Rose Connors: Temporary Sanity

“Get what, Maggie? Get what?”

She leans over me. “He knows them,” she whispers in my face.

“He knows all of them. He tells us that all the time. He knows every cop in the county. And every cop in the county knows him.”

“That’s probably true. He’s been a parole officer for twenty years. But that doesn’t mean he gets away with beating your mom.”

“They won’t touch him.”

“But they will, Maggie. They have to. They’re probably on their way to your house as we speak, because of the hospital’s report.”

“Oh, sure, they might pick him up. They’ll have to now, I guess. But he’ll be out in no time. The cops are his friends.”

“The cops have nothing to say about it. A judge will decide.”

Maggie straightens up and dries her face with the heels of her palms, leaving small patches of water on her cheeks. “But he’ll get out on bail first. He’ll be out before any judge decides anything. And you know what will happen then?”

Maggie points backward toward her mother’s now incomprehensible words. “Do you?”

I shake my head. I want to hear it from her.

“He’ll kill her,” she spits. “He’ll just plain kill her.” She turns away and buries her face in her hands.

The waiting area suddenly falls silent. Even Sonia Baker is abruptly quiet.

I lower my voice to a whisper. “Maggie, did Howard Davis say that? Did he say he would kill your mother if she turned him in?”

She stares at me, her eyes red, her cheeks stained, and says nothing.

I leave my chair, cross the small space between us, and take hold of her bony shoulders. “Maggie, you have to tell me. Did Howard Davis threaten to kill your mother?”

She looks away and talks to the floor. “Yeah,” she whispers, “he says he’ll break her neck with his bare hands. Right after she watches him break mine.”

Cape Cod Hospital’s parking lot is emptying, the seven-to-three nurses and technicians just off their shifts. The snow is falling in sheets, the afternoon sky a nighttime gray. I pull my hood tight around my face and insert myself and my cell phone into a crevice where the granite wall takes a jog, in a futile attempt to escape the gale-force winds and the driven snow. I take one glove off just long enough to punch in my office number.

Sonia Baker needs more than a restraining order. She needs more help than the District Attorney’s office can give her. She needs a lawyer of her own-to walk her through the process of swearing out a criminal complaint; to convince the District Attorney’s office to charge Howard Davis not only with domestic violence but with threatening to commit double homicide as well; to persuade a Barnstable County judge to put one of his own parole officers behind bars-and keep him there.

I can’t do it; I’ve already taken too much time from Buck Hammond’s case. Harry can’t either, of course. He’s in court on a suppression hearing right now, and he’s got Steady Teddy’s pretrial conference at the end of the day. Sonia Baker needs help today, not tomorrow. The Kydd will have to do it. It’s a serious matter-he’s never handled one of these before-but I know the Kydd. He’s up to it.

He answers the phone on the first ring and starts talking as soon as he hears my voice. “Marty, where the hell have you been?”

This is not the greeting I expected. “Do you think I dropped them off and went shopping, Kydd? I’m at the hospital, for God’s sake.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you for half an hour. Your cell phone’s been shut down.”

“I know that, Kydd. What’s going on?”

“Where is she?”

“Where’s who?”

“Sonia Baker.”

A shiver runs down my spine, and it has nothing to do with the weather. The Kydd knows Sonia Baker’s name now. He didn’t when we left the office. “She’s on her way to X ray,” I tell him. “Why?”

He takes a deep breath before he answers. “Chatham police are headed your way.”

“Good. They can take her statement, then pick up the murderous boyfriend.”

“Marty…”

“The boyfriend is Howard Davis. You know, that giant parole officer. Can you believe that?”

“Marty…”

“Sonia Baker is lucky she’s alive. Howard Davis is big enough to break her in two. And he’s threatened to do just that-to her and the girl.”

“Marty!” The Kydd screams so loudly I almost drop the phone in the snow.

“What, Kydd? For God’s sake, what?”

He takes another deep breath. The wind whips the hood from my head and hurls heavy wet flakes into my eyes.

“Howard Davis is dead.”

My vision blurs and I press my free hand against the granite wall for balance.

“Dead?”

“Stabbed to death with a steak knife,” the Kydd says. “One from a set in Sonia Baker’s kitchen.”

Chatham’s Chief of Police pulls into the hospital parking lot just as I snap my cell phone shut. I race across the slippery lot to the Thunderbird, grab my camera and a fresh roll of film from the glove compartment, then head back to the ER. I hurry through the automatic doors again, maneuver around the crowded waiting area, and run down the long tube of fluorescent light. I can’t get there fast enough.

Sonia Baker is reciting her litany all over again, this time to the X-ray technician. Her voice has grown hoarse, though, and she’s lost some volume-a small improvement. I wish I had a muzzle.

I find Maggie in the waiting area first and pull her to her feet. “Forget everything I said about talking to the police,” I tell her. “Don’t answer any questions. Not for the cops. Not for anybody else. Do you understand me?”

Maggie nods her head yes, but her terrified eyes say no. Of course she doesn’t understand me.

“Maggie,” I tell her, “give them your name. If they ask who you are, answer. But that’s it. Nothing else. Tell them those are my instructions.”

She nods again, but says nothing.

I rush into the X-ray suite and lean over Sonia while the technician scolds me from his booth. “Hey,” he yells out, “what are you doing? You can’t be in here. Where the hell did you come from?”

I ignore him.

“Sonia.” My hand moves above her stitched lips to stop her recital. “Be quiet. I mean it. Don’t say another word.”

Sonia stares at me while I load my camera, her expression suggesting she’s never seen me before. “I provoked him,” she mutters, the word sounding through her damaged lips as if it has a b in the middle. “He wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t proboked him.”

“Shut up,” I tell her. “For God’s sake, shut up.”

“Sonia Baker?”

The sound echoes through the hallway, a voice I know well. It’s Tommy Fitzpatrick, Chatham’s Chief of Police. The dead man was an insider; the Chief’s handling this one personally. Two uniformed Chatham detectives are with him, but only Tommy Fitzpatrick speaks. “Sonia Baker?” he repeats.

“This is Sonia Baker,” I tell him. “She doesn’t want to answer any questions. She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

The Chief gives me a friendly nod with his full head of strawberry blond hair. He’s more comfortable with my new job than I am. “Okay,” he says, “but she needs to listen.”

I know what’s coming. I wish I’d warned her.

“Sonia Baker,” the Chief recites, towering over her on the X-ray table, “you’re under arrest for the murder of one Howard Andrew Davis.”

Sonia gasps and raises her upper body from the table. She looks at me, shaking her head back and forth, disbelief creeping into her eyes. I nod at her. She pulls herself to a seated position, holding the hem of her hospital johnny with her good hand.