By Reason of Insanity (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  Nicole smiled. That smile of satisfaction she always wore when she knew her attorneys as well as they knew themselves. Maybe even better. “I already checked. She has three pretrials this afternoon, all in the Pit.”

  Brunelle nodded and stood up, pulling the report from his desk. “Thanks, I bet I can catch her.”

  Nicole stepped almost enough out of Brunelle’s way as he passed. “I already made a copy for her. It’s on my desk.”

  Brunelle turned back from his door frame. “Thanks, Nicole. You’re the best.”

  She curtsied—like an Amazon princess, Brunelle thought. “I know.”

  Chapter 10

  The Pit was to pretrial conferences what Presiding was to arraignments and pleas. After all, arraignments had to turn into pleas somehow, and somewhere. The somehow was plea-bargaining, and the somewhere was pretrials in the Pit, semi-formal court dates scheduled to make sure the busy prosecutors and overworked defense attorneys would actually get together to discuss their cases. A defense attorney might stack up five of six pretrials on the same date, each with a different prosecutor. But that was okay because each of those prosecutors had seven or eight pretrials, each with a different defense attorney. In fact, the prosecutor’s property crimes unit had so many cases, they had a prosecutor assigned to do nothing but negotiate cases all day. The drug unit had two. So everyone showed up in the Pit, a large room next door to Presiding where criminal cases were wheeled and dealed like the trading pit of a stock exchange.

  Brunelle found Edwards at the far end, in a heated conversation with a prosecutor from the Special Assault Unit.

  “It was a party,” Edwards was insisting. “My guy was drunk. So was she.”

  “She was fourteen,” the prosecutor replied. An implacable woman in a dark suit. Brunelle had worked with her before; she was tough.

  “Fourteen-year-olds get drunk,” Edwards tried.

  “They get raped too,” the prosecutor replied. “No deals. He pleads as charged or we go to trial.”

  Edwards was about to pretend that she didn’t mind going to trial on a child rape case where her main defense appeared to be that the victim kind of deserved it. Brunelle saved her from that.

  “Jess, you got a minute?” He raised the document in his hand. “We just got the eval on Sawyer.”

  Edwards seemed relieved to disengage from her negotiations. But they all knew she’d be back in a few minutes, ready with some new angle she’d claim merited a reduction in the charges.

  “The eval, huh?” She snatched it out of Brunelle’s hand. “It better say she’s incompetent.”

  Brunelle grinned. “You think I’d come all the way down here to find you if it did?”

  Edwards looked up from her reading of the report long enough to shoot Brunelle a glare. Then she went back to flipping roughly through the pages. “Where is it? Where is the damn conclusion? Argh. Why do they write these like this?”

  “I think it’s because the doctors are crazy too,” Brunelle quipped. It was easy to be light-hearted when he’d won the competency battle.

  Edwards didn’t seem to appreciate it.

  “They said she was incompetent before,” she argued to no one in particular as she finally settled in on the last page and began reading. “Why would they say she’s competent now?”

  “Probably because before, she stole a pack of cigarettes, and this time she murdered her mother.”

  “It was some grapes,” Edwards corrected without looking up. “She was hungry.”

  “Even better,” Brunelle said.

  Edwards allowed a smirk. “Mr. Brunelle, are you suggesting that the doctors at Western State Hospital allow their competency determinations be influenced by their personal feeling about the appropriateness of a particular prosecution?”

  Brunelle shrugged. “If the straitjacket fits.”

  Edwards shook her head. “They wouldn’t do that. They’re professionals. Like us.”

  “I don’t know,” Brunelle chuckled. “I was told recently that lawyers are all narcissists.”

  Edwards looked up. “Who told you that?”

  “A doctor, actually,” Brunelle realized. “A medical examiner.”

  “Oh,” Edwards looked back down at the report. “You mean the one you’re fucking?”

  Brunelle’s jaw dropped. He wasn’t sure what bothered him more: that people knew about his relationship, or the vulgarity Edwards just used to express it.

  “Wow,” he sputtered. “You’re in a mood.”

  Edwards glowered at him. “Don’t tell me what kind of mood to be in.”

  Before Brunelle could reply, the young defense attorney from Presiding stepped over. Robyn. “Whoa,” she said. “Tense.”

  Edwards glared at her too, but Brunelle offered a bemused smile.

  “So,” Robyn said conversationally, holding the word long enough to indicate she was about to try to lighten the mood. “Who are you fucking?”

  Brunelle was mortified, but Edwards let out a huge laugh. When she saw Brunelle’s expression, she laughed even harder.

  “The medical examiner,” Edwards said at last, gasping. “He’s fucking the medical examiner.”

  “Ooh.” Robyn nodded and twirled some of her red curls with an absent finger. “Kinky.”

  Brunelle shook his head and raised his palms in protest. “No, it’s not like that.”

  “It isn’t?” Robyn let a pout play across her red lips. “That’s too bad.”

  Brunelle cocked his head at the pretty young lawyer. His smile started to return, but before he could figure out anything to say, Edwards shook the report at him. “This is bullshit, Dave, and you know it.”

  “I know it’s not bullshit,” he replied. “Remember, I spoke with her in the hospital. She gets what she did and what she’s facing. She just thinks it was okay.”

  “Wait,” Robyn interrupted. “You interrogated the defendant yourself and you’re fucking the coroner? Sounds like some serious conflicts of interest.”

  Brunelle wasn’t interested in having two arguments at once. He was about to say something rude, when Robyn beat him to the punch. “No worries, though. I like a dirty prosecutor.” Then she turned to Edwards. “Can I see the report?”

  Edwards handed it to her and she began flipping through it as Edwards and Brunelle argued.

  “You’re not a psychologist, Dave,” Edwards started.

  “Neither are you. And the psychologists say she’s competent.”

  “They say that this time, but only because they’re afraid of getting sued.”

  “Can you blame them? The last time they let her out, somebody’s face ended up all over a wall.”

  “Which just proves she’s crazy.”

  “She may be crazy, but she’s not incompetent.”

  “How can she be competent if she’s crazy?”

  Brunelle ran his hands through his hair. They were getting nowhere and he didn’t want to have the same argument yet again. “Can we just set the arraignment and get this thing moving?”

  “What’s the rush, Mr. B.?” Robyn suddenly interjected. She handed the report back to Edwards. “We don’t have to accept this. We can get an independent evaluation and fight it out at a contested competency hearing.”

  Edwards and Brunelle both stared at her for a moment. She was right. The statutes provided for an independent defense evaluation, but there was an unspoken gentleman’s—or gentleperson’s—agreement between the prosecutor’s office and the defense bar to accept the opinions of the doctors at Western State. Their office had done that when they’d found Sawyer incompetent on the grapes case, dismissing it when Western State said she was incompetent. Brunelle expected Edwards to do the reverse now: bitch about the report, but accept it and let the prosecution move forward.

  But Edwards’ grin told him she wouldn’t be doing that after all. “Excellent idea, Miss Dunn.”

  Now wait a minute,” Brunelle started to protest, but it was too late.

  “Any
ideas for who we should hire to do our evaluation?” Edwards asked her, ignoring Brunelle.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Robyn replied with a broad smile. Brunelle didn’t like that dimple so much any more. “I happen to know a very qualified psychologist. He’s a good friend, and the director of Cascade Mental Hospital.”

  Brunelle’s eyebrows shot up. Cascade Mental Hospital was a private mental hospital on the Eastside—the suburbs on the other side of Lake Washington from Seattle. It had started out as an exclusive sanatorium offering spa services and electroshock therapy to a clientele of successful businessmen. However, as the field of psychology progressed and it became less socially acceptable to commit ‘nervous’ wives and ‘defective’ children, the facility fell into disrepair. It was barely holding on as an emergency spill-over facility when the state-run mental institutions became overcrowded.

  “That dump?” Brunelle scoffed. “I didn’t know they even had real psychologists.”

  “Oh, it’s very real out there,” Robyn assured with a glint in her eye.

  Brunelle crossed his arms. “How do you know they’ll say what you want?”

  Robyn batted her eyelashes and her lips curled into a smile simultaneously innocent and anything but. “I can be very convincing.”

  Brunelle had no doubt about that.

  Chapter 11

  “No fucking way.”

  That’s what Chen had said when Brunelle asked the detective to accompany him to Cascade Mental Hospital.

  “That’s not in Seattle,” Chen was quick to point, “so it’s out of my jurisdiction. Sorry, pal.”

  Brunelle knew it was bullshit. “You scared of that place, Larry?”

  “I’ll tell you, Dave,” the detective explained. “I used to have to drive some of the crazy-birds out there when I was still doing patrol. That place was creepy as hell then and I’ve heard it’s only gotten worse. I wouldn’t say I’m scared of it exactly, but I know this: after you’ve been there, you’ll be scared too.”

  The conversation had felt like a challenge at the time, but as Brunelle drove up the long drive to the crumbling facade of the asylum, he reassessed it from challenging to prophetic.

  Cascade was, in fact, creepy as hell. It looked like a cross between an old English manor house and a 1950s public school. It was a large, sprawling building, finished in orange brick and gray stone, with gables and turrets that decorated a roof looming heavily over three floors of iron-barred windows.

  Brunelle fought off a shiver and parked his car in the gravel lot near the front door. It was a bright day and the heat from the sun bounced off the dusty ground as he stepped from his car and looked up again at the facility. He reminded himself that it was a hospital—a mental hospital, but still a hospital. There needed to be a place to house people unable to care for themselves. Western State couldn’t take everyone. Cascade served an important community function, he told himself. Just like the prosecutor’s office.

  Brunelle straightened his tie and walked toward the entrance, intent on his mission to remind the director of their shared goal of public safety, hopefully before Edwards contacted him for her ‘independent’ evaluation. Edwards could try to game the system, but Brunelle knew how to play the game too. A phone call would have been too easy to disregard, or not even take. He was going to look the doctor in the eye, shake his hand, and get a commitment from him to give the right answer, not just the answer Edwards and Robyn wanted.

  Brunelle pulled open the heavy wooden front door and stepped inside. Despite the rows of windows he’d seen from the outside, the lobby was devoid of sunlight, starkly dark in contrast to the sunny day outside. Hallways led off the lobby to his left, right, and straight ahead. At the back of the lobby was a large wooden reception desk, but it was empty. The only person he could see was a very large man in a hospital gown sitting on a bench about halfway down the long hallway to his left. The man had wild, unruly hair and, if Brunelle was seeing it correctly, an eye patch. There were no staff members to be seen anywhere, but the large man didn’t seem to care. He was sitting as still as a statue, his only movement a barely perceptible rocking front to back.

  Brunelle walked up to the reception desk, hoping maybe the receptionist was simply out of sight, perhaps picking something up off the floor or asleep with their head on the desk. No such luck, however. He was definitely alone in the foyer. A hotel style bell sat on the desk with a handwritten sign that read, ‘Ring Once.’

  Brunelle looked around. What other choice did he have?

  Ding!

  The large man jumped to his feet and began yelling something at once unintelligible and angry. A nurse suddenly appeared from the center hallway and ran over to the large man, glaring at Brunelle as she raced past.

  “It’s okay, Eddie. It’s okay.” She grabbed the large man by his thick arms and looked up at him. He was at least a foot taller than her and was looking up at the ceiling, moaning. “He didn’t know, Eddie. The bad man didn’t know. It’s okay. The bells are gone now. The bells are bye-bye. It’s okay.”

  After a few more minutes of similar soothing and promises of the bell being ‘bye-bye’, One-Eyed Eddie calmed down enough for the nurse to ease him back onto the bench. She lingered a moment as Eddie settled back into his catatonic rocking, then she marched directly toward Brunelle, hands balled into fists, jaw clenched in anger.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  Brunelle tapped the ‘Ring Once’ sign. He wasn’t sure whether he should be indignant for being asked, scared by Eddie’s reaction, or thankful for the nurse coming to his rescue. He settled for feeling generally freaked out. “It says to ring the bell,” he defended.

  “Not,” the nurse crossed her arms, “when Eddie is in the hallway.”

  Brunelle glanced again at the sign. Indignancy was making a comeback. “Yeah, it doesn’t say that.”

  The nurse flared her nostrils and growled slightly. She was an unpleasant looking woman. She had stringy black hair pulled back into a ponytail, with dirty looking bangs hanging too far over her baggy eyes and putty nose. “What do you want, Mr.—?”

  “Brunelle. Dave Brunelle. I’m with the King County Prosecutor’s Office.”

  Brunelle had to admit, he sometimes enjoyed the reaction he got from saying that. Cocktail party conversation to be sure, but this was one of those times too. The baggy eyes widened and she reflexively wiped her hands on her skirt. “Prosecutor’s office? Why? Is this about—?” But she stopped herself.

  Brunelle raised an eyebrow, curious, but willing to see what she said next.

  Unfortunately, the nurse calmed herself. The darkness returned to her eyes and she set her mouth into a grim line. “What can I help you with, Mr. Brunelle?”

  Brunelle offered his own fake expression: a smile. “I was wondering if I could speak with Dr. Adrianos.” He decided not to elaborate on why he wanted to speak with the hospital’s director, even if just because it was fun to play with Nurse Baggy-Eyes.

  For her part, the nurse wasn’t completely oblivious to Brunelle’s coyness. She worked in a mental hospital after all. She shifted her weight, then crossed her arms again and nodded. “Dr. Adrianos is a very busy man. Do you have an appointment?”

  Brunelle kept his saccharine grin. “I’m afraid not, but I’m willing to wait. It won’t take long, I promise.”

  The nurse sneered at the word ‘promise.’ Brunelle had noticed that to be a common female reaction to the word. “Can I tell him what it’s regarding?”

  Brunelle let the smile slip away, replacing it with his ‘serious and professional’ expression. “Murder,” he said a bit too dramatically. “It’s about murder.”

  The nurse narrowed her eyes, but didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she pointed at his feet. “Stay here,” she commanded, then disappeared down the long hallway she’d emerged from.

  Brunelle was willing to remain in the lobby, but he wasn’t about to be ordered to stand in on
e spot. He turned, clasped his hands behind back, and began a slow stroll around the tiled foyer.

  One-Eyed Eddie was still rocking glacially on his bench. There was a distant, barely audible sound of screaming from somewhere down the other hallway. And directly in front of him was the door to the outside. He resisted the urge to run to his car and flee.

  “Mr. Brunelle!” boomed a voice behind him.

  Brunelle turned to see a large man, younger than him, with thick golden curls, a blond goatee, and a brilliant smile charging right toward him. He stuck out a meaty hand in greeting. “I’m Peter Adrianos. I’ve been expecting you.”

  Chapter 12

  “You’ve been expecting me?” Brunelle asked dumbly as he shook Adrianos’ hand.

  “Of course!” Adrianos laughed. “You’re a lawyer. Everyone knows lawyers are all crazy. It was only a matter of time until you ended up here.”

  “Ah.” Brunelle managed a smile as he extracted his hand. “Got it. Good one.”

  The psychologist reached out and clasped Brunelle on the shoulder. He had a strong grip. “Seriously though, Robyn already called me. She told me all about poor Keesha. I knew I’d hear from you eventually, although I expected a phone call. To what do I owe the honor of this in-person visit?”

  Brunelle hadn’t overlooked the ‘poor Keesha’ comment. He was probably already too late. Still, he’d come this far, and he hadn’t been completely unprepared for the possibility that the defense attorneys would have reached out to Adrianos first.

  “I think I may need a primer on competency versus insanity,” Brunelle said. He knew the difference just fine, thank you, but Adrianos seemed like someone who thought pretty highly of himself. Brunelle decided to play to his vanity. “I thought you might be willing to take the time to educate me. Robyn spoke very highly of you and, in all honesty, I just don’t see how she and Jessica can be so convinced Keesha is incompetent. Either they’re lying or I’m wrong. And I thought that kind of conversation would be more productive in person.”