Randy Singer - By reason of insanity

On Saturday, Rosemarie Mancini and Sierra came into town, and Quinn spent most of the day with his niece. He could tell that Sierra's time with Rosemarie had done her a lot of good. She seemed more self-confident and relaxed, full of chatter about her new D.C. friends. She and Quinn spent the afternoon lying on the beach, though neither of them set foot in the water. They went shopping for Sierra's school clothes at the Lynnhaven Mall and ate dinner on the back deck of a fish house nestled along the Lynnhaven River. They talked a lot about Annie, Quinn virtually guaranteeing an acquittal for Sierra's mom the next time around.

"I like D.C.," Sierra said. "And I like Rosemarie."

The first time Quinn had heard his niece use Rosemarie Mancini's first name, he had winced. "She told me to call her that," Sierra had said. Now, it seemed natural, indicative of a growing level of friendship and trust between them. It was hard to believe that a few months ago this same young girl had been suicidal.

On Sunday, Quinn and Rosemarie got down to work, slugging through her direct examination and practicing the questions Gates might bring up on cross. They still had a lot of ground to cover at 5 p.m. when Quinn received a phone call from Billy Long. "Can I call you back?" asked Quinn. "I'm meeting with Dr. Mancini."

"No," said Billy. "This won't keep."

Billy sounded serious enough that Quinn decided not to argue. "Okay, what's up?"

"You need to be alone when you hear this," insisted Billy.

"It's okay. I'm with Dr. Mancini."

"That's not alone."

Annoyed, Quinn asked Rosemarie if she could give him a minute. After she left the conference room, Quinn said, "This better be good. I trust Rosemarie with my life."

"I found one of the Carver babies," Billy said.

"What?"

"I found one of the Carver twins. The little boy."

"You found the body?"

"I found the baby, Quinn. Alive. Healthy. Crying and crawling and pooping in his diaper."

It took Quinn a second to catch his breath; he wanted to pump his fist in the air. Alive! But before he reacted, a crushing truth hit him. This would complicate things. It was great for the Carvers, but what about the case?

"Where?" Quinn asked. Before Billy could answer, another thought: "How'd you find him when half the cops in Virginia are looking for him?"

"He's in L.A.," said Billy. "Asian Central. I put the word out that I had a wealthy client who wanted to adopt a little boy without all the red tape. One thing led to another, and I stumbled across a few black-market baby operations. From there, you probably don't want to know, but let's just say I can squeeze folks in a way the cops can't."

"How do you know for sure it's Chi Ying?"

"I've seen him," Billy responded. "And everything fits. The timing, the age, and he looks just like the pictures. I even sent two digital photos via e-mail to a colleague of mine who does digital facial analysis. He says it's the same kid."

Alarm bells went off for Quinn. "What did you tell this colleague?"

"I'm not a complete idiot," Billy said. "I told him one was a picture of the kid while he was with the Carvers and the other, we think, is a picture of the kid when he was still in China. I told him we were trying to locate Chi's birth parents in China to ask them some questions, and we wanted to make sure we had the right kid."

The cover story sounded like a stretch to Quinn, but he let it pass. "Did you track down how Chi got to this new family?"

"I hit a lot of dead ends on that line. To be honest, I wasn't sure I wanted to know."

"Why?"

"Well…" Billy stretched out the word, apparently measuring his thoughts. "If Ms. O'Rourke's innocent, somebody's done a masterful job setting her up. If that's the case, I'm presuming they would have made it look like the money for those babies somehow went to Ms. O'Rourke. If she actually killed Donaldson and Archibald, it's even worse."

Billy paused and coughed, then picked up on his line of thought. "One of the things that always made me think our client might actually be insane is the fact that somebody killed those babies. Frankly, I've never heard of a woman killing a little baby unless she was totally nuts. But now we know that somebody went to a lot of trouble to make sure at least one of those babies didn't die. It seems to me somebody just wanted people to think the babies were dead so everyone would assume that whoever did this was crazy. I was afraid that if I figured out who sold those babies to the black-market folks, we might not like the answers."

Quinn reached the same conclusion even as Billy was talking. This would not be good for their case unless they could tie somebody else to the kidnappings. It would be quite a stretch to make a jury believe that the Avenger of Blood, Catherine's alternate personality, had kidnapped Chi only to sell him on the black market. Killing a baby would indicate insanity. But kidnapping a baby and selling him on the black market showed premeditation and deception over an extended length of time.

"Whom have you talked to about this?" Quinn asked.

"I work for you," Billy said. "Why would I talk to anybody else?"

"Are you still in L.A.?"

"Yeah."

"I need you on the first flight back to Norfolk. We might want you to testify."

Quinn Newberg and Marc Boland had not requested to meet together with Cat since Quinn entered the case. But on Sunday night, the deputy escorting her to the attorney interview booth told her that her "lawyers" had requested a meeting.

"Which one?" Cat asked.

"Both."

When she arrived, Bo was sitting in the chair on the other side of the bulletproof glass, and Quinn was standing behind him-two men squeezed into a booth designed for one.

Cat sat down, nerves prickling the back of her neck. "What's going on?" she asked, trying to read their faces.

"We've got some important news," Bo said.

They both looked so serious that Cat felt her stomach drop. Have they discovered another body?

"Billy Long thinks he has found Chi Ying, the Carvers' little boy, alive and well in Los Angeles."

Cat gasped and put her hand over her mouth. She felt herself trembling, tears welling in her eyes. She tried to say something but couldn't speak.

"Obviously, this is great news," Bo said, though his face indicated otherwise, "assuming we can verify it. Billy had an expert look at some digital photos to confirm the identity, but we don't have any fingerprints or DNA analysis yet."

"I don't know what to say," Cat managed. A wave of gratitude flooded her, washing away emotions that had tormented her since her arrest. It took her a few seconds to regain her composure. She wiped at her eyes, then took a deep breath. "What about his sister?"

"We don't know about her yet," Bo said. "Or about Rayshad Milburn. But we think there's a good chance they're alive too."

Cat couldn't believe this. It was the break she had been hoping for, praying for.

"The thing is," Bo continued, "we haven't been able to track down how the little Carver boy ended up out there. Billy tells us that Chi got placed through a black-market baby operation but that he ended up with a good family. We can't get a bead on who delivered him to the operation in the first place."

The seriousness of Cat's attorneys took the edge off her euphoria. What did this mean for the case?

Bo anticipated her question. "Quinn and I have been kicking this around for the past hour or so." Both lawyers stared intently at Cat as Bo talked, apparently searching for some type of reaction. "If this information gets out, it would dramatically impact our case in two ways, both negative. First, it would demonstrate a level of planning and deceit that would make it much harder, maybe impossible, to prove insanity. And second, it would look like you had purposefully misled the investigators when you described your visions, since you described the babies being strapped into an electric chair. Boyd Gates will argue that you created this scenario of dead babies just to make a case for insanity if you got caught when you went after Towns."