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Ramesh_Rocky · 11-06-2026, 01:37 PM

As the elevator opened and she pushed me toward it, she said, "Your reputation is going to be insane after this. You actually convicted the killer granny. That's one of the first times a woman's ever been sent to Death Row in this state. I'll have to schedule an appointment to get any personal time with you, Mr. Maitland."
I spent two and a half hours doing media interviews after which I was almost convinced that I really could walk on water.
About 4 p.m. I got a call from the Big Man.
"Bill, could you trot on down to Courtroom 4. Peters is in court with that hit and run driver, the one that killed those two kids. His attorney is balking at the plea deal we've offered, 15 years with no parole."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Just walk in the courtroom and talk to Peters for a few minutes."
"Why? I've just killed almost three hours giving you about a million dollars in free publicity."
"And I appreciate it. Humor me."
So I walked into Courtroom 4 and talked to Peters, a youngish blonde guy who was actually only a few years younger than me but looked like he was still in his 20s. I noted the hit and runner looking at me strangely and then his attorney and he conferred and in a few minutes a woman I thought must be the defendant's wife came over to them and whispered.
"Your honor," the defense attorney said, drawing the attention of Circuit Judge Dominic Dellaro. Dellaro looked up from some papers he'd been studying.
"Uh, your honor, my client has changed his mind. We'll take the State's plea."
Dellaro looked at him with just the hint of a smile and asked, "Are you sure, Mr. Richards. I thought you said your client would never agree to 15 years imprisonment. You were going to fight to prove his innocence."
The defense guy looked at Peters, and then at me, and suddenly I realized the world was a different place.
"We changed our mind, your honor."
Dellaro just looked at me and smiled.
When I got back to my office the phone was ringing.
The Big Man sounded like a cat that had just swallowed a covey of canaries.
"I think I'm going to have you stand around in every courtroom where we have a trial going. At this rate, we won't actually have to try many more cases. Not with the Angel of Death breathing fire and brimstone."
I would have joked about it except I was still stunned. I really had frightened that guy into accepting a plea. This was almost not funny any more.
It got to be about 5 p.m. I was wrapping up loose ends, accepting congratulatory calls, and trying to decide if I wanted to make it to Hurly's or try to get by Carlos' place. It had been a while since I'd done any sparring. The way I felt right now, it seemed I could do almost anything.
I had put away an evil woman, made myself a legal superstar of sorts, had the kind of raw sex I hadn't even thought about in more than 20 years, and did it right in the middle of the State Attorney's Office without anyone being the wiser. Hell, I could probably fly if I put my mind to it.
The phone rang and I answered it wearily. I really wanted to get out of here. Susie, a secretary who was taking Cheryl's place, said, "I hate to bother you, Mr. Maitland, but there's a woman out here asking to see you."
"I really don't want to see anybody, Susie. If she's a reporter, get her name and tell her I'll definitely call her tomorrow."
"She...said it's important and that you might want to talk to her."
"She wouldn't give you her name?"
"No sir."
"Aw hell," I said more to myself than her, then said, "Okay Susie. I'll give her five minutes. Tell her."
I was leaning over to get papers out of a bottom drawer when I heard, "I'd rather have more than five minutes, but I'll accept whatever I can get."
I froze. I smelled her perfume first and then when she leaned over to kiss the side of my face, a kiss that slid onto my lips, I tasted mint. She pulled back from me and was looking down on me and I knew I was dreaming.
"You wouldn't come to me, Mr. Maitland, so I had to come to you."
I was standing holding her around the waist and she was looking into my eyes with those sea-green eyes of hers. I couldn't talk.
"I have two weeks, Bill. If you don't want me to stay, I'll go. I can fly down south if you don't want me around."
I pulled her to me and after a long moment I let her lips go and told her, "I don't want you to go, Aline. I don't want you to go."
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Ramesh_Rocky · 13-06-2026, 11:24 AM

TWO WEEKS IS FOREVER

For regular readers, this has been the longest gap in the story since I started, for reasons I've touched on in a couple of postings. This is not the Chapter 5B I intended to put on Lit. I'd expected it to be at least two, maybe three times longer, which means more chapters. But I realized I'd hit a natural stopping point so I stopped and here is 5B. Fortunately, the writing has begun to flow again so I'm hoping 5C won't be as delayed. As always, I hope readers continue to enjoy the story. For obvious reasons I've become even more of a correspondence hermit than I have been , no time to reply your comments or emails, but I'm going to try to get back to more people.
*
My name is William Maitland. Six months ago I was a boringly happily married husband and father of two teenagers. I had one of - if not the hottest - women in Jacksonville in my bed, I basically ran the State Attorney's Office for my boss while he ran for Governor of Florida.
I knew who and what I was and I was happy with it. I had my nightmares. I knew that I didn't deserve the woman I was married to, that my kids had lost respect for me and that my hot wife Debbie for too long had seemed to look at me more as a roommate and good provider than a stud. I had gotten bald and fat and women no longer looked at me with an appraising eye, if they ever had.
But I told myself that nobody has it all. I had the woman I'd loved for 20 years in my bed and my life, the kids would grow up, I was doing a job that was actually more my life than an occupation, and I had a chance to make the world make sense sometimes.
And then it all went away.
In the space of a few weeks, I learned that my wife didn't love me anymore, she soon began fucking a tall, good looking young stud I couldn't begin to compete with on any physical level, my kids didn't know or respect me. I lost my wife, my kids in a way, my manhood and my balls when I couldn't even get an erection while jerking off.
I made a detour into the bottle and could have lost everything, but some good friends including people I didn't even know, helped me claw my way out of the bottle. I fought my way back to a better body and better health and the realization that it's possible to live even after the person you love most in the world has torn your heart out of your chest, chewed it up and spit it out.
It had taken awhile, but with the help of a better friend than I deserved, some kind ladies and one beautiful French woman, I had rediscovered my dick and my manhood. I hadn't stopped loving that bitch Debbie. I was beginning to think when they dumped my body into the ground I'd still love her. But I knew now I could live without her.
And so, only days away from hitting my 42nd birthday and becoming officially Middle Aged, winning a major court case and sending an evil woman to Death Row at Raiford, burnishing my growing legend as the Angel of Death, and not so incidentally having hot sex with only the third and fourth women I'd known carnally in the last 20 years, I thought my world had finally begun to make sense again.
Until SHE walked back into my life....
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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 -- 9 p.m.
I stood in the dunes in the humid darkness, holding a soft, very sexy bundle of femininity against me, feeling her push the globes of her fantastic ass back against my dick and massage it gently. I nuzzled the back of her neck and drank in the odor of her hair and skin.
I pointed out into the darkness.
It was dark enough that the horizon was only a faintly darker smudge against the night sky.
"Go about forty five hundred miles in that direction, heading northeast, and you'd be in sight of the French shoreline."
She didn't say anything but I knew we were both thinking. Beyond that horizon were her husband and son, her family and her life.
Far away near the horizon there were several moving lights, pinpoints in the darkness so close to the horizon it was difficult to distinguish them from stars hanging low in the night sky.
"Shrimpers," I said as she followed my finger to gaze at the spot where the Atlantic merged with the sky.
"Maybe cruise ships, but more likely shrimpers coming back into St. Augustine or maybe heading up to Mayport."
She leaned back into me and tilted her head back to kiss me. I loved the taste of mint on her lips.
"You think they could be cruise ships?"
"Sometimes they sail this close to the coast, but usually this far north you don't see them unless they're heading just north of us back to Blount Island. And there are only a handful. Most of the ships cruise from ports south of us to the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico so you don't see them often. Although there are some cruise ships that sail from northern ports."
She turned in my arms and kissed me hard. I felt her nipples as hard little buttons pressing into my tee-shirt.
When she buried her head in the side of my neck, I said, "Do you miss it that much, Aline? Would you rather be out there in the darkness looking back at the shore lights?"
"Maybe," she breathed heavily, "if you were out there with me."
I held her in the night and it felt for a moment that the whole world was spinning around us. Nothing had seemed quite real since that moment yesterday when she had appeared as if by magic in my office and was kissing me.
I had known she was gone and never coming back. Her life was on the French cruise ship Bonne Chance which was a maritime gypsy circumnavigating the world. It had stopped in Jac ksonville for a while, and then moved on to ports south. It was probably never be back and neither would she.
Which I had told myself over and over in the weeks before the Bonne Chance had finally sailed out for the last time, was a Good Thing. Because Aline des Jardins was a married woman, with a son, and her husband was a good man who had been a friend. Of course, he was also a cheating son of bitch who was screwing half the women in Paris while his wife worked at sea, but with the exception of that one little character flaw, he wasn't a bad guy.
"Do you think Philippe might object to me becoming a permanent cruise sex buddy?"
She breathed into the side of my neck again.
"He will never know. He can never know."
"I thought you were going to tell him that I had given you the Fleur-de-Lis pendant. Tell him that I was a passenger and you saved my life, sort of. And you would wear the Fleur --de-Lis proudly for the rest of your life. How can you wear it if he can't know who gave it to you?"
She separated herself from me and stepped a pace back. There was a cooling night wind whipping through the dunes and it caressed her heavy black bangs. The Fleur-de-Lis sat on her chest between her small, but delicious breasts bulging softly out from a light blouse. The moonlight glimmered off the diamond in its center.
"I thought I could tell him and he would never know the truth of what happened, even if he might guess. I thought that he wouldn't mind, because he's doing the same thing. But..."
"But what?"
"He's not a stupid man. The opposite actually. He reminds me of you. He is very, very sharp and perceptive."
"How can he-"
"You remember I told you that you were different?"
"Yes."
"I told you -- the others were -- just diversions. They never threatened....Philippe. And I think he knew that. I don't think he's ever had me watched. He could tell if...there was someone else...who mattered. But you...."
"What about me?"
I said the words carefully, the way you'd move around a coiled rattlesnake that you'd discovered sitting on your dresser drawers one morning. This was the thing that had lurked behind every word we'd said to each other since the moment I'd looked up into her eyes yesterday afternoon. It was the elephant in the corner of the room that you couldn't ignore, but couldn't acknowledge.
"You want me to say it? To put it into words?"
"One of us has to. Every day after I walked away from you, every single day that I woke up, I had to fight the urge to call you, to go back to the Bonne Chance. Every fiber of my body wanted you. But I couldn't, because I'd be breaking every rule that I've ever lived by, betraying everything I've ever believed in.
"But I'm weak willed. I couldn't go to you, but I couldn't push you away when you came to me. It doesn't make it right, what we're doing."
She held my face in her hands and kissed me. I felt that same weird sensation of fear that caused the little hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. It wasn't the night breeze. It was her kiss. It was fear. And now I knew what I was afraid of.
"I told you I felt something when I looked at you the first time, Bill. It was the same feeling, the same emotion, I had years ago when I first looked at Philippe across the room at that party. The night we wound up in his bed. The night he made me his. I am his. And so I can't be feeling those same emotions now for you."
She stared at me across a gulf of a few inches with those sea-green eyes that held the ocean in them.
"I can't be head over heels in love with you. I'm a married woman. I love my husband. I love my son. I have a life and a family. And I shouldn't be here tonight. So why am I here?"
"Because as I should have told Father Dunleavy, and he would have appreciated the joke, God has a cruel sense of humor. You love Philippe and you have a life you can't let yourself lose. I don't have a life anymore but I do have a woman that I shouldn't love anymore, but I do."
"You love her even though you don't want to? What about me, Bill? What do you feel about me? You realize you've never put your feelings into words. I don't really know what you think about me. Except that you like to have sex with me and ... you were grateful to me for helping you get over your cheating slut of a wife."
There was an odd expression on her face and I tried to analyze it: fear and female pride and worry and something else inexpressible.
"We only known each other for a week. We really don't know each other at all, Aline. We met in a dream and that's all we have. But...
"I think...I....might be in love with you. I have feelings for you I haven't had for anyone other than...Debbie... in 20 years. In the last week I've had sex with two women that I liked and it was great sex. But it didn't mean anything. You meant something."
"What does something mean?"
"Now who's playing attorney?"
She wasn't smiling. She had a dead serious look on her face.
"What am I to you, Bill?"
"I love her, Aline. I hate her, but I can't tell you that I don't still love her. There's 20 years of memories and loving. Every day I see something or hear something and a memory of her flashes into my mind. Sometimes I still wake up, after all these months, and I think I'm in our bed at home and I expect to roll over and feel her lying next to me. And then I remember..."
I looked across the gulf at her invisible home an ocean away.
"What you are is the person that made me think that life just might be worth living again, that I might not be the total and complete loser that I felt like before I met you. She wrecked my life. You've caused me to question everything I've ever believed in, caused me to question whether I'm the good guy I always thought I was."
I looked back out at the ocean and saw the dark, sharp fangs jutting out from the white-capped tides as the ocean receded. To change the subject, I pointed to them and as she followed my finger, I told her, "They call this the Matanzas Inlet. Matanzas means slaughter. This was a bloody place once.
" There's a monument in a park not too far from here. I've always known this since I grew up around here and my friends and I used to come here or to St. Augustine in the summers.
"In 1565, the Spanish and French were not being real friendly and they both wanted this piece of real estate. The Spanish killed -- slaughtered -- 250 French Huguenots to stake out their claim to the place. They even built a fort like the one at St. Augustine back in the 1700s. It's gone, not like the Old Fort in St. Augustine, but your people were here a long time ago."
I watched the rocks slide in and out of the moonlight and told her, "When I was a kid, we used to like to swim out to those rocks at high tide. They're dangerous. You could get your hands and feet carved up on some of them and kids have banged their heads in a rough surf and gone under, but usually their friends are able to drag them out."
I took her hand and run her fingers along the underside of the point of my jaw. She felt the scar and gave me a look.
"I was 15 when we came down here one day in July. As usual they had no swimming signs posted although the county would never cough up the money for lifeguards. Rough surf. I went out there and we were horsing around and a wave caught me and smashed me into the big rock the furthest to the right over there. It smashed my chin open. I was seeing stars and it's a good thing no sharks were around because they tell me I was bleeding like a stuck pig.
"It wasn't really that big. It only took five stitches to close it up, but it bled like hell. Kids are stupid though. I was out there again the next weekend."
She leaned into me and kissed the underside of my jaw.
"Do you realize, that is the first time we've ever talked about your life -- before. Your childhood?"
"We didn't do a lot of talking on the Bonne Chance, Aline, if you remember."
"No. I know about you and her, a condensed version. But you have a whole life, a childhood, a marriage, I don't know anything about. She has a lot of those memories. She made them with you. I'm just some woman you fucked for a week on a cruise."
She had turned away from me and her body shook. I grabbed her from behind and held her to me tightly.
"And you have a life I don't know anything about. And you are so much more than a shipboard romance."
"Do you love me even a little bit, Bill? Do you love me even a little bit as much as you love her?"
When I didn't answer she gave me a sad smile.
"That's so mean, Bill. And I know it. But I feel mean. And frightened. On the Bonne Chance, I had you in my world. Now I'm in her world. I want to win. I want you to choose me over her."
I pulled her forward, kissed her one more time, and then:
"You wouldn't know what to do with me if you won, Aline. Would you leave Philippe for me? Don't answer that. I already know the answer. What's the point of waging a fight you can't afford to win?"
#####################
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 -- 5 p.m.
Teller held the blonde goddess tight against his chest. Although she was hiccuping and gasping as tears flowed down her face, he'd been able to get her to evacuate the contents of her stomach with an emetic administered in his office bathroom before he'd begun the session.
He didn't want to leave another mess in his office for the cleaning crew to deal with like they had after his first session of hypnosis with the former Mrs. Maitland. And it had worked. With the exception of a few explosions of spittle from her stomach, it had been mostly dry heaves.
As she rubbed those heavy breasts against him, he found himself beginning to experience an erection, but forced the sensation down and thought about other things that made him go very limp. He could never afford to begin to even think about her in a sexual way, or he'd never be able to help her as a patient. And he would betray his medical oath. Never again.
He stroked her blonde hair and whispered as calmingly as he could, "It's alright now, Debbie. It happened a long time ago and you're in my office and you're safe."
She shuddered and pressed her face into his chest.
"Oh, my GOD! Oh my God."
To get her mind off the experience she had just re-lived, and to begin the analysis of whatever it had been, he said, "Tell me what you're feeling, Debbie. What's going through your mind right now."
She just gasped and moaned for several moments and then:
"Sick...sick to my stomach....I can taste them.....taste them pissing in my mouth....and....I'm scared..."
"We don't know when this happened, but it's likely been some time ago. There's nothing to be afraid anymore. It's only a memory. They can't hurt you anymore."
"No, I'm not scared of them....I'm....there's something...I can't remember...but it....it terrifies me...it's like one of those dreams when....something is behind you and you know it...but you can't turn around and look at it...like that..."
He made a mental note to follow up on that. It might be further repressed memories of other attacks, or fear of what they represented? Still and all, anger and depression would be expected if this was a true memory, but fear...?
"And...Jesus this makes no sense.....I hate Bill. I could cut his throat if I could get my hands on him. Now I know I am crazy. Why am I furious at him? He wasn't one of them. How can I blame him?"
"I don't know, Debbie. It's hard for me to visualize his connection, based on what you've just remembered, but it's also hard to imagine how your anger toward him could involve this incident, if there wasn't a connection. Keep going."
She pushed herself back and away from Teller, sitting back on the couch where she had lain during the hypnotic regression session. She wiped the tears and snot off her cheeks with the back of her hand, then accepted a white linen handkerchief Teller offered her to finish cleaning herself up.
"You want to know what I feel mostly, Dr. Teller?"
"Yes, I'm very curious if there's something you feel more strongly than what you've already described."
"Disgust."
"That's a normal reaction to the kind of event you're described. It's nauseating, even to listen to, much less to experience."
She looked up from the coffee table which was always a magnet for patient's eyes, which was why he'd had it put in, besides the fact that he loved it. There was a smile of such sadness on her beautiful features that he had to remind himself to keep a psychiatrist's neutral stance.
"No, disgust at myself."
"At yourself?"
"Don't you get it, doctor? I know you do. You're just trying to be supportive. I was in a bathroom. I think it was in a men's bathroom. I wasn't being bangd. It was obvious I had gone in there to suck those guys off or let them fuck me. I wasn't expecting what they did to me, but I didn't go in there to talk politics. I went in there to suck their dicks and let them fuck my pussy. Just like the slut that most think I am."
"You can't be sure of that."
"Doctor. It was a bathroom, a public bathroom and a big one, obviously. In a restaurant or big hotel. They weren't dragging me. They didn't have me gagged. I could have screamed for help, but I didn't. I remember them putting their dicks in my hands and I was jerking them. I could have hurt them, but I didn't want to. And until they got too rough, I obviously didn't mind sucking them.
"I know what it was, doctor. It was a gang bang, one that I apparently walked into willingly. And I wasn't a kid. I was a grown woman. So I was a married woman. While my husband that I vowed to love and be faithful to was somewhere else, I was sucking strange dicks.
"I'm a wonderful wife and mother, alright. No wonder I could never let myself remember."
Tears flowed down her cheeks that she didn't attempt to wipe away.
"The funny thing is, doctor, I really thought I was a better person than that. I love sex and I've had multiple men before, doubles and even triples when I was in college. But I thought...I was an honest person. That when I made a promise, an oath, I could keep it. And I made a promise to Bill.
"He accused me of cheating on him, and I told him he was wrong. Now it turns out he was right all along, he was just wrong about who I was cheating with."

Ramesh_Rocky · 13-06-2026, 12:13 PM

Teller kept quiet. There were times when patients needed to speak at their own pace.

She wiped a tear from her face and looked at the drop of her liquid on her fingertip as if she'd never seen a tear before.
"I like sex, doctor. I like having sex with men. I like being lusted after. I like that look in a man's eyes when he sees me for the first time and I KNOW that I could have him if I wanted him. When I met Bill...when I got to know him....when I fell in love with him...I didn't stop being what I am.
"He knew other men excited me....still do...always will....I'll probably be a flirt when I'm 80, if I make it that far.....I knew, or I learned, that he had doubts about me....I knew that...but what could I do? I can't change what I am.
"So I did everything I could to reassure him. No matter how hot other men got me, I always brought it home to him. And I think he liked it most of the time. It's a man thing. Most men like knowing they have something other men want -- as long as they don't have worry about losing it.
"And for the first ten years, before he joined that miserable fucking State Attorney's office and our marriage started dying, we were okay. I never cheated on him, although God knows there were lots of times I wished a little bit that I was still single. But I didn't. Honest to God."
Teller stopped her.
"There's no need to take a pledge to tell the truth, Debbie. You could lie all day to me and the only person it would hurt would be you. I believe you've told me the truth in our sessions. I trust you."
"I trusted myself until today, Doctor. Now I'm not so sure. But anyway, after he joined the State Attorney's Office, and after he left our marriage for his job, and my Aunt Clarice got dumped by her husband and kept telling me that Bill had to be cheating, that all men cheated, all men were pigs, I probably did things I shouldn't have done.
"I let men rub their dicks on me when they were dancing, once in a while I let a kiss go too far, and I did...I...uh.....there were two times when I jerk-masturbated a guy at a party when he got me alone.
"But I never gave anybody a blow job, I never put my hands on their naked dick, I never let anybody have...my pussy...because that was Bill's. Even if the son of a bitch didn't want it anymore and couldn't make good use of it anymore. By MY standards, and I'm the only one who counts, I kept my promise to Bill. I wore out two vibrators, but I never cheated.
"Or, I didn't think I did. Now, who knows. But as I can remember, I just drifted along fantasizing about other men, rubbing them sometimes. About three or four years ago, after Clarice...died....I started thinking seriously about leaving him. I tried to talk to him. God knows we had fights.
"But I couldn't tell him what I was really thinking. I couldn't tell him I teasing other men, because I knew how insecure he was. He always had doubts about his ability to...satisfy...me and if you tell a man he's no good in bed anymore, all it will do is push you toward a divorce quicker.
" I tried to get him to shape up, because I knew if he was in better shape, and looked better, he'd be better in bed and I'd be hotter around him. But that damned office always came first. I know that his job is his life. And it was probably innocent.
"But I could never quite get Clarice's words out of my head. She had loved her husband more than life. And he was about ten years older than Bill when he walked in one day and told her he was leaving her for a 25-year-old secretary in her office. It killed her. Although it took three years for her to die. So I wondered about Bill and that damned office. And maybe that's part of why I got so damned angry."
"So I was lonely and getting more and more unhappy and horny every day. But I couldn't tell him I was thinking about divorce. Because I was a coward, I guess. We had a good home, we were secure financially. We had two young children. It was...comfortable....That's a chickenshit word, but that's the way I felt. I kept praying that one day he'd wake up and realize what he was going to lose.
"But he never did, and one day I met Doug Baker. And looking back, if he'd wanted to, he could have had me in a couple days. But he played it cool. And somewhere along the way, even though I told myself he was just a friend, I knew I was going to wind up in bed with him. And I couldn't do that married to Bill. So I started seriously planning for a divorce, how I'd break it to Bill, to the kids. How'd we'd be financially.
"And I could have lived with that. I had been faithful to my marriage. I'd stayed with him as long as I could. I knew my mom and family and our friends would all think I was a terrible person. They'd all be sorry for poor Bill, because he was such a miserable fucking sad sack and I knew he'd be a basket case after I left him. But I'd know that I'd been a decent wife."
She looked up at Teller, her eyes dry now.
"And I find out that it was all bullshit. I was cheating on him. I did break my vows. I did revert to being a slut like I was in college. I don't know now if I can ever look him in the eye again. Dammit."
Teller just stared her for a few minutes.
"I've never felt guilty, doctor, about my life and the way I've lived it. And now I do."
"Okay," Teller said finally. "You're a cheating slut. Now what?"
"What?"
"I'm not sure that your interpretation of what we've learned through this session is accurate. I have some questions in the back of my mind about it. But for the sake of argument, let's grant that you broke your marriage vows, once or maybe many times. You had sex, with multiple partners, probably indulging in a number of what might be called risky or deviant sex practices.
"You're a cheating wife, an adulteress. By most men -- and women's -- standards, you're what society would call it a slut. So, what?"
She looked at him as if she couldn't believe what he'd said.
"So what? That makes me a terrible person, a liar, a cheat, a person who would hurt a man who loved her just to have bigger and better orgasms with strange men. What kind of mother does that make me? How could I ever talk about what's right and wrong with Kelly or BJ and keep a straight face. And if they ever find out...."
Teller leaned back and picked up his pipe, made a display of lighting it and took in a deep draught of aromatic smoke before releasing it.
"I concede your point, Ms. Bascomb," he said in a formal tone. "You are a terrible person. In other countries, you'd have the option of Hara-kiri or Seppuku, ritual suicide, to atone for your mistakes. We don't do that here. But pills and guns are always available. I believe you told me your husband left a handgun in your home."
She looked at him, her eyes opened wide in surprise.
"Doctor Teller, are you insane? You're suggesting I commit suicide because I cheated on my husband?"
He gave her a slight smile.
"No. You were starting to wallow in guilt about what you think you've learned and I was just trying to get you to look at the bigger picture. Assume that you have done a terrible thing, or things. There are only a certain number of ways to deal with that problem.
'You could commit suicide, which would permanently remove your guilt. Of course it would leave your children minus one parent, devastate your family, and even saddle your ex-husband with a mountain of grief on top of the pain you've already dealt him.
"Or, you could go to your husband, confess what you've done and either beg him to take you back or to forgive you. From what you've told me, you don't want to go back to him and confirming his suspicions of your unfaithfulness would help him to build a new life -- exactly how?"
"Or, third option. You could keep your mouth shut, let this secret go with you to your grave. There would be no unpleasant memories for your children or family to live with, and your husband would not have to remember you as a woman who cheated throughout his marriage, instead of at the very end.
"You can do whatever you want, but if you take the third option, you have to live with the guilt of what you've done, without trying to unload it on others, be as good a mother and daughter and ex-wife and possibly a future wife, as you can be. You have to live your life and maybe, just maybe, learn from your mistakes. It won't be as simple or easy as suicide, but it can be done."
He looked at her and didn't utter the thought running through his head.
"You can live with almost any amount of guilt, if you have to. I know."
######################
TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2005 -- 5 p.m.
He left her and went to the door to his office and locked it. He didn't want anyone wandering in. He wasn't sure why, but he wanted Aline to himself for right now. When he walked back to her they didn't touch again, just stood looking at each other.
"Why?"
"I missed you, Bill. I tried not to. I know you didn't want to see me again. But I missed you. I thought it would get better with time. But it doesn't."
"How could you get away from the Bonne Chance? And if you had that much free time, I thought....you'd be going home to Philippe and André?"
"It was time for me to leave the ship but Philippe called and told me that he has arranged membership for André in one of the most exclusive boy's fraternities in France. It will be a feather in the cap of André for the rest of his life. Most of the leaders of French government, industry, business, were members as boys. It's the equivalent of a club at...Oxford or Cambridge. You make friendships that will serve you the rest of your life."
She looked at her hand and I noted that she had not put her wedding ring back on, but she was looking at her ring finger and I knew who she was thinking about.
"Philippe came from nothing. Middle class pencil pushers, he puts it. He rose because of his own drive and intelligence. But he could have gone so much further with the connections that André will make. He wants that for André . And for two weeks, André will be engaged in male-only activities on a safari in Kenya, with Philippe and some of the other fathers along. An outing. It's one of the rituals they engage in."
"And a Mom wouldn't fit in?"
She shook her head.
"Non. It deprives me of my time with him, but I love André as much as Philippe. I will see him in two weeks. I could have stayed on the ship. I should have stayed on the ship. I could have flown back to Paris and waited at our home there. I could have visited family and friends.
"Instead," and she crossed the distance between us to put her hand on my chest, over my heart, "I chose to surprise a man I've only known for a week, a man trying to put his life back together, a man I threw myself at on our first cruise together. A man I was not even sure would welcome me. I must be a fool."
I pulled her to me and held her warmth against me.
"I'm glad you're here, Aline. God, I'm glad you're here. You have two weeks? Do you have any plans?"
"Just one. To spend them with you. If you want me to stay the whole time."
"Of course."
My mind started working again.
"I don't know that I'll be able to get away much. We have a pretty full calendar and..."
I stopped myself and looked at the dark haired vision that stood in front of me, delicious breasts rising and falling, remembering that great ass that was concealed beneath layers of clothing. She had chosen to come to me. And I was going to spend time on fucking depositions and witnesses and recalcitrant defendants?
Fuck it. I had lost one woman I couldn't afford to lose because I'd put this office first. The woman in front of me wasn't mine, never would be, never could be, but she had made me happy. She'd made me wake up with a smile on my face and a hard-on. She deserved more of me than I'd normally be willing to give.
"I have some things that need doing, but I'll make time for us to go places. I'd like to show off Northeast Florida to you. It's my home for most of my life. It's not exactly Paris, but there are a lot of things to like."
"That sounds like fun. Do you want to go out and celebrate tonight?"
I gave her a curious look.
"Everybody in the courthouse is talking about your great triumph and I saw a telecast on one of the televisions in the airport. 'The Angel of Death' takes a bite out of the 'Shark' was one report I saw and 'Killer Granny latest victim of the Angel of Death.' You have become a celebrity."
"I'm a 15 minute sensation, Aline. In a week they'll be asking me for ID when I go to cash a check at the bank."
"I don't think so," she said, slipping her arms around me. "My friend is a famous man and becoming more famous by the day. I think I'm going to become your first 'groupie'. But we should go out tonight."
I thought about it for a moment.
"I know a place we can go for drinks after we grab a bite. But I really don't want to celebrate anyplace we're liable to run into press or anybody I know."
She gave me a hurt look.
"You are ashamed of me, Bill?"
I pulled her to me and kissed her hard and while she fought it at first she gave in and gave herself to it. When I had to breath again I held her out at arms length and said, "Anywhere I go with you, every man in the place is going to be hating me and wishing you were on his arm. You're going to be the most beautiful woman wherever we go. How could I be ashamed of you?"
"Then why?"
"I want you for myself, Aline. I don't want to share you. I don't want to have to answer questions and I don't want Debbie sticking her nose into my business and she will be a pain in the ass if she ever sees you. We're almost able to stay in the same room without my wanting to kill her and I don't want to stir up any more shit than I have to.
"And...." I told her, "the world is a small place. A camera crew catches me celebrating with a beautiful, dark haired mystery woman, and what would you care to bet that it won't somehow wind up on the Internet. And they get the Internet in France. Does Philippe know you're spending your two weeks with his old friend, Bill?"
She shook her head and dropped her gaze.
"Do you want to try explaining to him why I gave you the Fleur de Lis AND you wound up coming to my home town and going out partying with me? I don't think anyone, and especially Philippe, is a big enough idiot not to know what's going on.
"He might be able to turn a blind eye to...us, especially since he's doing the same thing, but if it goes on the Internet your friends will see us together. Is he going to be able to accept that? You'll be hurting his pride, and from what I remember of him, I don't think he's the kind of man who can accept that and live with it. If you made him angry enough, you don't think he'd try to use André against you."
The color drained from her face.
"My God, Bill....I never thought...."
She was about to cry.
I grabbed her shoulders.
"Don't. I'm glad you're here. You're here now. We can spend time together as long as we're careful. You and I both know he sees other women. But you've never been embarrassed by him, have you? He's been discreet."
She nodded.
"We have to be careful, that's all. As long as we don't embarrass him, he won't do anything. He can't. Even in France, a mother has rights in regard to her children. And if he loves you the way you say you love him, he won't throw away your marriage as long as you don't humiliate him publicly. So we just have to make sure we don't go worldwide.
"Fortunately," I said stroking that thick black mane that I could never keep my hands off of, "I'm not that famous yet. If I was Bill Clinton, or Johnny Depp, we wouldn't stand a chance. But get away from the courthouse and I'm just another short, bald guy."
She gave me a quick peck on the lips.
"You will never be just another short, bald guy, Bill Maitland. AND....it's mean and low of me, but I would love to see the expression on your Debbie's face the first time she sees us together."
I couldn't help answering the grin she was flashing.
"You are mean, girl. A real bitch."
"But I'm YOUR bitch, and I'd like to let your old bitch know somebody else is playing with her old toys..."
She reached down and ran her hand over my cock and felt the hard bulge there. I was hard again only hours after cumming in buckets inside Heather. Aline was magic. Better than Viagra.
"Make that...her old toy. Which still works fine, by the way. Remember?"
"Yeah, I remember," I said, reaching down and moving her hand off me. "But I need to walk out of here in a little bit and if I'm sticking straight out I'm afraid that might launch some rumors about the pretty dark haired woman who came into my office."
She shrugged. Even that motion made my dick twitch.
"Alright, Bill. What kind of cloak and dagger intrigue will we indulge in?"
"No intrigue. Just walk out and go on down to the Starbucks on the first floor. Order a coffee and give me a couple of minutes. When I get down there you'll see me and just follow me out to my car."
She kissed me on the side of my face and said, "This is exciting. I'll be the lady getting all hot and bothered at the Starbucks when you get down there."
I opened the door and walked her out so that Susie could see me shake her hand and hear me say, "I promise you that I'll be available for an in-depth interview with your correspondent before the end of the week. If you'd just send a formal request through Mr. Edwards' office, my secretary will arrange it all. Is that okay?"
She gave me a cool, business-like smile and said, "That is very kind of you, Mr. Maitland. I look forward to working with you, very closely, in the future." And she stuck her tongue out at me at an angle that I'm sure Susie didn't catch. I had an almost irresistible urge to swat her ass, but I am not a disciplined attorney for nothing. I just nodded and walked back into my office.
I had walked back into the office and was trying to wrap up about 20 different loose ends with my head completely not into it when the phone buzzed. I punch the intercom button and Susie said, "Mr. Maitland, I'm sorry, but you have some other people out here that say they need to speak to you."
"Susie, I really am trying to get out of here. Who is it?"
"Uh....one of them is your...Ms. Bascomb from the Public Defender's office. And the other is...Ms. Martinez, from Mr. Edwards' office. Who....who do you want me to send in first?"
I don't know. Maybe I was shell shocked after the day I'd just had. Maybe I just wanted to see if they could both fit through the door at the same time. But I said, "Send them both in, Susie."
A moment later the door came in and sure enough, what the hell, they both came through at the same time. It was one of the few times I'd ever seen them together in the same room. It was, I admit, kind of breathtaking.
Debbie was....Debbie was dressed in a fairly sedate business outfit but she still could have aroused pornographic fantasies in a 90-year-old. She was about four inches taller than Myra and looked bigger, except in a couple of very important places.
Myra, hair blonder and brassier than Debbie, was preceded in by her chest by a few seconds and when she stopped in front of my desk, parts of her kept moving for several seconds. I got ready to duck in case any of the buttons on her stressed blouse started heading my way.
Choosing which one to look at was an impossible dilemma so I focused my gaze at a spot about midway between their heaving bosoms. Debbie shot Myra a sideways glance and Myra glanced back without moving her head. Something was going on in the indecipherable language of females, but damned if I could tell what it was.
"I have had a long day, Debbie, and I need to get out of here. Is it personal or does the Public Defender want to send me congratulations? If it's the latter, tell Mr. August that I appreciate the compliment. If it's the former....you didn't need to come by."

Ramesh_Rocky · 13-06-2026, 12:19 PM

"It's both. I talked to Johnny -- Mr. August, and he did want me to send you his congratulations. And he wanted me to give you a special message."

"Yes."
She stared at me as if she was looking at a stranger and for some reason that made me start to get hard. It was as if she was some gorgeous wet dream of a stranger who had walked into my office for the first time and I could imagine the impact she would have had on me if I'd never seen her before.
"He said, 'You did a great job today, Bill. You handed Lew his head. But don't expect our guys to roll over for the Angel of Death in the future. You just painted a big bull's-eye on your back, and expect all our guys to be gunning for you in the future. Good luck."
I couldn't help smiling. It sounded like Johnny. He'd probably take on a case against me just to try to get his licks in. And he might not exactly be in Lew's league as a trial lawyer, but that blind country-boy, aw shucks act he put on for juries always made it hard to gain the jury's sympathy against him. Still, it would be fun.
"Tell Mr. August that I look forward to going up against him at his pleasure," Ms. Bascomb. And..."
"I just wanted to tell you that...you were impressive. Lew is flashy and I made the mistake of underestimating you, Bill. I wish...I'd done this before. Seen you work. I don't know why I never did."
I just stared at her. There was a time when those words would have warmed my heart. Now they just made me remember what I'd lost.
"Thanks."
She glanced over at Myra who was just standing there breathing in and out and flashing a smile at me. Debbie looked like she wanted to say something else, then shook her head a little and turned around and walked out. As usual, she looked as good going as she did coming.
Myra gave her a little glance as she walked out the door, then sat down in a chair across from me and crossed her legs. I valiantly resisted the impulse to look up her dress and focused instead on her heaving chest.
"And what message do you bring from the Big Man, Ms. Martinez?"
"None."
"Then-"
"Would it surprise you, Mr. Maitland, to know that I have had erotic dreams about you?"
I stared into those emerald eyes and thought she was joking, but I wasn't quite sure.
"Actually, quite a lot, yes. Like, learning that Sister Teresa had had erotic dreams about me?"
She tried to be stern, but that twinkle remained.
"You're comparing me to a very old nun?"
'No, it's just that the idea of you have erotic dreams about me is as -- unthinkable -- as Sister Teresa having the hots for me."
"I'll admit, Mr. Maitland, that I've always liked you. You are one of the good guys. But...let's say you're much more visually appealing than you used to be."
"Hot?"
"You'll get a swelled head, among other things, but...yes. And, I've thought, over the years, that you might...have a secret yen for me."
"Like every other male between 15 and 90...well, yeah."
She leaned back and took a deep breath that caused my blood pressure to spike.
"But you're always been married. And I knew you would never mess around, and I don't mess with married men."
She flashed a quick smile and added, "except....you know. But, now you're single. And available. And I...uh...thought that perhaps you might be free sometime this week. To go out for drinks. Or supper?"
I couldn't help being incredulous.
"You are asking ME out?"
"It's the 21st century, Mr. Maitland. Women do that now."
I looked at the promised land she offered and it physically hurt me to say it, but I told her, "I'm sorry Myra. But...I will be tied up.....for a couple of weeks at least. And maybe a lot longer."
"Someone moved in that quickly?" she said with an incredulous look on her face. "You're not going back to-"
"No. And, there's nothing definite about the next couple of weeks....but...there is someone. And I don't think anything will happen, but..."
"But even when you're single, you're a decent guy. You could have stepped out on her and played both of us, but you're not that kind of person. God damn, why didn't I move quicker?"
She was out of her chair and enveloping me in acres of warm breast and I couldn't keep my hands off that ass as she pressed herself into me and then kissed the side of my face.
'It's okay, Bill. I didn't think I could respect you any more than I do, but....Just remember that if things don't work out with her...I would definitely be interested in going out. Don't forget."
"I won't."
And just to make sure I didn't, she created a female symphony of moving parts and pneumatic flesh as she maneuvered her way out of my office. I didn't realize how badly Aline had set her hooks into me until I realized that even now, I didn't regret turning something like that down for a chance to be with Aline.
When she left I still had to wade through six phones calls that had to be returned, several court documents that needed signatures and two ASAs who wanted to talk. And then I could FINALLY call an end to the day and get out of there.
I glanced over at the Starbucks as I walked toward the street that would lead to the private parking lot where courthouse officials could park without having to hunt for a free parking meter. It had been recurrent chaos for years until the state had finally decided four years before to build us a covered garage next to the jail facing the St. Johns River.
As I walked past her, I snuck a quick look at her and without her being too ostentatious about it she gave the round seat she sat on a hot, and slow, lap dance. I grinned at nothing in particular and walked out the courthouse doors.
Five minutes later she was sitting beside me and we were headed out toward
Chez Alexandre, an Avondale restaurant that served the best and most authentic French cuisine in Jacksonville. The owner and Chef had been in this country twenty years chefing for a number of restaurants until he finally got up the courage and money to launch out on his own five years before. It wasn't Paris, but it wasn't bad.
He had managed to keep his doors open in a city where barbecue joints outnumbered every other kind of restaurant by almost two to one. Somebody once said that Jacksonville was really South Georgia, and judging by culinary tastes, I had to concede the point.
I didn't eat there a lot, especially since just looking at most of the entrees added a half pound where I didn't want it going, but I had always liked the food since coming back from Paris and I thought Aline would welcome a taste of home.
Alexandre Auvray was about 50, tall and lean with dark hair turning a distinguished silver. Despite being the brains, heart and soul of the kitchen, he greeted guests in a tux so that every time you came in you felt like you attending a special event.
I didn't think he'd remember, but he gave me a strange look as he took in the dark haired woman at my side and said, "Mr. Maitland, a pleasure to see you again. I believe...you were here last with...."
I nodded.
"My wife. The tall blonde. She's not my wife anymore. Let me introduce you to my friend, Aline des-Jardins."
A genuine smile lit his face and he launched into a spiel of rapid French that left me far behind and brought a smile and blush to Aline's face as well. While they talked I remembered the last time I had been here with Debbie. I'd had to nag her for six months before she'd join me and she had put down every dish in the place as a caloric nightmare.
I knew she was serious about keeping the weight off because she could very easily have been a big girl, but it hurt that she made it seem like I was engaged in a campaign to plump her up. I had just wanted to share some of the gastronomic discoveries I'd made in Paris with the woman I loved. It was another one of the those nights we'd gone home and I'd had to dress warmly to avoid frostbite in bed.
I shook my head to dislodge those memories. That was then. This was now, I told myself as I watched Alexandre eat up Aline with his eyes, discretely. He finally tore his eyes away from her and managed to look at me for a moment. He was obviously surprised by the closer inspection. I had changed a lot from the last time he'd seen me.
"Mr. Maitland. I apologize. I didn't realize you had changed so much. You realize you are blessed by the Gods?"
I swapped glances with Aline and said, "I know."
He just shook his head again, "You walk in here with two of the most beautiful women in this hemisphere. It's a good thing I have a beautiful wife, or it would be easy to hate you."
"I've seen Cybelle, Alexandre. You don't have to be jealous of any man."
"You are kind, but I assume you came in here to eat. Please have a seat and let me take your order. Oh, by the way, congratulations on your great victory in court."
For the next two hours Alexandre and his staff, finally joined by the lovely Cybelle, kept putting French delicacies in our faces and both of us indulged more than we should have. I even had a few snails. Which were one of the house specialties.
Finally over coffee and a pastry with nuts and chocolate and thin wafers of some sweet crusty pastry, I told Alexander, "Okay, I surrender. Another bite and I will explode all over the interior of your restaurant. I cannot thank you enough for feeding us this way."
He and Cybelle had sat themselves down at our table and the two women had been rattling on at a machine gun pace. Although I could not understand exactly what was said, I noticed both of them looking at me frequently and Aline blushing a lot.
When we were finally getting ready to leave at 8 p.m., Cybelle pulled me aside and whispered into my ear, "I know that there is more going on here than your friend Aline is willing to say. But she can't hide her feelings for you She told me about your giving her the Fleur-de-Lis. Such a romantic gesture."
And then she reminded me that there is such a thing as a fraternity -- or sorority -- of wives, adding with a hard look, "I remember your beautiful blonde wife, Mr. Maitland. Did you ever do anything that crazy and romantic for her? Would you be single now if you had shown that kind of romantic love for her? Wives need to be reminded that their man loves them, too."
I guess it was still a little too raw for me to be really polite.
"I guess not, Cybelle. Other than risking my life for her and winding up in a coma, I never did much to show her how much I cared."
I didn't add that that had been 20 years before our marriage crashed and burned. Maybe if I had...but I stopped myself. I wasn't going to let someone looking in from outside make me feel guilty about what had happened. You didn't do things like buy an expensive piece of jewelry for your wife 15 or 20 years into a marriage. It never would have occurred to me and I knew Debbie would have made me take it back and get a refund.
As I walked out the door with Aline, I made sure to hold her tightly around the waist and even patted her lightly on that luscious ass under Cybelle's slightly disapproving glance. I knew Alexandre would enjoy it vicariously and I wanted to figuratively give Cybelle the finger. She was a good woman, but I wasn't real fond of wives right now.
I knew Cybelle didn't, couldn't know the details of my marriage's breakup. She was just a middle-aged wife watching a husband she thought had dumped a wife for a younger pretty woman.
I parked on Edgewood at the median and opened the door for Aline. She looked around and I know what was going through her mind. There are places like Edgewood and the Westside in Paris, but you usually don't go into them without a bodyguard or an armed escort.
It's run down, but not as bad an area as it would look to a French visitor. I pointed to the sprawling saloon that was O'Brien's and said, "This is a community bar called O'Brien's. It's a pretty nice place."
There were cars out front. Even on a weekday it had plenty of traffic, but nothing like the weekend. As we walked past the long plate glass window at the entrance Aline looked around curiously. When we stepped inside she realized the size of the place, looked from the horseshoe-shaped bar to a dance floor. There were pool tables at the rear and a couple of dart boards.
"This is like a --"
"Around here we'd call it a honky tonk," I said, grinning. There were a few cowboy hats, truckers, bikers with the requisite colors and tattoos, but also yuppies, businessmen in clusters sipping what looked like martinis, girls who looked barely old enough to order alcohol and some ladies who were undoubtedly waiting for last call to see if the dimmed lights and diminished capacities of drunk guys would give them a chance to get lucky. There were also older couples sitting at some tables nursing beers in mugs.
"This is like a country café, or what they'd call a Pub in England. It's enchanting," she said with a wide grin on her face.
"That's one word," I said as I couldn't believe her characterization, but I was glad that she liked the place. I always had liked it too.
We found a table and the only waitress in the place found us after a few minutes and took our orders. Aline ordered white wine and I ordered a Bloody Mary with celery and four green olives.
"Have you wasted many evenings in a bar like this?" she said, smiling.
"No, not until after....my breakup. Before that I was a married man and the only time I ever came in here was on business or a few times with cops or witnesses I needed to talk to."
"Don't let him fool you," a rough voice said from behind me. "Many's the night I've had to pour him in a cab from here."
I looked back at O'Brien and shook my head.
"Don't believe a word he says, Aline. He loves telling stories."
"M'sieur," she said, putting out one slim hand which he took in between his rough paws.
"Mademoiselle"," he said and then started speaking French. I wouldn't have been more surprised if a hole had open up in the center of the bar and aliens poured out. O'Brien speaking French?
After a couple of minutes she looked at me and said, "Your Mr. O'Brien is an intriguing man. A pugilist and a businessman. And he speaks highly of you."
I just stared at O'Brien.
"You never cease to amaze me. How in the hell and where did you learn to speak French?"
"It's rough, but you never lose it. I picked it up when I was living in Paris."
"You lived in Paris?"
"Back when I was a young, up and coming boxer. Back in the early 70s."
"What were you doing in Paris?"
He looked at Aline for a moment and I thought I saw his eyes brighten.
"Being married, Mr. Maitland. She was my first. I was 25 and she was 22. I met her when I was on a tour. I boxed all over Europe. She came to one of my fights with a boyfriend. We left there that night together and were never apart again."
I knew he'd told me he'd been married and divorced four times over the years.
"Is she still there, O'Brien? Is she one of the ones you had a good divorce from?"
"She's still there. We never got divorced."
I didn't say anything. He didn't seem like the same O'Brien I'd known for years.
"Lung cancer. She smoked like a fish. They all did. I couldn't, not and box. She developed a cough six months after we married. It took her two years to die. After awhile she just stopped fighting. She's buried with her parents in a little suburb south of Paris."
Aline placed one hand on his arm.
"I'm so sorry."
"It was a long time ago. There are times when weeks go by and I don't think about her."
"Have you...ever been back?"
He shook his head and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and smiled.
"No. It just wouldn't be the same...without her."
He shook himself as if awaking from a dream and stepped back.
"I didn't mean to talk about that. It was just hearing your accent, and talking with you, brought it back. Anyway, Mr. Maitland, if you can, hold onto this one. She's a keeper."
"I would if I could, O'Brien. I would if I could."
When he left tears rolled down her cheeks. I wondered if she was crying for the poor doomed young wife, or for us.
So I took her out on the dance floor and while I've never been a dancer I was able to twirl her around for thirty minutes. They didn't have live music but they had plenty of canned and the Cranberries provided a lot of the dance music. O'Brien must have really loved them, or got a cut for playing their music. He played their songs a lot.
That was okay. I loved their music too. Of course it didn't really fit the country image, but O'Brien's was more than a honky-tonk.
As we danced and she made love to me with her clothes on, I felt Aline sniff.
"Women are mush."
She leaned forward and bit me hard enough on the lip to make me wince and said, "Don't give me that crap, Bill. You were about to cry too."
"Was not."
She gave me a little smile and kissed the bite mark she'd left on me and said, "Even the Angel of Death has a heart. He is a friend of yours, non?"
"Yeah. He's a good guy. A little crusty, and he's been unluckier in love than me, but he's a good guy."
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned and looked up into Lew's smiling face.
"Can I have this dance? That is, cut in and dance with your charming partner. I don't want to dance with you."
I stopped moving with Aline and said, "I thought you'd be off somewhere licking your wounds."
He looked at Aline and smiled that rakish little smile that had probably gotten Mona to go to bed with him the first time and said, "I was, for a little while, but Mona does that so much better than me that I let her take over. Now I feel fine. When I got a call from O'Brien that the world was coming to an end, I knew I had to head over here."
I knew Aline wasn't following a lot of this but she looked at him curiously when he mentioned the end of the world.
He caught the look and held out his hand to her, saying, "Lew....Lew Walters. I'm the best friend, and probably the only friend, of the guy who's treading all over your toes. Oh, the End of the World? Well, we'd all pretty much decided that Bill had given up women until the End of the World.
"So when O'Brien said he was in here drinking and dancing with the hottest mystery woman to ever walk through these doors, I had to check it out. If the world is going to end, I need to make arrangements."
She looked over at O'Brien.
"He said I was the hottest mystery woman to ever walk through these doors?"
"Nah, he just said you were hot as hell and entirely too good for Maitland. So, can I have a dance and make your acquaintance, Mystery Lady?"
"You can have him," a female voice said from behind me, "and I'll take Bill off your hands before he does seriously orthopedic damage to you."
I looked back at Mona wearing something clingy and red and over my shoulder told Aline, "These are my best friends, Aline, Lew and Mona Walters. That right there tells you how desperately empty my life is."
"They seem charming," Aline said and released me to take Lew's hand. He grabbed her and twirled her away, but not before saying, "I'll give you a few minutes to adjust. Bill is a great guy, but he's the whitest white guy you ever saw on a dance floor."
She was dancing off with him when she said loud enough for me to hear, "Maybe, but he has other wonderful qualities -- that aren't immediately apparent."
Lew just stared at me and then shook his head in disbelief.
Mona fit herself into my arms and we danced away in the other direction while I tried not to step on her toes.
"Okay, so give, Bill. I can tell she's not from around here, not with that accent. And she is gorgeous. Is she a pro?"
From Debbie it would have stung like hell, but Mona didn't mean anything.
"No, she's just a...friend of mine. I met her awhile back."
"Just a friend?"

Ramesh_Rocky · 13-06-2026, 12:37 PM

"A very good...and close...friend," I couldn't help adding with a little bit of bravado.

She looked me over, catching the bruise on my lip and mint-smelling lipstick on various parts of me, and said, "Well, I have to tell you, Bill, I'm feeling better about you. Lew told me about your little booty call with that former Assistant State Attorney, the one he always called Dimples. We were both glad you were finally getting some action, after Debbie. But this woman..."
"She's special, Mona. I can't say anything more than that, but she's special. She's done me a world of good."
"Then I like her, even though I'm jealous as hell. What is it with you, anyway? First you nail the biggest and hottest pair of tits in Jacksonville, until that Myra cow came along, and now you're got Audrey Hepburn's reincarnation on your arm."
"You think she looks like Audrey Hepburn? How the hell do you even know who Audrey Hepburn was?"
"I watch old movies, Bill. No, besides being brunette and slender it's not that obvious...but she's got the COOL thing down pat. Anyway, you are so transparent. Does she know you're about one date away from asking her to go steady?"
I shook my head.
'Can't, Mona. I can't say anything more than that. But we really are just friends."
She looked over at Aline dancing like a professional in a gliding dance with her husband, then at me and a look of what I could only call shock came over her face.
"She's married? She's not wearing rings, but....How did you, of all people, get hooked up with a married woman?"
I pulled her to me and whispered in her ear, so I wouldn't have to look her in the eye, "It's a long story, Mona. Be a friend and after you leave forget you and Lew ever saw me and her together. It's not going anywhere. It can't. But she's going to be here for a few weeks. It may be the last time I ever see her. I don't want anything screwing up our time together."
She hugged me tight against her.
"Oh, God, Bill, I am sorry. You just aren't having any luck with women at all, are you?"
"I was very lucky to have met Aline, Mona, no matter what...and what are you doing in town? I thought you spent about three weeks of every month running around the globe doing good things for the poor and powerless."
She gave me another one of those looks that men can't possibly fathom and said, "Lew and I both lead very busy lives. It just seems to get busier. We have to make a date to be in the same town the same night to get together. But...he wanted me here to celebrate his big victory when he cleaned your clock in that Killer Granny case. He was certain he was going to win."
She smiled and leaned over to whisper in my ear, "Don't ever tell him I told you this, but he is a lot more human, a lot more like the guy I fell in love with, when he gets knocked down a peg or two. Sometimes he just gets too full of himself."
After awhile we wound up back at a table, the four of us, and we shared drinks and introductions.
"Talk about your Harlequin Romances," Lew said downing probably one too many straight Scotch on the Rocks. "His boss kicks Bill out of his job and ORDERS him, that's ORDERS him to get lucky, and who does he meet but the most beautiful French woman walking the earth."
He gave Mona a sloppy kiss and said, "I can say that dear, because we both know you are Russian by heritage, and there is no lovelier Russian lady walking the earth than sitting right beside me."
She tapped him lightly on the side of the face and said with a straight face, "That's what I call a fast recovery, darling, but it's wasted. You already got lucky tonight."
Lew turned his attention back to Aline and laid his hand lightly on hers, adding, "I meant getting lucky in the sense of meeting a beautiful woman, not in the-"
"You were right the first time," she said, staring at him until he almost blushed. "Bill got lucky, but I did too. Very lucky."
"You both got lucky," Mona said. "I don't know you Aline, but I know Bill. Any woman that can entrance him the way you obviously have, has to be a special lady. I hope you know just how good a man he is."
"Stop it," I said, "Or I'll start blushing. Jesus, I just got divorced. I didn't' die and come back. I'm just a middle aged, divorced guy who was lucky enough to meet a beautiful woman with not-quite-so-good eyesight."
"You're not just a middle-aged, divorced guy, Bill. You're a man who was a good husband for 20 years, and a good father until your bitch ex-wife forgot all that....and I hope any woman you meet realizes how fortunate she is to be with you and doesn't re-open the wounds."
Another look passed between the two women and this time I knew there was something being conveyed from Mona to Aline, but I'm not that perceptive. Aline just nodded slightly.
Lew looked over at me and said, "Before I get too drunk, Mona and I wanted to know if you have any plans for Saturday."
It took me a second but I shook my head.
"No. The kids asked me and I told them I'd like to put things off for a couple of weeks. There's just too much going on. We can do it in a couple of weeks if you guys want to get together."
"Saturday?" Aline asked.
"Didn't Bill tell you," Lew said. "He'll become an old man officially Saturday. It's his 42nd birthday. That's the birthday when everything really does start falling apart."
She gave me a look and I already felt like a henpecked husband as I told her, "I was going to tell you. I've just been trying to avoid thinking about it, honestly."
"Why? 42 is not old?"
"If you're a tree....Turning 40 didn't bother me, but for some reason, turning 42 bothers the hell out of me."
We talked for a little longer and then Aline and Mona decided they had to hold hands to go to the bathroom and went together as women will do. When they were out of earshot, Lew leaned over and said, "My God, Bill, she is gorgeous. If I was ever going to cheat on Mona, I think it would be with her. Be straight with me. You banged her on the big boat?"
"You're such a pig. But yes. Repeatedly and in every orifice!"
"And I was feeling sorry for you because you'd been cut off from Deb's tits. But noooooo...you go and bang the French cutie, and Dimples, and if you haven't banged that lady cop you're going to some time soon. I thought she was going to unzip you and give you a blowjob in court this afternoon. When you decide to end your celibacy, you don't mess around."
"I'm proud to have impressed you, Lew, but remember, you have Mona to come home to, whenever you two get together."
He looked down at the empty Scotch glass and pushed it around on the table.
"Lawyers lie, Bill. You know that. I don't know what it is...but"
For just a second the mask he presented to the world slipped a bit and I saw something I didn't want to recognize.
"I guess it's just the seven year itch, or doldrums, or whatever, but Hell, nobody's marriage can stay hot forever. We'll be fine."
"Is there anything-"
"Naw. I love her. She loves me. That's what counts."
And who the hell was I to give anyone romantic advice, so I kept my mouth shut.
Then Aline and Mona were back and we made our goodbyes. As Lew and Mona stood, I said, "Look, please, keep...this to yourselves. I don't want anyone in the office buzzing about this, and God knows I don't want Debbie hearing anything. Okay?"
"My lips are sealed," Lew said as he leaned over to kiss Aline on the cheek, as Mona gave me a hug and they walked out. As they walked out together, I noticed they weren't holding hands and I tried to remember the last time I'd ever seen them when they weren't holding hands. It was a young lover thing, and they'd always had it. I tried for just an instant to envision either of them with someone else. Couldn't.
When I tried to pay O'Brien, as usual he refused to take my money, kissed Aline on the hands in a Gallic gesture and said, "Au revoire."
When we got back to my condo, we stripped off, took showers and lay our naked bodies down in my small bed. As her nipples rubbed my chest and I nestled one knee in the cleft between her legs, I should have been getting hard, but I didn't. It just felt good. I held her to me and breathed in the smell of her newly dried hair.
"Your friends are nice," she said in a sleepy whisper in my ear. "Do they....are they....getting along?"
"As far as I know. Why?"
"Nothing....just....a feeling I got....from Mona. There's a sadness...there..."
"I know they've been trying to have a kid...without any luck...that might be it."
"Probably."
In a minute...
"Bill, do you mind if we don't....it just feels so good holding you like this and I guess the trip took it out of me..."
I kissed her on the tip of her nose and said, "My huge cudgel of masculine destruction will be disappointed, but..."
"I promise to make your cudgel very happy tomorrow....okay?"
As I drifted into sleep smelling her sweet breath against the side of my face, I tried to imagine what it would be like to do this every night...
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oxy.raj · 13-06-2026, 05:21 PM

Thanks for the updates

Ramesh_Rocky · 15-06-2026, 12:46 PM

YOU KNOW I'M SUCH A FOOL FOR YOU!

My name is William Maitland. Six months ago I was married. Today I am single.
Six months ago I was in love with a woman I thought loved me. Today I know she doesn't love me. Today I have feelings for a French woman that loves another man. Even though she may love me a little bit.
I don't know if that counts as progress in my personal life.
Six months ago I was the lead prosecutor or managing prosecutor of the State Attorney's Office in Jacksonville. People in the Courthouse knew me and I think thought well of me professionally.
Today, after a near breakdown for a number of reasons I don't need to go into here, I have been dubbed "The Angel of Death" and, through the virtue of the Internet and Internet web sites, apparently I've become a famous figure.
After I convicted the Killer Granny in a high stakes murder prosecution I have become even more famous and apparently cause callow defense attorneys to piss in their pants when I glare at them.
Of course it's all bullshit. If there's anyone less inclined to use publicity to advance themselves anywhere in the civilized world than myself, I don't know who it would be.
I don't want to endorse cereals, or run for higher office, and start a second career in Hollywood. I just want to do what I do, what I'm good at, why I'm here, which is to put bad people behind bars and keep them from hurting any more innocents.
And since I don't want anything more than what I had professionally, I'm not sure if that counts as progress in my professional life.
Six months ago I had a 17-year-old beautiful daughter that looked at me with a combination of bemused daughterly affection and contempt, while my 14-year-old son tried not to think about me much but basically looked at me as the nothing that put a damper on his personal life.
Today the bonds aren't completely restored, but they know that I loved them and I still do after years of neglecting them for my job.
Six months ago I got an occasional lay from my gorgeous blonde wife Debbie. But I couldn't really blame her for not pulling me down into her bed all that often.
I was flabby, fat, balding, and I'd let her treat me like that for years. I know from my professional life that people treat you the way you let them, and I never let anybody in my professional life treat me the way Debbie treated me in our personal life, or the bedroom.
But I loved her and I knew I was a disappointment and that I could never really be good enough for her in bed and I made myself grateful for the crumbs she threw my way because even crumbs are better than nothing.
Today I have fucked a cute little dimpled darling that used to work for me in the State Attorney's office, fucked the shit out of a hot grandmother of a vice cop -- in an empty State Attorney's office of all places -- and made mad, passionate hot sex/love to a beautiful French woman who is married to a man who'd been a friend.
Sexually I've come a long way in six months, but until my Frenchwoman Aline came back to me two days ago, I wouldn't have said my sex life has improved by leaps and bounds.
Because I realized with a sharp pain to the cavity where my heart used to be at, even crumbs from Debbie meant more than hot sex with Dimples or my hot Granny Cop.
But Aline was different. I thought I'd lost a woman I'd never really had, and tried to live with two defeats in the realm of romance until SHE walked back into my life....
#############################################
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005 -- 9:15 p.m.
We walked along the shore line with our shoes and socks in our hands. A light blanket I'd taken from my car was dbangd over my shoulder.
Even in late August, the ghostly foam carried by the incoming waves was cold as hell on my flesh. I shivered. Aline just laughed at me. I knew that French beachgoers were tough, dashing into water that would have sent Americans into cardiac arrest. We held hands like teenagers.
"I haven't done this since I was a teen," she told me.
"You're kidding me? All the islands and tropical paradises you visit and you've never strolled through the surf?"
"I've gone swimming, but walking like this....holding hands...it's something you do with a boyfriend...or a husband...."
"There's something very sad about that, Aline. You travel the world to the most romanatic islands and cities, and you don't have anyone to share it with. Philippe has never traveled with you?"
"In the early years, he'd come in for a few days, sometimes a week. But as he progressed in his career, the demands just grew too great And then there wasn't any more free time. Even when I'm home, we have to work for time together, and that usually centers around Andre."
"Something about that sounds familiar, very familiar. But...I can see why you'd have fallen in love with him. He was..is a very dynamic guy. Besides all the tallness, good looking, superficial stuff. I imagine for a woman, he'd be a very appealing guy."
She leaned into me and I caught my balance as a bigger wave splashed us up to the knees. I could hear sea birds in the distance, and other bird calls on the shore side.. On the other side of the inlet, on the far side of the A1A bridge that bisected the inlet, was a federally protected bird preserve where a number of migrating species had protected nests.
"He was...is...you worked with him. You saw how -- women react to him. He doesn't have to work at it. They just...respond to him. And I guess I did too. But that isn't why I fell in love with him, at first sight.
"You know how clichéd that sounds, and we French don't really put much stock in that. We are much harder-headed about relationships than you Americans, despite the stereotypes. But, there's no other way to describe it. And....it happened again when I saw you.
"I didn't mean for it to happen, either time."
She turned into me and I stopped and held her to keep the waves around our knees from throwing us into the surf. She took my hand and placed it over her right breast and I felt the nipple harden.
. "There wouldn't be a problem, Ma chérie, if we were just -- as you Americans say -- fuck buddies...friends with benefits....I could stay here for two weeks and fuck that lovely hard cock of yours and suck it and give you myself and pull myself together in two weeks and go home to Philippe. I told you I have had lovers before on the Bonne Chance, and it didn't bother me that much to go home to Philippe afterwards."
"But we are fuck buddies," I said squeezing the nipple hard between my fingers and making her moan softly.
She grabbed me by the chin with her right hand and stared into my eyes.
"Don't ever say that, Bill. Don't ever! I don't know what we are...and it scares me...but I know what we aren't....fuck buddies...friends with benefits."
She melted into me and I remembered old time movies about lovers on beaches. This felt like something from a tragic romance. All it needed was a musical score, but there was only the sounds of birds in the night nesting and a few far off cars against the wind blowing in off the ocean.
"We are lovers," she said finally.
"I know. And that's why you're going to rip my heart out again when you leave. And you will leave. No matter what you say, no matter how much we try not to think about it, you'll go home. And I'll stay here."
She buried her face against the side of my neck.
"Don't say that."
"I won't say it again, Aline. Not another time. But I want you to know I did this willingly. I could have sent you off yesterday. I know I should have. But I didn't. The fault is mine. And all the hurt that's going to be left when you're gone, that's on me too.
I held her so tightly I could feel her heart beating in her chest.
"When you leave and fly home to Philippe, I don't want you to look back or regret a moment of our time together. I'm doing this because I realized that you are special. I'm feeling old and jaded and that my life is pretty much over, but I know there will be other women. I don't know that I'll ever marry again, and if I did it would be for convenience.
"But you are something else entirely. I'm not a fatalist and I'm damned sure I don't really want to believe in the God that tears the wings off flies and crashes airplanes and sends tidal waves to destroy cities, but it couldn't be coincidence that brought us together. Somehow I think we were meant to be together.
"It's silly, but somehow I think that if I hadn't met Debbie that year at UF, and if we hadn't gotten together, I wouldn't have found anyone I could have loved as much. And if I had wound up going to France and meeting you BEFORE Philippe, I think it would have been us together."
Tears filled her eyes.
"Don't even dream about it...."
I put my hand over her mouth to shush her.
"Instead of a life with you, I'll have to settle for two weeks. But, if you do it right, sometimes two weeks can be forever."
She was nibbling on my ear as she pumped and jerked on my cock and whispered, "I want you inside of me, Bill. God, I want you inside of me so bad. Take me somewhere and fuck me until I can't think straight anymore."
I had to put my hand over hers and stop her.
"Keep that up and in a minute I'm going to squirt all over inside my underwear and I kind of think you'd rather have it squirting some place else. And at my age, I'm not sure how quick I could get it up again."
She grinned at me.
"Want to bet I couldn't get your mighty cudgel rock hard in 60 seconds, Mr. Maitland?"
"I would never bet against you, but let's not put it to the test. Come on."
I led her by the up from the beach into the dunes. Cars were passing by us occasionally 30 feet away, but in the rolling dunes topped with high growing sea oats, we were invisible.
I threw the light blanket down on the sand and pushed her down onto it. I unsnapped my belt and my slacks slid down around my ankles. Before I could drop down beside her she had reached out, pulled my Hanes down and had planted those luscious lips around my already semi-rock hard cock. A few seconds later I could easily have hammered nails with it.
"Oh shit! Aline..."
Normally I would have enjoyed emptying myself into that pretty mouth but I wanted the real thing tonight so I pushed her head away and she fell back onto the blanket.
"Spoilsport!"
"Tell me that in 30 seconds," I said, as I pushed her dress up around her hips and in the same motion pulled the sheer black panties away from her pussy. Then I dived in. She was dripping but in 30 seconds my face was soaked.
"Oh, God, God, God..that feels so good. Lick it, lick it darling..stick your tongue way in...like that...that...Oh...I missed this....every day....every day.....ohhhh"
Then she grabbed my head and with superhuman will, she pushed my tongue away from where it wanted to be, made me look into her eyes and asked, "Did you miss me like that, Bill? Was I on your mind all the time..."
"I missed you every day, Aline. And...almost...every minute.."
I couldn't help giving her a little smile thinking of Dimples and sexy granny Heather and she picked up on it. She swatted me on the head, and then let her grip go.
"You bastard....I know men well enough to know when you weren't missing me...I guess you got over Debbie...I'm very angry at you."
As I dived back into her soaking pussy she gasped, pushed herself up at me and said, "But I'll forgive you if you keep doing that...just like THAT!"
She brought her knees up around my head and squeezed as she spasmed and I remembered she had very strong legs As the force of her first orgasm shook her I pulled my mouth away and said, "I'm sorry. No more tongue for you tonight, young lady."
Her mouth opened in surprise as I lifted her ass with both hands, placed both those luscious legs over my shoulders, and with her pussy wide open, rammed my cock into it as deep and hard and fast as I could.
"Umm..uh.uh..ohhhh....god damn...bill....it's going to....going to.....shit can't think...going to come out.....uh...my throat..."
And then she lost the breath and the will to talk as I tongue wrestled her, letting her taste herself on my tongue, while I fucked her missionary style. There are a lot of things to be said for other positions, but I guess I'm conservative there too.
Missionary is still the easiest way to get off, the way that lets you look into the eyes of woman you're fucking. The old poets are right. The eyes can speak.
All too soon, it couldn't have been more than two or three minutes, I felt myself getting ready to pour out into her and gave her the chance to stop me.
"Aline....getting close....can pull....do this longer..."
She bit my tongue gently.
"You better give me what I've been waiting weeks for...now....."
And being the gentleman I was, naturally I did. Once, twice, three, four and five hard shots and she moaned with each one and tried to swallow my dick whole inside the hot pussy of hers.
Finally I stopped and let her legs slip to the ground while I held myself up over her, leaning on my elbows.
"Wow."
"How about magnifique!"
"You were definitely magnifique!"
"For an old man you weren't too bad."
"You're only saying that because you know you've disarmed me and I can't punish you anymore tonight."
She leaned over and grabbed my wilting manhood with a firm grip and said, "You remember our bet"
"Yes, baby, but I really feel like I need an IV right now. I gave you everything I had and then some...."
"Why don't you let me be the judge of that."
She turned out to be wrong. She couldn't get my magnificent cudgel hard again in 60 seconds. It took her a full five minutes, including sticking a slim finger up my ass while she sucked on my weary dick. But get it up, she did. And kept it up for 25 minutes this time as we did it doggy, some version of the Kama Sutra she introduced me to, cowboy style and finally up her ass.
As she lay in my arms after that workout we listened to the increasingly more rare cars passing by us on the road about five feet higher than the valley between dunes we rested in. Frogs or crickets or whatever the hell they were made the dunes alive with the sound of their music.
"You really thought of me every day?"
I placed my hand on the side of her face and stared into those dark eyes that had held me captive since the first moment I saw her on the Bonne Chance before I even knew who she was. And I knew that my intuition had been correct. She was dangerous as only someone who can destroy you is dangerous.
"Every day."
"Would you have forgotten me? You're a man, and I know you've had sex since we saw each other, you dog. Would I eventually have become just another one of your old conquests?"
"Is that what I would become to you, when you return to Andre and Philippe and the Bonne Chance and your life in Paris?'
She looked at me with a sad look on her face.
"You are always going to be the dark secret in my heart, standing between me and Philippe. The one I pray to God Philippe never learns about."
'And you will always be the One that Got Away."
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2005 11 a..m.
I was probably dragging a little bit when I finally walked into my office, but staying until 2 a.m. and having sex until my poor abused male organ had been whipped into a state of total exhaustion by a Frenchwoman's pussy, ass, mouth and hands will do that to you. I think she would have used her toes if we could have figured out a way to do it and if I'd had any bent in that direction.
I had gotten up at 6 a.m., literally dragged myself into the gym and went through the motions of a workout. My legs felt like I was walking on rubber bands. They were just tired and I felt every one of my almost 42 years.
But I forced myself. If I let every temptation keep me out of the gym, I knew in a few months I'd be the same old flabby loser I'd been for years. That wasn't going to happen.
I waved at Susie as I walked in and found out that Cheryl was still out with the bug that had knocked her down two days before.
I wasn't happy that Cheryl had gotten sick, but in hindsight I was damned glad she hadn't been around when Aline showed up. Somehow I knew she'd have discovered who Aline was and somehow the word would have gotten back to Debbie.
I had no reason to be afraid of a confrontation. We were through and there was nothing that Debbie could do to screw things up and in a very real way, I'd love to rub Debbie's nose in the fact that I could still attract a woman like Aline to my bed.
But it would complicate things. For now it was just Aline and myself in our little bubble, me trying as hard as I could to shrink our world down to just two of us over the next two weeks. I knew it was impossible, but I wanted to keep Aline away from as much of my regular life as I could.
When I opened my office and switched on my laptop, I took a moment to yawn and rub the tiredness out of my eyes and then my phone rang.
"You have a caller," Susie said. "She wouldn't identify herself."
"I'll take it. And who would this be?"
"Is anyone listening?"
"No."
"Good. I just wanted to let you know what I was doing, Mr. Maitland. Can you guess?"
"Probably reading a good book or maybe getting ready to take a taxi out to look around Jacksonville?"
"Would you believe I have my fingers in a certain place and I'm doing something that is making me feel very, very good."
"I can't imagine what you're talking about."
"And I'm imagining that it's a part of you that's rammed up real far inside that is making me feel wonderful. I miss you. I know you have a job. But I miss you and wish you were here."
"I'm going to have to hang up in just a moment, Miss. I'm afraid this conversation is going in a direction that will lead to me being very unproductive today, and I do have business to take care of."
"Very well, Mr. Maitland. I'll let you get back to business, but I want you to know what I'm doing and what I'm thinking about and to remember that you have very, very important business to take care of tonight."
"Trust me, I won't forget."
After I'd hung up I felt a little twinge in a part of my anatomy that I was sure was going to be out of action at least until tonight. Jesus, the woman was like walking Viagra. But I forced my attention back to business.
The first order of business was to make plans to be in court next week to ask the court to give Judy Johansen, The Killer Granny, the death penalty. I'd managed to convict her of first degree murder a few days before, but there was still a long way to go to get the judge to hand down a death penalty.
The penalty phase was where Lew Walters would pull out all the stops, using family, friends, the sobbing defendant, to convince the judge that the 67-year-old grandmother should not be strapped down a prison gurney while poison was pumped into her veins to stop her heart. It was up to the judge, and I honestly, despite my nickname of Angel of Death, didn't have any great urge to see her put to death.
Living out the balance of her life in a prison jump suit, having to see her family in a prison visiting room with guards around, having to use her personal funds or family funds to buy cigarettes or other items from a prison canteen instead of vactioning on a beach in Bali would be enough of a punishment.
I didn't need to see her die on that gurney. But on the following Wednesday Lew Walters and her family would be pulling out all the stops to see that she didn't get the death penalty. I could live with that.
But I didn't want her to get five or ten years, be out earlier with good behavior, and get out with years ahead of her as a free woman. I didn't necessarily want her to be put to death, but I needed her to die in prison.

Ramesh_Rocky · 15-06-2026, 12:50 PM

I made my plans to be in the courtroom next Wednesday to make sure things went the way I wanted them to. After that I started working on other cases.

One of the ones that bothered me the most was a guy named William Sutton. I was virtually certain he had beaten his pregnant soon-to-be ex-wife, and his unborn son, to death with a tire iron. But there was a too-great chance that he was going to walk away a rich and free man as the result of his brutal crime.
Sutton was a 37-year-old stock advisor for a Ponte Vedra-based financial consulting firm with clients up and down the East Coast. The firm was fairly successful and so was Sutton, but he hadn't come from money and all he had to his name was a fairly middle-class income.
But he'd lucked into finding a marrying a pretty registered nurse named Sheila Conroy and they both thought she was as lower/upper-middle class as he. She was a pretty blonde with an infectious smile and a nice shape including, from pictures, a world-class ass.
They apparently had loved each other. At least from the smiles on the pictures taken in the first few years of their marriage it appeared so.
And Sutton wasn't hard on the eyes. 6-2, brown hair, fairly well built. But I'd seen the pictures when I was reviewing the case and there was something about his eyes that caught my attention from the first moment I saw him. And what we'd learned about him in our investigations bore out that impression.
William Sutton was, to put it succinctly, an asshole. He was the kind of guy that blamed all his losses on someone else, all his triumphs on his overwhelming abilities. He was the kind of guy who made it his mission to make his co-workers look bad, and reveled in screwing a competitor.
He was the kind of guy that never forget a slight or a hurt anyone did him. He was smart enough to play nice until he was in a position to stab you in the back, and he never missed an opportunity. But he did it in such a way that it couldn't be traced back to him. Sneaky, vindictive, determined...that was William Sutton.
He was also the kind of guy, we deduced from numerous interrogations, that loved woman....a lot of them...before and after marriage. He was good looking and smooth and didn't have any conscience at all so he fucked a lot of them.
And naturally enough, while doing so, he became insanely jealous of his pretty -- as far as we could tell, faithful -- wife and made her life a living hell following her and checking her phone messages and questioning her every move for two years.
Until she finally snapped, they had a violent fight, she wound up in the hospital and he wound up accused of assault. Sutton's widowed mother had put up the money for a decent attorney and the attorney muddied up the water enough that it was dropped to a misdemeanor.
They split and it was then that they both made the discovery that Sheila's estranged father, who had walked out on her and her family when she was a year old, had become a very wealthy man. He had no family of his own when a stroke got him at age 55 and left Sheila and her two sibilings a $15 million estate which would be divided equally.
So Sutton was facing a divorce and the loss of at least half of $5 million. Which did not make Sutton happy. He was a man with a hot temper and a lot of character flaws and I think he really believed his pretty wife had been running around on him.
He and Sheila split and he went lived in an apartment on the Southside for several months before moving back in with his mother in her home in a subdivision of Ocala, a famous racehorse raising community about a hundred miles south of Jacksonville off I-75.
And then one night in March Sheila had gotten off a shift at St. Vincent's in downtown Jacksonville after telling friends that she'd gotten a call from William Sutton asking for one last chance to meet and talk. And Sutton had been, as everyone who knew him told us, one charming son of a bitch.
She said she wasn't sure she would meet with him, but after five years of marriage, and carrying his son, she felt he deserved a last chance to talk with her.
She wasn't due back until two days later on her next shift and although some of her friends tried to call her the next day, they weren't too alarmed when they couldn't reach her. Anything could have happened and ex-wives having a last fling with ex-husbands wasn't the most unusual thing in the world.
They became alarmed when she didn't show up for her shift and checked her apartment. They couldn't find her and security officer in Jacksonville contacted Ocala security officer.
They found Sutton playing golf on a local range and were told he hadn't been out of Ocala in a week. His mother backed his alibi. A few neighbors reported seeing his car when they went to sleep that night and still in front of his house when they woke up a 6 a.m. the next morning.
Two weeks after the night she disappeared, a body was found in the dunes off Regency in Jacksonville heading toward the Beaches. It had been beaten so badly and the animals had already done enough damage that it was only by dental records and then one finger remaining on the body that gave a good print that Sheila and her unborn child had been identified.
It was hard to tell, but forensics told us that somebody had used a hard object, like a tire iron for example, to beat her head in, to smash her ribs and arms and legs and it looked like all of her teeth out, probably before she died. There wasn't much of the fetus left, but it looked as if her attacker had taken the tire iron to it too.
We had brought Sutton in for questioning a dozen times. We'd interviewed his neighbors, Sheila's friends and co-workers, Sutton's mother and assorted girlfriends.
And what we were left with was the certainty that he had driven from his home in Ocala at night after his mostly elderly neighbors turned in, met with his soon-to-be ex, overpowered her, taken her into the deserted dunes, and beaten her and his unborn son to death.
But we couldn't prove it. There was no physical evidence. No one had seen the two of them together. No one could swear that he had even left his mother's home.
He could have reached Jacksonville in a couple of hours on the Interstate, killed her, and gotten back in five or six hours tops. But we had no proof he'd done so.
And she was a rock, swearing very believably that she had been up and down with an upset stomach all night the night that Sheila was murdered. And she had spoken to and seen her son sleeping in his bed four or five times during the night. She said it was impossible that he had left her home.
For nearly seven months we had investigated, we had questioned, we had probed, we had interrogated Sutton a half dozen times here and there and couldn't develop a crack in his story. It was driving me crazy.
I was picking up the phone to call Ned Colman, the homicide detective with the Marion County Sheriff's Office to check in with him when Cheryl buzzed me.
"Mr. Maitland, Detective Colman from Marion County is on the line."
"Colman, talk about great minds. I was picking up the phone to call you and see if anything new was shaking down there."
"Are you sitting down?"
"Oh, shit, don't tell me..."
"Billy Boy might be up shit creek without a paddle."
"Give."
"There's an old guy named Edgar Bell who lives about 200 yards down that dirt road from Sutton's mom. There are only five houses on that cul de sac and you know the other three residents are half dead with age and nobody was up that night. We couldn't reach Edgar because he has a habit of taking off from weeks or months at a time to visit relatives or just to RV around the country.
"He came back into town two days ago and called us this morning. I went out to talk to him and I think we have the son-of-a-bitch. Edgar left town the day after Sheila was murdered and didn't hear anything about it until he got back into town. He hates Sutton's mom because of some boundary dispute they've been squabbling about for years. And he hates Sutton.
"But he's clear as a bell. He was up at midnight the night Sheila was killed. He remembers very distinctly Sutton's MOTHER's car pulling down the road, slowly, with its LIGHTS OFF. He thought that was very weird. The old lady never goes anywhere at night.
"At 6 a.m. the next morning the sun was just rising, but it still wasn't full light. He had gotten up to catch the early morning news when he looked out his window and saw the old lady's car pulling back down the road and into her driveway. The lights were off and it was going slowly and quietly.
"He says he was looking at the car when he saw Sutton get out, walk over to a burn barrel in their back yard and dump something that might have been clothes into it. Then he went inside his mother's home. Wilbur thought that was weird but didn't think much of it.
"He left on a tour of the Canadian Rockies the next day and didn't know anything until he got back and heard all the news. He called my office five minutes later and I've got his entire statement."
"Damn. You believe him? He's not just some disgruntled angry neighbor trying to get back at the old lady?"
"He could be lying, but I doubt it. The story rings true. And he says he'll take a lie detector test. He could have been where he said he was and seen what he said he'd seen. I made it very clear to him that if we go ahead on his story, and prosecute Sutton on his testimony, and we find out he's lying, we'll nail his ass for perjury and he won't ever be going on any jaunts ever again."
I just sat there silently for a few minutes.
"Alright,you've got to get his testimony. Video tape it. I want a clear chain of evidence if he drops dead tomorrow. Something we can still introduce. Have him take a lie detector test.
"Then I want you to convince him to move out of his house and contact us so we can put him someplace up in Jacksonville at our expense where he can vacation. I'll assign security for him up here. If he balks, tell him I'll arrest him, hold him as a material witness and he can spend the next few months sitting in a comfortable jail cell instead of a condo somewhere.
"Then I want you to get your Sheriff to assign someone on a regular basis to keep an eye on Sutton. I don't want him leaving town without us knowing about it. And where he winds up. Tell him we'll help with funding if you need overtime."
"You think he'd go after Bell?"
"You think a guy who'd beat his own wife and son to death would hesitate to kill or arrange an accident for an old man trying to send him to the death chamber? Anyway, get him up here so I can interrogate him. If this works out, we have to decide whether to go ahead now while the old man is alive and healthy. Is he?
"He's alive. He's 79. Got a bad heart, diabetes, a pacemaker. I wouldn't place a large bet that he'll be around if Sutton doesn't go to trial for another year or so."
"Alright, we need to move on it."
After I'd thanked Colman again I tried to decide if it was worth rolling the dice. We still had no hard evidence. There had been no bloody clothes recovered after Sutton's house was searched, no other evidence of murder, no murder weapon. He or his mother's car hadn't been spotted in Jacksonville.
We now had what would probably be a strong eye-witness to testify against him, but he had a mother to testify for him. Who would the jury believe? This was a much bigger crapshoot than the Killer Granny.
And I could never forget, we'd get only one bite of the apple. If I brought him to trial and he walked and we later got the goods on him, he'd be free forever. We could never try him again for the murder. And trying him for violating her civil rights only worked for the Feds.
But we had to at least get ready. I was on the phone for the next three hours and it was 2 p.m. before I came up for air and realized I was hungry. I was going to ask Susie to call in something when I changed my mind and decided I wanted to get out and stretch my legs.
I walked across the street to a little sandwich shop that strangely enough served pretty good salads and I ordered one with broiled chicken. There was a day my stomach would have rebelled at the very idea of broiled chicken, but I had changed. I had changed.
I was sitting at a counter running along the plate glass window at the front when I realized someone was standing behind me.
I turned and looked into the eyes of a black cop standing there with his hand on his holster.
"Officer Smith. What can I do for you?"
He was about 5-foot-10, slender but muscular. He was one of those black guys so black his skin was almost blue. Good looking. Hair cropped short and tight to the skull. He had that typical cop stare. He was looking straight at me, but his eyes shifted almost constantly so that he was aware of everything going on around us.
"Could I talk to you for a minute, Maitland?"
"I think your sheriff would say that's Mr. Maitland."
"No one died and appointed you God. It's Mr. Edwards, but you're just an Assistant."
"No one ever gave you the lecture on how to make friends and influence people? How to deal with prosecutors"
"I deal with them fine, except when they're screwing me over."
"I see you're back in uniform. What's your beef?"
"I'm back in uniform, but that possible homicide charge is still hanging over my head. You've never come back with a finding on my case, just told the Sheriff the resolution was still waiting on a final decision. You gave me back my street job, but the cloud's still over my head. Those rednecks' family has filed a lawsuit for $ 1 million against me and I can't shut it down while you're holding the criminal case open."
He stepped closer and lower his voice so only I could hear him.
"Melanie left me. She couldn't deal with the pressure of never knowing if I was going to be charged. And her family said she was a nigger lover for hanging with the man that had killed her husband and two brothers.
"She couldn't defend me, couldn't say I was defending myself because your office won't clear the case. And one day she just told me she couldn't take the pressure and the looks and walked out of me."
He leaned in closer and gave me a contemptuous look.
"Is that what it was, Maitland? You couldn't hold that whore of yours with your tiny dick so you get a kick out of costing me my woman?"
I leaned back and looked at his quiet, tense face.
"I would never accuse one of Jacksonville's finest of being stupid, but did you really think you were going to come in here, insult me, get me to swing on you or so something equally stupid that would get me tossed off your case? You figured another SA would yield to the pressure and just give you a clearance on a fatal triple shooting?"
"My woman didn't have to go off and suck another man's cock to get her jollies. She liked what I had, a lot more than that pencil-dicked husband of hers."
I just shrugged.
"I'm sorry your woman left you. I'm sorry three men are dead that didn't have to be dead. I'm sorry your career has been in limbo for more than a half year. I'm sorry you might wind up before a grand jury. I'm sorry you might close out a pretty good career in law enforcement behind bars yourself.
"But, that's out of my hands. If I send this to a grand jury, it's up to a bunch of strangers how your life works out.
"But," I said, straightening up and staring into his eyes, "It's all on you, Shawn. You pulled out a department Glock and killed two men. One of them was your girlfriend's husband. Granted, they broke into your house, but they were pinheads from everything I've heard.
"You're a seven-year veteran cop. You've been in shooting incidents. You've won a couple of awards for heroism and public service. You weren't panicked. Most men would have been but I don't think you were. You could have shot one or two of them and let the other one go and likely you would have skated.
"I don't think you were panicked, but with the Sheriff's Office and the NAACP backing you, I don't think I could have gotten any traction. There would have been a hearing in a couple of weeks or a month, you'd have been exonerated. You'd have had your career and your woman.
"But you couldn't let the last one go, could you? They had the nerve to enter your home, they tried to beat you up, they grabbed your woman, and knowing them to be the rednecks they were, I'm sure they called you a nigger.
"They pissed you off and you made the mistake of thinking because you were a cop you could get away with breaking the law.
"You killed the husband and brother and the other brother broke and ran. And you couldn't let him get away with it. You shot him in the back and when you looked around and couldn't find any weapons on them, you used a drop gun, one that couldn't be placed, and put it on the third brother.
"You were too smart, Shawn. We checked and they didn't have guns. They didn't use guns. If they'd come after you with clubs, that would be believable. But not guns. And a weapon that can't be traced! We can't find prior ownership. No numbers.
"Somehow they just wound up with the perfect untraceable weapon.
"It stinks. It stinks to high heaven. All your bother officers know it. The Sheriff knows it. My boss knows it. Even the NAACP knows it. And the only reason we haven't rolled on you is that you're a decorated cop -- and you're black.
"But that's not enough Shawn. I'm tied up now, but in the next couple of weeks I'm going to let the Sheriff and my boss know I'm taking this to the grand jury. I'll leave it in their hands what to do with you. But you will go to the grand jury and nothing's going to keep you out of there."
His hand dropped to the butt of his Glock and I wondered for just a moment if he could possibly be stupid enough to do something in front of a whole room full of witnesses, including a few plaincothes cop detectives.
"You do that and it would be the worst mistake you ever made, Maitland. You're not so big that you can't be crushed by the people on my side, and the Sheriff. Edwards is a politician. When they put enough pressure on him, he'll step on you.
"And no matter what happens, you son of a bitch, I won't forget this. I'm going to be watching you, and someday I'll get my turn. Wait and see."
He walked away, I finished my salad and turned to look at the detectives sitting toward the back of the sandwich shop. They found something irrestibly interesting to stare at where I wasn't. Didn't surprise me. Cops stick up for each other. Even the murdering assholes.
I had just walked back into my office when the phone rang.
"Hi, Dad."
"Hi, BJ. What's happening?"
"Look Dad, I know you said you didn't want to do anything for your birthday, but Kelly and Mom and I were talking. We would really like to take you out Saturday night for your birthday. Just a quiet dinner at a restaurant. A couple of hours. How about it?"
"BJ, I do thank you and your sister....and your mother...but I'm in the middle of two really big cases right now. You know how it is when I get a hot one. I don't have the time to see or talk to anyone. I promise you that in two weeks -- say Mid-September -- I'll make the arrangements and we'll do something nice."
"But you're going to be working until all hours Saturday night?"
"Probably, and if not, I'll be at my condo sleeping. Running like this is really taking it out of me. I'll probably just go to bed very early. I'd be rotten company. Come on, the birthday will be appreciated more in a couple of weeks when I come up for air. Please, do it that way for me, okay?"
"Okay, I'll pass it on to Kelly and Mom. But it's a promise that in two weeks -- no later -- we'll go out for your birthday. Right?"
"I promise."
It was past five thirty and I was in the middle of three phone calls when Susie buzzed me and I put everybody on hold.

Ramesh_Rocky · 15-06-2026, 02:40 PM

"That lady is on the phone again."

"Oh....I'll take it. Aline, I'm sorry. I just realized it's almost 6 p.m. I never meant -- but shit. I said I wasn't going to say those words again. Give me 15 minutes to clear up and I'll be out of here. I'll meet you back at condo."
"It's okay, Bill. I know how it goes. You think that's the first time I've ever heard those words. I'm back at the condo. I went out looking around today. That will give me time to shower and get naked for you."
I tried. I honestly tried. But it was 7 p.m. before I managed to get out the door. And it was nearly 7:30 before I walked in the door. I could have called her on the condo phone, but I wanted to be looking into her eyes when I apologized. No one could be that stupid on a continuing basis.
She really was naked, a symphony in pink and red and black as I walked in the door. Five minutes later I was inside her. Fifteen minutes later I was lying next to her while we talked about where we'd go and eat. Thirty minutes later I opened my eyes and realized I was lying in bed and her head was nestled in my groin and I felt very good down there.
"Oh, God Aline, I'm such a shit. I fell asleep on you. I really am a hundred years old. But you don't have-"
"Shut up," and she went back to sucking and licking. I wouldn't have thought I had it in me but in about five minutes I was bucking upward while she tried to stay with me. And she did. I lay back and debated sticking myself with an ink pen to keep my eyes open.
Then she was lying with her head nestled against my shoulder.
"You deserve so much better than me."
"You're no spring chicken," she said with a small giggle. "An old man needs his rest. And you were up very late last night and I kept you very busy."
I pulled her mouth up to mine and kissed her for a little while.
"Not that old, I hope. You want to go out now? We can still grab a bite. Maybe hit a club. And then come back for...."
Her face was buried against me as she whispered, "You're not an old man. But you're human. I kept you up almost all night fucking me very hard. And then you got up and went for a workout. And if I know you, you've been busy every minute of this day on things that are life and death to a lot of people.
"And you're trying to meet those obligations and still be be a true lover to a woman who shows up with no warning on your doorstep. You are a very strong man. And you just fucked me -- as you Americans say, I think -- crosseyed and then I got you to come in my mouth one more time."
She literally climbed up me until we were eye to eye again.
"I'd rather be lying here next to you, listening to you breath, than eating in any restaurant and dancing in any club. You don't have to entertain me. I came here to be with you, not to be entertained. Understand."
"Understand. Yes ma'am."
"Now go to sleep. You need your rest. And I believe we've got a birthday to celebrate Saturday. I need you rested for that, because I intend to celebrate you straight into the ground on your birthday."
I don't remember anything else. Not until four a.m. by the alarm clock. I found myself awake and rolling over onto her naked body. Somehow I was hard and when I slid between her legs she was already wet and welcoming. She came awake slowly as I slid into and out of her warm, liquid center. I felt and smelled and tasted the femaleness of her body and skin, then held the globes of her ass in my hands as I pushed deeper and deeper into her.
I think she came, shuddering against me and I came without much force inside her. Then I slid down beside her and we both drifted off into sleep again. And I remember thinking that this was what I wanted.
It was married sex. Easy, undramatic sex. No dining and dancing and getting a woman drunk until you get got into that pussy and rammed it hard while the woman under you screamed. There was no conquest.
Just two bodies together naked and comfortable together, drifting into and out of sleep. How much more boring and middle aged could that be. But I realized it was what I needed. What I wanted. Before it had gotten bad, it was what I had had with Debbie. And I hadn't realized until this moment how badly I missed it.
And then I was asleep again.
##################################################
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 4 p.m
She came out of the dream gasping. Teller held her tight against him until the shivering stopped. He'd prepared her, but as he'd expected, he hadn't needed to empty her stomach this time. Although she heaved and gasped, she didn't spew any vomit.
"oh...oh.....oh...."
He laid her back against the couch and watched her as the tears streamed down her face. She gasped for air, caught her breath and closed her eyes tight, then opened them and wiped then tears off.
"Doctor."
"How are you feeling, Debbie?"
"I feel....terrible...disgusted....I can smell that bathroom...."
He sat watching her without speaking. He wanted to see what she brought back from the experience.
"I saw their faces. Clearly this time. The last time it was....foggy...or something. But I could pick them out of a lineup this time. I remembered them. Her hands curled into fists.
"The motherfucking bastards. If I could find them, I'd-"
"What else?"
I saw the bathroom more clearly. It had to be in a big restaurant or hotel. There were a half dozen stalls and four or five urinals. The floor had been clean, but then it there was....urine...piss... all over the floor....all over me."
He continued his silence.
"I tasted....piss....and....semen....cum......not the first time...cum I mean...."
She gave him an embarrassed little smile.
"I mean...doctor, most women know what cum...semen tastes like....guys love it when you swallow....so I knew that...but piss....God, I can't understand women that like that....my God..."
He leaned toward her and caught her gaze.
"Do you realize how this experience was different from the last time?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you remember how you were last time?"
"I -- what are you saying?"
"Think back to the last time. When you came back. What did you do?"
"I-"
She looked at him in surprise.
"I was vomiting...not as bad as the first time since you'd gotten me cleaned out, but I still have thrown up my lungs if I could."
"So you had a violent physical reaction to the memory of what happened/"
"Yeah, yes I did."
"And what else?"
She rubbed her face.
"I....I....guess,,,I'm not as upset as I was the last time...."
"Remember, you were panicked...this time you were upset when you first awoke, but....now you're calm again. Very quickly this time. Did you notice?"
'Yes...but.....why? The memory is even clearer now. It should be worse, shouldn't it?"
"Not necessarily. It was a nightmarish experience the first time and to a certain extent the second time. Nightmares act on a subconscious level. What you're afraid of isn't necessarily what you remember. Now you're remembering what happened more clearly, and it isn't affecting you as strongly."
She sat up on the couch, putting her feet under her and brushing her skirt which had risen up almost to her panties down with her hands.
"Why wouldn't it hit me as hard? It was so damned disgusting....so.....I told you that I like dominant men. I did....do....like men that take control of me...but not bang...not like that...."
"It was pretty bad even from an objective, male point of view...but..."
"But what?"
"There's a reason why it's losing its impact on you, Debbie. A reason you realize even as you can't get it clear in your mind.
"I don't....I'm not sure.....I.....I don't know why but I....do feel it...why doesn't it bother me as much?"
"Think about it."
She looked down at the Rorschach design on the coffee table and tried to get the memory clearer in her head. But while parts of it were crystal clear, it...didn't....feel right....
"I don't know, Doctor...it's just that....something....something doesn't feel right."
He took one of her hands in his and looked into her eyes.
"I know. Tell me what your assailants looked like."
"One of them was....dark haired....tall, maybe six foot one or two....slender....another was a few inches shorter, still taller than me...he was thinning on top....light brown hair...they were all wearing suits...not real fancy...dress, but business suits....the third one was blonde, heavy...a little chubby..."
"And how old did they appear?"
"I...uh....maybe in their late 20s...early 30s...not old..."
"They weren't teenagers?"
"No."
"Okay, tell me what you were doing before you went into the restroom with them?"
She tried to remember how they'd gotten her to go in there. She couldn't be a big enough slut to walk into a restroom on the spur of the moment with three strangers for a gangbang. It had to have been arranged. But the memory didn't come.
"Nothing? What happened after they left you covered in their urine and semen on that bathroom floor?"
Again, nothing would come to her. The memory started with her in the restroom and ended with her on the floor.
"I can't remember."
"I'm not surprised."
"What do you mean?"
"Think about this. Do you remember how they talked to you as they assaulted you, as you fellated them?"
She thought about it. She remembered the insults, the jeers.
"And there's nothing about that that struck you as odd?"
"Just that..."
He saw the realization strike her. She looked at him with surprise in her eyes.
"They weren't teenagers, were they? And yet they were calling you an old slut and expressing their disgust for you, to the point of refusing to bang you for fear of disease. Unless it occurred last week, you must have been in your mid to late 30s because it wasn't until that time that you said your marriage started to fall apart."
He looked her body up and down again and said, "I'm not flattering you to say that you are an attractive woman who doesn't look your age. And your description of the three men makes them look roughly your age. There's no reason they would be talking about you in those terms as an older woman, unless....."
"Unless I were an older woman."
He smiled.
"And since you are not an older woman, that means that...."
She shook her head, unable to grasp what she'd just said.
"How could the memory not be real? It felt so real. It was just a....dream...a nightmare?"
"It was a memory....but not one...."
"I don't understand."
"Everyone, I think, has heard of people who can remember where they were when the Twin Towers were struck. Or when Pearl Harbor was hit. Or during the big football game that was the biggest event of their childhood. People that were nowhere near a television screen will remember seeing it in vivid detail years from now. And they'll swear under oath they actually did see it. And they'll believe they saw it.
"It's a false memory. A fake memory. It's built on other knowledge and...wanting...to have seen it."
"How could that be the case in this?"
"I'm not sure right now. But, everything fits. A true memory has broader scope and it...has more detail. Your detail is crysal clear, but sharply limited. You can't remember anything before or after...how it happened...the aftermath...Eventually or by this time
some of those details would have been working their way into your conscious mind.
"But, at the same time, you have a clearer view of what happened, of the people involved, than anyone could have...if they weren't there when it happened. You couldn't have those events so clearly established if it was something you only heard about."
She shook her head again.
"I still don't see. I was there, but I wasn't?"
"If I'm guessing right, you were there. You saw the assault, or its aftermath, but you weren't the victim. It had to be someone very close to you to have had the emotional impact that this incident had on you personally. And it had to be an older woman. Does anyone fit that profile?"
"Clarice...my Aunt Clarice."
"That was my thought. I think something happened to her and you were close by or involved in some way. I think that over time, especially after she died, the incident festered in your subconscious and eventually worked its way into your mind as a dreamlike memory."
They stared at each other. Debbie listened to the muted rhythm of the Grandfather clock and thought about her aunt.
"But there's something else, Debbie. Something that doesn't make sense right now."
"A lot of this doesn't' make sense, Doctor, but at least I'm not hurling and I don't feel sick to my stomach. What?"
"The repressed, transformed, memory, has been in your mind since before your aunt died -- committed suicide. What triggered it?"
It didn't take a moment.
"The divorce."
"That's what it seems like. It rumbled around inside your mind until your divorce was finalized, and then it came roaring back. So not only does your ex arouse feelings of rage and anger, but your final breakup brought a false memory of yourself being bangd and abused to the forefront on your memory."
She put her head in her hands.
"That doesn't make sense, Doctor. Every bad thing I could ever think of to say about Bill, would never include involvement in something like that. Why would I associate the attack with him? With our divorce?"
He sat back and stretched.
'I don't know, Debbie. Like I said, that's what makes psychiatry fascinating. There has to be a link. We just haven't discovered it yet."
She looked up at him and he was surprised to find her smiling.
"What?"
"I just realized, doctor. I didn't.....I didn't cheat on him....the way I thought I had. I might have been a bad wife, but I wasn't a complete slut. I didn't think I'd ever be able to look him in the eye again. Now maybe I can."
#########################################
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 4 p.m
I was waiting at the door to the Duval County Jail booking office as the cruiser pulled up into the parking lot behind the jail entrance. It was a Marion County Sheriff's Office cruiser.
Colman stepped out of the passenger side and while the driver went to open the back door of the cruiser he walked over to me with a big smile.
Colman wasn't that much bigger than me, but his damned cowboy hat had to give him another eight inches in height. I'd never seen a man wearing a hat that big, but other than that, Colman was a pretty nice guy. I figured he must have a Napoleonic complex. He grinned as he took my hand in his and tried to shake it off.
"I'm glad you rolled the dice, Bill. I was starting to get a damned ulcer worrying that son of a bitch would get away with it."
The taller driver was helping a handcuffed, dark haired man dressed in shorts and a tee-shirt out of the back of the cruiser.
"We nabbed him mowing the grass," Colman said laughing. "He wanted to get changed but I said he needed to get used to a prison jump suit because that's what he'll be in for the rest of his life.
"Talk about chewing nails. I was hoping he'd take a swing at me and I think he almost did. But at the last minute he remembered I was carrying a .345 magnum and he thought better of it."
Sutton was 6-foot-2, slender but broad in the chest and well muscled. He was probably 220 or 230. A bigger man than he looked at first glance; a big, strong man capable of doing a lot of damage with his bare hands or a metal bar.
It would have been nice if he'd lost control of that volcanic temper, but bastards like that never lost control when you wanted them to.
Colman's deputy walked him over to us. He looked down on me with that instinctive air of contempt big men have for men who are shorter.
"Maitland. I see you finally developed some balls. It was the old fart's story that pushed you into filing charges, wasn't it?"
"Why do you assume it was Bell who dropped the dime on you? And what could he have possibly told us that would have convinced us to charge you?"
I thought he was too smart to fall for it, but if he indicated he knew anything about Bell watching him drive off and come back he'd be digging his grave with his own mouth.
But he was too smart.
"I don't have to be a genius. You screw me around for months, but you don't file charges so I can clear my name. You just leave me twisting in the wind.
"And then the crazy old bastard that's hated my mother and me for 20 years comes back into town and a couple of days later this redneck prick puts cuffs on me. I guessed he's probably behind it."
"You'll get the whole story pretty soon, Mr. Sutton, but you sure you wouldn't like to confess? I think you'd sleep better if you got it off your conscience. It must be hard at night seeing the face of your wife after you finished working her over with that tire iron.
"And they said you smashed her stomach in so badly that you probably saw part of your son's ripped apart body. He was your son, you miserable son of a bitch. Even if you hated your wife, how could you do that to your own blood?"
He just looked at me like you'd look at a bug on a windshield.
"It might bother me a little if I'd done it. But I'm an innocent man. I didn't touch that miserable whore that was screwing around on me behind my back for years. And I didn't touch her bastard. God knows who his father was, but it wasn't me. I hadn't dipped my dick into that diseased cunt for months before she got pregnant."
"That's strange," I said, staring into those dark, bottomless eyes. "I never made it public because I wanted to save it for the jury, but we were able to run a DNA analysis on the embryo's remains and we got your DNA with a court order. The baby boy you dismembered was William Sutton Jr."
He just kept staring at me with no change of expression.
"He was your son, Sutton. He probably would have had your eyes, your features. No matter how terrible a slut your ex might have been, he would have been yours.
"Did you really think she might have gotten pregnant by another man? All we've been able to discover indicates she never cheated on you. There's nothing to indicate it. Does your mother know you murdered her grandson?"
"I didn't murder anyone," he said, and smiled at me. "You think you've got supernatural powers or something, Maitland? You taking your press clippings seriously? All that Angel of Death bullshit? You're just a cheap little lawyer...a cheap little lawyer whose wife I'm going to fuck someday after I beat this charge."
He looked down at me and grinned.
"Yeah, everybody knows your story, Maitland. Pitiful little punk. Couldn't keep your pussy happy at home so she went and found someone younger. I should have some sympathy because I was married to the same kind of bitch. But I don't. I will walk. There's no way in hell you're ever going to convict me with no evidence.
"You don't have prints. You don't have blood evidence. You don't have a weapon. You don't have anyone who even saw me with the bitch the night someone did the world a favor and beat her brains in. You don't have anyone who ever heard me talking to her that night, despite her lying bitch friends.
"I'm glad you let the old bastard convince you to go for it. I don't want this hanging over my head for months or years. Now I can beat this shit and start my life over - $5 million richer. There's no way her fucking brother and sister can keep me from getting it. We were still legally married when some good samaritan did me the big favor of sending her to hell."
He stepped closer to me and I sensed Colman putting his hand on his Magnum but I waved him off.
"In a few months or a year I'm going to be rich, and free. And you better fucking believe I'm going to spend a chunk of that meeting and wining and dining your bitch ex-wife. And after I spread her legs and fuck her pussy and ass until you could run a two-by-four up here, I'll send you a video and polaroids to pass the time late at night."

Ramesh_Rocky · 15-06-2026, 02:41 PM

He turned his gaze down at Colman and sneered.

"That pig wife of yours is going to be harder to swallow, no pun intended, but I'll fuck her just for the pleasure of getting pictures and sending them to you.
"And when you come after me with the big-ass gun, I'll have security blow you to hell. You're going to be easy, because at least you've got balls and you won't be able to stand me turning your wife into a whore. Maitland is such a pussy he'll just lay there and take it."
I put my hand on Colman's gun hand and squeezed.
""You are welcome to fantasize as much as you like, Mr. Sutton. But you're never leaving the confines of the state penal system again while you're upright.
"And the only hot sex you're going to enjoy is some inmate's big cock stuck up your ass or down your throat. Probably two of three of them at the same time. And probably coal black because I hear they love good looking white boys like you."
He just shook his head and kept smiling.
"It's a date. See you in court, Angel of Death.
As Colman and the deputy led Sutton in the jail, a late model Caddy swung into the parking lot. A white haired old man got out from behind the driver's side and helped a little old white haired lady out of the passenger side. Leaning heavily on a cane and the old man, she limped toward me. Her gaze chilled me.
"Mr. Maitland, you are going to be sorry you did this."
"Hello, Mrs. Sutton. I expected you to be along pretty soon. Come to lend moral support to your son. I can't blame you."
"You are filth, Mr. Maitland. Just like that bitch wife of his. She deserved everything that was done to her. I just wish I could have seen it."
"You know her baby was your grandson?"
"That piece of trash was no relation to me. And I'm glad it was tossed into the woods for animals to eat."
I looked at her and for once words failed me.
"I was 49, Mr. Maitland, when I became pregnant with William. All the doctors told me to abort him. My husband -- my fortunately dead husband -- tried to make me abort him. But I refused. It was hell, but I bore him and he lived.
"He has always been mine and I have always been his. Someday we will be buried in the same grave, together for eternity. Nothing can ever separate us. Certainly not a miserable ambulance chaser like you."
I just stared through the ice at her, feeling sorry for the miserable old man who must have been a boyfriend. Although God knows I couldn't imagine have the nerve to try to shove a penis up inside that frozen vagina.
"Thank you, Mrs. Sutton. I was feeling a slight degree of pity for you. No matter what, no matter how twisted and just plain mean you have been, no matter that you're lying to help your son get away with beating a woman and embryo to death, I told myself that you're a mother and mothers have blind spots for their sons.
" But, I don't have any pity for you any more. You're the reason he's the monster he is today. You molded him into the man he is. If there was any way, I'd have you on the gurney with poison being pumped into your veins alongside him."
If she had had a weapon in her hands, I would have been apprehensive.
"But it's better this way, Mrs. Sutton. You're old, but tough. I think you'll hang on long enough to see him taken to the Death Chamber at Raiford. I think they'll probably let you be a witness. If I can, I'll be there. I want to see your eyes when his eyes close for the last time.
"I'm going to be thinking of Sheila and her baby. I'm going to be thinking of what went through her mind as he beat her and her baby to death. And I hope to God, he hurts like hell as he's dying and you feel every bit of his agony.
"And then I hope you burn in hell with him."
I turned and walked away from her although I could feel her gaze burning into my back all the way into the Jail.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2005 1 p.m
The beach curved out and bent to the right as the coast curved away to the south down beyond St. Augustine. We were on a stretch of isolated white sand beach tucked in away behind an undeveloped spit of land between St. Augustine and Marineland. There was a newish-paved two-lane highway a few hundred feet away but we could have been on a deserted island.
There were three or four long palm trees that storms had toppled in past years and the action of wind and water and sun over the years had basically fossilized them.
As the beach eroded, they were left behind, stark black monuments set against the blinding white sand and the clear blue ocean beyond.
I loved Matanzas for its wildness and those boulders set in the sea, but this didn't even seem to be on the same earth that existed a few miles away. I'd taken Debbie and the kids here when they were little and those visits were among the greatest memories of my life.
Aline looked up and down the beach. She was wearing a fairly skimpy red bikini but wore shorts and a shirt over it. We leaned against one of the tree trunks. We could have been the only people on earth. I wished we were.
"It's like another world," she said, reaching out to dbang her arms around me. "Thank you for bringing me here."
"It's not on any maps, but I've always thought it's one of the most special spots on this coast. The only people who know about it are people who grew up here like me or tourists who stumble on it by accident. This is something I could give a French visitor that you couldn't get from any tour."
We lay in each other's arms and smelled the salt breeze coming in off the ocean. There were a lot of things we could have been doing, but nothing that I wanted to do more than hold this woman and stare out at the whitecaps rolling in toward the shore.
Finally, I kissed her on the forehead, pulled her to her feet and we walked through the sand, back through a strip of wooded land and found ourselves back at my Escalade parked on the shoulder of the road, which was deserted.
"Where to now, my personal guide?" she said smiling.
"A little history lesson, Ms. des-Jardins, that someone from Europe might appreciate."
It was only noon and even in early September, the cramped, crowded, tiny little European brick-paved streets of St. Augustine were crowded with cars and strolling tourists from all over the world.
I parked a few streets over from the Castillo de San Marcos and we made our way past the restaurants and the little shops selling fudge and souvenirs of the Old City. In places the little streets were barely wide enough for two small cars to get past each other.
She stopped at one corner and looked one way and then down the other street. Something flashed in her face that she didn't want me to see and she looked away as if a store awning advertising Authentic 19th Century Salt Water Taffy was the most fascinating thing in all the world.
I let her stand there alone for a few minutes and I could tell from the way she breathed that she was holding in sobs. I came to stand behind her and put my arms around her shoulders and pulled her back to me. I let her hide her face and her eyes because I knew what I'd see if I forced her to look at me.
This was too much like her real life. Although this was anachronistic today even in Paris, it had the feel of France and Italy and Belgium. I knew it brought back memories of other days and I knew who she remembered standing next to, who she remembered holding her in his arms.
After a few moments she wiped her face and without looking back at me, said, "I am sorry, Ma chérie. I was just...just remembering....how Andre looked when we took him to a small village on the Portuguese coast last Fall. It looked like this, without the tourist shops. He ran along the beach making a mess of his new clothes and harassing the fishermen working on their nets in the sun."
She turned and buried her face against me.
"I'm sorry. So sorry. But I miss him."
I didn't say anything. Just held her. And it didn't matter that she was lying. She missed her son. And her husband. And her life. Which was far from here. But it had been my choice. This was part of it all. And no matter how bad it hurt to know who she should have been with, I had made the deal with the Devil to take the bad with the good of having her here.
We walked hand in hand to the Castillo de San Marcos, or as everyone in North Florida has called it since well before I was a twinkle in my daddy's eye, The Old Fort. Its rolling green approach was covered with kids and picnicers. We walked up to the entrance and I paid the $14 for two tickets and I led the way.
I wasn't a professional guide, but I had been in here so many times as a kid I felt like I could have done a professional job. I took her through the powder magazine, a dark prison cell, the chapel and guard rooms. The walls seemed to close in, the coquina walls felt colder than the underground location could account for.
When I'd been a kid I sometimes fantasized that there were real ghosts here. I imagined that the short -- even shorter than me -- dark haired men in the funny armor and their eyes in paintings both disturbingly cold and at the same time fiery, had left behind their spirits when they had died of disease or enemy attacks.
I knew it was all bullshit, but there had been a lot of pain and dying inside and outside these rugged walls and if there was anyplace in Northeast Florida that deserved a few ghosts rattling chains, the Old Fort would have been the place.
Or sometimes, I thought when I became a teenager and old enough to have my heart broken by the some luscious young lady who didn't see the stud I was underneath the nerd costume I wore, I imagined a dark-haired Spanish soldier with a cool goatee coming down with a fever and dying of a broken heart when the woman he loved returned to Spain with a rival.
When I got a little older, I realized that lovesick soldier would probably just purchase a whore, camp follower or possibly one of the Creek, Choctaw or Seminole women who'd been captured by slavers. I got to be very cynical after the tenth time I saw the love of my life walk away with some idiot who just happened to be tall enough to pat me on the head condescendingly as he took my girl away.
We walked to an upper level where we could look out over the Bridge of Lions and the Matanzas Harbor. The sun was blinding on the choppy waters as an early Fall nor'easter blew the wind ahead of it. In a few hours the sky would be overcast and then the sky would fall in, but right now it was Florida at its best.
I grabbed Aline's hand and said, "Let's go down."
We walked out onto the rolling hillside that led from the Fort's entrance to the street.
"I've got to do this," I said, and I started trotting. Holding her hand, she stumbled and then as long legged as she was she started to catch up with me. Then we were racing and laughing like crazy, laughing like kids while tourists and mothers and fathers and small children just stared at us. Finally, just before we ran out of grass and tumbled onto the bricks, I fell to my knees and dragged her along with me.
She was laughing so hard she could barely speak, but she managed to say, "What....what...what was that all about?"
"I loved to do that from the time I was nine or ten. My friends and I would go up to the Fort and run down as fast as we could and try not to sail out into traffic. Of course, nobody ever drove more than 15 miles an hour by here, but even so it's a wonder any of us survived."
"You are crazy, a crazy man," she said, kissing my check.
"That's me, a wild and crazy guy."
For just those few seconds I hadn't felt every second of my 42 years. It had felt good.
#####################################
THREE HOURS LATER
I tried to untangle my tongue so I could catch my breath. I thought that Philippe's ghost had gone back into whatever limbo he'd come out of because I couldn't feel him between us. She lay back on the couch naked to the waist, her breasts dripping with my spit from the sucking I'd been giving them for the last 10 minutes. We could have fucked, but we both were putting it off.
"Oh," she said finally. "What time did you say we had that reservation at The Top Floor?"
"7:30. We have 45 minutes. Plenty of time."
"Well, I need to get in and get a long bath and....get some things done."
I just gave her a look and she gave me a shrug."
"Wait and see."
I leaned back on the couch and let go of her. The Top Floor is a restaurant located on the 15th floor of the Barnett Bank Building. It takes up the entire floor and through its windows you can see all of Jacksonville spread out below and around you.
Jacksonville, and all of Florida, for that matter, is about six inches above sea level so there's nothing to block your view for miles around.
It's one of the most impressive sights in the city and I wanted to share that with Aline on my birthday. And the food isn't bad, if you like steak and potatoes. I'm not a huge steak guy, but it felt appropriate for such landmark birthday.
As Aline stepped into the bathroom my cell rang. I almost didn't check it, but there was always the chance that it was important.
I saw the number and realized it had to be Kelly. I couldn't imagine Debbie calling me on a Saturday night.
"Dad, hi."
"Hey Kelly. What are you up to?"
"BJ and I wanted to check one more time. Neither one of us is out tonight and we wanted to give you one last chance to change your mind and go out tonight for your birthday."
I waited a decent interval to reply and then lied my ass off.
"I'm sorry baby. I know this sounds like an old recording, but I have been hot and heavy on some important cases the last week. I'm in my underwear at the condo watching a movie on television and I'll probably be snoring before 9. I'd fall asleep on you.
"The date's just a number. Give me a couple of weeks and we'll go out and do something special, something you guys will enjoy. Can you give me a raincheck?"
"Okay. I'll find something to do tonight. You get some rest. You've an old man, now you know."
"Don't rub it in. I promise, I'll contact you when the smoke settles and arrange a nice night out."
Something entered my head then and it popped out of my mouth before I had a chance to stop myself. I found myself lowering my voice, even though there was no way Aline could have heard me in the bathroom, over the running water.
"We can all get together. You, your brother, your grandmother and grandfather. Even...tell your mother she's welcome if she wants to come out for dinner with us. Tell her...I promise...truce. We're going to have to learn...to be around each other...someday."
The other words in my head wouldn't come out. It would be the first time in nearly 20 years I had a birthday party where she wasn't. I knew that was the reality of it now, but it suddenly hit me all over again. I was in my apartment with a beautiful naked woman and I was missing my ex-wife.
"I'll tell her, dad. I...think she might like that. Okay, I'll let you go. Get some rest."
I clicked the phone off. And sat on the couch wondering if I was doing the right thing. But we'd have the rest of our lives together. I had less than two weeks with Aline, and it would probably have to last me for the rest of my life.
And how could I leave Aline alone, a secret from my family while I went out for a birthday celebration. On the other hand, how could I introduce Aline to my kids and say, "By the way, kids, this is the married lady that is cheating on her husband with me. She's a really nice lady."
Maybe they could do that in Europe. But not in Jacksonville, Florida. I shook my head just thinking about it.
I yelled at Aline, but she had a small casette player she'd brought with her going in the bathroom with some French pop tune and I was sure she couldn't hear me. I went to the closet, pulled out a nice pair of slacks and a V-necked blue pullover. The Top Floor was expensive, but not formal.
I was slipping some black loafers on when the doorbell rang.
Who the hell would be at my door on a Saturday evening? I wondered if something had happened at the jail with Sutton, or...it could be anything. But the phone hadn't beeped while I was on the phone with Kelly to indicate another call was holding.
The universe did a 180 and I felt like Alice falling through the Looking Glass. I had reached the door and looked through the peep hole.
Even though this wasn't a bad neighborhood, it was still downtown Jacksonville and I wasn't opening the door without knowing what was waiting on the other side. I recognized what I was looking at, but my eyes weren't transmitting the signals to my brain.
Before I could move, a key turned in the lock and I moved backward without thinking as the door opened outward.
"Surprise..."
"Hi, Dad...we...."
"Dad....I thought..."
"Bill, Happy Birthday son..."
They all stared at me in my slacks and pullover and shoes and I stared back.
"Hi....Kelly..BJ....Mom...Charles....Roy?
...Cathy?.....Clarice....Ricky......Amy"
I couldn't believe it but I said, "Debbie??"
I stared at my son and daughter at the front of the parade, followed closely by my mother and my stepfather, my ex-mother and father-in-law, my ex-sister-in-law, her six-year-old daughter Amy and 8-year-old son Ricky, and MY EX WIFE? What Circle of Hell had I been dumped into?
"Dad...what...I thought..."
"Yeah, Dad," Kelly said, "You said you were going to bed. We came by to surprise you and take you out for a cool birthday dinner."
"Yes, son," my mother said, advancing on me like a stalking lioness. "We thought we were going to have to get you dressed and take you out. But it looks like you beat us to it. Where were you going, and why didn't you want us to know about it?"
I didn't realize that she was backing me into my lair until I realized I'd passed beyond the couch and the whole expedition was inside my condo.
"Boy, this place is really small," Ricky said, looking around.
"Sh....baby, no...." Clarice said.
I heard a sound behind me and I realized that my entire life had been building to this moment. The door to the bathroom was turning and as it opened outward I heard a Cranberry's tune we had heard at O'Brien's. When Aline realized how much I loved it, she'd downloaded it.
As the door opened and I spun around in dreamlike slow motion, I heard:
You know I'm such a fool for you
You got me wrapped around your finger
Do you have to let it linger....
She stepped out like Botticelli's painting of Aphrodite rising from the sea, all pink and white and jet black wet hair hanging around her shoulders. With the Cranberries spilling out behind her, she advanced toward me on catlike feet, her attention focused on the pink slit of her shaved pussy which she was holding open with her thumb and index finger.
"Do you like? I thought we might...test it out...before we-"
Only a few times in my life have I seen a person's jaw literally drop. She stared at me and what stood behind me and her voice died away.
"Mommy, that lady doesn't have any clothes on."
It was one of those moments when you can hear the blood pumping through your carotid artery, you can hear the elements inside your apartment's AC system humming, you can hear the individual breaths of a half dozen human beings against a canvas of silence.
And then Aline was scrambling backwards, shifting her hands from her groin to her breasts and back again, gaze flashing from one set of astonished eyes to another as she disappeared into the bathroom whose door slammed shut.
"...do you have to let it linger...."
Somehow the old Vaudeville punchline about "slowly I turned..." rang in my head as I turned to face my parents and children and inlaws and outlaws. I couldn't read Charles' expression, but there was surprise and the beginnings of a small smile on my mother's face; shock and sadness on Cathy Bascomb's face mirrored in her husband and daughter, Clarice.

Ramesh_Rocky · 15-06-2026, 02:50 PM

Kelly had put her fingers to her lips and was looking at me in a way I'd never seen before. I realized she wasn't seeing me as Daddy. She had never seen me with another woman in her entire life. BJ was grinning and mouthed the words silently, "way to go, dad."

I locked eyes with Debbie and couldn't read her at all. All I knew was that seeing her without warning just made me realize all over again how fucking, unfairly beautiful she was.
"Look, I realize you guys were trying to surprise me....."
"And we did," my mother said, throwing a look back over her shoulder at Debbie.
"You did. I'm sorry....you got a big shock....but I did -- we did -- too."
"Who-" began Kelly.
"Just a minute," and I turned my back on them and opened the bathroom door and stepped inside. Aline had her back to me, her panties pulled up and she was vigorously drying her mane of black hair.
"I'm sorry, baby, it's like something out of a bad situation comedy. I had no idea they were coming. They thought they were going to give me a nice surprise."
"Your family," she said, turning to face me. Her entire body was still mottled with red splotches indicating a body-wide blush. "I feel like such an idiot. How can I show my face now?"
I pushed her hands aside, swept her bangs back from her face and kissed her hard.
"You put on that dress, and a bra, and come outside with me. You're a friend of mine from the cruise ship and you're visiting. I don't have anything to apologize for, and neither do you. I'm a grown man, a free man, and you're a grown woman. A beautiful woman. I want to show you off to my family."
She kissed me back, then said, "That's the first time I've seen her in the flesh, Bill. I had no idea -- she's impressive. What is she doing here?"
"I have no damned idea at all. Probably, I'm guessing the kids talked her into it. Something about burying the hatchet. But let her eat her heart out seeing me with you. The bitch deserves that and a lot worse."
I started to open the bathroom door, then added, "And make sure you wear the Fleur de Lis."
When I stepped out the whole crew was crowding into the area between the kitchen and small living room. Debbie was standing between Kelly and BJ at the front.
"Who is she, Dad?" Kelly started again.
"Her name is Aline des-Jardins. She was an officer, a crew member, on the French ship I took that cruise on, the Bonne Chance. We got to know each other on the cruise. She had two weeks off from the ship and she honored me by becoming my guest here."
BJ just grinned and high-fived me. I returned it.
"Why didn't you just tell us you had other plans," my mother said. "It wouldn't have hurt my feelings. We could have gotten together some other time and you'd have been able to spend time with her without...us showing up and trampling all over your apartment."
"I wasn't lying, purposely, Mom. I've been working hard and trying to spend time with Aline. She's only here a short time and I thought it would get...complicated..introducing her and explaining...things. I had no idea everyone would pop in. We were just going to grab a bite to eat and then hit the bed."
Clarice just rolled her eyes when I said that and grinned. I got the impression she was enjoying her sister's discomfort.
"She's....," Debbie spoke for the first time. "She's very beautiful, Bill. I'm glad....you've found a...friend."
"Thank you. Yes, she is very beautiful, and I'm very lucky."
The bathroom door opened and I looked back to see a vision in black step out. She was wearing the classic "little black dress" which looked like it had been painted on her. Even though she was wearing a bra, it didn't look like it. The Fleur-de-Lis looked as big as an orange gleaming in the center of the black dress.
I stepped back and put my arm around her and faced my family.
"Aline, this is my family. This is Debbie, my ex, Kelly, my daughter and BJ, my son. And..."
When I'd finished she stepped away from me and faced them.
"I...wish to apologize.....I...am...embarrassed to have put on such a display..."
My mother stepped around Debbie to take Aline's hand in her own. She looked up at Aline and said, "You have nothing to apologize for. We barged in on you. People that show up where they're not expected can't take offense at what they're not supposed to see."
"Thank you. You should be proud of your son. He is a very well respected litigator. He is the kind of man other attorneys want to be like."
"I am proud of him. And I know that if he likes you, you must be a special woman."
She reached out and touched the Fleur de Lis.
"That is so beautiful."
Aline touched the stone.
"Yes. It will always be very special to me, because it was a gift to me from your son."
"It is very beautiful. They can do wonderful things with costume jewelry. It looks real."
Debbie had stepped to within a foot of Aline. I wasn't holding my breath, but it felt like I should be.
"Yes, they can, but this is real gold and a real diamond. But I would treasure it if it were paste. It is not what it's made of, but what it represents."
"Shipboard romances are sweet. Ephemeral, but sweet. You were together for what, a week? Bill moved very quickly. Bill was a nice man, but he never moved that quickly when we were together. And he was never that dashing."
"Bill is a dashing man, a very...seductive man. Perhaps after a long marriage, you just didn't make him feel that...dashing...anymore."
The two woman, hot and blonde and cool and brunette held each other's eyes, Debbie looking down slightly. She stared at the Fleur de Lis and then looked over Aline's chest.
"I had thought that France was a more advanced nation, more medically and technologically advanced."
Aline just stared back. The question was implicit in her gaze.
"I would have thought that more French women would be aware of, and take advantage of implants where....nature has been...not quite so generous. In today's world, no woman has to remain flat chested."
And she took a deep breath and slowly let those heavy breasts jiggle to drive home her point.
A small smile played on Aline's lips.
"In France women do have implants...where they're needed and wanted. I would have thought, however, that in a country as great as this, more women would be aware of the possibilities of liposuction. After all, today there is no need to have those ugly rolls of fat on the stomach, thighs or the ass."
Her gaze played on Debbie's golden body and then the two women just locked eyes.
There was another lingering silence and then Debbie looked at me and said, "Happy Birthday, Bill. I do hope you have a good time tonight. And, Ms. des-Jardins, I hope you enjoy the remainder of your time in our country."
Looking at Kelly and BJ, she said, "If your father wants to go out tonight, I want you to go and have a good time. I'm just not feeling real well right now. I'm tired and I'm going home to get some sleep."
She shrugged off her mother's attempt to talk to her and just stared at Clarice for a moment, then shook her head, and walked out of my condo. I should have felt better at that moment than I did. I should have felt better than I had in the last five months since I'd first heard that phrase, "when we were married." I had a beautiful woman at my side. I should have felt better than I did.
Life is funny sometimes.

Ramesh_Rocky · 17-06-2026, 02:53 PM

My name is William Maitland. I am, as of today, 42 years old. I have been divorced for nearly 2 months from Debbie, my wife of 18 years and companion of 20, who tore my heart out and cut my balls off when she left me for a 10-year younger stud five months ago

I have moved on, to the extent of starting a hopeless relationship with a beautiful French woman I can never have a future with because she is married to a man who was my friend, and she has a young son she will never leave.
After being ambushed by my entire family at my new downtown Jacksonville condo and having to introduce my friend, Aline to my kids, ex-wife, mother and stepfather and ex-mother and father in law, my ex's beautiful sister and her two small children, we are all getting ready to go out for a big family celebration of my 42nd birthday.
I haven't told anyone and won't that Aline is a married woman who will be going back to her husband -- probably. She may have an open marriage, but it's not anything my family would understand or accept.
And it doesn't matter. Our relationship is ours -- not my mother and stepfather's, and not my kids. I've done something very stupid and it will come back to bite me, but it's my decision.
The only person who isn't going out with us is Debbie. She and Aline had one of those female catfights conducted at a level that males can only realize SOMETHING is going on until somebody's head falls off. There wasn't any blood, but blows were taken and received. And Debbie retreated.
I don't know where she is or what she'll be doing while I'm enjoying the company of my family and Aline. I know she was hurt, at least her pride.
I know she didn't think much of me as a man, and I hadn't given her much of a reason to look back on our last years in the bedroom with much affection. I know she pitied me, compared to her tall, strong young boyfriend with, she said, a much bigger dick than I wield.
And when she saw a naked Aline walking out of our bathroom to give herself to me, when she saw her slim, gorgeous body in a slinky black dress, it was as if I were giving her the finger, figuratively. She couldn't pity me anymore as the hopeless loser who wasn't worthy of her love or her body.
I saw it in her eyes as she left my condo. I had hurt her. Why in the hell she would be hurt like that, I still don't understand. If you don't care for someone anymore, why should you care if they meet somebody else.
Despite everything, I felt sorry for her. How people can shut off loving someone I've never understood.
I could never live with her again. I could never share her bed again. We would never look in each other's eyes at the end of a long day and know without words what the other was thinking.
But how do you tear memories and emotions and a life out of yourself and pretend it was never there? And our two children are a daily reminder that I can't remove what she was to me once upon a time.
But even loving her still, there was a part of me that enjoyed seeing the pain in her eyes. She had never once apologized for falling out of love with me and lusting for a younger man. She had never apologized for taking him into her bed before she even told me she wanted a divorce.
She had said she was sorry she hurt me. But that's not the same thing. And even though it was low of me, I wanted her to know and feel what it was like to be replaced in someone's life. Of course, it wasn't the same. Because when she had dumped me I was desperately in love with her. Now, I was only hurting her pride. But I'd take that.
She needed to be hurt. If there was any cosmic justice, she needed to be hurting even a little bit like she had hurt me.
##################################
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2005 9:30 p.m.
She knocked on the door of the Shire apartments just off Atlantic Boulevard. They were set right along service road that ran alongside the Arlington Expressway. They were built in a faux-Medieval system with corner apartments looking like the rounded towers at the edge of a castle.
He lived in one of the tower apartments. The fact that they were set at ground level instead of 50 feet in the air kind of defeated the image, but he had said he just liked the idea of living in an anachronism. She wondered if he had someone with him. Usually she would have called. But tonight it didn't matter. If he had somebody, he'd have to kick their ass out.
She knocked again, and a third time. His car was in the parking lot. He could have gone out with friends, but she was praying he hadn't. He had to be home.
The door opened and he stood there, dressed in slacks and a white t-shirt. He had a bottle of Bud in his left hand.
He was about to say something when she stepped across the threshhold, put her arms around his neck and pulled him down to plant her lips on his. After a few seconds his lips parted and she darted her tongue inside. She rubbed her breasts against his chest and pushed her groin into him. She felt the hardness between his legs started to grow and she made love to it with her own body.
After a minute he pushed her away gently and held her by the shoulders.
"I know this is a silly question, Deb, but why are you here?"
"Do I need to give you an instruction manual?"
He grinned.
"No, I think I know how to insert Part A into slot B and how it goes from there. But, I didn't know we had a date tonight. Did I do the unforgiveable and forget about a scheduled assignation?"
She kissed him gently this time, reaching up to brush his unruly hair away from his eyes.
"No. This is a spur of the moment booty call, as my kids would say. Do you think you could work me into your busy schedule? You have any women I need to run out of here?"
"No. No women hiding in any corners. Actually, I was working on a freelance magazine article. It's for Parade Magazine. It's due next Friday."
"And I interrupted your work? Do you suppose...."
She knelt and unzipped him. He was already hard and she pulled his Hanes down and was able to move the stiff column of hard male flesh enough to release it. She ran one hand up and down it, rubbing her thumb over the head and feeling the wet pre-cum that was already leaking.
She squeezed it hard enough to make him gasp, then lifted it to allow her tongue to run over his balls and ran her tongue up its lenth until she got to the tip, where she licked and stuck her tongue as far into his pee-hole as she could get it. Then she sucked it like a straw while she jerked.
Finally she pulled her head back and look up at him.
"You taste so damned good, Clint. Is there any way, any way at all, that you would consider putting off your very important freelance article for a few hours? Would you let me jerk your big hard dick until you squirt all your hot white stuff all over my face and titties? And let me get you hard again and convince you to slam it all the way up inside my pussy until you make me scream?"
He took a deep breath and pulled her to her feet.
"Damn, if you weren't a college professor and a professional administrator, Deb, you would have made one hell of a saleswoman. Screw the article."
He swept her into his arms without straining too much and she mentally applauded him. She knew she wasn't a little girl and he wasn't a bodybuilder, but he hoisted her without showing much strain. For a writer, he was pretty buff.
On his bed, which she'd already become familiar with, he threw her down and with a few practiced moves, unbuttoned and slipped her blouse off, then pulled her skirt down. He looked at her naked vagina and grinned.
"Why do I have the impression that you came ready for action, little lady?"
"Why, whatever do you mean, Rhett Butler. Are you prepared to take advantage of little 'ole innocent me?"
He made the classic 'villain twirling his mustache' gesture and slipped his slacks off. His cock was standing straight, hard and proud. She felt herself beginning to get even wetter.
"Actually that was my plan, if you see anything you like."
"Umm....yes, actually I do. Would I lower myself in your estimation if I told you that I find mens' cocks beautiful. Yours very beautiful."
He sat down beside her and ran one finger lightly down the side of her thigh, his fingers running close to the opening of her femininity.
"Really? I mean, I know women like what we do with them. But I've never quite heard a woman call them beautiful."
She rolled toward him and closed her fingers lightly about him, moving it up and down so softly as if she were afraid of hurting him.
"They are beautiful, Clint. I ..you know...I was kind of wild when I was younger. I've seen and rubbed and sucked big one and littles one and thin ones and ones with a kind of kink. Circumcized and uncircumsized. I've watched pornos. Everybody watches pornos nowdays, you know. Even Bill....and I...we watched them sometimes to make it hotter for us.
"And a hard cock....God.....its strength. Men are hard and angular and women are soft and round. And the cock is where you're the hardest. It's like living rock, soft, pulsing. Those strong lines. I wish I were an artist sometimes. I'd specialize in beautiful strong, long, straight cocks."
He rolled toward her and slipped his fingers into her pussy and felt them sink in. She was so wet he went in with no effort; He lowered his mouth to one heavy breast and licked the pebbly aurealea. As he did she sucked her breath in. He already knew she was one of those women with a direct line from her breasts to her pussy. If you could suck her, she'd spread her legs and be ready.
But somehow, she managed to bring her hands up under his chin and she pushed him away. He looked at her in confusion.
"You can have me, Clint. All night. But first..."
"What? You want me to do a handstand, pound some nails into a board with my dick. Jesus, just tell me..."
She rolled toward him and he couldn't read her eyes. It had happened before. Even though he knew better, it was too easy to fall into the trap of thinking she was just a big tittied bimbo. But she was a lot more than that, and if she let you treat her like a fuck toy, it was because she wanted to be treated that way.
"Tell me I'm beautiful."
He looked her, curious.
"What? Why?"
"Don't ask, Clint. Just tell me. Use words to make me wet. I know you can do it with your body. Make me believe that I'm beautiful, for a few hours anyway."
He knew then, but it wouldn't do any good to talk about it, now.
He lifted himself up on an elbow and looked at the golden body lying next to him.
"Alright, Ms. Bascomb. I could with Biblical allusions from the Song of Solomon, but how about this. You are a walking wet dream. When you walked into my office that first day I took one look at you and knew that if I had to crawl across broken glass to get into that hot pussy, I'd do it.
"You are every horny teenage boy's dream of a blonde with huge tits and big nipples and a great ass. I can't see you in clothes without thinking of what you look like under those clothes. I want to stroke those huge soft breasts, to sink my fingers into them, to suck on like a baby on the teat.
"I want to spread your legs and dive in to that wet pussy that's gleaming at me. I can't be around you and not envision myself sinking all the way in. I think about the way those breasts look like when they're wrapped around my cock and I'm sliding it back and forth.
"I can be sitting here sometimes, alone, and I think of you and the way you look naked on my bed and I can't help pulling my dick out and jerking until I come all over myself. I haven't done that in years. But you bring that out in me.
"It's like the old joke about Marilyn Monroe. Some critic said she just appealed to 13 year-old boys and the rejoinder was, yes, but around her, every man is a 13-year-old boy."
He leaned over and placed his hand at the base of one large breast and pulled it up, running his fingers over the yielding flesh until he captured the nipple and tugged and pulled until she gasped.
"But it's not just sex, Debbie. Your smile lights up this room. If I knew I could never have you, that smile would make me want to be your champion. It's the lips and the eyes and those cheekbones. I want to be a hero for you, to be better than I am. I know that's what other men feel for you. It's the reason why guys fall all over themselves to do whatever you ask.
"Even if they're old or young or fat and know they'll never in this lifetime have you. They want you to smile upon them.
"And I know that's what Bill felt like that night..."
She grabbed his hand, held it tight and raised herself up to catch his lips with her own.
"No, don't mention his name, Clint. I don't want him here. He's not part of my-"
He shut her up and rolled onto her, sliding his cock deep inside her in one fluid motion so that she gasped into his mouth but couldn't make a sound.
His cock slammed in as far as it would go, so hard it bruised her, but she pushed herself up to him to take even more of him inside her. She wrapped her legs around him to keep him as deep as she could, only allowing him to pull back and then ram it home again.
He ran his lips down from hers nipping her neck and then fastened on her right nipple, sucking and then pulling it up with her teeth hard enough to make her wince. But it just made her wetter. He'd already discovered that she liked a little bit of pain. Sucking hard made her moan inside her throat and start to scratch his back.
She wanted him to hammer her hard, the way Doug had, the way---no no no and she pulled her mind from the past and concentrated on the feel of him inside her, the way he played her, using her breasts and lips and pussy and ass, kneading and stroking and pulling and hammering and driving any thought but the moment out of her mind.
And then she felt him speeding up and she exploded around him and still the hard ram inside her hammered and she came again and she felt him almost there and she scratched his back and screamed and felt him pouring into her one molten blast after another and she came again.
He fell backwards, and she felt his still hard cock sliding out of her and she felt empty.
She rolled onto her stomach and found his cock and licked it, then shimmied up the bed until her breasts were over his face. She smothered him and grinned as he licked and then sucked as much as he could of the left and then the right in his mouth.
"Does baby like that?" she said in a teasing tone. She lifted herself lightly and batted them across her face.
He sounded winded but, "God yes, just let me lay here and suck for a while till I get my strength back. I'm not 20 anymore."
She pulled her breasts out of his reach and then began to give him what Bill-fuck shit fuck why did he keep sticking himself back into her memories --what the bastard had called a titty rub. She slid the heavy melons that sometimes gave backaches but were worth it up and down his chest and over his arms and back up to where he could nip them with his teeth and then down around his groin.
She sucked him first and then enveloped him with her breasts, rubbing them up and down and using her hands to press them in and, not surprisingly, in a few minutes she felt the steel beginning to return and he started to rise again.
"Ohhhhhh...."
"You like that huh...you like having those big heavy titties loving your dick....don't lie I can tell.....let's see if you like this," and she captured him in her mouth, sucked, then let him go and caressed him again. She sucked and rubbed and massaged and in minutes he was thrusting up to meet her mouth.
Then she stopped and keep his quivering cock motionless a few inches away from her hot wet mouth and looked up at him to ask, "Do you want to fuck me again, Clint...or would you like to cum like this?"
He answered her by grabbing her head and pulling her mouth onto him and he hadn't thrust more than two or three times until he was squirting into her mouth. She continued to titty rub him until the squirting stopped. He didn't have much, but hell, like he'd said, he wasn't' 20 anymore.
She kept her head in his lap while she licked him clean and rolled it around her mouth before swallowing. As she'd told Teller, she knew the taste of a man's semen. As a young girl she'd hated it. It didn't taste like anything else she'd ever tasted. But, now...hell if you could learn to like oysters you could learn to like almost anything.
She waited until she thought she'd swallowed it all before moving up to lay her head against his chest. Most guys, no matter how nice they were trying to be, just didn't like tasting their own cum. They didn't mind licking pussy, but their own...probably some hangup about having homoerotic tendencies. She still didn't understand, but when a guy made her feel this good, why force him to do something that really turned him off.
They lay like that for awhile until they were both breathing normally and then Clint slid her off him and asked, "You want a beer? Wine? I got coffee and some Danish in the kitchen in case you worked up an appetite."
"Coffee would be good. No Danish. Got to watch the figure."
"Can I watch it for you?"
She pretended to slap at him. A few minutes later they were sitting up in his bed naked, drinking hot coffee carefully. Clint was demolishing two frosted slices of Cheese Danish.
They'd been talking about nothing in particular when Clint said, "So what did Bill do this time?"
"Don't Clint...don't go there."
"I keep telling you, it's alright Debbie. You were married until a few months ago. It takes a couple of years for most people to get their heads screwed on right. I was in love with my wife for five years after she died and she was a cheating lying bitch."
"Just like me...that's what you're thinking, isn't it," she said, turning away from him to put her coffee on the side table and thought maybe this was a mistake.
He was able to grab her shoulder before she got off the bed and pulled her back to him. She wouldn't face him but she didn't try to pull away.
"That's what you see yourself as, isn't it? Yeah, you made mistakes. But most of the time it takes two people to kill a marriage. Bill is a good guy, but from what you've said, he wasn't the best husband in the world. Even if it was 100 percent your fault, you two are done now. You've got a new job, you're seeing at least one nice guy and if Bill hasn't found somebody, he will.
"He's not that old, even if he thinks he is, he's a powerful man in an important job and he's started getting famous. Trust me, women willl be stalking him."
He was silent for a moment then put his hands on her shoulders.
"He has, hasn't he? That's why you came here tonight. I'm hurt. I thought you were lusting for my body. This was a revenge fuck. Even if he doesn't know about it, you're giving another man what used to be his."
"Her name is Aline....Aline for God's sake. Who's named Aline? And she's a fucking stewardess. Oh she works on a cruise ship, but it's the same damned thing. Coffee, tea or me. And in his case, she gave him HER."
Clint's voice was gentle.
"You had Doug. You've got me. And...I don't know...maybe other boyfriends. He's got one woman. Why does it bother you so much?"

Ramesh_Rocky · 17-06-2026, 02:55 PM

"It's just you, Clint. No one night stands, no pulling some young stud lawyer's pants down and sucking him off, no zipless fucks. Just you. You believe me?"

"If you say so, Deb, I believe you. We're not married. You've got no reason to lie."
"I think...the gossip is...he's probably had other women. I'm not surprised. Since he started getting into shape, got that new look, I knew he'd find somebody. But why her?"
"What is so special about this Aline?"
"Because," and she took a deep breath to avoid screaming, "because she's beautiful and French and she's a fucking bone and standing next to her I felt like a 400 pound hippo. She doesn't have any tits, but what she's got looks good. Shit, I felt fat, and old next to her. And she LOOKS at me like I'm fat and old."
She turned to look at him.
"Women don't look at me that way, Clint. They're jealous, they're contemptuous because they think I'm a slut and a threat to steal their husbands or boyfriends, but not like....I didn't....I didn't....threaten her. She thought she was hotter than I am...and the bitch rubbed it in that she had Bill now.
"She walked out in front of my whole familly, my parents, our children flat naked, rubbing her pussy. The only way she could have made it more obvious is if she'd thrown Bill down and started fucking him."
Clint shook his head.
"She walked out in front of your whole family naked?"
"Long story. They pretended it was an accident. But I know the bitch planned it. Not a fucking ounce of fat on her. Every guy in the room got hardons, I know it. And what could I say? Everybody knows about me and Doug. I had to swallow any comment I could have made about her being a cheating fucking slut tramp."
"Okay, I can see that would be...traumatic. But, still, you knew he was going to find somebody. He found a beautiful woman. He did it before. What's so different about this?"
She leaned into him and nestled her head against his neck and shoulder. He couldn't' see her eyes.
"I....this sounds crazy....I know it does. But....it was the WAY he looked at her."
"How?"
"I know that look, Clint. It was the way he looked at me. Even....even after things blew up, when he was hurting, I knew when he looked at me he still loved me. He was looking at her that way. And it drove me crazy."
He felt moisture on his neck and realized she was crying.
"What kind of terrible fucking monster am I? I didn't love him and I went to another man and I enjoyed the fact that the man I'd thrown away was still hung up on me and now when I can see that he cares for somebody else, it's killing me."
He held her until the tears stopped and then pushed her away. He wiped the tears away.
"You're a human being, Deb. You're a gorgeous, big breasted walking wet dream, but you're still just a human being. You did what you thought was right at the time. And now you're having second thoughts."
"No-"
"Yes, you're having second thoughts. I don't mean you're going to go back to him, but I told you before I thought you moved too fast.
"You took up with another man before you straightened things out with Bill. You probably, in a perfect world, should have filed for divorce or got a separation, maybe went in for counseling. That way if it fell apart you could have had Doug or anybody else you wanted.
"And now....you've got issues. And it might be too late to do anything about them."
"Might be? MIGHT BE? Christ, no way will we get back together. I -- there are things I'm trying to get straight in my head, but he still makes me see red sometimes. And -- he would never be interested in me again. Don't ask. He just never will be. And anyway...how long did it take you to get over your cheating wife?"
She sat back and looked into his eyes and saw the answer to her question.
"Oh yeah, she died 20 years ago and you never re-married. Have you even been serious about another woman? Talk about being hung up on somebody."
###################
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2005 5 p.m.
We stopped at The Columbia on A1A south of St. Augustine. I've always loved their paella and found out that Aline loved it as well.
"I was raised in a little town near Marseilles," she told me. "Just the smell of paella de marisco gets my mouth watering."
"They serve a good seafood paella here. And I love their Sangria. I'll order a pitcher of the real stuff and a couple of glasses of virgin for me because I can't afford any tickets for drunk driving."
She leaned into me and said, "Are you trying to get me drunk?"
"Well, it wouldn't be a bad idea."
"Why? You're going to get lucky whether I'm drunk or sober."
"I love easy women."
"Don't get me started sailor, or I'll turn us around and take advantage of you in your car in this parking lot, Unless you can find a spot on the Beach."
I looked at her. She was dressed in a blue skirt and a gold v-necked top that showed the curves of her breasts but not much more. She was slender and casual and I wondered for the thousandth time how in the hell I'd wound up with her. It was only luck and chance that led me to Debbie's bed, and again it was only the wildest coincidence that led Aline to me.
I don't know if somebody up there likes me, or hates me with a passion.
We ate two plates of paella and it was as good as I remembered it. It had been a couple of years since I'd been here. As usual, Debbie had insisted on the paella with chicken and pork. For an intelligent woman, she was as traditional in her tastes and unwilling to experiment as any Southern mom whose tastes were limited to pork, chicken and mashed potatoes.
Or maybe our differing culinary tastes were just another indication of the chasm that had been growing between us that finally led to our divorce.
Aline polished off at least a half a pitcher of hard Sangria and was laughing and clinging to me as we walked out the door. It was nearly 9:30 p.m. and I figured we'd just head back to the condo and try to find at least one room we hadn't already christened. We'd done the bathroom, the tiny living room, the kitchen/dining room. Come to think of it, there wasn't anyplace else to christen.
As we walked across the small parking lot to where my Escalade was parked, her cell phone began to trill the "Marseillaise", the French national anthem. We both stopped and looked at it at the same time. I didn't have to look at the number. She hadn't received a call since she'd gotten to Jacksonville. I didn't know of anyone, other than the obvious suspect, who would be calling her.
She gave me a look and punched the button to answer the call. At least she didn't turn away from me to talk to him.
There was a rapid stream of French that I could barely follow. All I knew was she had said "hello" in French. Philippe of course sounded the same in any language. There were questions and she responded in rapid French. There was a smile that broke my heart and more French. Then a pregnant pause and "Jacksonville" and "Bill Maitland."
The conversation proceeded for a little while and then she handed me the phone.
As she did so she mouthed the words, "He knows." I didn't know how much he knew, so I assumed he simply knew that Aline was vacationing in Jacksonville and I was showing her around. It had been stupid to assume he didn't keep some kind of eye on where and what his wife did. That was the way I'd play it.
"Hello, my friend."
"Hello, Philippe. How have you been?"
"You know how it goes," he said in almost perfectly unaccented English. "Evil never rests. Of course, the Angel of Death must be aware of the depths to which men can sink."
"I'm famous over there?"
He laughed, that deep rich chuckle that reminded me of the nights we had gone drinking and he had flirted with three or four women, at least a couple of whom I had no doubt he'd be fucking after he left me.
"You're famous everywhere, Bill. With the Internet, anything is possible. I've read of the 'Killer Granny' case. That was a bold stroke on your part. I would have bet against your winning. But, I thought when you were here with us that you are a man it's not safe to bet against."
"It's all PR Philippe. Just a matter of luck and timing. I'm the same guy I was when I was a grunt prosecutor hitting the dives with you and your Gendarme friends."
He laughed again.
"We had some good times. I am sorry our paths never crossed again."
"So am I, Philippe. I appreciated your sending me the followup. It took you a solid year, but you did nail those bastards. Too bad that the head man chose to shoot it out rather than face trial."
"It was actually rather fortunate. You and I both know it would have been hard to get a conviction. There were too many layers between him and the slavers. He saved the state a great amount by taking a bullet to the brain rather than wasting the time of many good men and women."
I had no doubt then and I had no doubt now that the rich man who profited off the sale and use of '. teenage girls hadn't put a bullet into his brain voluntarily. Philippe had never admitted in his file which he'd emailed me that he had had the man murdered, but he made it clear when you read between the lines.
And I knew from hints that cops and thugs both dropped in Parisian dives that, like me, Philippe was owed favors by some of the worst of the worst, and I had the feeling that he had called in at least some of those favors over the years.
"When Aline decided to wait until I brought Andre back to Paris, I had assumed she would stay with the Bonne Chance or stay in Miami," he continued in a friendly voice. "But friends told me she had left the ship. Imagine my surprise when I learned she was staying in Jacksonville, the stomping grounds of my old American friend."
I didn't say anything.
"I haven't been keeping up on your activities,, but when I learned that Aline was in Jacksonville I thought of you and made some calls. I learned of your -- troubles. I was very sorry to hear about the end of your marriage. I remember the photo you showed me of your Debbie. A very beautiful woman."
I didn't say anything.
"I know that you loved her very much. It was evident in every conversation we had about your life in America. You remember that second night we went to that bar near the Seine? Lilly, the bartender, was taken with you. She was always strange for Americans. Must be the accent. She practically threw herself under you, but you never took the bait."
He laughed that laugh again.
"She was very upset with you when I talked to her later that morning. You hurt her feelings. I explained to her that you loved your wife and Americans take a different view of recreational sex than we French. You have a -- stricter -- view than most French."
"I was in a bad place when I met Aline, Philippe. If she didn't tell you, I was close to being suicidal. Debbie tore my heart and my balls out when she left me. My time on the Bonne Chance and Aline's friendship helped me take my life back. I can never express my gratitude to her. You are a luckier man than you know to have her in your life."
"I know I am, my friend. It never hurts to be reminded though. A married man sometimes forgets what he has, until he sees it through someone else's eyes. She is very fond of you, you know."
"I hope so."
"No, truly. When I asked her just now, she told me of how you had met on the Bonne Chance and that you had volunteered to show her around your city. She said you have been very gracious with your time, taking her to restaurants and seeing that she has not been bored. I would have expected no less of you, my friend, but I am grateful."
"It's been my pleasure, Philippe. I can honestly say I've enjoyed every minute I've spent with her. And since my divorce, I have the time to show her my home town."
"You have my thanks, Bill. When you're separated as much as we are by our professions, you can worry. It can be hard to keep a marriage alive. When she is with you, I can rest assured that she is safe. And that you would not do anything to jeopardize our friendship because you are not that kind of man."
"You know I consider you a friend, Philippe. And I would treat your marriage with the same honor and fidelity that I know you have shown it."
This time there was a long silence on his end of the line. Finally he said, "I am back in Paris now with our son, Bill. I am looking forward to Aline's return. I have missed her, in my life and in my bed.
"I only hope that someday in the near future you can come visit us in Paris. You have never seen the two of us together. I don't know if we have a marriage to equal the one you had with your Debbie, but I would like to show you what our marriage is like, what we are like together."
"I hope you have a better marriage than Debbie and I had, and I hope yours lasts longer than ours."
"Can I speak to Aline again, Bill? I wish you good fortune if we do not speak again."
"And you also, Philippe. Here she is."
I handed the phone back to her
Her face was white in the moonlight as she brought the phone to her ear. I heard the whisper of voices in the darkness and then she said, "Andre..."
Her face was lit with a smile as tears rolled down her face. Finally she said, "Je t'aimerai toujours, Andre."
The tears stopped as she spoke for a little while longer to Philippe and finally, "'Je T'aime. Au revoir."
As she clicked off the hand holding the phone dropped to her side. She looked across A1A toward the sound of the rolling surf and swayed. I stepped in behind her and put my arms around her. I could feel the silent sobs she fought to hold in. I didn't say anything because I didn't know what I could say.
We walked to the car in silence and drove home to my condo without saying a word to each other. In bed she grabbed me hard and burrowed her head into my chest, wetting my chest with her tears. We didn't have sex, merely held each other until her breathing slowed into the natural rhythm of sleep. I stared at the ceiling until dawn.
##################
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2005 -- 3 p.m.
I walked into Sheriff Knight's office. Knight was a relatively tall, maybe 6 foot 1, sandy haired 50-ish cop who'd managed to stay trim and fit. He was a good looking guy except for a bad case of acne he must have gotten as a teenager that had left his face pocked.
In his case, it made him more of a regular guy type, which he had used in his campaign to succeed the Old Sheriff as everybody had called the guy who ran the department for 20 years prior. We'd always gotten along and I'd tried to stay on his good side. I didn't think I'd manage to do that today.
He got up from behind his desk and came around to shake my hand.
"Hi, Bill. I appreciate your taking time out of your busy schedule to come have a talk."
I smiled at him and said, "Why do I think there's a little barb stuck in there, Sheriff. Anyway, you know I'm never to busy to talk to the head law enforcement officer in this county."
He laughed and said, "I'd better roll my pants up beause the shit is getting really deep. And here I'd heard you weren't a diplomatic type."
I smiled at him and said, "Not a matter of being diplomatic. You're a very important man in this community. We don't get much done without your active cooperation. I'm always glad to meet with you or anybody in your department. We're both on the same side."
"Most of the time."
"I thought it was all of the time, Sheriff. What do you have in mind?"
"You know what I'm talking about, Bill. Shawn Smith."
"We both have the same objective there. We want to make sure that security officer officers obey the same laws and are judged by the same standards as any other person involved in an incident in which people lose their lives."
He leaned back against his desk.
"God, sometimes I think you attorneys are some alien breed that was dropped on the earth, because you are definitely not real people. How do you manage to say something that sounds so logical and is full of horseshit at the same time?"
"Not sure I follow you, Sheriff Knight."
"That sounds good, Bill. security officer officers should be judged by the same standard as everyone else. Of course you and I know that's a crock of shit. Every cop is judged by a much higher standard than anyone not wearing a badge. My men have to make split second decisions involving life and death and then weeks or months later guys in suits that have never had a gun pointed at them decide if they made the right decision."
"That's why we pay security officer officers well and give them great retirements and look the other way at a lot of shit they do that would get someone not wearing a badge jail time."
I sat down in one of the chairs facing his desk and cross my legs and leaned back.
"Don't try to paint me as a cop hater, Sheriff. You've worked with me since you got into office. I've always backed your guys. You won't find a stronger backer of security officer than me in my office. Because I know how important your men are. It doesn't matter how good we are at putting away bad guys. Your guys have to catch them first and hopefully save innocent victims from assault or bang or murder at the same time.
"But...."
"Shawn Smith is a good man and an exemplary officer. He hasn't deserved to be hung out to dry all these months. He was allowed to come back to work, but without a clearance those vulture asshole attorneys representing the Roper families and children and trying to get his scalp.
"And everybody he works with knows he could still go down. Other officers are afraid to get too close to him for fear that it will be catching."
"Sheriff, I know he's a good cop. Unfortunately, he's a good cop who lost it and shot a man in the back and planted a gun on him to try to get away with murder. Or at least manslaughter."
Knight just shook his head and walked back behind his desk and stood there looking at me.
"You really believe that?"
"Yeah, unfortunately I do."
"Those guys could have picked up that gun from anywhere. It was in the seat of the truck where Artie Roper was headed when Smith shot him. Just because we can't prove that any of the three Ropers bought or got the gun doesn't prove they didn't place it there.
"You know as well as I that there's a river of cheap, untraceable guns flowing through this city, through any American city. The Ropers could have brought the gun."
"And Artie Roper walks with his two brothers armed with only clubs into the house of an armed cop and leaves the gun behind the cab of his truck? I know all three of them were pretty stupid. But you believe anybody is that stupid?"
"Don't ask me how stupid criminals are. I could keep you entertained for hours talking about the stupid crooks I've run into in 20 years in this job. They're not geniuses.
"Anyway, I'll agree that the Ropers weren't homicidal killers. I believe they intended to break into the house while Smith was asleep or groggy, get to him before he could grab a gun and beat the shit out of him. He was a black man sleeping with and stealing a white man's wife.
"I don't think they intended to shoot him in cold blood. But, I think the Ropers must have brought the gun along just in case. And when Smith fought back and started shooting, Artie lost his nerve and was running for the truck.
"Smith followed him out. He had no way of knowing what the Ropers had out there. And I wouldn't expect him, after three men burst into his house in the middle of the night, to just stand there and let Artie get to this truck and maybe start shooting.
"Cops aren't trained to let themselves be used as target practice by criminals. You honestly believe you're in danger, you shoot to kill. That's what I'd do. That old saying is true; better to be tried by 12 than carried to your grave by six."
"I understand where you're coming from, Sheriff. And you might be right. But I might be right. And I owe it to Art Roper and the taxpayers of this city not to sweep this under the rug. I'm going to take Smith and the shooting to the grand jury and let them hear the evidence and let them decide if there's enough to take him to trial. I'm not going to make the decision myself."

Ramesh_Rocky · 17-06-2026, 03:04 PM

For the first time Knight let his anger show.

"Bullshit, Maitland. Bullshit . And you know it is. You are going to play that damned grand jury like a grand piano. A good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict Mother Teresa if you want her scalp. Grand jurors are sheep. So spare me that crap about grand jurors being independent evaluators. YOU want to bring Smith to trial, and before you're through he's going to be railroaded to Raiford."
"You're wrong, Sheriff."
"The worst part is that you know how this is going to end up. At best, he'll be in solitary for his own protection for the next five or ten years and if he gets out he'll be a broken man.
"But he won't get out. Prisoners don't like cops. He won't make it. They'll either gang bang him, or gang bang him and then plant a sharpened screwdriver up his ass or in his eye. You take him to a jury, and you're killing him."
The more he spoke the louder he had gotten until he was almost shouting at the end. I kept my voice purposely calm and low key.
"I don't deny that if he's convicted, he'll have a rough road. But it's not an automatic death sentence. And Art Roper won't be getting any second chances. I happen to believe in jurors, Sheriff. They usually come out with the right decision. Not always, but most of the time. And I don't have super powers. They could just as easily acquit him, let him walk away."
He looked at me again and then shook his head.
"I told him he was a stupid bastard to brace you in that sandwich shop. He's sure that's why you're going to go after him. It was a stupid thing to bring your wife -- your ex-wife -- into it and he knows it. Everybody around the courthouse knows that's a sore subject. If I was you, and I lost a woman like that, I'd be walking around pissed all the time too.
"But insulting you and hitting you in a sore spot, is not reason enough to ruin a man's life. I'm asking you as one professional to another, one man to another, don't take out your anger on Shawn for something he had nothing to do with. He's not Doug Baker."
I stood up.
"Whether you or he believe it or not, his comments in the shop have nothing to do with my taking the case to the Grand Jury. Or at least, I'm not doing it because he got me angry. I've been putting this off for way too long, Sheriff. I haven't been doing him any favors by letting this drag out. We need to get closure on this. That's why I'm taking the case to the grand jury in about two weeks."
Knight just stared at me and his hands closed into fists.
"You son of a bitch. And I thought you were a good guy."
"I am."
"If you do this, Maitland, your name is going to be shit with every officer in this county. No more rounding your drunk ass up and seeing you get home. You step out of one line fucking time and I'll make sure you wind up behind bars. See how you like it when we toss you in with the animals and tell them who they're bunking with."
I shrugged and started walking toward the door.
"I guess I'll have to lead a perfect life then, Sheriff. It'll help knowing you're looking over my shoulder."
"I'm calling Edwards. You may think you're God, but you're just a goddamned flunky. He won't let you do this, not when he knows what's riding on it."
"Talk to him all you want. But if I was you, I'd tell Shawn to get the best criminal attorney he can find in the next couple of weeks. He'll need a good one."
As I walked out I thought that I probably wouldn't get my yearly Christmas bottle of expensive Scotch from the Sheriff this year.
########################
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2005 -- 11a.m.
Myra looked up at me curiously as I stopped at her desk. She wore a dress with a slight scoop neckline that would have been demure on most women. In her case it looked like a sack of volleyballs was rolling around trying to escape out through the top.
"I won't ask you what's going on, Bill. But, I don't know that I've ever seen him this angry."
The last was more of a question than a comment and I appreciated the delicacy of her probing.
"I'm afraid this is where the rubber meets the road, sweetheart."
Her look said it all. I couldn't really explain.
"When I come back out, Myra, I'll know if I still have a job here."
She looked stunned.
"Wha...t? Bill-Mr. Maitland. You're not...resigning...are you? This place wouldn't be the same without you."
"No. He'll have to make that decision."
I reached out and took one of her slim hands in mine.
"If things go south, and sour, really bad and it gets hectic and I don't have a chance to talk to you again..."
I looked into those green eyes and let my gaze wander down the hills and valleys of that incredible body that I had passed on for a woman that was almost certainly going to leave me.
"I want you to know, Myra, that it's been a pleasure working with you. You're smart and competent and entirely too nice for any woman with a face and body like yours. I never said it, but I have lusted for you every day for five years, whether I saw you or not, and if I hadn't been married and in love with my wife I would have hit on you every single day.
"And I know that God has a sense of humor because after lusting for you helplessly for five years, I'm finally free of that bitch I was married to and I find myself in love with somebody else. Life isn't fair."
She took her hand and ran her thumb gently up and down the inside of my palm. I was reminded of the old joke about how Martians make love. Her touch was hotter than most blow jobs.
"I know this is serious, Bill, because you talk like you're dying, like you'll never see me again. But..just remember..whatever happens...you may not be here, but I'll still be here. For when you finally are out of love with somebody else."
I squeezed her hand, said, "Wish me luck," and walked in to see which direction my life was likely to go in from this day forward.
Edwards was sitting back in his chair. Unlike most times, he didn't get up to shake my hand. He just stared at me. For most SAs summoned to his office, I imagine it would be an intimidating stare. But I had known him too long and we had a different relationship. And maybe I just didn't give a damn anymore.
"Good morning, Bill."
"I hope so."
"That's entirely up to you."
"No really, it's up to you. How about not dancing around this thing. What did you want to talk about."
"Okay, straight to it. Good. Knight is so fucking angry he's about to stroke out over the way you've been jerking Shawn Smith around."
"I'm sorry the Sheriff is upset. Is that all we had to talk about?"
"Bill, Knight is one of the most even tempered, easy-going guys you'll ever run into. And you know it. But he said he called you in the other day to get a handle on when you're going to give Smith a clearance on the shooting and you told him you were going to take Smith before the Grand Jury and try to prosecute him for murder."
"That's right. That's what I told him."
"And when were you planning on letting me into your confidence about all this? I thought we had an understanding that eventually you were going to clear him, let him go back to his life and let this mess die down."
"Actually, Austin, we never had that understanding. I know that's what you wanted. You've hinted about it, but you never flat out said that I had to clear him. I thought you wanted me to treat this case like all the others and use my best judgment."
"I do. But I don't understand why you decided to crucify this guy. It's true I want him cleared. The security officer Union and 99 percent of the county's cops want him cleared. The NAACP and at least two other black groups are ready to go on the warpath about another black man railroaded by white southern justice if he isn't turned loose."
He leaned forward and steepled his fingers in front of him. He reminded me of an ash blond Gregory Peck from "To Kill A Mockinbird." He had a high forehead, dark brown eyes, straight nose, strong chin. It doesn't hurt in today's media environment to be good looking, and Edwards was.
His hair had turned almost white, but in a relatively unlined face it didn't make him look as old as he really was. It just made him look more distinguished, the way Governors and Senators and -- if you could dream that high -- Presidents ought to look.
His smile was his fortune though. He wasn't smiling now, but when he unleashed that wattage, it made every person watching him on television or in a crowd he was addressing think that this was a good guy to go out for a couple of beers with, or women started fantasizing about what that still lean 6-foot-4 body looked like under the clothes. Whatever charisma, or 'it' was, he had it.
"You and I both know that if this blows up and he gets convicted and maybe dies in prison, the blacks will never forget or forgive me, and every cop and Highway Patrolman in the state will do their best to screw me over. This will still be hot and fresh in everybody's mind next Fall when the Governor's race rolls around.
"I'm running -- or will be running -- as a conservative, law and order candicate, but I've always good relations with the blacks and Hispanics. It's a perfect combo.
"But how can I do that next year if every major black organization in the state is calling me a corrupt racist and cops are saying I hate security officer and want to punish a cop for protecting himself and his -- fiancee -- from home invaders.
"The cops are going to kill me with the average white law and order voter, and the blacks are going to kill me with every minority. What the hell does that leave me with as a voter base?
"And I ask myself, why have I been busting my ass for the last ten years hustling money for Republican candidates, making myself sick choking down overcooked chicken and steak at political functions, spending days and weeks away from my wife to earn political credits.
"What does it matter if the guy that I trusted to help push me over the line screws me royally right at end, just as I get to the finish line for the 2006 race."
He was really trying to be calm, but the anger was flooding out at the end of his comments.
I didn't say anything. Let him get it out.
"I thought we were friends, Bill, in addition to being co-workers and committed to the same thing, which is justice. We've talked enough, you know who I am. I've got an ego, you don't get into public life without one. But I really do think I can do some good in T,.'assee.
"I'm honest, and I have ideas on how the state could be a better place to live in for everybody. The prison system is a horror and we're losing kids every day that could be saved. Our drug policy is medieval and because I am a law and order candidate, I can do things to make our drug policy sane that no liberal could ever get away with.
"I've got ideas on how to make our colleges better, how to make the state cleaner without driving away business. I think I could do a lot, Bill, but I can't do anything if I can't get elected. And you're going to drive a stake through the heart of my election chances if you prosecute Smith."
We just looked at each other for a few seconds.
"I agree that you'd be a good governor, Austin. We've talked enough, and I know you're a good enough politician that you could do a lot of good in the Governor's mansion. But, what are you prepared to pay to do all that good?"
"I don't understand."
"Suppose I had somebody bring in Doug Baker, the fucker that stole my wife away from me and ruined my marriage and my life. And I had him kneel down in front of this desk and I put a .45 to his head and told you that if you let me blow his brains out, I'd move heaven and earth to get you into the Governor's chair. And only you and I would ever know that Doug Baker was the price you had to pay. Could you do it?"
"You're not making sense, Bill. What does that have to do with Shawn Smith?"
"You know that two of the men -- Alan and Arnold Roper - who broke into Smith's house while he was there with his fiancee, who happened to be married to Arnold Roper at the time, , were shot inside the house.
"Smith could claim self defense for killing Alan and Arnold. But Art -- Arthur -- Roper, the other brother, was shot in the back trying to get to his truck. You and I both know Smith used a throw-down gun to shoot an unarmed man in the back."
"You 'think' he used a throw-down gun. You can't prove that."
"True, but I've got enough evidence to convince any jury that Art didn't use guns, he didn't have one before that day, and Art's brothers didn't use guns. They had a tire-iron, a baseball bat, and a billy club bought at a used security officer equipment online site. Nothing else that anyone knows about.
"I looked into Art's background. He was a high college dropout, been through dozens of temp jobs, usually getting fired. He had dozens of misdemeanor arrests, usually drunkness, getting into fights, dealing in stolen property. One felony involving an attempted robbery of a liquor store down on 8th Street where he was a lookout. He didn't carry.
"So, he was pretty much white trash, a loser. He'd never been married. But, he did have two illegitimate children, one an eight-year-old boy named Pete and a five-year-old daughter named Melanie, all by an old girlfriend named Lawanna Salyers.
"She's been with about six men since Art. They've gotten back together and split a dozen times in the last ten years. He couldn't keep from hitting her when he drank and she couldn't keep her legs together around strange men when she drank.
"She told me when I interviewed her that she knew she'd never be able to make it for long with Art, but the one good thing about him was that he loved his kids. He couldn't always make child support, but he gave them every spare dollar he got. He saw them on their birthdays and Christmas. They named the boy Pete after Art's grandfather."
I looked at my boss and saw that he got it.
"Art Roper had as much right to life as Doug Baker, or you, or me. He should have gotten jail time or prison time for taking part in a home invasion. But he didn't try to kill Smith. He was running for his life when Smith executed him.
"That's why I'm going to take Smith to the grand jury and let them decide if he should go to trial. There are questionable elements, but Art Roper deserves a grand jury hearing."
I stopped and looked around his office, at all the photos of Edwards and state and national politicians, the plaques and trophies. He wasn't just a figurehead. He was a good man. But even good men can be wrong.
"Art wasn't Doug Baker. But he was murdered. Are you prepared to let Art Roper be the price you pay to walk into the Governor's mansion? Can you live with that?"
Edwards just shook his head and dropped his eyes, then looked back up at me.
"Shawn Smith is a good cop, Bill. You checked him out and you know I'm right. He's received department commendations three times in 14 years on the force. He saved the life of an old man having a heart attack three years ago. He walked into that KFC armed robbery six years ago and killed both those bastards after they'd executed two workers and were getting ready to kill the other two.
"Even if I believe you, and he executed Arthur Roper, he had provocation. Three men break into his house in the middle of the night, start beating him, try to grab and take the woman in bed with him. He got to his gun and killed two men and saw a third running. He probably chased him on instinct and he had no way of knowing the guy wasn't going for a gun."
"At best for your case, at best, he had a lapse in judgment. He let anger and fear overcome security officer training and he did what almost anyone else would do. He shot the bastard."
"So if you're a good cop, or just a good guy, for enough years, you're allowed a free pass, good for one murder?"
He scratched his chin and said, "That Angel of Death crap is only PR, remember Bill? We're people, dealing with flesh and blood victims and criminals and sometimes we have to temper justice with mercy."
"What kind of mercy are you going to extend to Pete and Melanie? You going to bring their father back?"
He just shook his head.
"Don't do this, Bill. Don't be a hardass on this one. There's too much riding on it."
"Public trust is riding on this. You and I both know that the first thing that went through people's minds when they heard about this was, another cop shoots down three guys and will walk away from it. So Smith is a good cop. He's a hero cop. Last I heard, being a hero cop doesn't allow you to get away with murder."
I let the silence grow because I had the feeling we'd both said almost everything we could say until we cut right to the bone. But finally I had to say the words that might end a chapter in my life.
"I'm sorry, Austin, I really am. I tried to walk away from this. I've been a coward because I've been afraid it would come to this so I tried to delay things. I should have taken the case to the grand jury a couple weeks after the shooting. But I knew how explosive it was. And I guess I figured that I like this job too damned much to take a chance of losing it."
Edwards gave me a hard look.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm going to take it to the grand jury in two weeks. Let them look at it and let the cards fall where they may."
"No."
"No?"
"No, you're not going to take the case to the grand jury. You're going to issue a report clearing Smith of any wrong doing and listing it as a justified shooting by virtue of self defense in the course of a home invasion."
This time it was me shaking my head.
"Not going to happen."
He leaned forward over the desk.
"Bill, this is partly my fault. We made an agreement. I trusted your judgment. I always have. I've let you run the place. But I've always basically agreed with your decisions. Not this time. I know you think I've got personal reasons for this decision, but I think we just honestly disagree. I don't think it would be right to destroy a man's life for something you only 'think' he did.
"And, the agreement only stands as long I say it does. You are going to do what I asked you to do."
I stood up. He leaned back and his eyes opened a little wider.
"No, Austin, I'm not. I am going to the grand jury, as long as I'm the lead prosecutor."
"That's right. As long as you're the lead prosecutor. Reconsider."
"I wish I could. I've thought about this for months. And I can't."
He stood.
"If you're intent on doing this, I'll expect your resignation on my desk at the end of the day. You're not just out as lead prosecutor. You're out of this office and don't expect a job in any State Attorney's office in Florida. But as the Angel of Death, I'm sure you will land somewhere."
"No. I'm not resigning. You can fire me. But there is something you should consider before you do anything you can't take back."
"What?"
"Like you said, I'm the Angel of Death. There are people all over this country, not just in Jacksonville, that would be intrigued by a story about a prosecutor so blinded by ambition for higher political office that he was willing to let a killer cop skate on the cold blooded murder of the father of two to avoid antagonizing cops and the African American community."
I watched the ice descend over his eyes and a smile froze on his face.
"Are you threatening me? Me? You ungrateful son of a bitch. I gave you this office and let you play God for six years and this is how you repay me. Besides which, who do you think is going to even care about one case involving a cop that may or may not have broken the law?"
I smiled at him, and had to force myself. I didn't want to do this. I did like and respect the man. But on this one he was wrong.
"How many people care about what Bill Maitland thinks? Probably not that many, although I think it would interest the local media. But the Angel of Death? A lot of people. It would at least give my charges an audience. Remember, you wanted to push the Angel of Death PR angle. Well, live by PR and die by PR."

Ramesh_Rocky · 18-06-2026, 02:20 PM

"No matter what, Bill, it's only one charge. It will be forgotten. No one will care by next year."

"You're a reader, Austin. I know you've read John D. McDonald, the Travis McGee writer. There's one...I think it's "A Flash of Green", although I might be wrong. You remember that one. It's about a guy who's a big big fish in a little pond and he thinks he can get away with anything. But an enemy manages to publicize a scandal he's involved in.
"The big fish walks away from the scandal, but he's going to be stuck in that little pond for the rest of his life. A line has been drawn around the Little Pond and as long as he stays in it, he'll be safe. But if he ever steps outside it, the scandal he's been tarred with will be brought up. He'll never win higher political office or move to a higher level in business. Because no one will want to have the scandal tar them.
"How does this apply to you, Austin? Well, there will be a well publicized scandal about you betraying the public good to curry favor with cops and miniorities in the archives of most major newspapers and organizations around the country.
"When you go for governor next Fall, how many negative ads will be run quoting a prominent prosecutor about how you can't be trusted to protect the public good?"
He was leaning forward on his desk and I noticed the knuckles were turning white as he pressed down.
"Doesn't matter if the charges prove out or not. All a lot of long suffering white voters will see is another politician currying favor with blacks and minorities, and a lot of minorities who don't trust cops will just see another politician who lets cops go around killing people and getting away with it.
"You run for Governor and you're going to get screwed from both ends. It's hard enough to win any elective office without those kind of lead weights around you.
"You fire me and I go public, you might as well learn to love being the State Attorney here, or maybe run for Mayor. Because you're never going to rise any higher, and all those dreams you had of doing good for the state can be put into a drawer somewhere."
Finally he eased his grip on his desk and sat back down. Taking a deep breath, he said, "That French woman you're banging has one hell of a body."
I know my mouth dropped open.
"That change of subject just gave me whiplash. Where did that come from?"
"Just a comment, Bill. I had no idea when I called the Captain of the Bonne Chance and asked him to give you a babysitter that you'd wind up banging her. And not only that, but that she would follow you home. You think her husband knows what she's up to?"
"Austin, I knew you could be cold blooded when you wanted to be, but you honestly think that threatening the marriage of a woman I'm seeing is going to make me back off?"
He shrugged.
"Of course not, unless you care about her and her marriage. Of course if you did, you wouldn't be banging her, would you?"
"Is there any point to this conversation? And how do you even know about her? Do you spy on all your employees?"
"No, only the ones that are important. Actually, Harry, you know him, he's one of our investigators, was having an anniversary supper at the restaurant where you and your family showed up last weekend. He recognized you, and, naturally, knowing about your divorce, he spotted the good looking brunette sitting with you. He took a picture. It's second nature with him.
"Well, since you've already had one breakdown and you're vital to this office, I had her checked out. We employ a lot of investigators, you know. And I talked to the Captain of the Bonne Chance.
"So I know what happened on the Bonne Chance between you and Aline des-Jardins. I know she's currently married, with one son. And I know her husband knows you from that investigation four years ago in Paris.
"That one kind of surprised me. You're the guy who does the right thing, and you got a married woman to cheat on a man who took you under his wing and was your friend. You seduced a friend's wife. Somehow, after that experience with Doug Baker, I wouldn't have expected that of you."
I should have just walked away, but I was curious to see where he was going.
"That's a fucking low blow, Austin, and you know it."
"About as low as what you've done to Philippe Archambault."
"I repeat, what is the point?"
He smiled. Despite his nice guy image, he could be a bastard when he wanted to be. He wanted to be now.
"You know she's never going to stay with you, don't you?"
"So now you not only snoop, but you tell the future?"
"She's been married for ten years. She's had a few shipboard flings, but she always goes back to Philippe. She has a son to tie her to him. If they split she knows she'll never get her son. Philippe is too high in the French government. He'll get the boy. And so when her two weeks here is up, she's gone. No matter what she tells you."
I already knew that, but it sounded different coming from him.
"Again, so? What do you care about my love life?"
He pointed to a photograph in a frame on his wall. It had been taken at a party the year after I was appointed lead prosecutor. He was there with his wife, the three other Chief Assistants and their wives and at the end myself and...
I looked away from it, determined I wouldn't let him read anything in my eyes or on my face about how the photo hit me.
"Aline is a passing fancy. You're still in love with your ex. I saw it just then. Anybody that's around you when she's anywhere close can see it. You can lie through your teeth, but why bother. You can bang all the women you want around the courthouse, but there's a hole in you and you've never going to fill it with anybody but her."
"You're so full of shit, but again, what does this have to do with me and Shawn Smith?"
"If you let Shawn Smith slide, I'll run for Governor next year and get it. Even if I don't get it, I'll step down and I can arrange it so you're appointed to follow me. That gives you four years to prepare for another run. With a four-year track record, my backing and that 'Angel of Death' reputation you can probably have the job as long as you want it."
"And....?"
"This job takes time, but not like yours. You'll politic and handle a few cases, but this is only a 9-5, maybe a 9-6 Monday through Friday job. Being a prosecutor cost you your marriage. Being the boss will let you take back your life."
"I don't have a life, as you well know if you're keeping tabs on me that closely."
"You could, Bill. Your ex is seeing another instructor at UNF, a writer type named Clint Abbott. Seems like a decent guy but they're just friends with benefits according to all we can tell.
"In the meantime, she's buzzing around the courthouse in her new job and, according to some of our female staff, she manages to find reasons to come up to this floor many more times than she needs to. Almost as if she was trying to see, or be seen, by somebody."
"If this was a Harlequin romance, I'd say you might have something. But there is nothing left between us, never will be."
"You're not the man you were six or seven months ago. And whatever she did is in the past. If you wanted her back, I'm betting you could get her."
He turned the photo that sat on his desk next to his phone around so I could see it. It was a photo of himself, his wife in a low cut black gown and their two daughters since married and mothers in their own right.
"Greta and I have been married for 30 years next February. It was the best thing I ever did. I was pretty wild in my younger days, but I've never regretted marrying. I'm proud of what I've done in public life. I'm proud of the job I've done here, not least of which was picking you. But there's nothing in my life that matters as much as she does.
"I know you love this job. I know you've made sacrifices for it. But you can't take the damned job to bed with you at night. You can't hold the fucking job in your arms when life kicks you in the teeth and you need human contact. Aline won't be in your life. You can't fill it with temporary stand-ins."
He turned the photo back toward him.
"You're not just giving up this job if you go forward with the grand jury on Shawn Smith. You're giving up any hope of ever putting your life back together, of winning Debbie back."
I was determined that the puppet master wouldn't know that he had just kicked me in the guts with his words.
"We playing a scene from Faust now, Boss? You're Mephistopheles offering to grant me my fondest wish if I'll only surrender my soul?"
"Just think about it, Bill. You said you won't do anything for a couple of weeks. I gather you're waiting to see what happens with Aline. All I ask if that you think about what we've talked about before you make a final decision. You've waited this long. Give it a couple of weeks."
"I won't change my mind."
"I'm hoping you will."
#######################
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2005 -- 2 p.m.
Judge Leonard Pizaro looked first at Lew Walters and then at me.
"You gentlemen ready to proceed?"
Judy Johansen sat in an orange jail jumpsuit at Walters' side. He had railed and pissed and moaned about the prejudicial impact of his client having to wear prison garb. When Pizaro mentioned that there was no jury to prejudice and that it was he, Pizaro, who had ordered her to wear the jumpsuit, all Lew could do was grin and throw his hands up.
"I had to try, your honor," he said.
Pizaro smiled back. A long, long, long time ago, I knew that he had been a legal hotshot. He had a grudging admiration for Lew's showboating he'd done his best to hide during the trial.
' "I understand your concerns, Mr. Walters, but Ms. Johansen has been convicted of premeditated first degree murder. There is no bail because with the money she has at her disposal she would be too great a flight risk. That means she has to be housed in the Duval County Jail and there is no rationale for allowing her to possess different clothing. Do you disagree?"
"No sir, your honor."
"Are you ready to proceed with your arguments and witnesses?"
"Yes, your honor," he said humbly.
As he turned to speak to his client I mouthed "asskisser" and grinned at him.
When he just gave me a weak smile and bent over to talk to Judy I got a bad feeling. It wasn't like him not to give me shit about something like that. I'd talk with him after we finished.
Jessica Stephens had come up from behind me with a file I'd requested thirty minutes before. It wasn't like her to be late to hearings. Strange things.
"Is everything alright, Jessica?" I asked, looking at her curiously. She swept a few strands of her hair back. I noted that a button at the top of her blouse was unbuttoned. And she was wearing hose, but one leg showed a flesh of flesh at the top. I really couldn't believe what I was seeing.
"Jessica?" I said. She caught my eye and I slowly looked up and down. She noticed the unbuttoned button as my gaze dropped she looked down and spotted the errant pantyhose. Her face turned an attractive shade of crimson.
"Anything we need to talk about?"
She looked up toward the front row of seats behind the defense. It was the reporters' row. I spotted the dark hair and barrel chest of TU reporter Carl Cameron. He was smiling at Jessica, the kind of goofy, loopy expression a man has after really good sex. I glanced at him, then back at Jessica.
"Where?"
She blushed deeper, if that was possible.
"The bailiff's room behind Judge Pizaro's chambers."
I broke into a smile.
"You slut, you."
She held her left hand out. There was a diamond ring on the second finger. A respectable diamond in a white gold setting.
"Carl?"
She nodded.
"When?"
"We got married Sunday. No time for a honeymoon so we're..."
"Doing it everywhere you can. Well, congratulations, Jessica. You let him make an honest woman out of you. I'm happy for both of you."
'It took me a long time, but I finally realized that I didn't want to live without him. No matter what it cost me."
I knew what it had cost her.
"You did the right thing, Jessica. Being married is a good thing. And if anybody catches you, at least you've got a marriage license."
"Mr. Maitland?"
Pizarro's voice cut through our conversation and I looked up to see one of Judy's sons approaching the witness stand.
"Sorry, your honor."
We sat down and I heard Judy's two sons talk about what a loving mother she had been and a good wife to her first husband. I heard them tell Pizaro what a son of a bitch Clark Carroll, the husband she had murdered by messing around with his heart medicine, had been to their mother.
Of course, it had been mental abuse, simply because there weren't any confirmed medical records of physical abuse and she had never complained of it during their marriage.
Judy followed and told the judge how she has fallen in love with a forceful millionair and been swept off her feet by him. But, she said, after they'd married he had changed, at least in part because his children hated her and wanted to keep her from inheriting any of his fortune.
He had been insanely jealous and bitter because he was unable to function sexually and made her life a living hell. But he had been clever and kept his torments hidden from the outside world.
She smiled at the judge, a sad smile, as she said, "I'm not proud of what I did, your honor. I cheated on Clark. But I'm not dead yet. I'm a woman with a woman's urges. I wanted to be with Carroll, but it wasn't just that he couldn't physically satisfy me. He was so bitter, so jealous while I was still faithful to him, that we couldn't even cuddle, couldn't do the non-sexual things a loving couple can enjoy.
"I turned to another man because I was lonely. I needed a man's touch. I'm sorry, but I did.:
Then she stared at me, a stare that should have turned water to ice.
"But I did not kill my husband deliberately. Mr. Maitland was able to fool the jury into believing that a mistake was murder. But I didn't mean to kill him. He made my life a living hell at th end, but I never wanted him dead. I knew he was in pain and he knew I was cheating on him. I was hurting him and I felt guilty about that. But as God is my judge, I did not kill him purposefully."
Lew had done a good job of preparing her. She actually sounded believable and if she had been testifying before a jury, I might have worried. But she was testifying before a man who had been hearing such statements for 30 years. And he had long ago learned to distinguish truth from bullshit.
When Pizaro called on me I stood up and walked toward Lew's table.
"Ms. Johansen did a very good job in her testimony. I congratulate Mr. Walters on his preparation. I'm not going to introduce any witnesses and my comments will be short and, I hope, to the point."
I turned away from Judy and Lew and walked to the center of the courtroom facing Pizaro.
"Your honor, the jury, the triers of fact, have determined that Ms. Johansen with premeditation deliberately gave her husband medication that she knew would kill him. They convicted her of first degree murder. Therefore, her denial of her role in his death simply is of no consequence. It's moot. The jury said otherwise.
"Ms. Johansen herself admitted on the witness stand that she had ample motive to kill her husband. She took a lover, who testified that she told him she was going to kill Clark Carroll. Even if you believe Ms. Johansen about Mr. Caroll's alleged abuse, that merely strengthens the argument that she had reason to kill him.
"And finally, it is clear that Ms. Johansen could have easily escaped Mr. Carroll's abusive ways, simply by divorcing him. But, if she had done that, she would not have been in line to inherit his millions. Thus she had another reason to murder him."
I looked back at Judy. She had tried so hard. And it was all for nothing.
"That will conclude the state's arguments, your honor."
Pizaro took a slow and deliberate drink of water from a glass in front of him and then spoke to Judy.
"Ms. Johansen. Would you please stand. Mr. Walters. Mr. Maitland."
I looked at her instead of Pizaro,
"I really don't need any more time to consider your sentence, Ms. Johansen. Nothing had been said here today that really changes the facts proven in this case. You have been found guilty of premeditated first degree murder. The possible sentence could be death. But in my opinion, this crime does not reach the level where a death sentence could be justified.
"Life in prison without parole is another option. In my judgment, however, this crime not not reach that level of punishment either. At your age, I believe a substantial punishment woiuld consist of a mandatory ten-year sentence to be followed by ten years probation.
"You're welcome to appeal this sentence, and I expect you will, but considering what you could have faced, I don't think any appeal will be upheld. And that is another reason for the sentence. I believe it will forestall an avalanche of appeals that will do nothing but further clog up the court system.
"The bailiff will now take you back, Ms. Johansen, and you will be transported to the women's section of the state's minimum security prison at Lawtey within the next two days. Good luck to you."
She just stood there for a long moment, her face frozen in a hopeful smile. One of her sons groaned, another fell back into his seat sobbing. She was their mother. It wasn't unexpected.
Two women bailiffs approached her. I walked over as they did. She stared at me as if she didn't know who I was. It was one thing to expect to serve the balance of your life in prison. Another for it to be made real. She probably was beginning to go into shock.
"Judy," I said softly enough that only she and Lew could hear me. "You might live to leave prison. You're a pretty healthy lady. But you won't be that well off. Carroll's children are challenging the will, and with your conviction against you, I'd say they have a good chance of taking every dollar away from you. I'd watch my pennies if I was you."
That shocked her back to reality.
"Why do you hate me, Maitland?"
"I don't hate you, Judy. Actually I feel sorry for you. If you'd hung in there another year or two, he'd have died and you'd have gotten most of his money. You'd still have been young enough to enjoy spending it. There are some hot 70-year-olds. And 70-year-olds worth millions don't have any trouble finding playmates.
"But you got greedy. And impatient. Think about that for the next ten years as you go to sleep in a bunk bed with some interesting bunkmates."
As the bailiffs led her away, Lew said from behind me, "That was cold, Bill."
"She's doing better than Clark Carroll. But..."
I turned to face him. He'd bent over to collect papers he was shuffling into a briefcase.
"Are you alright, Lew?"
"Why?"
"You just don't seem like yourself, today. Where's the old swagger? Where is the Shark we've all grown to know and laugh at?"
He gave me a mild smile at the jibe but there was definitely something wrong.
"Maybe you just beat the swagger out of me. The Angel of Death took me out."
"Hell, I've beaten you before and you didn't act like your best friend died. Level with me. What is it?"
"I just...it's nothing, Bill. Just take a few bows and prepare your concession speech because the next time you go up against me, it will be me handing you your head."
"I hate to say this to a professional, but you're a piss poor liar. C'mon man, this is me. You want to go somewhere for a coffee? I can take the rest of the day off if you want to knock back a few cold ones."
He shook his head.
"Sorry, Bill. I have a few things to do and then I have to get ready to fly out. I've got a case they just called me in on in San Fran. A big payday and I need some time to prepare for opening motions. I have to leave tonight."

Ramesh_Rocky · 18-06-2026, 02:31 PM

I knew to a certainty there was something wrong. Talk of big money didn't rouse a smile. That wasn't Lew. But someone tapped me on the shoulder. As I turned, Heather McDonald smiled and hugged me.

"I'm sorry I was late. I wanted to be here for the actual sentencing but I had to make a meeting of detectives. But they just told me. Ten years. I guess that's acceptable, right?"
"She'll be nearly 80 when she gets out. I think Pizaro figured that was enough, if she even makes it out. And I just told her Carroll's kids will probably succeed in breaking their father's will, so when she does get out she won't be a pauper, but she won't be any multi-millionaire. All in all, I think she had a pretty shitty day."
She licked her lips and I just smiled. She knew what she was doing, as her answering smile showed.
"Congratulations, Bill. You did good."
"We did good. I wrote a memo to Knight praising you to the skies, although right now I don't think praise from me is going to do you any favors over at the cop shop. Didn't anyone tell you that you shouldn't be seen talking to me."
"I know what's going on, Bill. But a lot of us don't think Knight should be putting the whole department and its reputation behind a guy who shot a man in the back. You still have friends there."
"Thanks, Heather, but you should keep your head down. Don't get in the middle on this one because it could get ugly."
"I won't be signing any petitions, but remember if you need a friend, just pick up the phone. Oh, by the way..."
She turned slightly as a tall, dark haired young guy who just had the look of a plainclothes detective walked up to stand beside her. The looks they exchanged told me the story.
"Mr. Maitland, this is Detective Rob Goland. He's in homicide. Rob, this is Bill Maitland, the guy I was telling you about. The best prosecutor in the state."
He reached out and I shook his head. He smiled but he moved to put himself slightly between us. He was letting me know who she belonged to. She gave me a little contented grin.
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Maitland. Heather has told me all about you."
From behind his back she mouthed, "not all."
"Well, I appreciate the kind words but she's the one that really put Judy Jacobsen away. Not me. She's very good at what she does."
She couldn't help shaking her head a little bit at that, but the kid didn't pick up on it. I doubt he was thirty. More like twenty five or twenty six.
"Mr. Maitland, I just wanted to come by to check on the verdict. We've got to run. We're going to grab a bite. Rob, would you go on ahead and grab a car and pick me up at the front. I just need to take care of one more piece of business with Mr. Maitland."
"Sure. See you later, Mr. Maitland."
After he left the courtroom, she moved closer and said, "I'm sorry we haven't had a chance to get back together, Bill. I've missed...you know."
"Yeah, but...right now I'm involved. So..."
She reached out and again I shook a hand. This time she held my own between hers and squeezed. It looked professional.
"I understand, Bill. I didn't expect it to be anything more than a one-time thing. And, really, I couldn't do much now. Rob and I....we're uh.."
"He's a good looking guy. But he's lucky to have a hot item like you to hang with. Isn't he a little old for you, though."
"Smart alec. What can I say. It's the older woman thing. Love it."
"Well, Heather, go on and have your 'dinner.' But seriously, don't get involved in this Shawn Smith thing. You have to live and work in that department, and right now I'm poison. You take care of yourself. I'll be fine."
I was the only one left except for a single court reporter finishing up her work, and one lone bailiff who apparently didn't have anywhere else to be. I still felt funny about Lew so I headed down to Starbucks and realized I'd gotten lucky when I saw him grabbing a coffee and turning around to leave the courthouse.
"Lew."
"Now you're following me? You're not getting a crush on me, are you? That would be sticky, to say the least."
He sounded more like himself, but not enough.
"Lew, we've been friends for a long time. I'm not trying to pry, really, but is there anything I can help with. Professionally or personally?"
He stopped by the doors to the outside and took a sip of coffee.
"No. Your antenna are good as always, but this isn't anything you can bring your powers to bear on."
"Personal?"
He nodded.
"It's Mona. Mona and you. You remember the first thing you said when I called you about Debbie and me splitting. So I'll ask you. Did you do something stupid?"
He shook his head and just looked at the floor.
"Tell me or I'll just keep bugging the hell out of you until you do."
Keeping his eyes down, he said, "You know Mona and I......we've been trying....for kids. For awhile."
"Yeah, although I wonder about your sanity sometimes. Sorry. I know it's not funny for you."
"Well....we uh....found out.....not too long ago."
"What?"
"It's Mona. She can't...you know. So it's over."
Neither one of us said anything for a moment.
"Have you thought about-"
"It's over, Bill. It's over."
He met my stare.
"It's uh -- things have been tense since then. But...we'll get through it. Right now, it kind of...seems like I should be giving her a little space. That's why I'm taking the case. She's been out of the country for a little while. We just need some time."
"God knows I'm not an expert in keeping marriages together, but, you don't think you guys should be talking? Maybe see somebody?"
"Right now, she...uh....doesn't want that much to do with me. We....I didn't take the news well."
He took another sip and then said, "I do have to go, Bill. I'll be in touch."
I grabbed his arm before he could push the door open.
"I'd talk to Mona if you wanted me to. Sometimes an outside party....."
"Just leave it alone, Bill. You have enough on your plate. We'll be alright."
And he was gone.
I just stood there looking at the streams of people entering and leaving. How many of them had good marriages. Or relationships? How the hell did men and women ever manage to stay together?
#####################
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005 2:30 A.M.
She rolled back and forth on the bed. Jesus Christ, she'd never realized how big the bed was. She was half awake, in that state where you know you're on the brink of waking, but can't quite do it. She thought of Clint, of Doug, of men and cocks from long away and her fingers ran down her thighs but she couldn't make herself enter herself.
She thought of Bill, and her defenses were down and she couldn't make herself stop thinking about him. God damn, but he was looking good. Trim and hard and cold. At least around her. He was probably hot and filling that bitch's cunt with his cum every night and every day.
Just like she'd known he would. She had always known.
"You bastard. You bulldoze your way into my life. And you desert me for your fucking job...and who knows what or who else. Just like I knew you would. Just like she said you would."
As the thought flashed in her mind it was like a key unlocking a door to a hidden room. And she was....
...walking up to the long plate glass front of a bar she and Bill had been in one time years before. O'Brien's was a honky tonk, or a dive or whatever word you wanted to use. It wasn't the kind of place she or Bill hung out in anymore. Although she knew Bill liked it.
She had called MaryJane, one of Clarice's only friends from before the divorce, looking for her aunt.
They had used to talk almost every day but it had been nearly two weeks. Clarice had been the most beautiful, the most elegeant woman Debbie had known growing up. Much of what she knew about men, about being a woman, she had copied from her aunt.
Since that bastard husband of hers had dumped her, she'd fallen to pieces. Debbie knew she'd been frantically dating, going out with guys way too old or way too young for her to be seeing, anything to keep a man in her life while Frank was squiring around the little tramp that was carrying his baby.
MaryJane, Clarice's oldest friend, had been oddly reluctant to talk to her, finally saying only that Clarice had been getting more and more wild, more reckless in who she saw and what she did with men. MaryJane was no prude. She'd been divorced three times and had a long list of men friends, but...
"I'm worried about her Debbie. She's doing stupid things. She's having unprotected sex. I saw her get into a car with a guy and I know he fucked her without a condom. I've talked to her, but she won't listen to me. Maybe she'd listen to you."
MaryJane hadn't been sure where she was tonight, but she thought that she remembered Clarice talking about meeting "some young studs" for a party beginning at O'Brien's on the Westside.
Debbie had thought about asking Bill to go with her, but as usual he was working late on a case and even if he'd been available, he just didn't like Clarice. Or at least he didn't feel the sympathy that Debbie did.
But he hadn't grown up with her. She wasn't a second mother to him. And he had always been so fucking rigid and moralistic. Clarice always said he must have been born with a stick up his ass.
Now she was inside and it was fairly un-crowded for 8 p.m. on a Thursday night. There were people at the big horseshoe shaped bar, some couples dancing, others playing pool. She looked around but didn't see a blonde almost as tall as she was anywhere.
Two of the pool players, pseudo cowboys with black hats, moseyed on over and smiling, asked her if she felt like a game or...something.
The taller one just grinned and never took his eyes off her boobs. The shorter one, who at least had the manners to pretend to be checking out her face, asked if they could buy her a drink if she wasn't with somebody.
"No thank you, boys, although the offer is appreciated. If I didn't have business, I'd love to play with you..."
She grinned as she said it, knowing their tongues would be dragging the floor and they'd do almost anything she asked now that she had flirted harmlessly with them. Sometimes it seemed almost unfair to take advantage of men's horniness. Sometimes...
"I'm looking for a friend. An older lady. Blonde. About 5-6. Mid-50s. She might have been in here with some friends -- male friends. Any chance you might have seen her in here tonight?"
They exchanged glances.
The taller one managed to drag his gaze away from her chest and said, "Yeah, I think she's in here. She headed into the bathroom. I guess those other guys must have gone in with her to hold her hand."
The look she flashed him made him quickly add, "Probably they all just had to go at the same time. A lot of beer gets drunk in here."
"Thanks boys. Maybe I'll see you in here again someday."
She walked across the room trying to tone down her natural wiggle. It came naturally after so many years of practicing it, but they'd been helpful and there was no need to tease the animals in the zoo.
As she approached the bathrooms painted with Western Cowboys and Cowgirls art, she hoped she was wrong about what might be happening back here.
She walked into the Cowgirls' bathroom. It was a big place. There was somebody in a stall and a girl who looked to be 15 with long straight hair, no boobs, and a pierced bellybutton putting lipstick on in the mirror.
The girl gave her a quick glance and quick as that Debbie knew she had earned another enemy. Women were bitches. She glanced at the bottom of the occupied stall. The legs were black.
She pushed on the door to the Cowboys' bathroom and it moved a little then stopped. Someone was blocking the door.
"It's occupied. I got a sick friend in here. Let me get him cleaned up and you can come in."
She stepped back two paces and hit it at a run, trying to take the impact on her shoulder. The door swung open hard and the man who'd been blocking it went down to his hands and knees. Beyond him was...
"Clarice!"
The guy who had been grinding his heel into her naked breast stared at Debbie for a moment, then lunged at her.
"Bitch. Grab her you morons."
Debbie put all of her weight into the kick that landed squarely between his legs and left him gasping on the floor.
Before she could move the guy she'd pushed away from the door had grabbed her from behind. She tried to kick backwards but he was smart enough to wrap her legs up with his own.
With her arms pinned, she started to scream. With the music outside, and this far back, they might not hear her, but no one was going to hold her down again and use her against her will. Not without a fight.
The third man who'd been standing over Clarice came at her and she braced herself. She didn't even think about it as she shouted, "You touch me and my husband will hunt you down."
He didn't stop but barreled into her, grabbing her by the shoulders and using his momentum to slam her and the guy behind her into the wall next to the door.
The head of the guy holding her slammed hard into the wall and the man holding her shoulders rammed him into the wall again hard. The man behind Debbie loosened his grip and the man in front of her grabbed Debbie and threw her to one side.
The man he'd rammed into the wall put his hands up only to get a fist to the face that bounced him off the wall again. In the next instant, the third man who'd thrown Debbie to the floor had him in a bear hug up against the wall.
As they struggled, the third man looked at the one Debbie had kicked in the balls. He had risen to his feet and started toward Debbie.
"Danny, don't. You stupid fucker, don't."
"Are you fucking crazy. The bitch could send us all to prison. Now we have to grab her and take her somewhere where we can convince her to keep her mouth shut."
"Let go of me Bobby."
"Both of you, shut up. Listen to me. We are so, so fucking close to spending the rest of our lives in Raiford, if we even get that far."
"Yeah, if we let her call for help. I'm not going down for banging some old slut that wanted it."
The one called Bobby kept his arms around the man he was holding.
"LISTEN. Listen to me. I've seen her. I've done work around the courthouse. She's that guy Maitland's wife. He's the fucking top State Attorney in Jacksonville.
"Touching her is worse than going after a cop's wife. He's a fucking asshole and if the stories I've heard are true, we hurt her and we won't live to go to trial."
"You might not make it that far anyway."
The three men looked at the doorway and the short dark haired man who stood there tapping a baseball bat lightly in one hand.
Debbie recognized the owner of the bar, O'Brien, and she knew of his reputation. With or without the baseball bat, the three of them were about to enter a world of pain.
"You stupid assholes...you got the balls to do this in MY place. I hope you fight back, I really do."
He gestured to the trio with one hand, beckoning to them.
"Come on, please try to get by me. I'm just one old man. You might make it."
The man called Bobby let his friend go and held up his hands in a placating gesture as he backed away from the man with the bat.
"O'Brien, don't. The old bitch wanted this. She told us she wanted us all and didn't want to wait till we could go somewhere private. It turned her on to get gang fucked in a public place. It got out of hand, but she wanted it. She did."
"Call the cops, O'Brien," Debbie said, rising unsteadily to her feet. Her nylons were ruined and her left breast was sore where she'd hit the floor.
"Already done, Mrs. Maitland."
The three men looked from one to the other. Gauging their chances of making it past O'Brien against waiting for the cops to arrive. The one called Danny breathed hard and Debbie knew he was getting ready to charge.
As he set himself she stepped in behind him and buried the point of her right shoe deep into his balls from the back. He went down like a pole-axed steer.
"Debbie, baby, don't....."
Debbie looked back at the woman on the floor. White strands of cum ran from her hair to her face to her half naked body. Piss had pooled around her on the floor. The smell of that the vomit on the floor and on her was enough to make Debbie nauseous. Clarice's voice was so reedy and thin Debbie almost couldn't hear her.
She knelt down beside her and pulled her body close to her, ignoring the smell.
"What, Clarice...what?"
She whispered into Debbie's ear, "no, let them go, please."
"No. I'm not going to let them go after what they did to you. They bangd you, the bastards. Bill will send every one of them to Raiford for life."
"please...please..just take me home...."
"How can you ask me to do that? God, Clarice, look at what they did...."
Her aunt forced her with one trembling hand to look into her eyes.
"It's true, baby. I came in here of my own free will. I wanted them...to.....and it just got...out of hand...."
"They still didn't have the right-"
"Deb....if they're arrested....it will all come out.....and Frank...with that fucking little bimbo of his...will get a good laugh....at how desperate for cock I am since I lost his. I couldn't stand it. I'd kill myself."
"It's not right that they get away with this."
"They're just pigs, like every other man. I let them have me. It's my fault."
It took her just a second. The cops would be here any time.
"O'Brien, let them pass."
"No."
"Please, for me. For Bill. I know he likes you and this dive. She's my aunt. I can't let this go public. Please."
He stood there for an interminable minute then stepped back. The three men stepped warily around them. As they passed he touched Bobby on the shoulder and Bobby froze.
"I know your daddy, Bobby. You and your friends will never come in here again. If you see me on the street, you'll cross to the other side. Because if you ever cross my path again, I'll hurt you, and I'll tell your daddy exact what kind of animal he raised. And you know that will break his heart."
Bobby nodded and the three men stumbled away.
"What can I do?"
"Can you get me a blanket or big towel, and is there a back way out of here?"
When he came back she took the towel and said, "Please, keep everyone out and don't come back for a few minutes. And, O'Brien, for the love of God, don't ever tell Bill anything about this."
She could read the question.
"He's never liked Clarice and he won't have any respect for her if the finds out. And he won't let it lie. He'll go after them and it will all go public and she'll be humiliated. No matter what it looks like, she deserves better than that."
He finally nodded.
"Nothing ever happened back here. Just another boring night."
As she walked by him she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. He touched it as she passed and said with a smile, "Now I can't ever wash my face again."
Ten minutes later she had a shivering Clarice slumped over in the front seat of her 2001 Cadilac CTS. It was Autumn, early September, but unseasonably cool and her aunt couldn't stop shivering. Debbie had done everything she could to wipe the fluids off her and clean her hair, but she was still a mess. There was an ugly bruise on the side of one breast.
"It'll be okay, Clarice. Thank God you didn't let them....inside you without protection. No telling what those assholes might be carrying."
Clarice kept her eyes closed but said, "It's okay baby. I know you think I'm a miserable slut. Sucking off three men in a bathroom. Not the way you remember me, is it?"
"Clarice...God knows I can't act Holier than thou. You've pulled me out of some nasty situations. You know what I was like. You remember the time when I was 16 and you stormed into that Biker Bar at the Beach and pulled out a .38 and threatened to start shooting off balls if they didn't toss my drunken ass out of that place."

Ramesh_Rocky · 18-06-2026, 02:33 PM

She smiled for the first time since Debbie had seen her lying on the floor of O'Briens.

"Wasn't that a night, Baby? You remember the fat guy. He crapped in his pants when I put a bullet into his thigh."
"And you said, 'Sorry my aim was off. Next one leaves you peeing out of a tube for the rest of your life'."
Clarice slumped back against the seat, tears starting to run down her face.
"That was a long time ago, Baby. When I had a life. And a husband."
Debbie reached over and took her aunt's hand. It was cold and clammy.
"You're still a beautiful woman, Clarice. You don't need to be going into bathrooms with creeps like that. There are a ton of guys that would trip over their tongues to get at you if you'd clean up and wear something low cut. Show a little boob. You always had great breasts."
"Fat old guys that can't get it up and can't keep it up when they do. And they won't lick your pussy but get pissed if you won't spend hours sucking their lollypop, and they act like they're doing you a favor by letting you suck on their limp linguini."
She opened her eyes and wiped the tears away with the back of her hands.
"You don't know, Baby. You don't know. You're young and your boobs still are firm. They're sagging cause they're so big, but guys go crazy for big ones that sag like that. They know they're getting the real thing. Wait till your boobs start heading for your belly button.
"Wait till the wrinkles get so deep even botox won't get them out. And your skin starts to sag and you get those first blemishes.
"Wait till young guys approach you cause they like the view from the rear, but once they see how old you are they look like they found a rat turd in their soup and can't get away from you fast enough."
She took a deep breath and let it out.
"I want to be you so fucking bad. I want young men with big hard dicks to try to get their hands on my boobs, to be rubbing my ass and creaming in their jeans when I accidentally touch them.
"I want to be young again, baby. And for a little while in that bathroom, before they got mean, I felt young. They were so damned big and hard and they wanted me."
And then she was at Clarice's Southside home and so damned grateful that BJ was spending the night with a friend and Kelly was on a trip to Atlanta with a friend and her family so she didn't have to be home with them. When Bill called, she'd make up some lie about spending the night over with Clarice -- a girls' night out.
Debbie helped Clarice out of the car. She was drunk and hard to hold up, but it made Debbie's skin crawl. She moved like an old woman. And she wasn't that old. Only 20 years older than she was. She wasn't old. Not yet.
She got her to the shower and then stripped her off. Clarice still smelled of piss and cum and it was still in her hair. She propped the older woman in a corner and let her slide down, then turned hot water on and went to a bedroom to strip off. She came back and knelt down beside the older woman and started shampooing her hair to get the smell and stickiness out.
Clarice turned her face toward her under the cascading hot water and kissed her on the forehead. She didn't know why, but Debbie felt like crying herself.
"You know I love you, Baby, don't you. You're the daughter I never had. That I could never give Frank."
"I love you too, Clarice."
"It's too late for me, Baby, but it's not too late for you."
"It's not too late. You've got a lot of years ahead of you. There'll be another man. Frank is a stupid asshole and he doesn't know what he's thrown away."
"He's a stupid asshole, but I still love him and I always will. I loved the man, as much as a woman can love a man. I would have done anything for him. I did. I let him have me every way a woman could. I did three ways because it excited him."
"He didn't deserve you," and now Debbie was crying.
"No, he didn't. But it doesn't matter. My life is over. It will never be good again. But you still have time."
"Time for what?"
"Frank is a dog. A fucking cunt sniffing dog. Like all men. They will all turn on you. They don't love the way we do. You get old, and they start sniffing around for new stuff.
"My own brother, as much as I love him, is no better. I know you've never heard of it, but when he and your mother were going around, he dumped her and started screwing every piece of ass he could find. She chased him for a year before he finally took her back."
Debbie just stared at her, disbelieving.
"It's okay. He's your father. You don't have to believe it, but it's true. And Bill will do the same thing to you if he isn't doing it already."
"No. Maybe he's let himself go and he's not the man he was, but he's a good man. He wouldn't-"
"I said the same thing about Frank. He was special because he was mine but he let himself get a belly and he started losing his hair. But he still found that bitch who spread her legs for him because he's got money and power. Bill's not the man he was in bed because somebody else is getting what he used to give to you."
"Clarice, you're wrong. Bill's not that kind of man. I'd know, I'd sense it if he was-"
"Just like I would have known what Frank was up to.
"You're wrong, Clarice. You're just wrong."
Clarice took her face in her hands and stared into hers with dead eyes.
"He will hurt you, Baby. He will hurt you. I hope I'm not around when your world falls apart like mine did. But it's coming. Please, don't let him. Protect yourself. Find someone. Don't be like me...not like me..."
Lying on her too-big bed, Debbie stared at the ceiling in the darkness and whispered, "You were right, Clarice. But... I protected myself and see what it got me."
#####################
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005 -- 4:30 p.m.
I picked up the phone after Cheryl buzzed me. I was trying to get out of the place by 5 p.m. for a change. The internal clock of the time I had left with Aline was running and it felt like something was chasing me and it was gaining on me.
"Ms. Martinez is down here. Can you talk to her?"
I wondered if Edwards had a message for me or if he was sending her down in another attempt to change my mind. Or if he had told her what was going on and she had her own reasons.
"Send her in."
A minute later she jiggled in. I had to smile. She was almost like a cartoon caricature of the female earth mother figure. But nobody was going to laugh at this cartoon.
She wasn't smiling. That in itself was unusual.
"Ms. Martinez. To what do I owe this pleasure? Did Mr. Edwards have a message for me?"
"Austin told me what's going on. You're going to do it, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"It wouldn't do any good to ask you to back off, would it?"
"Did Edwards send you down, Myra? Actually, I have to tell you, I had a higher opinion of you. I didn't think you'd use that face and body as a bargaining chip."
It was the first time I'd ever seen her really angry. I was glad the desk was between me and her. If she couldn't get her hands on me, she could probably beat me to death with those 50 pound tits.
"You can be such a stupid bastard sometimes, Bill. I should tell you to go fuck yourself because you're never going to get any of this now."
As she said "now" she placed her hands under those huge orbs and lifted them toward me as if offering them on a silver platter. I wouldn't have done it, not really, but I could have fantasized for a moment about cheating on Aline -- just for the pure physical joy of sex with this fantastic creature.
She let them sink and said, "But unfortunately, you and I both know I'd be lying. I am hurt, though. You really think I'd prostitute myself to help Austin get his way?"
"Myra, I've never asked, but I know you have a 'special relationship' with Austin And that's okay. You're both adults. But I know you work 'closely' with him, and I know how bad he wants me to change my mind about Smith. So it's a question I had to ask."
She gave me a strange look.
"I do have a special relationship with Austin. He's a wonderful man. Although it may not be the relationship everyone thinks it is. But he's never asked me to use my body to help him out. I know him. He never would."
"Okay, I apologize.Why are you here, Myra?"
"I did ask Austin what was going on between you two and he told me. You are really prepared to give up ten years in this office, eleven now I guess, to prosecute one case where even you admit there might be some room for reasonable people to disagree.
"I've always admired you for being a pit bull when you thought you were right. But there's stubborness, and there's obsession."
"Sometimes it's a hard area to draw a line. Maybe I'm just holding fast to what I think is right. Maybe I'm persecuting the poor bastard. But I have to do what I think is right and I can't let this one slide."
"You really don't think he'll fire you if you go ahead, do you? I know you probably think you're the only person in the world who'll walk through fire to do the right thing, but he's the same kind of guy.
"I think he will fire you if you push it, even if it kills any future political hopes he might have."
I tried by force of will to make the erection that was threatening to turn my zipper into shrapnel go away, but watching her breath, those red lips and those emerald eyes sparkling with anger or lust, and who the hell cared which, made me realize that while love is said to be the strongest force in the universe, sheer rampant physical lust runs it a close second.
"He might fire me, Myra. I know that. But, really, so what? The world will go on turning. I'll go work somewhere else.
"Maybe I've been here too long anyway. Maybe moving on is what I need. Being somewhere away from...memories...might be a good thing. And the office will go on. Whoever comes after me will do their best. No one is indispensable."
"No, nobody's indispensable, Bill. But you're very good at what you do because you care about the people who get hurt by the bad guys. It's never been a job for you.
"That's one of the things that has attracted me to you. You're not just another lawyer. It's never been a game to you. You're not one of those guys who can lose a case, go out and have a few drinks and leave it at the office."
"It's not that great a quality, Myra. It cost me my wife. And almost cost me my kids. I'd have been better off if I could leave it at the office."
She reached across the desk and laid her hand over mine. I thought, this is it, my zipper is going to explode. But it didn't.
"I'm being selfish, Bill. I don't want you to leave Jacksonville. I still want my shot if ....this thing with the French woman doesn't work out. But, I know that the chance for the hottest sex you'll ever have in this world isn't going to be enough to change your mind.
"So just think about this. Whoever comes after you isn't going to be you. People that you would have helped, would have championed, are going to suffer. A lot of them. Is prosecuting one man worth depriving all those other people of the chance for justice?"
I didn't even bother to answer her. What would have been the use. After a long moment she took her hand back. She shook her head and stood up.
"You are an infuriating bastard," she said. "I don't know if I want to slap your stupid face, or drop down and give you the greatest blow job you've ever had."
She walked out and left me barely breathing.
####################
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 10, 2005 -- 9 p.m.
We stood on the Riverwalk watching the big yacht gently roll on the waves lapping against the river bulwark. The lights of restaurants and stores lit up the darkness behind us, but here there were only a few isolated lights on poles casting shadows onto the water of the St. Johns.
"It's beautiful," Aline said. It was cool enough that she shivered a little in her off-the-shoulder red dress.
We had had dinner at Benny's, arguably the best steak house in Jacksonville, then walked along the St. Johns looking at the private yachts anchored at berths along the river. Their owners boated in to eat at restaurants and hit the few night clubs worthy of the name in Jacksonville.
The yacht was all gleaming gold and polished metal outlining polished wood, nearly a hundred feet long. I stole a glance at her eyes.
"There was a hunger and a hurt in them so raw that it was almost sexual. I knew in that instant that she'd never stay, even if she left Philippe. She loved the sea and that life more than she could ever love me. Or Philippe.
She looked up to meet my eyes and saw that I had seen. She leaned into me, her arm snaking around my waist and leaning over to kiss me on the side of my face.
"I love you more than you will ever know," she said softly. "More than I should, more than I would ever have believed I could love another man."
"It's owned by a member of the Saudi royal family. It has been priced at more than $50 million. It's a floating home that can stay at sea for six months without having to come into port. There's a spa, gym, every luxury you could possibly imagine. The owner, they say, has four wives that sail with him and about a dozen kids."
She searched my face as I talked about the yacht rather than her words. I didn't know exactly what she wanted me to say. Or maybe I was afraid to put my feelings into words.
Since that call from Philippe at the beach, I felt like a man walking across a rotting bridge, gingerly feeling each plank as I stepped from one to the other, not sure when one would give way and leave me falling forever. He had been a name and a memory. Now he was real and standing between us.
"You don't have to say anything, Bill. I know how you feel. I have since the Bonne Chance. I hope you know how I feel."
"I do. And I know you love Philippe, or was that 'Je Taime' a lie?"
"No, but I wish it was. It would make it so much easier if it was."
I pulled her to me and smelled the fragrance of her hair.
"This is a mess."
"You're sorry now that I came?"
"I will never be sorry that you came back. I might be hurting later, but right now, I'm glad you came back."
I pushed her away from me and despite the feelings running through me grinned as I said, "This is like some1950s Hank Williams song -- 'I'll Be Alright...'Til The Hurting Starts.' We're living in a sad country western song."
She nestled against me and said, "Don't you believe in fate? Destiny, Bill? What are the odds against the two of us meeting? Of my being ordered, in effect, to meet you? Of you're insulting me and breaking down my anger and resistance and then seducing me with that damned, wonderful Fleur-de-Lis. And your lawyer words.
"Those can't be accidents. No matter what happens afterward. They were meant to happen."
"I don't know that I believe in God. Or destiny. I believe in coincidence, because I'd rather believe that than believe God is a crazed monster who enjoys setting us up for pain, heartbreak, destruction and death."
She pulled away from me and led me by the hand down the Riverwalk away from the yachts. We were alone for a moment, no one walking nearby, under a streetlight. The St. Johns River's black water gleamed in the light and somewhere close something leaped out of the water and plopped back in.
She leaned back against the wooden railing and touched the Fleur-de-Lis pin, moving it so the light of the streetlight glanced off it.
"You and I both know what this means, what it represents. You won my heart with this."
Debbie and my mom and everyone I've ever known have told me that at times I can be a smartass. They're right. I'm not sure where it comes from.
"You are so easy, lady. One pin and-"
She slapped me not too hard on the side of my face and then leaned in to kiss the pain away.
"It's not the pin. It's what it represents, and that is you."
After we tongue wrestled for a minute she broke the lock and took my left hand in hers. She held it up to the light. My wedding ring gleamed so bright it could have been a spotlight.
"Why do you still wear her ring, Bill?"
"It's not her ring. It's my wedding ring. And I don't know why. I...just got used to having it on. Habit."
"It's her ring, Bill and everyone knows it. It's why I know there's still a part of you in love with her. You can't make yourself take it off because as long as it's on there at least a part of her is still with you. And, Bill, don't fool yourself, she knows it too."
"Maybe it looks that way, Aline. But it's not."
"Then take it off. Take it off, Bill, and put it in your pocket or on another finger where it will just be another ring. If you don't still love her."
I reached out with my right and gripped that circle of gold that represented a half of my life and the best times and the worst pain I'd ever known. Then I tugged until it slid off. Losing weight had ended the ordeal it once would have taken to get it off.
I had a gold nugget ring on the next to little finger on my right hand. The little finger wasn't wide enough to hold it. I tried the middle finger. It was a job, but again the weight loss made it possible to slide it on.
I held my left hand up to the light and there was only the groove of pale skin where the ring had been.
"Convinced?"
She reached into her purse and pulled out a gleaming circle. She held it up to the light. It was a silver ring with a square head. On the head was a Fleur-de-Lis inlay of white gold and there was a small, gleaming diamond in the center. It was the sister-ring to the pin she wore.
"You're not the only person who can give presents, Mr. Maitland."
I shook my head for a second.
"If that's real, it's too expensive. You could explain away the pin, but how do you-"
"I have my own money, Bill. Philippe does not pry into my personal spending. And it's real. And it didn't take a fortune to have it made. Will you wear it for me?"
"I will, but why?"
"You remember you said that you hoped I'd think of you when I wore the pin? Well....no matter what happens...I want to think that you will not forget me. And if you're wearing my ring, I know that you won't."
She kissed the naked finger and handed me the Fleur-de-Lis ring. It felt oddly formal as I slipped it on. It went on as if it had been made to go on that finger. It was a moment that meant everything, and yet nothing.
And I took her home and we re-christened the kitchen table, the rug in the living room, the bathtub and finally my bed.
Lying next to her trying to catch my breath, my dick so sore I thought I was going to have to put some vaseline on just to get my pants later in the morning, I said, "Well, that's got to be some kind of personal best for me. I'd have thought what I just did was medically impossible for a 42-year-old male."
With my semen gleaming on her lips and nipples and the reddened vagina that lay between her splayed legs, she looked like a poster child for Porno movies. She smiled and reached out to touch the Fleur-de-Lis ring.
"It's magic, Bill. It's magic."
How the hell do you argue with reality.
But I tried.
"You're the magic."
Of course it wasn't magic. She couldn't get me up a fifth time. But she tried. God damn, but she tried.
##################
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 -- 7 p.m.
We sat at a table in The Top Floor restaurant located on the 15th floor of the Barnett Bank Building looking out into the gathering darkness and over the city of Jacksonville. I had promised Aline this view until we were hijacked by my family on our birthday. Now she was going to have it, just before she left, probably forever.
I'd ordered grilled Tilapia, the first step I'd have to take in the penance for the over eating and lack of gym time while Aline had been in town. Aline ordered the restaurant's version of Chicken Breast Coq Au Vin. Probably not what she'd find in a true Parisian eatery, but close enough for Jacksonville.

Ramesh_Rocky · 18-06-2026, 03:31 PM

We sat uncharacteristically silent. Normally the conversation flowed easily, as we talked about anything and everything, except those forbidden areas we knew to avoid. But now the silence lay like a heavy shroud over us.

We ate, Aline interspesing bites of chicken with sips of red wine, myself sipping at coffee because I knew Knight had meant what he said.
I knew he'd have cops shadowing me, regardless of what they were supposed to be doing officially. And if I was spotted drinking anything alcoholic and I didn't walk and drive an exact, geometrically straight line he'd have me pulled over.
I didn't think he'd frame me, because he wasn't that kind of guy and he knew that even if Edwards was unhappy with me, framing a prosecutor would start a cold war that would blow up in everybody's face. But if I gave him the opportunity to take me out, he'd run with it.
"It's nothing like the Eifel Tower," I said, gesturing to the view of Jacksonville from 130 feet up. "But I hope you remember it."
It was the closest I could come to saying that she would remember it because she wouldn't be here.
I hadn't checked her luggage, hadn't checked her out at all, but she had to have an airline ticket for the flight home to Paris. We hadn't talked about what we'd do on Tuesday, how she'd get to the airport. Or even that she would be going to the airport.
Maybe we should have, but if we did, it would become real. And I wanted to keep these last few moments between us free from the curse of reality.
When we finished our meals and paid, she said, "Could we drive to St. Augustine tonight. Is it too late. I'd like to walk the beach one last time."
"No, it's not too late."
We went by the condo and picked up blankets and I headed out I-95 and took the third St. Augustine exit which would take us directly to the beach and bypass most of the city. We drove to Matanzas and I parked in the little pull off area. There were two other cars, but the occupants were too busy with each other to notice us.
We crossed the highway and walked down to the water, blankets over my shoulders. We stood hand in hand watching the breakers slowly roll ashore under the light of a half moon. It seemed to float on the water, but I thought Aline was looking much further, toward home.
We walked into the dunes and she was out of her clothes in an instant and had me down on the blankets, stripping me. When we were down, she attacked me. Sucking, stroking, pulling, flipping around to lower her steamy pussy dripping into into my mouth while sucking and nibbling on my dick and balls.
I didn't think I was that much in the mood but in two minutes I was holding her ass with both hands and trying not to drown as I bucked up and came and came into her mouth. Before I could catch my breath she had flipped around and was licking my face clean of her juices,
Then she slid down me to suck me and get me hard again and rising above me, she slammed down on my cock so hard that it hurt and I imagine she hurt too, but she just pounded it again and again until I couldn't hold back and came again inside her.
We lay there, both of us gasping as an ocean breeze rustled the cattails around us. I didn't have to look at her, didn't have to be a mind reader, to know that this had been a goodbye fuck.
She raised her head to look at me and said, "Can we walk on the beach one more time, Bill. And then I need to get back to the condo and get some sleep."
She didn't add, "so I'll be ready to leave early in the morning," but I heard the words.
We walked on the beach and we went back to the condo and we both showered and got ready for the next day and she lay down next to me but not wrapping herself around me as she had. She moved close enough to me to touch but turned her back to me and after she thought I'd gone to sleep she began to cry.
There is something ineffably, unutterably, sad about a woman trying to cry softly in the darkness next to you. When you can't reach out to comfort her.
I made myself sleep. I might have dreamt it, but I think she kissed me on the lips.
And when my alarm went off at 6 a.m., I was alone in my bed. I lay there for what seemed a long time. There was still a slight warmth on the bed sheets where she should have been. I ran my hand over the empty space.
Finally I knew I had to get up because I had a job and a life to go back to. I rolled out of bed and padded to the closet and grabbed clothes. I dressed, made my way to the bathroom and pissed, brushed my teeth and made myself presentable. Then I went to the kitchen and would have hit the coffee maker 'on' switch, but somebody already had.
I poured myself a cup, poured in some diet French Vanilla creamer and walked over to the kitchen/dining room table.
As I'd known there would be, there was a piece of cream colored parchment sitting in the center of the table. Aline's precise, tight letters covered it. I took a sip of coffee so hot it burned the roof of my mouth which gave me an excuse to have my eyes water, and picked up the paper.
"Dearest Bill,
"You know by now that I am on my way to the airport. And you know that I am a coward. But I could not say goodbye to you because I did not know if I could walk away from you if I were looking into your eyes. And I have to go back.
"No matter what Philippe has done with other women, he has not violated the rules of our marriage. I have. I have to face him, to see if we still have a marriage. I will not know until I stand in front of him.
" But more than that, I have to go back for Andre. I told you that I love you and I do. But if I leave Philippe for you, I will be leaving Andre as well. I know that I will never be able to take him away from Philippe. And I cannot leave Andre. He is only a little boy and he would never understand why his mother abandoned him.
"It is time to leave, Bill. My heart feels like it is tearing in two. I expect that you will hate me. But, I had to come to you, and I have to leave you. Please forgive me,
Aline."
I read it a dozen times, but the words never changed. I held my left hand up and watched the light dance on the white gold and silver of her Fleur-de-Lis ring and realized I'd never be able to take it off.
I prepared my briefcase with the documents I'd need for the coming day and before I walked out the door I took a quick look around. It was back to simply being a condo again. I closed my eyes for a moment and thought I could almost catch a hint of her fragrance.
I had lied to her and myself all along. Two weeks is not forever. It can't be. It's just two weeks.
####################
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005 - 11 a.m.
I made my up the elevator and managed not to speak to a single living soul or look into another set of eyes. A few times ASAs or courthouse staff of one type of another were heading my way and for some reason I couldn't figure out, they suddenly found they had pressing business somewhere else and veered off in different directions or suddenly turned and started walking the other way.
After I'd left the condo I'd almost found myself driving toward the airport, but I managed to stop myself. There was nothing I could say that would change her mind. Nothing I could make myself say. I checked and found out her flight was leaving at 11 a,.m., if it departed on schedule.
I had hours to kill so I went by the gym and worked myself into exhaustion for an hour and a half, then showered again and headed to the office.
As I got off on the fifth floor I noticed the giant figure of Johnny August deep in conversation with a man I didn't recognize. He glanced up at me and I knew I could only be a moving shadow and yet...he dropped his eyes and turned so he had his back to me. Was it obvious that even a blind man could see it?
I just nodded in Cheryl's direction, said, "No calls -- from anyone -- for the next ten minutes" - and entered my office. I turned and locked the damned door. Let the rumors begin. I'd unlock it before they called in security, but right now I didn't want to see anyone.
I laid my briefcase on my desk, took the phone off the hook, and walked over to the plate glass window. I pulled the curtains back and looked up into the sky. Somewhere over there, Aline's plane was ascending into the clouds, if hadn't already left Florida's skies on its way to New York and a change over for the New York to Paris leg of her journey.
I visualized her in her seat. Had she asked for a window seat so she could see Jacksonville, and me, fall away beneath her and finally vanish into the white haze of the clouds. Was she having a drink now? Or preparing a story for Philippe on what she'd been up to the last two weeks?
Was she wearing the Fleur-de-Lis proudly as she'd said she always would, or had she packed it away the way she'd put me and our time together away in her memory book?
Was she crying? Did I merit a tear or two? Or was she dry-eyed, coming out of the romantic dream we had shared and returning to the mundane world of work and husband and son and obligations and shared marital memories?
I wondered if she would ever think of me when Philippe had his big cock buried deep inside her. Would she ever slip and call my name in a moment of passion, or in a few months with no photographs of our time together would she have difficulty seeing my face in her mind?
I had thought there were no more left in me, but I felt tears trickling down my cheeks. It was so silly. I was a grown man. I'd had a two week romantic and sexual idyll with a beautiful woman, but it had never been anything real or substantive. It was just a passing episode in both our lives.
And then I told myself, "You are such a miserable liar. At least be honest with yourself. You are, were, will be, in love with that woman. The same way you are still at least a little bit in love with your cheating whore of an ex-wife.
"Not in love with HER, the one that kissed Doug outside her home and shaved her fucking pussy to excite Doug....not that Debbie.
"The Debbie that you held in the night so many nights...the Debbie that cried inconsolably the night her crazy aunt Clarice committed suicide...the Debbie who made you smile just by looking at her after a hard day at the office....the Debbie whose body and mouth and smile made the miserable fucking world that you live in bearable so many days over the years.
"Lew, Mom, everyone on the outside only see the cheating bitch....they didn't live with her when she loved me. They can't see that Debbie...they only see the ghost that lives in her body now....and I can't make myself throw dirt on her grave the way we buried Clarice and accept the fact that MY Debbie is dead and gone forever...."
I realized I had locked the door because if anyone had walked in and heard me talking to myself, they really would have sent me to a hospital for observation.
But, I didn't want to get taken away for observation. As the cop had observed months ago, the job is the only life I have now. Or if not the only life, it's the important one. I couldn't jeopardize it by giving anybody the idea I was having another breakdown.
I'll keep my job for a little while longer, a few days at least. And after that...all bets would be off.
I unlocked my door but left my phone off the hook. It might buy me another few minutes of solitude. And then I walked back to the view of Jacksonville's northern approach.
I put my face in my hands and tried to think. I am a smart man. I handle problems every day. I have made a life for myself. What do I do now?
But nothing will change the fact that I love..loved one woman who stopped loving me and I love another woman who never started loving me...enough...because she's still in love with her husband
I am so fucked.
############################
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005 - 11:10 a.m.
She looked at Cheryl.
"His phone's off the hook. I don't think he wants to talk to anybody."
"I know you don't have to let me, Cheryl, but I thought we were friends. One friend to the other...you saw him....let me go in and talk to him.
"I don't know that you're what he needs right now."
"I'm exactly what he needs. And no matter what anybody says, I don't want to hurt him any more."
Cheryl finally nodded.
She opened the door. He was standing at the plate glass picture window looking out into the morning sky. She knew what he was looking for.
He didn't turn around.
"Why did I know you'd turn up this morning?"
"Because we were married for nearly 20 years and you get to know someone in 20 years."
"Not really. I thought I knew you but I obviously didn't."
"But you knew I'd be here."
"Only because bad things happen in threes. I knew you had to be in there somewhere. God only knows what the last thing will be. Maybe I'll have a heart attack."
"You're too healthy for a heart attack...and only the good die young. You're not THAT good...despite your press releases."
"If that's true, Deb, you should live forever."
He still hadn't faced her and she walked toward him until he was directly in front of her. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her breasts into his back. He was thinner, harder than she ever remembered him being. She hadn't touched him in more than six months.
He stiffened but didn't throw her off.
"I know that I am really bad off when I can't work up the energy to throw your cheating ass out of my office."
She leaned forward and pressed her face against the back of his head.
"I'm sorry."
"Why? What have you done this time?"
"I hired a private investigator. I know she was living with you. I know what you're been doing together. I know she's married and has a son in Paris. I know she left your condo early this morning -- without you. You didn't take her to the airport.
"She's going back to them, isn't she?"
"Why do you care? Why go to that much trouble? We're not married anymore."
She put her head on his shoulder and tried not to rub her breasts back and forth across his back. It was almost automatic when they had been married.
"I know you, Bill. I know you're probably banging some of the women around here. I know you must have had that female cop, and I've heard rumors about others. But I know they're not serious.
"I saw the way you looked at her the night we all barged in on you two...The only woman you've ever looked at that way...was me. That's why, part of why, I got so crazy that night.
"I know we're not married. I know I have no right to be jealous. I'm like the dog that doesn't want another dog to have a bone, even though I don't want it any more....But, it hurt."
"Why the hell would it hurt? You told me you didn't love me anymore. We're divorced, for God's sake."
"I know it's not logical...reasonable. But I haven't been logical or reasonable...about a lot of things lately. I'm seeing...somebody....because I have kind of....gone off the tracks lately. I'm starting to get some things straight.
"I only know that it -- seeing her that night and seeing you look at her that way...that it hurt me. I wanted to find out everything I could about her...and that damned Fleur-de-Lis.
"You know you NEVER bought me anything like that in all the years we were married..."
"You can't be serious. You screw around on me with a younger man, with a bigger dick. Even if you didn't fuck him, I know you were cheating emotionally. You threw me out of my own house. You fucked him in my bed. You threw me out of your life...and you're upset because I bought some expensive jewelry for a new woman in my life."
She held him a little tighter and he didn't move to throw her off.
"I know it doesn't make any sense. You said I was crazy. I'm thinking I was. At least for awhile. But one thing I know, you were serious about Aline. Or the skinny French bitch, as I prefer to call her.
"And so when she left alone, and you came in here and you looked like you'd lost your best friend or your dog died, I knew what happened.
"She went back to him, didn't she?"
"Yes, she went back to him."
"Is she coming back? Do you think she'll leave him?"
He reached out with his fingers and touched the glass.
She saw the unfamiliar ring on his left hand, then the wedding ring on his right. The Fleur-de-Lis was the mark that bitch Aline had left on a man that used to belong to her. Even if she wasn't here to rub her nose in it in person, Aline would still be doing it in spirit.
"I hope to God not. She could lose her son. She could lose a man she still might love. I don't want to be Doug...even though I've been acting like him ever since I met her."
"Doug didn't break us up. I was going to leave you, Bill, if I'd never met him."
"Thanks. That makes me feel better."
"I shouldn't tell you this. The person...I'm seeing...said I shouldn't. But I have to. I told you I didn't cheat on you before Doug. And I didn't...go to bed with anyone or suck them off. But...I.....teased a lot of guys....and..."
She felt him stiffen and wondered why she was doing this. Was that stubborn anger driving her to kick him when he was down, do the most damage she possibly could. It didn't feel like it inside her. She didn't know, but maybe she was just tired of lying to him.
"What? Shit. I'm in the Valley of Despair, so why not drop some more shit on me?"
"I...jerked a couple of guys off at parties. I...masturbated them through their pants. I never held their naked dicks in my hands, but I jerked them off."
"So you never got any semen inside your pussy. I should be grateful for small favors."
"I'm not claiming any special...virtue, Bill. I was a pretty bad wife...for the last three or four years. I told myself it was alright because I saved my pussy for you....when I let you have it. But I honestly got more out of my vibrator than I did from you."
" What did I ever do to deserve that kind of treatment from you?"
"I don't know. I was angry as hell at you most of the time, but I thought I hid it pretty well. I guess I was angry...and contemptuous....I didn't think much of you....as a man."
"You forget. I read your emails. I know how you felt about me as a man."
"What good would it do me to lie about it? I told you I wrote the truth. That's...the way I felt about you. But...I...I know this drives you crazy, but it was some of your fault. Even if you never admit it, you know I'm right. You left me alone for this damned office and this damned job. You wanted to be Saint Bill more than you wanted to be inside me."
"And that made what you were doing right?"
"No, I didn't say that. Just like what you've been doing with Aline for the past two weeks wasn't right...and you know it. But you did it anyway."
They stood there silently for a moment.
"I know I was wrong, but...can you be honest with me about one thing?
"What have I ever lied to you about?"
"I don't know. That's why I'm asking. Did you ever cheat on me. You don't have to tell me the truth, but we're over. It won't change anything. I just...would like to know."
"To make you feel better about what you were doing"?
"No, whether you were screwing half the females in your office, or were as pure as the driven snow, I should have divorced you. I should have had the courage to walk away. I had a good job. The kids weren't little. They were in their teens. I could have made a new life for myself. God knows, I have never had a problem attracting men. I could have found a good guy to replace you. I shouldn't have hurt you the way I did...with Doug...and the emails.
"I was a coward. And that I'm sorry for."
"I hope this hurts you a little more, Debbie. No, I never cheated on you. I never had another woman in all the years we were married....until Aline.
"That's Aunt Clarice speaking from the grave, isn't it?
"I never really believed it...but...the things she said got stuck in my head, and I never really dis-believed them either."

Ramesh_Rocky · 18-06-2026, 03:39 PM

He shook his head.

"The poor miserable bitch. She lost her husband and her mind and her life...and she dragged you down with her. I almost can't hate her....almost. But you shouldn't have believed her."
"I'm sorry I did. But I loved her. She was almost more of a mother to me than my real mother."
........
"I've got things to do, Debbie. I've got a life to start putting back together again...for the second time. So why don't you take you and those tits of yours and get out of my office."
"Now that sounds more like the Bill Maitland I knew and lo-"
She had reached the door to his office when she looked back at him.
"If she had left her husband and chosen you...or if she comes back...would you...?"
"I don't know, Debbie. I've known her for less than two months. On the other hand, I knew you for two years before I married you and look what that got me."
"Thirteen or fourteen years of a good marriage and two kids I think you love."
"True. I guess....I'd marry her in a heartbeat. And if she comes back in a month of two, I still will....if she'll have me."
When he turned away from the window she had left without another word.
#
NOT THE END OF THE STORY!

Ramesh_Rocky · 20-06-2026, 10:58 AM

SOMETIMES, DYING IS EASIER......

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2005
My name is Bill Maitland. I'm an Assistant State Attorney in the Jacksonville State Attorney's Office. Unofficially I'm the chief prosecutor which means that although in an organizational chart there are two other SAs at my level, in reality I'm the number one guy under the Big Man, State Attorney Austin Edwards, at least for right now. I've finally made the decision to take a black cop, who shot three men breaking into his home including one of them in the back running away, to a Grand Jury.
I might wind up out on my ass at any moment and 10 years of prosecuting will be a memory, but I can't see any way out of it, not and be able to face myself in the mirror.
At the same time, a woman I have feelings for has left me to go back to her husband and son in France and I'm not at all sure that I've recovered from being dumped by my wife of nearly 20 years for a younger, prettier, more well-hung rival. So, it hasn't been the best six month period of my life and I'm not sure things aren't going to get worse....
####################
FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 1985 – 6 P.M.
I was hitting the books for my sociology class, one of the requirements of pre-law, when Mark Cumber tapped on the door of my bedroom. I was sprawled across my bed, trying to read four books at once, take notes, and prepare for a final that I didn't see any way in hell I could pass. I'd been studying since I got out of classes at 3 p.m. that afternoon and my eyes were beginning to cross.
I almost welcomed the interruption, although I knew I couldn't spare the time for Mark's perennial request that I go out partying on a Friday night with him and the other two guys who share the rent with us for the luxury of an off-campus apartment.
It really wasn't a luxury. I'd tried dorm living, and, while it was cheap, it was almost impossible to get any real studying done, what with the booze and pot and hot and cold running females that zipped in and out of the bed of any roommate I happened to land. Not for nothing had Florida been named one of the top partying colleges in the land.
Not that I had anything against hot or cold females passing through. I'd snagged a couple myself, but most of the guys I'd bunked with came from money or had scholarships or didn't mind taking out loans it would take them 30 years to repay. They could afford to screw around, maybe flunk out as a lot of freshmen did, and someday soon come back with daddy's blessing and financial support. I couldn't do that.
"Whatever it is Mark, I can't man. I've got a month of studying to make up for in a couple of weeks. Just go on without me."
Mark was a tall, skinny, white dude trying his best to raise an Afro and look cool. It just made him look stupid but somehow girls pitied him and he wound up scoring pretty regularly. He just looked at me funny.
"It's not me, Bill. Somehow, I think you're going to want to make time for this interruption."
I looked up. Standing behind him in the doorway was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. It was a warm day for March in Gainesville and she wore red shorts, a fairly loose white top that somehow bulged out, and a smile that would raise the dead.
Debbie Bascomb was a gorgeous wet dream of a 19-year-old college sophomore at the University of Florida where I am currently working, hopefully, toward a law degree someday in the not-too-distant future. I'd seen her around campus at times, always escorted by one of the college's football or basketball stars or guys who could afford $50,000 cars on their daddies' lines of credit.
Then one night she'd been the center attraction at a would-be frat house gang bang where I was earning a few extra bucks doing waiting and 'scut' work duties. Something, maybe only the distinct impression that she hadn't got involved voluntarily, led me to poke my nose into her personal business and I wound up in the hospital in a coma for my efforts.
I felt pretty silly afterwards. I nearly died, saving the dubious virtue of a reputedly very sexually active coed who never bothered to come by and see me a single time in the hospital, call me or even send me a card. I'd told myself I hadn't done it to make points. I'd have stepped in even if she hadn't been inhumanly beautiful. I told myself that.
I found myself staring at her breasts, then somehow raised my eyes to look into those cool eyes, found mine drifting lower and dropped them to a safer region, which were those hips and legs and found myself getting lost again. She was a big girl. It was a long way from those breasts to her feet. I managed to look up at her face again.
"Hi."
"uh – hi."
"I'm –"
"I know who you are, Debbie. I've seen you around campus."
A little twinge of something that might have been embarrassment flashed across her face for a moment.
"I'm sorry, but I don't remember running into you."
"You didn't. We don't travel in the same circles. I just meant I'd seen you a few times," and then, although I knew it was stupid, added, "You're hard to miss."
That smile flared on her face again and it was as if the room had gotten 20 degrees warmer.
"Thank you, Bill."
She looked down at the bed which was a patchwork of books and papers and asked, "Could I sit down for a minute?"
I looked around. The two chairs I'd gotten from Goodwill were also covered with academic debris. There was just enough space in my room to turn around and that was it, the bed or nothing. I swept a pile of books and papers up and deposited them behind the bed in a heap.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and folded one knee under her. Up close she was even more spellbinding. Her eyes were an odd shade of blue green. She stared at me and I felt like a bug pinned to a specimen slide.
I tried to think of something to say but my mouth didn't seem to be working right. I noticed Mark gave me a thumbs up, grinned and vanished.
"I'm kind of hurt."
I stared at her, trying to figure out what she meant.
"You save a girl from a fate worse than death and then you completely abandon her. I figured you'd at least call me, but not a word. It's been more than a week since you got out of the hospital. Do you go around saving so many damsels in distress that you lose track of them?"
She smiled as she said it and I couldn't help smiling back.
"No, I generally don't make a habit of it. But..."
"But...."
"I – uh...I don't imagine you know anything about me, but I'm here on a partial scholarship and working and keeping up a full academic load. When...uh...when I went in the hospital I lost nearly a month. I've got finals coming up in a little more than a month and I can't afford to fail any of them. I've been studying my ass off, plus going to classes. And..."
"And?"
She leaned forward, her breasts swaying gently inside her blouse. I could tell now she wasn't wearing a bra because of the thimble sized nipples poking out at me. I had lost my train of thought.
"And?"
She was smiling gently and she followed my gaze down to her chest.
"And...I know you've got a very busy life. You...uh – have an active social life. I didn't want to...uh...intrude."
"Intrude?"
The smile faded.
I tried to make it sound casual, but I couldn't keep a little emotion out.
"If you'd wanted to see me, to thank me, you would have come by the hospital. You never came by. I just assumed....that you weren't interested in....bringing back any memories....of that night. I figured you probably just wanted to forget all about it. My mother told me about how you were hurt, and that you probably were embarrassed. So I just thought.."
"I never came by the hospital? That-"
Then she stopped herself. Her breasts heaved, which was a show all in itself.
She took a few deep breaths. Then:
'I came by the hospital. Three times before I ran into your mother. She made it very plain that she didn't want me anywhere around you. I managed to sneak into your room twice when she wasn't around...just to sit with you.
Then she walked in one day and found me there and gave the nurses orders to keep me out of there. She was family. They had to do it.
"When I heard you'd regained consciousness, they wouldn't put any of my calls through to you.
I have a friend who's an orderly and he told me when you'd been released. I just assumed...you would contact me. I was waiting. And when you never called, I said to hell with it and came over."
I felt like shit for what I'd thought. And what I'd thought was that she was just a rich little slut girl who really didn't give a shit about a nobody that had wound up in the hospital helping her.
"I'm sorry Debbie. I didn't know. I – uh...look, my mother's not a bad woman. She's just protective. She – I – we lost my father when I was a little boy. She's never remarried. I've been her whole life. I was an only child. And she thought you were-"
"A stupid, reckless slut that nearly got her son killed screwing around at a frat party."
"Debbie, I-"
"You don't need to deny it. That's what she told me when she found me in your room the first time. Do you feel the same way?"
I just shook my head.
"I can't say anything about the way you live your life. You're over 18."
Her voice rose.
"You think I went there wanting to be bangd. To have those assholes bang my ass until I was torn up inside? To tear my vaginal walls so I might not be able to have kids? To line up and fuck me over and over? That son of a bitch I thought was my boyfriend got me drunk and drugged me."
She lowered her voice.
"I like parties. I like guys. I like sex. Sue me. Show me that many coeds on this campus that don't feel the same way. But I'm not a punchboard. I don't go to bed with just anybody."
Somehow, without knowing how it happened, I'd wound up holding her hands in mine. Her eyes glistened.
"That wasn't what I was saying. I'm just saying that I can't pass judgment on how you live your life. If I'd thought you...wanted to be there...wanted what was happening, I wouldn't have stepped in. But I didn't think you wanted it. And I was right. I'm glad I stepped in. I always will be. It was the right thing to do."
"Do you always do the right thing?"
"I try to."
She was close enough to me that I could smell the dizzying scent of her. It wasn't perfume. It was her. Another few inches and those hard nipples would be grazing my t-shirt. I had never wanted anything more in my life than to lean forward and kiss those red lips. But I couldn't.
She was grateful to me for saving her but, if I leaned forward and took that kiss, I knew she'd stiffen and draw back and give me a look I didn't want to have to live with. She had come here to thank me, but she was still light years out of my league.
She licked her lips and I thought I was going to die, or cum in my pants. Whatever, one of those things. Then she pulled back and looked around my little room designed in late 20th century poverty.
"You save me and sink yourself Bill. That doesn't seem fair."
"It's okay."
"No, it isn't. You shouldn't be punished for coming to my rescue."
She picked up the sociology book, looked it over and said, "You've got Williamson?"
"Yeah."
"I took his class last semester. I got an A. I can tutor you on what you've missed and I guarantee you an A on the final. What else are you taking?"
I told her.
"I haven't taken the math yet, but I'm pretty good at math. I have taken the econ and while I haven't taken your lit class, I always ace English. Let me help you on these and you can probably pass everything without killing yourself. Two heads are better than one you know."
"I can't ask you to do that, Debbie. You've got your own classes to worry about."
"I'm ahead on everything right now. And...my econ 2 class is the hardest one I've got. Jerry Harvey has been trying to get me to go to bed with him since I started his class. If I rub my titties on him a little bit, he'll do my assignments himself."
I couldn't help smiling at her, although I didn't like the mental image of her rubbing those big breasts up against an old man.
"And there are whole armies of frat boys who'll do the work in my other classes if I just ask them to, ever so sweetly."
"You make it sound so easy."
She grinned at me again.
"You think I'm just a pretty face and a pair of D cups? There's a brain inside here, Bill Maitland."
"Yeah, I'm beginning to see that."
"But in the meantime," she said, standing up suddenly and holding her hand out to me, "let me take you to dinner."
I didn't grab her hand..
"I can't, Debbie. I have too much-"
"Bullshit. Give me your hand. There."
She pulled me up and for the first time I realized how tall she was. She wasn't wearing heels but I still had to look up slightly. Not a lot, but it was strange looking up into her eyes. It didn't do anything for my self confidence.
"Come with me. You have to eat something so let me treat you to a steak at Merriweather's and when we come back I'll help you study. I don't have a curfew and I'll stay as late as you want me to."
Merriweather's was the best steak place in Gainesville and I couldn't afford to even think of going there.
"I don't want you to spend that kind of money..."
"It won't cost us anything. I dated the son of Ritchie Merriweather, the owner, last Fall. It's too bad he's married because I liked him better than I did his son, but he loves me and he'll feed both of us for free."
She looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, taking in the faded jeans and holed tee-shirt.
"You got decent clothes? Maybe a jacket?"
"Decent clothes but no jacket."
"Doesn't matter. He keeps jackets and ties for special guests. Come on, get dressed. You want me to turn around, in case you don't have on underwear under those jeans?"
She grinned at me.
"If you want me not to, I won't turn around."
I thought about arguing with her for a second, then realized she'd get me out of there if she had to throw me over her shoulder and carry me out. I had run into a stacked steamroller.
The only problem was, I was already falling in love with an angel and I was never going to be able to fly high enough to win her.
########################
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2005
I still woke up sensing her presence in the bed next to me. I had not heard from her but I hadn't really expected to. I wondered what had happened when she met Philippe for the first time on her return, when she had looked into his eyes. I didn't want to think about their first night together after months apart.
Not thinking didn't make it go away but, even though the thought of Aline with Philippe hurt like hell, it didn't make the feelings I had for her go away.
I made myself NOT think about what I'd told Debbie the day she left. What if she walked back into my office one day in the near future? What if she told me that she and Philippe hadn't been able to put their marriage back together?
What if I was unemployed, or moving to another state, my life up in the air, trying as hard as I could to keep a relationship with my kids long distance and still missing Debbie and trying to start a new life? Could I add Aline into that mix?
Damn straight I could. One thing the end of my marriage had taught me was that a job and responsibilities and doing the right thing weren't a substitute for protecting what was the most important thing in your life.
In my case, it had been Debbie and I'd let her slip away. If Aline came back, no matter what it cost, I wasn't going to let the same thing happen again.
Despite how I felt emotionally, which was drained and tired and old, physically I woke with energy and I felt good. All the propaganda about the value of hard physical training and conditioning had turned out to be true after all. Who knew? Even though I'd slacked off while Aline was here, the conditioning carried over.
Why the fuck had I never even considered doing this when I was with Debbie and she had begged and nagged me to set foot in a gym, to go with her, even sweetening the deal with an occasional blow job or a really hot fuck?
She had wanted it and even though I knew now it was for herself, to try to keep alive a flicker of the desire she had once felt for me, she had also been doing it for me. And now, I couldn't even remember what had been so vital that I could never find the time.
Regret is the most useless emotion, or so I'd read somewhere, so I forced myself to think about William Sutton and Shawn Smith and the mechanics of the office and I managed to put Debbie and Aline out of my mind for awhile.
The process of getting ready to go to the grand jury is not all that simple, particularly when you're preparing to toss them a political hand grenade like Shawn Smith, so I spent time on that one.
Also, although we'd done a lot of prep work on Sutton, actually filing the charges and setting up the case was a different story. I had two Assistant SAs preparing the case but I was going to be the face of the case.
If it blew up in our faces, I didn't want to cripple two young attorneys just starting their careers. Better that I go down.
We'd just started the hurricane of legal forms, but Sutton's attorney, a fairly good trial lawyer named Barry Mahon of the famous Jacksonville Mahon legal dynasty, already was firing back at us as fast as we hit him with motions and counter-motions and requests for delays.
I knew what he was doing; just what I'd do in his shoes. He was going to delay, delay and delay again in the hopes that our star witness would die before the case went to trial. No recorded or written testimony is ever as effective as a live, warm, breathing human being on the witness stand.
Then, there was that distant dark cloud on the horizon. We'd heard more about the snake-bit trial of the Mexican drug cartel warlord who'd been set for trial in the West until the cartel had killed the two U.S. prosecutors on the case in that circuit.
There had been talk of moving the trial to Idaho and only a week before, the lead federal prosecutor in Boise had come home to find his wife and three children murdered, their heads missing.
Written in their blood on the walls of his home were words in Mexican that roughly translated to "Touch us and we will kill you all. El Degüello."
U.S. prosecutors around the country had received a flash education in Mexican culture and tradition, learning that "El Degüello" was the name of the trumpet tune played by Santa Anna's army surrounding the Alamo in 1836.
It meant, according to different sources, "no mercy," "no quarter?" and more literally "slit throat." One book translated it as "The Beheading." The cartel thugs who had butchered the prosecutor's family obviously went with the book definition.
The cartel had moved on the RUMOR that the case was going to Idaho, so prosecutors and cops around the country were justifiably nervous. It had been a long, long time since any organized crime groups in this country had felt free to attack cops or prosecutors.
This Mexican cartel had dared to go to war against the entire law enforcement establishment of the United States and so far they were winning.
The DEA and U.S. black Ops groups were moving in Mexico, but the entire country was so corrupt that you never knew who you could trust and often the law enforcement allies you needed were hired killers for the cartel, so taking out their heads was more than difficult.
All of this was highly sensitive, but prosecutors knew about it and knew the storm was heading for someone. The American government couldn't back off on its prosecution of the cartel warlord who had killed hundreds in Mexico and the U.S., and the cartel wouldn't or hadn't backed off on its pledge to keep him from going to trial.

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