Rough Justice (Cainsville 5.5)

No one answered. I looked at Lydia's empty desk and checked my watch. It was past six. I sent off a text to Gabriel, telling him where he could find me, and went into his office to work.

When I started at the firm, Gabriel assigned me the meeting room as an office--there wasn't a separate room for me to work in. Most times, though, he had preferred me in his office where he didn't have to get up to talk to me. When he got around to buying a second desk, he'd just had them put it in his office, and that was where I stayed.

Today, though, I sat at the big desk. His desk. I riffled through the stack of files on it until I found the police report from the accident that killed Johnson's wife.

Something wasn't fitting with the scenario I'd worked out--Alan Nansen killed Kathy Johnson in a hit-and-run, and then two years later, her husband initiated an elaborate scheme to get Heather to kill Alan.

Time to go back to the beginning of that solution and reanalyze the data. According to the report, it played out as I'd seen in the vision. Dark country road. Johnson was driving. His wife was in the passenger seat. It would have been her voice I heard, Johnson paying no attention to what she was saying. According to the report, they'd reached a curve, and the next thing Johnson knew, he saw a flash of headlights...and then impact.

The collision happened too fast for Johnson to even process what happened. Their car spun off the road and down an embankment. It struck a tree on the passenger side. Johnson had groggily looked around and spotted another vehicle with a woman climbing out, only to be pulled back inside. Johnson lost consciousness before he really understood what he was seeing.

When he woke up, he immediately checked on his wife. She wasn't breathing. He frantically dialed 911. Paramedics arrived within twenty minutes, but it was too late. His wife was dead.

The police had tried to find the person responsible. They tried even harder than usual, I suspected, not only because there was a death involved, but because, if someone in the other car had called 911, Kathy Johnson would still be alive. It was the delay that killed her. The car went off the road in a quiet area, and it spun down into an embankment at night, where any cars that passed continued by, oblivious.

I could now see why Johnson would definitely blame Alan Nansen. A hit-and-run causing death was bad enough. But in fleeing the scene, the Nansens let Kathy Johnson die. Even an anonymous 911 call from a pay phone would have saved her.

That scenario, however, made Johnson seem less accountable for Alan's death, which took it even farther out of the Cwn Annwn's realm.

I glanced at my silent cell phone. I really could use Gabriel's help on this. I needed someone to bounce ideas off, someone to see what I must be missing. But he wasn't returning my text, meaning he was busy, and I hated to interrupt for something that wasn't urgent. We could discuss it over dinner.

Thinking of dinner, I checked my watch. And then I stopped. I stared at my watch. Looked at my cell phone. Back at my watch.

I remembered Johnson's memories. A flash of a cell phone in his hand, his gaze going to it and then to his watch. I'd thought that was after the accident with Lloergan, but his airbags hadn't gone off then. So this was connected to his wife's accident.

Why had he remembered that exact moment?

Because that was when he'd realized it was too late. He'd regained consciousness and looked at his watch...

Somehow, even addle-brained, I couldn't imagine I'd wake up after an accident, see Gabriel unconscious and check my watch. If by some bizarre chance "Hey, how long have I been out?" was the next thing on my mind, I'd glance at the time while calling 911.

There had to be a reason why he'd remembered that moment, along with the accident and the Hunt and seeing the headline of Nansen's death. A connection that I wasn't making...

I pictured his watch again.

Oh, yes. Oh, hell yes.

I grabbed the report.

Johnson told the police he didn't know exactly when they'd gone off the road. They'd left the city just past midnight, but he hadn't checked the time since. The police knew, though. They got that data from the car's computer to help in their investigation.

The accident happened at 12:32 a.m. Johnson placed the 911 call at 1:59 a.m. And the time on his watch when he glanced at it?

Just past one in the morning.

I leafed through the pages for the paramedics' report. They arrived and immediately went to Kathy Johnson's aid. Once they'd determined they couldn't revive her, they wanted to check out Johnson's condition, but he was agitated and distraught and insisted on getting his wife to a hospital. He could be checked there if necessary, but he'd only suffered a crack on the head. Once at the hospital, he'd refused treatment.

Because you didn't crack your head, did you, Keith?

What would you crack it on? The airbags deployed. Your wife died from the impact of the tree on the passenger's side. You were cushioned by the airbags.

You were fine.

If Keith Johnson did pass out, it was only briefly. He'd been awake and alert just after one, midway between the time of the accident and calling 911. He'd checked his watch because he was waiting.

Waiting until it was too late to save her.

Keith Johnson killed his wife. It didn't matter if he hadn't caused the accident. He'd taken advantage of it, and that was even more coldhearted than what th