J. Jance - Dead to Rights

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.