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now.
     
    “My wife is being attacked on the path behind my house. Please help. Come fast. He’s killing her!”
     
    Matt tossed the phone and ran for the front door without looking back at the painting.
     
    He hit the sidewalk running, the pizza tossing in his stomach, trying to slow him down.
     
    The access to the trail was two blocks away. Matt ran as best he could, knowing it was too late to avoid any serious damage. He was hoping to at least stop Charlie before he killed Fran.
     
    A police siren wailed in the distance.
     
    Good, they saw my address on their computer. Everything would be over soon.
     
    He hit the opening to the path as a police cruiser rounded the corner twelve houses back.
     
    Running with a brutal cramp in his side, Matt tried to maintain his speed, but was slowed from lack of routine exercise.
     
    “Hey, wait!”
     
    He heard the cops yelling behind him, but all he could think about was Fran.
     
    Sure she tried to kill him, but he couldn’t sit by and watch her be murdered. Divorce was one thing, murder something completely different.
     
    After seventy-five yards, he entered an area that was familiar to him from the picture in his office. He heard the police officers not far behind.
     
    He recognized the creek. The tree to the right. The spot where Fran had stood was five feet away. He stepped up, afraid to see what had become of Fran. There was no sign of Charlie.
     
    He saw the blood first.
     
    Blood had pooled in little puddles over two feet from her broken face. Her nose sat askew on the top of a face that looked like a farmer’s plow had gone over it. Matt couldn’t tell where the cuts started and stopped. Blood still oozed from most of her head, even though her eyes were open and sightless.
     
    He dropped to his knees beside her, overcome by sadness.
     
    He reached out and tried to lower her eyelids, but they were missing.
     
    What the fuck did Charlie do to her?
     
    The cops caught up to him. Matt leaned down and wept.
     
    What had Charlie’s fists been made of, bricks?
     
    Then he saw the culprit. Two feet from Fran’s ruined face sat a jagged stone the size of an average running shoe. It had edges that were covered in blood, and part of Fran’s hair was matted to the surface.
     
    Matt grabbed the stone and turned to the cops.
     
    “His name is Charlie. He did this to my wife and he used this rock. I saw the whole thing.”
     
    Matt set the stone down, as it seemed to be unsettling the cops. One was calling for backup and the other had stepped back a little, his hand resting on the butt of his gun.
     
    “How do you know it was Charlie?” the one cop asked.
     
    “Because I saw the whole thing.”
     
    “Could you explain how you saw the whole thing?”
     
    Even in his heightened state of anger and pain at the loss of his wife, he realized no one would understand what had happened. No one would believe him.
     
    “What I mean is, I heard the scuffle and knew Charlie’s voice from over there. I just couldn’t get here fast enough. Charlie is my ex-business partner so I know his voice. He has been fucking my wife and when she spurned him, he did this,” Matt said, gesturing to his wife’s body laying in the foliage.
     
    He heard more footsteps. Backup had arrived.
     
    The cop who had asked him the questions turned to the new officers. “We wanted to wait for you. This guy is big. He claimed to see someone else doing this, but when we pulled up he was running into the bushes with us on his ass. He knew exactly where she would be. He said it was an old business partner. Something about the guy fucking his wife.” The cop stopped talking and pointed at Matt. “And look at his hands. They’re all red like he’s been slapping and punching something.”
     
    Yeah, a metal filing cabinet, you asshole.
     
    Two more officers walked up, making it six in total.
     
    “This is my wife. I did nothing wrong. I did not touch her,” Matt said.
     
    “Then tell