The Killers: A Love Story

It was the most intoxicating sensation I have ever experienced.

That set Janet off on another round of screaming and bucking. I collapsed on top of her and she continued to moan.

I didn't want to crush her. So I eased slowly back down her passage and she groaned loudly from the loss.

When I finally got my wits back she was lying next to me just staring at the ceiling like she was a million miles away. After the way she had cum I understood that.

I had the sudden awful thought, "Is this the last time? Is this the end of my happiness?"

I decided that I was being a weenie. What would be, would be. But tonight I had her and that was all that mattered.

She turned and looked at me with enigmatic yearning in her eyes and said, "I will love you forever. Promise me that you will be mine forever - no matter what."

I smiled at her poignant sincerity and said, "Promise."

But I added in my head, "There are a few common sense stipulations on that my dear. Like you not fucking somebody else."

She arranged herself under the covers and said dreamily, "I am going to sleep now. I am leaving early to catch the flight. So I won't be around when you wake up.

"When you do, just remember this is the last time for me. I will never leave you again."

Then she dozed off.

I was thinking, with no little irony, that the choice might not be hers.

I went downstairs and ratted her laptop. Went back upstairs. Brushed my teeth and lay down in the bed.

I know that I was being a sneaky son-of-a-bitch. But these were desperate stakes.

As I drifted off to sleep I was thinking, "How could she be that unquestionably devoted to me and yet give herself to another man?

"I am not a genius when it comes to the human heart. But there was no conceivable set of circumstances where the woman I knew as my wife could do something like that."

__________________________________

I don't care what the romantics say. Comfortable habit is the cornerstone of marriage.

It's a pragmatic fact.

You spend a lifetime together. That is a lot of time to kill. Much of which entails doing the humble repetitive things that you do to just get through another day.

And constantly getting in each other's way does not inspire marital harmony. Hence, the importance of smooth running routine.

She always showers first and I shave. Then I shower while she gets dressed. And then I dress while she makes the coffee.

That has been the way it has been in the Witger house every working day since the dawn of time.

Except today.

Today she rose early and was out the door before I awoke.

The empty spot next to me was heartbreakingly redolent.

I grabbed an energy bar and went out for my morning run.

I have been a runner forever. I like to do three to five miles almost every day depending on my attitude.

The payoff is that I am still greyhound lean after 38 years, although I am a very tall greyhound.

I am also probably hooked on my own endorphins.

I showered when I returned. Refreshed I sat down to see what I could see.

There was a lot of junk on Reynolds' home system.

The tradecraft challenge is never having enough information. The problem is that you have disorganized steaming piles of it.

So ferreting out the good stuff is like finding the proverbial needle in a field full of haystacks.

That's why you have to have talent like mine.

First I did a simple search on Reynold's deleted e-mails to pull off any from Janet.

What I got was the mother-load. There were perhaps 50 messages spanning the last three months starting with a contact message to inquire about her services and ending with something she had sent him yesterday.

I put the accumulated messages into a file and went looking for anything else.

They had the usual family clutter on their hard drive which was totally uninteresting, except for the pictures.

It looked like he and his wife had an ideal marriage, both of them were attractive people with beautiful kids.

They even had the requisite golden retriever. He looked happy too.

The vacation photos showed the average upper middle class family doing the usual yuppie things.

I wondered what would ever motivate a man with a life like that to go after another man's wife.

It was probably just the thrill of the hunt. You spend your bachelorhood racking up points and some men just can't grow up. Even after they have made a commitment to marriage.

When I am prowling around other people's machines my first target is the encrypted stuff.

People don't encrypt things unless they want to keep them confidential. So for a hacker, encryption is like blood on the water to a shark.

I did a file system search and sure enough, there was one encrypted folder.

It took a physical memory dump to recover the key but I had his virtual safe cracked in five hours.

I had a pang as I realized that Janet was probably with the cocksucker as I was doing the decryption.

I set the formerly encrypted folder aside - next to his messages to Janet. Then I did a simple query across his file system on every keyword that I could think of. Nothing else came up.

I looked at the e-mail first.

It started three months ago with the usual business inquiry and getting-to-know you messages.

Then the tone shifted. He had obviously met her for lunch and liked what he saw.

She was perfectly professional in the way she was setting up the engagement. But he was already starting to edge toward seduction.

I couldn't believe that she didn't see that. But then again, Janet is blithely dismissive when it comes to men. I suppose if you looked like her you would be too.

The terms of the engagement were typical for her. She would do the financial work and he would interface with the client.

The messages back and forth crossed the line into flirtatious somewhere around message thirty-three.

Then they quickly progressed downhill into out-and-out suggestive on his part.

His were long and personal. There was no actual sexual content but words like "fond" and "close friend" began to creep into the conversation.

It might not have gotten physical yet. But they were getting too close emotionally – at least HE thought so.

Then I finally found it. It was Forty-four messages into the pile of fifty.

There was no "what" or "why" It simply said, "You forced me. What we did has never happened before and it will never happen again. I love my husband and I value my marriage too much for that.

"You caught me by surprise. That's the only reason why you pushed me over the line - I am so ashamed. I will follow through on my business commitments. But never touch me again!!!"

The timestamp coincided with the Atlanta trip.

What followed was exactly what you would expect from a guy like Reynolds. He both cajoled and bullied.

On the one hand he kept reminding Janet of their "close friendship."

He even went as far as telling her that he loved her and that he would leave his wife and kids for her.

The part that broke my heart was the one where he told her what a great fuck she was and that he had never experienced sex like that before.

The self-satisfied smirk lay blatantly between the lines.

He also pointed out that they had a contract.

She was not buying any of the extensive protestations of love but she fell for the contract part.

He had threatened a major suit if she violated the terms of their agreement. And of course the reason for breaking the contract would have to come out in court.

Meaning I would find out.

Two messages from the end she finally agreed to one more consulting visit. But she told him that she was going to stay at a different hotel and that she would only see him at the client's office.

The message that she sent yesterday said, "Will meet you at Flagler at 10:00. We have to wrap this up today."

I sat back and had a little sniffle before I went through the encrypted stuff. She was my whole life and she had betrayed me with that smarmy creep.

But it had only been once. She claimed to have been forced and she clearly regretted doing it. Maybe I could get past it – maybe I could act like it never happened?

I DID understand the circumstances. It sounded like Reynolds had somehow managed to get Janet's motor running.

And from long happy experience I knew that she is totally irrational once that happens.

In fact, I was certain that Mr. Reynolds had himself quite an arduous night.

In public Janet is levelheaded and controlled.

But in the bedroom she is a fiery cauldron of pure lust.

And if you manage to tap into those passions, she is absolutely relentless until she is satisfied.

How Reynolds set her off remained to be seen. She knows she is hot blooded. So she would never let any man close enough to get her going - short of a physical ambush.

That appeared to be what happened here.

I like to think I am an adult. And I understand that life has its darker moments – the times when we do stupid and self-destructive things. The whole point is to avoid long-term repercussions from any regrettable acts.

The sex was understandable if it had actually happened the way that the e-mail portrayed it.

It sounded like a one-shot situation and very close to a rape. Her response was exactly what I would expect from her. And it would have been easily forgivable if that was the case.

All logic told me that there was no reason for her to lie since it would never occur to either of them that I would read the message.

So I was pretty sure that I could get past something that she was initially forced into.

Even if she had been a willing participant for most of the actual process.

The problem was that short of putting a tracking collar on her I might never be able to trust her again.

I reminded myself that she had been wonderful all of the past month. And if she could keep something like that from me one time, then she could do it again.

So we had to talk about it. And she had to provide me with some kind of satisfactory justification for why she did not share this with me.

I could think of a number of valid reasons, first and foremost that it would be embarrassing to her and hurtful to me.

But I had to hear it from her.

Meantime, I opened the other folder. This was personal correspondence between Reynolds and the client.

It was straightaway obvious that the client was a consortium of high level drug traffickers with Latin American roots who were interested in laundry services in the US.

There was nothing in the correspondence that told me where the connection had been made. But it was obvious that Reynolds was setting up the front companies that the money would wash through.

And he needed Janet's expertise to build the financial structure.

In her defense it was also plain that Janet did not know the source of the money, only that there was a lot of it and it was foreign.

That also explained why Reynolds had used a big hammer to keep her working on the deal.

It would be safe to assume that his "clients" would not be very understanding if he suddenly had human resources problems.

In fact, bringing in another financial consultant mid-deal would no-doubt be very hazardous to Mr. Reynolds's health.

My brain was now in mortal lock.

She had cheated on me and it killed me. But she had only done it once, clearly regretted it and had done everything she could to get out of the situation – point in her favor.

But what about all of the flirting, and teasing that preceded it?

What did that mean? She is always flirtatious, even right in front of me. It never leads to anything.

It is just her nature. She is a gorgeous woman and beautiful women have a fundamental need to be admired.

Otherwise there wouldn't be a fashion industry.

Maybe she didn't realize that the teasing in this situation was different?

What was much worse was the fact that she was creating financial channels for some really bad men.

But she didn't know that.

Nevertheless, thanks to Reynolds her involvement put her in mortal danger. Those were the sort of fellows who did not like loose ends.

It was evening. But I had to call her. I wanted to warn her - to get her out of the situation – immediately!!!

I expected it to go to voicemail but instead a man answered.

My heart sank. It must be him!!! I had a sudden image of the phone lying next to their sweaty naked bodies in some Miami hotel room.

The voice said, "Hello, who is this."

I almost hung up but instead I just stared at the phone. The voice said, "This is the FBI. I need you to identify yourself."

I quickly terminated the call.

Then I activated the bluebug on her phone. I heard several male voices. The one who was holding the phone said, "Her husband just called."

Another voice clearly in authority said, "Then you need to call him right back." And my phone rang.

This time I answered it.

The voice said, "This is Special Agent Mark Schneider. I am with the FBI. We need to talk to you about your wife. We will be at your house in three hours and I want you to be available."

There was no "pretty-please", or "if it is convenient". It was just, "Be there."

He hung up.

If my mind had been in turmoil before it was moving at warp-speed now. The FBI? What in the world had Janet gotten herself into?

Some people might pace. But I respond to stress by sleeping. I went into the bedroom, lay down fully clothed on top of the bedspread and conked out for two of the next three hours.

I took another shower to wake myself up, tried to eat something. And I was more-or-less functional when three very grim guys knocked on my front door later that evening.

These three were trying to look compassionate. Since they were Feebs they looked more officious and bored than sympathetic.

I have dealt FBI Agents a lot. And I have always wondered if the poker up their ass is original equipment, or if it is an aftermarket item.

We went through the usual identification ritual and the three of them sat down with me. They have a protocol for this and they were following the book.

Unfortunately I had read that book and knew why they were there.

This was a survivor visit!!!

The guy who was obviously the head Feeb plastered phony sympathy on his face and said, "I am sorry to inform you that your wife Janet died today. You have our condolences."

I knew it was coming but his words still totally blew up all of my internal systems.

Dead! She couldn't be dead!!??

I must have sat there like a zombie because finally the head Feeb said, "Mr. Witger??"

I looked at him and even he was taken aback by the pain and devastation that he saw.

I said, "What? How?"

He said, "She was caught in a shootout between members of a Miami Cartel. She was at the offices of one of the Cartel leaders when another group stormed the place and murdered all of the people inside.

"There were six people killed. One of them was your wife. We believe that she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time."

I knew better. But I couldn't tip my hand without getting my own up-close-and-personal experience with a Klingon interrogator.

All the same, my emotion was genuine when I broke down in wracking sobs.

The Feebs looked nonplussed. Being manly men they were not used to such feminine behavior.

Between sobs I said, "What do I do now?"

He said, "The arrangements are being handled by us. We want to spare your feelings. It was pretty bad."

Pretty bad didn't begin to describe it. I had started the day suspecting my wife of cheating and by the end of it she was dead!!!

Dead enough that the FBI couldn't even let me see her.

The shock simply shut down everything. I felt a wave of nausea and the darkness descended.

The next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed wired to a bunch of machines. A friendly nurse was standing over me.

She said, "Welcome back Mr. Witger. You gave us a scare."

I said, "Where am I? What happened?"

She said, "You had a little blood pressure incident yesterday. It was more of a psychological collapse than a physical one but the FBI Agents who brought you in thought it might be a heart attack. We have had you sedated for the past twenty-four hours."

Then it hit me again, Janet! Dead!

The thingy that was monitoring my heart went crazy, the nurse grabbed a hypodermic and I blessedly went back to sleep.

I was well enough that I was able to attend her funeral. It was a beautiful spring day. The coffin was closed.

I didn't like it but I was not about to argue about the niceties of funeral presentation.

Any spirit that I had was long since ripped out of me by cruel fate. I was an automaton.

Her parents and our few friends were there. As were my parents.

They were all sympathetic. We went back to my place in Georgetown for a somber dinner. Then they all left. And I was alone without her for the first time in fifteen years.

It was absolutely terrifying!!!

___________________

Six long years passed and my heartache was just as overwhelmingly painful as it was the day it had happened.

I was emotionless most of the time except for the occasional fits of uncontrolled crying.

I didn't care about life. I lived utterly alone. Nobody saw me. I missed Janet so much it hurt.

At forty-four I was not interest in replacing her. After you have experienced life on intimate terms with a woman like Janet the rest pale by comparison.

Buster and I lived a monastic life. He had been fixed when I adopted him and Janet's death more-or-less gelded me. So there was no problem enforcing the celibacy.

I also had absolutely no social life. My friends had given up on me years ago. I didn't blame them. I was a melancholy piece of shit.

I knew that she cheated. But that fact had minimal emotional effect compared to the shattering effect of her dying.

Any pain that I might have felt from her cheating measured against the indescribable impact of her subsequent death, was like comparing the impact of a conventional bombing to having a 50 megaton nuclear device dropped over you.

Same concept, vastly different scale.

And the effect of the latter totally blew away any residual effects of the former.

There was no question that we loved each other. And I already knew the entire set of circumstances surrounding what happened. So I was certain that we would have eventually found some way forward.

But her abrupt and total removal from my life was another story entirely. There was no way forward from that. And there was no recovering from the death of somebody who you have loved as much as I had loved my wife.

It was simply too much to endure.

I might have spent the next six years wreaking havoc on the cyber-universe, just to work out my feelings of rage and cosmic injustice. But instead my aim was to be totally invisible.

I didn't want to piss-off the deity who had laid this on me. Because he might decide that I needed another object lesson just to reinforce his point.

The angst from thinking that somebody up there was only waiting for the right moment to drop the other shoe makes you very righteous. And it wears you down.

Of course all work and no play made me reasonably wealthy. But it wasn't the money. I was driven – absolutely compelled - to work.

I had basically gone feral.

I spent all of my time on the road – just Buster and me - restlessly moving from one engagement to the next.

My peripatetic life was a side effect of my mental state. I couldn't calm down. I knew that if I stopped working I would realize how pointless my entire life was.

Thanks to the blackhat community there is always a call for a talented whitehat. So I spent a lot of my time riding into western towns like Clint Eastwood in the Unforgiven – beaten down and just as disillusioned.