Temporary Sanity

by Rose Connors

  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.

  Chapter 18

  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.”

  Chapter 19

  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.

  The front of Luke’s gray sweatshirt is peppered with small red dots. So are Maggie’s sleeves. Actually, they’re my sleeves. She’s wearing my knit fisherman’s sweater.

  “Marty, you’re just in time,” she shouts, then bends in two, shrieking, and points her wooden spoon at a red circle newly arrived on Luke’s cheek.

  “Ow, that’s hot. It’s not funny.” Luke launches into a laughing fit of his own, though, holding his arms in front of his face as if shielding himself from enemy gunfire.

  Just in time or not, I decide to get out of my suit before going anywhere near either one of them. Maggie and Luke continue shouting in the kitchen, each of them giving the other instructions on what to do next, while I change into old jeans and a warm sweater. The clanging of pots is followed by a sound that might be Niagara Falls. I hope some of it went into the sink.

  By the time I get back to the kitchen, things have calmed down and the food is actually on the table. The kerosene lamp is lit and two Christmas candles left over from last year are glowing amid the bowls. Maggie is already seated, beaming at her handiwork. Luke holds a chair for me, kitchen towel draped over his arm, as if he’s the maître d’. Never mind the red polka dots.

  It’s quite a spread. A steaming bowl of linguine, a fresh garden salad, even garlic bread. I realize I must be ravenous. The Ragú smells divine.

  The self-appointed maître d’ pours a glass of Chianti for me, then awaits my approval, as if I might send it back for another vintage. “Sit,” I tell him.

  “I’d have made meatballs,” Maggie says, “but there wasn’t any meat.”

  A good mother would have meat in the house.

  “And I’d have made cookies,” she adds, “but there weren’t any eggs.”

  Even a mediocre mother would have eggs on hand.

  “This is wonderful,” I tell her. “We don’t need another thing.”

  Luke clears his throat and arches his eyebrows at me. Meatballs and cookies sound good to him. I pass him the pasta.

  “Maggie, you’re quite a cook. How did you learn?”

  She shrugs, a pleased smile on her face. “I cook on Sundays,” she says. “Howard always eats with his poker buddies on Sundays, so it’s just Mom and me home for dinner. Mom says I shouldn’t cook when Howard’s home. He gets mad if anything goes wrong.”

  Howard Davis was quite an addition to that household.

  Luke reaches for the bread basket, shaking his head. His expression tells me he knows all about Howard Davis. He and Maggie have been talking. Good. Maggie’s going to need a friend in the months ahead. And when it comes to being a friend, Luke is the best.

  We eat as if it’s Thanksgiving in Italy, then move into the living room, closer to the woodstove. No need to fuss with the dishes, we all agree. They’ll still be here tomorrow. I realize my claim even to mediocrity is slipping.

  By eleven, Luke and I are all but asleep in our overstuffed chairs, and Danny Boy is snoring by the woodstove. Maggie is wide awake, though. She has the sofa bed all set up, and she’s propped on two pillows, reading a Glamour magazine and painting her fingernails.

  Luke rallies enough to bid us good night and head for the stairs. Danny Boy stretches and yawns, then follows him. I steer toward my own room, relishing the thought of my old, heavy quilt.

  “Don’t read too much longer,” I tell Maggie. “There’s school tomorrow.”

  “I’m not going to school tomorrow,” she says.

  Luke stands still on the staircase. Danny Boy does too. He looks down at me, then stares up at Luke, as if one of us should give him an explanation.

  I lean against my doorway. “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  This doesn’t sound negotiable. I move back into the living room. “Maggie, it’s the last day before the break. It would be crazy to skip.”

  “I want to go see my mom.”

  Of course she does.

  “I called there today,” she says. “They’ll let me see her at one o’clock tomorrow. For half an hour.”

  She’s a self-sufficient little thing.

  “I was hoping I could ride over there with you-when you go to work. I don’t mind waiting around. I’ll watch your trial.” She finishes a fingernail and smiles up at me. “It’ll be educational.”

  I sit back down in the overstuffed chair. “Maggie, I know you want to see your mom. And she wants to see you. But tomorrow’s the last day of school before Christmas. Don’t miss it. You can go with me on Thursday. Thursday and Friday, if you want.”

  Luke steps back into the room. “I have to go in tomorrow,” he says to Maggie. “I have practice.”

  He has to go in tomorrow for more reasons than that. Classes, for instance. I bite my tongue.

  “But if you wait until Thursday, I’ll go with you,” he says. “If Mom will lend us the car, we can go to the mall while she’s working. I still have Christmas shopping to do.”

  Yikes. Christmas shopping. All hopes of maternal mediocrity are dashed.

  Maggie caps the nail polish, considering. The educational opportunities afforded by watching my trial apparently pale compared to Luke’s idea. “Will you?” she asks me.

  “Will I what?”

  “Lend us the car.”

  I can’t help but remember my first meeting with Maggie, the newly initiated driver. Hard to believe it was yesterday. “Yes,” I tell her. “But Luke does the driving. All of it.”

  She laughs and turns out the lamp. “Okay, okay. I’ll go to school tomorrow. And I’ll go see Mom on Thursday. Thursday and Friday, just like you said.”

  Luke heads upstairs again, but I catch his eye before he disappears onto the second floor. I give him a thumbs-up, and he smiles. He really is the best.

  During the weeks leading up to Buck Hammond’s trial, I worried that I’d be unable to sell the temporary insanity defense to our jury. I worried that my unspoken doubts about the validity of that defense would render my words in support of it hollow, unconvincing. And so I returned, night after night, to the words of Mr. Justice Paxson, hoping his words would help me choose mine. Not all of them did.

  Chief Justice Lewis has said that moral insanity bears a striking resemblance to vice, and further, it ought never to be admitted as a defence, until it is shown that these propensities exist in such violence as to subjugate the intellect, control the will, and render it impossible for the party to do otherwise than yield.

  And again, this state of mind is not to be presumed without evidence, nor does it usually occur without some premonitory symptoms indicating its approach.

  A striking resemblance to vice. Sounds like something Stanley would say.

  Chapter 20

 
Wednesday, December 22

  The front-page headline of this morning’s Cape Cod Times proclaimed: “Defense Attorney Puts On Magic Show.” The article accused me of trying to pull an acquittal from thin air. Seeing myself identified in print as a defense attorney caused a momentary jolt. For the past six weeks I’ve thought of myself as Buck Hammond’s lawyer, but never as a garden-variety defense attorney. I’d better get used to it, I guess.

  The Boston Herald wasn’t so jocular. “Justice Undermined” screamed its page-one banner. The article that followed condemned my “thinly veiled” call for jury nullification and criticized any juror who might “buy into” it. The reporter lambasted Judge Leon Long for his tolerance of my “subversive tactics.” Generous quotes from District Attorney-Elect Geraldine Schilling, along with a few sarcastic remarks from Stanley, were sprinkled throughout.

  It occurred to me as I finished the piece that I must be a defense attorney after all. No one called me for a comment.

  The good news is that the news doesn’t matter. Thanks to the street smarts of Judge Leon Long, our jury is sequestered for both the trial and the deliberations. From now until the verdict is returned, the members of the panel will hear none of the media hype. The press will try its case in the court of public opinion for the foreseeable future, of course. And, to some extent, the prosecution will too. But I will try mine only in this courtroom, before the men and women who will decide Buck’s fate.

  We’re delayed this morning. Yarmouth police officers picked up Dominic “Nicky” Patterson late last night, and he’s scheduled to face the music here before our trial resumes. Nicky is one of the Cape’s better-known deadbeat dads. He gets hauled in every year or two, signs off on a payment schedule, makes a few installments, then disappears again. This time the Kydd has been appointed to defend him.

  According to the courtroom clerk, Wanda Morgan, it was close to midnight when the Kydd got the assignment. He was still in the office when the night clerk called, intending to leave a message on the answering machine. Wanda shakes her head sympathetically when she delivers this news. She’s at least as old as I am, but I think she’s taken a shine to our young associate. I wonder how the Kydd feels about forty-something women.