Chapter 2

“Good of you to join us, Martha.” Geraldine Schilling is the only person on the planet who calls me Martha. And she knows damned well I’m not here to join anybody. Charles Kendrick called me a second time—ten minutes ago, at one-thirty—because he’s worried. And he should be.

“Party’s over, Geraldine. No more questions.”

“Attorney Nickerson can be a bit rude.” Geraldine presses an index finger to her cheek and directs her observation exclusively to Senator Kendrick, as though I’m not in the room. “I should have trained her better,” she adds. She sounds almost apologetic.

Geraldine “trained” me for a solid decade, when I was an ADA and she was the First Assistant. If she’d done the job as she intended, I’d be a hell of a lot worse than rude. I’d also still be a prosecutor, not a member of the defense bar. I lift her black winter coat from the back of an upholstered wing chair in the corner and hold it out, letting it dangle from two fingers. “Adios,” I tell her. “You’re done here.”

She accepts the heavy coat but doesn’t put it on. Instead, she takes a pack of Virginia Slims from its inside pocket and then drapes it over her arm. She tamps a beige cigarette from the pack, shakes her long blond bangs at me, then turns to the Senator and arches her pale eyebrows. She seems to think he might override my decision. She’s mistaken, though; she trained me better than that.

“You’re done,” I repeat. “Senator Kendrick spoke with you voluntarily this morning but he’s not doing that anymore. Not at the moment, anyway. He called his attorney. That’s me. This is his home. And I’ve asked you to leave.”

“Marty, is that really necessary?” Senator Kendrick is seated on his living room couch, a deep-maroon, soft leather sectional. Behind him, through the floor-to-ceiling windows, is a heart-stopping view of the winter Atlantic. His long legs are crossed—in perfectly creased blue jeans—and his starched, white dress shirt is open at the collar, sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms. His gray-blue eyes mirror the choppy surf, yet he seems far more relaxed than he should be under the circumstances.

“Take a look outside,” I tell him, pointing to a pair of mullioned windows that face the driveway. “And then you tell me if it’s necessary.”

He stands, sighing and looking taxed by the effort, and crosses the antique Oriental carpet to the dark, polished hardwood at the perimeter of the vast room. I follow and stop just a few steps behind him, eyeing his chiseled profile as he parts the curtains and leans on the sill. He’s silent for a moment as he gets a gander of the scene that greeted me when I arrived. “Standard procedure?” he asks at last.

“Not even close,” I tell him.

Four vehicles occupy the crushed-shell driveway, all facing the closed doors of the dormered, three-car garage. The shiny Buick is Geraldine’s; she gets a new one every two years without fail, always dark blue. The ancient Thunderbird in desperate need of a trip to the car wash is mine. The enormous gray Humvee, I can only presume, is the Senator’s. And the patrol car belongs to the Town of Chatham. Two uniforms stand in front of it, leaning against its hood and talking, their breath making small white clouds in the cold December air.

The Kendrick estate sits on a point, a narrow spit of land that juts out into the Atlantic. It has a solitary neighbor, a small bungalow, to the north. Otherwise, the Kendricks enjoy exclusive use of this strip, the front and sides of their spacious house bordered by nothing but open ocean. The cops are in the driveway for a reason, not passing through on their way to someplace else. The Kendrick estate isn’t on the way to anyplace else.

“The one closest to us is the Chief,” I tell the Senator. “Ten bucks says he’ll shoot the lock off your front door if your friend the DA here presses the right button on her pager.”

Senator Kendrick pulls the curtains back together and turns away from the windows to face Geraldine. She dons her coat as she stares back at him, transferring her still unlit cigarette from one hand to the other as she threads her arms through the coat’s tailored sleeves. “Senator,” she snaps, her tone altogether different than it was just moments ago.

He stiffens beside me and turns my way, but I stare at Geraldine as her deep green eyes bore into him. “We’ve barely begun to check out your story,” she says, “and already, parts of it don’t fly.”

He takes a step toward me but still I don’t look at him. Since I’m the only person in this room who hasn’t heard his story, there’s not a hell of a lot I can offer.

“That can’t be,” he says.

“Shut up, Senator.” The utter shock of my command renders him compliant—for the moment, at least. Still, I keep my eyes fixed on our District Attorney. She carries little more than a hundred pounds on her five-foot-two-inch frame, but there’s not a tougher DA in the Commonwealth. Geraldine Schilling is no lightweight.

I take my cell phone from my jacket pocket and flip it open as I walk toward the kitchen—and Geraldine. “At this point,” I tell her, “you’re nothing more than a common trespasser.”

She laughs.

“And I’ve got the Chief on speed-dial too.”

She laughs again, louder this time, but she moves toward the kitchen door. She pauses, digs out a lighter from her coat pocket, and ignites the tip of the cigarette now pressed between her well-glossed lips. She opens the inner door, sucks in a long drag as she reaches for the outer one, and then blows a steady stream of smoke over her shoulder, her smoldering green eyes moving from mine to the Senator’s. “Mark my words,” she says to both of us. “I’ll be back.”

Chapter 3

“How’s Chuck?” Harry stares at the snowy road ahead as he asks, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He apparently finds it amusing that the Commonwealth’s senior senator is proving to be a less-than-model client.

“Chuck is the same as he was this morning,” I tell him. “Difficult.” I flip the heater in Harry’s old Jeep up another couple of notches and shift in the passenger seat to face him. He’s driving with one gloved hand, clutching a cardboard cup of steaming coffee with the other.

“Makes sense,” he says. “The guy’s usually the one calling the shots; he isn’t used to taking orders.”

“I’m not issuing orders, Harry. I’m offering advice.”

He smiles at me and then swallows a mouthful of coffee. “And you’re just the drill sergeant for the job.” He laughs.

Now there’s a sentiment every forty-something woman hopes to hear from the man in her life.

It’s three o’clock and we’re pulling into the Barnstable County Complex, headed up the hill to the House of Correction. We’ll spend the next couple of hours with Derrick Holliston, a twenty-two-year-old creep who’s accused of murdering a popular parish priest last Christmas Eve. Harry is Holliston’s court-appointed defender and—according to Harry—neither of them is happy about it. Holliston apparently thinks Harry’s efforts are less than zealous. And Harry calls Holliston a lowlife, a bottom-feeder.

Like it or not, Harry and I will spend the rest of the afternoon walking Holliston through his direct testimony. Tomorrow, to the extent possible, we’ll prepare him for cross. His first-degree-murder trial starts Wednesday morning. And unless Harry can convince him otherwise in the next forty-eight hours, Holliston intends to take the stand. He plans to tell the judge and jury that he acted in self-defense; that fifty-seven-year-old Father Frank McMahon made aggressive sexual advances toward him on the evening in question; that when Holliston resisted, the older man became violent. If Harry’s instincts are on target—and I’ve never known them to be otherwise—Holliston’s story is just that. Fiction.