Enemy Way Read Online Free PDF Page B

answered.

    “And I’d be doing mine in arresting you. Now give us some room.” Ella wasn’t sure where he’d come from, but Officer Jimmy Frank appeared and reached for Lulu’s camera. The reporter stepped back automatically to avoid Jimmy’s grasp. “Thank you for stepping back, ma’am,” Jimmy said, smiling coldly.
    As Ella led Gladys down the hall, she heard Jimmy talking and taking control of the crowd beforethings continued their downward spiral.
    Outside, Gladys started pleading to be released, but her words fell on deaf ears. Ella turned the sobbing woman over to Michael after he’d placed Paul in the back seat. “I’ll be in soon to make a report. This is one disturbance I can’t wait to see reach the courts. But right now, I have to stay here.”
    “Understood.”
    By the time Ella returned to the waitingroom, Jimmy Frank was the only one there. “Good job,” she said. “We needed another officer on the scene.”
    “I’m glad I decided to stop by. I heard about your mother and decided to take my sixty-one here.”
    Ella nodded. “I appreciate the help. Go have your dinner. You’ve earned it.”
    “Glad I could help out. If there’s anything else I can do, just name it.”
    “Thanks. Right now, all anyone can dois wait. My mother is in recovery, still asleep. At least she didn’t have to see this circus.”
    Ella returned to the waiting area, and bought a cup of hot cocoa from the vending machine. It tasted like cardboard, and the scalding liquid burned her throat, but it was better than nothing. It was good to feel something besides anger. She managed to stay seated for only a few moments before restlessnessforced her to her feet and she began to pace again.
    Carolyn Roanhorse came up as Ella tossed the empty cup into the trash with a vengeance.
    “If you stay here, wearing a hole in the carpet with your pacing, you’re going to go crazy.”
    Ella looked at her friend. “I feel so helpless. I’m a cop, for cripes sakes. It’s my job to keep civilians safe, but we can’t even keep drunks like Leo Bekis fromgetting behind the wheel time after time until they destroy someone else’s life. The system really sucks.”
    “Yeah, but not all the time, and not on everything. Don’t condemn all you’ve dedicated your life to, based on this one incident.”
    “I can’t get it out of my mind. Do you know that my mother may be on crutches the rest of her life? Maybe even a wheelchair.”
    Carolyn exhaled softly. “But atleast she’s alive.”
    “You know my mother. These past three years she’s worked hard to make a life for herself without my father. She’d just reached that point where things were where she wanted them to be, and now, this happens.”
    “Don’t sell Rose short. She’s got a will made of iron, that’s how she survived the murder of your father. She’ll have a hard road ahead, but it won’t be the first time.”

    Ella stared down the hall at the recovery room door. “That walking six-pack will have a million excuses for his actions, but none of those will be any help at all to my mother. She’ll be dealing with the results of what he did long after he’s forgotten all about it.” Rage made her shake again, and she stuck her hands in her pockets to control them.
    Carolyn looked at her, a worried expressionon her face. “Go home. Look around your house to see what might need to be changed to accommodate a wheelchair, or run five miles across the mesa. Get busy and start working off that anger, or it will eat at you like a cancer. Staying here, waiting for your mother to regain consciousness, is not a good thing for you now.”
    Ella nodded, realizing that Carolyn was right, yet still feeling guiltyabout needing to leave. All her life she’d been the type to make things happen. Patience was one Navajo virtue she was able to practice only when she was expecting a big payoff, like having a trap slam shut on a criminal. The kind of waiting she was doing now led