Matt stepped toward the table. He fake-tripped and tossed the lasagna into the air. Fran shouted behind him. He hit the ground and rolled away from the flying glass as the lasagna pan erupted on impact with the hard kitchen floor. Meat and pasta were pierced with chunks of Pyrex. Food ruined. Mission accomplished.
Matt got to his feet and feigned regret. He hugged Fran and thanked her for the effort involved in making such a dish, even though it repulsed him greatly to touch her knowing what her plan had been.
“We’ll order Chinese or pizza. I’m so sorry.”
An hour and a half later, the pizza finished, Fran said she was heading out for her evening run.
Matt only nodded. He didn’t want to talk to her anymore. His anger was taking him over again as he realized how close he’d come to being killed.
She got changed, put on her running shoes, and slammed the door upon her exit.
He got up and ran to his den. To steady his hands and calm his nerves, he poured a scotch and sat in his reading chair. The picture was as it should be. Everything remained intact. Nothing moved.
He waited. Nothing changed.
He drank more scotch and stared. Still nothing.
Matt finished his beverage and got out of the chair. With each step forward he waited to see the picture animate, but it didn’t.
Did I imagine everything last night?
He stood one foot from the landscape and waited, with both hands placed open palmed on the top of the metal filing cabinet.
The river started first. Then the deer got spooked and bolted off. Charlie entered the painting from the left, Fran from the right.
“You didn’t do it, did you?” Charlie asked.
Even from his vantage point in his den, Matt could see the look of failure on Fran’s face.
“It wasn’t my fault. He was carrying the lasagna to the table and tripped. The Pyrex shattered on the floor, ruining the dish.” She looked down at her shoes. “I’m sorry. I tried.”
“You’re lying.”
Her head snapped up. “What did you say?”
“You’re lying. This was your seventh attempt. If you really wanted to kill your husband to be with me, you’d have done it by now. I’ve waited too long for this charade to play out. Goodbye.”
Charlie turned away from her and started to walk off the landscape.
Fran ran after him. She grabbed the shoulder of his jacket and spun him around.
“How dare you!” Fran screamed.
To Matt it sounded like she was in the same room.
“You said you loved me,” Fran continued. “I was willing to kill my husband for you and you have the audacity to just walk away. How dare you?”
“You weren’t killing your husband for me. Let’s be clear on that.”
“What are you talking about?” Fran asked, her voice rising to a shriek, one Matt had heard numerous times. “What was I doing it for then?” She stepped back and crossed her arms.
“You were doing it because you are a stupid bitch. I have manipulated you from day one.”
Fran shook her head and frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“With your husband dead, not only do I get to fuck his wife for a while, I also get his half of our little business venture as agreed upon when we started up, in the advent of a death. After a month I would explain to the authorities what you had done and that you’d just told me all about it out of guilt. You’d be arrested and I wouldn’t have to deal with you anymore. See what I mean, you’re a stupid bitch.”
Matt didn’t see it coming. Neither did Charlie.
Fran dove forward, both hands outstretched, lunging for Charlie’s throat. Before he could respond, she was on him, both of them falling to the ground.
Matt shouted at the painting and slammed his hands on the top of the cabinet.
Charlie and Fran rolled off the path in their wild wrestling match.
Matt shouted again for them to stop. He had no idea where they were on the path as he had only walked it random times through the years. He never jogged it routinely like Fran did.
He could hear grunts and groans as his ex-partner and his soon to be ex-wife fought in the bushes.
Then Charlie rose up on his knees. Matt gasped. Charlie lifted his right arm and drove a fist down below the line of sight.
“Noooo!” Matt screamed as he banged his fists on the top of the cabinet. He turned and grabbed the phone, dialing emergency services without looking.
“Do you require Ambulance, Police of Fire?” he heard through the phone.
“Police. My wife is being attacked in the bush behind my house.”
The phone clicked. A man said, “Police, how can we help?”
Matt watched as Charlie rose his arm again and again, dropping his fist into Fran’s face. The only difference was his fist was bright red now.
“My wife is being attacked on the path behind my house. Please help. Come fast. He’s killing her!”
Matt tossed the phone and ran for the front door without looking back at the painting.
He hit the sidewalk running, the pizza tossing in his stomach, trying to slow him down.
The access to the trail was two blocks away. Matt ran as best he could, knowing it was too late to avoid any serious damage. He was hoping to at least stop Charlie before he killed Fran.
A police siren wailed in the distance.
Good, they saw my address on their computer. Everything would be over soon.
He hit the opening to the path as a police cruiser rounded the corner twelve houses back.
Running with a brutal cramp in his side, Matt tried to maintain his speed, but was slowed from lack of routine exercise.
“Hey, wait!”
He heard the cops yelling behind him, but all he could think about was Fran.
Sure she tried to kill him, but he couldn’t sit by and watch her be murdered. Divorce was one thing, murder something completely different.
After seventy-five yards, he entered an area that was familiar to him from the picture in his office. He heard the police officers not far behind.
He recognized the creek. The tree to the right. The spot where Fran had stood was five feet away. He stepped up, afraid to see what had become of Fran. There was no sign of Charlie.
He saw the blood first.
Blood had pooled in little puddles over two feet from her broken face. Her nose sat askew on the top of a face that looked like a farmer’s plow had gone over it. Matt couldn’t tell where the cuts started and stopped. Blood still oozed from most of her head, even though her eyes were open and sightless.
He dropped to his knees beside her, overcome by sadness.
He reached out and tried to lower her eyelids, but they were missing.
What the fuck did Charlie do to her?
The cops caught up to him. Matt leaned down and wept.
What had Charlie’s fists been made of, bricks?
Then he saw the culprit. Two feet from Fran’s ruined face sat a jagged stone the size of an average running shoe. It had edges that were covered in blood, and part of Fran’s hair was matted to the surface.
Matt grabbed the stone and turned to the cops.
“His name is Charlie. He did this to my wife and he used this rock. I saw the whole thing.”
Matt set the stone down, as it seemed to be unsettling the cops. One was calling for backup and the other had stepped back a little, his hand resting on the butt of his gun.
“How do you know it was Charlie?” the one cop asked.
“Because I saw the whole thing.”
“Could you explain how you saw the whole thing?”
Even in his heightened state of anger and pain at the loss of his wife, he realized no one would understand what had happened. No one would believe him.
“What I mean is, I heard the scuffle and knew Charlie’s voice from over there. I just couldn’t get here fast enough. Charlie is my ex-business partner so I know his voice. He has been fucking my wife and when she spurned him, he did this,” Matt said, gesturing to his wife’s body laying in the foliage.
He heard more footsteps. Backup had arrived.
The cop who had asked him the questions turned to the new officers. “We wanted to wait for you. This guy is big. He claimed to see someone else doing this, but when we pulled up he was running into the bushes with us on his ass. He knew exactly where she would be. He said it was an old business partner. Something about the guy fucking his wife.” The cop stopped talking and pointed at Matt. “And look at his hands. They’re all red like he’s been slapping and punching something.”
Yeah, a metal filing cabinet, you asshole.
Two more officers walked up, making it six in total.
“This is my wife. I did nothing wrong. I did not touch her,” Matt said.
“Then tell us what we’re looking at,” one of the new cops said. “Help us understand.”
“It all started when I overheard Charlie and my wife planning to kill me…”
Two of the officers turned to the others and smiled, like they’d all heard this story a thousand times.
“Look asshole, I didn’t do anything. Stop making out like I’m guilty.”
“Mister, stand up and place your hands on your head. Do it now.”
“I will not. I did nothing wrong.”
“That’s not for us to decide. Stand up and place your hands on your head. I will not tell you again.”
Matt let go of Fran, set her broken head down in the grass, and started to stand. Five of the six officers held their hands over their holsters. The one talking to Matt had handcuffs in his hands.
Matt looked down at his wife. “Is this what you wanted? Was this how I get killed?”
“What’s that?” the cop asked.
Matt looked back at him. “You’re in the picture now.”
“I’m not following.”
“If I was back in my den, I would be able to watch you. You’re in the picture now.”
“Hands on your head. Now. Last chance to do it peacefully.”
“There’s nothing you can do to me that would hurt me more than what has already happened. I’m innocent here. Fuck you if you think otherwise.”
Matt stepped out from the foliage and made it three steps. He was tased before he even knew what hit him.
With no muscle control, Matt fell and rolled away, down the small embankment, and into the creek. He slipped below the surface of the water, and moved from the edge with the current.
The officers ran to the edge and looked over. Matt was already four feet from them and moving away fast.
Nothing in his body seemed to work. He could only breathe.
He took in a large breath. His mouth filled with water, his lungs enlarging with it.
He detected a splash nearby. But it didn’t matter anymore. Nothing else mattered.
Maybe he didn’t see the picture in his office move. Perhaps he knew about Charlie all along. But could he kill his own wife? Did he kill her?
Or was it the painting that showed him the truth?
He drifted down the creek and in and out of consciousness.
His chest hurt. His heart hurt. His head ached.
And then nothing.
A Greater Justice
The sun was dropping behind a curtain of blackened clouds. The evening air felt cool and moist against Jerry’s forehead.
There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do, or try, at least once. But meeting with a psychic was something he had never considered. His wife had pushed for it. Ever since Joshua died last year, she’d been worried that the same fate would be cast upon them, and she wanted to be sure they were safe.
Like anyone can predict the future,
Jerry thought to himself as Ashley pulled on the door and entered the psychic’s home.
“Good evening.”
Jerry turned around and almost laughed. The psychic stood behind him wearing an ugly green sweater, three different chains around her neck, and stupid earrings that did some kind of multiple loop thing. She was definitely a smoker. No one could have that many wrinkles and not have benefitted from the help of a healthy carcinogen.
He stepped back and held his composure.
Ashley extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I don’t touch people. Only when doing readings.”
Ashley lowered her hand. Jerry could tell she was a little embarrassed.
The psychic didn’t move. She didn’t offer to take their jackets, or show them to a table. All she did was stare at Jerry. He looked back at her, his eyes unwavering. Many men had stared him down in darker corners than this. He’d almost killed a man in prison six months ago because of this exact kind of disrespect. He wasn’t about to wink, let alone look away.