A large maroon pool over Howard Davis’s left breast suggests that the single incision beneath would have done the job. It didn’t have to, though. It’s one of multiple stab wounds, too many to count through the patches of almost dried blood. His flannel shirt is sliced open in at least a half dozen places. His heavy work boots are stained red. Even the couch cushions are saturated.

There is little blood elsewhere. A few drops in the bathroom sink, Geraldine points out, and a smear on a hallway light switch, but the rest is confined to Howard Davis’s body and the living-room couch.

The cottage is not otherwise disturbed. We walk quickly through each of the small rooms, ending up in the kitchen. There’s no evidence of forced entry, no sign of a struggle.

“What have you got on Sonia Baker?” I ask.

She laughs. “What haven’t we got? Motive, opportunity, motive, fury, motive, the weapon. Did I mention motive?”

“For Christ’s sake, Geraldine, the man was a parole officer. He handled the most violent cretins the system spit out. He’s probably got as many enemies as you do.”

Geraldine rolls her green eyes to the ceiling, flicks her cigarette ashes in the sink, and shakes her head like a parent trying to reason with a misguided teenager. “Martha, Martha, what’s become of you? Surely you’re not serious.”

“You bet I’m serious. This guy’s been a parole officer most of his adult life. You’ve got to investigate the payback angle.” The confidence in my voice astounds me.

She takes a long drag and answers as she exhales. “Only if the evidence warrants it.”

She’s right, of course. They’ll dust the house and the weapon for prints, type and cross the bloodstains, take DNA samples. If the only matches are the people who live here, they won’t look any further.

It’s one of many prejudices built into our system. If a murder victim lived alone, the search for his killer begins with the analysis of evidence. If the deceased had a spouse or a live-in lover, that person is assumed to have crossed the narrow line between love and hate. The significant other is automatically identified as the prime suspect, before any analysis is conducted. This is not something I can fix-at least not tonight.

“When do you expect the reports, Geraldine?”

The Commonwealth is required to turn over the results of its fingerprint and blood analyses to the defense. If that evidence discloses the presence of an outsider in Sonia Baker’s cottage on the day of the murder, Geraldine is obligated to tell us so.

She looks up at the ceiling to calculate. “Monday night,” she says. “It’ll all go out in the morning. Should have blood work back late Wednesday. Prints sometime Thursday.”

“I’ll wait to hear from you then.”

“Oh, you’ll hear from me,” she says, blowing smoke through her half-smile.

I head for the door.

“But Martha…”

I turn back to face her.

“Don’t get your hopes up.”

The female violent offenders unit of the Barnstable County House of Correction is an austere, forbidding place. Nonstop gray cinder blocks serve as walls. Cement slabs-the same dull gray-make up the ceiling. The narrow hallway is poorly lit by yellow bulbs protruding overhead, protected by wire cages. The concrete floor dips every six feet or so to accommodate built-in drains, testaments to the need for occasional hose-downs.

My escort is a well-endowed, gum-chewing matron with wide hips bulging under a heavy holster. She’s annoyed. Evening meetings with inmates disrupt the all-important prison routine. Generally speaking, visits outside the established schedule are prohibited. But when an inmate newly placed in lockup asks to speak with her attorney, she’s entitled to do so. To hell with the schedule.

My escort doesn’t seem to share that view.

It makes matters worse, of course, when my obligatory trip through the metal detector produces a series of high-pitched shrieks. The noise doesn’t surprise either one of us, even though I turned in all coins and keys at the front desk along with my handgun. The metal detectors in the Barnstable County Complex scream for no reason all the time. Technicians are called in weekly, it seems, but the machines are never calibrated properly.

Miss Congeniality is obligated, because of the shrieks, to conduct a manual search, first with a handheld electronic scanner, then with her bare paws-an old-fashioned pat-down. Both are mandated by her job description, not by any real concern on her part. The rhythm of her gum chewing is unchanged. No weapon manufactured could make me a threat to her.

Apparently satisfied that my snow-sodden clothes hide only my underwear, she directs me toward the hallway with a toss of her head and a smack of her gum.

“Must be the dental work,” I tell her.

She walks past, wearing no sign that she heard, and continues down the hallway in front of me with neither a word nor a backward glance. Charm school didn’t work out, I guess.

She stops in front of a white metal door on our right and selects a key from dozens on her large oval ring. She shoves the door open with one hand and, with yet another toss of her head, directs me inside as she checks her watch.

Her glance at the watch prompts me to check my own. It’s after nine. “I won’t be long,” I promise, a futile attempt on my part to mollify her.

“Knock yourself out,” she says, the gum momentarily socked in her cheek. She assumes the pose of a sentinel as the heavy door slams shut between us.

The space has all the comforts of a telephone booth. Sonia Baker is already here, seated on the other side of a plastered partition, staring at me through a pane of bulletproof glass. She’s dressed in the standard prison-issued jumpsuit, a one-piece, bright orange version of the surgical scrub outfit she wore earlier.

I sit down in the solitary plastic chair that faces hers and pick up the black telephone on my side. She winces when she lifts her receiver, the movement apparently exacerbating some ache or pain. Neither one of us says anything at first. I’m wet, cold, and tired. Sonia Baker looks like she barely survived a train wreck.

The cast starts just below her shoulder, bends at the elbow, and extends to her wrist, with a narrow loop of plaster between her thumb and index finger. It’s the kind normally accompanied by a sling, but Sonia doesn’t have one. No such device is allowed in lockup; too many potential alternative uses. She supports the cast instead with her other arm, the phone cradled between her neck and head.

Her lips look somewhat better than they did earlier, but her right eye is much worse. We never iced it, I realize. It’s turned a deep purple, swollen completely shut. Her shoulder-length, bleached hair is tangled and matted on one side. It occurs to me that if I could slip her anything right now, it would be a hairbrush.

“What happened?” Her voice is brittle.

“I’m not sure.”

That’s a lie, of course. I have a pretty clear picture of what happened. But I want Sonia to do the talking.

“He’s really dead?”

The image of Howard Davis sprawled on the couch is fixed in my mind’s eye. He’s really dead.

“Yes, he is,” I report.

Her eyes fill. She lowers her head and hugs her cast tighter, but says nothing.

“Sonia, we need to start at the beginning. You need to tell me what happened to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes, to you.”

“What difference does that make?” She shakes her head. “Howard’s dead. I’m not.”

“It matters,” I tell her. “You’ve got to trust me on this.”

It’s too late and I’m too weary to delve into the legal and psychological complexities of battered woman’s syndrome.

“Please, Sonia, tell me what happened before you came to my office.”

She stares at her cast, apparently unsure where to start. “Sunday night poker,” she says.