SIGNIFICANT OTHER: a Randall Arthur short story

I originally published this on Amazon.com as an e-short. Then, as the days went by, I thought that since I was only selling it for 99 cents, and that I wouldn't make much money from it, I might as well let people read it for free. So, if you go onto Amazon looking for this short story, you will no longer find it there because I've removed it.

This story is told in the first-person, something I have not nor do I plan to do in the Randall Arthur novels. But I wanted to try it out in this short story to see if it worked, and I think it does. The story takes place in between the events of ASIAN HAZE and the upcoming novel FAMILY DYNAMICS. If you haven't read ASIAN HAZE yet, you can read this story and hopefully want to buy that book, as well as the new one when it eventually comes out. And if you have read ASIAN HAZE already, hopefully this will whet your appetite for FAMILY DYNAMICS. So, here is "Significant Other." Hope you enjoy it.

“How long have you and your significant other been married?” I asked. I was sitting behind my desk in my high-backed leather chair in my upstairs home PI office, with my newest potential client sitting in front of me in one of the two smaller leather-seated folding chairs I had placed there for such potential clients and other visitors. The room was pleasantly cool, the central air conditioning thankfully working on this unseasonably hot August day in western New York. I wasn’t exactly dressed very professionally, in an orange T-shirt, knee-length basketball shorts, white ankle socks, and sneakers. But I don’t think my potential client minded all that much. She had other things on her mind.

“It will be ten years this November,” replied Sally Decker. She was an attractive woman with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a polyester pink blouse, navy-colored pants, and sandals.

“Have there been any problems in the past before this present situation?”

“You mean with him cheating?”

“Yeah.”

“Just suspicions. He’s always denied cheating on me when I’ve confronted him about it.”

“Have you confronted him this time?”

“No. not yet. If I had, he would have just denied it again. That’s why I’ve come to you. I want cold, hard proof to show him when I do confront him again, so he can’t deny it. And also to use in court against him, if I need to go that far. I figured if a professional private investigator got the evidence for me, it would be more effective, more believable, harder to argue against.”

“It would. Do you have any suspicions as to who the other woman might be?”

Sally nodded. “I think he’s fucking his best friend’s wife, Jamie Stone. Pardon my French.”

I smiled slightly, not wanting to show too much amusement at this lady’s predicament. “You’re pardoned. Why her?”

Sally sighed. “My husband and I have been friends with her and her husband, Terry, for years now. Terry is Jacob’s best friend. He was his best man at our wedding, and Jacob was Terry’s best man at his. Lately, I’ve been noticing that when Terry isn’t around, and Jacob and Jamie are together, they look at each other in this weird way . . . like they have a secret between them. You know what I’m talking about, Mr. Arthur?”

I slowly nodded. “I think I know what you mean. But is that all you’re going on? This look they seem to share? Have you seen them in more intimate situations?”

“I have eavesdropped on them a few times from behind doors and whatnot. They flirt a lot when they’re alone.”

“Just flirting?”

“Yeah. But you have to remember, either I’m in the house, or Terry, or both of us. They wouldn’t want to get caught doing something more than just flirting, wouldn’t you think?”

“I do see your point. And with your past suspicions of his infidelity, I see why you’re concerned about this time. But if he’s having an affair with his best friend’s wife, the best friend he was best man at his wedding and vice versa, that is rather low.”

“It is. And if it’s true, I want him to pay for it.” She paused for a moment, and then clarified, “In a court of law, of course. So, will you take the case, Mr. Arthur?”

I had only been a part-time private investigator a few months. Most of my work was security consulting, or looking up something—or someone, through avenues that only a private investigator, and former DEA agent, would have access. My day job as a history professor at Falcon City College kept my part-time work to a minimum. I had to be very picky about what I chose to take on. Plus the fact that I was writing books along with the teaching, though they were only self-published on Amazon, and they weren’t exactly doing David McCullough or Erik Larson-type sales . . . yet. The biggest case I’d had so far was a tough and complicated one, one that ended up with a death I didn’t want, and news to a client I didn’t want to tell. But that case began at the end of the spring semester at FCC, and I was presently a couple of weeks from the beginning of the fall semester. And hopefully a break to the unseasonable heat. Thankfully, the autumns here in this part of the country were cool and pleasant. The winters with their lake effect blizzards and deep cold—not so much. But I had plenty of time to devote to this woman’s plight, and she seemed nice enough, and I hate to see anyone in dire straits, especially if I can help them get out of such conditions, to whatever degree. And, I had never had a case before that involved infidelity. It seemed like one of those cases from a noir film back in the day, starring people like Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum. I’m sure the number of real-life cases of this sort taken by real private investigators throughout the history of the profession was countless. I thought it would be interesting, and I could say to people and to myself that I had worked one of those cases.

“Yes, Mrs. Decker, I would be happy to take the job.”

Later, I’d regret saying that.

Big time.

#

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long to get the first, and as it turned out the only necessary break on the case. And it came from a call to Sally Decker from a disgruntled secretary.

Sally had told me in our conversation yesterday where Jacob worked. He was the administrator at Lakeshore Hospital, which conveniently was next to Lakeshore Arena, where our minor league hockey team, the Falcon City Blizzard, played its home games, most of them in the midst of actual blizzards and lesser snowfalls. Both of them, as their names might make you guess, were on the lake shore—Lake Ontario, to be exact (though the baseball park where the Falcons played was not called Lakeshore Park or Field, even though it was on the lake shore, too. It was called Red Givens Field, after a Falcons player who had tragically died in the 1920s). The money was good from Jacob’s position at the hospital, and both he and Sally lived comfortably. But obviously, that wasn’t enough to make Jacob completely happy. Coincidentally, Jamie also worked at the hospital, which made their opportunities at seeing each other that much higher. According to what Sally had said yesterday, she was a nurse.

The following morning, Jacob’s secretary, Christy Bishop, called Sally. Christy did not like her boss, and had even told Sally that he had hit on her a few times before she made it clear that she was a happily married woman and wasn’t interested. She threatened a charge of sexual harassment if he didn’t stop. Jacob had backed off, scared from her threat, but his attitude towards her had turned cool ever since. And her opinion of him was so in the negative realm that she dreamed of the day when she could quit and tell him to go to hell. Christy had become friendly with Sally, and when Sally had shared her stories of Jacob’s suspected infidelity, Christy had told her of what Jacob had done to her. Sally decided to keep this to herself, never letting Jacob know that she had even spoken with his secretary. Sally asked Christy to keep a look and listen on her boss, and if she ever saw or heard anything that might give Sally reason to finally catch Jacob in the act, to call her.

The day after Sally had visited me, Christy did just that. She called from her cell phone on her lunch break. She told Sally that she had accidentally overheard Jacob and Jamie speaking, and they were talking about getting together after both left work at five that afternoon and driving their separate cars to Franklin’s Tower, a place southwest of the city, in a secluded rural area of Boone County, NY, where Falcon City was located. It was an observation tower, and you could see for miles from the top of the structure. Sally thanked Christy and promised not to tell anyone that she had called. Ten minutes later, Jacob called Sally, saying that he would be home late that evening, due to a meeting he had a work. He figured that instead of his usual arrival time of just after five in the afternoon, he would not be home until about eight, referring to it as “One of those stupid staff meetings I have to deal with from time to time.” Sally pretended to be disappointed, but understanding. Then she broke the promise to Christy when she called me to tell me of both phone calls, but then she asked me to promise not to tell anyone of either call. I agreed to the promise, and told her I would be on my way to Franklin’s Tower before Jacob and Jamie arrived, in a hiding place where I could see them arrive and then see what transpired from there.

I hadn’t done much of this type of surreptitious surveillance in my so far short stint as a PI. Certainly nothing like my DEA days working undercover in the heat and humidity of Asia, trying to take down heroin and opium lords and their underlings, all the while working as a college history professor at a university in Bangkok, partly as a cover, partly because of my love of history and teaching, partly to help keep me sane. That life only lasted a few years, before I got homesick, burned out, and frustrated by the lack of progress my actions seemed to be making in the so-called “war on drugs.” I resigned from the DEA and came back home to Falcon City, NY. But the jones to help fight crime remained in me, and I decided not long after coming back home that I would satisfy that craving by working at least part-time in private investigation, doing what I could in that without affecting my teaching and writing gigs. Those came first. Being a private eye (I never thought of myself as a “gumshoe” or “private dick.” I hated those sleazy terms from another time, a time of fedora hats, sexy blonde secretaries, and lots of alley fights with scoundrels) was just my little hobby on the side, something to make a little extra cash. Most college professors, no matter how good, did not make LeBron James-type money. LeBron was probably smart going into basketball. But I loved history too much not to want to try to make a living from that passion.

It was another sunny day, but not quite as humid as the day before when Sally had come into my office looking for help. I left my house at a little after four that afternoon in my red Ford Taurus, wanting plenty of time to get there and set up where I wanted to so I could get what I needed, without my subjects ever realizing I was there until after the fact. I took the main drag south out of town and onto the main state highway that ran straight south through the rural section of the county, past the railroad tracks that cut through the county like a long steel scar, and after about six miles arrived at the turnoff towards the tower, a long mix of blacktop and gravel road that had more twists and turns than a Robert Ludlum novel, through hilly farmland sprouting either crops of corn or soybeans or wildflowers, grass, and trees, the houses either nice one or two-story wood or brick frames, or a combination of older and newer mobile homes, all that could have been seen on a drive back when I was growing up in the Eighties and early Nineties, save for the satellite dishes outside replacing the antennas for television reception. And there were the occasional abandoned dwellings, allowed to fall into disrepair and nothing now but eyesores.

After about three miles of driving, leaving behind a thick plume of dust on the gravel sections that people living out this way have learned to deal with, I finally arrived at Franklin’s Tower, off to the side of a curving rise in the road. It was a mostly steel structure with wooden stairs and summit that was built back in the 1970s by the U.S. Forest Service as a fire watch in the middle of the thick woodland that dominated the southern part of the county. But besides its initial purpose, it became an attraction for both the county citizens and a tourist spot for those outside the county. It had ended up becoming the primary make out spot in the county, because it was deep in the rural area, far enough away from any houses to be considered secluded enough for doings of the erotic and naughty nature. Which apparently was the thinking of Jacob Decker and Jamie Stone. I wondered if they had been to the tower before to make out, with each other, or their spouses, or partners before that. Hell, I’d even done it there back in the day, with a woman I hoped to marry, but ended up dead due to a drug overdose. But that, as they say, is another story . . .

I parked the Taurus in the gravel lot, got out, and unlocked my trunk. In the back was what I referred to as “Randy Arthur’s Super Fantastic Bag of PI Tricks.” It was indeed a bag, a large duffel bag that was spacious enough to fit all I needed to do any work in the field. In today’s case, all I needed was one item. I had bought it not long ago, seeing an ad for it on the Internet. It was a Spypoint Xcel 1080 Camo 12 MP HD Action Camera, used by hunters to film their hunts, a camera that could be operated up to by remote control via an iPhone app, a camera I could hide from eyes I didn’t want seeing it, a camera I could operate from a safe distance so the subjects couldn’t see me. I carried the camera into the woods about thirty yards from the parking area, and found a spot to place the camera so it could capture what I wanted, and capture it in stealth. I placed it on the ground next to a trunk of a maple tree, and found branches, twigs, and leaves to cover the top while leaving the lens exposed to have unobstructed sight towards the parking lot and the base of the tower. It was now 4:55 P.M., and if all went as planned, Jacob and Jamie would be here in about thirty minutes. I then got back into the car, and drove out of the lot. The plan was to drive a ways down the road past the tower, find a good place to park the car and lock it, and then walk back to the woods near the tower with my iPhone so I could operate the camera, but far enough out of sight of Jacob and Jamie.

Maybe ten minutes or so after I had situated in my hiding spot about another thirty yards behind the hidden camera, I was watching my iPhone when I could hear the sound of car engines. Soon on the phone screen, I saw two automobiles, one right behind the other, drive into the lot, nearly thirty minutes from the beginning of the recording. The front car was a red Hyundai Sonata, driven by a man in suit and tie. This was Jacob Decker. The trailing car was a blue Chevrolet Malibu, driven by an attractive blonde woman in her forties. I assumed this was Jamie Stone. He parked in the spot where I had been parked earlier, and she parked to his right. Both turned off their engines and got out of their cars. She was still in her blue hospital scrubs. They met in between the cars and began kissing and groping each other like a couple of horny teenagers, which this sight had seen plenty of over the years. I couldn’t pick up what they said to each other, but I could guess. They quickly got into the back seat of his car, apparently too anxious and horny to climb up the four flights of stairs to the top of the tower. Though the camera was in such a position low to the ground that it could not catch exactly every movement, I was able to manipulate the lens with the app so that it caught enough so one could tell that they were undressing just enough to engage in sexual activity. On the screen, I could see her head disappear from sight towards his crotch, and then vice versa. I could see Jacob lay back on the seat so she could get on top of him and I could then see her begin to bounce herself up and down upon him. This went on for about twenty minutes before it climaxed (amazingly during this time, only two cars drove by on the gravel road leaving behind their plumes of dust, and both times Jacob and Jamie ducked down beneath the vision of the back seat so they couldn’t be seen from the drivers of those cars). I watched all this in the shadows of the woods on my iPhone screen, slightly aroused, but more than anything, I was angry. These two adults were in the seclusion of the country, having sex with each other, and in the process deeply hurting two people who did not deserve to be hurt.

Then they got dressed, opened the doors to get out of the back seat, kissed and passionately hugged each other, said some more unintelligible words, and got back into their respective cars and left the tower area, heading back north, I assumed back to Falcon City. I went to retrieve the camera and took it back to the car. I was on my way back home, to call Sally, and then to get what I had recorded transferred to a compact disc to give to her. I had the evidence she wanted. I had done my job. I should have felt pride in a job well done.

Instead, I felt like shit.

#

I called Sally when I got home that evening, telling her I had filmed Jacob and Jamie having sex in the backseat of his car near Franklin’s Tower. I told her I was sorry.

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Mr. Arthur. I hired you to find out if my husband was having an affair, and you did your job. I appreciate the time you took to help me find out the truth, hard as it is to accept. But I guess because I’ve suspected it for years, maybe it’s just a relief to know for sure, to not have to wonder anymore.”

“Yeah.” I still didn’t feel any better. “When would you like to come and pick up the recording?”

“Would ten in the morning be OK with you?”

“Ten it is. Again, I’m sorry. See you in the morning.”

“Good night, Mr. Arthur. And thank you, again.”

“Good night, Sally.”

#

When Sally came to my house that morning, she dropped a bombshell.

She sat down in the chair across from my desk upstairs. “Not long after you called me last night, Jacob got a call from Jamie. When she had got home from fucking my husband, she found her husband dead in the bedroom, He’d shot himself in the head.”

I stared at Sally for a moment, my mouth open slightly in astonishment. I was finally able to whisper out, “Holy shit.”

“I overheard at least his end of the conversation. From what I could figure out, Terry left behind a suicide note for Jamie, saying he knew that Jamie and Jacob were having an affair. He couldn’t take the fact that his wife who he loved beyond words and his best friend since childhood was betraying him. I heard him tell her that she had to destroy the note so the police wouldn’t discover it, so they could keep their secret. Isn’t that illegal? Tampering with evidence, or something like that?”

I thought about it briefly. “Yeah, it could be. I’d have to talk with an attorney to make sure though.” This wouldn’t be that hard for me to do, since my sister Rachel was an attorney. “Whether it is or not, this does complicate matters. It’s not just a simple case of infidelity anymore. Now we have a suicide, and the destruction of a suicide note, assuming that she went ahead and did it. What was Jacob’s reaction to hearing that his best buddy had killed himself because of what he and Terry’s wife were doing?”

“Well, of course, he was shocked. But he never mentioned the note to me, or the affair, of course. He was just in shock, devastated that his best friend had killed himself. He said both of us should be there for Jamie. I nodded my head in agreement, but deep inside I wanted to kill the motherfucker right then and there. Then drive to Jamie’s house and kill that fucking whore, too.”

I didn’t say anything to that, though I could understand her feelings. At least she hadn’t been broken enough to go that far. “Why didn’t you confront him then with your suspicions?”

“Because I was waiting to for the recording you made yesterday. I want to see the look on his goddamn face when he sees himself fucking Jamie Stone. When I finally expose his lies once and for all. And, yes, I’m going to tell him that I heard him tell Jamie to destroy Terry’s suicide note.”

“Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“You mean like kill them?” She chuckled, though it was one of the saddest chuckles I’d ever heard. “No, I think it would be better punishment for them to suffer the rest of their lives with what they’ve done to me and Terry. Could I have the recording now, Mr. Arthur?”

“Sure.” I took out the disc from my desk drawer that I’d made last night from the recording of yesterday afternoon’s events, in a diamond case, and handed it across the desk to Sally. She slipped it into her purse.

“When are you going to show that to Jacob?”

“Probably when things settle down a little from Terry’s suicide. After the funeral, whenever that will be.” Sally took out a checkbook and a pen from her purse. “So, how much do I owe you, Mr. Arthur?”

I told her what I had figured out earlier. Since I was only going to charge her for the time I took on surveillance at Franklin’s Tower, plus travel to and from, it wasn’t going to be very much. She was going to be paying a lot more emotionally, I thought. Sally wrote out a check for my fee and gave it to me. “If this ends up going to court, I might be calling you back to testify. Or my attorney.”

“No problem. I hope you can work out something without a messy court battle. Hopefully that recording will convince him to settle out of court.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.” Sally stood up and held out her hand. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Arthur.”

I stood up and took her hand across my desk. “I just wish all this shit wasn’t happening. It’s bad enough he’s cheating on you, but now with the husband of the other woman killing himself, it’s even worse. I hope everything works out well for you, Sally. You deserve better than what you got.”

Sally smiled faintly. “Thank you. That’s sweet of you to say. I guess in life, it doesn’t matter if one deserves it or not. They get whatever fate has coming.”

“True. If you need anything else, you have my number. Don’t hesitate to call me anytime.”

“I will. Have a good day, Mr. Arthur.”

“Would you like me to walk you downstairs?”

“No, thank you. I’ll be fine. Good-bye.” Sally stood there for a moment, then said, “You know when people post on Facebook their status, like if they’re in a relationship, or engaged, or just got married?”

“Yeah.”

“I need a status that says, ‘Married to a Piece of Shit.’”

I couldn’t help to let out a chuckle. “I can’t argue with that one.”

“Have a good day, Mr. Arthur.” She turned and walked out of the office, down the stairs to my living area, and out of the house.

It would not be the last time I ever saw her.

Unfortunately.

#

I’m not sure why I decided to go to the St. Francis Church Cemetery on the west side of Falcon City three days later to see the burial of Terry Stone. Curiosity is probably the best answer. Curiosity is something all private investigators—whether they are full-time or part-time—should obviously possess. I figured that both Jamie and Jacob would be there. Wife and best friend. But I didn’t see Sally there. Maybe she had gone to the funeral and not the burial. I stood off in the distance, in a small grove of pine trees maybe a hundred and fifty feet from the service. No one noticed me. Jamie was sitting in the front row, wearing the requisite funerary black, next to the flower-draped casket with an elderly man and woman to her right. Another elderly man and woman sat next to them on Jamie’s left. I guessed they might have been Jamie’s and Terry’s parents. There were up to seventy or so people there. Jacob was sitting in the row behind Jamie. From the interaction between Jamie and both elderly couples, I could guess that Jamie had done what Jacob had asked, and destroyed Terry’s suicide note. His parents or hers had no idea of her betrayal of her husband, their son.

It was another beautiful day. A few puffy clouds here and there, but mostly nothing but blue sky. It was a little less humid than it had been the last few days. A nice day for a funeral and a burial—not that it was really relevant to Terry Stone at the moment.

I stood back in the grove and watched the short service. The solemn words from the reverend. The grieving tears from family and friends. I didn’t see Jacob crying, but he certainly looked somber. Whether he was somber about the death of his best friend, or his role in it, I couldn’t tell. I have several talents, but mind reading isn’t one of them. Too bad, because in the PI business, it can come in handy. Jamie was crying (I’m sure there’s a pun involving Van Halen there, but I’m not going to use it). But I wondered if her tears were sincere or crocodile tears? Maybe a combination of both? Again, because of my lack of clairvoyance, I didn’t know for certain. Soon, after the reverend said his final words in saying farewell to Terry Stone and wishing his soul eternal peace, the service ended and everyone stood to leave.

I saw Jamie talking to the older people who were probably parents, plus two men and two women who were younger, looking closer to her age, and who might have been siblings. Everyone else, including Jacob, was walking away towards their cars, some walking past a mound of dirt that had been excavated for the grave, soon to be put back over the casket once it had been lowered six feet below ground level. Soon, the people who had been speaking to Jamie left her alone with the casket. She must have told them that she wanted to be alone with the remains of her husband. A few minutes passed as cars began leaving the side of the street and the church parking lot where they had been parked, and Jamie stood there at the casket, in tears. But, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jacob walking back to the grave. He joined Jamie, put his arm around her, and said something I was too far away to understand. I looked at them standing at the casket of the man they had helped to kill, and I was more angry with them than I had been when I was watching them on my cell phone . . . frolicking in the parking area of Franklin’s Tower. I felt nothing but pure disgust for these selfish bastards. I wanted to walk over to them, tell them who I was, what I had been hired to do by Sally Decker, what I had seen them do. I wanted to tell them I thought they were poor excuses for humanity. But I didn’t. I thought I owed Sally Decker that opportunity. I thought that eventually, karma would eventually punish them, big time.

How right I was . . .

I took a deep breath to calm myself and turned to walk back to my car. I had reached the street when from behind me I heard gunshots. Two of them. I turned around quickly, pulling my Beretta Model 92FS from my holster hidden behind my suit jacket, and ran back towards the gravesite, somehow knowing what I would see when I arrived there.

What I saw was Sally Decker, her Glock 43 9mm pistol still in hand, standing near the bodies of Jacob Decker and Jamie Stone, lying on the grass near the casket of Terry Stone. Jacob and Jamie’s heads had been destroyed by one gunshot each. I had seen enough gun wounds of that type in my life to know by seeing the position of their bodies that Sally had come up from behind them and shot them without warning, execution-style. I had heard no screams, no yelling. Jacob and Jamie probably didn’t know what had hit them.

I saw to my right three cemetery workers rushing towards the scene from the church, where they had been waiting for the conclusion of the service so they could lower the casket into the grave and fill it back in with dirt. I yelled to them, “Stay back! I’m a private investigator!” I quickly grabbed my leather badge case from my jacket pocket and held it out to them so they could see that I was telling the truth. “Call 911 and them what’s happened. Tell them a PI by the name of Randall Arthur is here and has the shooter under guard. Go back to the church and stay there. Go!” They immediately did as I told them, all three running back towards the church as one of them was pulling out his cell phone to make the 911 call.

I slowly approached Sally as I replaced the badge in my pocket. I held the gun to my side, not wanting to spook her anymore. She looked spooked enough already. But if she happened to aim the gun at me, I would be ready to bring it up and fire, as much as it would break my heart to do so. She looked at me, and without any prompting, dropped her gun on the grass next to her. Shen then sat down in a chair in the front row as I came up to her, now standing maybe five feet away. “I showed him the disc last night,” she said in a faraway tone. “He was angry. Angry that I had hired a private detective to spy on him and Jamie. He told me he had loved Jamie for years, that I meant nothing to him anymore in his heart. He told me he and Jamie had expressed their feelings for each other a few years ago, but had kept things as secret as they could. All those other times I had confronted him with having an affair, he had been. With her. He told me he wanted a divorce, and with Terry now out of the picture, he and Jamie would take a few months out of proprieties’ sake and then come out to the world as a couple.” She looked down at Jacob’s body, staining the grass with blood and blood matter, as was the body of his married lover. “Jacob and I first made love on top of Franklin’s Tower, a few months before he proposed to me. It was on a beautiful, starry night in August, around this time of the month. One of the most beautiful nights of my life. And years later, he takes his whore out there to fuck her in the back seat of his car. I wonder why they didn’t climb to the top of the tower? Would it have reminded him too much of that night we had up there? I really did love him. Why didn’t he love me back? What did I do to make him stop loving me?” She stared at her victims, who had made her and Terry Stone victims. “I guess I just couldn’t hold my feelings back anymore, either.” She looked back up at me with tears beginning to run down her face. “Please put away your gun, Mr. Arthur. I’m not going anywhere.”

When the police and ambulance arrived a few minutes later, both their sirens howling in the sunny August afternoon in the small city of Falcon City, NY, they found me sitting next to Sally Decker on one of the folding chairs, near the casket bearing the body of Terry Stone still poised above its grave, plus now the bodies of his wife and best friend on the ground, karma in the guise of two bullets having found their heads, destroying them for all time. My right arm was around Sally’s shoulders, while she wept uncontrollably on my right shoulder, staining my suit jacket with her tears.

Broken.