Quinn put a calming hand on Cat's knee. "I'll handle it."
"You're sure that's what she said?" Gates asked. "That she should have done Towns first."
"God's truth," Tasha responded. "Every word."
"And what did you understand that to mean?"
"That she wished she had capped this dude Towns first, as opposed to all these other guys."
"Did she appear normal at the time?"
"Objection!" This time it was Quinn.
"Sustained."
"Describe her demeanor when she made the statement."
"She was real calm," said Tasha. "I was like, 'Whoa, girl, you are cold.'"
88
"You've got a knack for picking friends," Quinn whispered to Catherine before he stood to examine Tasha. "Do you know if she took the stand in her last trial?"
Cat furrowed her brow. "I don't know, but I bet she did. She's pretty arrogant."
"Mr. Newberg?" prompted Judge Rosencrance.
Quinn grabbed a thick legal brief from the table, then stood and buttoned his suit coat, taking his time. He walked closer to the witness box than normal.
"Did you discuss your testimony with Mr. Gates before taking the stand?"
Tasha looked wary, even hostile. "I told him what I was going to say. That's all."
"Did he show you this document?" Quinn asked, waving it around a little with his left hand.
"No. I don't even know what that is."
"The prosecutor's handbook," Quinn said, "where it says, on page 53, 'If your expert witness falls apart on the stand, you can always fall back on a jailhouse snitch.'"
Tasha looked confused.
"Objection!" shouted Gates, his face growing red. "That's ridiculous."
Rosencrance looked like she might be trying to suppress a smirk. "It's cute; I'll give you that much," she said to Quinn. "But this is a murder trial, and we don't do cute in my courtroom during murder trials. This is a warning, Mr. Newberg. Next time it will cost you."
"Yes, Your Honor."
Rosencrance turned to the jury. "Please ignore that last comment by Mr. Newberg. It was just grandstanding, not evidence."
"Let's talk about your record," Quinn said. He placed the legal brief back on his counsel table. "How many felony convictions do you have, and what are they for?"
"Two," said Tasha. "One for possession and one for being an accomplice."
"An accomplice to what?"
"Armed robbery," Tasha said grudgingly, shooting daggers at Quinn with her eyes.
"Given the fact that you're in the city jail, I presume you're facing trial for another offense?"
Quinn waited for an objection-convictions were normally fair game but not accusations on crimes that hadn't yet gone to trial. When no objection came, it told Quinn what he wanted to know.
"Yes," Tasha answered. "Violation of state firearms laws."
"That's a serious offense," Quinn said. "Did the prosecutors promise you any kind of deal in exchange for your testimony in this case?"
"They said they might consider a deal."
"Might consider a deal. What kind of deal?"
"Maybe plead to makin' a false statement to a law-enforcement officer."
Quinn smiled. "What a deal! How could you say no to that? That sounds like it's only a misdemeanor. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"So, instead of facing your third felony and a long jail sentence under Virginia's three-strikes-and-you're-out law, you're looking at a simple misdemeanor?"
"Yeah."
"Maybe you could have asked Mr. Gates to throw in a small car."
"Objection." This time Gates didn't even raise his voice, as if Quinn wasn't worthy of getting a rise out of him.
"Mr. Newberg…"
"Sorry, Judge. I keep forgetting I'm not in Las Vegas anymore." Quinn smiled, but Rosencrance did not.
"Proceed," she said.
"As I understand your testimony, you told my client not to pretend to be the Avenger during a session with Dr. Mancini because lying gets complicated and she might get caught."
"Exactly."
"Is that based on your own experience with fabricating testimony?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"This last conviction of yours-the accomplice thing?-am I correct that you took the stand in your own defense?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"And a jury of your peers decided not to believe you, right?"
Tasha shrugged. "They got it wrong."
"But you're hoping that maybe this jury will believe you. Maybe this will be your lucky day."
"Objection. Argumentative."
"Sustained."
Quinn headed back to his counsel table and stopped. I don't know what possesses me to do this, he thought.
"When you get out of jail, Ms. Moorehouse, do you have any plans to visit Las Vegas?"
Tasha furrowed her brow. "No."
"Too bad. Guys like me love to see tourists like you walk into our poker rooms-always sure that this is going to be their lucky day."
"Objection!" Gates shouted.
This time, there was no smirk hiding under Rosencrance's glare. "Dismiss the jury!" she ordered.
After a tongue-lashing, she levied a two-thousand-dollar fine against Quinn for grandstanding. She instructed Marc Boland to keep his out-of-state co-counsel under control. She told Quinn he was in danger of having his pro hac status removed, making him ineligible to continue on this trial.
Quinn acted contrite, apologizing for pushing it too far. He said all the right things in all the right places, but a single thought kept floating through his head.
It was worth every penny.
89
One thing about solitary confinement-it gave a person time to think. And to read. On Friday night, her third consecutive night in solitary, Cat did a lot of both.
She might have been the only one, but she still believed in her own innocence. Most of the time. Not just innocence by reason of insanity, a game that lawyers played, but total and complete exoneration. She wasn't the Avenger of Blood. She hadn't killed Paul Donaldson. And she certainly hadn't killed those babies. Why wouldn't anyone believe her?
Cat was convinced that her visions were the key to solving this case. A few weeks ago, when she had embraced this conclusion, she'd decided to explore every possible explanation for the visions. If she knew what caused them, maybe she could figure out why she stopped having them. And, more importantly, the identity of the real killer.
She'd read the biblical book of Daniel at least three times. In Cat's visions, there was handwriting on the wall. Belshazzar, king of Babylon, had seen handwriting on the wall. Daniel had interpreted what that handwriting meant. All throughout the book of Daniel, kings had dreams or visions, and Daniel interpreted them. All the dreams and visions were messages from God. His finger literally wrote the words on the wall.
Dr. Mancini had seemed to embrace this spiritual explanation, at least in the early days before she had proffered her report about Cat's insanity. "God communicates through His written Word," she had told Cat. "And He showed us what love was like when He sent His Son to live among us. But occasionally, He also communicates through dreams and visions. Treat it as a gift, Catherine. Embrace these visions as God working through you."
But Cat was sitting in prison as a result of the visions. They certainly didn't feel like a gift.
She explored other explanations as well, scientific theories, but few of these seemed very plausible. Cat had read two books about science and the paranormal cover to cover. One book, Spook, dealt with scientific explanations of various aspects of the afterlife. It was, according to the author, "spirituality treated like crop science." The other book, Ghost Hunters, was about William James and a group of scientists called the Society for Physical Research, detailing their search for scientific proof of life after death.