further action on the O'Rourke case until our case-acceptance committee can meet and decide what to do."
Quinn stuffed a few last things in his briefcase and grabbed his suit coat. "I really do have to go," he said. "Walk with me if you want to keep talking."
Espinoza followed Quinn out the door and down the hallway. "There's a whole mob of reporters out there," Espinoza said. "What are you going to tell them?"
"That my client's innocent."
"She's not your client yet."
Quinn stopped. "Look, Robert, I'm not backing out of this case. The firm has every right to refuse to get involved. But I'm in." He stared at his managing partner, a look that others said could melt steel. "I hope you're in with me."
Espinoza didn't respond until Quinn started walking away. Quinn knew the older man must be struggling to contain his anger; young partners didn't treat the managing partner this way. "We don't do well with ultimatums, Quinn."
* * *
The press accosted Quinn as soon as he left the building and set foot on the plaza. With the cameras rolling and mikes thrust in his face, Quinn affirmed his representation of Catherine and proclaimed her innocence in no uncertain terms. "The Commonwealth of Virginia has no body, no motive, and no real evidence," he declared. "In Nevada, this case wouldn't even be brought. And even in Virginia, there's this concept called 'innocent until proven guilty.'"
"Is Ms. O'Rourke considering an insanity defense?"
Quinn made a face, as if it were the dumbest question ever. "For something she didn't do?" he asked.
"What about the DNA?" another reporter asked.
"I don't comment on specific evidence," Quinn replied confidently, his chin held high. "But there are a thousand explanations for one piece of Ms. O'Rourke's hair being on that envelope. Nine hundred ninety-nine of them are consistent with innocence, including a scenario where the real Avenger of Blood picks up a piece of Ms. O'Rourke's hair and puts it there in order to frame her."
"What about the other DNA?" a reporter asked. "Have you seen the article just posted on the Tidewater Times Web site?"
Quinn quickly processed the possibilities. He knew the prosecutors were running DNA tests on the bloody paper towels. They must have announced a match.
"Have you been to a Vegas magic show?" Quinn asked the reporter. She didn't respond. "Things are not as they appear," he stressed. "Your eyes and your mind play tricks on you, but there's always a rational explanation."
"Care to share that explanation with us?" a skeptical voice chimed in.
"That's why we have trials," said Quinn. He started moving again, pressing his way through the crowd, ignoring the rest of their shouted questions.
More DNA evidence. What had he gotten himself into? And why had he made it a go-to-the-mat issue with his firm?
Maybe I'm the one who's insane.
45
Ironically, Tasha Moorehouse's alleged crime--lying on a firearms transaction record as the straw purchaser of guns for the black market--was considered a nonviolent offense, making her eligible for the work duty the luckier inmates performed each Wednesday. As a third-time drug offender, Holly could join the crew as well. But not Catherine. Alleged serial killers were not qualified to pick up trash along local highways and endure the scorn of passing motorists. In theory, they posed too big of a flight risk, too much danger to others. Violent offenders were not entitled to see the sun.
When the other inmates returned from work duty late in the afternoon, Tasha was not among them. "One of the male guards t
ried to take one of the Widows into the woods along North Landing Road," a gang member explained. "When Tasha jumped in and started cursin' him out and makin' a big scene, she ended up in solitary."
While Cat was fretting about spending the night alone with Holly, more trouble showed up, this time in the form of a television newscast. DNA testing on the paper towels found in Cat's neighbor's trash revealed traces of Paul Donaldson's blood and contained a match from Cat's saliva. On hearing the news, Cat stepped from the pod into her cell so she could brood alone.
By now, she was almost immune to the avalanche of incriminating evidence. Though she still believed in her own innocence, it no longer surprised her when seemingly rock-solid scientific evidence pointed straight at her. Somebody was setting her up. And that somebody was doing a very good job.
The noise from the pod and the general chaos that now defined Cat's life made it hard to think rationally. But one question kept haunting her: how had the police even known to look in the neighbor's trash? And a corollary question: how would the person setting her up know that the police would look there?
The more she thought about it, the more she realized there was only one logical conclusion: Cat was being set up by somebody on the police force or in the prosecutor's office. Somebody who could guarantee police would find this evidence. But also--and this was the part that freaked Cat out--somebody who had access to Paul Donaldson's blood even though the body had not yet been found. Could the Avenger of Blood be a cop?
Actually, there was one other possibility, and the very thought of it made Cat want to puke. Multiple personality disorder. Or dissociative identify disorder, whatever you wanted to call it. A demon-possessed Catherine exacting revenge on those who raped and got away with it, then attempting to hide evidence next door. She put her face in her hands and closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead.
It couldn't be. For starters, there was just no possible way that Catherine could harm innocent babies like the Carver twins and Rayshad Milburn. Sure, she still felt rage boil up when she thought about that night at the frat house. But it was rage directed at Kenny and his frat brothers, not others who Catherine didn't even know. Especially not attorneys like Rex Archibald and Bobby Carver. They were just doing their jobs, detestable as they might be.