By Reason of Insanity

by Randy Singer

  He went down to the lobby, gave his ticket to the valet, and explained his plan to the security guard. Quinn climbed in his Mercedes and drove past the media hounds camped outside the gate, ignoring their shouted questions. He drove to a mall just north of the strip and picked out a pair of oversize sunglasses and a stylish, floppy hat. Then he circled back to the Signature Towers and drove up to the maintenance entrance. He waved at the security camera, and the guard opened the gate so Quinn could drive into the underground loading dock that backed up to the elevator.

  He returned to the condo and gave the sunglasses and hat to Sierra. "What are these for?" she asked.

  "We're going out," Quinn said. "Think like you're a movie star with paparazzi outside."

  Sierra looked skeptical.

  "Trust me," Quinn said. "I've got a plan."

  The look didn't change.

  "We're going shopping," Quinn said.

  This brought a slight flicker of enthusiasm, followed quickly by another downcast look.

  "I've got the car hidden in the basement," Quinn explained. "We'll use the freight elevator. They'll never see us."

  "He knows what he's doing," added Annie. "He used to sneak out all the time when we were kids."

  Sierra finally assented, and Quinn winked at Annie. "We'll be back," he said, and the adventure was on.

  For the first time in weeks, a plan worked just the way Quinn had laid it out. They took the main elevator down to the first floor and then transferred to the freight elevator. They made a clean getaway in Quinn's car and headed to the Boulevard Mall, where Quinn was determined to spend a few hundred dollars on his niece. At first Sierra resisted, but she soon succumbed to the Quinn Newberg makeover plan. A new pair of jeans, several new tops, and a pair of sandals later, Quinn actually talked his niece into the Images Hair Salon for a new haircut. In thirty minutes, Sierra's straight, shoulder-length, strawberry blonde hair had been transformed into a stylishly layered hairdo that made her smile sheepishly when she snuck a glance at the mirror.

  "You look great," Quinn said.

  "Mom's going to flip out."

  They shared dinner at the food court before heading back to the condo. This time, Quinn and Sierra donned their sunglasses and drove right past the surprised reporters.

  When they walked into the lobby, Quinn felt Sierra relax.

  "Who's that beautiful young woman on your elbow?" the security guard asked Quinn.

  "This is my niece, Sierra," Quinn replied.

  "I knew she was too good-lookin' to be your date," the man responded.

  Sierra smiled. It left her face quickly, but Quinn could tell it hadn't been forced.

  "Good looks run in the family," Quinn said.

  62

  Rosemarie Mancini thought the College of William and Mary, with its traditional brick buildings snuggled next to the heart of Colonial Williamsburg, seemed like an incongruous place for the painful memories that Catherine O'Rourke had described. On this day in late May, two weeks after graduation, the campus was nearly deserted. A few college students played ultimate Frisbee on the sunken grounds that served as the school's quad while bright sunshine warmed the ivy-covered buildings and huge oak trees that reminded visitors of the school's rich tradition. Rosemarie half expected Thomas Jefferson or John Marshall or one of Virginia's other founding fathers to appear, dressed in colonial garb.

  But Rosemarie was chasing other memories today. She found the ancient brick building that served as the home for the philosophy and religion department, eventually winding her way to the small, cramped office where she was scheduled to meet Dr. Frederick Channing.

  Rosemarie arrived at 9:50 for the 10:00 meeting. Since the office door was locked, she waited in the hallway, reading bulletin board material and thinking about Catherine's case. Professor Channing came shuffling down the hall a full ten minutes late.

  The smell of cigarettes arrived just before the short, round man with the crescent moon of hair circling the lower part of his skull. Rosemarie thanked him for meeting with her but avoided telling him not to worry about being late. Her time was valuable too.

  Channing moved some papers and books from a wooden spindle chair in front of his desk and invited Rosemarie to have a seat. He plopped down in his worn leather desk chair and started telling Rosemarie how fascinating he found the entire O'Rourke case. The man remained in constant motion, fidgeting here and there, picking up knickknacks from his desk and placing them back down.

  "I don't remember her as a student," he said, picking up where their phone conversation had left off. "I even went back and looked at some yearbook photos to see what she looked like in college, but it didn't trigger anything."

  "How big is your comparative religions class?" Rosemarie asked. She had carefully combed through Catherine's schedule from her senior year in college. From the course description in the catalog, this class looked like it had potential.

  "Students need three credits in either religion or philosophy as part of their core curriculum. A lot of them take this class. I end up with maybe sixty students per section." Channing squinted and scrunched his forehead. "Most of them are underclassmen, though."

  Rosemarie pulled out a Dictaphone and placed it on the desk, turning it on. "Do you mind?" She wanted to watch Channing rather than have her head down taking notes.

  "No, that's fine," Channing said. "Will you send me a copy of the tape?"

  "Sure."

  "So based on our telephone conversation," Channing continued without any prompting, "I actually went back and tried to reconstruct my notes from that year." He started fishing around in a pile of documents behind his desk. "Every year I tweak the course material a little, but the gist of it stays the same."

  He pulled out some rumpled pages and started leafing through them. "Here--you can make a copy of these if you want."

  Rosemarie took the pages and tried to decipher the professor's sloppy writing, margin notes, and pervasive abbreviations. She noticed for the first time that the computer screen sitting on his credenza was dark and dusty.

  "You mind taking me through this?" she asked.

  He fidgeted. "Sure." He felt his head for some reading glasses, patted around the piles of paper on his desk a little, and finally found a pair in a briefcase next to his shelves.

  At Rosemarie's request, he zeroed in on the issue of justice and retribution. According to Channing, many of his students were surprised to learn that the Bible borrowed many of its principles and stories from other ancient religions and vice versa. Rosemarie had a few opinions about that comment, but she let it pass.

  "Take this Avenger of Blood thing," Channing continued. "This whole idea of a blood feud is not unique to Judaism or Christianity."

  Channing went to his overcrowded bookshelves and pulled down a Bible with yellow Post-it notes sticking out in dozens of places. With the other hand, he grabbed a well-worn copy of The Eumenides, an ancient Greek play. He put the Bible in front of Rosemarie and opened it to the book of Numbers. "Under Old Testament Hebrew law," he explained, "an Israelite had the duty to kill someone who had killed his or her relative." Channing put his stubby finger on Numbers 35:21. "'The blood avenger shall put the murderer to death when he meets him,'" Channing said, quoting the verse. "This was true whether the murder was intentional or accidental."

  He gave Rosemarie his copy of The Eumenides and returned to his seat behind the desk. "Are you familiar with that book?" he asked.

  "I might have read it during undergrad."

  "The author is Aeschylus. It's the final play in the Oresteian trilogy, the story of Agamemnon following the Trojan War. This last play is basically the battle between two generations of gods--the older generation of deities, represented by the three female furies, and the new generation of Olympian gods represented by Zeus and his progeny." Channing looked at Rosemarie with a hint of paternalism--the college professor lecturing a uninformed plebeian. "Do you know what the furies were called?"

  "Blood
avengers," answered Rosemarie.

  The professor raised an eyebrow, perhaps trying to decide whether it was just a lucky guess. "Quite correct! They were to be feared and never provoked--all black and wingless, with heavy, rasping breath and eyes oozing discharge. They exacted vengeance without remorse. Yet by the end of the play, the ultimate blood feud had been brought to an end with the emergence of the first Athenian court--the goddess Athena presiding at the trial, Apollo serving as an expert witness, and the furies acting as prosecutors. Following the trial, the furies become benevolent goddesses rather than vengeful and spiteful beings."

  Rosemarie had forgotten the details of the plot and, despite the professor's condescending attitude, was beginning to think the visit had been worthwhile. She considered the implications of The Eumenides for Catherine's case. Honestly, she had been so focused on the biblical notion of a blood avenger that she had missed this secular angle. "Is it okay if I borrow this book for a few weeks?" she asked.

  "Have at it," the professor said. "Maybe sometime you could come and lecture to my class. 'The psychology of The Eumenides.'"

  Also known, Rosemarie thought, as the professor finding another excuse to take a class off. She tucked the book in her briefcase. "Is this the kind of thing Catherine would have been exposed to as part of her comparative religion course?"

  "This and other examples," said Channing, "my basic point being to demonstrate that these ancient religions all sanctioned some type of blood feud. Makes you wonder who copied whom, doesn't it?"

  Rosemarie had heard enough revisionist history. "Seems to me that Greek drama came along in about the fifth century BC, thousands of years after the Mosaic law," she said. "And I'm no expert, but if I remember correctly, the biblical system included a number of 'cities of refuge' set up throughout the country. Any killer could flee to the cities, but a blood avenger could not go there. A person fleeing to the cities would not be put to death unless that person was tried and found guilty of intentional murder, not just an accidental killing."

  She opened the Bible on the desk and flipped back to the book of Numbers, locating one of the passages she had run across while analyzing Catherine's case. "'The cities shall be to you as a refuge from the avenger, so that the manslayer will not die until he stands before the congregation for trial.'" She looked at Channing. "Seems to me the biblical system was focused on a fair trial, not just blood vengeance."

  "Yes, yes, I see your point," he said. "One could certainly view it that way, though I'm still struck by the overwhelming similarities."

  Rosemarie thought about pressing the point but decided against it. Channing could be a valuable witness in Catherine's trial. She thanked the professor for his time, turned off the tape recorder, and left his office. Her suspicions had now been confirmed, dropping the first piece of the puzzle into place.

  Under a DID diagnosis, an alter ego would often carry with it many of the thoughts and characteristics that the person had exhibited at the time of the event that caused the personality to fracture, as if that other personality had become frozen in time. Catherine's rape had occurred during her senior year in college. That same year, she had studied the blood-avenging Greek goddesses in The Eumenides and the biblical notion of a blood avenger. It could be a coincidence, Rosemarie thought. Or perhaps not.

  * * *

  On the way to her car, Rosemarie dictated a note to herself, a reminder to check Catherine's newspaper articles for any coverage of the Paul Donaldson or Clarence Milburn rape trials. Then she called Marc Boland.

  "Whose idea was it to bring Quinn Newberg into the case?" Rosemarie asked. "Yours or Catherine's?"

  "Catherine's," Marc said without hesitation. "Why?"

  Rosemary ignored the question. "How insistent was she on getting Quinn involved?"

  "Pretty insistent. Confidentially, I tried to talk her out of it. I'm glad he's part of the team now, but at the time I wasn't thinking insanity, and I felt like his involvement might send the wrong signal."

  "Thanks," said Rosemarie. "That's what I thought."

  "Do you mind telling me why you're asking?"

  "I do mind," said Rosemarie. "And thanks for being sensitive to the fact that I can't always share everything I've discovered with you and Quinn."

  Rosemarie could tell by the silence that Marc didn't particularly care for that answer. She thanked him for his time and hung up the phone. The second piece of the puzzle was now firmly in place.

  63

  Catherine O'Rourke felt herself slipping deeper into depression but couldn't seem to stop it. Everything about jail was designed to depersonalize, humiliate, and desensitize. If it wasn't for Tasha, she probably would have gone totally berserk.

  Even visiting hours compounded the despondency. The steady stream of visitors had dwindled to a few loyal friends and Cat's mom and sister. In a couple of days, her family would have to return to Pennsylvania. "We'll come down just about every weekend," Kelsey promised. But Cat knew the realities--money was getting tight. Kelsey had to get back to work. Trips to Virginia were long and costly.

  Catherine continued taking her antidepressants. Her psychiatrist assured Cat she would work through this. The worst thing was that Cat had not seen Marc Boland in nearly a week, and Quinn Newberg had quit taking her collect calls. Updates on her case came from the news or other inmates.

  Through it all, she wondered and worried. Was there really another Catherine, one responsible for the murder of infants, defense lawyers, and criminals? Why had the visions stopped? If she wasn't the Avenger, who was?

  Catherine was a woman of action, but here she sat, helpless, watching the minutes slowly tick by as she waited for her trial date. If she lost and faced a lifetime prison sentence, she would seriously consider taking her own life. If she truly was the Avenger, who would care?

  I can't think that way. But it wasn't that easy. The more she obsessed about the case, the more she isolated herself. And the more that happened, the more depressed she became. She couldn't remember the last time she had genuinely laughed. Cat felt trapped inside a spiral of misery, her mind eroding by the hour.

  Even if she won the trial, there would be a significant percentage of Americans who would always believe she was a serial killer. Her best-case scenario was living like O.J. Simpson, enduring the scorn of good people everywhere.

  Maybe she could start over again in some remote Latin American country or someplace in Europe. But first, she had to get through today. And then tonight. And then the day after that and the day after that.

  Catherine O'Rourke, suspected serial killer. It seemed at times like she could barely remember what life had been like before this nightmare. The sun. The freedom. Friends who believed in her. A promising career.

  All gone. And maybe her sanity along with them.

  * * *

  Late Monday afternoon, Quinn suffered one final blow before his scheduled court appearance with Annie. It came as he entered his office building, pushing through a few persistent TV reporters who had set up shop in the lobby.

  "Do you have any comment on Claude Tanner's filing in family court?" one of the reporters asked.

  "No comment," Quinn said, wondering what the man was talking about. He and Annie had decided to keep the TV off in the condo. He'd never heard of anyone named Claude Tanner.

  "Does your client deny that Mr. Tanner is Sierra's father?"

  Quinn stopped dead in his tracks, his world suddenly spinning. Sierra's father?

  "No comment," Quinn said more tersely than before. He resumed walking toward the elevator, hoping he didn't look as flustered as he felt.

  "Will Ms. Newberg contest his right to custody?"

  Quinn whirled and shot the reporter a withering look. "Of course," he said. "I don't know if this man is Sierra's biological father or not. I do know that Sierra's biological father wanted nothing to do with his child from day one, at least until the smell of money apparently became irresistible."

  "Were you aware he asked
for a DNA test?" asked a second reporter.

  "No comment," Quinn said, reminding himself that this was a game he could not win. He turned and walked away.

  Waiting for the elevator, Quinn mulled over this new complication. Sierra's father could not have picked a worse time to reappear. The thought of the man swooping in and acting concerned about his child's welfare infuriated Quinn. He wondered if Tanner realized that Richard Hofstetter's estate didn't amount to much. Even if Annie was convicted and disqualified from inheriting the money, Sierra, as second in line, wouldn't be getting rich. The proceeds from Hofstetter's life insurance policy would be used to pay his debts first, leaving precious little for either Annie or Sierra.

  If Tanner thought he could waltz into this mess and obtain custody of his daughter without a fight, he had another think coming to him. Short of murder, Quinn would do whatever it took to protect Sierra.

  64

  Reporters jammed themselves into the limited seats of Courtroom 16D on Tuesday morning, bringing back memories of Quinn's bitter battle to free Annie, which had ended in a mistrial three months earlier.

  Carla Duncan walked down the aisle of the courtroom and came over to shake Quinn's hand. "Please reconsider," she said, referring to the phone call Quinn had made rejecting the proposed plea.

  "We haven't changed our minds," Quinn said.

  Carla nodded and pursed her lips, looking dreadfully solemn. During the phone call, she had explained to Quinn that she would move to revoke Annie's bail if Annie didn't take the plea.

  Carla turned and pointed to a man in the third row. He was probably in his thirties, with shaggy dark hair, a stud in his left ear, and an ill-fitting suit. "That's Officer Northrop," Carla said. "He works vice and narcotics and has a few friends on the seedier side of town. He gave me these." She handed Quinn a couple of fresh-looking visas. Quinn's heart did a nose-dive.