By reason of insanity

76

Catherine ate lunch quickly and went to her cell to read. The other inmates in her pod congregated at the metal tables, finishing their lunches or playing cards or arguing about anything and everything. Tasha and another woman had pulled a mattress from somebody's cell into the open area and now alternated between sit-ups on the mattress and push-ups with their feet elevated on the benches of the metal tables. All the while, the TV blabbered on as the trustee in charge of the television surfed the channels.

When Catherine heard shouting and catcalls from the pod, she looked out to see most of the inmates glued to the TV. The level of noise had dropped by several decibels.

"Get out here, O'Rourke!" Tasha shouted.

Catherine put down her book and shuffled warily out of the cell. The last thing she needed to see was another "update" about her case.

…

She stopped in her tracks just outside her cell door. On the screen, big as life, was the face that had haunted her nightmares for years. Kenny Towns was eight years older now but looked exactly the same. Shorter haircut. A more professional bearing. But the same arrogant smirk.

She hated this man.

"He's hot," said one of the inmates. Others joined the commentary, making lewd comments about what they'd like to do with Kenny.

"Shut up!" yelled Tasha.

Kenny's lawyer sat next to him as Kenny answered questions from a former prosecutor now making a living as a CNBC host.

"Sure, we had sex," Kenny was saying. "But it was always consensual."

Catherine felt the pressure building inside her head and chest. She wanted to turn away, but somehow she couldn't.

"On more than one occasion?" asked the host.

"Yes, more than one occasion." Kenny smirked in a way that said the conquering hero had been intimate with his conquest too many times to count. "We were college students. We had an ongoing relationship."

The catcalls started again, so loud this time that Catherine couldn't hear the next question. But she heard Kenny say that a few other fraternity brothers had called recently to tell him they had been sexually involved with Catherine as well. One of them said that Catherine had threatened to drag Kenny into her murder case.

Cat felt her face flush as the taunting in the cell merged with the roaring in her head. She looked around at the inmates-smiling, mocking her, making all manner of suggestive noises.

"I've got a family," Kenny was saying. "A wife and kids. The last thing I wanted was to be dragged into something like this-a desperate woman's lawyers accusing me of things I didn't do."

"Shut up!" Cat yelled, more to the television than the inmates. "Shut. Up."

"Chill, woman," one of the inmates said.

"I wish he'd accuse me of a few of those things!" said another, and everybody laughed.

"I mean it," Cat said. She turned on the trustee as her anger exploded. "Turn this off!" she demanded.

The woman shrugged. "We already voted. Democracy at work."

Cat stormed toward the woman. "Shut it off!" she yelled. She turned toward a table of inmates right behind her. She grabbed an inmate's plastic tray and flung the half-eaten lunch at the elevated TV screen. She missed, so she grabbed another one and this time hit the mark. She cleared another table with one sweep of her arm, sending trays of food flying to the floor.

The bars of the pod seemed to pulse and billow, keeping time to the anger-laced adrenaline flowing through Cat's body. She was vaguely aware of the inmates staring at her, the doors near the guard post clanging open, Tasha coming toward her to calm her down.

Cat whirled toward the trustee again, stopping just inches away. "Turn it off now!" she demanded. She grabbed the remote and spun back toward the television just as the guards reached her. One knocked her to the floor, facedown. A second put a knee in her back. They cuffed her hands and dragged her to her feet, escorting her out of the pod toward solitary confinement.

As Cat left, she could still hear the TV in the background, the grating voice of Kenny Towns protesting his innocence. "I feel sorry for Catherine O'Rourke," he was saying. "I hope she gets the psychological help she needs. I just wish she had left me out of this."

Cat walked without resistance toward the isolation unit. She had never felt so powerless in her life. The man who had raped her, a man who was never brought to justice, who had never even apologized, was now playing the victim! Her insides roiled in rage. She wanted to rip his heart out, the same thing he had done to her.

Three days later, when Catherine O'Rourke left solitary confinement, she made a series of collect calls to Quinn Newberg. The first two times she called, he didn't answer. She reached him on her third try.

"I'm ready to change my plea," Cat said.