you kill your wife?” she asked him abruptly. It was the first time she really thought about it and she was curious. In the bizarre frame of mind she was in, it seemed more relevant than it had been when she was her other self.
“No, Pansy, I did not kill my wife,” he said wearily.
She was becoming painfully aware of her finger on the trigger of the gun, and revulsion was quickly replacing her earlier rush of adrenaline. She realized suddenly that she could not kill Jack after all. In fact, her parallel mind had unexpectedly disappeared and now she was all alone with the horror of her situation. Jack seemed to comprehend some of this from her expression and he sagged back down in his chair in relief, although the gun was still pointed at him.
“Christ, Pansy,” he said weakly. “I would never have said those things if I’d known they’d hurt you so much.” She was staggered by the genuine compassion in his tone. She would have fully expected him to be angry, or perhaps even try to hurt her. Her earlier anger had by now dissolved into nothingness, as did all her previous angers. And yet they still lingered dormant inside her, unrecognized and unavenged. Pansy was immobilized with despair and uncertainty. She looked into Jack’s troubled eyes and she felt a jolt from deep within her that caused her entire body to stiffen, including her finger that had remained on the trigger. The gun suddenly went off with a resounding thunk. Without even aiming, Pansy had shot Jack directly in the chest.
For the third time in two days, Pansy cried bitter tears of anguish and remorse, lamenting what she had done and issuing promises into the stifling air around her. One moment she was bemoaning her misfortunes and the next raging against the forces that seemed forever to be working against her. Eventually, as always, her thoughts came back around to Tom; fat, loathsome, useless Tom. Always her grief led her back to him.
But even as she stirred up her ongoing resentment of Tom, it suddenly occurred to her that something was different this time. She came alert with a newborn hope. Was it possible that she had fixed Tom once and for all? Her mind put all the events of the night together neatly and concisely as she quietly drove his car into their garage. It was Tom’s car that had driven to—and quite possibly had been seen at or in the vicinity of—Jack’s house. It was Tom’s shoes that made footprints all around Jack’s house, Tom’s gun that fired the shot into Jack’s heart, and bullets marked from Tom’s gun that ultimately killed Jack. It wouldn’t even be a lie when she told the police that she didn’t know for certain whether or not Tom had remained home that night, having spent the night in the den where she had supposedly gone to read. Even if Jack had taped videos of their affair, which she doubted now, they would only add to Tom’s motive and further explain his hatred for John Foreman. He had been obsessed with the man, and it would not be hard to prove that he had killed him.
Pansy was all at once exultant again. How perfectly just that Tom should feel the burn of being accused for something he didn’t do. How many people had felt that same burn because of him, including possibly even Jack?
Pansy deliberately fell into a routine of inertness in the weeks that followed. She spoke almost never, steering clear of everyone and everything. The uncertainty of what might happen kept her in a constant state of acute watchfulness, and her worst fear was that Tom would not be linked to the murder after all. She knew firsthand how bungling and corrupt the men of her husband’s precinct were, and it seemed more and more probable that the many subtle hints she had dropped would all be for nothing. Often she remonstrated with herself for not leaving some small possession of Tom’s near Jack’s body, but she had not wanted to make it too obvious, bringing suspicion in from the other end.
Just when Pansy had all but given up hope, John Foreman’s murder investigation at last took a turn in Tom’s direction. She could hardly believe her good fortune when at last they took him away. She remained quiet and thoughtful throughout the investigation and ensuing trial, appearing to all who observed her as the grief-stricken wife. She testified reluctantly of her inability to fully verify Tom’s whereabouts on the night of the murder, and her reluctance was at least partially genuine, for she was absolutely terrified that she might slip and say too much. The prosecutor had to drag every last word from her quivering lips, and this too made it all the worse for Tom.
As for Jack’s threat about a video, Pansy need never have worried about that. There were no videotapes, and no one ever came forward to link Pansy with Jack on the two occasions when they had met in hotel rooms. She had even worried that a stray hair of hers may have appeared on Jack’s body or clothing, but if such a thing had existed, the police never bothered with it. The police, who were Tom’s peers and cut from the same cloth as him, had set their minds at the first hint of culpability upon his guilt, and once their minds were set they, like Tom, were loath to change course. It was, for them, a staggering tragedy, and they were equal parts sad and superior, shaking their heads at the difficulty of being a police officer and the statistical likelihood of it driving a person over the edge.
Tom was ultimately obliged to spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement, evading aggrieved convicts as he pondered what had happened.
“I would visit, Tom,” Pansy told him one day over the phone. “But let’s face it. There hasn’t been anything between us for a long time now. To visit you would be to prolong the inevitable. You should just get on with your new life there.”
But Jack was not so easy for Pansy to forget. She thought of him often, especially the last few moments they had shared together, when his thoughts had been for her. She came to think of their short-lived relationship as a great love affair, all the more poignant for having ended so tragically at the pinnacle of their affection.
Eventually Pansy was moved to go out and date, out of sheer dread of living alone more than anything else. One of Tom’s associates at the precinct had expressed an interest, catching her off guard. She was charmed by his bemused demeanor and awkward advances. She sympathized with the challenges he faced, working so many unrewarding hours at the precinct and having no one to properly care for him. Surely with her help, he would have more success with his cases and perhaps even lose some of the excess weight he had put on from constantly eating in fast-food restaurants. Here, at last, was her second chance in life, and Pansy decided to seize it.
Perhaps things would be different this time.
* * * * *
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