Randy Singer - By reason of insanity

Quinn took a few deep breaths and headed for the parking lot. His stubborn side wanted to head back into the high stakes table at the Rogue and make a killing. But he had been around enough to know that gambling while angry was a bad idea.

He flexed his neck and tried to massage away the pain. Bobby Jackson was on his own tonight. For Quinn, it might be a good time for a rare night off.

On Thursday, Catherine found herself increasingly distracted at the office and left work early. She had tossed her laptop into the bay at about 12:30 the night before and then had found it hard to get any sleep. This morning, she had used a calling card to talk with Jamarcus, who reported no real progress on the case. It was as if the Avenger of Blood had just materialized from nowhere, kidnapped three babies, left behind two eerie messages, and vaporized into the atmosphere.

Catherine arrived at her duplex and changed into shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt, then sat down to finish loading software onto her new computer. After an hour or so, she took a break and surfed a few of her favorite blogs. A thought hit her, and she googled the words multiple personality disorder, resulting in a number of interesting sites. An article from Psychology Today was particularly helpful.

The article said the phrase "multiple personality disorder" had been changed to "dissociative identity disorder," also known as DID, sometime in 1994 to reflect the fact that patients actually fragmented their personalities as opposed to "growing" multiple new ones. Most DID patients only had a couple of fragmented personalities, though some had as many as one hundred. Cat thought about that for a moment. A hundred separate Catherines! How could anyone survive like that?

The disorder was frequently accompanied by memory loss, especially among the more passive personalities. In other words, a patient would create and live in two or more separate realities, and the passive personality wouldn't even know the more aggressive personality existed. Many times, the more aggressive personality could be very clever in covering up evidence of its existence. According to the article, transitions between personalities were normally triggered by psychosocial stress. One sentence in particular jumped out at Catherine: "Visual or auditory hallucinations may occur."

Reading that sentence was like a slap in the face. She stared at the screen for several moments, considering the implications. Could she truly be sick? The part about psychosocial stress sure fit. And the article also said that the disorder was frequently accompanied by depression or anxiety.

She was definitely anxious now.

Cat rose from the computer and got a bottle of water. She started feeling a little light-headed, her skin perspiring as she turned the possibility over in her mind. It was ludicrous. She didn't even know the families whose babies had been kidnapped. She couldn't possibly be involved.

Could she?

She sipped the water and started pacing the duplex, rehearsing all the reasons the DID diagnosis couldn't apply to her. She tried to reason through it, but the whole thing seemed to defy rational analysis. Then she had a thought. One personality might forget events that transpired in the life of another personality, but physical evidence didn't just disappear.

Cat went back online and started researching the kidnappings one more time. What weapons did the Avenger use? What were the precise times and dates of the crimes?

She knew her calendar didn't show anything for the nights in question-the police had already asked her about that. So she focused on the Avenger's MO-a needle and, in one instance, a Taser. Where would she even get such a thing?

Methodically, Cat searched through every room in her small duplex, looking for a Taser or needles or research about the Carver kids or the Milburn baby or rubber gloves or a knife or gun. She looked for bloodstains on clothing or ripped fabric. Catherine ransacked her own place, looking for anything inconsistent with the Catherine she knew.

After two hours, she had found absolutely nothing.

When she finished, she lay down on the couch and closed her eyes. She was exhausted physically and emotionally. If she wasn't crazy yet, at this rate, she would be soon.

When the e-mail first arrived, Rex Archibald could hardly believe his luck. The Reverend Harold Pryor, a "person of interest" in the Carver and Milburn kidnappings, was assembling a dream team of lawyers. He wanted Rex to serve as one of his trial lawyers!

Rex played it cool, resisting the urge to report the good news to his assistant and slap her a high five. His legal career had fallen on hard times recently, dragged down by a long string of losses and lack of high-profile clients. But Rex knew he was only one big case away from the boom times. Seven years ago, after the headline-grabbing verdict Rex had engineered for Paul Donaldson, the phones had lit up for months. Winning a high-profile case was good; winning a high-profile case when everybody knew your client should have been convicted was golden.

Despite his eagerness to be part of the dream team, Rex played it by the book. He sent a reply to the Reverend Pryor and provided wiring instructions to the firm account. As soon as you wire a twenty-five-thousand retainer, we'll talk.

Dream team lawyers didn't come cheap.

After some negotiations via e-mail, Rex agreed to a retainer of ten thousand. He didn't tell Pryor, but given all the publicity the case would be sure to generate, Rex would have done it for free. Pryor asked whether money orders would be okay, and Rex assured him that money orders would work just fine. Rex had been well schooled in the number-one rule for criminal defense lawyers-never question the source or the means of payment.

But nothing prevented defense lawyers from dreaming about how they would spend the money. In Rex's case, it was already spoken for. He and Crystal, his wife of thirteen years, had finally been successful in their fertility treatments. Rex was going to be a daddy! He was hoping for a daughter to spoil, though at times he imagined throwing a baseball or football with a rugged little son. In either case, the kid would go to college and then on to law school. It was never too early to put a little something away in a savings account.

Because Rex practiced law in Richmond and the Reverend Pryor was busy raising havoc in Virginia Beach, they agreed on a meeting place halfway between, just outside Williamsburg at a small church where Pryor knew the pastor. Rex's assistant took care of the meeting details and printed out a set of directions from MapQuest. Pryor would be bringing a Virginia Beach lawyer with him, the assistant told Rex.

Now, just fifteen minutes away from the church on Thursday night, Rex received a call on his cell phone. "I'm the custodian for the North Williamsburg Baptist Church," said the caller, "and I wanted you to know I'm unlocking the side door located on the right of the building as you face it from the parking lot. I just talked to Reverend Pryor and his lawyer, and they said they're running a few minutes late. You can just come on in when you get here and wait for them in the fellowship hall."

"No problem," said Rex, though he usually liked to stress his own importance by being the last one to a meeting, not the first. "I'm running a little late myself."

"I'll put on a pot of coffee in the fellowship hall," the caller said. "I may be working in another part of the church, so just make yourself at home."

"Okay. Thanks."

After he hung up, Rex decided to pull over at a convenience store and grab a soda. At this pace, he would arrive a good fifteen minutes late, minimizing the possibility that he would be the first one there.

A half hour later, at twenty minutes after eight, he pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of the small box church with vinyl siding and a cross that served as a steeple. There was a sign out front, the kind with interchangeable black magnetic letters. As his headlights flashed across the sign, Rex noted that it contained a reference to a single verse: Ezekiel 18:20. Rex had seen a number of these types of signs before, usually containing pithy sayings that tried too hard to be cute- God: "Don't make me come down there." -but never one with just a single verse, especially when there was no indication what the verse actually said.