Obstruction of Justice by Perri O'Shaughnessy

stop."
    "You’ve talked to her yourself?"
    "Of course. Kim Voss. Her statement is in the file. She’ll talk to you."
    "No trace of the car?"
    "Permanently disappeared in somebody’s garage, or driven to Mexico and parted out, but not repaired over a two-hundred-mile radius, I guarantee you that." Hallowell’s jaw clenched, and Paul got a glimpse of the steely resolve that would not let him give up or let go.
    "Sometimes the car leaves ... traces on the victim," Paul said, choosing his words with care.
    "She hit the bumper, then the windshield," Hallowell said. "No paint chips. The autopsy and lab reports are in the file." He polished off the beer, his head leaning back, his throat working as he swallowed it. Paul had another one open and waiting for him, which Hallowell took without comment, setting it neatly next to the empty.
    "Even though they never found the car or the driver, her death was ultimately ruled an accident, of course," Hallowell went on. "There was no evidence of premeditation."
    "And she gave you no hint at all about what she wanted to discuss?"
    "No. Later I talked with her boss, Marvin Gates. He couldn’t think of anything unusual."
    "None of her clients had threatened her? That happens to probation officers. Somebody goes back inside because she gives him a bad report. A relative blames her for not doing her job, or for doing it too well."
    "There were no threats I had heard or that Gates knew about. He had nothing but praise for Anna. He said she had a rare rapport with offenders. Said her clients liked her, in fact."
    "Did he know who she saw that day?"
    "He had a list of her appointments, but that’s next to useless. Anna wanted to help these people, and she tried to be accessible whenever possible. If someone came in before they were due, she always accommodated them, so some people she saw on that day might not show up on that list."
    "Anyone else in the office who might know exactly who came in that day?"
    "It’s a busy place and each officer operates fairly independently. They had very heavy loads. I doubt anyone else was keeping track of Anna’s clients other than Anna and her boss, but even he could only give her half an eye."
    "Who was Anna supervising at that time?"
    "She had sixty-two felons, mostly women but a few men, on her case list."
    Paul whistled.
    "Most of them were nonviolent, drugs and white-collar stuff. They checked in, they gave her the forms from whatever detox program or counseling thing they were in. She called the workplaces to make sure they were still there on the job and helped ’em when she could. You know the routine. She did what she had to do, but she tried to be compassionate."
    "Still," Paul said.
    "Still," Hallowell agreed. "It could be one of them."
    "It’s been three years," Paul said.
    "For a long time, I expected the guy would come out of the woodwork if I was just patient," Hallowell said. "Somebody would get picked up on an unrelated charge and have some information to trade, or a wife would find out and have a crisis of conscience, I don’t know. But it never happened."
    "So why start this whole thing up again?"
    "Because ... I haven’t been able to move on. It’s affecting my work, my attempts to have a life outside work. I went for a hike a week ago—you may have heard about it from Nina. The damnedest thing happened. A terrific storm came up. Another hiker who had come up just behind us was struck by lightning and died. I had been thinking about Anna the whole way up the trail, about one time when we hiked that same trail. I don’t know if it was the storm, exposure, the shock.... I didn’t handle it very well. In fact, I had a little breakdown or something. I thought this dead guy I was giving CPR to was Anna. I realized I—I’m not much good for ... anyone else. I have to know. Who killed her? Why did she die?"
    "You were hiking with Nina, huh?" Paul said.
    "Right."
    Paul got up and went to his window, looking down at the Hog’s Breath