My back was aching from the effort of dismembering the body and my ribs and arm were still sore from the beating I had taken the night before, but I was fairly sure by then that nothing was broken and I’d be able to heal without a trip to the doctor. Things were definitely looking up.

After a half-hour break and a couple of beers, I dove back into my work with renewed gusto. I hacked through the head with a pruning saw, scooped out Jackie’s brains and flushed them, too. I then got to work cutting up all the bones as small as possible. The bolt cutter saved lots of time and worked wonders on everything from fingers and toes to the forearm and some of the spine, but I had to saw through everything else and it took a while.

I used the pliers to pull her teeth and flushed them down the toilet. The channel locks were also useful for breaking up the skull along suture joints, so that it was eventually just a bunch of bone chips.

By 9 p.m. I had it licked. I randomly put the pile of bone pieces into a couple dozen trash bags, being careful to keep them very light, maybe only two or three pounds in weight each. I then double-bagged the lot and put them into two cardboard boxes. The pile of flesh was divided into quart- and gallon-sized freezer bags, most of which I dropped into the dirty and dented chest freezer that had been left in the basement by previous tenants.

Once I had finished, I took a long hot shower and cleaned the bathroom thoroughly. I was surprised by how little blood I had got on surfaces outside the tub, just a smear or two on the tile and nothing in the grout. Even if the cops eventually did search the place, it would be hard to detect anything out of the ordinary. I then swept up the glass from the living room floor, put my books back on shelves and made sure that there were no tell-tale Jackie fingerprints by wiping down everything that she could possibly have touched. The last step was to fetch the shop vac from the garage, and I carefully covered every square inch of the sofa, the rug and the rest of the furniture with it to pick up any stray hairs that Jackie might have lost during our tussle.

It was the cleanest the house had been since I'd moved in.

The remainder of her flesh I put in the refrigerator while I read the manual for that food dehydrator. You see, once I had made up my mind that Jackie was at least as much responsible for this mess as I was, if not more so, I was determined that she should share in my guilt and my punishment. Did I come looking for her? No. Did I attack her with a bat? Hell no. So in order to make things right, make Jackie go on paying for what she had done, make her pay for the torture of memory she had saddled me with for the rest of my life, my fevered brain had reasoned that she would have to become a part of me. And I could only think of one way to do that.

I would eat her.

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

As of this morning we still don't know if there's going to be a Presidential debate tonight thanks to John McCain's last minute stall tactics. He claims that he's suddenly more interested in this country than in running for President. Does that even make sense? Because I thought being interested in this country was WHY he was running for President.

The real reason is that neither he, nor his brilliantly-educated running mate Sarah Palin (nor any of the fucking Republicans for that matter) have a clue as to what to do about the economic mess we're in, and as usual, their answer is to do absolutely nothing. No, check that. McCain wanted to fire the Chairman of the SEC until he found out that he couldn't do that.

After spending the past umpteen months campaigning for the highest office in the land, suddenly Big John wants to work as a Senator again. Since he freely admits to knowing very little about how the economy works, how the hell does he think he's going to help at this point? Is he going to be the cheerleader? I think his buddy George W. has that end covered.

A long-time champion of deregulation (as are all of the Republicans) McCain has a lengthy voting record to prove that he's had an enormous hand in getting us to this point in the first place. Do you know why the Republicans don't want to regulate big business? Because that would mean they would have to feel guilty about taking all that money from corporate lobbyists who have been paying them to vote for deregulation all these years.

The crux of the problem is that greed is what fuels capitalism and if you start telling people that they can't be greedy anymore, then they get upset. “You mean I can't have a seventh vacation home? Fuck that! I'm the C.E. Motherfucking O.!” they say.

Greed needs oversight, which means that businesses need oversight, especially businesses that loan money to people. It's been generally acknowledged that loaning money at exorbitantly high interest rates and unreasonable terms backed by a threat of blackmail is wrong. It's called 'loan sharking' or 'predatory lending' and it's been illegal in the U.S. for a long time. That is, until the sub-prime lending crisis.

Oddly enough, when those same institutions that didn't want our government to interfere while they raped and pillaged the middle class start to have trouble and face the prospect of going belly up, guess who they want to 'bail them out'? That's right, the GOVERNMENT.

So it's time to make some decisions, people, and my guess is that instead of McCain and Bush and Obama and the rest hunkering down behind close doors while they try to hammer out a solution to keep the entire house of cards from falling down, maybe it would be a good idea if the two guys who want to be President just sit down together in front of the American people and try to answer a few questions. I know it would put my mind at ease. How about you?

So on with the fucking debate already!

By the way, I'm getting pretty tired of 'McCain/Palin' this and 'McCain/Palin' that... It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? How about just 'McPain'... I think that says it all right there, and if they get elected you can expect at least four more years of the same old shit. If we don't all die out in the cold this winter after being evicted from our foreclosed homes.

Jenna is this week's Craig's List girl and in addition to working as an escort in the Richmond, VA area, Jenna is a lifelong, card-carrying Democrat who attended this year's Nominating Convention in Denver as a Super Delegate. After proudly casting her vote for Obama, word is she made a small fortune working the parking lot with her 'Blo and Go' special at only fifty buck a 'pop'!

My Dear Lyzako,

As much as I'd like to pretend that things are different, these days I find myself completely tapped out emotionally, my senses cruelly drained and my soul suddenly a black hole of absolute horrible nothingness.

Each day I witness the absurdity of life in modern-day America that is presently magnified by the glaring spotlight of a Presidential election which promises to be even more disappointing than when I stood in line for nearly an hour to vote for John Kerry four long years ago. I remember at the time being so sure that all of America was just as sick to death of that evil idiot George W. Bush as I was and that any clear-thinking individual would make the right decision to help us all move forward towards a brighter future, that I was foolish enough to have had real hope.

You see, despite my ongoing cynicism, I would truly like to feel good about being an American, feel proud of our American ideals and believe in our claim that we are on an ongoing mission to bring freedom and peace to the entire world. Most of all (and with considerable selfish concern, I'm afraid) I'd like to be able to earn a decent living, be left alone and feel positive about the direction in which Old Mother Earth is heading.

But I cannot.

I am no fortune teller, but I don't really need to be one in order to know that our next President will be John McCain. (Ironically, yours truly actually predicted that result two years ago.) In the likely event that the stupid old geezer doesn't survive his first term, that would make the 45th President of these United States none other than Sarah 'The Barracuda' Palin.

It's a difficult pill to swallow, but I've now resigned myself to the fact. And here is the reason why: If Barack Obama were Hillary Clinton, if he were John Edwards or even if he were Al Franken, he'd stand a better chance of being our next President than he does now. But Barack Obama is black. Yes, I know, African-American is the preferred term, but all over the south and in far too much of the north, east AND west, he is simply 'black', which to the vast majority of white America makes him unqualified.

And, to at least one Republican Congressman from Georgia - Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, it also makes him “uppity”. We all know what term follows that word, and it's not "Senator from Illinois".

So I've given up hope. There simply are not enough blue states to get the job done, and here in Michigan, where Kerry and Gore both resoundingly thumped George W., Obama is currently running neck-and-neck with John McCain.

If Barack Obama were white, preaching the same message of change as he is now, if his wife were blond and blue-eyed, his children freckled and rosy-cheeked, I dare say he'd be up fifteen points right now and the Republicans wouldn't even be close enough come November to have a snowball's chance in Hell of stealing this election like they have the past two.

But he's not.

And no matter what he says, no matter how sincere he is, no matter how good his ideas are, how inspirational a leader he may very well be... at the end of the day, he is simply 'black'.

I'm more than a little sad to report that in 2008, in America - in 'The Land of the Fucking FREE' for CRYIN' OUT LOUD!, the color of Barack Obama's skin STILL prevents him from being thought of as being 'qualified' to run for President by most white Americans while at the same time branding him as being 'uppity' for thinking that he is.

Morosely Yours,
Marty Sherman

As I made my way towards home numbly striding over cracked and crumbling sidewalks, I replayed over and over in my mind what I could remember of our fight the night before, and each time it seemed to me that Jackie was just as much to blame as I was for how things had turned out.

Jackie and I had no kids - not together, not from previous relationships. Both of her parents had died in a boating accident while vacationing in Hawaii years ago, and she and her sister weren’t particularly close. Except for one or two cousins like Andy, she rarely spoke to the rest of her family, and Jackie had few close friends. All-in-all she wasn’t very well liked. I wasn't just rationalizing, I told myself; it was simply the way things were. She wouldn’t really be missed all that much.

Sure, I felt bad for her. Who wouldn’t? But I couldn’t see how confessing and going to jail was going to do either of us any good. Odds are I’d never come out alive, and if I did I’d be a broken man. So, by the two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right rationale, I decided to get rid of her body. No body, no murder. End of story.

Once inside the house, I carried Jackie into the bathroom, took off her clothes and carefully laid her in the tub with her head near the drain and her feet propped up. A quarter turn of the hot water tap produced a slow, steady stream of water. I went to the kitchen, put on a fresh set of gloves, started a pot of coffee and grabbed my chef’s knife. It was already pushing nine o’clock.

Once back in the bathroom, I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and made a slow, sure stroke across Jackie’s throat with the knife, being careful to keep the cut side away from my body in case any blood squirted out. I was surprised at how easily it sliced the flesh. All my knives had stayed much sharper since I started storing them on that magnetic strip I had installed on the back splash by the stove. Thirty bucks at Crate & Barrel sounded like a lot when I bought it, but it seemed like a pretty wise investment under the present circumstances.

Again, to my surprise, the blood didn’t squirt, but oozed towards the drain, mixing with the water. Before long I realized that hot water wasn’t such a good idea. The odor of the draining blood was intensified by the steam that began to rise from the tub after several minutes and I choked and gagged as I hovered over Jackie, struggling to turn off the hot tap and replace the stream with cold water. But once that was done, it was just a matter of waiting.

While Jackie drained, I poured a cup of coffee and headed to the garage for tools.

I found a pair of large bolt cutters, some channel locks, two or three types of hand saws and an old food dehydrator that I had bought at a garage sale just two weeks prior for two bucks. The chef’s knife and a boning knife that I rarely used would round out the implements I’d need to finish the job. By the time I got back inside, she was pretty much dry and I spent a few minutes trying to figure out the best way to cut her up before diving in.

Jackie was in good shape for her age...about five-five, one-thirty or so. And a lot leaner than two years ago, thanks to all of that liposuction I paid for prior to the divorce. It really didn’t seem like it would be all that much work once I got started.

I stripped naked to keep from getting blood on any of my clothes, straddled Jackie’s body and began cutting strips of flesh away from the bone. When joints were exposed, I sawed carefully through them and slowly began assembling two piles of remains on either side of the tub...one, a stack of naked, grisly bones and the other, a limp, wet heap of flesh.

It was sweaty work and it took some time, but by mid-afternoon I pretty much had the arms, legs and head removed and, along with the torso, stripped of flesh. I carefully cut into the stomach, trying not to puncture any of the internal organs, but a nick of the colon produced horrific odors to the point I thought I would have to stop.

After wiping the sweat from my eyes, I steeled myself and went back to work, eventually getting used to the stench. It occurred to me that I hadn’t had to be so careful anyway, since I was planning on chopping the organs into pieces that were small enough to flush down the toilet. It took another hour or so, but eventually liver, lungs, heart and kidneys had all been cut into flushable chunks.

I grabbed a pan from the kitchen, piled in some of the organ bits and dumped them into the toilet, bumping the handle down with my elbow. The water swirled crimson clouds and the level rose in the bowl. My heart nearly stopped when I realized that the chunks had clogged on the way out and an overflow was imminent. I quickly put the pan back in the tub, stripped off the plastic gloves as the water neared the top of the bowl. Just in time I managed to remove the lid from the tank and lift the mechanism to kill the flow of the water. When the tank had refilled, I reached into the bowl, scooping back through the pile of Jackie's guts and let the water drain. Then I flushed again.

From then on I carefully measured tiny portions into the bowl making sure that they would flush easier. It took longer than I had hoped, but an hour later the organ chunks had all been sent straight to the Detroit River.

I checked the time. It was half-past five and I had never been more in need of a drink in my life.


1... 2... 3... 4...

Remember when we used to celebrate Christmas between Thanksgiving and the ACTUAL HOLIDAY ITSELF?

Yesterday while I was eating my lunch I switched on Channel 7's Noon News, mostly just to see what Carolyn Clifford was wearing. Well, she was looking pretty fantastic in a powder blue pant suit, as you can see for yourself, and I got lucky enough to catch her doing a quick interview promotion with the Radio City Rockettes, who were in town to plug - ta DAAAAAHHH!!... their Christmas show at the Joe Louis Arena! Yesterday was September the frigging 11th! NINE-ELEVEN!

Shit, they haven't even really started pushing the plastic Chinese Halloween crap yet!

And once they do get going, the Halloween promos will get shoved down our throats for a good five weeks before October 31st, so that by the time it actually gets here I'll be so sick of the idea that I'll hide in the basement again with all the freaking lights off just counting the minutes until it's over!They don't even put the good monster movies on broadcast television anymore. You have to have CABLE or a SATELLITE DISH. Whatever happened to Karloff's 'Frankenstein' and Lugosi's 'Dracula'? Two of the creepiest movies of all time! Oh, and the 'Wolf Man'! Lon Chaney, Jr.! MOTHERFUCKING GREAT! Maria Ouspenskaya as the gypsy! Now THAT'S what I call ACTING!

It seems as though each year the holiday seasons grow longer and longer in an effort to get us to spend more and more money on useless garbage and gifts nobody really wants. Halloween has become the second biggest retail event next to Christmas in the United States and they expect us to start decorating and planning for it NOW. RIGHT NOW!

Christ, when I was a kid we improvised a costume on Halloween afternoon, grabbed a pillowcase and made the rounds. That's it. The next day, sick with a sugar-buzz hangover, we took our skinny asses back to school and forgot about the whole thing. We didn't even BEGIN to think about Christmas until two weeks after Thanksgiving.

Now? The Rockettes are in town right after Labor Day to make sure we all get our tickets to the freaking Christmas show!I'm not really complaining. Carolyn stepped up like a trouper and high-kicked with the girls for a couple of minutes while I finished my lunch, mouth agape, my shorts getting tighter with each turn and kick. By the time Carolyn's dancing lesson was over, my pants were around my ankles and I was spent.

Don't forget: There's just ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FIVE SHOPPING DAYS left until Christmas!

A Pet Rock is at the top of my list and if I get it, I'm gonna throw it right through the motherfucking window at Nieman Marcus!

This year's Detroit Jazz Festival was amazing. We had exceptionally good weather for Labor Day weekend and a long list of talented players, young and old, the acts themed around the idea of a 'Philly/Detroit Summit'.

Tucked away on the Waterfront Stage on a beautiful Sunday afternoon was a lineup of young trumpet stars playing a tribute to Lee Morgan, a Philadelphia native and one of the best jazz artists to ever pick up the instrument this side of Miles Davis. Dominick Farinacci, Jeremy Pelt and Brandon Lee dazzled the crowd trading fiery solos on Morgan originals causing heads to bob, hands to clap and feet to tap. I sat in the shade and drank a six-dollar Bud, marveling at how fresh and alive Lee's music still seemed after forty years of technology and progress.

For some reason Lee Morgan's story is little known. Born in Philadelphia in 1938, the young Morgan first picked up a trumpet as a teenager, and by the time he had reached the ripe old age of eighteen found himself touring with Dizzy Gillespie's big band. From there he went on to work with some of the best names in the business, his brashly inventive solo work on Coltrane's epic 1957 Blue Note LP 'Blue Train' scorching the grooves unlike anything before (and he was only nineteen at the time!).

An off-and-on member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Lee also recorded a number of LPs for Blue Note as a leader, including his best-selling 'Sidewinder' album, the title track of which was used as theme music for a Chrysler television commercial during the 1963 World Series. Unfortunately, the success of 'Sidewinder' forced a pattern onto Morgan's later sessions, including 'Cornbread', which was recorded in 1965.

Despite the fact that 'Cornbread' (along with many of Morgan's subsequent recordings) is somewhat formulaic in its approach, there's plenty of strong blowing from a stellar lineup that features not only Lee, but Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley and Herbie Hancock. I had forgotten how catchy the title tune was until I heard it played again that recent Sunday in the park overlooking the riverfront, each of the young trumpeters trying to top the others in a memorable finish to an incredible set.

Most critics agree that Morgan didn't recapture his early fire and creativity until shortly before his tragic death, his 'Live at the Lighthouse' LP from 1970 featuring some superb extended solos that could have signaled better things to come. Unfortunately, Morgan's life was cut short by a bullet while playing a gig at (ironically) Slug's in NYC, the gun in the hands of his common-law wife, who had reportedly brought it to him at his request so that he could settle an argument with his coke dealer.

In just a span of sixteen years, the former prodigy had stamped his indelible mark on the history of jazz and helped lay the framework for the Hard Bop movement, which survives to this day thanks to youngsters like Farinacci, Pelt and Lee.

My copy is a reissue from 1988 and is in stone mint condition. According to the price guides, an original mint copy might set you back upwards of thirty bucks, and reissues are trading for $15 - $20 on Ebay. I only saw one original copy up for auction and it had a beat-to-death cover and a so-so disc. They wanted ten bucks, which didn't seem like such a bad deal considering what you might shell out for the CD.

And while 'Cornbread' may not get a five-star rating from most critics, it definitely gets the A-Okay in the design department with another incredibly tight cover by the great Reid Miles featuring a photo by Francis Wolf. Plus, the whole shebang was recorded by Rudy Van Gelder. Natch.

Oh, and by the way, speaking of prodigies... Saturday afternoon's spotlight set at this year's festival was performed by the incredibly talented and beautiful songstress/bassist Esperanza Spalding. She didn't 'play' the bass so much as she made love to it, danced with it, tickled it. Crushed my foolish heart with it.

Dear Lyzako,

As you well know, Labor Day in Michigan signals the end of summertime, the festivities ranging from outdoor music festivals to baseball games to the State Fair, the aroma of charcoal filling the air nearly everywhere you go as the curtain falls on another growing season. The weekend following the holiday is just as rich in tradition locally with our annual Dally in the Alley, this year's event marking thirty-one years since its inception. Can that be right? Thirty-one years?

Indeed it is, and I did my part to support the Dally by imbibing in local brew and generously contributing 'tips' to the coffee cans marked for proceeds to benefit the North Cass Community Union.

It was a beautiful day with highs in the mid-seventies and a fresh breath of cool air after the sun dropped. We watched some DJ who's name I don't recall spin deep house grooves on the stage at the corner of Hancock and Second, the Fisher Building framed perfectly in the background while several folks in the crowd danced awkwardly to the rhythm. One older woman herky jerked in circles with her eyes closed, slow stepping and placing alternating feet into an invisible bucket while balancing on one leg and making swimming motions with her hands.

I ran into Carl, Walt and Jerry, who casually handed me a printed card calling for entries to the next Dirty Show while mugging for Walt's camera phone, the resulting wave of his hand placed perfectly in the shot as though he were Tom Cruise avoiding the paparazzi. Walt gave out with his usual quackquackquack of a laugh when he saw it, his eyes closing to slits behind his glasses as his cheeks swelled with smile.

At some point during the evening, a friend and regular attendee herself told me that she had seen a photo of yours truly on the Dally website. “What was I doing?” I asked her. “You were standing right over there, with a beer in your hand, just like you are right now.”

Yesterday morning, remembering what she had said (in actuality I had scrawled a barely-legible note on a post-it the night before to remind me), I logged onto the Dally home page and searched through the pictures myself. It took a while, but I finally located the shot she had described in the photo album from 2003 and have included it here so you can see for yourself just how damned handsome, young and slim I looked a mere five years ago.

Of course, the fact that I was surrounded by Raging Grannies may have had something to do with that.

As Always, Looking Forward to the Fall,
Marty Sherman

Okay, folks, let me sum it up for you: The Republicans think that we are all so dumb (especially you women out there) that we will accept John McCain's surprise pick for Vice President, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as a thoughtful choice that takes into consideration her many skills as a leader and her vast (two years) experience as a governor. Since Hillary didn't get the nod from Barack, they think a certain percentage of us (again, you women out there) will vote the Republican ticket just because Palin is a woman and it's about goddamned time someone without a penis made it to the White House.

I ask you... Is that a good enough reason?

This pathetic ploy to make the Republican Party look more 'progressive' than the Democrats is just that. Selecting Palin to be next-in-line to run the world's largest democracy in the somewhat likely event that John McCain dies during his first term is an example of the kind of shallow political tactic that should immediately tell all of you who are on the fence as to which way to vote in November to run like hell for the other side!

By the way, I hope I don't piss anybody off, but if you are still undecided between McCain and Obama at this point, you are either a BIGOT or an IDIOT, and you shouldn't even be ALLOWED to vote!

Imagine...

A seventy-two-year-old John McCain becomes President and develops terminal brain cancer three years into his first term. Then recently-divorced, forty-five-year-old Sarah Palin, mother of six and three months pregnant with her seventh 'gift from God' (courtesy of John Edwards this time) takes over. Does that sound alright to you?

I know, I know... I'm exaggerating. I admit it. It's what I do. They told me in AA that we alcoholics all tend to play out the 'worst case scenario' in our heads. It helps us rationalize our drinking. But believe me there won't be enough beer in the world if anything close to what I've described above takes place. And even if you're a teetotaler, you'll need a drink. Trust me.

And trust is exactly what John McCain expects us to do, only this time we're supposed to trust his judgment. You decide. Here's a short list of Sarah Palin's 'accomplishments'...

-They had to go all they way back to high school basketball to prove that she's a go-getter. Palin was nicknamed 'Sarah Barracuda' because of not only her fiery on-court play, but because of her rabid enthusiasm in leading the team prayer prior to the games. She's a 'Barracuda of Prayer' as it turns out. Whatever happened to the separation between church and state?

-The former 'Miss Congeniality' and 'Miss Wasilla' was runner-up in the 1984 'Miss Alaska' beauty pageant, where she won a scholarship that allowed her to study at the prestigious institutions of Hawaii Pacific College and North Idaho College before earning her B.S. in Communications/Journalism from the University of Idaho in 1987. Sure, her creds are a little stronger than my B.F.A. from Western Michigan via Jackson Community College, but not all that much. At least I got my scholarship by passing a test that proved I was smart.

-She began her 'career' as a sports reporter in Anchorage before becoming mayor of Wasilla, garnering a whopping 909 votes.

-A former member of the Alaskan Independence Party (whose platform calls for Alaska to secede from the rest of the U.S.), Palin supported blowhard Pat Buchanan for president in 1996.

-Palin is against: legalizing marijuana, same-sex marriages, explicit sex education in public schools and abortion.

-Palin is for: Alaska oil drilling, the right to bear arms and capital punishment.

-Palin doesn't believe that global warming is caused by man.

-Palin is also under investigation for improper behavior in her firing of the Alaska Public Safety Commissioner for refusing under her orders to fire an Alaska state trooper (who also just happened to be Palin's former brother-in-law) after he tasered his ten-year-old stepson during the course of a messy divorce from Palin's sister Molly.

-The latest news is that Palin's seventeen-year-old daughter is pregnant out of wedlock, but plans to marry the child's eighteen-year-old father. How long do you give that marriage, folks? A year? Maybe two?

The whole thing sounds like it would make a good David Lynch movie, doesn't it?

And what really ground my ass was seeing former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who doggedly pursued Bill Clinton's impeachment for purely political reasons while himself being found guilty of a number of House ethics violations) discuss Palin's relative experience on television this past weekend. That moron claimed she had more experience with the military than either Obama or Biden because she had run the National Guard in Alaska for the past two years! Gingrich also claimed she would be good because as governor of Alaska, Palin had to balance a state budget, unlike Senators Obama and Biden. Did the dumb bastard forget that George W. Bush has had a little trouble with the accounting during his eight years in office?

To end his little Q&A session, Gingrich opined with a smile that Palin's journalism background was interesting because it was the first time a former sports reporter had ever been on the ticket for the White House. There's a reason for that, Newt. Sports reporters AREN'T QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!

I don't want to sound bigoted myself, but if the 'Geezer and the Bimbo' triumph in November over Obama's promise of hope and progressive change... well, I just might move my dumb ass to Canada. I hear the beer is stronger over there.

This week's Craig's List Girl, Dannie claims no political affiliation, although she always thought former President Clinton was 'hot'. Working the Anchorage page, Dannie does top-notch GFE, MIA, DOA but no CIM or BBBJ. Check her ad for rates.

Without help from a forensic pathologist, I couldn’t really be sure how Jackie had died. Other than some faint bruises on either side of her throat she didn't have a mark on her and there was no blood anywhere. I guessed that she had either hit her head during our struggle or that I had choked her...maybe a combination of both. As I saw it, it didn’t really matter at that point. She was dead and my goose would be cooked either way.

Even though the tape demonstrated evidence that I had acted in self-defense, they'd be able to pin a manslaughter charge on me at the very least, and probably more like murder-two. I would be found guilty and I'd do some serious time. What good would that do? I kept asking myself. Would it bring Jackie back? No. And I was no killer, in spite of the fact that my ex-wife was lying dead on my sofa.

I looked at the clock again: 7:05. I needed to get moving.

I went to the kitchen and put on some disposable vinyl gloves that I use when I’m cooking, then I went back to the living room and did a quick visual survey.

Jackie's hand bag was on the floor near her body and I popped open the clasp hoping to find a rental car key. If she had come by cab, I was sunk. The key was right on top and I let out a sigh of relief.

I dumped the entire contents of her purse on the dining room table: sunglasses, a wallet with over $300 cash and a hefty stack of credit cards in it, lipsticks, eye makeup, house keys, gum, mints, a couple of ink pens, a pair of wrinkled boarding passes and her cell phone. I picked up the phone, unlocked the keypad and checked her call log. It looked like the last call she had made was to her sister in L.A. around 11:30 the night before. A quick check of the boarding passes indicated that would have been around the time of her scheduled arrival at Detroit Metro. Probably just to let Sis know that her flight arrived okay, I thought. The call log also showed no received or missed calls since she landed, and none of the rest of the dialed numbers had local area codes. More good news. Unless she had spoken to somebody in person between the airport and my place, nobody should have known she made it this far.

First, I had to get rid of the car before she was reported missing and the police got involved. After that, I’d worry about the body. I figured that if I dumped the car somewhere, it would be at least a day before the cops started nosing around and a couple more days before they actually figured anything out. Plenty of time, I thought.

I looked out the kitchen window and saw a white Mustang parked across the street in front of the house next door. The car key in her purse was from a Ford so the Mustang had to be Jackie's rental. My luck was holding. She hadn't pulled into the driveway, so the car wouldn't be immediately associated with me unless somebody saw her park it then walk up to my door. Since I lived right across from a water treatment plant and the house next door was vacant, I was pretty sure that nobody would have seen anything. It had been late. A forty-minute drive from the airport put her here well past midnight on a weeknight. I crossed my fingers and rolled the dice.

After making sure the place was locked up, I went out the side door, slid into the rental car and started it up. Nice car, that Mustang. Jackie always did have good taste in cars.

With the disposable gloves still on, I drove the car several blocks away to a particularly desolate area just off Van Dyke. It looked more like a war zone than a neighborhood, with burned out homes and empty lots filled with rubbish and piles of tires as high as your head. I parked the car in a driveway next to one of the shabbier abandoned houses on the block, pulled it as far off the street as possible and left it, keys still in the ignition. Candy to a baby.

It wouldn’t be hard to imagine a woman from out of town getting lost in this area and being car-jacked, robbed and killed. Happened all the time in Detroit, I told myself. All the time.

I took half of the money from her wallet, then dropped her purse near a rusted out 55 gallon drum around which a group of crack-heads could often be seen socializing. My hope was that somebody would find the money and credit cards, try to use them, get caught and be arrested. With any luck, they’d get a quick conviction on something even if the cops couldn’t turn up a body. Case closed and I’m home free.

I pocketed the gloves then strolled back to my house as nonchalantly as possible while my gut churned and I worried about being seen. A dog yelped in the distance. I could feel the humidity already in the morning air, sweat soaking through my shirt at the arm pits. Except for the dog and the chatter of birds, there were no other signs of life on my way back. I still hadn't seen a soul by the time the house came into view.

This thing is far from over, though, I thought. Now what in the hell am I going to do with Jackie’s body?


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