Dead to Rights

EIGHT

Feeling frustrated, Joanna left the Rob Roy for the fifteen-mile drive back to Bisbee. Along the way, she mulled over what had happened with Terry. Joanna had been curious about whoever was with Terry on the day after Bucky Buckwalter’s death, but that hadn’t been her primary concern. More than anything, she had wanted to speak to Terry, widow-to-widow, long enough to mention the inadvisability of making any momentous financial decisions in too much of a hurry.

That heartfelt warning had gone unsaid in the face of Terry’s seemingly unprovoked anger. What was going on? Prior to Joanna’s arrival in the bar, she had observed Terry Buckwalter and Peter Wilkes from a distance for the better part of half an hour. During that time the two of them had been chatting away as though neither of them had a care in the world.

Maybe that was it in a nutshell. Maybe, with Bucky Buckwalter dead, that was absolutely true. If Peter Wilkes and Terry Buckwalter had something going, then Joanna’s seeing them together might well have precipitated Terry’s angry reaction.

Small towns have certain expectations of what’s appropriate and what isn’t after the death of one of their own. Bisbee, Arizona was no different. Joanna wondered how many other luncheon attendees had witnessed and been shocked by Terry’s carefree attitude the day after her husband’s murder. The difference between police officers and ordinary citizens, however, was that the former’s opinions could lead to questions of an official nature-to questions and, sometimes, to convictions.

Other people might disapprove-quietly or otherwise-of Terry’s actions: of her peeling off her wedding ring less than twenty-four hours after her husband’s death or of her possibly carrying on with Peter Wilkes. As for Joanna, personal reservations aside, she had a moral obligation-a duty-to learn whether or not cause and effect were involved. Was it possible that Terry Buckwalter and/or Peter Wilkes had something to do with Bucky’s death? If so, that would go a long way toward explaining the sudden chill in the air when Joanna had interrupted Terry’s lighthearted performance as the merry widow.

Joanna couldn’t recite the exact statistics, but she knew full well that people were far more likely to be murdered by those nearest and dearest to them than they were by complete strangers, mere acquaintances, or business associates. In some troubled marriages, homicides became a permanent substitute for divorce, although, once again, statistically speaking, violence-prone husbands used that escape hatch far more of-ten than did vengeful wives. Still, women weren’t immune. They resorted to such a method of dissolving a relationship, too, on occasion, especially when the murderous wife had a possible alternative to the troublesome husband already line(up and waiting in the wings.

Is that what’s going on here? Joanna wondered.

It was generally assumed that Peter Wilkes was involved in a devoted, long-term relationship with his partner-thy guy named Myron who ran the restaurant. But just because that was common gossip around town didn’t necessarily make it true. Maybe Peter Wilkes was a switch-hitter-AC/DC, as Andy used to say.

Clearly Peter Wilkes and Terry Buckwalter were up to something that went beyond a simple above-the-board pro/golfer relationship. Whatever it was, neither of them had been willing to discuss specific details in front of Joanna.

Suppose, Joanna told herself, Bucky was an insurmountable roadblock to whatever Wilkes and Terry had in mind. What might the two of them have done then when someone from out of town someone with a perfectly believable motive for Bucky’s murder, had shown up on the scene? Slowly, the idea began to coalesce it Joanna’s mind. If Terry wanted to ditch Bucky Buckwalter, wasn’t Hal Morgan the perfect fall guy?

Unbidden, Joanna’s mind wandered back to the previous afternoon. She remembered how Terry Buckwalter had casually reached into her pocket and pulled out that damning scrap of paper-the one containing Hal Morgan’s purportedly handwritten note. If, as Terry maintained, the note had been hidden in her makeup case for months, why did she suddenly and conveniently have it in her possession, to pas along to investigators on the very day of her husband’ death?

That’s easy, Joanna thought. To point a finger at someone else. At Hal Morgan.

One terrible injustice had already been visited on the man. He had lost his wife to a senseless, tragic death. Now another blow was about to fall if he ended up being charged with murder in the death of Bonnie Morgan’s killer.

That hadn’t happened yet, not officially, but only because Ernie Carpenter had so far been too busy to get around to crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s. At this point, Morgan was still only a suspect-some would have said prime suspect-in the case.

With her heart quickening in her breast, Joanna realized that Bucky Buckwalter’s killer had counted on that. Whoever the perpetrator or perpetrators were, they had killed the man with some confidence that the homicide investigation would go no deeper than the obvious: Hal Morgan had come to Bisbee with a clear motive for wanting to harm his wife’s killer. If that man was now dead, it naturally followed that Hal Morgan had killed him.

What came over Joanna then wasn’t exactly a chill. It was more like a vibration-a telling, steady thrum that came to her from the inside out, letting her know that she had stumbled onto something-something important. She had never experienced any sensation quite like it, but she knew at once what it was. Without understanding how, she knew-beyond a doubt-that Hal Morgan was innocent. He hadn’t killed Bucky Buckwalter. Somebody else had, someone who had cynically exploited Hal Morgan’s lingering grief and had used it to further his or her own deadly purposes.

The moment of realization rang so true that Joanna felt almost giddy. She was suddenly so excited-so energized and focused-that she had to concentrate on lifting her foot off the accelerator to keep from mashing it all the way to the floor.

And then, in that peculiar way minds work, a long-buried memory surfaced in her head. She was twelve years old again and sitting at the breakfast table in her parents’ home of Campbell Avenue. Eleanor had been cooking breakfast am was just then slamming the frying pan into the sink, whet Big Hank Lathrop came into the room and poured himself a cup of coffee.

Sheriff D. H. Lathrop had been out all night investigating a homicide crime scene. He had come home at sunup to shower, change clothes, and eat breakfast before heading back to the office.

“I don’t know why you had to be out there all night like that,” Eleanor complained as she slid a loaded plate in iron of him. “You’re not as young as you used to be, Hank. You can’t expect to work around the clock without having it affect you.”

“But Ellie…” he objected. Big Hank Lathrop was the only person in the world Eleanor Lathrop ever allowed to call her by a nickname. “You just don’t understand how great it feels. I knew from the beginning, from the moment we go there, that George Hammond was lying through his teeth when he said that him and his buddy-”

“He and his buddy.” Eleanor’s habitual corrections of her husband’s grammar were so much business as usual that Big Hank barely missed the beat of his story. “… he and his good buddy, Lionel Dexter, were out hunting. Hammond claimed that he stumbled and that his thirty-ought-six went off by accident. All of a sudden, right while he’s in the middle of telling this long, complicated story, I realize it’s a crock. Ol’ George is making it up as he goes along. I can’t tell you how I knew; I just did. As soon as I caught on to him, I couldn’t stand to walk away without managing to trip him up.”

The whole time Big Hank had been speaking, ostensibly he had been telling the story to his wile. But ever so often, as he spoke, his eyes would stray to Joanna, including her in the conversation, saying to her-in that quiet, unspoken way of his-that she, too, was included in the storytelling. The message behind his words came through to his daughter loud and clear. He was letting her know that it was all right to love something-to care passionately about it-even if some-one else in your life, someone you loved, didn’t necessarily share your enthusiasm.

Sitting down across from him, Eleanor’s disapproval was as plain as the permanently etched frown that furrowed her forehead. “Did you?” she asked. “Trip him up, I mean.”

Big Hank’s face had lit up like a Christmas tree as he continued. “You bet. All night long Georgie had been telling us about tripping over something-a rock, or maybe even a branch or a root. He claimed that’s how come the gun discharged. So come sunup, I tell him, ‘Okay, Mr. Hammond, all’s we need now is to have you show us whatever it was you tripped over.’ So he leads us to this big of rock and tries to pass that one off as being it, except anybody who knows a thing about guns and trajectories and all that can see it isn’t true. From where the rock is and where and how we found the body, you can tell those two things just don’t add up.

“ ‘Look here, Georgie,’ I said. ‘This whole thing’s a bunch of B.S. It couldn’t have happened this way, and you know it. How about if you just haul off and tell us the truth?’ And you know what happened? He did. Just like that. Broke down in tears and started spilling his guts. The thing is, if I hadn’t nailed him on it, George Hammond might have gotten away with murder.”

Eleanor, listening in silence, refused to be swayed by either her husband’s story or by his enthusiasm in telling it. “You still shouldn’t have stayed out all night,” she responder at last when he finished. “You’ll be paying for this foolishness the whole rest of the week.”

It was amazing to Joanna how everything about that whole scene had lingered in her memory. It was all there, it full living color and sense-around sound. She could hear and smell the frying bacon. She cringed at the enamel-chipping latter when her mother pitched the frying pan into the sink and avoided the soul-shriveling frown that etched her mother’s forehead.

Even at age twelve, Joanna had known there was more a stake in that small kitchen than the loss of one night’s sleep. Although she was years away from being able to sort it out, she understood there were other, more weighty issues hidden in the dark undercurrents of the words being bandied back and forth across that kitchen table. And now, some seventeen years later, Joanna finally did see.

After years of enduring her mother’s unremitting criticism, she realized that D. H. Lathrop had been Eleanor’s target long before his daughter was. When he was no longer there to bear the brunt of it, Joanna had been forced to take his place. The constant arguments between mother and daughter-disagreements that lingered to this day-were and had always been nothing more than extensions of the original conflict. It was a natural outgrowth of who Joanna’s parents were and what made them tick.

Big Hank Lathrop had thrown himself into living without reservation. He had grabbed hold of everything life had to offer. Eleanor had clung to the sidelines. Unable to compete with her husband out in the world, she had cut away at him at home, constantly trying to whittle him down to her size. She was smart enough not to reveal her hand by directly belittling his triumph in the Hammond case. That would have exposed her own jealousy of his devotion to duty. Instead, she cloaked her rebuke in the socially acceptable guise of wifely concern-of Big Hank’s needing his rest-rather than saying what she really meant. Never once did she admit that anything that took her husband’s attention away from her-Big Hank’s job included-was a rival to be attacked on all possible fronts.

Suddenly, as clearly as Joanna sensed Hal Morgan’s innocence, she could see that her mother had spent her whole lifetime claiming the high moral ground, all the while cutting everyone else down to size. In negating other people’s accomplishments, she magnified her own.

The things that had driven Big Hank-the same needs and desires that had sent him out on a nightlong mission to match wits with a killer-were the ones that motivated Joanna as well. Those were the very ingredients lacking in Eleanor’s own makeup. She had lived her life vicariously, first through her husband’s work, and later through Joanna’s work and her happiness with Andy as well. No wonder Eleanor Lathrop was angry and drowning in self-pity. Only by diminishing others could she maintain her own fragile self-worth.

Those insights all washed over Joanna in a series of crushing waves. When the flood ebbed, it left behind, like debris deposited on a sandy shore, an adult understanding not only of both of Joanna’s parents but of herself as well.

There could be no doubt that, in spite of it all, D. H. Lathrop had continued to love his wife. The reverse-Eleanor’s love for Big Hank-wasn’t as easy to discern. Big Hank had managed to maintain the relationship by learning to disregard the hurtful things that came out of Eleanor’s mouth.

Unfortunately, that simple survival trick was one his daughter had yet to master.

Joanna realized now, though, that he had demonstrated it back then. With Joanna sitting at the breakfast table, watching and hanging on his every word, he had simply set Eleanor’s biting criticisms aside. He had let them flow over him and then he shook them off as a dog sheds a coatful of water. Instead of internalizing his wife’s carping, he had simply deflected it. But first, he had winked at his daughter.

“That’s funny, Ellie,” he had said. “I must be younger than you think, because I don’t feel the least bit tired. Fact of the matter is, I think I could go out right this minute and lick my weight in wildcats.”

Seventeen years later, Joanna felt exactly the same way-ready to take on all comers. She had left the Rob Roy feeling drained. The hassle with her mother over the ride home, as well as the confrontation with Terry Buckwalter, had taken their toll. But now, convinced she had made a vital connection in the Buckwalter case, she felt miraculously recovered. Rather than driving directly back to the department, she headed for the Copper Queen Hospital.

On the way, she radioed to the department to see if Ernie Carpenter could meet her there. Unfortunately, Dispatch reported that he was still up in Sunizona. Putting the radio mike back in its clip, Joanna made up her mind.

That’s all right, she told herself. I’ll make like the Little Red Hen, and I’ll do it myself.

Once inside the hospital, she saw Deputy Debbie Howell stationed in the hallway outside the door of Hal Morgan private room. Instead of going directly to the room, Joanna headed for the nurses’ station. Mavis Embry, the heavyset woman issuing orders at the nerve center of the hospital, had been a recent nursing school graduate working in the delivery room on the night Joanna Lathrop was born. Now she was the Copper Queen’s head nurse.

“What can I do for you, Joanna?” Mavis asked.

“I’m here to see Hal Morgan.”

Mavis shook her head. “Dr. Lee says no visitors. He’s over in the clinic, if you want to talk to him about it. Until I get the okay from him, nobody goes in the room.”

Nodding, Joanna headed toward the clinic wing of the hospital. Dr. Thomas Lee was standing out in the hall, perusing someone’s chart. “Dr. Lee?”

Lee, a Taiwanese immigrant and a recent medical school graduate, was only an inch or two taller than Joanna’s five-foot-four. He peered at her through the tiny round lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Yes?” he answered.

Joanna opened her leather wallet that displayed her badge. He frowned. “The officer who was here earlier disturbed my patient. He needs rest.”

“Another officer was here?” Joanna asked in surprise. “Who?”

“A big man,” Dr. Lee told her. “Voland, I believe was his name. He, too, carried a badge.”

“Dick Voland is one of my deputies,” Joanna said.

Dr. Lee drew himself up to his full height. “I do not care for his bedside manner,” he declared. “You can tell him from me that he is not to enter the rooms of any of my patients without my permission in advance. Is that clear?”

Joanna nodded. “Perfectly,” she replied. “But would it be possible for me to speak to Mr. Morgan? It’s a matter of some urgency.”

“Mr. Morgan has had a severe blow to the back of his head,” Dr. Lee replied. “He needs his rest. You promise not to take too long?”

“I promise,” Joanna said.

“Very well,” Dr. Lee returned. “I will call Mrs. Embry and let her know.”

When Joanna returned to the nurses’ station, Mavis Embry waved her on by. “I guess you know which door,” she said.

Deputy Debbie Howell, stationed directly outside the door to Hal Morgan’s room, was a single mom and a relatively new hire in the department. As a consequence, she was low-man on Dick Voland’s patrol roster. She greeted Joanna with a pleasant smile. “Good afternoon, Sheriff Brady.”

“Good afternoon, deputy,” Joanna returned. “How’s it going?”

Deputy Howell shrugged. “B-o-r-i-n-g,” she answered. “The only people who’ve been in or out so far are doctors and nurses. No other visitors at all.”

In fact, a printed “No Visitors” sign had been affixed to the door frame. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Lee,” Joanna said, pushing the door open. “I won’t be long.”

Hal Morgan lay on his back on the bed. His head was swathed in bandages. At first Joanna thought he was asleep. He lay with his face turned toward the window, and he didn’t move when the door opened. Walking quietly to the far side of the bed, Joanna was surprised to see that his eyes were open. He was staring out the window. Following his gaze, she looked out through the slight distortion of the green mesh screen that covered the window. Half a mile away, the rusty-red tailings dump reared abruptly into the air, reaching heavenward toward an intensely blue canopy of sky.

“Mr. Morgan?” Joanna asked.

Frowning, he turned to look at her. For a moment Joanna wasn’t sure whether or not he recognized her. With head injuries, she knew there was always the possibility of loss of memory. Short term memory, especially of events that occur within hours of the injury incident, can disappear forever.

“Sheriff… Sheriff…” Morgan struggled.

“Brady,” Joanna supplied. “Sheriff Joanna Brady.”

He nodded and then grimaced, as though even that small movement had pained him. But when he spoke, his voice emerged with surprisingly clarity and force.

“I don’t care what that Voland character says,” Hal Morgan told her. “I didn’t kill Amos Buckwalter.”

There was a single chair next to the window. Joanna sank clown onto it. “What’s the last thing you remember?” she asked.

“Wait a minute, Sheriff Brady,” Morgan said with sudden wariness. “I put in my twenty years. Voland already told me I’m a suspect. There’s an armed deputy stationed outside my door. I’m not talking to anyone-you included-without having an attorney present.”

“Do you have one?” Joanna asked.

Morgan frowned. “Do I have one what?”

“An attorney,” Joanna answered. “By the way, the best defense attorney in town is a guy by the name Burton Kimball.”

Reaching into her pocket, Joanna pulled out one of her business cards-one of the shiny new ones with the words “Joanna Lee Brady, Sheriff of Cochise County,” printed on the front. Turning the card over, she scrawled Burton Kim-ball’s name on the back and then handed the card to Hal Morgan. He squinted al it for a moment as though his eyes weren^’t quite working properly. “What’s this?” he asked.

“The name of that defense attorney,” Joanna replied “You’ll have to call him, though. He’s good, but he’s not likely to show up unless you call him. Ernie Carpenter, my homicide investigator, is bound to be in touch before long. You’ll want to have Burton on tap when that happens.”

Morgan lowered the card and stared at Joanna. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

Joanna looked down at her hands. “Maybe because I believe you when you say you didn’t do it?”

Momentary anger flickered in Hal Morgan’s deep-set eyes. “Look,” he said, “if this is one of those good cop/bad cop deals, forget it. It’s not going to work. I’ve played that game myself a time or two. No matter what you say or do, I still didn’t kill Amos Buckwalter.”

“I didn’t say you did,” Joanna replied. “In fact, I believe I said the exact opposite.”

Looking away, Hal Morgan tossed the card onto his bed-side table. “What are you here for, then?” he demanded.

“To ask a few questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like what do you remember about yesterday?”

“Very little from noon on,” he said.

“But before that?”

“Pretty much the whole thing,” he replied. “I remember meeting you. I remember standing outside the fence at the animal clinic all morning long. Up until noon.”

“And then?” Joanna urged.

“It must have been right around then when Buckwalter’s wife came outside, got in her car, and drove off. I assumed that Buckwalter was alone in the clinic, but a few minutes later he cam outside with somebody else-another man. The two of them walked toward the barn.”

Joanna sat forward on her chair. “What did this other man look like?”

Morgan looked at her quizzically. “You believe me, then?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“When I told Voland the same thing, he made me out to be a liar. He said I made the other guy up in hopes you’d go looking for someone else to pin it on.”

“Did you?” Joanna asked.

Morgan shook his head. “No,” he said. “He was there. I saw him.”

“What did he look like?”

“That I can’t tell you,” Morgan answered. “Not really. I was on the far side of the cattle guard, outside the fence. From that distance, I couldn’t see either one of them very well, but I’m fairly certain one of them was Buckwalter. I recognized his shirt. The other one, I never saw before. I do remember wondering how he could have gotten inside the clinic without my seeing him. One thing for sure, he didn’t come in through the gate.”

“He probably came through the house then,” Joanna supplied. “The Buckwalter house faces another street, but there’s a path that leads back and forth between the house and the back of the clinic.”

“I see,” Morgan said.

“So what happened next?” Joanna asked.

“Both of them, Buckwalter and the other guy, walked into a metal building, a shed that looked like a barn.”

“And then?”

Without answering, Hal gave Joanna a shrewdly appraising look. They were both aware that, over his objections, they had slipped into a mode where she was asking questions, and he was answering them. For a time, Joanna thought he was going to clam up completely, but after a moment he continued.

“Pretty soon I heard someone yelling. It sounded like somebody calling for help from inside the barn, so I left the gate and went running that way. The last thing I remember was going in through the door-going from bright sunlight into a sort of dusky gloom. Then something hit me on the back of the head. The next thing I knew, I woke up here with my lungs on fire and with a killer headache that just won’t stop.”

Joanna nodded. “I see,” she said.

“Why is that?” he asked. “If Deputy Voland doesn’t believe me, why do you?”

“It occurred to me this afternoon that maybe someone else-somebody with his or her own reasons for wanting Bucky Buckwalter dead-is using your motivation as camouflage. Whoever the killer is, he’s expecting us to take things at face value-to charge you and let him off the hook.”

As a sudden expression of comprehension flashed across his face, Hal Morgan raised himself on his elbow. A few minutes earlier, the mere act of nodding his head had pained him. This time, if the pain was there, it didn’t seem to register or show. Suddenly Hal Morgan was transformed into a cop again-a cop on the trail of a killer.

“Do you know who it is?” he demanded.

Joanna shook her head. “Not yet,” Joanna said. “But I have a few ideas. Talking to you has given me a few more.’

Morgan studied her for a minute, then he eased himself hack down on the pillow. “You know, I did want to kill him once,” In admitted. “The night Bonnie died, I could have done it with my bare hands. I think I would have, if some-body hadn’t stopped me. And I still felt the same way when I saw that smug little bastard in Phoenix last summer. I went there thinking there was going to be a trial, that I’d have a chance to testify. But Buckwalter’s lawyer had already worked out a plea bargain. When I found out about that deal, I might still have done something drastic if it hadn’t been for Father Mike.”

“Father Mike?” Joanna put in. “Who’s he?”

“A friend of mine. Father Michael McCrady. I met him through M.A.D.D.”

“Is he a counselor for them, or a chaplain maybe?”

Morgan shook his head. “No. He’s a member, just like everybody else. His sister was a nun in Milwaukee. A drunk ran her down in a crosswalk as she walked from her school back to the convent after a school Christmas pageant. Of all the people I talked to after Bonnie’s death, Father Mike was the first one who got to me, the first one who made sense. Talking to him finally made me see beyond my own hurt, made me see the big picture. He helped me understand that we were all in the same boat and that it’s useless to take your hurt and anger out on a single individual. It’s far more important to get people in general to see that drunk driving is a menace to everyone. Father Mike is the one who convinced me that by working with M.A.D.D., by raising people’s awareness, maybe I can keep what happened to Bonnie and me from happening to someone else.”

“In other words,” Joanna said, “you’re saying that you didn’t come to Bisbee to kill Bucky Buckwalter?”

Hal Morgan’s gaze met and held Joanna’s. “That’s right,” he said. “I came to pass out leaflets.”

Joanna thought for a moment before she spoke again. “Yesterday afternoon, Terry Buckwalter gave me a note, on she claims you gave her up in Phoenix. It was written in pencil and had a reference on it to a Bible verse.”

Morgan nodded and closed his eyes. “Exodus 21:12,” he said. “‘He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.’ “

“You did give it to her then?”

“Yes,” Hal Morgan said. “And at the time, I meant every word of it, but, like I said, that was before I met Father Mike.”

Another long silence followed. “Am I under arrest then? Morgan asked at last.

“No,” Joanna told him. “Not yet.”

“What’s the point of the deputy, then?”

“Some people seem to think you’re a flight risk,” Joanna answered.

“Some people,” Morgan repeated. “Like your friend Voland, for instance? What about you, Sheriff Brady? What d you think?”

For a moment, Joanna considered how she should answer. What she thought was complicated by what she felt, and what she felt was directly related to her own experience. On one side of the scale there was the far-too-blithe, wedding ring- and grief-free Terry Buckwalter. On the other was Hal Morgan, a seemingly honorable ex-cop who, almost a year later, was still grieving over the loss of his beloved wife. Terry’s reaction to Bucky’s murder was totally foreign to Joanna Brady, while Hal Morgan’s continuing anguish was achingly familiar. Based on those stark contrasts, it wasn’t too difficult to see where Joanna Brady’s sympathies might fall.

“Have you ever been in Bisbee before, Mr. Morgan?” she asked.

I le shook his head. “Never,” he told her.

“Even so,^” Joanna said quietly, ^“you may have heard something about me and my husband.” She paused and had to swallow before she could continue. “His name was Andy-Andrew Roy Brady. He was murdered last September seventeenth. He was shot and died the next day-the day after our tenth anniversary.”

The look on Hal Morgan’s face registered both surprise and pain. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I had no idea.”

Joanna acknowledged his condolence with a nod and then continued. “His killer was a hired gun-a hit man working for a Columbian drug lord. The killer’s name was Tony Vargas.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Morgan asked.

The room became deathly silent as Joanna sought the courage to finish her story. “Vargas didn’t go to prison,” she finished at last. “He died. I killed him. I shot him.”

“You shot him yourself?”

Joanna nodded. “It was ruled self-defense, so there was never any trial, but if I had needed a defense attorney, Burton Kimball is the one I would have called.”

Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute; a little while ago you said you believed me.”

“I do,” Joanna answered. “But just because I do doesn’t mean everyone else will.”

Hal Morgan reached out and retrieved Joanna’s business card. It was only when he was holding it in his hand, examining it, that she noticed his fingers and saw that Hal Morgan was still wearing his wedding ring. Three weeks under a year after his wife’s death, he had yet to take his off. Terry Buckwalter’s was already history. The contrast was telling.

Morgan was still looking at the card when he spoke again.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

‘‘Thank you,” she returned.

“Is that why you’re helping me?” Hal Morgan asked.

Joanna shrugged. “Maybe,” she said, standing up. “If nothing else, I know how you feel.”

“Won’t it cause trouble for you?^” he asked. “With your people, I mean?”

She smiled. “It could. On the face of it, there’s certainly potential for a conflict of interest. That’s why I’m not pulling the deputy, even though I personally don’t believe you need an armed guard.”

“It’s okay,” Morgan said. “I understand.” Then, after moment, he added, “Your homicide dick isn’t going to like it when he finds out you’ve referred me to a local defense attorney.^”

“Who’s going to tell him?”

For the first time there was the slightest hint of a smile lurking under Hal Morgan’s gray-flecked moustache. “Not me,” he said, holding out his hand. “Thanks for everything.”

Joanna shook hands with him, then walked as far as the door, where she stopped, pausing with one hand on the lever. From a law-enforcement standpoint what she had done made no sense. On a personal level she was incapable of doing anything else.

“You’re welcome,” she told him. “And good luck wit Burton. He’s a good man.”