By reason of insanity

51

Three days later

The screening process at the Virginia Beach city jail made Quinn think he had stepped back in time and ended up at Alcatraz. Perhaps this was the way they always treated out-of-state lawyers, or perhaps he should have stopped to change out of the jeans, boat shoes, and polo shirt he had been wearing on the plane. Whatever the reason, Quinn endured two pat downs, a metal detector, and a hand search of his briefcase before he found himself waiting in a cinder block-walled cubicle for Catherine O'Rourke.

He was separated from the prisoner's side of the cubicle by a block wall and a window of heavy glass. There was a slit at the bottom of the window for passing notes or pleadings-anything else and a lawyer could lose his visitation rights.

They brought Catherine in ten minutes later, her wrists cuffed together. She slumped forward as she took her place on the opposite side of the glass, watching Quinn with a certain wariness.

"Thanks for coming," she said.

"No problem."

Quinn stared at her for a moment, surprised by the transformation. He had watched the video of her arrest a dozen times, till the image had been burned in his brain. Plus, the networks had been running stories about Catherine all weekend, once they learned about the altercation at the jail. They used stock footage with photos that showed a captivating young woman with a sly half smile and mysterious dark eyes.

But the woman sitting before Quinn had short, unkempt hair, dark circles under those eyes, and the beginnings of a red rash on the side of her neck.

She managed a wan smile. "That bad?"

Quinn felt himself blush. "I've seen worse," he said. "A lot worse." He jotted the date on his legal pad. "Jail's no picnic."

"So I've learned."

Quinn launched into his standard spiel about the need for honesty and full disclosure. He learned Catherine was taking some antidepressants, 20 mg per day of Lexapro, which she said she intended to stop taking once she left solitary confinement. He asked questions about her alibi and the methohexital and the DNA evidence against her. He had her describe in detail the rape by Kenneth Towns and possibly others, as well as the cover-up by Towns's frat brothers. As she did, Quinn put down his pen and studied her carefully, struck by the way she narrated the episode in an even voice, looking mostly at the slit in the glass, as if the entire event had happened to another person.

"How did that make you feel?" he asked.

Catherine looked at him, the almond eyes turning hard as they came into focus. "Violated. Ashamed because I didn't report it. Angry." Her tone underscored the lingering effects. "I've had nightmares for years."

"Tell me about them."

In a subdued voice, Catherine described the recurring scenes of Kenny and his frat brothers. Occasionally she would stop to collect her thoughts or scratch the side of her neck. Quinn probed for specifics, asking follow-up questions that clearly made her uncomfortable.

Next he turned to the matter of Catherine's visions-what she had seen, how she had felt, the differences between her visions and her nightmares. When he felt his client wearing down, he packed up his briefcase and emphasized the importance of Catherine's being absolutely forthcoming with Dr. Mancini. He asked Catherine if she had any questions.

"Aren't you going to ask me if I did it?"

Quinn furrowed his brow and studied his client. "I normally have the psych eval done first."

Catherine returned his gaze. "I'm innocent, Quinn. I need you to know that." She paused, glancing down for just a moment. When she returned her gaze, tears rimmed her eyes. "With God as my witness, I didn't even know those people."

Quinn wanted to reach out and touch her, a hand on her arm, anything to show his support. But three inches of bulletproof glass separated them. "I believe you," he said.

He wondered if she could sense his doubt.

Catherine shuffled back to her solitary-confinement cell, a place that had become hell on earth. Her spirits had sunk lower each day, her isolation interrupted only by an occasional visit from the jail psychiatrist and one brief visit from Marc Boland. The rest of the time, Catherine wrote in her journal and obsessed over the mounting evidence against her, demoralized by her inability to do anything about it.

But Quinn, like Marc Boland, seemed to believe in her case. She liked Quinn's style-thorough, confident, realistic. She could understand why the man did so well with juries. He didn't seem as outgoing as Marc Boland, but Quinn had a quiet intensity that he expressed through his eyes, the smoldering look of a man who knew more than he was saying. You wanted Marc Boland to be your friend. You wanted to make sure Quinn Newberg was not your enemy.

She took a few deep breaths in the quietness of her cell. Day by day, the place seemed to be closing in on her. But for once, it seemed like she could actually fill her lungs, the vicelike pressure on her chest relaxing just a little. She stood and headed for the rinse basin. For the first time since going into solitary confinement, she felt like washing her face and what little hair she had left. It wasn't a nice warm shower at her beach duplex, but the feel of water trickling down her face and dripping from her chin made her feel close to human again.

She had opened up about some painful moments to Quinn, though she had tried to do it on autopilot, keeping her feelings at bay. It felt therapeutic. Yet there were still a lot of things he didn't know. Like her guttural revulsion when a recent boyfriend had tried to get intimate, releasing a flood of horrific memories.

She was smart enough to know that some thoughts are so painful, some memories so intense, you need to hide them even from your own lawyer.