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But this was about Katrina, and that mattered more than it should. “Put him in an interview room. I’ll be right down.”
Aware that his team members were looking at him with surprise, he got to his feet. “I need to deal with this. It’s about an urgent situation that arose yesterday. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
Confident that his colleagues would carry out his instructions, he hurried to the reception area with Boris at his heels. The receptionist waved him toward one of the interview rooms and he went inside. The man seated at the table made a movement as if he was about to get to his feet.
“Please, stay where you are.” Spencer pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’m Sergeant Spencer Colton. How can I help you?”
“My name is Aidan Hannant.” He was quiet-spoken and appeared nervous. “I was driving the vehicle that mounted the sidewalk on Mustang Boulevard yesterday.”
Spencer wasn’t sure what he’d expected from this meeting, but it certainly hadn’t been that. He picked up the pad of paper and pen that had been left on the table.
“I will need to ask one of my colleagues to take a full statement from you, Mr. Hannant. But I have a few questions to ask before that, starting with what caused you to lose control of the vehicle?”
“I sneezed.”
Spencer glanced up from the note he was making. Hannant was offering a tricky excuse. It was a driver’s responsibility to remain in control of his, or her, vehicle at all times. A sneeze, however, was an involuntary action—one that often could not be predicted or prevented.
“And your reason for not stopping at the scene, or coming forward sooner...?”
“I was scared.” Hannant drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. “I mean, I closed my eyes for a second when I sneezed and the next thing I knew, my car was on the sidewalk. I could have killed someone.”
“That’s true. And, if your intention had been to harm someone—whether physically, or by scaring them—a sneeze is a very convenient defense.”
Hannant sucked in a breath. “I—I don’t know how to answer that. Except to repeat that it was an accident.”
“So you didn’t know the woman you nearly hit?”
“No!” The guy was either genuinely upset at the suggestion, or he was a very good actor. “I panicked and left the scene, but after I thought about it, I knew I had to come in here and tell the truth.”
Spencer knew that appearances could be deceptive. Conducting a background check would give him a clearer picture of who Aidan Hannant was and might help him understand the reasons behind this visit. He couldn’t quite figure out why the other man would turn up with this story if his intention had been to harm, or frighten, Katrina.
A quick glance at the screen of his cell told Spencer he needed to get moving. The operation at Mustang Valley General couldn’t happen without him. Before he called in a colleague to take a full statement from Hannant, he had one more question.
“Do you have any connection to the Affirmation Alliance Group?”
“I don’t understand.” Hannant’s forehead wrinkled. “Is that the group who’ve been helping people affected by the earthquake? What do they have to do with this?”
That was the key question. Spencer didn’t have an answer. Yet. But he intended to find one.
* * *
Katrina had gone through the first training session of the afternoon on autopilot. Although every animal was different, most of the routines were the same and it didn’t take much to adapt her approach to an individual dog. By the time the dogs were collected by their owners, the shakiness she had felt after yesterday’s encounter with Aidan Hannant had returned and she was exhausted.
“I overheard something a woman said in the grocery store yesterday.” She started the conversation before Suzie, who could be a little too perceptive sometimes, asked if she was okay. “She was talking about a man who had died recently in a horrible accident. I don’t recall anything like that, do you?”
“Not here in Mustang Valley.” Suzie could always be relied upon to be up-to-date with all the news, including the latest recent killings of beauty pageant contestants in two Arizona counties. “But my mom’s friend Helen Jackson, who lives just outside of town, lost her husband recently. That was a tragic accident.”
“How did he die?”
“He was an airplane pilot for a small commercial company operating out of Tucson. A month or two ago, his plane collided with another on takeoff.” Suzie shook her head sadly. “Helen’s son, Jonah, said they had to use dental records to identify the bodies.”
Katrina stored the information away for later. It was possible that Helen Jackson was not the woman she had seen confronting the AAG members. But Helen had recently lost her husband in tragic circumstances, and her son could have borrowed money to spend on one of the group’s seminars. She still didn’t feel it was enough to take her suspicions to Spencer and risk being labeled as the same sort of attention seeker her mother had been. But it was a potential starting point and that gave her hope of finding a way forward.
By the end of the day, her fighting spirit had been restored. The panic brought on by Aidan Hannant’s warning was still there, but she was able to push it aside and plan her next steps.
“You said Helen Jackson lives out of town. Where, exactly?” she asked Suzie as they locked up.
“She’s a sculptor. Her studio is about ten miles out of town, close to the Mustang Valley Mountains. Why?”
