By reason of insanity

27

Paul Donaldson found the envelope in his mailbox. It contained no postmark but was addressed to him and marked "personal." When he opened it, he found a cryptic note composed of words cut out from various magazines. "Your lover is having an affair. If you want to know more, meet me in the back corner of the Hooters parking lot on West Broad Street at 11 p.m. Bring five hundred dollars and no weapons. Learn the name of the mystery man! Come alone."

The envelope also contained two pictures. The photos were dark and grainy, but Donaldson could tell that the woman was Rachel and that she was draped all over another man. Both pictures were taken from behind the man, so the back of the skinny runt's head was all Donaldson could see.

He studied the pictures carefully to see if this could possibly be airbrushed or whatever it was they did to doctor pictures these days. He analyzed the details for a few minutes, trying to figure out what bar the pictures had been taken in.

He fumed at the thought of Rachel's unfaithfulness, his rage so full that his hand literally began to shake. After everything he had done for her-how could she betray him? humiliate him in public like this? He had been faithful. He had bought her things. Kept her in clothes. Fed her drug habits. He had sacrificed so much to keep her happy.

Now this?

How could he have let himself fall for a woman this deceptive? As he stood there considering the treachery, his humiliation and anger turned into a blinding rage. He conjured up thoughts of spectacular revenge. He would cut off this man's head, then leave it on Rachel's side of the bed, Godfather-style. He would kill them both together so they could burn in hell with each other forever. He wanted to make an example of her, to somehow make her hurt even more than she had hurt him.

But he was just dreaming. None of that was really possible. He had beaten the system once. This time he would have to be careful, more subtle. He would find out the identity of Rachel's lover and kill the man. In an out-of-the-way place, he would show Rachel the man's dead corpse and watch her reaction. And after she begged him to forgive her, Donaldson would kill Rachel too.

He would dispose of the bodies far away from Richmond, Virginia. And he would be careful to leave no evidence.

First he needed the lover's name. Next he would have to kill the person who took these photos. He couldn't risk the possibility that this photographer would have a fit of conscience after finding out that Rachel and her lover had disappeared. The photographer might go to the police.

Donaldson walked from his mailbox to his car and slid the envelope under the driver's seat. Before he left, he would sheath his knife in his favorite pair of boots and tuck a gun in his waistband. He would down a few brews-not enough to slow him down, just enough to lower his inhibitions a notch or two. He would show up at Hooters a few minutes after eleven, nine hours from now.

He hadn't asked for this fight, but he wasn't going to run from it. Nobody made a fool of Paul Donaldson and lived to tell about it.

Marc Boland was all business, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, when Catherine showed up at his office that afternoon. He offered Catherine a glass of water with ice and poured himself one as well, then sat across from her at a round table in the corner of his office. As they talked, he took notes on a yellow legal pad and gently asked probing questions in his soft Southern drawl.

Catherine told him the story of the visions. He asked the usual questions about whether she could make out any features on the hooded figure, and she gave the usual answers assuring him that she could not. He asked detailed questions about her whereabouts on the days and nights surrounding the abduction of the Carver twins and Rayshad Milburn. He frowned as he realized she had no alibis that would hold water.

After nearly forty-five minutes, Bo studied his legal pad for an inordinate length of time, looked up, and lowered his eyebrows. "I believe every word you've told me, Catherine, but we've got to prepare for the commonwealth's attorney's approach to these same facts. To do that, I'll have to ask a few questions that will make you uncomfortable. Remember, our conversations are absolutely protected by the attorney-client privilege. Okay?"

Bo was already making Catherine uncomfortable, but she nodded anyway. "Sure."

"The morning after these two kidnappings, did you feel unusually tired? Was anything out of place? Like, for example, were your clothes or shoes dirty or soiled? Did you notice any blood anyplace? Were you cut or scratched in any way?"

Catherine should have been accustomed to these types of insinuations, but the questions still bothered her. "I don't remember anything unusual," she said tentatively. She thought about Sunday morning and the level of fatigue she had experienced. She had chalked that up to her hyperemotional prison experience. "I mean, I certainly don't remember any blood on my hands or muddy sneakers or anything like that."

"I'm no expert in psychology," Bo said, "but there are cases of multiple personality disorder where a person is actually taken over by a second or third personality, and the various personalities don't even know that the other personalities exist. Most often, multiple personality disorder is caused by extensive childhood abuse or trauma." Bo took a swig of water and placed his pen on the table. "If there's anything like that in your background, Catherine, I really need to know about it."

Silently, Catherine weighed her options. She stared down at her water, trying to summon the strength to talk about the rape. Why couldn't she put this behind her? It had been eight years ago. Was it really necessary to reopen it all?

"Catherine?" Bo prompted softly. He looked at her expectantly, as if he already knew.

Finally she looked up at him. She had only talked about this with one other man, a boyfriend who hadn't worked out. But she found sympathy in Bo's eyes.

"It was a frat party," she said, starting slowly. "The guy's name was Kenny Towns. I had dated him a few months earlier…"

She told Bo all the details she could remember. The three or four drinks she'd had that night. Flirting with Kenny. How he'd coaxed her into the bedroom only to have her pull away in the middle of some passionate kissing. "I can't do this," she had said to him. "Not now. Not like this."

Kenny was agitated, telling Cat she had no right to get him all worked up and just stop. She left the room angry.

Later that night, Kenny came over and apologized. They went outside for a drink on the patio. Cat would never forget what happened next. After a few minutes and half a drink, she felt like she had chugged a whole bottle of tequila. The wooziness, the slurring of her words. To Cat, it was like watching herself lose control, as if she had stepped outside her own body, observing with detached fascination as an incredibly drunk Catherine lost all of her inhibitions and coordination. She tried to stand, but Kenny had to help stabilize her. She remembered wrapping her arms around Kenny to keep from falling. She remembered staggering back to the bedroom with him.

She regained consciousness the next morning, lying on a couch in the fraternity house lobby, the taste of vomit in her mouth.

Cat stopped and looked at Marc Boland, tears rimming her eyes. "You don't need the details," she said. "I was raped. Maybe more than once. I started asking questions of some of Kenny's fraternity brothers and some of the girls at the party. I got a bunch of vague answers. One girl said that Kenny took me back into the bedroom and that later some of the other guys came in too. The next day, I did some research on date rape drugs and found out a bunch of stuff about GHB. The problem is that it only shows up in a urine test and you generally have to take that test within twelve hours.

"One of Kenny's friends was the son of the prosecuting attorney for that county," Catherine said softly, the emotions of the rape making her voice raw. "Some of the other guys said they would testify against me if I claimed I was raped. Some of them said I was really drunk that night and came on to them, which I didn't. It made me realize that maybe they had raped me too and were worried about whether I had preserved the evidence against them. A few promised to testify I had had sex with them at other times, which wasn't true either."

She stared out the window, her eyes clouding with tears. "I decided to just let it go. A few weeks later, the depression settled in. I went to a few counseling sessions. Got a prescription. But mostly, I just avoided that part of campus and tried to pretend it never happened."

Catherine wiped away a few tears with the back of her hand. Bo stood up, walked over to his desk, and brought a box of tissues to the table.

"I still have nightmares sometimes," Catherine said, pulling out a tissue and drying her eyes. "But it was a one-time event. Eight years ago." She smiled gamely. "I don't think it turned me into a serial killer."

"You're a victim, not a psychopath." Bo said it with real conviction, just the words Catherine needed. "I used to be a prosecutor. Guys like Kenny deserve to be locked up for life."

He paused, and Catherine looked into the boyish eyes. She saw an intensity there she hadn't seen before.

"Everybody deserves a defense under our system of justice. But I personally don't represent sex offenders."

"I heard that about you," Catherine responded. "I guess it's one of the things that drew me to you as a lawyer."

Bo asked a few more questions and then suggested a break. When they reconvened, he went into lawyer mode and gave her the don't-talk-to-anybody-about-anything-related-to-this-case spiel. He straightened his legal pad and put his pen down. "There's something else you ought to consider. I would never advise a client to destroy potential evidence, Catherine, and in your case, there is no evidence to destroy." He paused, as if to make sure Catherine caught his next point. "But if the authorities do try to pin this on you, they will swoop into your home with a search warrant and confiscate everything in sight. Computers, journals, shoes, gloves… everything. I've seen even innocent clients burned by random statements in an e-mail or instant message or on an Internet site they accessed. And with you actually covering the various exploits of the Avenger, and possibly doing research to supplement your reporting, there's no telling what's on your hard drive."

Bo shifted and took another sip of water. "Right now, there's no outstanding warrant or subpoena that would keep you from disposing of any personal property, and I'm not saying you should. But I think you might be interested to know about one client who thought he had deleted all kinds of incriminating documents from his hard drive. He even took a hammer to his computer and shattered it into a dozen pieces. Darned if the feds didn't reconstruct every keystroke this genius had made over the prior thirty days." Bo smiled to himself. "We pled him out on that one."

"I understand," Catherine said.

"And one last thing."

"Okay."

"I need to know the name of your confidential source."

"Why?"

"For your own protection," Bo answered. No blinking; no hesitation; all business. "I need to call your source and tell him or her to make this go away. Your source needs to know that we want to protect him or her but that I'll burn the source if I have to. Your source needs to have every motivation to help us out."

"I can't reveal my sources, Bo."

Bo set his jaw and stared back at Catherine. He apparently wasn't used to clients with their own opinions. "You've been noble, Catherine, but don't be stubborn. This isn't contempt of court we're talking about here, a few days in the slammer. This is child abduction and possibly murder."

Catherine sat speechless for a moment, trying to sort out her conflicting duties and emotions.

"I'm trying to help you," Bo said. "Freedom of the press is a nice concept. But you're my client, not the press." He leaned toward her. "Let me do my job."

"I'll call you tomorrow," Catherine said, her tone indicating the issue wasn't open for further debate.

Later that afternoon, Catherine began the process of backing up all the documents and e-mails she wanted to keep. It would take her a day or two, and then she would drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, stopping to dump her computer into the vast expanses of the bay.

For the first time in her life, Catherine felt like a common criminal.