No Welcome Home - Weeping is Over

I could see her lips do something that might have been a smirk, but what do I know? The band started playing with a nice two-step song. Sandra took my arm and led me to the dance floor—my guess just to see if I could dance (bless those dance lessons!). The song was one of Tim McGraw's: "I Need You."

I wanna wrap the moon around us, lay beside you skin on skin
Make love til the sun comes up, til the sun goes down again
Cause I need you

It started as just a dance, but something was happening to me as we danced around the floor. Some yen, some deep seated longing for something that had never been in my life before. It scared me a little because it was so different for me; I was the standoffish analytical one. I was the one who always kept my distance because danger was always a constant in my life. I was afraid of this feeling of need.

That night, late, I downed a six-pack of Coors just looking at the sky, the stars and moon; thinking of nothing, my mind empty as I looked at the dim outline of the mountains to the west.

The next morning, I felt energized, eager to face the day. I went for an early morning walk and then wrote until lunchtime. I called Ginger. Somehow, I hadn't got Sandra's phone number last night.

I called with no small amount of trepidation, but she seemed happy to hear from me; we talked for some time. In the end, we had a dinner and dance date for the coming Saturday night. It was at one of the larger hotels with a Tommy Dorsey type swing band.

Three months later we were married! It was so fast I felt like I was in a dream the entire time. I had the wife I'd always envisioned: sweet, lovely, personable; let's not forget sexy. But most of all, I had the loyal companion that would be with me until the end of days. I was as happy as I had ever been.

After two years, we had a custom log cabin built in Evergreen, a lively development in the foothills above Denver, on the way to the mountains. It was a lovely home and I could see myself living with my love forever in this winter wonderland. We sold the house out by the Tech Center for a nice profit... it paid most of the cost for the new home.

The only cloud on the horizon was the frequent trips she was taking for training seminars or conventions. She said that the trips were important for her work, but they seemed to be every six to eight weeks.

PART THREE -- Just what went wrong?

Oh yeah! I bet you are wondering how I came to die for the second time! It seems a lifetime ago; some of the details I've forgotten. Some of the rage has left. I no longer think much about Sandra. She may or may not still be in prison. I don't really give a shit!

It wouldn't bother me if she were released. It wouldn't bother me if she rotted in jail. I'd never cared enough to find out. I'm happy as long as the bitch stays out of my life.

What I remember most is the white-hot anger that overwhelmed me when I saw the email messages. I wasn't looking for them. I hadn't been concerned about anything. I had a happy marriage to a wonderful wife.

----------∞∞∞----------

Sandra was on yet another of her trips, this time to Phoenix, when it all fell apart. Somehow, a virus had infected our PC, and I had to reinstall some of the applications. The biggest problem seemed to be the email system. Before I uninstalled it, I copied the email archive file to a separate hard disk, and reinstalled the email software. In doing this, I, of course, wiped out any existing passwords, so, it started up with a blank, default password. I made a mental note that when Sandra returned, I'd let her know what I'd done to recover from the virus.

I reinstalled the software and reloaded the email archive. I decided I'd better check and make sure everything was working; everything else seemed to be okay now, so it seemed this would fix the problem. My email came up okay, great so far. I pondered for a minute and decided I'd better check Sandra's email, also. She got real bitchy when the computer didn't work right.

The way the blank password worked is that you had to change it before you could use the software for the first time. I figured I'd just reinstall the software again after I checked everything out. Otherwise, she would bitch at me for reading her email. I entered a password and opened her email, and I started dying! The headers were certainly catchy. The dialog between this jerk Andrew and Sandra was hot! The pictures were even hotter. Hottest of all was my anger, a burning, vicious, killing anger! I couldn't breathe for a minute. I ran into the bathroom, splashed cold water on my face , my chest heaving, trying to breathe. Suddenly, I ran into the toilet area and really heaved! I felt like my guts were coming out.

Going into my office I poured a small glass of scotch, and gulped it down. Then, I poured a bigger one. Then another one. Shit!

Finally calming down. I stopped drinking, and started breathing. I began thinking. My anger had coalesced into a tight hard ball where my heart used to be. It felt like a cancer, eating away, destroying me from the inside. It took years and a beautiful four-year-old girl before this cancer in my heart started to dissolve!

Christ, I hated her! Christ, I hated him! I focused on my hate. "Let that keep me going," I resolved. I was smart. I had a good imagination.

My dad had always told me that when bad times come, "And they will," he said. "Don't give in to your weaknesses and stand on your strengths."

I never asked him what had happened to him that he felt he had to tell me this over and over, but by God I listened and I heard him, and I remembered.

My strength was my writing. I wrote novels. Sometimes I wrote crime novels and/or detective and/or murder, but always a mystery. I was successful. I was well known. I researched. I talked to cops. I talked to cons. I talked to judges, reporters and victims. I knew a lot of people.

I had met a con at the Colorado Territorial Prison in Canon City a few years previously. I did him some favors (cigarettes, helping his son out of a jam, etc.) for taking the time to talk with me, helping me to solve a plot problem. A few years later, he was released. I helped him get a job. I did him a few more favors. I occasionally paid him for research. He walked the walk; he talked the talk! His insights added veracity to my stories, and money to my bank account.

Now, in my time of need, real need, I remembered Glenn. I drove down to see him, picked up a couple of cases of cold brews on the way and said, "Glenn, I need to die. I need to have my wife and her asshole buddy (really, I saw the photos!), murder me. They need to be caught, and they need to go to jail."

I told him the whole story and asked him for help. We treated it like a new idea for a novel (and someday I might write it, under a different nom de plume, of course). I laid out a storyboard. We covered all the details. Anyone watching us would think we were plotting to rob Fort Knox.

This is what we did. We planned everything to happen when she went on her next seminar. I went back to Evergreen. I became the most loving husband. Sandra was puzzled at times, but I just "loved" her and kept on with my writing. Every time we made love, I had a fantasy of choking her as she came. Gradually the sex got a little rougher; instead of complaining she seemed to enjoy it more. She was happier every day and I died a little more each day. She became a piece of meat to me. I used her, but then she had been using me for years.

I told her about the computer problem, of how I reinstalled the software and it would have a blank password. I made sure she knew she would have to enter a password before she could check her email, the lying, cheating bitch!

Meanwhile, I got smart. She was changing her password regularly, but all I had to do was copy her email archive file to my laptop and fire it up. I tracked her email every day.

Andrew sent her a message asking if I ever noticed anything. She replied, "No, if anything he is even more loving."

"God, what a fucking wimp he is!" Andrew sent back.

"Yeah but he's my wimp. I do love him, but I also love to fuck you. He is so caught up in his writing that the only way he would notice anything is if he wrote it himself."

"Wimp my ass," I thought. One of my favorite clichés was, "He who laughs last, laughs last."

Several months later, it was time for her next seminar, this time in San Antonio. She was going for the usual five days. She was also going to hell for eternity, but she didn't know that yet. I had a plan.

Yeah, I know. You think I'm a vindictive SOB. Damn straight; you would be correct.

Was I weeping?

"You think I'll weep

No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,

Or ere I'll weep."

Hell no, I wasn't weeping!

PART FOUR -- And this is how it all ended.

Dave Lawrence had to die.

All the planning Glenn and I had done broke into three main parts that had to merge together perfectly:

-- How to kill me

-- How to make me born again

-- How to send the sinners to hell

Everything was in place; now it was time to act.

The first problem was money. I had to leave with total transparency. I couldn't take anything with me except the clothes on my back. I had a commission check I'd been holding onto. As soon as Sandra left, I went to the bank and deposited the check, a little over twenty grand. I kept out about $2,500, typical for ongoing expense funds. This would get me started; most of that money could disappear with me.

It wasn't nearly what I needed, though.

Sandra had some heirloom jewelry she had inherited from her grandmother. I don't know the current value, but when we had it assessed for insurance several years ago, they came out at spot on a quarter mil. They were too valuable to keep in the house (and too old fashioned for darling Sandra to wear), so we kept them in a large safety deposit box at the bank. They were kept in a locked box within the safety deposit box. Both keys were kept in our safe at home.

While she was still on her previous, infamous trip, I went to the bank and took the jewelry out, leaving a large envelope filled with last year's tax papers in the front of the box. I gave the jewelry to Glenn to fence. He got just under a hundred grand for it from someone in his past life. I gave him ten thousand for his help and hoped the rest would last me long enough for the expenses involved with my death and enough to live on for a year or so.

I kept out a beautiful emerald brooch worth around five thousand. I would use this later. We also had twenty thousand in emergency cash in two wrapped bundles. I kept one bundle and put the other to use with the brooch.

A couple of days after Sandra got back from Phoenix; I caught her just as she was leaving for work. "Babe, could you do me a favor? I have an envelope with tax papers in the bank vault that I need. Could you run over during lunch and pick it up for me?"

"Sure, honey, could you grab the key for me?"

"It's right here. I got it out of the safe while you were taking your shower. Thanks a million, I'll give you a back rub tonight to thank you."

"Oh! I can hardly wait; will you wait hardly?" she laughed, (her and her sense of humor).

Without the key to the locked jewelry box, she wouldn't be able to look at her jewelry, not that she would have any reason to view it. The last time that this had been opened was when we had all the pieces appraised. At the time, I had a typed a list of the contents of both the safety deposit box and the enclosed jewelry box. A copy of this went to my lawyer.

Now she was on record as the last one to use the safety deposit box. The tax papers I left in my file cabinet at home, ready for anyone that cared to look at if she even remembered picking them up.

Next, I needed documentation. I knew this was going to be expensive. Glenn had another "friend." This guy had worked in the documentation section of the CIA for over thirty years. He was essentially paid to forge documents: everything an agent would need to get into a foreign country.

I didn't need that much. I talked it over with Glenn and we figured on a passport (well used), Driver's License, car insurance card (with insurance in force if anyone asked), International Driver's License, VISA and AMEX cards, bank Letter of Credit; you get the picture. This was going to cost me $10,000 if I could wait six months, or for $20,000, I could get them in six weeks. I could not wait six months.

I had letters from my new agent about a romance novel done under my new name. I had a manuscript almost ready for editing.

We started the messy business of killing me. First, we needed blood. Glenn knew a guy that had worked in the infirmary at the State Prison. We met in a back room of a bar in Trinidad, south of Denver almost to the New Mexico line. He took about a dozen vials of my blood and put them in a cooler with ice.

I sprinkled some blood in the trunk of her car and then did a half-assed job of trying to clean it up. I put a couple of drops of blood in the corner of the trunk along with some fuzz from a burlap bag. I stuck a couple of hairs from my head on the blood while it was still moist. I also put blood on the laundry room throw rug leading to the garage. This, I half-ass cleaned up. I added a few drops underneath the rear bumper of the car.

Glenn got a shovel from Andrew's shed and left it in my shed. Again, I put some blood on it and did a little better job of cleaning it off, but NOT perfect!

In the middle of the night, Glenn picked the lock at Andrew's apartment and we went in. I got some hairs from Andrew's brush to put in my brush at home and a couple to put under the pillow in our master bedroom. I carefully got an empty beer can from his trash to put in our kitchen trash. I got lucky and found a tied off condom in the wastebasket in his bathroom. That got thrown behind our toilet bowl in our bath. It would take a good cleaning to spot it, or a good search! Finally, I took the emerald brooch and wrapping in one of his handkerchiefs along with the wrapped ten thousand, and put it in the bottom drawer of his armoire beneath some of his sweaters.

Hopefully, when the police found the brooch and the bundle of cash, they would assume that Andrew had taken all the jewelry and money out of the safe deposit box, and not look elsewhere for it. When everything took place, my lawyer would deliver a copy of the contents of the Safety Deposit Box to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

Glenn had gotten a cell phone in Andrew's name and I used that to call her hotel. I knew he was not taking his car because Sandra's company always provided limo service for the airport. I took (and later replaced) the key to his locker at Cherry Chase Country Club where he belonged. I went to the club for lunch and then wandered into the locker room. No one was around, so I left the cell phone in his locker. Of course, Glenn and I were both very careful to leave no signs of our presence.

Starting from a few days before Sandra left (for her final trip), I was careful to leave no telltale footprints, such as reading my email when I was supposed to be dead. I left my billfold with everything in it in the silver tray in the drawer of my dresser where I always left it. There was a little over six hundred dollars in it, about the usual amount.

Not wanting to leave my usual mess, I ate out, but no more fast food. I just stopped. Quit. I didn't have any coffee, tea or beer, taking nothing in the place I did not consider to be my home anymore. In fact, I cut out hard liquor; I needed to stay sharp and not make any mistakes. I was staying with Glenn and driving back and forth. Hell, I didn't even take a piss in the house.

I didn't go to any of my usual hangouts; none of my favorite bars, restaurants or other places I usually went. I stayed away from anywhere I might run into a friend. All my visits to the house were late at night and I parked Glenn's car at least a block away.

I got a new prescription for my blood pressure and cholesterol medicine from the same guy that drew my blood; I renewed them over the Internet in my new name and had them sent to Glenn's address. I didn't go to any local grocery stores and drugstores. I was as close to invisible as possible. A lot of this probably didn't make much difference, but I wanted to sow the seed of confusion far and wide.

I was leaving a lot, a bunch of money, a way of life I enjoyed and a few friends I would miss. Thankfully, there wasn't much family left. My sister was living in Boston and I just saw her every other year or so. She would miss me but with the kids, her husband and her job she would be okay. My parents had recently moved to the area north of Sydney, Australia, with two other couples. They were all into the active life, golf, tennis, sailing, and particularly neighborhood cookouts. Of, course I hadn't seen them or my sister since I died in the Caribbean, so dying again should not be an onerous burden.

I left about $600,000 in cash or near cash in various checking, savings and money market accounts. My IRA was probably around a half mil. The house in Evergreen had about $700,000 in equity. Most of all, I left my career as a crime writer. I was good at it. I made tons of money from my writing. I had four novels under contract, two of which I had already received advances for. One of those was in the editing process and would be published in a couple of months.

In addition, I had a significant amount of money stashed in an account in the Cayman Islands. I got the idea from one of the stories I wrote; I had gone down to the Caymans, and on a whim decided to open an account. I started it with a quarter million, and occasionally sent more to the account. I thought about grabbing some of this but decided it was wise to leave it alone.

Our joint will left everything to the survivor, and if we both died, to the Salvation Army for their work with the homeless and Veterans. I knew it was a lot of money, but it was the cost for my dying. If Sandra was convicted of my murder, she would not be able to inherit: those damn ill-gotten gains. I assumed it would take seven years for the court to declare me dead, given the lack of a body. The Salvation Army was patient; they would surely not mind waiting.

I left my car in the garage, my lovely silver BMW coupe, "The M6." It sure looked like I was going to miss my Beemer more than I would Sandra.

I wish I had kids to leave all this to, but if I had kids, I wouldn't have done it this way. Sure, I would have thrown her sorry ass out, but I would have lost this precious revenge. Every day since Glenn and I had started planning this, especially on those nights after Sandra and I mated (I never made love to her again after seeing those emails), I pulled my revenge out and caressed it. I petted it. I loved it. It was literally precious to me. Was I vindictive? You bet your sweet ass I was!

Finally, it was time for lights out, time to die. All of Glenn's and my efforts were to show that she had me killed before she left on her last trip. I imagined her coming home and being perplexed when I wasn't there. She would ask around and finally call the police and report me missing. About that time, she would start wondering if somehow Andrew had had me killed while they had been in San Antonio. I'm sure she would be a nervous wreck by the time the police got there.

Glenn drove me down to Albuquerque where I gave him a big hug and said goodbye. I caught a bus to El Paso. All my documentation looked used as appropriate. My luggage was even more used. At El Paso, I filled the luggage up with new clothes, totally different brands and styles down to shoes, socks and underwear. I took a taxi into Juarez. I caught another bus to Mexico City. There, I took a plane to Buenos Aires. I stayed there for a week, decompressing and enjoying some excellent food and wine. I got my hair restyled and a more modern look for my eyeglass frames. From Argentina, I flew on to Tel Aviv. Glenn and I, in our discussions, figured that no one would ever look for me there.