By reason of insanity

23

The Avenger of Blood drove to the home of Paul Donaldson, found a parking spot on the street in front of Donaldson's house, and slouched down behind the wheel. In the past three weeks, the Avenger had been out here two other times.

The Avenger searched the streets for Donaldson's vehicle, a beat-up silver 2002 Volvo that was probably stolen. It was not around. The lights were on in the two-story white vinyl unit squeezed between nearly identical homes in Donaldson's neighborhood, but Donaldson apparently wasn't home.

At 11 p.m., Donaldson's live-in girlfriend, a Goth-looking woman in her twenties, came strutting out of the house, dressed for a night on the town. Black lace stockings. Straight and shiny black hair hanging over her face. A tight cotton top baring one shoulder. Blue lips. Black eyes. White face. The Avenger decided to follow her.

The girlfriend drove to the Mars Bar in the Shockoe Slip area of Richmond, an eerie place where the Avenger felt like a total misfit. Nevertheless, the Avenger found a booth in the corner and kept an eye on Paul Donaldson's girlfriend, watching intently as she flirted with a guy who made himself at home on the bar stool next to her. When they started making out, the Avenger snapped several pictures with a cell phone.

The Avenger found a spot a few feet away from the couple, discreetly snapped another shot, and even smiled while walking past them. The Goth woman stopped mid-kiss and stared back, as if pronouncing a curse with her eyes, but the Avenger just kept moving. A few minutes later, the Avenger drove out of the parking lot, the sweet taste of revenge pungent on half-smiling lips.

For motivation, the Avenger thought about the wasted life of Sherri McNamara, a woman who had been raped by Paul Donaldson. After his arrest, Donaldson and his lawyer had claimed that the sex had been consensual. They had three other witnesses testify that Sherri liked to play rough. Donaldson and his cohorts apparently lied well enough to create reasonable doubt, and the man even had the audacity to cast an accusatory glance at Sherri as he left the courtroom, according to press reports. Two weeks later, Sherri took her own life.

Now Donaldson would pay. And, since he had no children, he would have to pay himself.

By the time the Avenger finished, Donaldson would be wishing that the court had found him guilty. And Donaldson was just the warm-up act. The Avenger's most despised target was yet to come.

Catherine O'Rourke woke on Sunday morning in a cold sweat. She sat straight up in bed, frantically taking in her familiar surroundings, convincing herself that it was all just a nightmare. She felt like she had been wrestling all night, her sheets in a tangled mess.

Though it disturbed her, Catherine tried to focus on the details of her nightmare so she could write them down.

The nightmare started with a familiar scene, one she first experienced eight years ago and thought she had placed forever in the past. A single man, her attacker, came out of the fog, smiling and sweating, taunting her while she tried to run but could not move. His frat brothers, wearing Greek masks, laughed behind him, like a chorus of grotesque ghosts. The man started to unzip his pants.

But this time there was something new. Another man, lurking further in the background. A hooded figure, quietly watching. The Avenger.

Before the first man could attack Catherine, his face turned from lust to concern. He glanced over his shoulder at the Avenger, then dropped to his knees. The chorus of taunting became a chorus of screams. The Avenger extended a hand, pointed a finger, and the first man jerked in violent convulsions as the Avenger laughed.

And Catherine woke up, terrified.

With the images still burning in her mind, Catherine typed a series of cryptic notes into her computer. Rapist. Frat brothers. Same nightmare as before. Hooded figure entered from the shadows. No discernable face. She tried to remember the hand, the pointed finger. Was it the hand of a man or a woman? In truth, she couldn't tell. But the laugh, the one that startled her awake, was still very distinct. It was a sinister sound, haunting. A man's chilling laugh? Catherine typed. The hooded figure crippled the rapist. Electrocuted him?

Catherine saved the notes under the file "Avenger of Blood" and took a deep breath. She realized how tense she had become just thinking about the nightmare-racing heart, clenched muscles, the whole works. She needed to shake this off and get some perspective.

In four hours she was scheduled to meet with the chief of police, the assistant commonwealth's attorney, and Jamarcus Webb. She had concluded late yesterday afternoon that she really had no choice. If her visions could actually help them catch the kidnapper, how could she withhold that information? Still, she worried that coming forward would be crossing some type of line. After this meeting, her life would never be the same.

She put on her workout clothes, picked up the newspaper outside her door, and started brewing her own coffee, an inexpensive store brand, since Starbucks wasn't open yet. It was mid-May, but a cold front had moved through the area, leaving behind an uncharacteristic bite in the air. An outside thermometer said fifty-eight. She grabbed a sweatshirt, pulled it on, and headed out to the patio with her coffee and paper.

She turned first to her own column, "Journal from Jail," and went through the painful experience of reading her own words. Sometimes, the day after she wrote them, the words still resonated. Other times, she wondered what she had been thinking.

First, you strip off your clothes for an invasive full-body search. Next, they begin to strip away your dignity. Being in jail is not so much about confinement as it is about humiliation and invasion of privacy. If you're not antisocial before you enter, odds are you will be when you leave…

It was harsh, Catherine knew. But it was also true. Fortunately for her, she had no plans of returning anytime soon.

As she finished her first cup of coffee, Catherine thought about calling Marc Boland but talked herself out of it. After she fired William Jacobs, the paper's attorney, Cat had been forced to pay her own legal bills. Bo's rate was normally $350 an hour, but he had cut her a break-"only" $300. She couldn't afford to get him involved in this next matter. He would insist on going to the meeting with her. That alone could cost more than a thousand bucks. And Catherine wasn't even a suspect.

She finished reading the paper, changed from her slip-ons into her Rollerblades, and headed to the boardwalk. She started slowly, her muscles sore and tight. She would push through the first five minutes and loosen up. She could do some of her best thinking gliding down the boardwalk, the wind strong in her face, her quads beginning to burn. But this morning, for some reason, she just couldn't get going.

After ten minutes of laborious blading with skates that seemed to have lost their ability to glide, Catherine coasted to a stop. She leaned against the railing on the edge of the boardwalk and stared out at the ocean.

What's wrong with me? She was exhausted, as if she had run a marathon the night before. Plus, her mind was playing games on her. Summoning visions. Constructing nightmares. She felt like a totally normal person who had been dropped onto the set of The Twilight Zone.

She needed to talk with someone. Her mother and sister both lived seven hours away in central Pennsylvania, and her mom didn't need one more thing to worry about. The last time she had seen her dad was fifteen years ago, about six months after he left Cat's mom and filed for divorce. Her friends were wonderful but didn't understand a thing about the criminal justice system except what they picked up from CSI . A recent ex-boyfriend? She quickly put that thought out of her mind.

She started skating slowly back toward her house. She would tell the cops what she'd seen in the jail cell, and then maybe life would return to normal. She could go back to writing about crimes instead of envisioning them.

On her way, she tried to remember the last time she had failed to complete a workout-the last time she had felt so sapped of energy, so out of control.

She remembered it well. She was a senior in college. And she was trying to cope with the fact that a man she once loved had raped her.