"Not today," Quinn grumbled.
"The blood of the kidnapped babies is on your hands!" shouted the reverend.
"Your client is a baby killer!" echoed a younger woman.
"Baby killer! Baby killer!" The protesters and cameramen formed a moving mob around Quinn as he reached the courthouse steps. Red camera lights blinked while shutters clicked and whirred. Quinn kept his gaze straight ahead, tuning out the protesters as he entered the doors of the courthouse.
The door closed, and the welcome sound of relative silence flooded the hallways. The protesters seemed very far away.
"Good morning, Mr. Newberg," said one of the guards at the metal detector.
"Good morning, Deputy Aaronson."
Quinn plunked his loose change and keys inside a small plastic container to pass through the screener. "Quiet day, huh?" Aaronson asked.
Quinn smiled. "If this is your idea of a quiet day, I'd hate to see a riot."
This brought a big grin from the deputy. "If you win this case, you might just get your chance."
Quinn walked into the courtroom, placed his briefcase at the defense counsel table, said a few words to Marc Boland, and slipped through a side door into a small, gray hallway with no outside windows. Just off the hallway were two even smaller rooms hidden behind heavy metal doors with a single narrow slit about a third of the way up. On a typical court day, male inmates would be herded into one room and females into the other. For the past three days, Catherine had been the only occupant of the female cell. Her friends and sister had brought her a fresh change of clothes each day, and the deputy allowed her to put them on before entering the courtroom.
"Good morning," Cat said after the door to the courtroom closed behind Quinn. "Did you get any sleep last night?"
Quinn stood outside the cell, leaning against the wall. He cherished these few moments before court even though he couldn't see his client's face.
"Sleep is overrated."
"I know what you mean," Cat said.
Today, even more so than the last few days, Quinn could sense the tension in Cat's voice. Today the trial began in earnest.
"Did your friends find some clothes that fit?" Quinn asked, trying to lighten the mood. On Monday, Cat had discovered how much weight she had lost during her months of confinement; her dress had practically swallowed her slender body.
She started to say something, but the words apparently caught in her throat. Whenever she spoke about things that really mattered to her, Cat's voice had a deeper tone and a softness that Quinn had grown to recognize, a softness that he intended to showcase for the jury when Cat took the stand. "My friends went out and bought me three new outfits," Cat said. "It made me cry."
"That's the good thing about murder trials," Quinn said dryly. "You find out who your true friends are."
"And who they aren't."
Quinn checked his watch. In a few minutes, the bailiff would call court into session. Quinn needed to take one last look at his notes.
"Things are going to get a little heated today. Boyd Gates is a first-class jerk, and there's no telling what he'll do to get a reaction from you. If you lose your cool even one time, the trial is over. Our whole case is premised on the theory that the Catherine O'Rourke on display in the courtroom did not and would not commit these crimes. A different personality altogether is responsible. Having that alter ego suddenly appear at trial would look staged and manipulative."
"I know that, Quinn," Cat said. "And I promise not to bull-charge the prosecutor or the judge."
"That would be nice."
"No promises on Jamarcus Webb, though."
"Maybe I can hold you back if you go after him."
"Maybe," said Cat. "But then again, you've never seen me mad."
78
"My name is Boyd Gates, and I have the privilege of representing the Commonwealth of Virginia."
The prosecutor stood ramrod straight in front of the jury box, holding a legal pad in his right hand, his left hanging at his side. He wore a conservative blue suit and red tie. His bald pate seemed to attract and reflect every ray of artificial light in the courtroom, except for those drawn to the ultra-shiny black wingtip shoes, buffed and polished as if Gates's former navy commander might stop by the courtroom for a quick inspection.
"'This is insane. What kind of warped person would commit a crime like this? She must be crazy to think she could get away with it. She must be sick.'" Gates stopped and surveyed the jury. "These are common expressions we use when we hear about a horrendous crime like the one in question. But these sayings do not reflect the legal definition of insanity. If they did, no criminal audacious enough to commit a truly horrible crime would ever go to jail."
The last statement was hyperbole, but Quinn knew better than to object. He tried to look disinterested, scribbling a few notes on his legal pad, chin in hand. "Don't look so mesmerized," he whispered to Catherine.
"The test of insanity under Virginia law is twofold." Gates consulted his legal pad, though Quinn knew he had the test memorized. "The first part is this: was the defendant, Catherine O'Rourke, at the time of the murder of Paul Donaldson, suffering from a mental disorder that kept her from knowing the nature and quality of the act she committed or, if she did know it, that prevented her from appreciating that the act was wrong? Or second, if she understood the nature of right and wrong, was she unable to control her actions, the so-called 'irresistible impulse' rule?"
Gates stopped reading and looked back at the jurors. "That's a lot of lawyer talk, but it all boils down to this: the insanity plea cannot be used by a defendant to excuse coldblooded and premeditated murder. And one of the ways to determine whether the defendant knew her conduct was wrong is to ask yourself this question: did she try to cover up the crime afterward? In this case, the answer is a resounding yes.
"The defense will rely upon a well-traveled psychiatrist named Dr. Rosemarie Mancini, the same psychiatrist who testified that Mr. Newberg's sister was insane when she killed her husband-"
Quinn jumped to his feet. "Objection, Judge. That's improper argument, not an opening statement."
Gates turned to face the judge, adopting a posture of indignity. "It's a fact I'll prove at trial, Your Honor. It's a preview of the evidence, and it happens to be true."
"Of course it's true," responded Quinn. "But so what?"
Rosencrance gave him a stern look. "You can make your so-what argument during closing statements, Mr. Newberg. I'm going to allow mention of your expert's opinions in other cases to be admitted for whatever relevance the jury chooses to grant them."
"Thank you, Your Honor," Quinn said grudgingly. He took his seat.
"As I was saying," Gates continued, "Dr. Mancini will suggest that this defendant has dissociative identity disorder, something that used to be called multiple personality disorder. Dr. Mancini will claim that, because of an alleged rape that occurred eight years ago, Ms. O'Rourke developed a second personality, one that has the ability to completely take over her body, one that the Catherine O'Rourke sitting here today didn't even know existed.
"But Dr. Mancini's opinion raises a slew of questions and ignores a mountain of evidence. First, the questions."
Quinn noticed that the jury seemed to be paying rapt attention to Gates. The prosecutor had chosen to forgo the normal chronological recitation of events and jump right into the core issues. To Quinn's chagrin, the tactic seemed to be working.
"If Ms. O'Rourke was indeed raped in college, could that rape have caused this entirely different personality, this so-called Avenger of Blood, to spring out of nowhere eight years later? Our expert witnesses will tell you that dissociative identity disorder is extremely rare and is almost always the result of persistent childhood abuse. If Ms. O'Rourke does have this psychosis and it developed from one instance of rape, then we are witnessing a first-of-its-kind occurrence, medical history in the making.