Five minutes later, he joined his father-in-law in the Gilroys’ kitchen. Even at this late hour, Joe was fully dressed and spit-polished. He had served three tours in Viet Nam flying F4s. At the end of the war, he’d left the air force. But the air force had never completely left him.
He motioned toward the coffeemaker on the counter. “Help yourself.”
“No thanks.”
“Since I know I won’t sleep anyhow, I thought I had just as well have some.”
They sat down across from each other at the dining table. Crawford said, “Grace went to bed?”
“Finally. I had to slip her a mickey. I ground up a pain pill she had left over from that ear infection. Spiked her chamomile tea with it.”
“Can’t hurt.”
“Knocked her out.”
“That’s what she needed.”
“Did you go by the Ambersons’ house?”
“Just left there. Georgia woke up only long enough to kiss me good night. I’m not sure she’ll remember that I was there. But it did me good to see her.”
“You meet Frank?”
“Just Susan. Nice lady.”
“They’re good people.”
The conversation stalled there. This was the way it had been since Beth had first introduced him to her dad. Once he and Joe exhausted chitchat about the weather and everyone’s health, they never seemed to have anything else to talk about.
While married to Beth, Crawford had gone out of his way to be friendly and easygoing around Joe, even pretending an interest in his hobby of carpentry. But eventually, he’d accepted that he and his father-in-law would never be chums, and he was fine with letting their relationship remain civil and neutral.
Certainly for as long as Georgia had been in the Gilroys’ custody, Crawford had done nothing to provoke Joe, to tip that delicate balance between them, to give Joe a reason to limit his access to her.
But now, sitting in the homey kitchen, without Grace’s diplomacy acting as a buffer, he felt the brunt of Joe’s hostility toward him.
“You talk to your cop friends?”
Crawford wanted to disabuse him of the notion that he would receive preferential treatment because he was a law enforcement officer himself. “As you know, Neal Lester is the lead investigator. He and a guy new to me, named Nugent, took my statement. They knew most of it already and only wanted details from my perspective.”
“Like what?”
“Like I didn’t know you could move that fast.”
“Excuse me?”
“When the guy came in shooting, you reacted with remarkable speed and agility.”
“I guess my two-mile walk every day keeps me limber.”
“Guess so. Lucky for you and Grace.”
“He wasn’t aiming at us.” Joe pushed back his chair and got up to pour himself a refill of coffee. He returned to the table, but once he’d set the mug on it, he didn’t touch it again. “What happened up there?”
Crawford knew that “up there” referred to the roof of the courthouse. “I haven’t been near a TV, but I suppose it’s been a big news story. Your neighbor Susan remarked on it. What’s being reported?”
“That you were trying to talk the guy into surrendering. But that when he realized he was surrounded and fired at a deputy sheriff, SWAT team snipers took him down.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
“The TV people are playing up the fact that you’re a Texas Ranger.”
“I’m a computer geek with a Ranger’s badge.”
“To hear them tell it, you’re a hero.”
“I don’t look at it that way.”
“Neither do I.”
Joe had gradually been working up a lather, so that by the time he said those last three words, he was seething. He turned his head, listened for a moment, as though to make sure that Grace was still in the bedroom asleep, then came back around to Crawford.
But before his father-in-law could speak, Crawford went on the offensive. “Since I came through the door, you’ve been building up to something, Joe. Let’s have it.”
“You took it upon yourself to play John Wayne.”
“I went after a man armed with a semiautomatic pistol who threatened the lives of everybody inside that building. Was I supposed to just stand by and let him walk out of there?”
“That building is crawling with officers of every kind, all day, every day.”
“Well, the only officer immediately on hand was Chet, and he was dead.”
“What did you say to the shooter?”
Crawford had spent the last several hours answering Neal’s questions about that encounter. He resented getting the third degree about it now from his father-in-law. On the other hand, he hoped to avoid creating a rift with Joe and recognized the value of treading lightly.
“I’ll be happy to recount it for you later, Joe, but right now I’m bushed. Thank you for arranging my visit with Georgia. I needed to see her. I also wanted to check on Grace. Now that I know they’re tucked in and all right, I’m going home to my own bed.”