By Reason of Insanity Page 2

  Regina went out into the living room, where Avery was standing next to a small table, sifting through mail. She glanced at Regina, and looked at the mail again, and then glanced up again. And then she cocked her head, and smiled.

  "I knew it was just a matter of time. What happened, the two of you got schnockered last night and did the deed?” she asked with a smile.

  “Something like that,” Regina said. “I think I had way too much Grey Goose last night. At least your brother has some taste, in vodka, I mean."

  "Whatever, it’s your guys’ life. Anyhow, Aidan, what were you going to tell me?"

  "I have a murder case."

  Avery's eyes got wide. "You have a murder case? What do you mean?" She was clearly incredulous. Her mouth was opened and she was just staring at me as if I had grown another head.

  "Why do you say it like that?” I asked her.

  "I mean, you’ve been a lawyer for like two seconds. You just got sworn in last month, and your firm’s already giving you a case like this?" She shook her head. "Dude, that's a malpractice case waiting to happen."

  I had to admit that she was probably right about that. I hadn't been to too many court appearances as a lawyer, aside from a bunch of 5150 and 5250 hearings, which typically lasted not more than a couple of hours. I hadn’t yet had a full-blown trial, with multiple witnesses, jury selection and an extensive discovery process.

  I shrugged my shoulders. "What can I say? She's one of my current clients. She was involuntarily committed to the psychiatric unit at Sharp, and she ended up in the Behavioral Health Center in La Mesa. She's been in and out of psychiatric units for most of her life, and she landed in the hospital the latest time because she had threatened to burn down her friend’s guesthouse. The friend called the cops, and Marina had a meltdown in front of the cops, threatening to kill herself, so she ended up in the psychiatric unit for a 5150 hold. She was deemed to be a danger to herself after the 72 hours, so she was held for another 14 days under a 5250 hold. I represented her in all of these hearings. And now, apparently, she's been accused of murdering her husband."

  Avery looked at me. “So, you have a case now that might be capital, and you’ve been a lawyer for just a few months? What the hell is Pierce and Wright doing to you over there?"

  "Sis, I don't know. All that I know is that this woman apparently wants me to represent her in her murder case. And apparently she told my firm that it was me or nobody. And I guess she's got deep pockets, her husband was a billionaire. He owned this biotech firm called Pegasus, and –"

  “You have the murder case of Lawrence Murphy?” Avery said. "Oh my God."

  I took a deep breath. "That doesn't sound good. You immediately knew who I was talking about when I said what she did."

  "Well who doesn't in this town? Listen, Aidan, when a billionaire gets murdered, especially when the wife is accused of doing it, and especially when said wife has told everybody that she knows that she didn't do it, but, apparently she had blacked out the night of the murder, that's going to be a story. And here you are, a baby lawyer, hot and heavy in the middle of it. You're going to need some help."

  "Well, I guess that's where you come in,” I said. “And Regina. My firm doesn't have very good investigators for murder cases. I mean, our firm is a boutique firm, and it doesn’t really like to stray from what it does, which are involuntary commitments and class-action lawsuits. I'm going to have to ask my direct supervisor if we can bring Regina on the case. I'm sure that won’t be a problem. I’m going to need her help, because you're right, I’ll be flying blind with this. The bad thing is, I really don't know why it is that she wants me on her case so badly. I mean, to me, that seems kind of fishy."

  "Well, what do you know about this woman?"

  "Just that she's borderline. That's her diagnosis. And, considering all the things that she's done over her life, I think that that's probably the right diagnosis. I mean, I can understand where her personality disorder came from. She was in an orphanage in Russia until she was seven years old. And God knows what happened to her in the orphanage. Her parents were murdered when she was three months old, and she spent all of her time from the age of three months to age seven in an orphanage. I know a little bit about psychology, actually, I know quite a bit about it, because that was my major in undergrad. I know that she probably suffered from Attachment Disorder, which is what happens when a young child is neglected, abused or abandoned. She needed somebody to bond with when she was a baby, someone who could make her feel safe, and she never had that she was very young. I would imagine she actually experienced horrors in that orphanage. I’ve read about them, about the kids who are beaten, starved, tied to benches and beds, and some are abandoned. I never really got into her orphanage experiences with her. I’m going to have to definitely talk to her psychiatrist, and her psychotherapist, and everybody who has been working with her to get the entire story about her."

  "Okay, so she's borderline. Does she have any lapses of time?"

  "I think she does. At least, that's what she tells me. She does tell me, or she has told me, that she would lose entire days sometime. Like, it would be Friday afternoon, and the last thing that she would remember would be going to the movies the previous Monday. She would have no clue about what had happened between those two periods of time. So, yeah. She definitely has had lost time. They call it dissociation."

  “So then it’s possible that she did kill her husband and she just doesn't have any memory of it,” Avery said. “You’re going to have to find out what happened to her."

  I looked over at Regina, who was nodding her head. “Aidan, I'll come with you down to the jail. You want me on this case, right?"

  “Of course, you're the best." I clasped my hands in front of me, suddenly feeling shy. This was Regina, a girl I’d known for years. I wasn't used to this. I wasn't used to having my one-night stand around me after the night had passed. I could smell the scent of her slightly woodsy perfume, could taste the strawberries that were on her lips the night before. I took a deep breath, trying to keep myself from having a boner. That would be embarrassing, to say the very least.

  Was my working relationship with Regina going to work? Now that we had broken the seal, so to speak, were we going to be able to just go back to the way we were? This was uncharted territory for me. I wasn’t used to seeing my one-nighters again. I was used to women who knew the score, just like I did. Just one night, boom boom boom, and that's it. Yet here I was with my one-nighter going with me to the jail to see this Marina person.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  “Marina’s waiting for us?" Regina asked me.

  "She is. Of course, were is she going to go?"

  "True that. You driving?" Regina asked me.

  "Yeah. I'll buy you lunch."

  "You don't have to do that. I got stuff I gotta do in the afternoon."

  We said goodbye to Avery, and got in my car, and headed towards the jail.

  Chapter 2

  Regina and I went to the San Diego County jail and waited for Marina to be brought out. I looked over at Regina, who had her hands clasped in front of her, not saying a word. I wondered if she was thinking the same thing that I was, which was that last night was a mistake, although it was definitely a mistake that I would have liked to keep repeating. Not that I could say that to her.

  "I was looking at this case, on my phone, on the way over here,” she said. “What's with this Pegasus thing? I mean, they're trying to do human cloning over there?" She shook her head. "I mean, why? That's so weird. Do you remember, God, it was about 20 years ago or more, there was some weird couple on some island who said that they had cloned a human ? And did you ever read that book, The Boys from Brazil?”

  “No, I can’t say that I’ve read that book,” I said, impressed that Regina had. I had heard of that book, but I didn’t really know what it was about.

  “Well, in this book, these mad scientists cloned Hitler, over and over again, all these new
Hitlers, I forget exactly how they were able to do it, because you know Hitler has been dead for so long, but they cloned him. And then they would take these boys, these Hitler clones, and kill their fathers at a certain time, things like that. They wanted the baby Hitlers to have the same experiences that Hitler went through. You know the whole nature versus nurture thing. Was Hitler born bad, or was he made that way? Anyhow, these crazy guys wanted these kids to have the same experiences that Hitler did, so they made sure that these kids’ fathers died at the age of thirteen, or whatever, and they made sure that the father was married to a much younger woman, because those were Hitler’s life experiences and the new Hitlers had to have the same experience. I don't remember exactly how it ended. I really don’t know what the point is in human cloning. What purpose does it serve?”

  “Well, maybe some rich person is going to want to have his daughter cloned because, who knows why. I agree with you, however, I do know that cloning has been extremely beneficial in the medical field. You can –"

  "I know. People could clone themselves so that they can have excess body parts. You know, you create somebody, exactly like you, and you could store your clone in some laboratory somewhere and just take his liver, or whatever, if you need it. I think I saw a movie like that too. I mean, why else would cloning even be a thing?"

  "I admit, I don't know. Probably Pegasus just wants to be the first. Just like putting a man on the moon - what was the point in that? I don’t really know, but it was important to be the first. Human cloning will be like that.”

  Regina rolled her eyes. “Yeah, maybe it was pointless to put a man on the moon, but, at the rate we’re going, we might have to put people up there to live once we destroy this planet. Besides, the space program has brought a lot of great things to the world, like satellites.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I agree that the money going to the moon would probably have been better spent taking care of the people on earth.”

  Just then, Marina showed up. She was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, of course. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and she was wearing no makeup. Still, even though she was extremely pale, she looked like a supermodel. Her blue eyes were clearer than ever, and she walked with the grace of a leopard. Her full lips were pursed as she looked at Regina and me. She was not in handcuffs, either her wrists or her legs, because this was a professional visit, so it wasn’t necessary to shackle her.

  She sat down at our table, and then looked at Regina and me with suspicion in her eyes.

  "Aidan," she said, looking at Regina. "Who is this?" Her eyes bore holes in me. “Aidan, are you cheating on me?"

  She smiled as she looked over at Regina, and put her hand on Regina's arm. "Soft. You must use good moisturizer, because I can tell you’ve been in the sun a lot. You’re very tan. You have the kind of skin that I've always wanted for myself. Dark."

  I was still trying to figure out why it was that she asked if I was cheating on her. I was pretty sure that it was meant to be a joke, but, who knows? It was entirely possible that she had created a relationship between the two of us in her mind.

  Regina just looked at me and shook her head.

  Marina looked at me again. "Aidan, are you going to answer my earlier question? Who is this?"

  "This is Regina. She's going to be my investigator."

  "Investigator. Is that what they're calling it these days?" She looked at the two of us and smiled. "I can smell it on the two of you. Pheromones. I have a very keen sense of smell. You guys are doing it.” She leaned back. "Not that I care. You can do what you want, of course. I just don't know if your lover should be working for you. You’re going to get distracted and you’re going to do a poor job on my case. That's all I'm thinking."

  I didn't try to set her straight. How could I? She somehow picked up on the nonverbal cues between Regina and I, and she had both of our numbers.

  "Trust me, Regina is nothing but a professional. And a great private investigator.”

  “I’ll bet,” she said.

  “And I’m a professional. I won’t get distracted by Regina.”

  "You’re a professional?” Marina said with a snort. "You're just a baby. A kid. You’re the legal equivalent of Doogie Howser.”

  “Yet you want me on the case, right?”

  "Yes, I do. You see, you’re eye candy, Aidan. If I have to go through a nightmare such as a murder trial, when, if you ask me, I should be getting a medal for that man being dead, I might as well go with somebody who's sexy. Like you."

  "Marina, that is not the way to pick an attorney,” I said, stating the brutally obvious.

  "You think I care? Listen, I really don't care whether I live or die. I don't care if I go to prison. I don't care if they put a needle in my arm. I think it would be kind of electric. Just think about all those people on the other side of the glass, watching me die. It gives me shivers of excitement just thinking about it. Also, just think about all those people I can meet behind bars. All the trouble I can stir up. Quite frankly, I'm very bored with my life as it is. Why do you think that I go into the hospital all the time? I live for different experiences, and there's nothing more thrilling than being in a place where people are constantly brought in screaming. Prison is a place where all these damaged lost souls are. All the scared people, all the people who’ve been tortured throughout their lives. What can I say, I like twisting the knife a little harder. Especially if you're weak. If I go to prison, then I'll have my pick of people who I can torment."

  Regina stepped on my foot, but I was still watching Marina. Regina put her pen down, as she had stopped writing and was just watching Marina with me.

  It was then that Maria smiled. "I gotcha, didn't I? You thought that that's really what I was after, didn't you? You thought I really wanted to just go to prison so that I can torment weak people." She shook her head. "No, that's really not it. I want you to be my attorney, because, quite frankly, I trust you. When you went to my hearing for me, I thought that you did a good job. And, because my husband is a billionaire, and believe it or not, I was able to take control of my own personal bank account, don't ask me how I got the money, because you know that my husband's assets are frozen at the moment. So I can't get into it. I have my own money, not much, just about $8 million in there. So I can pay you what the firm is asking. Five hundred dollars an hour. I just want to have an attorney that I like. It's nothing more than that. Besides, six of one, half dozen of the other. Attorneys are all the same. I'm sure you'll do a good job."

  Regina resumed her note taking.

  I just watched her some more. I didn’t know which statement to believe from her - that she wanted to go to prison for sadistic reasons or that she was joking about it.

  I decided just to stop trying to figure out the answer to that question, because it was making my head hurt.

  "Okay, Marina, I need to ask you some questions, about the night your husband died.”

  She leaned back in her chair. "Go ahead. By the way, you have to get me out of this place. I have to get out of here. This place stinks like you would not believe, and, quite frankly, this color clashes with my skin and hair. Redheads look horrible in most oranges, especially this particular shade. And the food, don't even get me started. Inedible is not the word."

  “I’ll do what I can to get you a bond that you can make.”

  “Good,” she said. “I have about $5 million to spend on my bond. The rest of my money, I have to use to pay for you sharks.”

  “I’ll bring it up at your arraignment,” I said. “Now, tell me about the relationship you had with Lawrence."

  Marina snorted, which was an odd sound coming from such a small dainty woman. She pursed her lips, and I looked away.

  "What's there to tell?” she finally said. “I married him for money. Of course. He married me because of the way I look. And he groomed me to be what he wanted me to be. You know, he helped me to look right at his fancy parties. How not to make a total idiot out of myself in front of people. I
needed to go to social functions with him and not drool in front of people and pee on their floor. That's what I did. He had like this entire resumé for me."

  “A resumé? What do you mean?"

  "A resumé,” she repeated. “When he married me, he gave me something that had my name on it, and had a job description on there. It was so weird, really. He told me what was expected from me and that he would give me $1 million for every year that we were married, and no more. So, it kind of was like a job where I earned $1 million a year for not doing a whole lot."

  That sounded weird, to say the very least. “I guess I don't really understand. Why would he hire you to be his wife, as opposed to finding somebody who would actually be his wife for real? The guy was loaded. I’m sure that there are quite a few women out there that would be more than willing to marry him.”

  Marina just shrugged her shoulders. "How am I supposed to know? Besides, the guy was gay. Well, maybe not gay, but definitely bisexual. I don't know the answer to your question, but you have to admit he got off cheap. I’m only getting a million a year, when the guy is worth billions. Any other woman wouldn’t put up with that crap. You should be asking me why I got married to him, not the other way around.”

  “And if he died?”

  “If he died, I get nothing more. My prenup says that I only get a million a year, and if he died, all of his property goes to charity.” She shook her head. “Charity. Not me. Makes me sick, but what can you do? At least you know that I didn’t kill him to get his money, because I’m not going to get a dime out of his fortune. All I got is the $8 million I’ve earned over these past 8 years, and I have to pay most of that to you guys. I’ll be in the poor house in no time.”

  That was an interesting twist. It certainly was going to blunt the inevitable argument that she killed her husband for his money.

  “Besides,” Marina said. “Even though he was worth billions, most of his money was in Pegasus. I’d rather just take the cash. God knows I wouldn’t want to take over for what he was doing there. I think it's unnatural, that human cloning nonsense. Where I come from, you don't do stuff like that.”