By Reason of Insanity Read online

  As he was talking, I was thinking that I was going to have to try to get some of the internal memos of the Pegasus company. Something was forming in my brain, an idea. An idea about maybe who it was who actually killed Lawrence. And why.

  Again, the idea was only that. An idea. It wasn’t something that was fully formed, but maybe it could become fully formed if I was actually able to get some information on the company.

  I interviewed him a little bit more. I was also really interested in his twin studies, but on that subject, he wasn’t as forthcoming about what those studies entailed. He simply said that he was in charge of studying identical twins who were separated at birth. One twin went with one of the parents, the other twin went with the other parent. He was thus able to examine how it was that genetics played on the personalities, intellect and so forth of the kids, and how much was the environment.

  I drove home from that interview feeling depressed. I didn't want to believe that there were people like this doctor in the world. People who didn't value life. Well, that wasn’t necessarily true. He did value life, just not life that was imperfect in some way.

  If only society could get rid of people like him, we’d probably all be a lot better off.

  Chapter 19

  Marina’s official arraignment was set for that Monday. I planned to make a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, but first, I had to go ahead and ask for a meeting in chambers. I needed to ask the judge what I could do in this situation, because I knew that I was going to maybe change my plea at a later date, once more information came to light. Because I was a newbie, I knew that the judge would be willing to hold my hand through this entire process. This was important because I didn’t really know what to do.

  So, I and the prosecutor, Jenna Powell, who was a veteran prosecutor, and knew what she was doing – after all, there was the possibility that this would be a death penalty case, so they had to get someone who was top-notch for the prosecutor's office to try it – met with the judge in her chambers.

  "So, counselor, you wanted to go ahead and meet with me before the arraignment?" Judge Watts asked me. "Go ahead, hit me with whatever it is you got."

  "Well, here's the thing,” I said. “As you know, my client doesn’t have a memory of the night in question. I would like to go ahead and plead her not guilty by reason of insanity. I want that option. However I cannot say with any certainty that she did kill him. If I come up with any new evidence along the line that she was not the one who killed him, I would like to withdraw the insanity plea. I would like that option."

  Judge Watts looked over at Jenna. "Well, Ms. Powell, what do you think about that? It means that you're not really going to know how to prepare for this case, because you won’t know whether or not insanity is going to be on the table. However, I am inclined to agree with Mr. Collins. In a case like this, where he's not really sure if his client did it or not, he should have both options on the table."

  "Well, as you say, your honor, it's not really fair to me. I'm not going to know if I’m going to be preparing for defending against an insanity case, or if I'm going to be preparing for a regular trial. Is this going to be a case of dueling experts or is it going to be a regular case of proving the defendant did it? I need to know that well in advance. So I would ask you to force the defendant to pick a lane and stick to it. Or at the very least, he's going to need to take the insanity defense off the table after, say, 60 days. If the insanity plea is still on table after 60 days from today, the defendant will be stuck with it. We can schedule the trial for six months out, that would give me plenty of time to make the necessary preparations for whichever kind of trial he's going to be asking for."

  "That sounds reasonable,” Judge Watts said. “In your case, Mr. Collins, if you can't figure out if your client did or did not do it within the next 60 days, then you're going to be stuck with the insanity defense. But I’ll give you 60 days of investigation, to see if you can come up with another suspect. Hopefully in those 60 days, you’ll be able to piece together exactly what happened the night that Lawrence Murphy died.

  In the meantime, I am going to go ahead and schedule the trial for six months from today. Which puts us into January 15 of next year. Whatever you decide after 60 days, that's how I'm going to proceed with this case, as well. Which means that if you want to go ahead and keep your insanity plea in place, I will order the necessary evaluations, and you're going to have to start looking for an expert to present to the jury, etcetera. So, for today, we're going to go ahead and say that she's pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. I may have to re-arraign her at another time, depending on what you decide. But let's just get this out of the way."

  I took a deep breath. What was my client going to say today? How was she going to be today? Was she going be the Marina who wants me to enter an insanity plea, or would she be the Marina who was going to insist that I plead her guilty? Maybe she was going to be the Marina who wanted me to try the case, and basically throw it. I didn't have any other suspects that I could point to the moment. I could find some in the future, but, at the moment, I was flying blind.

  Marina was out in the court, sitting at the counselor's table, her hands clasped in front of her. She was looking down at the table. I came out, she looked at me, and I could see in her eyes that she was hostile. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew I was going to have to just do what I had to do.

  "Okay, Marina, I –"

  “You need to go and talk to the judge again,” she said. “You need to go back and change this, and ask if I can plead guilty. I need to hear it from her that I can’t. You need to do that."

  "We talked about this, remember?"

  "Go back there anyways. I want you to try. I don't want to go through trial. I just want this to be over with."

  I shook my head. The judge was back on the bench. "Your Honor, can I have another conference with you in chambers?”

  She looked over at Jenna and then back at me. Then she motioned to both of us. “Okay, counselors, let's go back in chambers and talk about whatever it is that Mr. Collins needs to talk about."

  After we went back into the chambers, I took a deep breath. "My client wants to plead guilty. I wanted to know if that was an option here."

  "I don't understand,” Judge Watts said. “She wants to plead guilty? Can she make the factual basis for pleading guilty?" the judge asked me. "I'll be candid. The answer to that is no. Unless she suddenly got her memory back from that night and she can stand up in court and answer questions about how she killed him, I won’t accept a guilty plea.”

  “What about an Alford Plea?” I asked her, referring to the type of plea where the defendant pleads guilty, yet asserts innocence. This is used where the defendant knows that the evidence against her is sufficient to convict.

  “Obviously, it’s her right to plead guilty under Alford, if she wants,” Judge Watts said. “But I won’t take a straight guilty plea from her.”

  "That's what I told her. So I'm going to have to go out there and tell her that a straight guilty plea is not going to be on the table anytime soon."

  "Right,” Judge Watts said. “Okay, let's go out and get this over with. Time's a wasting. Not to mention the fact that I'm starving." She took out a pack of gum, and then popped a stick in her mouth. "When I can't get a meal anytime soon, it helps if I have my jaw working. Okay, you guys, let's get on out there."

  All of us filed right back out into the courtroom, and I went over to Marina. "Just like I thought. The judge is not going to accept a guilty plea from you. You can't get up on the stand and say that you killed your husband, when you don't know if you did or not. So she might accept a guilty plea in the future, but only if I can prove to her with the facts that you did do it. So, that's where we're at."

  Marina sighed. "This is ridiculous. I don't want to go through trial. I don't want to have to go through a mental evaluation. I don't want to do anything. I just want to go to prison."

  "Well, sorry, that
's not going to happen today. Today we're going to do an arraignment. I'm going to plead you not guilty by reason of insanity. And in 60 days, if nothing has happened, and I have not been able to figure out in my own investigation who killed your husband, assuming it wasn't you, then the not guilty by reason of insanity plea will stand. We're going to have to proceed that way. That's what the judge has decided. So we have 60 days to try to figure out exactly what happened."

  "Well, then, I guess you know what you're doing. You're the boss."

  “There is one other option,” I said. “The judge won’t accept a straight guilty plea. She will accept what’s called an Alford Plea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s where you get up on the stand and do not admit guilt, yet plead guilty to the charge. All you have to do is admit that the state has enough evidence to convict you. However, I don’t advise that, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I haven’t even started the discovery process with the state yet. I don’t know that the state has enough evidence to convict you, and neither do you. All I have is what’s in the police report and the statement of information. If I plead you guilty through an Alford plea now, you’ll come back on me for malpractice and you can appeal on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel. I don’t want that following me around, so again, if you want to take an Alford plea right now, you can. But I’ll have to withdraw from your case first.”

  And that was that. I suddenly made up my mind. If Marina wanted me to do something that I knew was against the evidence, I was going to tell James to pound sand. I didn’t need a black mark following me around, and I knew that Marina, whose moods and thoughts changed with the wind, would be just the kind of person who would sue me for malpractice if I pled her guilty before the facts were in.

  She simply nodded her head when I said that to her. “Okay, you’re the boss.”

  Her shifts in mood and tone were starting to give me whiplash. One moment, she went from fighting me every step of the way. The next moment, she was willing to acquiesce to anything I wanted to do.

  But I could see in her eyes that she was calculating something. I didn't know what it was, but there was something behind those eyes that made me think that she was going to throw a monkey wrench into the gears yet.

  I just had to shake off the feeling I got when I looked at her. Her face was blank, for the most part. But I could see in those magnetic blue eyes that her wheels returning.

  The judge got on the bench, called the case, and I went forward with Marina. Jenna was up there as well. I pled Marina not guilty by reason of insanity, the judge accepted it, she announced to the court that we had 60 days to withdraw the insanity plea, and after 60 days, if the plea was not withdrawn, that was how the trial was going to proceed.

  I was just happy that I got through this part of the proceedings. I was not happy, however, with my feeling that everything was going to get messed up. FUBAR.

  I had no clue exactly how it was all going to go FUBAR. I only knew that it was going to.

  Chapter 20

  It was finally Saturday, and I didn't have anything planned for the day. I only knew that, for once in like, forever, my weekend was my own. I hadn’t toked up in quite awhile, and I was itching to get to the pipe.

  I went out on the balcony, lit up my pipe, and took a deep hit. The smoke burned my throat and my lungs as I inhaled forcefully.

  I remembered when I first started doing this. I was only 16. I was running with a crowd who smoked a lot of weed, but I never did. I was drinking beer by the time I was 13, but I wasn’t smoking pot at all at that time.

  One of my friends, I think his name was Toby, finally decided that it was time for me to get with the program and toke it up with the rest of them. At that time, marijuana was legal for medicinal purposes, and but not for recreational purposes. Now, of course, it was legal for everybody.

  And, of course, pot wasn’t legal for 16-year-olds, then or now, so I broke the law back then when I lit up. No getting around that.

  "Here, dude," he said to me, passing me his joint.

  I just shook my head. "No man, I don't do that shit.”

  He looked at the beer that I had in my hand. “You’ll do this, yet you're not going to smoke weed?” he said, motioning to the beer. "Trust me, this is much better for you."

  I had no desire to even try it. At that time, I bought into the whole story about how people start smoking weed, and how it made them lay around the couch all day long, eating Nacho Cheese Doritos by the bagful. Somebody would ask a stoner a question, and they would just stare at the questioner and not answer. 10 minutes later, they would come up with a reply. That was the way it was with every stoner I knew at that time. I had no desire to be one of them.

  I finally decided to go ahead and take a toke, of course. And I realized that my body was the kind that did very well with marijuana. It didn't make me want to lay on the couch, and just eat a lot. It didn't make me feel like I couldn't function. It just made everything come into focus.

  I had been hooked ever since.

  I sat on the balcony, and took another hit on my pipe. I put my feet up on the railing, and leaned back in my chair. Our condo was facing the beach, and, it being a Saturday morning, there were a lot of people down there. I watched a volleyball game, and I watched all the people on the boardwalk below, doing their thing. In the distance, I could see the surfers, and I knew that I was going to be out there soon.

  But, for now, I had to just chill. I thought that maybe if I toked up, I could see my way around this Marina case. It was baffling me, the way that she was acting, the way that she was changing her mind every five seconds about things, and just everything about it. I knew that there were going to be problems in this case. I just didn't know what they were going to be, and how I was come going to overcome them.

  I hated that I didn't have an investigator on the case anymore. I hated that I had to do my own investigations. I really hated the fact that I didn't have an excuse to be close to Regina anymore.

  That was what I hated most of all. I was looking forward to having Regina on the case, because I wanted to be close to her. I wanted to be close enough to touch her skin. Close enough to look into her blue eyes. I wanted her to work with me, side-by-side, because I wanted to be with her.

  Avery came out, with her dogs, Harlow and Lola. They were two boxer dogs, a year and a half old, and, like all boxers, they were hyper as hell. They came up to me, their tiny tails going mad as Harlow attempted to get on my lap, all 70 lbs of her, while Lola madly licked my face. I laughed as I helped Harlow onto the chair with me, and pet her head. At that point, I had two boxer dogs giving me mad kisses, and it kind of made my day.

  "Hey, Aidan," Avery said to me. "I thought I would find you out here."

  I nodded my head. I took another hit off the pipe. "Yeah. I may be getting out there pretty soon, surfing with the guys. But I have to think about what's going on with my case. I don't know, it's got me kind of rattled. My client has got me rattled."

  “What's got you rattled? Maybe I can help?"

  "Well, it's just kind of overwhelming, to be honest with you. I know that this is the only case I have right now. When my firm assigned this case to me, they told me that they didn’t want me overwhelmed, so I don't have any other cases on my plate at the moment. I guess what I'm saying is that this is the only game in town for me. And I feel like I'm going to blow it."

  "Why? Why do you feel you’re going to blow it?" she asked me.

  "I don't know. It's just that my client is not exactly mentally balanced. Every moment, it seems like she's trying to tell me to do something else in her case. Plead her guilty, plead her not guilty by reason of insanity, don't plead her not guilty by reason of insanity, try the case as a SODDI case. Some other dude did it. It just seems that she’s taking me on a roller coaster, a Tilt-A-Whirl, and I don't know what's going to happen next."

  "Well, you just have to methodically
investigate this case, a little at a time. You know what they say about how you how to eat an elephant - one bite at a time? That's what you need to do with this case. Just take it one bite at a time."

  "I guess so. Anyhow, I’ve been doing a little research on this Pegasus place. And you know how they’re kind of focusing on trying to get a cloned human being. Right?"

  “Yeah. I do understand that. And, I think that that might be what's behind Lawrence getting murdered."

  "I think you're right. I have to wonder how it is tied into it. I've been trying to find out information about what kind of human subjects they have been taking on, if any. And, so far, I've come up empty. Regina told me about a lady named Helena Maxwell who had a daughter, Genevieve, who she wanted cloned. But I can’t find info on this. I put Christian on the task of hacking into the database, and he told me that there hasn’t been any movement on the human cloning front at all. All that I know is they’re trying to figure out how to do it. But there is something I came across, that was, shall we say, intriguing."

  "What was that?" Avery asked me.

  "Well, I guess that one of the studies that Pegasus has commissioned, has been twin studies. And it makes sense, since they are so interested in maybe cloning a human being. It makes sense that they would be looking into the nature versus nurture question. Because, if you think about it, what is it that a person wants when they want a cloned human being? Let's just say that you had a daughter. And that daughter was killed in an accident. And let's just say it's 20 years in the future, or however far in the future it is that there's going to be actual human cloning. You take some DNA over to this laboratory, because you want more than anything to have your daughter back. You don't want it to be a different kid, you want your daughter back."