Hank Venture, Babe Magnet - Chapter 7

"No."

The word was spoken in the sharp, emphatic tones of a trainer correcting a dog.

Hank looked up to see a knife hovering just above him, quivering in the grip of two hands. One was the pink glove encased hand of Dr. Girlfriend. She was holding back the other hand, a slender hand with black fingernails. Hank's eyes followed the hand back up the arm to the figure of a young woman dressed in a smartly tailored but rather drab purple dress with white lace at the neck. A tiny hat with a giant daisy bobbling from it covered her head. It took a moment for Hank to recognize the woman.

"Kim? Dr. Girlfriend?"

"You are on probation, Missy," Dr. Girlfriend was saying. "You are not allowed to harass Hank Venture in the slightest!"

"But he's right here! Under my foot! Just one little jab and it’s over!"

"You harm even one hair on his head and you’re dead! Guild rules! And there will nothing I can do about it." The knife quivered in the grip of the two women. Like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake, Hank was unable to move. "Hank?" the girl beside him asked nervously. "What's going on?"

"Listen to me," Dr. Girlfriend continued her deep raspy voice coming from between clenched teeth, "I had to call in all my IOUs to get you squared away with the Guild after you stole my identity and robbed that bank. I have no favors left to call in and you don't have nearly enough money to buy off the Guild for breaking their probation. If you don't put that knife down right now you are a dead woman. Dead!"

"But - but -" Kim Duquene whined. "Oh, Alright. Have it your way!" She let Dr. Girlfriend wrest the knife over the table, then dropped it. "But the minute that damned probation is over,” she said turning to glare at Hank with insane hatred in her eyes, “Wham! I'm going to get you so hard that you'll be cold in the ground before you know that you're dead!"

"Hank, what a surprise," Dr. Girlfriend was saying on his other side, in soft, friendly tone unlike the ones she had used on the other woman. "What brings you skulking among the ferns?"

The restaurant Hank Venture and Jill O'Lantern had taken refuge in was a spacious Russian Tea Room. Ferns lined the large front window. Faux Tiffany lamps hung from the ceiling, as well as a couple slow moving ceiling fans. Behind a bar towered a gleaming silver hot water urn. Next to it were rows of glass canisters with polished silver caps. Over the earthy smell of the ferns he was sitting next to came the sweet smell of tea. Waiters in loose trousers and white Cossack blouses wandered amid the tables.

"We're - uh - hiding from some henchmen," Hank said, confused by Dr. Girlfriend's casual manner.

A frown crossed her face. "Anyone I know?" she asked with sudden seriousness.

"The Mighty Lobe."

She seemed relieved, then scowled. "So, he's back in town? I'd best warn my husband. What a nuisance. He bilked my sweetie out of ten million dollars the last time. Hardly a dent in his trust fund but one never likes to waste money, or be made a fool of. At least you weren't running about from our minions. I would have had to do something if you were." She paused, noticed Hank's confused look, and continued, "I was hoping to have a little time off the clock talking with my franchisee, you know girl-talk." Dr. Girlfriend seemed to notice Jill for the first time, kneeling beside Hank. "And who’s your little friend?"

Taking a cue from the place, Hank made a formal sort of introduction. "Ah, Jill, this is Kim - Kim - you know I never did learn your last name..."

"It's Lady Au Pair these days," Kim corrected.

“Oh, really." Hank felt confused again. "But I thought..." he glanced at Dr. Girlfriend, "that was your ID?"

"I licensed it," Dr, Girlfriend explained.

"Anyway, she wants to kill me. And this lady is Dr. Mrs. The Monarch. She wants to kill me, too. Or at least her husband wants to kill Pop, though I don't know why." Hank turned to present Jill,, "this is Jill O'Lantern.” Not wanting the two older women to think less of her, he added, “She's trying to kill me too."

“Hank!” Jill complained but she was drowned by the girl with the flower bobbing from her hat.

"Another bad date, huh?" Lady Au Pair jibbed.

"No! - Wait - is that what this is all about? You’re trying to kill me because of one double-date we went on? You thought you had a bad time? My brother and I were nearly killed because of your boyfriend!” He pointed an accusing finger at Dr. Mrs. The Monarch.

“My husband had nothing to do with that. It was all Phantom Limb’s idea.”

“At the time Phantom Limb was your boyfriend. The Monarch was there with some trollop he’d picked up from an on-line dating service. Gary told me all about it!”

“21 always had a big mouth,” Dr. Mrs. etc., sighed.

“The two of them got into some kind of pissing contest," Hank explained to Jill, "and Phantom Limb called in a Guild Erasure. If it hadn’t been from Brock Samson we’d all be dead now." Switching his finger to Kim he added, "So don’t complain about having a bad date!”

“A girl’s got to have a hobby,” she murmured with a smug smile.

“No, stamp collecting is a hobby. Building bird houses is a hobby, playing Fantasy Football is a hobby. Killing someone just because of a bad date is just ... murder!”

Kim snorted in denial.

"Well, Hank, Jill, there's no need to sit on the floor. Get up and sit down," Dr. Mrs. The Monarch was saying. She held up an arm and preemptively snapped her finger, like a man calling to his dog. A waiter appeared at her elbow seconds later. “Tea for our friends,” she instructed. “They’ve had a rough morning so something soothing, chamomille I think. And a plate of cookies, chocolate chip. You  know how kids like their sweets.” The waiter nodded and went away.

"You’re inviting them to tea? Are you trying to torment me?" Kim hissed.

"Think of it as a lesson in patience, dear." Dr. Mrs The Monarch returned blandly.

Squinting at the two kids, Lady Au Pair said, “You two seem awfully cozy for hench and henchee. Are you really sure she’s trying to kill you?”

“You should have seen her firing her grandfather’s old Colt .45 at me. There was pure hate in her eyes...”

“Hank,” Jill touched her arm, “about that...” but Kim interrupted.

“Hey,” she said, turning to Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, “if she’s trying to kill Hank Venture, isn’t she henching without Guild approval?Why does she get to do it when I can’t?”

“Why are you trying to kill Venture here?” Dr. Mrs. The Monarch asked.

Before Jill could speak Hank explained for her. “She thinks our family had something to do with her father’s death. He was working for the company, then got laid off, took his life and Jill thinks’s it’s all our fault. I just happened to be there when she started shooting. I think Pop may have laid him off twenty years ago when he moved most of the business overseas.”

“Well, there you are,” Dr. Mrs. The Monarch replied, “Revenge is distinct from henching. It’s all laid out in the Guild manual, which I do suggest you read.”

The waiter came back with a pot of steeping tea, two delicate cups and a small plate of Tollhouse cookies. Hank sniffed at the tea suspiciously, ignored it while taking a cookie.

Between bites he fill in Dr. Girlfriend on their day.

"You were throwing panties at him?" Kim laughed, forgetting her anger for a moment. "I wish I could have seen that. What kind of moron gives panties to his girlfriend? Were they black?"

"Hey!" Hank objected, "Jill is not my girlfriend. She's trying to kill me, remember."

"You were holding hands when you came in here," Kim replied. "That spells girlfriend in my book."

"It's doubtful that Hank even knows what it's like to have a girlfriend considering his stunted childhood," Dr. Girlfriend observed. She wasn't the least  bit embarrassed about trashing Hanks entire life.

"Why does it matter what color they were?" asked Jill.

"Oh, black is the color of romance... arousal. White is so - not sexy."

Jill’s eyes grew wide as she considered this revelation, eyed the contents of the shopping bag she continued to hold on to, then angrily whispered to Hank, “You don’t think I’m sexy?”

“Of course I do. You’re the prettiest girl who’s ever talked to me. Of course the three of you here are pretty much the only woman I’ve ever talked to. But ... but ...  the kind of clothes she’s talking about,” he nodded towards Kim, “aren’t really practical.” Hank had seem his father’s Victoria’s Secret catalog so had an idea what sexy lingerie meant. “You needed clothes so I got you some clothes, good, practical clothes. What kind of guy gives sexy clothes to his nemesis?”

Jill, whose reading was mostly limited to a stash of romance paperbacks left by her mother, had differing ideas about that.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mrs The Monarch was telling the new lady Au Pair a story about the time The Monarch had captured Dr. Venture and sons and was about to inflict the horrible death by caru on them when Dean Venture had called for a time-out. Kim was incredulous that an execution could be delayed because some child was in pain. Hank sipped his tea, which he found too sweet and perfumey. Nibbled more cookies and encouraged Jill to try them.  He picked up a spoon and polished on the cloth napkin laid out with his plate. The spoon was too convex to make a good mirror, so he picked up a butter knife and tried with that. The image was too blurry to see what was going on behind him, outside on the street.

“Oh, for peter’s sake!” Dr. Mrs. The Monarch snapped. “Here!” and handed him her compact.

“I’ll look kind of weird, you know, being a guy using a woman’s compact,” Hank objected.

“You could always move around the table so you can look out the window, if you want to see what’s going on so bad,” the woman in pink growled.

The two women had instinctively sat on sides of the table where they could keep an eye on what was going on outside the tearoom and what was going on inside. Hank had picked a seat with his back to the large picture window so any passing minions would not see and recognize his face. Of course from that position he couldn’t see if there were any minions still wandering the streets looking for them. Reluctantly, he opened the compact and used the mirror built into the lid to examine the scene through the window.

“It looks like they’ve given up the chase around here,” he told Jill. “I think it’s save to go.”  Standing up he said, “I’d like to say its been great, but it hasn’t,” Jill stood up a moment later.  “I’d say ‘till we meet again,’ but I hope not. But thanks for the cookies... and not killing me.” he backed away from the table lest someone do something like that while his back was turned.

He headed along the row of ferns towards the restaurant door. Catching himself in a mirror at the end of a short corridor on the other side of the door, he pulled Jill in. It was a passage to the restrooms. Hank studied himself in the mirror.

“Do you still have that black wig you were wearing earlier today?” he asked. Jill handed it to him from her shopping bag. With the familiarity of endless home theatricals, Hank pulled it over his head and settled it in place. He practiced a disgruntled look, then slouched to match. he flipped some of the artificial hair forward until his face was half-covered.

“I think this’ll work,” he announced then turned to look at the girl beside him. “How can we make you not look like you?” he mused.  “Do you have the rubber bands with you so we can put your hair back up in pigtails?”  She shook her head.

Jill’s hair was a sunshine-yellow, which she normally wore in a pair of pigtails. They tended to make her look even younger that she really was. Right now her hair had been scrunched flat under her wig, and after taking it off had been finger-combed straight back.

“Let’s try this,” Hank said and started dragging one side of her hair forward so it draped over her eye Lauren Bacall-fashion.

“I can’t see,” Jill complained.

“You can see well enough,” Hank told her. “What can we do about the dress?” he mused. “It’s not reversible is it? has a different color on the inside?”

“No!” Jill told him in an exasperated voice.

“I got it! Hold on to your dress...”

Jill’s ‘Wha-” ended in a squeal of alarm as Hank pulled the strap down off one shoulder. The loose-fitting dress, one of her late mother’s, started to make a rapid descent to the floor. She grabbed the neck and pulled it back up.

Hank pulled her arm threw the strap and folded the strap inside the dress. He then went over to her other side and pulled that strap off as well.

“What are you doing?” Jill angrily demanded.

“Changing the look of your dress.” Hank said. Jill had used a pair of large safety pins to tuck up the dress so it wasn’t quite so large on her. Hank took out one of the pins and seized a larger pinch of cloth under her armpit, folded it over and pinned it into place. He went back to her other side and did the same. “How does that feel?” he asked. “Do you think it will stay up?”

Gingerly the girl took first one than the other hand off the neck of her dress. It stayed in place. “I feel like it’s going to fall down at any minute,” she complained.

“Let me pull the fabric in a little more....”

“No, you’ll tear it. This dress is old.” She hugged her arms around her middle.

“That’ll work,” Hank said. “You can hold on to your dress and it will look like you’re angry and resent me.”

“I am angry, and you’re pissing me off.”

“Look,” Hank swung her around to face the mirror. “Do either of us look anything like we did when we escaped from The Mighty Lobe? No. At least not enough that we might be able to walk past one of his minions - at least from a distance - and not have them recognize us.” He dragged her out the door and away from the direction of the Lobe’s hide-out.

“The mall’s that way,” she objected, pointing back the way they’d come.

“So’s the Lobe. I want to avoid his men as much as possible so we’re going to circle around and come to the mall from the back.”

They stopped at a traffic light and waited for it to change. Jill nervously looked around.

“Don’t fidget so much,” hank warned her. “That makes you look suspicious.”

“How can you take this all so calmly?”

“Who says I’m calm. I’m just not fidgeting.”

The light turned and they crossed the street. This was an older part of town with broken up sidewalks and lots of closed up shops. The sun was shining bright but Jill couldn’t stop shivering. They’d gone a block when Hank noticed her shopping bag. She’d been holding it by the handles. he took it, rolled the plastic into a compact bundle and handed it back to her. “Hold this like you would a purse,” he instructed. “They may be looking for a girl holding a plastic bag; now you’re a girl holding a purse.”

They went down a second block, took a right for a block and then a left and went down several more blocks. Though slouching like a disgruntled slacker Hank was talking long strides forcing Jill to trot along to keep up. It left her a little breathless.

“Those woman,” she said after they moved over another block and resumed they march to the rear of the mall, “I don’t like them.”

“You shouldn’t. They’re bad people.”

“You seem to know them pretty well.”

“Not because I want to.”

“They scare me. They way they talk about killing people - killing you - like they were talking about pulling the wings off of flies... Ugh!”

“Now you know how I feel every time you pulled that gun of yours on me.”

“I didn’t bring it this time!”

“For which I’m glad.... Here, look into this store front. Don’t look around!”

Before she could even say “uh?” Hank had pivoted her around and pulled her next to an abandoned store. There was a large plate glass window looking into a large, dirty room partly filled with shelves, racks and discarded pop bottles.

“What are we looking for?”

“Nothing. I saw a minion cross the street ahead of us. In case he comes back to look, we’re a couple of kids window-shopping.”

“But there’s nothing here.”

“He doesn’t know that. We just have to look like there’s something interesting inside. He’ll flag us as bystanders and go on searching somewhere else.”

“How long are we going to stay here.”

“Another minute or two.”

“I don’t want to be like them.”

“Who, the minions?”

“No, those ladies in the tea shop. Doctor something and Lady Are...?”

“Au Pair.”

“Right.”

“You don’t have to be like them. You can be who ever you want.” Hank had been watching the reflections on the glass. The minion had not reappeared. “Ok, we can go.”

When they came to the corner Hank carefully looked around it before crossing the street and continued on. The street was empty. He breathed a sigh of relief.

They continued on that way, zigzagging their way until the mall came into sight. Hank asked where she had packed her father’s old pick-up truck. They made they way around to it, sticking to various ornamental shrubs and potted trees as much as possible to stay out of sight.

“This is where we part, I guess.” Jill was unpinning the truck key from the belt on her dress.

“I - uh ... You kind of look pretty that way.” Hank was saying. His eyes were darting all over the parking lot looking for trouble but they kept coming back to the blonde girl in front of him. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot....”

Jill yanked the truck door open. “Get in. We gotta talk.” She pushed Hank towards the open door.

“What’s there to talk about?” he asked, slumping down so his head was below the dashboard.

The girl dropped her bundle on the floor between them and grasped the steering wheel tightly.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, when we were trapped in the ravine, what you said about me father.”

Hank opened his mouth to reply, then decided that maybe this wasn’t his time to talk.

“I love my father so much. I miss him each and every day. Sometimes it’s hard to go on, you know. And it’s all your fault!  Then I think about what you said about it was really my father’s fault that he could not move on, find a new job and everything. And then I hate you even more, because ... because...” She bite her lip to hold back the tears which came anyway. “Because maybe you’re right.”

She laid her head on the steering wheel and quietly sobbed. Hank’s experience with woman was limited to those pointing guns at him. He wasn’t sure what to do here. He knew he should comfort the girl, and he’s seem on TV and old movies that the man would pat the woman on the shoulder or hold her tightly but Jill didn’t seem like the type that took kindly to that sort of thing.

“I thought I would feel better after shooting you, make a Venture pay for what they did to my father. I figured if I could look a deer in the eye and shoot them without regret I could do the same to you.”

She sniffed but didn’t raise her head off the steering wheel. “Did you ever kill someone?”

“I’ve seem people die. One minute they’re coughing up blood and trying to tell you something and the next they’re just meat. I dream of them coming back to life a lot. But if you mean like look them in the eye and pull the trigger ... no. I have shoot back at people who were shooting at me. I may have hit some of them, some of them may have died. I don’t think about that much. I know people who have killed people: Brock and Gary, our bodyguards. They’re nice people but, yeah, there’s something different about them.”

“I don’t want to be like them.” Jill said very quietly.

“I don’t have much choice,”  Hank said. “Being born a Venture I’m sort of cursed with whatever original sin started all of this. I would love get out of it, but there’s no ‘Exit’ sign for me.”

“Since I can’t kill you and I won’t forgive you, just go. Get out of my sight. Leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry what happened to your father. I’m sorry what happened to you. I really am. And if there were some way to make it up to you I would.”

Jill didn’t say anything, just cried harder.

Hank eased open the door on his side of the truck and slide out. Keeping an eye on the girl in the truck in case she changed her mind, he moved around it and started jogging towards the X-13. All the way there he expected to hear the boom of a Colt .45 Peacemaker. Once inside the relatively bulletproof atomic powered car he slumped, breathing heavily. Noticing the black wig he was still wearing, he tore it off and threw it on the floor. He tried to find the old pickup truck in the X-13’s  rear view mirror but he couldn’t find it. He wished he knew the words that would make it better for her. To tell her that death threats aside he admired her for surviving everything that had gone wrong in her life.

The Thwak of a bullet ricocheting off the windshield interrupted his thoughts. A minion from the Might Lobe was starting in front of the car, not twenty feet away, aiming a gun at him. With a snarl, Hank slammed the drive selector into “Forward” and gunned the car.... The minion didn’t more fast enough.

][

Summer had turned to Fall when Hank Venture once again rode his hover-bike along the public access road to the State Park’s boat launch, and past it deeper into the forest, following a vaguely marked tire track. He found the ancient pick-up parked under a large oak tree, which meant she was most likely at home.  He stopped his hove-bike just below a small ridge that hid him from her mobile home. Before getting off he carefully turned it around so that if he had to leave in a hurry it would be ready.

He pulled off a large Manila envelop taped to the handlebars, crossed the ridge and approached the trailer encampment. Hank stopped about a hundred feet from the ancient airstream and hollered, “Hello? Hello? Anyone there? Jill?”  

He waited.

After a minute the screen door pushed open and the girl stepped out on the steps and squinted at him. “What do you want?” she asked, not quite belligerently but not quite happy to see him. Jill looked like he remembered her, tiny cut-off jean short-shorts, an open shirt knotted under her breasts, blonde hair done up in high arching pigtails.

“I brought something for you.” Hank called back.

“I told you, I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity, it’s -uh - uh, restitution.”

“Restitution?” the girl echoed.

“You know, it’s when one tries to repair the damage...”

“I know what restitution is. I’m not a dummy. But unless you got a wad on money somewhere we don’t have anything to talk about.”

“I have something better than money. Let me come in an explain.”

The girl eyed him suspiciously. “All right. It’s probably the only way I’ll get rid of you.”

Hank crossed over to the steps and mounted into the little trailer. The inside looked as it did the last time he was here, worn but tidy. There was the double-bed at the front, piled up with boxes, A long built-in table and booth filled the middle. It looked like the kind of thing that would fold down into another bed, probably Jill’s. Her grandfather’s massive Colt .45 was nowhere to be seen.

“Why didn’t you just knock on the door?” Jill asked sliding behind the table.

Hank found a chair and sat down across from her. “I have a healthy respect for you and that cannon of yours.”

“I said I wasn’t going to kill you.”

“I’m not used to people living up to their promises..”

Hank opened the Manila envelop and dropped a handful of papers on the table. He sorted through them before picking up a pick of plastic rectangle.

“Pop was pretty mad about me losing my job,” he began. “He kept yelling at me to ‘get a life,’‘get a life,’‘get a life,’ That’s when it hit me, I can’t give you any money because I don’t have any - to speak of. And Pop doesn’t have any money either, aside from the compound, which we inherited from my grandfather, and a few patents we’ve got nothing. Nothing and enemies. But there was one thing I could do for you, and that was to give you a life.”

“I’ve got a life,” Jill objected.

Hank paused. “You just think you do,” he said after a moment. “This is kind of like a vacation from real life. And ... uh ... I’ve got to said I wouldn’t mind living like this for a while... Off the grid, out of sight of my enemies. Hunting or fishing when I’m hungry, doing what I please between times... But what happens if your truck breaks down or ...”

“I take real good care of my truck.” Jill protested.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s old. Eventually something’s going to break that you can’t fix. Or what if someone stumbles across this trailer? Do you know where you’re living?”

“My daddy always said it was public land so the public has a right to live here!”

“ah ... no! This is a state park and the law is very clear people can not set up permanent housing on park grounds. According to the law you’re trespassing. If someone were to report you the state would send out a trooper to arrest you, then while you’re in prison they’d send out a bulldozer and scrape this trailer off to the dump without so much as a by-your-leave.”

“The hell they will!”

“The hell they can because the law is on their side. And don’t think waving that cannon of yours around will change matters. They’ve got more and bigger guns then you. What you need is some land you can call your own and for that you need money, a lot of money, and for that you need a job, and for that you need an identity!”

He laid the piece of plastic down in front of the girl. “To start with a fake driver’s license.”

“I don’t need a license to drive my truck!”

“Actually you do. Getting caught without a driver’s license will result in you being arrested. So here’s a license that will pass scrutiny, as long as people don’t look at it too closely. But that fake driver’s license won’t pass close inspection, and certainly not by a cop who, if they run it through their computer system will instantly flag it as bogus. What you need is a real driver’s license and for that you need two other pieces of identification. First is a birth certificate.”

Hank handed over a green sheet of paper about eight inches square and folded in half. “I checked the records of every hospital within a hundred miles of here and there is no record of you ever being born.”

“That’s because I was born right there on momma’s bed.” Jill pointed to the large bed it in the front of the trailer.

“Ah,” Hank said with a shudder at the thought. After a moment he resumed. “Without a birth certificate you do not exist and that becomes a problem for all sorts of things. I was able to break into the Sisters of Mercy Hospital and steal one of their birth certificate forms, filled it out on their typewriter and left a copy in their filing cabinet so you are now an official person!”

Hank was expecting a grateful smile, not the scowl that transfixed her face. She tossed the paper back at him.

“This is a load of crap,” she announced. “That’s not my name, that’s not my birthday and you’ve got my age all wrong!”

“Jill O’Lantern?”

“Jill Caitlyn O’Lantern! You’ve got it down as ‘Marie’.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You could have asked.”

“But that would have ruined the surprise...!” Hank paused to reflect. “I guess that kind of ruins the surprise, too. Sorry. But your year of birth that was on purpose. The law doesn’t allow fourteen year old girls to go around living by themselves...”

“I’m sixteen!”

“Really? You look younger.... Like I said, by law you can’t live be yourself until you’re at least eighteen. Otherwise you’d get sent to a Foster House and everything I’ve heard about them has been terrible. So I made sure you were a legal adult on your birth certificate.   The other thing you need to be a real person is a social security number. You can’t just hack into their computers. At least I can’t. So I had to go find a pro and that cost me an arm and a leg.... Actually it cost me a ‘Promise.’ Some day I’m going to get a call asking for a favor in return, and I won’t have the option of turning it down. It may be to clean up a murder site or dispose of a body. I did say I can’t kill anybody for him, but short of that anything he needs done I have to do. But ...” Hank handed over a small paper rectangle. “This is your social security card.  Don’t lose it. With this and the birth certificate I got you, you can go to any Department of Motor Vehicle and and get a valid driver’s license. And with a real driver’s license you can get a job, take out a loan, get credit cards, anything! With these three items you can go where you want, be who you want, anything.

He watched Jill look through the pieces of paper he had handed her.

After a while he added, “I know this doesn’t make up for your father dying and any of the other stuff. But it’s all I have to offer.”  He stood up.

“You leaving?” the girl asked.

“I guess you have a lot to think about. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Yeah,” she agreed absent-mindedly.

Hank got up and stepped to the door. He paused there, waiting for Jill to call him back. Her eyes flicked his way for a second before looking away. Hank took that as a sign of dismissal, but reluctant to leave he said, “If you need anything you kow where to find me. Best leave the blunderbuss at home, though, Gary gets kinda excited about that.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept looking at the papers Hank had brought her.

After a moment he pushed through the door and walked away. There didn’t seem much else to do.