Close to Home Recap: Road Rage
As a father drives his daughter home from day care, the car in front of him suddenly stops, blocking him in. Then a car behind him pulls up, meaning he can't go anywhere. We've all been there, and it's not uncommon to be upset about the situation. But this guy gets out of his car, and so does the guy in front. The person behind pulls away. The next thing you know, the man is defending his actions, saying that he was afraid for his life, and the life of his little girl - it seems that he has killed the other man with a crowbar. That's one serious case of road rage.
Now it's up to Annabeth to determine if it's a valid defense or not. Her gut is saying that she is getting the runaround and this guy isn't telling the truth. So the investigation begins, to determine if this mild-mannered English professor and the construction worker that was killed has more to it than what is on the surface, and sure enough, some interesting tidbits surface almost immediately.
To begin with, the professor hasn't been the same for the last year or so - ever since he lost his son in a car accident outside his home. He's been short-tempered and just plain mean. All the while, the construction worker, who also lost a child not long ago, has been a pillar of the community, working at an organization to help others who have lost their loved ones, and as it turns out, he even counseled the man who killed him on a couple of occasions. So it seems that the statement that he didn't know the other man is a lie. Strike 1.
A little more digging turns up the fact that though the professor stopped the counseling sessions, the dead man did some work with the professor's wife. Though there is no proof that anything improper happened, it is certain that they spent a whole lot of time together, and even if nothing ever came of it, it sure isn't going to make the guy happy. Strike 2.
To wrap things up, it appears that the story of the professor's son dying doesn't seem to sit quite right, either. He says that they were playing hide and seek in the front yard, and as he hid his eyes, his son ran in the street and was hit by a car. But two neighbors say that they can see the yard, and he was nowhere to be seen. After a bit of digging, it appears that the dead man found out during his counseling sessions that this wasn't what happened. The deceased had fallen in love with the professor's wife, and suggested that the professor tell her what really happened, or he would do it for him. Strike 3. One dead construction worker, and one guilty professor.
