By Reason of Insanity Read online

  By Reason of Insanity

  Rachel Sinclair

  Tobanna Publications

  Copyright © 2019 by Rachel Sinclair

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

  Also by Rachel Sinclair

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  Johnson County Legal Thrillers (Kansas City, Missouri)

  Bad Faith - https://tinyurl.com/y3a6vtcm

  Justice Denied - https://tinyurl.com/y6l24d5u

  Hidden Defendant - https://tinyurl.com/y2od8qrd

  Injustice for All - https://tinyurl.com/y2znryaw

  LA Defense - https://tinyurl.com/y6o6j83f

  The Associate - https://tinyurl.com/y5kskl7c

  The Alibi - https://tinyurl.com/yy96k97t

  Reasonable Doubt - https://tinyurl.com/y6nw27kn

  The Accused - https://tinyurl.com/y2d9t3z7

  The Hate Crime - https://tinyurl.com/y5w4e24k

  Secrets and Lies - https://tinyurl.com/y6pwcjjw

  Until Proven Guilty - https://tinyurl.com/yxlllu7d

  Emerson Justice Legal Thrillers (Los Angeles)

  Dark Justice - https://tinyurl.com/y2ezwnny

  Southern California Legal Thrillers (San Diego)

  Presumption of Guilt - https://tinyurl.com/y2oowdwz

  Best Served Cold - https://tinyurl.com/yyzy5pr4

  Justice Delayed - https://tinyurl.com/y3lh6rno

  Chapter 1

  Aidan

  I woke up and looked at the person next to me. It was Regina. My head was splitting, and I tried to desperately think about what had happened the night before. As I looked over at my nightstand, I saw a clue as to what might've happened. There was a joint that was in the ashtray, which was pretty much par for the course for me on a Friday night. But, next to the joint that was stubbed out, there was an empty bottle of vodka. Grey Goose. I had pretty good taste when it came to vodka, just like my sister.

  I nudged her. "Hey, you better wake up."

  She turned over and looked at me, her blue eyes squinting in the sunlight that was pouring in through the sliding glass door. She put her hand on her forehead, and then put both of her hands on each side of her head, as if she was trying to steady it. She made smacking noises with her lips, as if she was trying to get something out of her mouth. Then she shook her head.

  "What the hell happened? What am I doing here?" She looked down at her body, which was naked, and, I might say, was beautiful. Then she looked at me. "Well, I guess that settles it. I guess that you and I hit the sheets last night, although I have no idea how that happened. Maybe you can enlighten me."

  There was going to be no enlightenment from me, unfortunately. It had been a long time since I drank to the point of blacking out, but, apparently, last night I broke that streak.

  I had to admit, I wasn’t too upset to be in bed with her. I had a crush on her, from the very first time we locked eyes. But I knew that she did not feel the same about me. I knew that she kind of thought of me as Avery's little brother, and that was it. There is an age difference of eight years between the two of us, and I also knew that she didn’t date a whole lot. I knew why she never dated that much, as she had had nothing but bad experiences with men over the years, so she really had no interest in getting involved with anybody.

  Not that she was getting involved with me. I couldn't hope for that. The only thing I could hope for would be that maybe this could turn into an ongoing thing, a friends with benefits thing. That is, if she was open to it. I had no idea if she was.

  She covered herself up with a sheet and walked daintily to my attached bathroom. I looked down at her feet, as they strode across the hardwood floor, seeing how delicate they were. Her toes were painted a light pink, and there were rings on just about every one of her perfect digits. On both of her ankles were tattoos. A rose with a saying on it was on her left ankle. It said I’m not afraid, at least not to die. I’m afraid to live and not remember why. On her right ankle was a picture of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, who was holding a balloon. I smiled, in spite of myself, seeing her tattoos. The Pooh tattoo was so unlike her, although the rose tattoo was totally her. That was her attitude - she was fearless. I was going to have to ask her a little later about the Pooh tattoo. Maybe it was something that was meaningful for her, something that she thought about from childhood.

  I heard her rustling around in the bathroom, and I had the urge to go in there and join her in the shower. I pictured myself soaping her back, shampooing her hair, and banging her up against the wall.

  I shook my head, as I realized I had a woody just even thinking about it. What was I doing? What was she doing? Avery told me that Regina had a policy to never shit where she sleeps, and that would, I would assume, include me. After all, Regina was Avery's right-hand woman and I was Avery's brother and roommate. Not to mention the fact that Regina was over at our condo all the time.

  I heard the shower running, and I had to take my mind off of my desire to join her in there, so I rolled a joint and walked over to my balcony. It was a Saturday morning, on Coronado Beach, which meant that people were starting to pack the shores. There were people on the boardwalk, rollerskating, walking their dogs and gliding along on scooters. I took a deep breath, smelling the salt in the air, feeling the moisture on my skin, all while trying to keep my mind out of the gutter. It was no use, though. All I could think about was Regina’s naked body and how beautiful it was.

  Marijuana, for me, was something that helped me think. It had the opposite effect on me than it did for most other people. I was not like my sister, who was typical of the people who I knew who smoked weed. She told me that all weed did for her was make her lay on the couch, delay responses to every question, and eat. A lot. She said that when she was high, if somebody asked her a question, she would answer it five minutes later. She didn't like the way that made her feel, so she rarely smoked with me.

  But with me, I really found that it made everything a bit more clear. Everything burned a little brighter. It was like when you go to an eye doctor, and you get glasses for the first time. The doctor would put you in that machine, where they ask you if this picture looks more clear or th
at one. And, at first, the picture would be extremely blurry. But, after the doctor put his special lens over it, that picture would come into sharp relief. Crisp. That's how it was with me with I smoked pot. Not that my world was blurry when I wasn’t smoking weed, but it wasn’t as clear as when I did. The clarity of mind was something that really was enhanced with every hit I took on the joint.

  That was the reason why I smoked as much as I did. I didn't do it for reasons that other people would, to calm down or to feel the high. I did it because it cleared up my head and, at this point, knowing what I did with Regina the night before, my head needed some serious clearing.

  I felt my stomach start to turn over, and my head was starting to hurt. I was experiencing the first symptoms of a hangover - the first one I’d had in a while, because I didn't usually drink to excess. I had gone through my days in college, and in law school, when I would binge drunk with the best of them. A fun Friday night was having the guys over with a pony keg of beer, shooting the shit. They would crash on various couches, or on the floor, and the next day, we would have a hair of the dog that bit us.

  But I was 26 years old now. I had a job. It was a decent job, with a law firm called Pierce and Wright. They were counting on me to not be a total fuck up. I was determined I wasn’t going to be.

  At the moment, Pierce and Wright were giving me assignments where I appeared in court for various people who were involuntarily committed. There are procedures in California that protected them. A person who is a danger to herself and/or others can be involuntarily locked up for 72 hours without a hearing- a 5150 hold. This hold is for evaluation, and, if the person is no longer a danger to herself or others after 72 hours, that person is free to go. If that person is still a danger after 72 hours, she is subjected to a 5250 hold, and she can be held for another 14 days, although she gets a hearing, in the hospital, within 4 days. If the person is still a danger after 14 days, she’s put into a conservatorship if the person’s treating psychiatrist and the psychiatric medical director of the Public Guardian Office sign off on it. Called a 5350 hold, it actually refers to the fact that the conservator makes the decisions about whether or not the person stays in the hospital, not the patient.

  My office had as one of their specialties involuntary commitment. I spent most of my time attending various 5150, 5250 and 5350 hearings. Often, the holds were justified, but sometimes, they weren’t.

  Just then, while Regina was still in the shower, and I was still staring out at the beach below me, my cell phone rang.

  "Hey, Aidan, this is Stuart.”

  Stuart Williams was the managing partner of my firm, and was the one who was responsible for giving me my various assignments. I was kind of surprised that he would be calling me on a Saturday morning, but, then again, the law never sleeps, and neither do our clients.

  "Hey Stu, what's up?" I asked him.

  "I hate to be bothering you on a Saturday morning. I really do. But, one of our clients is in jail right now. Marina Vasiliev. She's been arrested for murdering her husband, and she's been asking for you. She wants to hire our firm to represent her in the murder, but she's been very clear that the only person she wants to represent her is you. And she's also been very clear that she wants you to come down and see her today. Probably within the next hour or two."

  I shook my head, thinking about the splitting headache I had, and the way my stomach was turning somersaults. And I thought about Regina, and how I really wanted to hang out with her that day. Not that she wanted to hang out with me. In fact, she probably didn't. But it was worth a shot to ask her.

  And if there was one thing I didn’t want to be doing on a Saturday morning, it was talking to Marina Vasiliev. She was one of the people that I had represented in 5150 and 5250 hearings. She had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, and had been in and out of institutions for most of her adult life.

  At the moment, at least before she apparently was arrested for killing her husband, she was back in La Jolla in the enormous house she shared with her husband, Lawrence Murphy. Lawrence was one of those new money guys who made a fortune off of founding a tech firm in Silicon Valley, and leveraging it to found a series of biotech firms right here in San Diego. Biotech was the big industry in the area and it was the main reason why there was so much money flowing into the city. Everywhere I looked, there were condos going for a minimum of $1.5 million, and houses that started at around 500 grand. I didn't know how it was that so many people could afford such expensive houses, and condos, in the area. But then I read up on it, and found out that biotech was the main reason why we had so many rich guys around.

  Lawrence was one of those rich guys. He was the CEO of a firm by the name of Pegasus, which was known for not only being on the cutting edge of discovering new pharmaceuticals, but also being on the cutting edge of human cloning. Animal cloning has been around for quite a while, ever since Dolly the sheep in the late 90s, but, as of yet, there has never been a human cloned. Pegasus was aiming to change that. It was not only involved with therapeutic cloning, which was relatively non-controversial, but was active in animal cloning and was stepping up its game in the race to make the first human clone.

  As fascinating as I found Lawrence's job, I did not find Marina quite as fascinating, even though she was gorgeous. She had the kind of pale skin of somebody who never got out in the sun, which was very unusual here in sunny San Diego, and she had hair that was the color of sunset. That was the best way to describe it, other than to say that I had seen her hair color on an Irish setter. It was a deep auburn, with streaks of blonde here and there. Her eyes were Cerulean blue, the color of one of the Topaz rings I bought at a farmers’ market one day. She was delicate, as brittle as a bird, with slim shoulders and narrow waist, and small breasts. She was a kind of woman who, when she walked in the door, any door, most people turned to get a better look, not because she was odd, although she certainly was that, but because she was gorgeous.

  But that didn’t really matter. I still didn’t want to have her as a client, because there were more things in life to consider than to think about what somebody looked like. No, I didn’t want her as a client because she was certifiably off her rocker. She had the manipulative personality of somebody with a deeply rooted personality disorder, which she had. She would literally do anything to get people to do exactly what she wanted. Lying and digging up personal information to hold over people’s heads - these were just a few of the ways that she made sure that everybody danced to her tune. Sympathy was another one of her calling cards. She would overdose on pills, slit her wrists, cry that somebody was raping her, even though it wasn’t true. When all else failed, she resorted to violence. She would attack women and men, clawing their eyes out, kicking, scratching.

  In short, Marina was a piece of work.

  And, at the moment, she was a piece of work that was in jail. I was fully prepared for anything that she might say to me, and I knew that almost anything she would say would be a flat out lie. Nevertheless, I was going to try to get her story. She deserved to be represented by somebody, and it sounded like that somebody was going to be me.

  Just then, I turned around and saw that Avery was coming in the door. She was dressed in her jogging clothes, earbuds in her ears. She had her two dogs, Harlow and Lola, on a leash, and she was out of breath.

  "Hey, what's going on?” she asked as she walked towards her bedroom. I was going to tell her about what was going on, and then I realized that I did not want her to know that Regina was still here.

  "Not much," I said. "I have to go see a client of mine today. Which really sucks, because I was hoping that I could join the guys later on out in the surf." I was talking to Leo and the gang, buds of mine who I usually met with on Saturday mornings, and we all made plans to get together about 1 o'clock. It looked like I was not going to make that particular rendezvous, unless I could cut this visit with Marina short, which was what I was hoping to do.

  I surreptitiously went in
to the bedroom, and I saw that Regina was out of the shower now. She was dressed in the same clothes as she was last night - black T-shirt, torn and faded jeans, black boots. Her dark hair was up in a ponytail, and she had on no makeup. She still took my breath away, just as she always did. I was embarrassed to admit that.

  What can I say, I'm a dude. Very visual, and Regina was definitely pleasing on the eyes.

  "About what happened here,” I said to Regina. "Maybe we shouldn’t tell Avery.”

  She just shrugged her shoulders. "She's a grown-ass woman, she can handle the fact that you and I hooked up last night. No need trying to hide it."

  I had to admit, I kind of admired her I don’t give a crap attitude, but I wasn’t all that anxious for Avery to know that I hooked up with her best friend and employee.

  "Okay, if you insist,” I finally said.

  "I do insist. Unless of course you don't want me to let Avery know about us hooking up. And, by the way, this is going to be the only time. I'm sorry, dude, but sloppy seconds are just not my style."

  Her words stung me just a little bit. I wasn't used to a girl treating me like a piece of meat. In fact, I was used to girls who got attached way too quickly. Obviously, that wasn’t likely Regina's MO, and I had to admit that I kind of wished that it were.