By Reason of Insanity (27 page)

"Maybe so," Marc Boland inserted as he moved some hot dogs onto the top grill to wait for the burgers to finish, "but we can't exactly give them a Bible lesson from the witness stand. I'm actually with Quinn on this one--and I'm a God-fearin', gun-totin' Southern evangelical. Just because that stuff happened in the Old Testament doesn't mean it's still happening. When people start claiming they've heard directly from God, it's usually a one-way ticket to crazy."

"Some jurors will be like me and gravitate to the faith angle," Rosemarie countered. "Others will want science or real-life examples. We can give them a little of everything--juror's choice. Take Allison DuBois, for example. In the year 2000, this nice-looking young lady was on her way to becoming a career prosecutor in the Maricopa County prosecutor's office. One day she went downstairs in her apartment building to get the laundry, and this man walks right through her. When she explains what happened to her husband and actually describes the man--he loves clam chowder; he's had a heart attack--her husband says, 'Hey! That's my grandfather.'

"So Allison DuBois is watching
Dateline
one night and sees a story about a guy named Gary Schwartz, a psychology professor at the University of Arizona who has conducted a bunch of experiments related to the afterlife. Allison goes to this professor so she can prove her 'vision' wasn't real and get on with her life. Instead, Schwartz discovers that this lady really does have a gift for seeing and hearing things the rest of us can't. She walked away from her job as a prosecutor and went on to help police as a medium. The NBC show that's been running for the last few years is loosely based on her life story."

What's with this sudden rush of great-looking mediums?
Quinn wondered. "So our defense is that Catherine O'Rourke is some kind of medium or maybe a recipient of a message sent by God or Satan or some other kind of spiritual being?"

He looked from Rosemarie to Boland. They actually seemed to be considering it.

"Personally, I think there's a spiritual dimension to this," Rosemarie said softly. "I asked Catherine a lot of questions about past involvement in the occult or that type of thing and she denied any. Still . . . I think she could be holding something back."

Quinn raised an eyebrow.
Dreams. Visions. Handwriting on the wall. Ghosts.
He'd believe it when he saw it.

"We don't have to prove any of this," Boland said tentatively, starting to sound like a convert. "We just have to raise reasonable doubt."

This whole conversation had a feeling of desperation to Quinn. "I'm starting to see my own handwriting on the wall," Quinn said. "And it looks mysteriously like a guilty verdict."

On the way back to the hotel, Quinn and Rosemarie Mancini rode in relative silence. Rosemarie had insisted on driving, and after putting up a token argument, Quinn had given her the keys. He slouched low in the passenger seat.

"How's Annie?" Rosemarie eventually asked.

"Good," Quinn said. "Actually, more like just okay. She's worried about what's going to happen to Sierra in the next three years. What this will do to their long-term relationship."

"Who's going to take care of Sierra?"

"She's staying with the Schlesingers until she starts boarding school in California this fall," Quinn said, noticing the lack of enthusiasm in his own voice. "After that, she'll spend vacations and some weekends with me."

"Boarding school." Mancini simply repeated the words, but Quinn knew what she meant.

"It's not perfect, Rosemarie. But the Schlesingers can't keep her for three years. And there's no way I could do it, given my schedule at work. Besides, I'd be a lousy parent."

"Boarding school is probably better than the Schlesingers," Mancini confirmed. "But, Quinn, what Sierra needs, more than anything else, is unconditional love. You don't have to be perfect; you just need to be there for her."

55

The next morning, Marc Boland took to the airwaves even before Quinn boarded his flight for Las Vegas. Marc was on the offensive, doing his best to take the sting out of the assault-and-battery charges Boyd Gates apparently planned on filing later in the day. Marc expressed sincere concern for the safety of his client. He said that Catherine had been harassed repeatedly by her cellmate in the past few days. He said the guards had not responded to her requests for protection because they were upset about the articles she had written about conditions in the jail.

He said Catherine finally had to take matters into her own hands and defend herself. Then, to Boland's great surprise, prison officials had punished Catherine by putting her in solitary confinement for several days. Now that Catherine was going back into the general inmate population, Boland said he would be filing a motion for a restraining order to keep Holly Stephenson away from Catherine O'Rourke.

It was, Quinn thought, a nice preemptive strike, but he knew it would get swept away later in the day when Boyd Gates released the pictures of Holly's bloody face.

Catherine O'Rourke stared at the wall during her last day in solitary confinement, pleading for another vision.
What is this--some cruel cosmic joke?
The visions had been vivid enough, and accurate enough, to land her behind bars. She hadn't asked for this power, this curse. But now that she needed the visions to come back with greater force and detail so she could actually help the authorities solve these crimes, now that she did everything within her power to enable them, the visions were nowhere to be found.

She tried to empty her mind. She tried focusing on the wall and then on the psychic power within her. She thought about the victims of the crimes and the night of her own rapes and the biblical verses the Avenger had cited.

But no matter how hard she tried, the visions would not come back. Catherine O'Rourke, infamous medium or hated serial murderer, depending on your perspective, could not conjure up even a hint of the Avenger's ghost. She stared at an empty wall, frustrated.

Where were these vaunted powers when she really needed them?

After Quinn survived the media gauntlet waiting for him at the end of his flight, he headed into his office. Melanie left at five and Quinn barely noticed, consumed by the mound of paperwork his three-day absence had generated. He was still hunched over his computer at 9 p.m. when the phone call came.

Annie's number registered on his cell phone. She was probably nervous about tomorrow's hearing, but he didn't have time right now. He hit Ignore. He would call her back in a few minutes, as soon as he finished with these e-mails.

Two minutes later, she called a second time. It wasn't like Annie to be so persistent. He picked up on the third ring.

"Quinn?"

She sounded stressed, enough so to squeeze his heart. "You okay?" he asked.

"No." Her voice cracked a little. "It's Sierra, Quinn. She . . ." Annie took a breath, obviously struggling to maintain composure, her voice thin and fragile. "She tried to kill herself, Quinn. Sleeping pills. Something like half a bottle . . ." Annie's words trailed off.

Quinn bolted from his chair. "Where is she now, Annie?"

"Desert Springs Hospital. The emergency room. The Schlesingers found Sierra in her bedroom and called me. I met them here."

"Don't move," said Quinn, already heading for the door. "I'll be right over."

56

"They think she's going to be all right." Annie had called Quinn back just a few minutes before he hit the hospital parking lot. The emergency room personnel had pumped Sierra's stomach and hooked up some IVs, Annie said. Sierra's vital signs had stabilized.

Quinn breathed an enormous sigh of relief, thanked Annie for the update, and felt his own racing heart slow just a little. He wasn't ready for this--a brush with death by someone so young and innocent. He had been thinking about Sierra the entire drive to the hospital. Her confused and endearing face. Her awkwardness as a girl struggling to become a woman. Her honesty and transparency with Quinn. What could he have done differently? What should he have said the last time he was with her?

He wouldn't have been able to live with himself if Sierra had died.
Suicide.
How could this nightmare be happening?

He parked in a handicapped spot and half walked, half ran into the hospital. Sierra had already been moved to a private room. He bumped into the Schlesingers in the waiting area, and Allison promptly had a meltdown.

She cried as she related the story of finding Sierra unconscious in her room, an empty bottle of Allison's Ambien on the bedside table. "It was awful, Quinn," she sobbed. "We called 911. We thought she was going to die before the ambulance even got there."

Quinn murmured a few sentences of empathy, telling Allison it wasn't her fault, then extricated himself and headed to Sierra's room. He didn't know what he would do once he got there. Quinn hated hospitals, and he wasn't good at providing comfort. Still, he had to see Sierra and be with Annie.

He gently pushed the door open and stopped just inside the threshold. Sierra was lying on the bed, eyes closed, a breathing tube in her nose and IV lines attached to her body. Annie was sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the bed, keeping one eye on the door.

Annie forced a thin smile when she saw Quinn and rose to greet him. She looked shell-shocked, like someone who had just escaped a battlefield littered with land mines and dead bodies. "I can't believe this," she whispered.

She took Quinn's hand and led him into the hall. She crossed her arms and spoke in a subdued tone, as if Sierra might wake up at any moment and overhear them. "The doctors said she's going to be okay. They think it's a cry for help. Girls this age who really want to take their life don't take a bunch of sleeping pills at home in the evening knowing that they'll be discovered right away." Annie stopped, working hard to keep her emotions under control. Quinn reached out to rub her shoulder.

"It's not a coincidence that she did this the night before my plea," Annie said. "Three years without a mother is an eternity when you're thirteen." She paused, measuring her words with care. "Plus, to have a mother who admits being a murderer . . ."

"That's not what this is about," Quinn said softly. "Sierra knows what really happened. A plea bargain doesn't change that."

But Annie was apparently in no mood to discuss it. "I want to call off the plea bargain," she said firmly. "This changes everything."

Quinn wasn't sure his sister was thinking clearly. Her harrowed face showed the strains of a mom's worst nightmare. She was reacting out of emotion.

"I'll call Carla Duncan," Quinn said. "We can postpone the hearing for a week or two, give us a chance to regroup and decide what to do."

Annie had been staring at the floor, but now locked her eyes on Quinn, the big sister coming back. "I don't want a postponement; I want to withdraw the plea. And, Quinn, she can't stay with the Schlesingers. They don't have a clue."

On this point, Quinn knew Annie was right. Sierra felt smothered there; she had said as much to Quinn. "What are you suggesting?"

Annie lowered her voice. "If Sierra can't live with me, it might be better if she could stay with you."

Quinn started to object, pointing out that the court wouldn't allow it, but it seemed his sister could always read his mind.

"Even if it means I have to stay in jail without bail until the retrial," she added.

Part of Quinn wanted this. But the other part, the logical Quinn, could think of a thousand reasons why this was a bad idea, though Annie's desperate look vaporized most of them. "We'll talk about it," he said. "Right now, let's just focus on getting Sierra the help she needs."

"
You
are the help she needs," said Annie.

"I'll call Carla Duncan," said Quinn. "We'll take it from there."

Quinn's misgivings disappeared a few minutes later when he and Annie returned to Sierra's room. The girl looked younger than thirteen, frail and vulnerable, her hair spilling in a tangled web onto the pillow.

Physically, she would recover. But her brittle psyche had been shattered by the overwhelming events of the past few months. Quinn knew the feeling from his own troubled childhood. He had blamed himself for most of the events that spun wildly beyond his control, devastating those he loved most.

They could not lose the next generation. Quinn reached out and touched Sierra gently on the arm, surprised by the coolness of her skin. Instinctively, he wrapped his fingers around her slender forearm, feeling the thin bones. In that moment he had his answer. He would do whatever needed to be done.

Quinn looked at his sister, tears brimming her eyes. "I hope she knows how to cook," Quinn said.

57

Quinn headed straight for the hospital the next morning, calling Melanie along the way so he could tell her to reschedule the day's appointments. He had called Carla Duncan the night before, and she had agreed to reschedule the plea hearing. "I'll give the judge some vague reason," she assured Quinn. "I'll do my best to keep this out of the press."

When Quinn told her that Annie might change her mind about the deal, Carla was not happy. "If you reject it now, you can't come back on the eve of trial," she warned. "I worked hard to get this deal approved. Don't leave me flailing in the wind."