Bay of Deception Read Free Page B

dismissive wave, she relinquished the floor and Oliver picked up where he’d left off.
     
    “I’ve had lots of time to think since the trial began," he said.  "Time to look back and see that perhaps both Linda and I let our guards down. Maybe it happens to everyone once in their life.  If things go your way, you pick up the pieces and go on.  If they don’t, well, just hope to God you don’t end up like us. 
    “As I said, it all started with paperwork.  Though our shifts were defined, the paperwork afterward always varied, depending on the day and crimes involved.  This always made getting home at a set time a gambler’s nightmare and in eight years of marriage, I’d lost an awful lot of those bets.  Once I made detective, a year after moving to the peninsula, it only got worse and, it became even more complicated.  In an area like L.A. where they don’t want to pay a lot of overtime, it wasn't too bad.  But in P.G. I had to finish my paperwork without exception.  More and more we hit heads about my sporadic work schedule and I think over time, it just became easier to believe I was out screwing some unnamed woman, just like all the men in her family.  Infidelity she could rage against, paperwork she couldn’t.
    “After a quiet shift one day, I managed to get off early and went for a jog along Carmel beach.  That took an hour and I stayed to watch the sun set, pushing my usual arrival time at home by another hour.  Complicating matters further, Linda had gotten off work early as well and she called the station.  Told that I’d just left, she began a special dinner to surprise me.  By the time I came home, her growing fears and my late arrival had convinced her she’d been right all along.
    I arrived home to find Linda wearing her best outfit, but was greeted by only silence and cold stares.  I took a shower, put on some sweats and walked down to figure out what I’d missed.  We were soon shouting, walking the length of our house, going from room to room spitting out all the mean, cruel things people say to each other in such a fight.  All the while getting louder and nastier, yet resolving nothing.  After an hour of this, I made the mistake of going to the kitchen for a drink of water...”  
    “Officer Peidmont?”
    He looked up at her and was surprised to see a look of concern.  
    “Are you all right?  You look a little...pale.” 
    He realized with a start that sweat now covered his hands, neck and face. 
    “Uh...yeah, I’ve...told only one other person about this.” He cleared his throat too loudly.
    “You don’t have to go on, Detective.”
    He cleared his throat, “No, I’m fine, really.  There’s not much more anyway.”  She nodded at him, a little uncertainly. 
    He looked down, centering himself to reveal what had never made it into the papers and had caused Linda to leave. “It was in the kitchen,” he said.  “That it all went to hell...”
     
    A sharp pain to his chest prodded the breath from his lungs.  He looked up to see Linda holding a steak knife in front of him, a mixture of rage and fathomless pain in her eyes.  The blade’s cold steel tip pressed into his bare chest, just barely puncturing his skin.  He concentrated on his breathing as his wife continued to scream.  The knife sliced through several layers of skin, causing him to groan, and bleed.  
    He felt a single drop of blood trickle down his stomach, then another.  Real fear now swept over him as he saw in Linda’s eyes a heightened sense of abandon; something he’d seen in too many criminals. 
    “Linda, please!”  He tried to keep his voice steady.  “I’ll explain where I’ve been, but I can’t think with that knife poking me.”
    “Ha! Ha! Ha!”  Her maniacal laughter dashed his hopes.  “Don’t try that boyish look on me.”  Her tone was all wrong, almost sing-song like.  “I know what you’ve been doing, out screwing another woman?  HAVENT YOU ? ”  This