The Insanity Plea (2 page)

Frederick Parke finished a morning of
skiing and wound his way down the mountain from Beaver Creek to the bottom of
the valley and continued up the other side to a development called Wildridge. He
turned onto Red Fox Lane to the last house on the right and pushed the remote
to raise his garage door. He parked the yellow Hummer next to his Corvette,
also yellow, and entered his home. He retrieved his laptop from the first floor
office and carried it to the second floor to a combination living, dining and
kitchen area, forty feet long and thirty feet wide with twenty foot tall beamed
ceilings. Giant picture windows filled the walls and brought the outdoors into
the room. Placing the computer on the dining table, he walked to the door
leading to the deck. Stepping outside, he was greeted by the warmth of the sun
even though the temperature was in the twenties. He studied the ever-changing
view with a smile on his face, once more pleased with his decision to live here
in the mountains even though it required him to commute a few days a week to
Denver.

Returning to the table, he fired up
the computer. It had been two days since he lectured at the University of Texas
Medical Branch in Galveston. The lecture had gone well, but he wasn’t looking
for news about that. Instead, he was searching the Galveston and Houston media
for anything about the killing of a young woman on the seawall. When he clicked
on the
Houston Chronicle
website, he
found it. He learned that his victim was a young woman named Debbie Robinson,
the daughter of a rich and prominent Houston oil man.
This could get interesting,
he thought, as he continued to read. They
had already arrested a street person and charged him with capital murder. That
was something he did not anticipate. He was barely into his clinical study and
someone else was charged with a murder he’d committed. In all of his research,
he didn’t recall an innocent person being charged with a murder committed by a
serial killer
. If he’s a street person,
most likely he’s mentally ill.
That could lead to an insanity defense. If
he could help convict this person, that could make for a most interesting
chapter in the study. He pondered how best to proceed.

Before that son of a bitch on the
east coast had entered his life, he almost certainly would have been contacted,
probably by the prosecution. Now, he couldn’t be sure, but he wanted to be
involved in this case. Maybe he should just call the prosecutor.
 
It was worth a try. If it worked, not only
would he have committed the murder, but he would have convinced a jury that
someone else did it and deserved the death chamber. Other academics would have
a field day. They might choose to brand him as the most evil of serial killers.
So what
, he thought. He would be long
since dead and buried when the story came out. And, he had one more thought: Maybe
the conviction would be a red herring that would throw the FBI off the trail
for weeks or even months.

While he pondered his decision, he
remoted to his desktop computer downstairs and clicked to an encrypted and
password protected journal where he described the murder in Galveston, making
sure to add a few thoughts that would lead others to conclude that he was
insane. It was something that he decided to do after each of his successful
hunts. As a scientist he wanted to document his actions, thoughts and emotions.
As to the part about insanity, there was no doubt that he was sane. He would
destroy those references when he completed his study. On the other hand, it was
a safety net in the unlikely event that he was caught. No one understood the
insanity defense better than Parke. By documenting his own insanity, he
considered it to be a get-out-of-jail-free pass.

Clicking out of his journal, he
returned to the internet and found that a woman named Katherine Rasmussen was
the assistant district attorney who was prosecuting Daniel Little. He decided
to give her a call.

“Katherine Rasmussen, please. This is
Dr. Frederick Parke calling.”

After silence and two clicks, a woman
answered. “Dr. Parke, what an honor to talk to you.”

Parke smiled as he was reminded that
he rarely needed an introduction. “So, you’ve heard of me?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve read every one
of your journal articles about insanity and serial killers. I know about your
work with the FBI’s Behavior Analysis Unit and your expertise in profiling
killers. I’ve even read some of your testimony. When I go home tonight, I’ll be
telling my mother that I actually talked to you. She’ll be thrilled. Now, to
what do I owe the honor of this call?”

“You know my background. I have
Google Alert set to let me know of unusual murders around the country. I
received an alert about that murder on the seawall in Galveston. Then I read an
article in the Chronicle. A real tragedy for such a beautiful young lady. I see
you’ve charged a schizophrenic. If you’re looking for an expert to evaluate his
sanity, I’d like to offer my services.”

“I appreciate you calling. Right now,
though, there’s not even a plea of insanity. Matter of fact, we haven’t even
had a competency hearing. Still, I’m interested in your offer, only I’m not
sure that we can afford you. Send me your resume and fee schedule and at the
right time, I’ll talk it over with my boss, Harry Klein.”

“Fine, Katherine. I’ll email them if
you’ll give me your address.”

Rasmussen provided her contact
information and they ended the call. Parke concluded that he had done all he
could to be hired on the Galveston murder. After fixing a cup of hot tea, he
returned to his computer and began preparing for his lecture at the medical
school the next day.

(Thirty years
earlier)

It was the Texas State 4A
championship, being played between Galveston and Odessa high schools. The game
was at the Houston Astrodome, still proudly considered by Houstonians as the
Eighth Wonder of the World and deemed a neutral site although Galveston fans
only had to drive fifty miles up I-45 while the fans from Odessa had to travel nearly
four hundred. Of course that didn’t bother the folks from Odessa. For many of
them high school football was their life and their religion. It wasn’t
happenstance that
Friday Night Lights
was about Odessa and its football team. The championship game was also an
excuse to rent every bus in the area and have one giant party while they
followed the team to Houston. The game was so highly touted that 40,000 people
were in attendance, some kind of record for a high school game.

For the players, it was their Super
Bowl, their dream. If they won, it would be something they told stories about
as long as they lived. Even if they lost, once the disappointment drifted away,
they would be talked about for years, just because they played on a team that
vied for a Texas state championship.

Dan Little, the Galveston
quarterback, was a skinny kid with a cannon for a left arm. He started the year
on the bench, backing up a six foot, two inch fellow senior who had college
coaches salivating. In the fifth game, the starter went down with a fractured
tibia, almost surely out for the rest of the season. Dan came in, took the team
to victory and led them through the rest of the season to the big game. The
pundits had Odessa favored by ten points, and they all agreed that it should be
an offensive spectacle.

Going into the fourth quarter the
lead had changed hands seven times. Odessa was ahead forty-two to thirty-eight.
Feeling the pressure of the game and having repeatedly marched up and down the
field for three quarters, the teenage gladiators began to wear down. Each team
scored one more touchdown in the fourth quarter. With three minutes left Odessa
was still in the lead and marching once again. On a third and three from the
Galveston twenty-seven, the Odessa quarterback threw what looked like a game
clinching pass to his favorite wide receiver who had sneaked into the end zone.
As the ball arced over the battle being waged at the line of scrimmage, one
Galveston defensive back saw what was happening and began the sprint of his
life. Just as the receiver was about to put his fingers around the ball, the
defender leaped and tipped it into the air. Hitting the ground, he rolled and found
the ball landing on his stomach. Touchback! Galveston’s ball on the twenty.

Dan commanded his offense to circle
him on the sideline and after a brief prayer led the charge onto the field. They
had eighty yards to go in less than two minutes with no timeouts. Knowing the
defense would expect a pass, Little called a quarterback bootleg right. Twenty-five
yards later, he stepped out of bounds and stopped the clock. Next came a pass
good for ten yards. The clock was running. Then he intended to hit his running
back coming out of the backfield, but with one less blocker, he was sacked for
a ten yard loss. Twenty seconds left on the clock. In the huddle his teammates
could barely hear the call as the yells from the crowd reverberated throughout
the domed stadium.

On the next play Little wanted to go
long and the defenders knew it. They had his receivers covered. He finally
tucked the ball and ran for the sideline, stepping out of bounds on the Odessa
forty with seven seconds on the clock.

“Okay, guys, this one’s not in the
playbook. Jimmy Ray, you see Mary Lee over on the right sideline at about the
ten.” Jimmy Ray looked up and saw the blond cheerleader begging for a
touchdown.

“I want you to run like a spotted-assed
leopard to where she’s standing, spin and break to your left. The ball will be
there on your second step. Everyone else go left. On three.”

Dan took the ball from his center and
faded back, purposely looking to his left. At the last minute, he turned to his
right. Jimmy Ray reached the cheerleader. Dan lofted the ball. Just as he had
called it, the ball landed in Jimmy Ray’s hands on the second step. He broke
through the arms of one tackler and dived into the end zone.

The Galveston fans spilled onto the
field in such numbers that the security guards gave up. Mary Lee leaped at Little
as he was taking off his helmet, hugging him and shouting into his ear. The
next thing he knew someone was on his back, his hands around his neck. It was
his little brother, Wayne, then eight years old.

Wayne was Galveston born and raised,
and that was important if a person lived in Galveston. Old Galvestonians
separated people into two classes, Born-On-the-Island (BOI) or newcomers. It
didn’t matter if a newcomer arrived thirty years before; he was not born there
and was relegated to secondary status. Because of the difference in ages, the
two boys were not close; yet, Wayne was Dan’s biggest fan, yelling for him at
football games and tagging along to the beach if his brother would consent. When
Dan went to college, Wayne came into his own. Close to a straight A student, he
also excelled in basketball. As point guard in his senior year, he led his team
to the state semi-finals and always regretted that he could not have matched
his brother’s state championship. Still, Wayne was good enough to be second team
All State and received a partial basketball scholarship to The University of
Texas at San Antonio.

 
In his sophomore year, two family tragedies
struck. Wayne’s father, a big man who had chain smoked most of his life, died
of a heart attack. Wayne grieved when his father died. Then his brother’s
illness came on the heels of the death. Emotionally, he could no longer cope
and dropped out of school to wait tables on the San Antonio River Walk. The
next year he returned to school, deciding to relegate basketball to pickup
games in the evenings and on weekends.

The two tragedies torpedoed his grade
point average and kept him out of the University of Texas School of Law in
Austin. His second choice was the University of Houston. Caring nothing about
subjects like real property, probate, tax and the like, he skated by with
mediocre grades. When it came to classes dealing with trial, evidence and
procedure, he excelled, often finishing first in his class. All of his spare
time was taken up with mock trial competitions. In his senior year he led his
team to a national championship, maybe not quite as good as a state
championship in football, but close enough.

After graduating, he knew his grades dropped
him below the top quarter of his class and eliminated opportunities with the
big Houston firms. Instead, he interviewed with Harry Klein, the Galveston
County District Attorney and an old friend of his late father. He knew that
Klein would almost certainly hire him, and there was no better way to learn to
be a trial lawyer than to prosecute criminals for a few years. He got the job,
moved back to his old family home two blocks from the courthouse and was
promptly thrown into the courtroom.

It was only a matter of time before his
reputation as a trial lawyer made its way to Houston. Tod Duncan began hearing
of this young lawyer, not yet thirty, who was commanding first chair in major
capital trials in Galveston. Duncan was legendary among Texas trial lawyers. In
his fifties, he was on the short list of every corporate counsel whose company
needed representation in Texas. He started with one of the Houston mega-firms
and quickly forsook it to start his own firm.

When he went out on his own, he made
two decisions. The first was to keep the firm small, no more than a dozen
lawyers although he could have grown it ten times bigger. Instead, he selected
his cases carefully, expecting them to generate big fees and even more
carefully he selected his lawyers, ones he tagged as having the potential to
excel in the courtroom.

The second decision was a bit
unusual. Instead of officing on the fortieth floor of a downtown high rise in a
suite with marble floors and expensive paintings adorning the walls, he remodeled
an early nineteen hundred fire station on Washington Avenue two miles from
downtown. The station had long been abandoned when he bought it. After
restoration, the halls were adorned with pictures of fire trucks, and
firefighter hats hung from the walls. In the center of the reception area was a
brass pole going to the second floor, the only remnant of the building’s glory
days. When lawyers throughout the area talked about going to the fire station,
they understood it was the Duncan Law Firm.

It was the eighth and final day of a
capital murder trial in Galveston when Tod slipped into the back of the
courtroom to hear the final arguments from Wayne Little and the defense lawyer.
When Wayne stood to address the jury, he commanded the attention of every eye
in the courtroom. He started slowly with a quiet, measured voice. When he laid
out the facts of the murder, his voice became louder as he weaved a story of
passion gone awry and the murder of a nineteen year old girl by an
ex-boyfriend. Tod had high expectations. He got a performance far greater than
he anticipated.

After the jury retired, Tod
approached Wayne as he was packing his briefcase.

“Wayne, I’m Tod Duncan,” he said as he
extended his hand.

“Mr. Duncan, a pleasure to meet you. I’ve
heard about you for years and even watched parts of a couple of your trials
when I was in law school. What brings you to Galveston? I didn’t think you ever
handled criminal matters.” The words spurted nervously out of Wayne’s mouth
since he was face to face with one of the greatest.

“You’re right, Wayne. I don’t do
criminal work…never have. And please call me Tod. While I’m older than you,
after what I saw today I consider you an equal. You’re the reason I’m here. I’ve
been hearing about you for over a year. I’m particular about my lawyers and I
wanted to see you in action. I must say I’m impressed. Would you consider
paying a visit to my office in Houston? I warn you, I’m talking potential
employment.”

“Mr. Duncan, uh, er, Tod, I don’t
know a damn thing about civil procedure and much less about civil law. Are you
sure it’s even worth your time for me to visit?”

“Listen, Wayne, I’ve been trying
lawsuits for near thirty years. Some folks are natural born trial lawyers; some
start a little slower but can still become damn good. You’ve been practicing
what, three or four years? If I didn’t know better, I would have pegged your
ability at somewhere north of ten years experience. Hell, you can transfer
those skills to the civil courtroom. If you’re a trial lawyer, you can try any
damn case. All you need is some other lawyer to explain the legal theories,
bone up on the facts and you’re good to go. Give me six months and I’ll make
you a civil trial lawyer.”

“Shit, Tod, you kinda hit me all at
once here. Can I have a few days to think about it?”

Tod nodded, “Of course. Understand we
haven’t made a deal yet. I just want you to come take a look around and we’ll
talk more. By the way, you ought to have a verdict in about an hour.”