Temporary Sanity (3 page)

I pause in the doorway. Harry’s rugged features are worried. He feels it too. Something isn’t right here. There’s a reason this skinny teenage girl brought her battered mother to us.

He cups the side of my face in his big hand the way he always does now. “Be careful” is all he says.

The Kydd and his helpers install the long woman in a prone position on the backseat of the Thunderbird, leaving her sullen daughter with no choice but to ride shotgun. When I get behind the wheel, she moves to the far edge of her seat and stares out the side window. I look to the rear, where the mother has her eyes closed, her left arm once again slung over her face. The blanket lies across her chest, the cold compress against her mouth.

I look out my own window at the Kydd as I start the car and turn both the heat and the defrost on high. He shrugs his stooped shoulders at me and grins. “Good luck,” he says.

If we don’t hit traffic, we’ll reach Cape Cod Hospital in little more than half an hour. For the first ten minutes, the teenager beside me doesn’t utter a word. She keeps her face turned away, her thumb nail back between her teeth. Her limp, dirty-blond hair hangs forward, almost covering the fine features of her profile.

“I’m Marty Nickerson,” I finally say to her. “What’s your name?” She turns toward me, looking surprised to see me here, as if she assumed the car had been driving itself to the hospital. “I know who you are,” she says, so quietly I can barely hear. “I saw you on the news all weekend.”

The news. Stanley and I argued pretrial motions in Buck Hammond’s case on Friday. The press was all over us. They were even worse with Buck’s wife. One group of reporters essentially held her hostage in the courthouse hallway; I had to elbow my way in for the rescue.

My head aches all over again as I remember the mobbed courtroom, the microphones outstretched to receive Stanley’s caustic comments, the camera lights blinding all of us. Buck’s trial promises to be nothing short of a circus.

I look back at my soft-spoken passenger, still turned toward me. Her eyes aren’t quite focused, like those of someone under hypnosis. “I’m Maggie,” she says after a pause, and it occurs to me that Harry should have checked her pulse as well. “Maggie Baker,” she adds.

She turns toward the rear seat, then looks back at me. “That’s my mother, Sonia Baker. Don’t even think about calling her Sonny. She hates it when people do.”

“Okay.” I’m grateful for even this tidbit of volunteered information.

Maggie turns away again, so I check on her mother in the rearview mirror. Sonia Baker appears to be asleep-eyes closed, breathing deep and regular-though it’s hard for me to believe that’s possible under the circumstances.

I’d like to ask Maggie why she brought her injured mother to our law office, but something tells me to wait, to move slowly here. This young girl, nothing but tough and surly until just moments ago, now seems vulnerable, fragile even.

“Where do you and your mom live?” I’m hoping to stay on neutral territory a little longer.

Maggie twirls one long strand of fine hair around her right index finger; she’s distracted. “On Bayview Road,” she says after a while. “You know where it is.”

I nod, aware that Maggie’s response was a statement, not a question.

Bayview Road intersects with the east end of Forest Beach Road, just a stone’s throw from Buck Hammond’s cottage. I’ve been there at least a dozen times during the past six weeks, visiting Buck’s wife, Patty, eliciting the awful, necessary details. Preparing her-to the extent possible-for Buck’s trial, for the ordeal she will have to endure on the witness stand, the nightmare she will have to relive, this time in public.

The entire Forest Beach area is a magnet for summer tourists. Its beaches are wild and pristine, vast stretches of white sand punctuated by rugged black jetties, year-round favorite sunning spots for hundreds of harbor seals. The cottages in the Forest Beach neighborhood are quaint, but small; most aren’t winterized. The year-round residents are few and far between.

“You must know Buck Hammond, then,” I say to Maggie. “You’re practically neighbors.”

“We know Buck. Mom and I both know Patty and Buck. He’s in big trouble, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not fair,” she says, her small voice growing strong for the first time. “After what that creep did to their little boy.”

I agree, of course, but say nothing.

Minutes pass before I summon the courage to broach the matter at hand. “Maggie,” I ask, “the man who did this to your mother, what’s his name?”

“Howard,” she says to the dashboard. “Howard Davis.”

I catch my breath before I can stop myself, but Maggie doesn’t seem to notice. She looks back at her mother, then closes her eyes and shakes her head again, letting out a short, bitter laugh. “Mom calls him Howie, if you can believe that.”

I know Howard Davis; he’s been a Barnstable County parole officer for two decades. He’s an enormous hulk-he hardly seems human-with a booming voice and an intimidating stance. He routinely handles the most dangerous of the county’s parolees; he’s the only employee on staff with any chance of keeping them in line. The first time I saw Howard Davis, in the courthouse hallway with one of his clients, I was at a complete loss. There was no way to tell which one was the ex-con.

Sonia Baker is lucky she’s breathing. And Howard Davis is going to jail, parole officer or not. I don’t say either of those things to Maggie, though. She doesn’t need any more drama at the moment.

“Does Howard Davis live on Bayview Road with you?” I ask instead.

Maggie stares at me without speaking for a minute, tears pooling in her eyes, but not falling anymore. “Yes,” she whispers.

“Has he done this before?”

Maggie opens her mouth, but no sound comes out. She nods her head up and down, though, hard enough to dislodge her tears from their pools, hard enough to tell me that the answer is a resounding yes. “When he drinks,” she says at last. “And he drinks a lot. He was drinking again before we left.”

She’s had enough. I had planned to explain to her some of what lies ahead-the reporting requirement imposed on the hospital; the police interviews; the arrest; the necessary restraining order-but Maggie Baker has had about all she can handle for the moment. We’re just minutes from the hospital anyway; the shingled cottages we’re passing now have all been converted to doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and medical supply stores. The process will unfold soon enough.

“Maggie,” I ask, “how old are you?”

She squirms a little at this, and I’m charmed by her innocence. Under the circumstances, even Geraldine Schilling wouldn’t press charges against Maggie for driving without a license.

“Are you asking as my lawyer?”

I laugh. “Do you think you need one?”

Maggie’s thumbnail goes back to her teeth and she speaks to the dashboard again. “Maybe.”

“Okay then,” I tell her. “I’m asking as your lawyer.”

“Fourteen.”

“When did you learn to drive?”

“Today.”

She really has had enough. I pull to the curb in front of the emergency entrance, and an orderly pushes a wheelchair up to the back seat almost immediately. Harry called ahead as promised. Sonia Baker lifts herself from the car with a modest amount of help from the orderly, still pressing the blanket to her chest and clutching the bloody kitchen towel to her mouth. The orderly slams the back door and whisks her away.

“Maggie, go ahead in with your mother. I’ll park the car, then come and find you.”

Maggie does as she’s told, but her eyes are like pinwheels. Her hands tremble when she reaches out to close the car door, and a wave of guilt rushes through me. I had to send her ahead with her mother; I need a few minutes alone to make a phone call. But I should have given her some idea of what to expect. The unknown is a terrifying thing.

Cape Cod Hospital’s parking lot is just about full. It takes ten minutes to find a vacant spot, and even that one is partially blocked by a drift from yesterday’s snowfall. I maneuver the Thunderbird into it anyway, cut the engine, and dial the District Attorney’s office on my cell phone. I need to alert them.

One of the ADAs will have to be available, when we’re through here, to appear before a District Court judge with Sonia Baker and secure a restraining order against Howard Davis. Given the extent of Sonia’s injuries, we’re likely to be here for a while.

Geraldine can’t take my call; she’s in a meeting. Stanley, though, is available. He picks up at once. “Attorney Nickerson, so good to hear from you. May I assume you’ve come to your senses?”

Stanley is probably about thirty-five. I wonder how many times he’s been decked.

“No,” I tell him, “you may not assume any such thing. I’m still daft.”

The line is silent. He’s apparently not surprised.

“Listen, Stanley, one of you needs to be in the office at the end of the day. I’m at the hospital right now with a woman who’s been roughed up big time by her live-in. And her live-in happens to be Howard Davis, the parole officer.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stanley mutters.

“Yeah. Sounds like he drank himself stupid and then lost it.”

“Jesus Christ,” Stanley repeats.

“She can’t go home with him there; he was drinking again when she left. I’ll bring her straight to the courthouse from here, but it might be a while. She’s in rough shape.”

“Not a problem. We’ll be here.”

Those might be the kindest words J. Stanley Edgarton III has ever said to me. I thank him and cut the connection, not wanting to press my luck.

The car door smashes into frozen snow when I squeeze out. I hurry back toward the emergency room, my hood useless against the unrelenting wind. It’s about two-thirty. This morning’s sunshine is gone, blanketed by a thick bank of darkening clouds. More snow is headed our way.

The hospital’s automatic doors open as I approach, and I run through them, hoping to join Maggie and her mother before too much happens. Signs in English and Portuguese are posted every three feet or so on the white plaster walls. Some direct patients to have their insurance cards ready. Others inform us that seriously injured patients will be given priority. Still others warn that public cell phone use may interfere with the functioning of diagnostic equipment. I reach into my jacket pocket and shut down my phone.

Two television sets are on in the crowded waiting area, each tuned to a different channel, making their own small contribution to the general chaos in the room. Sonia Baker must have qualified as seriously injured; there’s no sign of her or Maggie among those waiting for medical attention.

“Sonia Baker?” I ask the young nurse at the desk.

She’s a striking blonde who looks as if she’s been on duty too long. Her pale blue smock is stained and she’s obviously harried, but she checks her list of names, then looks up at me and smiles. “We took her straight back for stitches,” she says. “She needs to go to X ray, but the lip’s got to be sewn first. Her daughter went with her. You’re free to join them.” She points down the brightly lit corridor behind the desk. “The young girl seems upset.”

“Thanks,” I call back to her, already heading down the hallway, a seemingly endless tube of fluorescent light. I hear Sonia even before I reach her small curtained cubicle. “He didn’t mean it,” she’s repeating, this time to a young surgeon who’s pleading with her to be still. “He didn’t. He’ll feel awful about it. I know he will.”

I wish she’d stop that.

Maggie sits alone in the area outside the cubicle, her tears gone. She hugs herself with her skinny arms and rocks back and forth on her plastic chair, shaking her head each time her mother speaks on Howard Davis’s behalf. I can’t say I blame her; Sonia Baker should give it a rest.

“Maggie, there are a few things that have to happen now. I want you to know what to expect.”

She stops rocking and stares at me, panic in her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean certain steps have to be taken. The hospital has obligations under the law. All hospitals do.”

“Like what?” she whispers, her panic up a notch.

“Like the police have to be called.”

“No,” she insists. “No cops.” Maggie jumps to her feet and speaks with a force I wouldn’t have guessed she had.

I sink into an orange plastic chair across from hers and tell myself to answer calmly. “You don’t have a choice, Maggie. No one involved has a choice. The hospital has to report this to the police. It’s the law. Someone here has probably called them already.”

Maggie drops back into her own chair and says nothing, but her tears begin again.

“Maggie, you shouldn’t be afraid to talk to the police. You didn’t do anything wrong. Neither did your mom. Howard Davis is the only one in trouble here.”

A look of disbelief seizes her wet face and she gets up again. She rubs both eyes with her fists, leaving a dark half-moon of mascara under each. “Is that what you think? That Howard is the one in trouble?”

“Maggie, he beat your mother. He’s done it before. But this time she’s injured badly. He broke her arm, for God’s sake. We can’t let him get away with that.”

She shakes her head at me, streams of dark water running down her cheeks. “You don’t get it, do you?” Her small voice is desperate. “I thought maybe you could help, but you don’t even get it.”

“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.”