In the practical sense, all murders are straightforward.

Someone is dead, and someone else has killed them. I suppose that in some cases the manner and the how can be confused and muddled; but a bullet to the head is pretty obvious. So is smeared lipstick on the other glass, and the receipt for a cheap hotel room.

I won't bother explaining the scene when I rolled up. Thanks to TV everybody knows how it goes. The prime time shows make the process look snazzier than it really is, and COPS makes it look silly and amateur. So I imagine you have a pretty clear picture of how it looked.

What can't be shown, is smell. I have to say, that the smell of sex, gunpowder, cologne, sweat and recycled air from the air conditioner is a pretty routine smell, but when you add blood into the mix ' then it gets interesting.

Blood has a metallic taste and smell, that's what everyone says. I think blood sticks to your nose hairs and makes vomit rise in the back of your throat. I think it makes your stomach flip over and makes your legs want to break and run; especially old blood which I didn't care for at all.

At this scene, the blood was hours old. There were no candles, so the scene wasn't romantic in nature (big surprise with the cheapest condoms sold by the Kwick stop littered around the room), but the room was bought around three in the afternoon, which was odd.

Mrytle (and I'm not making that name up either) was chewing gum tapping her manicured nails against the counter, turning the Styrofoam cup around and around, irritated that she had been at the station so long.

'I told you and told you,'� she said, 'I gave the guy a room! He paid in cash, came in the afternoon when it was hot, said he needed a cool place to get some sleep. I didn't see a woman.'�

'And you're positive about that?'�

'Andy!'� she snapped, breaking protocol by using my name, 'You know damn well I have perfect vision and you can ask Doc Vern for the records if you want. If I say I didn't see her, I didn't fuckin' see her!'�

'No need to swear Myrtle,'� I said, soothingly, like they do on the shows.

'Well if I can't swear I guess I have nothing to say.'� She crossed her arms across the biggest breasts in the county and didn't say another word.

It didn't matter really. Since she was the only 'witness' and she didn't see anything we could only surmise that Bernie had been killed by a woman (we hoped anyway ' these days you can't be too sure) and that he probably had it coming. Of course we looked at the wife, but she was in Tulsa at the time and had the ticket to prove it. Boss said to close it up as unsolved, which I did; didn't even take all afternoon. Still, it stuck with me. A hit man, no way; but I thought a hit woman in on a deal with a jealous wife, maybe. I'd seen such things on T.V. and after all, stories come from somewhere. So I opted to work patrol that night, thinking maybe I'd get lucky.

And wouldn't ya know, I did.

This broad was doing eighty in a forty five on the way out of town and when I pulled her over she looked like a movie star. She had on bright lipstick, a scarf around her throat and she was wearing a black dress. She was driving a convertible, an older one, and she looked scared.

I went though my routine, and she complied, and I was about to have her step out of her vehicle to take a sobriety test when she shifted and I saw the spark of the streetlight hitting the butt of a gun.

Now, my life is very slow, and very uncomplicated; and I can say without shame that when I saw that gun, I had never been more excited in my life. I felt my palms sweat, and felt my heart rate go up and my chest tighten. I knew that I should pull my gun that had hardly ever been out of its holster and arrest her and get my name in the county paper that next day; but I couldn't.

She was awfully pretty; full lashes and a scared look that's probably taken hundreds of men over the edge to hell without a complaint. Dark hair too, which I had a weakness for, and the battle in my head was fast and furious.

She could be the killer.

Bernie deserved it anyway. He was a cheat and a drunk.

Beautiful woman, what was she doing with him? Can't be the killer.

Should take her in, just to see.

Those lights at the station will turn her skin all flat and ugly.

It's a dark road, and late. Now one knows that you're both here. Camera in the car's busted, has been for weeks.


So I made a decision, then and there like some grand moment in a movie. I know it was foolish, and against my sworn duty; but just one time, I wanted to see what it was like, to do something dangerous. So I tipped my hat, laughing inside at my self as I did, told her she was a free woman and stepped back.

She waited for three heartbeats, blew me a kiss and stepped on the gas.

There's red in my memories of her, of the lipstick on her lips and the glasses, the taillights fading away, and the blood on Bernie's surprised face.

Of course she wasn't the killer. The hooker confessed two days later it was an accident. He'd been showing off, and didn't know his own gun was loaded. Justice if I've ever heard it.


I did some research, and realized that the woman I pulled over and let go was wanted in six counties in three states for murder, arson, theft, and grand larceny. They finally caught up with her five years after Bernie's murder, and a jury of her peers hung her out to dry. Life, in a prison somewhere north of here; I sometimes fantasized about going to visit, to see if she remembered me.

But, I had already done the one truly dangerous thing in my life, and being who I am, once, was all I got.

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