Wrong Man, Right Job- Ch. 1

I have been in a drug induced stupor for two days now. And it’s not helping one bit. I can’t erase his face from my brain. His final look before…before the end. Two days ago I killed my husband.

Did he deserve it? I keep asking myself that. One part of me swears that not only wasn’t he the man for me but he was a down right living hell. The other part, well the other part isn’t so sure. When we first met I knew he was going to be a big influence in my life. While my meeting him was in no way coincidental (a colleague of mine put us together) our life as we knew it would change considerably in the coming years.

The day we got married there were a few suspicious characters there that he would intermittently speak with in a very secretive manner. When I looked over at him and he noticed me he waved casually. I waved back and though “So this is how it will be.” When he stepped out in the middle of that night to “get some fresh air” I noted the time, wondering if this was going to become a habit.

A habit it became as throughout the years I still found him making those midnight excuses, still talking to truly conspicuous characters at a table near ours at dinner or outside of a theater after a movie. By our 5th year of marriage I was comfortable with this strange behavior and a willing observer. It was about this time that I got my promotion at work and life, my life, my plans went into overdrive. I would come home very late and to no surprise find that my husband wasn’t in our bed.

One might think that he would ask where I had been or I would question what he had been doing. That wasn’t the nature of our relationship. We were both closed off people, something we had discovered about each other very quickly. Besides, it wasn’t allowed by my job to discuss what I worked on. I don’t remember when it was exactly that I began following my husband and my suspicions but I do remember that it was around the time I had received new information about a project I was working on at my job. I would return from work a few minutes before I knew he would “sneak out”, parking down the street from our house and tailing him.

On some nights he was at the shipping yard going to an office building and staying for hours as boxes came and left. On other days he was at a very large, run down mansion in a bad part of town. After a few weeks I found what he believed was his secret cell phone, (though I had seen him use it on occasion, noting that it was a different color from his “regular” cell) which he used during these excursions. Having purchased a very tiny microphone (which was surprisingly easy- radio shack has everything these days) and placed it under the casing of the phone, I was able to listen in on everything he did during these nightly sessions. Deciphering what he was talking about was another matter entirely.