By Reason of Insanity (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

Brunelle stood up. “We’ll see, Ms. Sawyer. Thank you for explaining it to me.”

  Sawyer blinked at him, but the smile remained. “You’re welcome, Mr. Brunelle. You should go home now to your girlfriend.”

  Chen stifled a laugh, turning it into an obviously fake cough.

  “Thanks, Ms. Sawyer,” Brunelle answered. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again.”

  As he and Chen stepped toward the exit, Sawyer called after them. “Mr. Brunelle! If the nurse is out there, could you ask her to come in. The shot made the voices stop, but I think I’m starting to hear them again. I want to sleep, but I can’t sleep very well when they talk to me.”

  Brunelle stared at the very earnest and very mentally ill woman strapped to the bed. “Of course, Ms. Sawyer. We’ll find the nurse.”

  Sawyer offered a relieved smile. “Thank you, Mr. Brunelle. You’re a kind man.”

  Brunelle shrugged. He didn’t know what else to say, so he just said, “Thanks.”

  In the hallway, Chen finally got to tease him. “A kind man like you really should be married, you know. Should I call your girlfriend and see if she has any kids?”

  Brunelle narrowed his eyes. “You know damn well my girlfriend has a kid. And if you say anything to her about us getting married I will personally dismiss every case you have with our office.”

  Chen laughed. “I bet I don’t need to say anything.”

  Brunelle sighed and ran a hand over his short, gray-specked hair. “I bet you’re right.”

  “So, at least this one isn’t justified,” Chen returned the conversation to work. “I doubt she was really being murdered and turned into a zombie.”

  Brunelle nodded. “Oh, right. No worries there. She wasn’t justified.”

  “So the murder charge will stick?” Chen confirmed.

  Brunelle shrugged. “I didn’t say that. Justification isn’t the only defense.”

  “What else are you thinking?”

  “You said it,” Brunelle reminded him. “She’s fucking nuts. I’m staring right at an NGRI: not guilty by reason of insanity.”

  Chen crossed his arms. “Is she gonna walk?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Brunelle replied. “But I’ve got some work to do.”

  “What’s the first step?” Chen asked, looking at his watch.

  Brunelle looked at his too. It’d be a few hours before the medical examiner’s office opened for the day.

  “Breakfast,” he replied. “Then I’m going to watch my girlfriend perform an autopsy.”

  Chapter 3

  Dr. Kat Anderson shoved her hand up into a thick, blue, rubber glove and let it go with a loud snap.

  Under different circumstances, Brunelle thought it might have been arousing. But he was there for an autopsy. Kat snapped on the other glove and Brunelle nodded approvingly.

  “No mask?” His voice betrayed disappointment

  Kat narrowed her eyes suspiciously and shook her head, sending her thick, black hair into a pleasant bounce. She looked great even under the scrubs. Of course, now Brunelle knew exactly how to imagine the curves beneath. “No. I need the gloves to protect me from biohazards, but I’m not too worried about spreading germs. I think she’s past worrying about an infection.”

  “I suppose so,” Brunelle responded. He found himself disappointed not to get to see her bright eyes shining out over a surgical mask. The disappointment surprised him.

  I should look into that, he told himself with a small shake of his head.

  “I thought the smell would be worse,” he said, pulling his thoughts away from surgical masks and hidden curves.

  Kat shrugged. “She’s been refrigerated. Wait ‘til I cut her open.”

  Brunelle winced. “Great.”

  He’d attended one or two autopsies before, but observed through a window from an adjoining room. Usually the dead bodies he saw were fresh. The scent of blood or gunpowder could be strong, but weren’t really nauseating. It took decomposition to get that truly putrid, stomach-turning stench. He steadied himself for the odor, but in doing so overlooked steeling himself for the sight.

  Kat pulled back the tarp and Brunelle looked directly at what had once been Georgia Sawyer’s face.

  “Holy fuck!” He turned away and pressed his palms against his eyes, as if that might somehow erase the image from his mind. But the vision of the woman’s former face—butchered like an inexpertly carved Thanksgiving turkey—was burned permanently into his brain.

  “Wow,” said Kat.

  “Yeah. Wow,” Brunelle agreed without turning around. “Larry said it was bad, but I had no idea.”

  “No,” Kat said. “I mean: wow, you’re a wuss.”

  Brunelle spun around, his manhood affronted. But he still didn’t look directly at the body. “Her entire face is hacked away,” he protested.

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “Well, yeah. I knew that,” Brunelle admitted. “But seeing it is different.”

  Kat looked down at the remains. “I don’t know, David. If someone told me a person got her face hacked off with a hatchet, that’s pretty much what I would expect to see.”

  Brunelle managed a peek at the butchered head. Exposed bone protruded from where her eye sockets and nose had once been, these fragile bone structures annihilated by the force of the hatchet blows. Her lower jaw hung open onto her throat, most of the teeth missing, and the flesh of the cheeks was slit open like the sides of a flour sack. Whatever soft tissue had once been between her brow and chin was either missing or unidentifiable. Brunelle looked away again.

  “So cause of death is pretty easy, I guess,” he joked darkly.

  “Not much doubt there,” Kat agreed with a slight grin. “But that’s not where the mystery lies.”

  She picked up a dead wrist and examined the hand and arm. She reached over the corpse and repeated the examination for the other limb.

  “No defensive wounds,” she announced. “She didn’t even try to fight back. So the first wound was probably fatal, or at least incapacitating. The victim likely never saw it coming.”

  “She was sleeping,” Brunelle explained.

  Kat nodded.

  “Murdering children through her dreams,” Brunelle explained.

  Kat stopped nodding and threw a dubious glance at her boyfriend. “Excuse me?”

  “Oh yeah. Her daughter explained it all to me.”

  “Isn’t her daughter the killer?” Kat questioned.

  “Yep,” Brunelle confirmed. “That’s how she’d know. The perfect source. She told me all about it. Her mother had been psychically murdering her in her dreams for some time. Turning her into a zombie, of course.”

  “Of course,” Kat agreed nonchalantly.

  “Which, you know, wouldn’t normally be grounds for murder,” Brunelle went on, “but when mom started murdering the neighborhood kids in their dreams too, well, that went too far. She couldn’t just stand by and let the little darlings be turned into zombies too.”

  “Oh, of course not.”

  “I suspect,” Brunelle said, “the voices she hears when she’s not doped up on intravenous anti-psychotics explained it to her much better than I’m explaining it now.”

  “No doubt,” Kat agreed. Then she shook her head. “Wow. She’s fucking nuts.”

  “I believe the proper term,” Brunelle corrected with faux offense, “is paranoid schizophrenic.”

  “Probably,” Kat grumbled. “I took one psych course in med school. I hated it. A bunch of gobbledygook. I like it hard, not all soft and squishy.”

  Brunelle smiled and rested his hand on the small of her back. “Mmm, I’ve noticed.”

  Kat had to laugh. “Wow again. Are you actually hitting on me over a dead body?”

  Brunelle looked around the room appraisingly. “Why yes, I believe I am.”

  “That’s pretty messed up, David.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I should look into that.”

  Kat paused for a moment, then lowere
d her voice. “Come back tonight,” she purred. “After they’ve cleaned the tables.”

  Brunelle balked at that. But he was relieved he had a limit. Probably. “Maybe just get a baby-sitter, and come over to my place?”

  Kat looked up at him, locking her eyes onto his, and clanked the metal table with her knuckles. “Wuss.”

  Chapter 4

  Keesha Sawyer spent another week at Harborview. It took that long to get the voices under control. She’d also nearly severed her left thumb with the hatchet.

  “I needed to hold her head still once she was dead so I could keep killing her,” she’d explained.

  The jail didn’t want her until they could be a jail and not a hospital. Once the thumb was sewn together and the voices had quieted to whispers, she was discharged into the waiting custody of two Seattle P.D. officers who drove her down James Street to the King County Jail. And once that happened, late on a Thursday night, Brunelle had twenty-four hours to file changes and arraign her. So Friday morning found him at his computer, double-checking the charging document he’d drafted days before. One count of premeditated murder in the first degree.

  A knock came on his doorframe.

  Brunelle looked up from his monitor. It was Nicole, one of the paralegals in the homicide unit. She’d been at the office even longer than Brunelle and knew at least as much as he did about how to prosecute a murder case. It was a shame she didn’t have a law degree—if there was anyone in the office he’d want sitting next to him during a trial, it was her. Instead, she filed his witness lists and made sure his video equipment worked.

  “Jessica Edwards is at the front desk,” Nicole announced. “She’d like to speak with you about the Sawyer case.”

  “Great,” Brunelle muttered as he stood up. It was anything but great, though. Edwards was one of the best at the King County Public Defender’s Office. She was smart, engaging, and tenacious. Worse than that, she knew all his tricks. They’d been trying cases against each other for over a decade. The only saving grace was that he pretty much knew her tricks too. It was like experienced card players playing the hand face up on the table. They each knew what the other would do, so the only question was who got dealt the better cards.

  Nicole stepped back into the hallway as Brunelle followed. “She’s very pretty,” Nicole added to his thoughts.

  Two things struck Brunelle about Nicole’s comment. First, Nicole was right. Edwards wasn’t unattractive. Another asset when arguing a case in front of a jury. A subtle, unconscious one—one that shouldn’t matter, but it did. Every trial attorney got a fresh haircut right before jury selection.

  The second thing was that Nicole calling someone pretty was like the Sahara Desert calling something dry. Tall and buxom, with long fit legs and long brown hair, Nicole was one of those rare women who could honestly be called ‘statuesque.’ She was the only woman Brunelle ever thought could actually pull off a Wonder Woman costume.

  Why he’d ever thought that, he wasn’t sure. He’d have to look into that too.

  “Sure,” Brunelle agreed with a shrug, pretending he hadn’t ever noticed. “She’s a good attorney too.”

  Edwards was waiting in the prosecutor’s small reception area, thumbing through whatever old magazines some of the staff had brought in after spring cleaning.

  “Jess,” Brunelle greeted her as he opened the interior door to the lobby. “Nice to see you again.”

  Edwards set down the magazine and stood up. Nicole was right; she was attractive. Straight blond hair, cut right past the shoulder. Looked good in a suit. And pleasant features, left natural with the minimal make up she wore as a born-and-raised Northwesterner.

  “Nice to see you too, Dave,” she said. He knew she meant it. “You got a few minutes to talk about the Sawyer case?”

  “Did you get that one?” Brunelle asked as Edwards stepped into the bowels of the prosecutor’s office. “Congrats.”

  Edwards rolled her eyes affably. “Thanks, I think. Just once I’d like to get a case where my client didn’t confess.”

  Brunelle smiled. “Where’s the challenge in that?”

  They reached his office and Edwards took a seat across the desk from him. He gestured at his computer monitor. “I just finished the charging documents.”

  “Murder One?” she asked.

  Brunelle nodded. “Maybe we can save some time this afternoon,” he joked, “if you can get the guilty plea form ready before the arraignment.”

  Edwards smiled, but shook her head. “Well, that’s why I’m here. I think we’re going to need to set over the arraignment.”

  Brunelle’s own relaxed smile twisted into a half-frown. He knew what was coming, but he’d let himself hope it might not. The whole point of seeing each other’s cards was not having to go through the song and dance of actually playing every hand. “She’s competent to stand trial, Jess. She’s nuts, but she’s competent. Do we really need to waste time with a competency evaluation?”

  Edwards shrugged, and her smile deepened. “You said it yourself, Dave. She’s nuts.”

  Brunelle leaned back and crossed his arms. “Nuts, but not incompetent. Incompetent means she doesn’t understand the proceedings against her.” He started ticking off the elements on his fingertips. “Does she know she’s charged with a crime? Does she know she’s going to prison? Does she know I’m the bad guy trying to put her there? Does she know the pretty lady next to her is her lawyer? Does she—”

  “Pretty?” Edwards interrupted. “Did you just call me pretty?”

  Damn Nicole. Brunelle tried not to get flustered. “Eh, well, my point is, she may be nuts, but she knows what’s going on. Can’t we just skip the competency evaluation and get right to the insanity defense?”

  “Insanity?” Edwards scoffed. Her smile at Brunelle’s ‘pretty’ comment hadn’t entirely faded, but she let the topic go. “I’m not going insanity.”

  “Why not?” Brunelle asked. He didn’t miss the irony that he was advocating for a defense he likely couldn’t defeat. “She totally knows what she did and why she did it. She also thinks it was justified. That’s classic insanity. Not knowing right from wrong.” He raised an eyebrow. “Did she tell you about the zombies?”

  Edwards crossed her arms and raised an affronted chin. “What my client tells me is privileged, Mr. Brunelle.” Then the chin dropped again and she smiled. “But yeah, she told me all about the zombies.”

  “And doesn’t that sound more like insanity than incompetency?” Brunelle insisted.

  “Of course it does,” Edwards admitted. “But that’s not the point.”

  Brunelle leaned onto his desk. “What’s the point then?”

  “The point,” Edwards explained, “is to get the best possible result for my client. And that, Dave, is not insanity.”

  “Insanity,” Brunelle repeated. “As in ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’ When is an acquittal not the best possible result for your client?”

  “When it’s followed by twenty years in a mental hospital.”

  Brunelle didn’t say anything. He just cocked his head again, inviting further explanation from his opponent.

  Edwards obliged. “If she’s found not guilty by reason of insanity—NGRI—then she’ll automatically be committed to Western State Hospital, with a presumptive stay of twenty years, the minimum prison sentence for Murder One. Do you know how hard it is to get released after being committed for NGRI?”

  “Not personally, no,” Brunelle quipped. “Do you?”

  Edwards groaned. “Only professionally, Dave, thank you. But getting committed with an NGRI on your file is like having ‘never release’ tattooed on your forehead. If they get out early and hurt somebody, the state’s going to get sued ten ways ‘til Sunday.”

  “Not my problem,” Brunelle observed.

  “Maybe not,” Edwards agreed. “But I’m not going to set my client up for that. Not if I can help it. Tell me: what happens if they find Keesha Sawyer incompetent?”


  Brunelle knew the answer. “Then they try to restore her competency.”

  “How?”

  “With drugs.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “More drugs.”

  “And if those don’t work?” Edwards pressed. “If they find her unrestorable?”

  Brunelle frowned. “Then we have to dismiss the charges.”

  Edwards crossed her arms and smiled. “See my point?”

  “Not entirely. When we dismiss for incompetency, the defendant still gets committed to Western State.”

  “Sure, but it’s a totally different situation,” Edwards replied. “NGRI means a jury said you did it, but you’re bat-shit crazy and don’t know it’s wrong to hack your mother’s face off with an axe. That person isn’t getting released. But if your case is dismissed because you’re incompetent, that prevents any trial. There’s never a judicial determination that you actually did anything.”

  Brunelle frowned dubiously. “Yeah, but everybody knows you did.”

  “Maybe,” Edwards conceded, “but the doctors can hide behind that. ‘She was never found guilty. She came here because she’s sick. But now that we’re understaffed and overbooked, we’ve cured her and she can be released. Yay, us.’ Instead of twenty years, she’ll do twenty months. Maybe.”

  Brunelle’s expression hardened. “She murdered her mother.”

  Edwards offered a cynical grin. “But she’s sick, Dave. I just hope the docs out at Western State can cure her quickly.”

  Brunelle took in what Edwards was saying. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So, incompetency, huh?”

  Edwards shrugged a casual shoulder. “To start with. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try dim cap. It’s even better.”

  “Diminished capacity?” Brunelle translated. “That means you didn’t have the requisite intent to commit the crime.”

  “Exactly. You said yourself, she didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “No, I said she knew exactly what she was doing, she just didn’t think it was wrong.”

  “I dunno, Dave,” Edwards grinned. “I don’t think she had the intent.”

  “She didn’t just intend it, she planned it. Jesus, she almost cut her own thumb off holding her mother’s head still while she chopped some more. It couldn’t have been more intentional.”