Adultery When We Were Married by DanielQSteele1

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Camera crews stood outside the trucks and stared at me as I pulled in, but I was already by them before they could get their cameras aimed at me. I drove down a winding road until I saw a small knot of vehicles off to the right. I pulled in behind one and got out. A small group of people, maybe thirty in all, was standing near an open grave site. A casket was set up on a stand and a black minister stood in front of the casket.

In the front row of mourners was a small black, white-haired woman surrounded by three good-sized men. As one of the men, alerted by the murmurs of the crowd, turned to look at me I saw the resemblance. It was an older, heavier Shawn Smith. All of them turned to look at me as the first man to spot me came toward me at a fast walk.
“Get the hell out of here,” he said, his fists clenched. He was about six-two, heavily muscled. He was trembling. One of the other men with the old woman walked up behind him.
“Eddie, don’t. Don’t do this in front of momma.”
“I’m gonna kill him with my bare hands if he don’t walk his ass out of here.

Now.”

I held my hands in front of me, palms out in a conciliatory gesture. He had six inches and probably a hundred pounds on me. Even with the boxing lessons I’d had, I didn’t want any trouble with him, especially since in his shoes I’d probably feel the same.
“Mr. Smith? You’d be Eddie Smith, Shawn’s older brother, right? And you’re Carl, right?”
Carl Smith put his hand on Eddie’s shoulder and told me, “Mr. Maitland, please get out of here. My brother is a law abiding man, but this is a bad day for him, for all of us. Don’t make it worse.”
Eddie Smith pushed his brother’s hand away and stared at me.
“Where are the photographers, you piece of shit? Just couldn’t pass up another chance to get a little more publicity. ‘Angel of Death comes to the Killer Cop’s funeral.’ I bet the tabloids will eat it up.”
“No photographers and I won’t stay long, if you’ll give me just a couple of minutes. I was going to stay at the back until the service was over and have a couple of words with your mother, if I could.”
“You get away from her, from us. I’ll kill you before I let you hurt her more.
You killed her baby, you asshole. My baby brother.” “Edward!”


The white haired woman had come up behind him. She leaned heavily on a cane. She looked like she weighed 100 pounds if she was soaking wet, and yet she had borne four bruising sons.
“Momma, go back. This is that piece of shit- “
“Edward, I’m not one of your floozy girlfriends, and this is your brother’s funeral. You will not use that kind of language on this day.”
She stared at me, Her face was lined and the lines had lines. I couldn’t imagine when she had been a young woman conceiving and bearing these sons.
“Mrs. Smith.”
“Mr. Maitland, why are you here?”
“I came to express my condolences for your loss, Mrs. Smith.”
“You goddamned hypocrite. You got him killed and you have the balls to come here and-“
“Edward, show some respect for your brother. Mr. Maitland, you could have sent a card. Why did you feel it necessary to show up in person? You have to know that my sons are very upset. Shawn was my baby, our baby, and they helped raise him after my husband died when he was just a toddler.”
“I’m very sorry to intrude on your personal grief, Mrs. Smith. I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry it turned out this way. I never intended for it to end like this. I knew that Shawn might, probably would, have to serve some prison time, but people go in and come out all the time. He could have built a new life, a different life, and he had a lot of friends. He could have come back.”
The brother who hadn’t spoken, Cyrus, had joined us.
“As what? A crooked cop who shot a man in the back and killed him? How do you come back from that? I tried to talk sense to him, but he thought it was the end of everything. When he lost Melanie, it was like the heart went out of him. I knew he was going to do something crazy, but he wouldn’t have, and he wouldn’t have lost Melanie, if you hadn’t kept hounding him.”
“I thought he had murdered a man, maybe in passion, but it was still murder, and I couldn’t walk away.”
“It’s done now. It’s over, Mr. Maitland. We’ll bury my son and go on with our lives. I appreciate your having the decency to come here and talk to me.”
Eddie Smith said, “We’ll go on with our lives as the family of the killer cop who murdered three men and then shot down two of his fellow cops before they shot him down like a mad dog. That’s what we’ll go on with and what we’ll have to tell his nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews when they come along. That’s what we’ll tell them about my baby brother.”
I shook my head and reached out to take his mother’s hand. She stiffened, but didn’t pull away.


“No, tell them that your baby brother, your son, Mrs. Smith, was a good and a brave cop. He saved lives and shot down bad guys. He earned commendations. He was liked and respected by the men he served with. He served the public for ten years. He never had a blemish on his record, but then he fell in love. Love makes people do strange things. He made a mistake and it cost him his life, but the way he died doesn’t change the way he lived his life. Maybe the public will always look at him as the Killer Cop, but you can tell his nieces and nephews that he was a good cop and a good man, and there are records to prove it.”
As I walked back to my Escalade I knew they’d probably never forgive me for the part I had played in Shawn’s death. But they hadn’t committed Shawn’s crimes. They just had to pay for them for the rest of their lives. I hoped my words would help them, even a little bit, to remember the good that Shawn Smith had done in his short life.
I felt tired as hell - maybe it was finally all over. However I didn’t know as I drove away from Smith’s family that James would die in the hospital within 36 hours. I’d have one more funeral to attend before I could start trying to forget about Shawn Smith. I also knew that, try as I might, I never would.
The gunfire in the FOP hall had only taken seconds, but the ripples of those seconds would change lives for years to come. The sad thing is that I had learned over the past ten plus years that that’s the way it always is. Episodes of violence never ever end nice and neat, maybe because life isn’t that way.