watched breathlessly, Hannah Green’s other hand emerged from the concealing pocket and came to rest on the second dog’s raised forehead. Only then did Joanna realize that Hannah Green wasn’t armed.
Her right hand didn’t hold a weapon-could not have held a weapon. The whole hand was horribly maimed. Useless, mangled fingers bent crookedly across a partially missing thumb.
“What kind of a dog is this?” Hannah Green asked distractedly as her crippled hand ran back and forth across Tigger’s silky blond head.
“Half golden retriever, half pitbull,” Jenny answered. “His owner died, and we adopted him. He’s real smart, except for porcupines. He keeps coming home with his face covered with porcupine quills. When that happens, we have to take him to the vet.”
Jenny faltered then. In talking about her dog it seemed as though she had forgotten the strained circumstances that surrounded the question. Remembering, she fell silent.
For Joanna, the realization that Hannah Green’s right hand didn’t contain a gun completely changed the dynamics of the situation. At first she wasn’t sure how to react. It was still possible that Hannah might be concealing another weapon somewhere else on her body, but somehow, watching her pet the dogs, Joanna doubted that.
Maybe what Hannah Green had told them in the beginning was true. Maybe all she really wanted to do was talk. To that end, the best thing Joanna could do was try to establish a sense of rapport, a sense of normalcy. She dropped her purse on the counter beside the grocery bags. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Would you like something to eat?”
“Just a piece of bread or two would be fine,” Hannah answered. “And maybe a little bit of jam if you have some.”
“I was going to bake a couple of pork chops,” Joanna said. “If you don’t mind waiting until they cook, I’m sure we’ll have plenty to go around.” She looked at Jenny. “While the food’s cooking, Jenny, you get busy with your homework. You told me you have a whole bunch of math to do for Mrs. Voland’s class.”
Jenny shot her mother a surprised look. “But Mom…”
“No argument, young lady.” Joanna abruptly stifled jenny’s objection before the child could reveal that her teacher’s name was really Mrs. Harper, not Mrs. Voland. All Joanna could do was hope Jenny was smart enough to take the hint. Take it and act on it.
“No argument at all,” Joanna finished. “Get now. And take the dogs with you. They’ll just be in the way. Mrs. Green and I need to talk.”
Without further discussion, Jenny took the dogs and her school backpack and retreated to her bedroom. Relieved that, for the time being at least, Jenny was out of any immediate danger, Joanna turned to the everyday task of putting away groceries. After the unnerving terror of the preceding minutes, the little kitchen seemed impossibly warm and homey. Despite Hannah Green’s still ominous presence, folding the empty paper bags and putting them in the bottom drawer gave an air of mind-bending domesticity to the proceedings.
Hannah Green slid onto the bench in the breakfast nook and slouched there. The despair emanating from her was almost as powerful as the stink of her great unwashed body. Her flat, vacant features could never have been considered remotely attractive, but she seemed at home in her placid ugliness.
“Before you and I say anything more, Mrs. Green,” Joanna cautioned, “you must understand that I’m a police officer. Since you’re a suspect in the death of your father, you probably shouldn’t be talking to anyone-me included-without first consulting an attorney and without being read your rights.”
“Don’t care none about my rights and can’t afford no fancy attorney,” Hannah returned morosely. “All’s I’ve got with me is just what I had laid by in my underwear drawer. Five hundred fifty dollars and some change. I don’t reckon that’d go any too far in hirin’ me one of them there lawyers.”
“If you can’t afford an attorney-”
“Besides,” Hannah continued, seemingly unperturbed. “Don’t much want one anyways. I already tol’ you I kilt him. And if’n they send me to jail, leastways I’ll have food to eat and a roof over my head. It serves him right, my daddy. He allus said I wasn’t smart enough to rub two sticks together. He allus said that without him I’d just up and starve to death. Well, I reckon I won’t. Nobody’ll let me starve in jail, will they?”
Joanna had pried the plastic wrap off the pork chops and begun to season them, dropping them into a cast-iron skillet and browning them before placing the skillet in the oven. “No,” she agreed. “I don’t suppose they will.”
“See there?” Hannah said. “I’ll be fine. Just fine.”
Joanna could think of nothing to say in reply.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why I did it?” Hannah asked a moment later. Joanna shook her head. “I’m gonna tell you anyways. You see, I just wanted to change the damn channel. That’s all. Daddy wouldn’t never let me watch what I wanted. It was just pure meanness on his part. That’s what made me so mad. He didn’t want to watch nothin’ else. Didn’t care about no other channel so long as I couldn’t watch what I wanted. He just got up and went outside and took that clicker with him. I coulda changed it on the set, but I wanted to use the clicker like a regular person.
“He went out and I went chasin’ after him, tellin’ him to bring it back-to bring it back right now. But he wouldn’t. Wouldn’t no way. Jus’ kept right on walkin’-didn’t even have no coat on-and I kept right after him, yellin’ my fool head off, tellin’ him to give it back. And then somethin’ happened. He musta tripped and fell and didn’t get up. The next thing I knowed, I was standin’ over him with a rock in my hand, bashin’ the back of his head in, all the while screamin’ at him at the top of my lungs. ‘Give it to me. Give it back!’ “
Hannah Green told her story with a minimum of emotion, delivering the details with a chilling dispassion that seemed to imply she was still more upset about the loss of the remote control than she was about her father’s death.
Sitting there hunched in the breakfast nook, with her multiple chins resting in her good hand and with the ruined one once again back in its concealing pocket, Hannah Green didn’t appear to be a danger to anyone. Still, Joanna recognized that she would need help in dealing with this woman. She could go through all the motions of playing hostess, of feeding her unwelcome guest and warming her. But somewhere along the line, the charade would come to an end. Joanna knew that when that moment arrived, she would need back up. Had Jenny understood or not?
As Joanna continued with dinner preparations, she wondered if it would be possible for her to find some plausible excuse to slip into her bedroom. There, in a matter of seconds she could dial 9-1-1 and call for help. What Joanna feared though, was that once Hannah’s suspicions were aroused, she might fly into the same kind of murderous rage that hat overtaken her when she killed her father.
“And then,” Hannah went on, taking up her story again after a long, thoughtful pause, “when I knew he wasn’ movin’ no more, I turned him over on his back and left him there. Left him starin’ up at the sky. Even if he was dead, I wanted him to see my face afore I left. I wanted him to know it was me and nobody else ‘at kilt him. Then I pulled ‘at there remote right out of his pocket and went back home. But my program was over by then. It was a special about Judy Garland, and I missed the whole thing. Course, it could be on the reruns later. Maybe I’ll have a chance to see it then. Do they have TVs in jail?”
With the meat in the oven, Joanna started peeling potatoes.
“They do,” she answered without conviction. Even if television sets were available to inmates, it didn’t seem likely that Hannah Green’s fellow prisoners would be any more interested in a Judy Garland retrospective than Reed Carruthers had been.
What Hannah said next chilled Joanna to the bone. It seemed almost as though the woman had peered into her skull and heard those unasked questions.
“It wasn’t just the TV, neither,” Hannah Green continued doggedly.
“It wasn’t?”
Hannah shook her head. Removing her damaged hand from her pocket, she held it up to the light, examining the bent and useless fingers. “I did it because of this here, too.”
“Because of your hand? Are you saying your father did that to you?”
