And then Billy pulled out his ace.
He swallowed the last of his beer and slid a manila folder across the table to Quinn. "This one'll be on the house," he said. "It's gonna be a long day for you boys tomorrow."
Quinn assessed Billy with a sideways look. Billy stood and Quinn did likewise, taking Billy's card before he shook the PI's hand. After Billy left, Quinn opened the manila folder.
It was a summons for Virginia Beach General District Court, Criminal Division, on charges of assault and battery. The named defendant was Catherine O'Rourke, and from the description, the charges were obviously the result of Catherine's attack on her cellmate, a woman named Holly Stephenson.
What surprised Quinn about the document was the date: June 3. Tomorrow. Somehow Billy had gotten his hands on a summons from the commonwealth's attorney's office that wasn't even scheduled to be filed until the next day.
This charge would compound the difficulty of Catherine's defense. If nothing else, it would give the media one more nail as they constructed Catherine's coffin, even before she went to trial. Plus, if Gates could get this assault case to trial first and obtain a conviction, he might be able to use it on cross-examination if Catherine took the stand in her murder trial.
Included with the summons were several oversize photographs showing Holly Stephenson's bloody scalp as she lay unconscious on the floor of her cell. There were photos of the rinse basin, photos of the bloody concrete floor, and close-ups of Holly's stitches. They would undoubtedly be plastered all over the television tomorrow.
At least now Quinn knew it was coming. He called the number on Billy Long's card.
"We didn't talk rates yet," Billy said when he answered.
Quinn smiled to himself. Long was exactly the kind of man he needed.
53
Quinn and Dr. Mancini met Marc Boland at 3:45 in his eighteenth-floor office suite at the Armada Hoffler Tower in Virginia Beach's Town Center. Quinn couldn't help but notice that the premier conference room for Boland and Associates looked like a janitor's closet compared to the luxuries of his own firm. Sure, Boland's conference room had plush burgundy leather chairs, rich mahogany trim, and ornate wood molding, but those were considered the bare minimum in Vegas, your ante just to get in the game. Boland had no original masterpieces hanging on the wall, no teakwood imported from Thailand for the conference table, no authentic Persian rugs.
It wasn't that Quinn was snobbish about furnishings; he saw it more as symbolic of the sophistication of Vegas criminal defense lawyers versus their Virginia Beach counterparts. It was like a member of the Yankees visiting the clubhouse of the Toledo Mud Hens. It wasn't the clubhouse; it was just a different level of ball.
Boland burst into the conference room a few minutes after Quinn and Rosemarie had settled in. Quinn told Boland about the new charges that would be filed against Catherine, but Boland shrugged it off. "Have you guys made dinner plans?" he asked.
Not even 4:00, and the man is talking dinner?
Quinn and Rosemarie looked at each other. "Not really."
"Good, then pack up your stuff. We've got some major decisions to make and we've got to be at our creative best," Boland declared. "Stuffy conference rooms don't do it for me."
Quinn was skeptical. It was a muggy day in early June, and it seemed to Quinn like Boland was suggesting something outside, like an elementary class sitting in a circle on the schoolhouse lawn. But Boland's enthusiasm carried the day, and a few minutes later Quinn and Rosemarie were following Boland down the interstate in Quinn's rental car. They headed straight for the oceanfront until they took the Birdneck Road exit, wound their way through an established neighborhood, and parked in the lower parking lot of a place called the Cavalier Golf and Yacht Club.
Boland alighted from his car with his tie gone and his sleeves rolled up. Quinn had dressed casual, though Rosemarie Mancini, ever proper, had on a professional blue dress and matching pumps. Boland waved to the boat hands milling about as he led Quinn and Rosemarie down a long pier lined with expensive yachts. They reached the end of the docks and the boat that dwarfed all others-Boland's boat, Class Action according to the moniker on the front.
Class Action was a sixty-eight-foot custom-designed yacht, Boland explained, complete with all the gimmicks and toys. The boat looked sleek, Quinn had to admit, with its polished white shell and its dark tinted windows reflecting the sunlight. He and Rosemarie followed Boland aboard, passing through the sliding glass doors on the back of the boat and into a room Boland called the salon.
The room had a soft leather couch and easy chair along one set of windows and a pop-up large-screen television on the other side. A full bar lined the far wall. Apparently this yacht was the Virginia Beach equivalent of the Signature Towers.
They followed Boland up a set of steps into the covered pilothouse and galley area, which gave Quinn's kitchen a run for the money. The bank of controls to the side of the pilot's seat looked like it would be sufficient to pilot a 747.
"Something to drink?" Boland asked, opening the door to a well-stocked refrigerator. Quinn and Boland each grabbed a Corona; Dr. Mancini stuck with bottled water. Boland picked up some hamburgers, hot dogs, buns, and condiments, tossed a bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa to Quinn, and assembled his grilling tools. He took his guests up another set of steps to the flybridge area on top of the boat, a semicovered sitting area with plush white leather swivel chairs, another hardwood bar, and an outdoor grill. Boland put on an old baseball hat he pulled out of a compartment and fired up his grill.
"Now can we start arguing about strategy?" Quinn asked. He had to admit he was enjoying the view and the nice little breeze coming from the river. It was a branch of the Lynnhaven, Boland had explained, that eventually led out to the Chesapeake Bay. Quinn opened the bag of chips and the salsa. The smells of the gas grill made him hungry, though it was only 5:00.
"We've got a preliminary hearing next week," Boland began, "and we're getting slaughtered in the press. Quinn and I need to start hitting the airwaves immediately, countering this new charge and getting Catherine's case out there." He plopped some burgers on the grill and pointed toward the river. "Look at that! Egrets!"
Quinn twisted in his chair to watch the beautiful white birds in flight.
"We can't be seen as flip-flopping on this," Boland continued. "If we go out there right now and claim innocence, we'll look like shysters later on if we claim insanity. On the other hand, if we claim insanity now, we're admitting Catherine killed this guy, so we'd better be certain that's where we want to go." He looked at Rosemarie. "Would you even be willing to support such a claim?"
"It's too early to tell. An insanity plea would depend on a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, and that's a very tricky diagnosis. I would need several sessions with the patient before I could make a definitive recommendation."
"I thought the whole idea of split personality disorder was pretty much discredited these days," Boland said, poking at the meat on the grill. "I thought most psychiatrists believed it was simply the result of suggested scenarios from therapists."
Rosemarie shot Quinn the briefest sideways glance before she gave Boland a condescending smile. He'll learn not to challenge the woman, thought Quinn, kicking back and tilting his face to the sun.
"There is some controversy about the diagnosis, to be sure," Rosemarie said, with just a tinge of snootiness. "But it's still in the DSM-IV-TR, and dissociation is recognized by most experts as a symptomatic presentation in response to trauma or extreme emotional distress and in association with emotional dysregulation and borderline personality disorder. Documented cases of full-blown DID, where the patient's ego actually fractures into distinct personalities to deal with different situations, are rare, but they do exist."