Rough Justice (Cainsville 5.5)

"All right. I'm not fine, at the moment. That's why I'm here to see you. Gabriel is doing well enough, considering he has to endure visits with his mother, which I'm trying to curb. Is that what you wanted? Or would you rather I just said we're both doing awesome?"

"We need to talk about the Seanna issue. I'm glad you brought that up. But first, let's deal with your problem. We can discuss it on the way." He closed his laptop.

"How's the writing going?" I asked.

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He smiled. "Thank you. I'll even pretend you care and aren't just tossing me a bone. I've hit a point in the novel where I know where I'm heading but am not quite sure how to get there, so a break is a very welcome distraction."

"Meaning you now owe me? Cool."

"That depends on your request. To be distracting, it must also be interesting. Otherwise, you still owe me."

"Now that is how you commit a murder," Patrick said as I finished telling him the story. "Ingenious."

"On paper, yes. In reality, he just got lucky. Johnson, that is. Not Alan...or Heather."

"Oh, I think the jury is still out on Heather. Both literally--depending on the outcome of the charges--and figuratively. The loss of a spouse doesn't always affect one quite as dramatically as it did poor Mr. Johnson. But it's a brilliant plot that could either succeed or go horribly awry. Both are equally good fodder for fiction."

I turned onto his street. "Mmm, pretty sure there's a third--and far more likely--option there. That the plan goes nowhere at all. Johnson set up the board, but Heather had to make the final play, and all it would have taken was for Alan to say 'Honey, I'm home!' and he'd still be alive."

"Unless..." He waved it off. "I'll save that for a book plot. So yes, I do owe you for this one."

"Great. But I'm not actually here to entertain you. There's a moral to this story. A moral quandary."

"There is, isn't there? A delicious ethical conundrum."

"Far less delicious when you're the one experiencing it."

"Oh, I wouldn't know." He took out his house keys. "But the way I see it, Mr. Johnson took this chance knowingly. He rolled the dice. He realized that the end result, no matter how clever he'd been, could be his arrest and subsequent jail time."

"And execution? I don't think he was counting on that."

"No one ever counts on death by cwn. Which is a shame. People might be far more respectful of fae if they knew the punishment for harming us."

"Which would first require them to know about fae."

"And that would be terribly inconvenient. As for Mr. Johnson, I'll argue that when one commits murder in revenge, one must accept the possibility of counter-revenge. An eye for an eye seems all well and good until everyone's blind."

"True," I said as I climbed his steps.

"I would also argue that Mr. Nansen, while an entitled ass, did not intend to kill Mrs. Johnson. So is killing him justifiable? If you were to take a corner too fast in your little sports car, hit another vehicle, panic and flee, would you deserve to die for the crime? No court of law would say yes. No more than it would agree to kill Mr. Johnson for his crime."

He pushed open the door. "If you don't get the answers you want from my books, Liv, that might be what you need to remember."

"Two wrongs don't make a right."

"So I've heard."

"Thank you."

He glanced back at me, brows raised.

"I mean it," I said. "Thank you for that rationale. I have a feeling I might need it."

Nineteen

Olivia