"I'll get involved under one condition," Quinn said after he had checked off all the questions on his legal pad. "I want you to get evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist I know. She's one of the best in the country."
"Dr. Mancini?" Catherine asked.
At first, Catherine's answer surprised Quinn. Then he remembered that Catherine had covered Annie's case. "Yes, Dr. Mancini."
"Agreed."
"Good. I'll file my appearance tomorrow. I'll try to make it to Virginia to meet with you and Marc Boland early next week."
"Thanks," said Catherine. "And Mr. Newberg?"
"Quinn."
"Sorry. Quinn." Catherine paused, then made one final point. "I'm not crazy. Dr. Mancini will tell you that."
After Quinn ended the call, he asked Melanie to set up a new file. "Our client is Catherine O'Rourke. Criminal defense. Standard rates apply."
"Did you get a retainer?" asked Melanie. She was young and bookish, but she knew how to follow the money.
"Twenty-five thousand. Check's in the mail."
"In other words-no."
"This case is worth a million dollars in free publicity," Quinn argued, but even to him it sounded lame. "We should be paying her."
Melanie sighed and started filling out the new client form. "Are you trying to get fired?"
Catherine stayed busy during visiting hours, talking with her mom and sister as well as several friends and coworkers, all via closed-circuit television. Her editor, Ed Shaftner, was too busy to stop by, but Catherine's friends at the paper promised to deliver her message. She would agree to an exclusive interview with her fellow reporter Brian Radford. Also, she would be willing to write an exclusive daily column for the paper about her experience behind bars.
"Didn't you do that last time?" a friend asked.
"That was different. This will be real-time, not after the fact. It will focus on solutions and personalities, almost like a reality show, except printed."
Her friend seemed skeptical.
After a while, the steady stream of visitors wore Cat down. Her mom cried while Kelsey tried hard to stay upbeat, though her eyes were beet red too. With Cat's friends, it was the same questions, the same answers. "How are you doing?" Okay. "What's it like in there?" You don't want to know. "Is there anything I can do for you?" Not really.
When the last visitor departed, a deputy escorted Cat back to her cell.
Tasha was meeting with one of her own visitors, leaving Cat alone with Holly. Without speaking, Cat grabbed her pen and legal pad to make notes for her anticipated column. She looked for the pages she had churned out earlier. She noticed that Holly was watching her.
"Have you seen some notes I made earlier?" Cat asked.
"Yes."
"Do you know where they are?"
"Yes."
Cat raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
"We ran out of toilet paper," Holly said, smiling. "I used them and flushed them."
Cat looked at the nearly full roll of toilet paper sitting on the floor next to the toilet. Anger exploded in her head, ignited by a lack of sleep, the frustrations of the day, and her cellmate's unbridled arrogance. "You jerk," Cat said, seething.
Holly jumped up from her bed and took a few steps toward Cat's mattress. She stood there, towering over a still-seated Cat. "You gonna back that up, Barbie?"
Cat snorted in disgust. She refused to even look up at her cellmate. "Grow up."
"That's what I thought," said Holly. She took another step closer then placed her dirty shoe squarely on Cat's pillow. "Barbie's not so bad when Tasha ain't around."
Cat looked up at her and pointed to the foot. "Do you mind?"
Holly stood there for a moment, chuckled, and pulled her foot away. She walked back to her bed and sat down. Slowly, she removed her shoes. "Don't want to get my sheets dirty," she said.
43
After inspection on Wednesday morning, while the inmates were hanging out in the pod, Tasha pulled Cat into their cell. Cat noticed that a few other African-American inmates stood just outside the cell door, blocking the view from the pod.
"You're in," Tasha said. "A member of the Widows. It's mostly sisters, but we believe in equal opportunity."
Catherine hadn't anticipated this. She didn't want to join a gang, but it didn't seem like Tasha was really asking her opinion. It was more of an announcement, like Cat should be thanking Tasha for the honor.
"Just because you're a Widow doesn't mean you won't get attacked," Tasha warned. "It might even make it more likely. What it does mean, girl, is you got backup."
"How do I know who's in?" Cat asked.
Tasha glanced quickly around at the inmates standing at the door and smiled. "The mark," she said.
She grabbed a plastic cup from the sink and pulled Cat into a far corner of the cell. Tasha took another glance around and reached into a slit in her mattress. She pulled out baby oil and some matches.
"Where'd you get the matches?" Cat asked. She suspected they came from prison "trustees"- inmates specially selected to help with prison chores.
"No questions," Tasha said gruffly.
Tasha filled the plastic cup with baby oil and made a wick out of toilet paper. She lit the toilet paper and held a funneled piece of paper over the makeshift candle for several minutes, collecting black soot on the paper. Next, she mixed toothpaste with the black soot, forming a gooey black ink.
"Amazing," said Cat.
"That part's nothin'." Tasha said. "Wait till you see the tattoo gun. You know Felicia?"
Cat nodded.
"She ripped the motor out of her cassette player and mounted it to an ink pen using dental floss," Tasha explained. "She replaced the ink cartridge with a staple attached to the end of a spring. That staple serves as the needle. This stuff is the ink."
Cat's eyes went wide with disbelief.
"Yep," Tasha said, "Felicia is our resident tattoo artist. Drop your jumpsuit. Left hip, just above the buttocks. Every Widow has a spider tattoo."
Cat thought she might pass out. She hated needles in the first place, but unsanitized prison staples? No telling how many women had been tattooed with this same "needle." Or what diseases they might have.
But how could she say no? Did she want to offend a big portion of the inmate population by refusing to be part of the Widows? How could she survive on her own if she did?
"How big is the tattoo?" Cat asked.
"On your skinny butt? Not much bigger than a real black widow spider."
A few moments later, Cat nearly scraped the cement off the walls as Felicia used her crude tattoo gun on Cat's lower back. When Felicia finally announced she was finished, Cat decided not to even look.
"Two things," Tasha instructed, as Felicia left the cell. "First, you need a weapon. Every night, begin filing down the end of your toothbrush. Also, if you ever see another inmate get careless with their razor in the morning, before the guards collect them, grab it. I'll show you how to hide those things in your mattress. Second, when that tattoo dries, go and take a shower. That way, the other inmates will know you belong to us."
"Is Holly a member of a gang?" Cat asked.
"Uh-uh," Tasha responded. "That woman's psycho. Gangs don't take no psychos."
44
As usual, the phone messages piled up before Quinn even made it to work. He ignored them all, including three messages from Annie. He sent a fax to the Virginia Beach Circuit Court, noting his appearance as counsel of record for Catherine O'Rourke, then closed his office door so he could spend a few hours researching the victims of the Avenger of Blood, searching for common links in their pasts.
There were the obvious links-two criminal defendants who had beaten rape charges and three criminal defense lawyers. One of the lawyers, Rex Archibald, had represented one of the victims, Paul Donaldson. But neither Robert Carver Sr. nor his son, Bobby Carver, had ever represented Clarence Milburn. Quinn would need to research the rape victims. Maybe they would provide the missing connection.