almost okay

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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