Temporary Sanity (11 page)

Sonia avoids looking at me. Her eyes roam around the room, then settle on the small, empty counter in front of her. She sets her jaw.

“Because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts intends to convict you of first-degree murder. And sometimes the Commonwealth convicts innocent people. Not on purpose. But it happens. Trust me. I know.”

Sonia’s lips part, but she says nothing. Her eyes stay fixed on the counter.

“Because in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, women convicted of first-degree murder-guilty or not-go to MCI Framing ham, a place that makes this joint look like a spa. And they don’t leave. Ever.”

Now Sonia lowers her eyes to her lap. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I get it.”

I wait until she raises her head, but she still doesn’t look at me. She stares at the wall again.

“I hope you do. You need to cooperate with Dr. Nelson tomorrow morning. Tell her everything.”

“Everything about Howard?”

“About Howard. About you. And about anything else she brings up. She can’t help us if you don’t.”

Sonia nods, but says nothing.

“Howard’s life is over, Sonia. There’s nothing you can do about that. But if you don’t come clean about him, yours may as well be over too.”

She runs a hand through her bleached hair, then tilts her head back and studies the ceiling.

“Maggie needs you. She needs you more than Howard Davis ever did.”

She closes her eyes, head still tilted, and takes a deep breath. “How is she? Maggie. Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. But she won’t be, down the road, if you don’t beat this charge. And tomorrow’s assessment is step one. Take it seriously. It matters.”

Finally, Sonia tears her eyes from the ceiling and looks at me. “What is it? The battered woman thing-what’s it all about?”

The million-dollar question.

“It’s a syndrome-described by the experts as a subclass of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s not classified as an illness; it’s not even a diagnosis. It’s a pattern of emotions and behaviors common among women who’ve been battered by their partners.”

“Like what?”

“Depression. Shame. Self-reproach. Repeatedly leaving-and then going back to-the abuse. The medical community sums it all up as ‘learned helplessness.’”

Sonia’s gaze returns to the ceiling. “So what? Why does any of that matter?”

“It goes to intent. A woman in the throes of the syndrome lives in constant dread of imminent aggression.”

Sonia looks at me, raises her eyebrows. “Translation?”

“She knows she might get hurt-badly-any minute of the day, every day.”

Sonia nods.

“The battered woman has a heightened perception of threat. She’s on constant alert. Expert testimony on that issue can bolster a self-defense claim.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“There have been cases where the women didn’t remember.”

“Didn’t remember what?”

“Killing their abusers.”

Sonia stares at me, mouth open.

“I’m not kidding. The psychiatrists call it ‘dissociative amnesia.’ The woman does in her batterer-in one case, she bludgeoned him with a baseball bat-then doesn’t remember anything about it.”

Sonia knits her eyebrows and shakes her head, slowly. She doesn’t buy it. “I’ve never hurt anyone,” she says. “Not on purpose.” Her voice is little more than a whisper. “If I killed somebody-anybody-it wouldn’t slip my mind.”

She falls silent, still staring at me. Her expression says I’m the one who needs a shrink. Our dissociative amnesia discussion is over.

“Okay, Sonia. But I want you to understand the syndrome. So you’ll know the kind of information you need to share with Dr. Nelson.”

She shrugs.

“The experts all agree it’s cyclical. The cycle has three stages. The initial stage is mostly verbal, a lot of yelling. There’s some physical abuse too, but it’s minor.”

“People fight,” she says. “What’s the big deal?”

“In stage two, the verbal abuse escalates. The yelling gets louder, more threatening. Then there’s a single explosion. The woman gets physically beaten up-once.”

Sonia nods, says nothing.

“That’s followed by a respite, a break. No abuse at all. Until stage three.”

She lowers her eyes to her lap again.

“Stage three is essentially a repetition of the first two stages-on fast-forward. The time between beatings gets shorter and shorter.”

For a full minute, the telephone line between us is quiet. Sonia takes a deep breath and looks up at me. “Okay,” she says. “I get it.”

“You should know,” I tell her, “that the law doesn’t recognize a woman as battered unless she’s gone through the complete cycle-all three stages, and with the same man-at least twice.”

Sonia lets out a soft laugh and stares at her lap again, hugging her cast. “Twice?” Her eyes are brimming when she looks back at me. “No problem.”

She’s had it.

“Are we done?”

“Yes.”

She hangs up her phone, stands, and turns away.

I hang up too, and press the buzzer. The matron opens the door behind Sonia in a millisecond. She must have been leaning on it.

It occurs to me, as I pack up my briefcase, that I’m two for two. First in Buck Hammond’s case, and now in this one, I’m arguing that the dead guy deserved it. I’ve barely begun my career with the defense bar, but I seem to be developing a niche.

The moon is almost full tonight. Beams of light shimmer on the salt water at the end of Bayview Road. They light up the beach and the narrow lane, reflecting off the newly fallen foot of snow. The weatherman was right on.

Sonia Baker’s cottage, crime scene tape and all, is bathed in a soft yellow glow. Geraldine’s Buick is parked at the curb, empty. She’s already gone inside.

Every light in the place is on. Soft lamplight peeks out from behind ivory lace curtains. If it weren’t wrapped in that black-lettered tape, the small shingled house would look cozy and inviting on this frigid night. It occurs to me, for the first time, that Maggie Baker will probably get good and homesick long before all this is over.

Geraldine agreed to meet me here at seven, but I’m a half hour late. I was only a few minutes behind schedule when I left the Barnstable County House of Correction, then I got stuck behind a sander on the single-lane portion of the Mid-Cape Highway. This isn’t good. Geraldine doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

The front door is unlocked. I let myself in, tapping on the inlaid glass to announce my arrival. Sonia’s living room looks altogether different than it did twenty-four hours ago. Howard Davis’s body is gone, of course; so is the blood-drenched sofa, the serrated knife, and the Johnnie Walker Red bottle.

A white, powdery film covers every surface in the room-the remaining furniture, the doorknobs, even the windowsills. It’s residue from the print search. Patches of the living-room rug-close to where the couch and body were-have been excised. A scuffed wooden floor shows through the holes.

“In here, Martha.”

I follow Geraldine’s voice to Maggie’s back bedroom, a room we surveyed quickly on last night’s brisk tour. It holds only a single bed, an oval braided rug, and an old pine bureau. The lamp on the bureau-a ceramic ballerina with a chipped tutu and a frilly pink shade-is on. Maggie’s hairbrush sits beside it.

The room’s walls are covered with the predictable tattered posters of movie stars and rock singers, but otherwise the space is surprisingly neat for a teenager’s. My stomach registers a small surge of hope; maybe a touch of Maggie’s tidiness will rub off on Luke.

Geraldine doesn’t look up when I join her. She’s busy filling two shopping bags she’s positioned on Maggie’s bed. I wouldn’t have a clue about packing for a teenage girl, but Geraldine selects items from the bureau’s open drawers without hesitation, as if she’s been Maggie Baker’s personal shopper for years.

“How do you know what to choose, Geraldine?”

She gives me that look, the one she perfected during the ten years we worked together. “Martha, get a brain,” it says. Then she gestures toward the bureau’s open drawers; they’re just about empty. No choosing necessary.

“Divine inspiration.” Geraldine raises her hands to the heavens, as if even she can’t comprehend the extent of her God-given talents. She empties the last few items from the bureau and shuts the drawers. She drops the hairbrush in with the clothes, hands both shopping bags to me, and turns off the ballerina lamp. She pauses to light a cigarette, and heads for the bedroom door.

“Funny,” she says, walking in front of me down the short hallway to the kitchen, “you never struck me as the foster parent type.”

“It’s temporary, Geraldine.”

“Temporary?” She throws a skeptical look over her shoulder at me. “As in until-her-mother-serves-a-life-sentence temporary?”

“No.” I don’t particularly like talking to Geraldine’s back, but I seem to do it a lot. “As in until-we-figure-out-who-the-hell-killed- Howard Davis temporary.”

She leans against the kitchen sink, her cigarette poised in midair, and shakes her blond bangs at me. Long ago, Geraldine diagnosed me as chronically naive. Now I’ve convinced her the case is critical.

“Your client killed Howard Davis, Martha. We both know that.”

“I don’t think so, Geraldine.”

“He had it coming. I won’t fight you there.” She flicks her ashes into the sink. “You’ll probably score with the psychiatric workup. If any woman’s been battered, she has. And if old Prudence comes through for you, we’ll plead it out. But your client’s doing time, Martha. Real time.”

Suddenly I’m exhausted. I rest the shopping bags on the floor, pull a chair out from the kitchen table, and drop into it. I can’t help wondering why it is that Geraldine is always certain of her position and I-no matter which side of the aisle I find myself on-am not.

She can read my mind, of course; she always could. She blows a stream of smoke into the center of the kitchen before explaining it all to me. “Martha, you feel sorry for her. Your emotions are clouding your judgment. And who doesn’t feel sorry for her? We all see she’s been to hell and back. But stabbing him eleven times wasn’t the answer.”

I raise my eyebrows. No need to waste my breath; she knows what I’m thinking.

“Yes, they do work,” she says. “Restraining orders work in most cases.”

Actually, they work in all cases-one way or another. Sometimes the bully is afraid enough of the Big House to stay away from his favorite whipping post for a while. Other times he doesn’t give a damn and needs to be sure she knows that. So he shows up and beats her again-often within hours of being served.

In a select few cases, the restraining order is a trigger. The document itself induces a new level of rage. The abuse reaches new heights-or depths-and the woman who sought protection from the system ends up in the county morgue.

Geraldine knows all of this at least as well as I do. No need to argue about it now. I force myself to my feet and lift the two shopping bags. “Thanks for these,” I tell her.

I’m almost out of the kitchen when I remember. I stop in the doorway and put the bags down again.

“What?” Geraldine’s cigarette freezes and she eyes me guardedly. “What now?”

“I just want to check something.”

I go back to the kitchen table and walk around it, my eyes on the wide-pine floor. There they are. Two glass lighthouses, one cracked. They’re side by side against the trim on the floorboard, small black and white grains spilled out from their silver caps.

The salt and pepper shakers.

Geraldine crosses the room and stands beside me, cigarette at her cheek, her green eyes following my gaze. “So what?” she says.

“It’s just something Sonia Baker told me, a small detail. One that turns out to be true.”

She inhales and shakes her head again. I’m apparently a lost cause.

I retrieve the shopping bags, head for the front door, and call back over my shoulder. “I know, Geraldine. I know. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

If Luke ever discovers the taste of a home-cooked meal, I’m doomed. How he grew to be six feet two is anyone’s guess. Good mothers prepare meals for their children, I’ve heard, but I’m not one of them. I do, of course, arrange for takeout. I’m a mediocre mother, anyhow.

It’s almost nine by the time I get to our Windmill Lane cottage. I stopped at the office after I left Geraldine, to ask the Kydd to do some background work for Sonia while Harry and I are in trial. The Kydd was way ahead of me. He filed a written request this morning, he said, for copies of Howard Davis’s active files. We should receive the first batch by midday tomorrow. Round one of eligible suspects.

Luke always has the woodstove blazing by the time I get home on winter nights, and tonight is no exception. The sweet smell of burning bark envelops me in the driveway, a warm welcome home. I trudge through the packed snow toward the back of our cottage. The pounding surf of the Atlantic is just beyond the dunes, a few yards away, and I have to brace myself against salty gusts of wet winter wind.

I climb the wooden stairs to the back deck and the kitchen door. During the winter months, our front door is permanently sealed. I’m happy to be home at last. And I’m fully prepared to spring for Chinese food. Any mediocre mother would be.

The windows look odd from outside. They’re opaque with steam, even the small panes in the door. The ocean wind normally keeps our kitchen chilly in the winter, but tonight a noticeable warmth washes over me as soon as I go inside. And the rich scent of burning wood is mixed with another aroma, something familiar.

Ragú. Maggie Baker is on tiptoes at the stove, giggling and struggling to control a large pot of furiously boiling pasta. Luke is laughing too, standing next to her, absentmindedly stirring a smaller pot while he watches Maggie struggle. He’s in charge of the red sauce, it seems, and he’s not doing a very good job. He is, after all, his mother’s son.