Randy Singer - By reason of insanity

"Don't get me wrong; I don't condone the way Quinn misled the court about Hofstetter's murder. But Quinn made a choice. He decided to use a false confession to trap both Marc Boland and Richard Hofstetter Sr. He decided to trade his own freedom for the freedom of two women he loves. And he helped a third reclaim her mother. The thing is, if he had to do it again, I'm sure he'd make the same decision."

Cat didn't respond. She had never been very comfortable talking about matters of faith. Now Rosemarie was digging up Cat's feelings toward Quinn and tossing them into the stew as well. She sat there next to Rosemarie in silence as the tourists paraded past: old men with shorts and black socks, children in strollers, couples holding hands.

It was a strange place to have a spiritual moment, but Cat couldn't deny that something significant was happening. It certainly wasn't a leap of faith-more like an insight or realization, the way Cat felt when the pieces of a news story fell together. God had been pursuing her. Trusting her with these visions. Loving her enough to show her these things. Maybe it was time to listen.

Maybe it was time to start returning that trust.

Rosemarie looked down the street and smiled at a kid who had buried his face in a chocolate ice cream cone. She stood and brushed off the back of her pants.

"You ready to head back?" she asked.

"Sure."

Since the street was closed to motor traffic, the two of them shuffled along in the middle of the road, dodging horse manure, feeling the gravel crunch against the cobblestone under their feet. It was Rosemarie who spoke first.

"You know I don't like to preach to my patients," she said.

Catherine turned and raised an eyebrow.

"Okay," said Rosemarie. "Maybe a little. But there's this Scripture verse about Jesus that says, 'No one has greater love than this, that he should lay down his life for his friends.' Think about that-it's the most noble thing a person can do, putting his own life on the line for someone else. And in Quinn's case, it was something more-a ten-year-old boy finally discovering the courage to act.

"Love him for it, Catherine, but don't try to take that away."

For Cat, it felt strange being on the outside going in. She registered as a visitor and passed through a metal detector, palms sweaty just from being surrounded by prison walls again. The guards in Vegas had the same I'm-just-doing-my-job approach as the deputies in Virginia Beach. Depersonalizing. Their attitude reminded Cat of how depressing jail had been-how much it had toyed with her sense of dignity and worth.

Ironically, Vegas was not as technologically advanced as Virginia Beach. For that, Cat was grateful. Instead of closed-circuit TV, where Cat wouldn't even be in the same room as Quinn, she would instead be sitting on the opposite side of three-inch glass, face-to-face, a mirror image of the way they had conducted their attorney-client conferences in Virginia Beach.

Cat arrived in the interview booth first and mentally steeled herself for the fact that the Quinn Newberg she was about to meet would not seem like the same person as the dapper attorney who had stood up for her in court. Even though he had been in jail only a few days, the place had a way of changing you-reducing you to the ugly core of who you were.

A few minutes later, the door opened on the other side of the glass and Quinn slid into the booth. He wore an orange jumpsuit, his hair was disheveled, and his face was still swollen from the nasty cut to his cheekbone. He smiled immediately. "What's a gorgeous woman like you doing in a place like this?"

Surprisingly, he sounded upbeat. His smile brought back the old Quinn, except for the swollen eye and the gash on his cheekbone, and for a moment it was Catherine who was incarcerated and this handsome Vegas lawyer who had ridden into town to save the day.

She was glad that she came.

"They said you needed some coaching," Catherine said. "How to survive in jail."

"Yeah. That would be good. Things like how to stay out of fights and how not to confess to my cellmate. Maybe you could teach me how to file my toothbrush into a shank."

"Shut up," Cat said, and they both laughed.

"Actually," Cat went on, "the best thing I did in jail was to convince the world's best lawyer to handle my case." As she said it, she stayed locked on his eyes, sensing that the chemistry was still there, that things hadn't changed between them. "I never got a chance to properly thank you, Quinn Newberg. You saved my life."

"You made it easy," Quinn said. "You happened to be innocent." His halfhearted attempt to shrug it off couldn't mask how much her words meant to him-especially now, alone in prison, where the full weight of abandonment and loneliness hit.

There was an awkward silence, and Cat remembered how hard it was to communicate-not just talk but really get down to heart issues-when separated by glass, wondering if every word was being monitored. "Are you doing okay?" Cat asked. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Are you kidding? I love this place. Plenty of crazy folks for clients. Card games galore. You should see the pile of cigarettes I've already won."

Cat decided not to let him off the hook so easy-always the sarcastic charmer, deflecting the tough questions. "Seriously, Quinn. How are you doing?"

He shrugged again. "It helps being a lawyer, even one about to have his license pulled. I'm representing three of the toughest thugs already, preparing paperwork for their outside lawyers-the inmates love it. You don't have to worry about me being attacked. I'm trading legal brains for protection and pretty much have my own Secret Service escort."

Cat couldn't resist a small smile. Quinn had been in jail less than a week, and it already sounded like he was running the place.

Quinn's eyes softened, and his voice became quieter. "The hardest thing is that you only see the sun for about an hour each day-and then you're on a scalding concrete pad with a basketball goal on each end, and it's about a hundred and ten degrees. Three years is going to be a long stretch."

Quinn seemed to catch himself, throw a switch in his demeanor, and turned from melancholy to superlawyer again. "Enough about me, though that is my favorite subject. How's my number one client doing?"

"She's fine. She's also free, thanks to you."

"Does she still have nightmares? Did she get her old job back?"

Catherine shifted in her seat. This was the opening she had been waiting for. It was time to get serious and push the point. "I had another vision, Quinn. This time, I saw Hofstetter's murder." She watched closely for a reaction. "You weren't even there when it happened."

Quinn didn't flinch-not a single facial muscle changed. The man had practiced bluffing for years at the poker table and in the courtroom.

"As for my job," Cat continued, "I've got a friend at the Las Vegas Review-Journal who thinks he can get me in. I'm moving out here, Quinn. I'm going to come by every day."

Catherine waited when Quinn didn't respond immediately. He glanced down, seemingly trying to figure out what to say. When he spoke, his voice was steady and sad. "You aren't going to mention this last vision to anyone, are you?"

"Nobody else needs to know."

This seemed to relax him a little, though his face was still troubled. "You can't move out here, Catherine. You're twenty-eight years old-smart, beautiful, full of life. There are a million guys who would swallow broken glass just for a chance to take you out. You can't waste your life waiting for me." He hesitated, looking as though he had to convince himself to continue. "Three years is forever. We'll both be different people by the time I get out."

She leaned forward and felt her throat tighten as emotions too complex for words welled up in her. She knew he didn't mean this. He had brushed her off once before, right after her case was dismissed, supposedly for her own good. Not this time. Catherine O'Rourke could be very determined when she knew what she wanted. And she also knew what Quinn needed, despite his protests to the contrary. "I would have been in jail the rest of my life if it wasn't for you-"