DNA evidence. Psychotic visions. To Cat, it felt like the jury had already pronounced her guilt.
35
This time, they placed Cat in a cell with two other women. The cell was part of a pod that housed a total of thirty-four inmates. Cat's older cellmate, a woman probably in her forties, looked like she hadn't bathed or showered in a month. The woman had stringy hair, gingivitis breath, and a spare tire that would put a plumber to shame. She complained loudly when the guards stuck Cat and an extra mattress in the cell, turning her venom toward Cat as soon as the guards disappeared.
"Shut up, woman," said Cat's other cellmate, a young African-American woman with ripped biceps and a hard look that scared Cat. "She didn't ask for this cell."
Cat's defender jumped down from the top bunk and shook Cat's hand, her grip conveying a message that Cat had already deciphered. This woman's in charge.
"I'm Tasha," she said.
"Catherine."
"Don't mind Holly," Tasha said. "She gets this way when she doesn't take her medication."
But it wasn't Holly that unnerved Cat. The mouthy ones, in Cat's opinion, were not the dangerous ones. Tasha, on the other hand, had this eerie calmness and unsettling stare.
"What are you in for?" Tasha asked, sizing Cat up.
"They think I murdered someone," Cat responded, though she still couldn't believe it herself. "Maybe more than one person."
"And you're innocent, right?" Tasha said, her sarcasm obvious.
Cat felt almost embarrassed to admit it. "Yes."
"Imagine that," Tasha responded. "Holly's innocent too. They tried to say she's a druggie."
"I am innocent," Holly protested, eyeing Cat suspiciously.
"What are the odds?" Tasha asked. "I get the only two truly innocent women at the Virginia Beach city jail as my cellmates."
Cat didn't respond.
"You don't look like a serial killer," Tasha said.
"She does to me," said Holly. "Look at the eyes. She's psycho in the eyes."
Tasha leaned a little closer, staring at Cat and freaking her out. Cat looked down, avoiding Tasha's gaze.
"Maybe she's just scared," Tasha said.
Quinn caught the scene on the late news, bringing his channel surfing to an abrupt halt. An attractive woman in a bathing suit top and cotton shorts, her hands cuffed behind her back, accused of being a serial killer! The sunglasses prevented him from seeing the eyes, the first place Quinn had learned to look for signs of insanity.
From what little he could see, the woman looked scared. Confused. Ashamed. Could a woman this pretty really be a cold-blooded serial killer? Could she be the "Avenger of Blood"?
For some reason, the woman's name rang a bell. Catherine O'Rourke. They identified her as a reporter for the Tidewater Times. That was why the name sounded familiar; she had covered Annie's case. Intrigued, Quinn got on the Internet and Googled a few of the woman's articles. Catherine had given Quinn the benefit of the doubt during Annie's trial. He decided to do the same for her.
He studied a head shot of Catherine from a few months ago and compared it to her mug shot, already posted online. In the first picture, Catherine's large hazel eyes sparkled with life. They were playful and alluring, a woman comfortable in her own skin. In the disheveled mug shot there was desperation. She looked beyond the camera with a fearful and haunting stare that made Quinn wonder what was going on inside that pretty head.
Annie's case had been huge. But this one, the Avenger of Blood case, would dwarf it. The Avenger of Blood was a serial killer, not just an abused wife who struck back.
He took one more look at the earlier photo and then the mug shot. Interesting. It almost seemed like he was looking at two different women.
36
Catherine was already distraught, but her nerves frayed even further that first evening in jail. Friends tried to lift her spirits during visiting hours, but afterward the guards put her back in the same overcrowded pod. In the center of the pod was a two-story common area with a few bolted-down metal tables and picnic bench chairs. A total of fourteen cells lined the walls of the pod on two opposite sides and opened into the common area at all hours except during lockdown. A third wall contained open shower stalls. The fourth wall, the one opposite the shower stalls, was taken up by the thick bulletproof glass protecting the guard station where the deputies could watch every move of the inmates and lock every cell door or even spray the inmates down by remote control.
Inmates had a choice of hanging out in their own cells or going into the common area. But even if they stayed in their cells, the cell doors would be open except during lockdown, and there would be no escaping the taunting of other inmates. For Cat, the barbs during the first day had been nonstop.
Holly and several other inmates who had been in jail during Cat's first stay continued mockingly referring to her as "Barbie." Holly's first nickname for Catherine, which also started with a B, got nixed by the short-tempered Tasha.
"Call her that one more time, and I'll drive my foot all the way up to your backbone," Tasha threatened.
From then on, it was Barbie.
Cat hadn't realized how fortunate she had been during her first brief stay in the jail. Isolation had meant having her own private cell and at least a semiprivate toilet. But this time, there was no privacy. The "showers" were nothing more than three nozzles attached to the wall at the end of the pod opposite the guard station. The guards and everyone else in the pod could watch. The toilets weren't much better. Every cell had a stainless steel toilet and a stainless steel rinse basin attached to the wall, open for all to see. When Holly used the toilet after lockdown at 11:00 p.m. and Cat glanced around the cell, Holly jumped on her.
"What are you starin' at, Barbie?"
"I'm not staring at anything. Certainly not you," Cat responded, tired of her cellmate's nonsense.
"I'll stuff your head in this bowl when I'm done," Holly threatened.
Holly finished and walked slowly toward Cat's mattress. Tasha sat up on her bed and stared, though she didn't say a word. Cat tensed, ready to fight if necessary. Holly towered over her for a minute, laughed, then turned and went back to her own bed.
When Cat used the toilet a few minutes later, Holly stared at her the entire time. "How do you like it, Barbie? How do you like it?"
"Leave her alone," Tasha grunted.
Cat stayed awake the entire first night, wary of even the slightest movement from the bunks. She had already decided she would not submit quietly. If one of the others attacked her, Cat would punch, kick, and claw, screaming the entire time. Jail required a new level of toughness; only the strongest survived.
Cat was a survivor. She would forge alliances and fight to defend herself. Though the guards prohibited gangs, after just one day in the pod Cat sensed the existence of gang loyalty among certain women.
It was probably just a matter of time before Holly found an opportune time to make a move. If and when it happened, Cat would hold nothing back. Her reputation and survival, she knew, would depend on the results of that first fight.
Exhausted, Cat stared at the ceiling, counting the minutes until dawn.
At 8:30 a.m., the deputies placed handcuffs on Cat and walked her through several thick metal doors and down a long tunnel to the circuit court building. Once there, she was jammed in a small cinder block holding cell with about ten other inmates, all clad in orange jumpsuits and shackled at the wrists and ankles. Eventually a deputy led her into a conference room where Marc Boland was waiting. The deputy stood just outside the door.