Free Wrongful Death by Robert Dugoni

them. Ferguson’s wife said it was her husband’s biggest adjustment. He generally stayed upstairs until she got home.”
    “So how did he get out to the barn?”
    “Good question. I asked it myself. Here’s the scenario. The wife is at work. The kids are in school. The brother is gone, and the therapist is late because she gets a flat tire. Just months after being blinded, and weeks after coming back to his own home, and still dealing with major balance issues, he navigates down a steep staircase, gets his shotgun from a locked cabinet in his office, finds his way out the front door, down the porch, around the side of the house, and walks fifty plus yards through what looks like a junkyard of scrap metal and potholes to blow his head off in a barn.”
    “Again, it could have happened that way.”
    “Could have, but in light of all the other things I just told you, is it plausible?”
    “We’d be speculating. We don’t really know.”
    “And if I’m wrong, it’s no big deal. But if I’m right…”
    “Okay, so how does this relate to James Ford?”
    “I don’t know, but my gut is bothering me. Have you found anyone else?”
    “For a guy who didn’t sound all that enthusiastic about taking this case this afternoon you’re awfully pushy.”
    “Yeah, well, things have changed.”
    “I have a bead on a guy in Tacoma, but I haven’t been able to reach him yet. His sister says he works nights.”
    TACOMA, WASHINGTON
    THE WAY DWAYNE Thomas figured it, there was a predetermined day and time for everyone to die, and there was no getting around it. To his way of thinking, heaven was a warehouse filled with billions of timers, all ticking at once, and every second another bell rings to indicate someone has died. That’s why people said things like “His time was up” and “The bell tolls for thee.”
    People did everything they could to avoid that bell. Thomas saw them every day at the health club, people damn near killing themselves trying to prolong their lives. They didn’t get it. They didn’t understand that they could work out for hours, take a long steam in the locker room, and walk out the door and get hit by a bus. That was how it happened to Brad Pitt in that movie Meet Joe Black. One minute, he’s sitting in a restaurant meeting a girl. The next minute he walks out the door and his bell rings.
    That was destiny. That was fate. And all the hours sweating on the damn StairMaster weren’t going to change that.
    Thomas knew about fate. He’d learned all he wanted to know about it waking up every morning in Iraq wondering if it was his day to die. He’d been sure his day had come in that ambush, but God had kept his clock ticking and stopped James Ford’s instead. Shitty deal for sure, but nothing to be done about it. After that, he figured if it was his time, then it was his time, so there was no reason to get all worked up about it. That was fate.
    When he got back to Tacoma, he learned a different lessonabout fate, except they called it irony. The city rejected his employment application. So much for his grand plan to use the Guard to catch on as a city worker; he was no better off for humping his ass in 130-degree weather than if he’d never left Tacoma. Well, screw that. He was owed something for his trouble and not just some damn medal, either. Hell yeah, he was. So when the attorney called to tell him he was filing a claim for Fergie and wondering if DT was interested, he figured why the hell not? Why shouldn’t he get something for serving? He’d nearly died in that ambush and the doctors had said he lost 30 percent of his hearing in one ear when that building blew up. That had to be worth something, didn’t it?
    He tossed dirty towels into the laundry basket and replaced them with clean ones. The muscled guy on the treadmill had given up and left, leaving the old fart on the StairMaster to push on alone, red-faced and sweating buckets. Thomas half-expected the guy to suddenly clutch