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. “
“You did give it to her then?”
