24 Hours

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Her pendant and a wrapper.
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This is a rather short story exploring a genre I don't normally work in but I thought it might be fun to play with. None of the names and characters or addresses are real. I'm going to place it in Loving Wives because, well, it involves wives and all wives are loving to somebody even if it is just to themselves.

I knew I should have changed those damn wipers when I changed the oil the last time. Now the rain was coming down in a torrent and with the rubber blade beginning to peel off the top of the passenger side wiper it was only a matter of time before it failed completely. Even with good blades, the downpour on this blacktop road into the neighborhood was taking visibility down to nothing.

The downpour couldn't conceal the red and blue lights a few hundred feet in front of me. The Sherriff's Department along with State Troopers, a fire engine and EMTs had the roadway up along the ravine blocked off and I slowed to a stop. With the vehicle parked on the side I could see more clearly now. Dan Peterson, one of the Deputies and an old schoolmate who lives in our neighborhood walked over to my rolled down window.

"Evening, Barry. It's a hell of a night to have to be out on a call like this, don't you think?" He asked in his best professional imitation.

"It is nasty for certain." I replied. "What do you have for me?"

"We've got one DOA, nobody else, no witnesses and it looks like it was a bad ride down to the bottom. Charlie ran the plates and it came back registered to Knowles Construction and the personal info identifies the driver as one Patrick Daniel Knowles. Other than that, we've got a bad accident on a rainy night with one dead driver. Ready to take a look?"

I was ready. It was what I did when I wasn't off playing golf or drinking my own craft ales. I'm a state coroner and I end up having to cover for the rural counties here in central Virginia. My name is Barry Nelson and I work out of a state office in Charlottesville. On this miserable night I was less than a mile from my own home in a residential neighborhood in Albemarle County.

Dan and I worked our way down to the bottom of the 250 foot ravine off Langhorne Road and I approached the vehicle. It was resting solidly upright so there was no danger of it slipping. Another crew was bringing down a tethered gurney to pull the body back up to the roadway.

The deceased was wearing a seatbelt but nothing would have protected him in this crash. He had been impaled from the impact and bled out in his seat. I approached the body from the passenger side as Dan tried to open the mangled driver's side door. It had been nearly torn off during the ride down the steep slope but still prevented the crew from opening it. It took a bit of work with a Hurst Jaw to open it all the way.

As they were cutting the seatbelts away I glanced down on the floorboard on the passenger side and noticed it. It was a heart shaped pendant with an opal in the center along with a gold chain necklace that would suspend it between the breasts of the woman wearing it. With the crew occupied removing the body, I slipped it into my pocket and knelt down to inspect the seat area. At first sight, nothing worth noticing appeared. As I was raising myself up I saw an oddity. It was just a small candy wrapper, nothing unusual unless you knew where it was from. The wrapper was from a salt water taffy sold all over the place, like a seller in Ogunquit, Maine by the name of Perkins Harbor Candies. I only knew that because my wife Kim and our daughter Sophie had just returned from a vacation two weeks ago.

The crew extracted the body of Patrick Knowles and brought it to the roadway. By then the wrecker crew was ready to pull the vehicle back up the ravine.

"Dan, I'm heading to the house. I'll drive to UVA in the morning to do a full examination but at this point I don't see any foul play. It appears to be force trauma from the tree limb that came through the windshield opening. I'll ascertain more when I look at him tomorrow." I told the Deputy.

The rain was still coming down pretty heavily when I pulled into my drive. It was just a five minute ride to the house from the accident site and it appeared that Knowles was heading in the opposite direction. At 1AM I wasn't ready to analyze much but my fingers toyed with the pendant in my pocket. I knew what I would find when I opened it. That and the candy wrapper began fueling a litany of thoughts, none of which were comforting.

Kim had left the nightlight on in the living room and I made my way to the kitchen where I poured a glass of orange juice and fixed a bowl of Cheerios. It's my comfort food, my retreat of sorts. As I sat there I slipped the candy wrapper onto the table in front of me while the pendant burned in my pocket.

"Bad night, Barry?" She asked me.

I hadn't even noticed her coming into the room with my uneasiness. She actually startled me and she noticed.

"Jesus Christ, it had to be something bad. You're never jumpy like that. I'm sorry, baby, for surprising you." She said as she came around the table to give me a hug.

"It was another accident, a fatality, just up the road from here actually. One deceased, bad roads, rain, you know the drill; probably driving too fast to get back to his wife." I replied.

Kim fixed us both a cup of tea. Even at the wee hours of the morning it's soothing. Kim had been at a Realtors meeting and dinner earlier that evening while I was covering for a colleague on call at UVA who had to tend to a family emergency. I was never big on her business meetings and dinners to begin with. Maybe I should have been more attentive.

She picked up the candy wrapper off the table looked at it quizzically and put it in the trash as she rinsed our dishes. I almost stopped her but I let it pass; I wasn't sure how to approach the matter.

The next morning I completed my examination of Patrick Knowles and closed out the file. As I was breaking to go to lunch, a petite attractive woman approached me in the hallway.

"Are you Dr. Nelson?" She asked.

"Yes, Ma'am, I am. What can I do for you?" I replied.

"My name is Joanna Knowles. I'm the wife of the man –"she replied before I thoughtlessly interrupted.

"Yes, I'm so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Knowles. Can we talk over here?" I asked her.

"If you don't mind I would prefer it if you would join me for lunch if you haven't already made plans, of course?" She asked.

I was hesitant at first but agreed so we walked together to a small café just down the street from the main entrance to the hospital.

"Mr. Nelson, first off thank you for meeting with me on such short notice and especially under such conditions. I don't know how you could do the job you do." She smiled a bit at that last part.

"Mrs. Knowles, it's no problem I assure you and you can call me Barry. It's what everybody else does." I replied

"And likewise Barry, please call me Joanna. Now, the reason for asking you to meet with me here is rather complex and difficult for me to explain so I shall be blunt. With regard to Mr. Knowles who was just lying on your slab, he can stay there until he rots for all I care." She directed to me.

I looked at her askance wondering if I had made a mistake in agreeing to lunch. At that point our sandwiches arrived and we started in.

"Allow me to explain, Barry. I know that sounded quite crude but I wanted to get it out of the way. You see I had divorce papers drawn up to serve Patrick this morning but the accident got in the way of it I guess." She actually giggled softly at her remarks.

"Now, I know I'll have to claim the body and all that but to save us the time you can have his remains delivered here." She slid a card across the table at me. It was for crematoria services.

"Joanna, pardon me for asking but why are you sharing this with me. I'm just the coroner who releases the body to whoever makes the claim." I asked her.

"Barry, it brings me to the other reason I wanted to have lunch with you today. I had planned this as well because it involves you. I wasn't going to when I woke up this morning but I knew this was really just one of several and had the bastard not been killed coming home from one of his trysts you would have found out in any regard."

I just nodded at her to continue as I munched on the sandwich. I had a pretty good idea where she was heading.

"Well, I don't know if you know anything or not but my husband was having an on-going affair with your wife." She paused for effect and when I gave none she continued.

"Unfortunately she wasn't the only one he was playing with. I discovered it three months ago when I found a DVD that had been inadvertently left in Patrick's den while I was away on business. The stars of the show were your wife and Patrick. I was pretty pissed off about it for a while but I kept it under wraps and hired an investigator to dig up as much as he could about the whole sordid mess."

She pushed a package over to me and I picked it up.

"It's a DVD of the evidence I collected. There are videos and stills over the past 3 months. From some of the discussions it appears the festivities have been occurring much longer than that. I think your wife has been involved for at least the past six months."

The oddest thing about all of this was that I didn't suffer from any emotional trauma. I was flat emotionally.

"Joanna, just so you know, I discovered something was wrong last evening when I responded to the call out."

I set the pendant on the table between us.

"I found that on the floorboards of your husband's car last night and recognized it as soon as I saw it. I bought it for her on our anniversary a couple years ago."

Joanna picked it up and examined it, toying with it and the necklace.

"Nice picture." She said.

Inside was a picture of Kim and me taken on the beach at Kiawah, SC during that anniversary trip.

"Yes, it is but it's a troubling memory now, Joanna. So, where do we go from here or I should ask where do you go from here?"

"Well, Barry, for me, I burn the bastard's corpse and tear up the filings." She grinned almost devilishly.

"I had thought of comforting the aggrieved husband involved but it seemed a bit tacky. No, that would just make me as cheap although there's nothing wrong with cheap once in a while." She said, again with that devilish smile.

"I guess I'm not one of those what's good for the goose is, well, you know, so I probably wouldn't be much fun, Joanna. To tell you the truth I've been in a bit of shock about the whole thing. I mean there hasn't been 12 hours from the discovery to now and based on what you've told me already, I've been a clueless fucktard for a long time." I replied.

"Barry, I was the same right up until three months ago. If I hadn't found that DVD then, I would probably be going about my life just like I was. Oh one more thing. I had myself tested for STDs a month ago and I was clean but I haven't had any relationship with my dearly departed since I discovered the sordid mess. Not everything was safe sex from what I saw. You might want to take that precaution."

We finished up our lunch and parted company. There was no remorse, sadness or grief at all with Mrs. Knowles. Hell she could have had him killed for all I know. As for me, I walked around for a while trying to sort it all out in my head. I had been completely clueless. Either that or Kim was the best god damn actress in the state of Virginia. We never lacked a minute for rambunctious sex and I know I'm no slouch in the bedroom. I'm bigger than most men and I've never failed to rock her world when I set out to.

I was still on call so I grabbed my keys and headed for the car. I glanced at the DVD on the passenger seat and turned toward the house. Kim would be showing property all day and I didn't expect her back until this evening. Sophie was visiting Kim's parents in New Mexico for the next couple of weeks so I would have the house to myself.

There was a single DVD in the package. I started to open the DVD to insert it into the player but my fingers were trembling and my judgement stopped me from proceeding.

‘Did I really want to sit here and be exposed to what I already knew would be on these disc?' I asked myself repeatedly. I didn't know. After sitting there a few minutes longer I grabbed the disc and after storing it in my office safe I picked up my keys and went for a drive.

I started heading toward Skyline Drive thinking that would be a good place to try to gather my thoughts on all that I had discovered in the last several hours. I didn't make it.

"Barry, we need you out in Crozet. I've got a shooting victim that the responders are telling us was accidental but you know the drill." The dispatcher told me.

I knew it all right. There goes the rest of the day and my problems get buried again for a while. When I arrived at the address given to me, the EMTs and Sherriff's Department was on scene. It was just as the responders said. A man was cleaning his rifles and didn't properly clear the chamber; not a fun call at all. His widow was terribly distraught and unable to make any decisions so we had one of the local mortuary services come over to take the body. The family would have to work out these things later.

My old friend and deputy, Dan Peterson, was on the scene as well.

"Pretty fucked up thing, eh, Barry?"

I just nodded not knowing what to say.

"Oh, about that accident up your way last night, come to find out that it looks like there might have been foul play after all." He told me.

That perked my interest up immediately. Foul play opens a whole other book of rules.

"What makes you say that, Dan?" I asked in return.

"Well, the Captain probably has already sent the order to your office by now so the body was put on hold for further review. It seems there were push marks on the rear driver side fender and bumper; markings that couldn't have happened from the descent into the ravine. The State Crash boys have been working the site all morning and afternoon." Dan told me.

"Jesus, that was a lucky find." I replied to him.

"Yeah, not really. Somebody called it in; said the victim had been run off the road so the Captain called it in to the State."

My mind was running a mile a minute at this point. All I could think of was Joanna Knowles. I wasn't ready to have that discussion with Dan or anybody else. This was a twist that could turn all our lives upside down.

Dan and I parted company and I headed back to the office to reopen the Patrick Knowles file. It was a serious quandary for me as I was now an interested party in what could turn out to be a vehicular homicide case. First course of action was to isolate myself from the direct second examination. I called in a favor and had another staff member at UVA who was certified to do the exam. With that out of the way I had our secretary put the preliminary coroner's report together and I then excused myself and made a call.

"Kim, listen, I'm going to be tied up with an open investigation of the accident that was up the road from our place last evening. It seems that there is suspicion around the circumstances of how the vehicle ended up in the ravine." I said to my wife.

"Do they know who it was that was killed? I haven't heard anything on the radio or in the newspaper about it this morning." She asked me.

"At this point there was one victim and his name was Patrick Knowles. He lived over in Scottsville according to the registration." I replied.

There was a long pause on the other end before she answered.

"Oh ... I don't think I've ever heard of him." She replied in a more subdued voice.

I didn't try to read anything more into it than what I already suspected. She was his whore and just discovered he was dead. What else could she say?

"Well, we'll know more once the State finishes up their on-scene investigation. In the meantime, I will finish up here this afternoon and evening and see you tonight." I told her and then we ended the call with the usual little love you and all that.

I had followed all protocol for official prejudicial conflict except for one thing; I had not called my superior in Richmond yet. Before I could do that, I needed to talk with my attorney. I laid out everything I knew including my conversation with Mrs. Knowles that morning along with my suspicions of Kim's adultery and more. After hearing that I had not played the DVDs his instruction was to leave it untouched in my safe and he would retrieve it himself personally. I called my manager in Richmond right afterwards. He had me recused from the case and my lawyer then arranged for a meeting with the State Police investigators. Before the meeting, my lawyer and I returned to the house for the files.

Later that evening, I sat across the table from Kim sipping a glass of wine. She is a beautiful woman, 5'2", amply proportioned, dark flowing hair with deep brown eyes. Her appearance conceals her 40 years of age very well. I've loved this woman for 16 years now and it has been a difficult 24 hours.

"Did they determine whether or not that Mr. Knowles fellow was murdered up the road." She asked me.

"They concluded that there was indeed foul play and identified the person responsible." I replied.

"Really? Who was it?" She asked nervously on the edge of her seat.

"His lover." I said looking straight into her eyes.

--------------

Earlier that afternoon, my attorney accompanied me to an interrogation and discussion with the two State Police investigators on the case. We went through a timeline of the previous evening and everything that had happened during the day. I explained my conversation with Mrs. Knowles and the evidence package she provided me, which my attorney placed on the table after explaining I had not viewed the DVDs and that my attorney was unable to open it when actually inserted in his player due to password encryption.

Both investigators looked at each other and asked me to continue after taking the DVD and handing it to another lady who had joined the room. She then proceeded to pull the files up and ran several routines to open the contents.

I explained my suspicions from the night before with finding the pendant in the deceased man's car and its significance.

"Mr. Nelson, did the person you met with this morning actually identify herself as Mrs. Patrick Knowles?" One of the investigators asked.

"Yes, sir, she did." I replied. They looked at each other again.

"Mrs. Joanna Riley Knowles has been deceased for the past six years." The other one said.

"I've got it." exclaimed the lady working on the files. She plugged a cable into her laptop and the screen contents appeared on a monitor on a side wall.

"This will be a first view for all parties." She spoke into a microphone. "I've filed documentation and ghost files on server 24 Directory 8."

The video opened to a dashcam view of Patrick Knowles' vehicle being hit or nudged from behind on Langhorne Road and crashing through the guardrail into the ravine. The scene broke away to the camera capturing the smoking wreckage 250 feet below.

From that point, the video shifted to sexual content. We watched as a man we assumed was Patrick Knowles clenching his tightening buttocks as he fucked into a dark haired woman beneath him. The two of them rutted like that for 3 or 4 minutes until he emptied himself into his lover. The scene shifted to another encounter with a different timestamp with much the same thing. In all there were 8 separate scenes, all in the same home; mostly simple fornication but a couple were rather sumptuous blowjobs.

It was awkward with the lady officer in the room but she was purely professional. The next scene sent a cold chill down my spine. It showed ‘Joanna' approaching my wife at her Realtors meeting the previous evening and introducing herself as she engaged in small talk. The camera had to be a lapel sized lens or something that was clipped to her blouse or jacket. Kim was wearing her usual dinner attire and one thing jumped out; the pendant was there while they were talking. The camera panned the room and a few minutes later we heard the woman whisper under her breath ‘I'm going to cut your fucking heart out you bitch!' as the camera centered on Kim. The pendant was now gone.

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