Her Darkest Secret: A Thriller

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.

― André Malraux

1

Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s wife. That’s what the Bible says. Not that I care all that much about what the Bible says. Although, as a kid, I did enjoy the crucifixion story a lot. I think even at a young age, I knew how to recognize high drama. It’s what would one day lead to my becoming a writer, and a mystery writer at that.

The scourging, the crown of thorns, and Jesus being made carry a two-hundred-pound cross after surviving all that horrible abuse. Top it all off with those drunk Romans nailing him to the cross and everybody watching the Son of God bleed out under a dark, storm ridden sky with all the greedy excitement of binging a new Netflix show. I mean, wasn’t Jesus’s message all about peace, love, and understanding? Something had to be very wrong with people back then. Like there was something in the water. Led contamination or something.

But you know what’s the best part about the crucifixion story? The most dramatic part? It’s the climax. It’s how, in the end, Jesus goes all bad ass on those sick mofos. How he cheats death and rises up on the third day and beats the sick bastards at their own game. Like I said, I’m not a religious nut or anything. I’m just a writer, and semi-anonymous one at that. But let me tell you something, I do believe in karma. And I can bet Jesus did too, so when he rose from the dead on the third day and beat the living snot out of the devil; when he walked out of that stone tomb and went on his merry way, you know he had to have been whispering to himself, Well ain’t karma a bitch.

But I digress.

The point I’m trying to make is this: I’ve been messing with my own karma these days. It all started when I started seeing Martha behind her husband’s back. Before I go any farther, allow me to stress that karma can work both ways. You can make good karma for yourself or you can make some serious bad karma too. So, when I started making advances at Martha, or Marty as I like to call her, at Lanie’s bar a while back, I knew that in the cosmic sense of the word, I was entering into a territory not where no man has gone before, but where every brainless jerk has gone before. Jerks who know damn well that while he might get lucky at getting himself some primo tail there’s no way on God’s earth the whole thing is going to turn out good. That eventually, if her husband doesn’t catch up with me, someone or something will. That’s the law of karma after all. Like oxygen or the sun or the moon, you just can’t avoid it.

Add to that the fact that she’s a veteran narco unit cop (a State Trooper) and you start getting the FUBAR picture I’m painting. FUBAR, as in Fucked Up Beyond All Reality. That’s a bit of verbiage left over from my little two-year vacation in Afghanistan courtesy of Georgie Bush and those towel heads who decided to drive a couple of jetliners into the Twin Towers for political and religious reasons. But once again, I digress.

Back to the cop I’ve been seeing. Holy mackerel if she isn’t a spitfire in the sack. And this isn’t just coming from a woman who made a vow to serve and protect, but also from the mother of a college age daughter and as a practicing Catholic. Or so she says.

But we make a hell of a couple, even physically, me being a tad below five feet eight and stocky from long days on the flat bench at the Albany Strength Gym and she a hair over five feet five and a Golds Gym physique to boot. She’s got long brown hair that somehow makes her hazel eyes light up like they’re attached to their own battery supply. They are enough to make me cry every time I look into them.

Her eyes are what attracted me to Marty the first time I met her at Lanies. She was sitting there with a big thick textbook open before her and a draft beer beside that. I shot her a smile and asked her what the hell she was doing. She responded with a kind but guarded grin.

Guess, she said, deadpan.

Ha-ha. A knockout and a sense of humor too. I was in love already. But when I noticed the big rock on her marriage finger, I felt my stomach sink. It was a rock so big I could practically make out my brown eyes, and my salt and pepper scruff covered face reflected in it. I mean how could I not look at her finger? How could I not seek out the truth? Question is, did it really matter if she was married? Would that stop me from at least showering her with affection? Maybe in my mind I enjoyed the challenge.

You’re married, I said.

Gee whiz, she said. You haven’t even asked me my name yet. Again, her tone and expression were exceedingly deadpan, like to show emotion was giving away too much information. In any case, point well taken. Even for a knucklehead wordsmith like me.

So here’s the short of it. I spend the better part of two years...two years is not a typo...meeting her at Lanies bar on every consecutive Wednesday at 6PM sharp. We never once formally arranged to meet there, we just instinctually knew the both of us were going to be there at that Bat time, that Bat channel, that Bat hour. It was a sort of silent arrangement we’d established without formally establishing anything at all. At first, I would take a seat on the opposite end of the horseshoe shaped bar from where she normally would sit. Since we’d be facing one another, I would smile and wave. She’d do the same of course.

But soon I’d get around to buying her a round and moments after that, I’d get up the nerve to grab hold of my beer and approach her. After just a matter of a few weeks, however, I’d walk into the bar and instead of sitting all the way on the opposite side, I’d cut to the chase and steal the empty stool right beside her. That is, if it wasn’t occupied by somebody else. But then, just a few weeks after that, when she started going out of her way to save me the stool directly beside hers, I knew I was already in.

In her very good graces, you might say.

2

It wasn’t long after this past Christmas that I convinced her to meet me at my apartment in downtown Albany. She was nervous as all hell, and it seemed strange seeing her outside the bar. Not like she looked any different. On the contrary, she was even more beautiful and oozing of sex appeal. It’s just that sometimes when you pull a person out of their element, they appear a little different. You might get to know someone for over a period of two solid years while you visit her at the same bar on the same day of the week at the same time of day. But then you suddenly run into her on the sidewalk, and you’ll be damned if you can remember her name. Luckily, I remembered Marty’s name when I threw her up against the vestibule wall and pressed my mouth against hers so hard I thought my bottom lip split.

We undressed one another right there in the little apartment vestibule and we left a trail of clothing and underwear all the way to my bed where we made love for hours like we invented it. Afterwards we opened up a couple of beers and laughed about seeing one another naked for the first time. She admitted something too. She told me she knew she was looking for trouble when she kept making the decision to show up at the bar. That eventually it would lead to no good.

Do you love your husband? I asked her.

She paused for a while and stared into her beer.

Yes, she said. But it’s not like you might think.

We carried on like that for a while. Months and months. Her husband was years older than she was and more or less infirmed. Wheelchair bound, in fact. He was a drinker and a smoker who made his fortune in pharmaceutical sales and who’d pickled his liver ages ago. Now he was paying the price while his body fell apart all around him. If it weren’t for his neediness, his poor health, she would leave him. Leave him immediately, or so she said.

But remaining married to her husband meant she wasn’t all mine. Technically speaking, it meant I had to share her. She would stay with me for a few nights and then, when I was still asleep, she’d sneak out in the dark of night and drive home. But I’d always wake up when she was leaving. I’d just pretend to be asleep while the pit in my stomach grew bigger and bigger.

I guess I should have considered myself lucky to be spending the amount of time with her that I did. If it weren’t for her cop job and the need for her to be in the city four days a week, I would never have seen her. But then, maybe that would have been all for the good. From a karma point of view, her being so available was precisely what lead to her disappearance. But I’m getting ahead of my skis here. And I don’t ski. Just know this: when it came to being with Marty, she considered us the perfect match...the perfect pair...that we had a beautiful future together if only I would be patient in the here and now.

Or so she said.

It was a one of those rare beautiful Upstate late summer evenings when we were spending what was to be our last night together for a month since I’d be leaving for a research trip to Europe early the next morning. That said, Marty and I wanted to make the most of our last night. We might have blown the bank and gone out for a three-course, gourmet dinner (not that I could afford it on my humble earnings as of late), but I suggested we cook a special dinner at home.

We’d buy a nice bottle of wine, cook up something tasty, then retire early. As we were walking across the busy supermarket parking lot, she nudged me with her elbow when I said the words, retire early. She knew full well that the last thing we would be doing after dinner was retiring.

But before all that, we drank a few beers at Lanies, our home away from home at the end of a busy workday (which, for me was spent inside my bedroom which doubled as my writing studio). We’d also had a couple of shots a piece, so that by the time we made our way to the supermarket to buy our dinner ingredients, we were both feeling pretty good. In word, we were happy. But guarded happy. Our relationship was nothing more than a house of cards that could come crashing down even with the slightest of breezes, and we both knew it. But we didn’t talk about it much. How do you talk about a relationship that exists, but that doesn’t exist at the same time?

Once through the automatic sliding glass doors and inside the store’s airy vestibule, I grabbed a free cart. We then entered into the busy store. Maybe our relationship didn’t exist, formally speaking anyway, but we walked in not like we were a couple, but like we were the only truly happy couple on earth. It was times like these that I would completely forget just how married she was to another man. It was as if I was playing make believe but living it for real too. I guess it was just a matter of not overthinking things too much—of living in present tense all the time.

We picked up some salad food and decided on a couple of thick filets for a main course. To go along with that we also grabbed some fresh corn which was still in season, and a couple of baking potatoes. Now all we needed was some wine. But the booze would have to be purchased at the liquor store next door.    

I forget what we were joking about. Something about how tightly her t-shirt fit her ample chest and me not able to keep my eyes off her, even while shopping. That’s when we came around the corner of the coffee and crackers aisle, and I slammed not into someone’s shopping cart, but into the man pushing the cart instead. Maybe it was the alcohol in me or maybe it was my being drunk on all things Marty, but I just never saw him coming.

Oh crap, was my immediate reaction. Sorry, buddy.

I even laughed a little because it was all so innocent. Marty giggled a little too. It could have happened to anyone. In any case, I felt my pulse rise and my mouth go dry, almost like I’d hit the man not with a plastic shopping cart but instead, my Jeep. He was a tall, wiry middle-aged dude with a long tight face filled with salt and pepper scruff that matched his full head of short hair. His eyes were blue and by the looks of his athletic clothing, he was coming from the nearby gym. We eyed one another and for a few, very long seconds I thought he was about to tear me a new one. I felt a tightness in my stomach, and I was about to apologize for a second time when he suddenly smiled pleasantly.

No broken bones, he said, not without a laugh. It was a genuine laugh. But I hope you’re insured.

It was a little ice breaker of a joke that made the three of us laugh all the more.

I’m a writer, I said. I might be a little late on the payments.

I expected him to come back with something witty, but he just smiled at us once more then went on his merry way.

Maybe I should drive the cart, Marty said.

You’re not about to pull me over for a SWI, are you, Officer? I said.

And what’s an SWI? 

Shopping while intoxicated.

We both burst out laughing.

Don’t tempt me, she said. I might have to slap the cuffs on you.

Goody, I said.  

3

We paid for our groceries at the self-check-out lane, then made our way back out to the lot with our bags in hand. I was still giggling to myself over the shopping cart mishap with the tall man outside the coffee aisle. I’m not always the most attentive guy in the world, living inside my head the way I do. In my business, you must keep on putting out the content or you’re a dead man, financially speaking.

As it was, I’d been living on fumes for most of my adult working life. Oh, sure, there were periods when I had money, especially if a really nice advance came through for a new book my agent had sold or a hefty payment for a ghostwriting job. But usually, that money would get eaten up pretty quickly because of overdue bills and unpaid loans. What most people don’t know about writers is that even the seemingly most successful ones are all too often broke as hell. Writing was a labor of love, not financial freedom. Unless you were JK Rowling of Harry Potter fame, that is. 

Money...cash...ching...call it what you want. That was the great thing about having Marty in my life. She had a secure and stable career in law enforcement. If we could somehow make our relationship work...if she could somehow find a way to separate herself from her ball-and-chain of a husband...we just might have ourselves a real nice life together. And, yeah, I’ll admit it, for me at least, it would mean a hell of a lot less worry over making the monthly rent.

But please don’t get me wrong. Don’t get the wrong idea. Money had nothing to do with the real love I was building for Marty. I’d always gotten by one way or another, and I was confident that I would continue to do so with or without her. But it’s just that she was so different from both my ex-wives. They had been so dependent on me for everything, from putting a roof over our heads to cash in their purses. One of them, the first one, nearly drove me to the brink of bankruptcy on at least two occasions. I hadn’t loved her like I loved my second wife. But unfortunately for me, wife number two had neither the desire nor the will to establish a stable career at much of anything. Which meant, I either sold books or else. And, when she became pregnant with our daughter, all hope for her going to work to lessen the financial burden was abandoned.

But nothing like that would ever happen with Marty. Marty was her own woman. Marty was independent. No that’s not right, she was beyond independent. God knows she didn’t need me in her life. I was a disrupting factor at best, and bad karma for her at worst. Really bad karma when you think about it. She was still married for God’s sake, and although I didn’t drag her into my world, I didn’t exactly hold off on my pursuit of her either. From the moment I first saw her studying from a big thick textbook at the bar, I knew I wanted her and that one day, she would be all mine.

We’d enjoy a long life together, with nothing but good vibrations washing over us. 

We were just a few steps away from the Jeep when I was somewhat startled by a voice. A man’s voice. Together, Marty and I stopped in our tracks and turned. It was the man I’d hit with the shopping cart. Like us, he was heading to his vehicle with his grocery bags gripped in both hands.

Hey, you, he barked, his voice loud and tense.

His face was no longer full of smiles. His manner was no longer No harm done. Truth is, he appeared to be angry and agitated like a hornet had just stung him.

Something the matter? I asked.

Yeah, he said, his deep blue eyes shifting from me to Marty and back again. You didn’t apologize for what you did to me in there. I could have been hurt bad.