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.”