The Cold Case of the False Arrow

Harry London, a detective retiring from the Knoxville, Tennessee Police Department, frowned when he handed me the file.

"I knew who the killer was, but I couldn't arrest him. I had a ton of reasons he was the killer but it was all circumstantial. There was no firm evidence whatsoever and I couldn't get the son of a bitch to confess, so the DA couldn't prosecute. Maybe you and Rochelle can do better."

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If you haven't read my other cold case stories, I'll give you a short bio on myself and Rochelle. I'm Richard Owens, a detective for the Knoxville, Tennessee Police Department and mostly I try to solve the backlog of cold cases in the department files. Rochelle Roberts is my civilian partner as well as the woman I live with. She's a writer who makes her living writing murder mysteries based on real crimes. We met when my former employer, the Nashville, Tennessee Police Department agreed to let her tag along on one of my cases.

Together, we solved that case and also figured out that we were a really good fit together. Rochelle has certain needs that I seem to be able to take care of, and I'm more than willing to give her everything she needs. Rochelle owned a house in Knoxville and I was living in an apartment in Nashville. It seemed easier for me to move to Knoxville, so that's what I did.

We live together, but we've both been divorced so while we love each other, we're not ready to make things permanent, at least not for a while. One divorce hurts pretty bad. A second would be unbearable for both of us.

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After I read through the case file, I could see why Harry hadn't been able to solve the case.

On November 6, 1999, two bow hunters went out to their tree stands at about five in the morning. By nine that morning, Mr. Arnold Stinson decided he wasn't going to get a shot that morning and climbed down from his tree stand. His hunting buddy, Mr. Roy Johnson, had a tree stand about two hundred yards from Mr. Stinson's, so Mr. Stinson walked over to tell Mr. Johnson they should leave and come back that afternoon.

When Mr. Stinson reached Mr. Johnson's tree stand, he found Mr. Johnson lying on his back with an arrow in his chest. Mr. Stinson determined that Mr. Johnson was dead because Mr. Johnson had no detectable pulse and he wasn't breathing. Mr. Stinson left the body there and walked back to his pickup to call the police.

While Harry and the Coroner examined Mr. Johnson's body, the crime scene techs began searching the area for any evidence. What they found told them that Mr. Johnson had indeed died at the scene, but there might be a different cause than the arrow. That was because about fifteen feet from where Mr. Johnson's body had been found, Suzie Majors, a new tech, found a brass cartridge case that was almost hidden by some leaves. The cartridge case looked new, so she bagged it and then showed it to Harry and the Coroner.

Harry didn't recognize the cartridge case and neither did the Coroner, but both agreed the arrow might not be the cause of death. The Coroner said he'd have to get Mr. Johnson back to his lab to be sure.

That opinion was reinforced by Ricky Jones, a tech who hunted deer with a bow. Ricky said he'd killed a lot of deer with his compound bow, and unless the arrow hit something solid like the deer's shoulder blade, it was usual for the arrow to go all the way through the deer's body. He'd usually find the arrow in the grass beside where the deer had been shot. Since Mr. Johnson wasn't a big man, if he'd been shot with the arrow, the arrow would have probably gone completely through his body. The arrow in Mr. Johnson's body appeared to have entered his chest and kept on going until about six inches was protruding from his back.

The other reason according to Ricky was that there didn't appear to have been any attempt by Mr. Johnson to run. Ricky told Harry that the purpose of a broadhead arrow is to cause massive internal bleeding, and that most of the deer he'd shot ran at least a few feet before they died. He said he'd had to follow some deer for hundreds of feet. Ricky didn't see how a hit by one arrow would have made Mr. Johnson just drop in his tracks.

When the techs had finished sweeping the area and taking pictures of everything, they loaded Mr. Johnson's body with the arrow still in his chest into the Coroner's van. Harry and the techs followed the van back to the station.

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After the techs finished dusting the cartridge case for prints and finding none, and the swabbing the outside for DNA, Harry took the case to Jack McCormack, the firearms expert for the Knoxville Crime Lab.

Jack took one look at the headstamp on the case and told Harry the case had started out as a NATO compliant 5.62 x 45 round used in the M-16 and variants and also in a lot of different NATO firearms.

"The plus sign in the circle designates it as NATO compliant. The LC designates it as having been manufactured by the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri and the 95 means it was manufactured in 1995. The dots indicate which station on Lake City's loading machine produced the cartridge."

Harry said it didn't look like the 5.56 cartridges he'd used in the Army, and Jack nodded.

"It started out a 5.56 but it's been reformed into something else. Give me an hour or two and I'll tell you what firearm fired it."

An hour later, Jack had identified the case as being a 5.56 case reformed for a 7.62 x 25 Tokarev pistol, and he said it wasn't an amateur job.

"This is a NATO compliant 5.56 case shortened and necked down to form a case for the 7.62 x 25 Tokarev round. You can buy both surplus and new factory rounds for the 7.62 Tokarev from a few European countries, but they're usually Berdan primed and can't be reloaded. The ability to reload the cases is important to people who routinely shoot the Tokarev round because new ammunition tends to be more expensive than ammunition for common calibers like the 9 millimeter,.38 Special,.44 Special and their magnum versions. That's because demand for the Tokarev round isn't very high.

"New ammunition is also has a bit less performance as far as muzzle velocity because the same cartridge can be used in pistols that can't handle the pressures generated by the military loads, like the Mauser 96 Broomhandle. The Tokarev round will feed and fire in a 96, but it might blow the side out of the chamber. To be safe, manufactures load the Tokarev round to prevent that. Those lighter loads can cause feeding problems in pistols designed for the Tokarev round like the original Tokarev TT-33, the Zastava M57, and the Chinese copies of both. Handloading is the cheapest way to have a supply of Tokarev rounds.

"Whoever did this knew what he was doing. Anybody can easily neck down a 5.56 case to the right dimensions with a case-forming die. It'll be too long, but you just cut off the excess and use a case trimmer to cut the case neck down to the right dimension and square it up.

"The problem with doing it is that since the 5.56 cartridge generates some pretty high chamber pressures, the case walls get thicker as they go from the neck to the head. You have to ream out the inside of the reformed case before loading it for a Tokarev. Depending upon the size of the bullet you use, If you leave the case walls as they are, the bullet will either expand the case mouth and cause feeding issues or the reduced internal capacity of the case will raise the chamber pressures too high for the pistol. The guy who made this case knew that and he reamed the case neck to compensate for the thicker case walls."

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The Coroner's autopsy determined the wound channel wasn't just tissue sliced through by the broadhead. It was the tissue disruption caused they the shock wave of the bullet hitting Mr. Johnson's body. The coroner also noted that both the wound track and the path of the arrow were nearly perpendicular to Mr. Johnson's chest. He'd been shot while standing on the ground and not while in his tree stand.

In their search of the area, the techs hadn't found any indication that Mr. Johnson had tried to run or had put up a fight. It looked to them and to Harry as if Mr. Johnson was just standing on the ground when he was shot and then fell or was rolled onto his back since most of the blood pool was under his body.

Harry could put both men in the same area at the same time, and since it was on property that the owner only allowed the two men to hunt, there wouldn't have been any other hunters in the area. Harry had confirmed that with the property owner. Since the two men knew each other, Mr. Johnson would probably not have suspected he was about to be shot. Mr. Stinson was also apparently the last person to see Mr. Johnson alive.

To Harry, it was obvious that Mr. Johnson's hunting partner had shot him and then used brute force to push an arrow through the bullet hole and out the other side. It would have been fairly easy to do since the broadhead had four razor sharp blades and the arrow shaft size was only a few thousandths of an inch larger than the hole the 7.62 bullet would have left.

Harry's problem was the only witness was Mr. Stinson and even after several hours of questioning, Mr. Stinson stuck to his story. Harry did check on the arrows Mr. Stinson had with him, but they didn't match the arrow in Mr. Johnson's chest. Neither did the arrows in Mr. Johnson's quiver. With no prints and no DNA on the arrow or the cartridge case, Harry didn't have much to go on.

Harry did talk to the friends and spouses of both men, but got nothing of use in the case. Everybody he talked to said Mr. Johnson and Mr. Stinson were friends almost to the point of acting like brothers. None of them had any reason to suspect Mr. Stinson would have a motive for killing Mr. Johnson.

In the end, Harry had a solid suspect but with no evidence that would get him a search warrant to look for the pistol or to arrest Mr. Stinson for murder.

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In all the investigations I'd done into murders, I'd learned that two things are true. The first is that there is no such thing as a perfect murder. The killer always leaves something behind or takes something with him. It might be really difficult to find, but it's always there. In this case, the killer had left one cartridge case and that cartridge case was for a rather unusual weapon. All the indications also told me that the killer was pretty skilled at reloading his own cartridges. That should narrow down the field of suspects.

The second thing I'd learned is that somebody either knows who killed the victim or at least has a strong suspicion about who the killer is. They'll almost always lie for a variety of reasons. Loyalty to the killer or fear of the killer are probably the most common reasons. Harry just hadn't talked to the right people in the right way.

I couldn't fault Harry for that. At the time of the murder, he was one of the few detectives in the Knoxville PD and had his hands full with current cases that were easier to solve. Every police department keeps a record of the percentage of cases solved by every officer and detective so they can prove to the city budget committee that they are using their budget to the city's advantage. There's also the fact that just like in any other occupation, promotions and the resulting salary increases depend to a great extent upon successfully solving cases.

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I took a copy of the file home with me and gave it to Rochelle to read while I took a shower and changed clothes. When I came out of our bedroom, she was looking at the pictures of the crime scene.

"It's no wonder Harry couldn't solve this case. There's nothing here to work with except a man that's been killed by a bullet and then had an arrow pushed into his chest."

I nodded.

"That's what Harry thought, but there's probably more to the story. We just have to dig deep enough to find it.

"Since the two biggest motives for murder are money and infidelity I'll start looking into Mr. Johnson's and Mr. Stinson's finances. I can't get bank records for either Mr. Johnson or Mr. Stinson for that far back because the law says they have to be retained for only five years. I might be able to get a report from a mortgage company if neither paid off a mortgage until after 2022. A mortgage company would keep a record of every payment from the origin of the loan until it's paid off and by law they have to keep those records for at least three years from the date the last mortgage payment is made.

If I can find out what credit cards they have, I'll request a warrant for those as well, but without talking to them, I'd have to issue a warrant to every national credit card company. That can wait until we have more information.

"Maybe you can look into the infidelity angle. If the Johnson's were having problems, it could be that Mr. Johnson refused to divorce his wife so she either killed him or hired someone else to do it."

"You mean like Mr. Stinson?"

"Well, could be, but everybody Harry talked to said the two men were more like brothers than friends. Harry still thought it was Mr. Stinson, but I'm not sure. I need more evidence to be sure. Harry confirmed with the owner of the property where they were hunting that they were the only hunters there, but it was dark when they got there. It would have been pretty easy for someone else who knew the location of Mr. Johnson's tree stand to get there without being seen, wait for Mr. Johnson to get there, and then kill him."

Rochelle closed the folder and then smiled.

"That can wait until tomorrow. I made fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and asparagus for dinner. After that I want some dessert."

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It was tough getting out of bed the next morning, not because I hadn't slept well, but because Rochelle wouldn't let me go. I've learned that once is definitely not enough for Rochelle. She'll settle for once when we go to bed, but she usually feels like a repeat the next morning. That morning was no different.

I woke up because Rochelle had her heavy breasts pressed into my chest and she was playing with my cock. When I opened my eyes, there was Rochelle grinning.

"Thought this might wake you up. We have half an hour before I need to fix breakfast. Think we can find something to do?"

Rochelle's "something to do" entailed her stroking my cock rigid and then pulling me on my side. It took her a few tries to get my cock in the right position, but when she did, she spread her thighs and pulled on my ass until my cock was buried in her up to the balls. She moaned a little moan and then lifted her left breast up to my mouth. A few little pinches with my lips and then a little sucking had her moaning and rocking her hips to stroke my cock in and out.

It's usually best to just let her do what she wants when she does this. She doesn't make regular strokes. It's just stroke herself over my cock, then stay that way for a few seconds, and then ease her body back out. All I have to do is try like hell to keep from cumming and that's hard. Rochelle has this way of making me feel every little ripple inside her. That and the fact that she gets more vocal the closer she gets makes it really easy for me to lose control. When I was twenty, I'd have been cumming by the tenth stroke. Thankfully, I've gotten older and can stave off the inevitable until Rochelle is ready.

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When I got to my desk, walked down to the County Clerk's office and asked Rachael if she had any records of home purchases for Mr. Roy Johnson or Mr. Arnold Stinson. Rachael smiled and said she'd need an hour or so to check and that she'd call me when she had something.

After I walked back to my desk, I tried to imagine what had happened at the crime scene. I end up doing a lot of that with these old cases. Today, the techs can video the scene from several angles and then use a computer to generate a 3-D model of the scene just like architects do with a building they've designed. Some crime scene departments even have laser scanners that map the crime scene in three dimensions. That model stays in memory forever, so it's easy to make a virtual walk through the scene at any time. I had to rely on still photos.

It looked to me like the original investigation was right. There was little disturbance of any leaves or other ground trash around the body other than a slight discoloration from some overturned leaves on the ground that was probably the killer walking up to and then away from the body.

If the body had been found a week or two after the murder, it was possible that wind, rain, or other animals might have covered any signs that Mr. Johnson had been killed elsewhere and than dragged to the scene. Since only around five hours had elapsed since both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Stinson walked into the woods, Mr. Johnson had probably been killed right where he fell.

Something that was a little odd was that there didn't appear to be much in the way of disturbance of the ground around the body. In my limited experience, it's rare that a person who has been shot just drops to the ground and lies still. Death usually causes at least a few involuntary contractions in the muscles of the arms and legs. I decided I'd talk to our current Coroner, Ron Blake, and see if he had any ideas.

Another thing that seemed odd was that apparently Mr. Johnson didn't have his bow in his hand when he was killed. It was leaning against a tree in the background. That same tree had a ladder leading up to the tree stand on that tree. It looked to me like Mr. Johnson had walked to his tree stand but instead of climbing the ladder had set his bow against the tree and then walked back to the spot where he was killed. I couldn't figure out why he'd do that unless someone else was there to stop him. Mr. Johnson either knew the killer really well or the killer forced him to do that at gunpoint.

Another question Harry hadn't been able to answer was where did the arrow in Mr. Johnson's chest come from? The techs had taken a close-up picture of Mr. Johnson's bow that showed an arrow quiver on the bow. I counted six spaces for arrows and there was an arrow in each space. Mr. Johnson wouldn't have had a reason to bring a seventh arrow, and even if he had, he probably wouldn't have tried to climb the ladder to his tree stand while holding an arrow with four razor sharp edges on the broadhead. That told me that the killer must have brought the arrow with him.

Mr. Stinson wasn't in any of the pictures, but that was normal. As soon as he'd shown the officers and Harry the scene, one of the uniforms would have taken him aside to interrogate him and also to keep him away from the scene so he wouldn't accidentally or intentionally cover up or otherwise disturb any remaining evidence. I couldn't find anything in the officer's reports that mentioned Mr. Stinson's bow or how many arrows he had with him.

The only mention of the arrows at all was in Harry's report and was the statement by Ricky that all three arrows had carbon fiber shafts, but with different colors of fletching. The arrow in Mr. Johnson's body had light blue fletching with one white vane, while Mr. Johnson's arrows had orange fletching with one white vane. Mr. Stinson's arrows were fletched in green but were different in that the nocks had had little lights in them.

Ricky said when the arrow was pulled against the bowstring, it would permanently close a switch inside the nock and make the internal light come on. The tiny little battery in the nock would keep the light on for about two days unless it was shut off with a little screwdriver. That was to make it easier to find an arrow that had missed or that had passed through a deer. Ricky said it also acted like a tracer in a rifle bullet and would show the archer the path of the arrow. If the archer missed and assuming his target was still there, he could nock another arrow and adjust his aim to compensate.

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It was about half an hour later that Rachel called me. She'd found mortgages for Mr. Roy and Mrs. Arlene Johnson and for Mr. Arnold and Mrs. Grace Stinson. The Johnson mortgage was for the property at 2175 North Elm in Knoxville and was listed as being held by Franklin American Mortgage Company and the mortgage was granted on March 10, 1997. The Stinson Mortgage was for ten acres out in the country on West Savannah road and was listed with the same company and was granted on June 6,1995.

I took my file and walked down to Judge Sarah Mitchell's office. She made me jump through some hoops, but I finally satisfied her that I had a legitimate reason for seeing those mortgage records. I went back to my desk and faxed a copy of both warrants to the Franklin American Mortgage Company asking for any and all existing records relative to the mortgages in question.

I used a fax for two reasons. The first reason is that by sending a fax, I get a receipt on my end of the date and time I sent the fax. That eliminates having to somehow prove in court that I actually sent the request.

The second is that when I send a fax, I get a response from the fax machine on the other end that acknowledges a receipt. That eliminates the runaround of, "Sorry, but we never received your email. Maybe our spam filter weeded it out. Can you send it again?" I could have done that through USPS via certified mail, but a fax machine is cheaper and faster.

I figured it would take a week to get an answer, so I took the file and walked downstairs to the Coroner's lab.

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Ron was standing at one of his autopsy tables and looking at the older naked man lying there. He waved and then pulled off his latex gloves and walked over to see me.

"Hey Rich. Got something for me? Not another sack of bones where you want me to give you a cause of death I hope. Just once, I wish you'd bring me a fresh body. A woman's body with big tits would be preferable, but I'm good as long as she has tits."

I nodded.

"No, no body this time, but I do need your opinion about a cold case. The case is of a bow hunter who was found on the ground under his tree stand with an arrow in his chest. The former Coroner ruled it a murder because he discovered that the arrow had been pushed through hole made by the bullet that actually killed the guy.

"What is a little odd is that apparently the guy was shot and then just fell down and didn't move. I've had to shoot two perps and neither of them were still once they were shot. Is it possible that this guy could have been shot and died almost immediately?"

Ron took the Coroner's report from the file, sat down in his office chair, and looked at it for a few minutes. Then he looked up at me.

"Well, it's hard to say because it depends upon how much damage the bullet did. He'd probably gone into shock pretty fast so that might be why. What the other Coroner found is the bullet entered the man just under his breastbone and exited only about a millimeter from his spine and just below his shoulder blade. He documented a lot of tissue damage the bullet caused along the way.

"The bullet wasn't all that big, but it wouldn't be the bullet hole that caused the damage. It would have been the shock wave that migrated into the surrounding tissues. The coroner noticed damage to both the heart and the spinal cord. Your victim probably didn't die immediately, but if his spinal cord was damaged, he wouldn't have been able to move around much. If his heart was damaged as much as this report says, he'd have suffered a lack of blood to his brain and died within a minute or so."

"So someone could walk up to him and push an arrow through the hole?"

Ron nodded.

"It would have taken some force because the exit point was between two ribs, but if the arrowhead was really sharp, it wouldn't be impossible to push the arrowhead between two ribs. Fresh bones aren't as hard as most people think. I cut through ribs all the time with what amounts to the pruning shears I have at home, and I don't feel a lot of difference between a rib and a branch on a bush."

Ron smiled at me.

"Anything else I can do for you today? I need to get back to my old guy on the table. He's sixty-seven according to what the detective told me and he has, or rather had, a girlfriend who is twenty-six. Apparently they were doing the old hump and pump when he just keeled over on top of her. Looks to me like he had a massive heart attack, but I have to pop the hood to make sure.

"That'd be the way to go, wouldn't it? I mean you're on top of a young sexy woman and pumping away and just at the grand finale you croak. The French say an orgasm is 'la petite mort' -- a small death -- but I'll bet his mort was a lot more than just petite."

I thanked Ron for his help and walked back to my desk. There wasn't much more that I could do until I got the mortgage reports, but I spent some time looking up Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and Mr. and Mrs. Stinson on the Tennessee DMV database and NCIC. NCIC had nothing on any of them. From the DMV records I got driver's license numbers and ages and other vital statistics for all four. The addresses hadn't changed so evidently they were still living in the houses on the mortgages.

Working only on cold cases comes with some benefits other detectives don't have. One of those is that I'm not tied to any standard working hours or location. I didn't have anything else to work on so I went home to see if Rochelle had come up with anything.

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I found Rochelle sitting at the dining room table with her copy of the case file spread out around her laptop. She was studying the screen and wrote something down on the steno pad she uses for notes, then looked up and smiled.

"I started my usual thing of looking for birth and marriage announcements in the newspaper archives and I found out quite a few things that are interesting.

"You probably looked up all the driver's licenses so I won't go into birth dates. They didn't tell me much except for one really interesting thing. Arlene Johnson and Grace Stinson are step sisters."

"Step sisters?"

Rochelle nodded.

"They have the same father but different mothers. I found birth announcements for them both. Their father was Wayne Adams on both announcements. Arlene's mother's name was Gloria and Grace's mother's name was Barbara. Their father and their mothers are dead now, so we can't talk to them, but I'd bet Arlene's father divorced Arlene's mother and then married Grace's mother the same year. Grace's birth announcement was dated two years after Arlene was born."

Well, that was interesting information and probably explained why all the people Harry interviewed told him Mr. Johnson and Mr. Stinson were more like brothers than just friends. They were brothers in law. At the time of the murder, they were both about forty, so they'd probably have fit together pretty well too.

"OK, what else have you found out?"

Rochelle scanned down through her notes and then looked up.

"Roy Johnson married Arlene Adams on July 24, 1978 when he was nineteen and she was nineteen. Their first child, a boy they named Jason, was born on January 30, 1979. That's only about five months after the wedding. What that means is Arlene was pregnant with Jason when she walked down the aisle. I haven't been able to find out anything about Jason.

"Arlene had another child on December 10, 1996. It was a girl they named Bethany. That's all I've been able to find out about Bethany, but I'm not done looking yet.

"Arnold Stinson married Grace Adams in 1978 when he was twenty and she was eighteen. I couldn't find any birth announcements for them so apparently they never had any kids. That's all I've been able to find out about them so far.

"It looks to me like both couples were related by both blood and by marriage. I can't see Arnold killing Roy like Harry thought. I mean, would you even think about killing your brother in law?"

I shook my head.

"No, and that's why I'm not sure Harry was right about the killer. All Harry had to go on was the fact that Mr. Stinson was the last person to see Mr. Johnson alive and that they were both in the same place at the time of Mr. Johnson's death.

"The other thing that makes me doubt Harry is that Mr. Stinson never changed his story about what happened even though Harry questioned him for hours. People who commit murder usually have a story all planned out that proves they didn't do it, but if questioned long enough, they'll slip up and their story changes. Once it does, it's pretty easy for an interrogator cause them to slip up again and again until they finally have to come clean.

"I got a search warrant for the mortgage accounts for both couples. I doubt it's going to tell me anything and I probably won't have anything until Monday at the earliest. It's Friday, so how about we go get a steak and then come back here and watch some TV?"

Rochelle grinned.

"I bought steaks for Sunday dinner. I could handle some barbecue though. How about if we go to The Smoke Pit for dinner? When we come back, you can see how many ways you can handle me."

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Well, the barbecue was great like it always is. Handling Rochelle was great too, but then that's always great too. It was great on Friday night when she straddled me and let her heavy breasts dangle over my face while she rode me. It was great on Saturday morning when Rochelle pulled me between her spread thighs. I really love how she raises up off the bed when the orgasm hits her. She gasps, holds her breath, and lifts her hips up into my strokes. A second or so later, her legs turn to jelly and she stays there up off the bed and quivers as the wave wash over her body.

Saturday night was just a little playing around in the shower together. Rochelle was satisfied for the moment and so was I. It still felt great to lather up her breasts and feel them slipping around in my hand. It felt great to lather up the hair on her mound too and then slip a fingertip between her lips. She stopped me before I could do anything else though. She said we needed to save it for after the steaks on Sunday night.

I grilled the steaks Sunday night while Rochelle fixed us a salad and a baked potato each. Once we'd eaten and then cleaned up, Rochelle said she felt like doing some reading in bed.

Well, that was a bit of a letdown until I saw what Rochelle meant by reading.

She took off her clothes while I was in the bathroom, and when I came out, she was on her elbows and knees in the middle of our bed and reading a paperback book. She looked up from her book and grinned.

"My publisher says if I put a little more sex in my novels they'll sell better to women. When I went to the grocery store I bought this romance thing because it looked like it had a lot of sex in every chapter. I'm going to read it and you do the man's part. That way I can see if reading about sex turns me on. Now, get undressed and assume the position."

The position Rochelle wanted was behind her with my hands holding her breasts, or at least that what she started reading to me.

"I felt Wade's rough hands caressing my breasts and my nipples started to swell. When he pinched my nipples and then pulled on them, I knew I wanted... no... needed more. I needed to feel him inside me.

"Wade chuckled when I stroked his erection. I felt his fingertips parting my lips and then two of his fingers slipping slowly inside me. It was almost like his erection was inside me until he curled his fingers up and started to massage. I gasped and then tried to pull him between my thighs, but he wouldn't move. I knew what he was doing. He was going to take me to the edge and then let me coast down a little, and then do it over and over until I was begging him to do it."

I have to admit that hearing Rochelle reading that to me had me turned on. My cock was bumping her hair-fringed lips while I was lightly pinching and pulling on her nipples. It was when I slipped two fingers inside her that she put the book down and moaned, "I can't read anymore. Just do what you want to do."

By then, what I wanted was to feel her rippling passage massaging my cock, but I held out. I did take Rochelle to almost the point of cumming twice, but when I tried it a third time, she reached between her spread legs, grabbed my cock, and murmured, "Rich, I'm so hot I can't wait. Screw me now."

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The next morning, I got to my desk a little late because Rochelle wanted a repeat. She didn't read anything this time. She said she didn't have to because she'd been thinking about it since she woke up. On my drive to the station I was thinking too. I didn't know what good fairy had introduced me to Rochelle, but if I ever found out, I was going to thank her. It wasn't just the sex. It was the whole woman I'd met and then fallen in love with in spite of trying not to.

I was surprised when Nancy, our desk sergeant brought me about thirty pages faxed to me by Franklin American Mortgage Company. It was every payment Stinson's had made from the start of the mortgage until the mortgage was paid off in 2023. It looked like the Stinson's had made every payment on time for the entire thirty years of the mortgage.

There was also one sheet relative to the mortgage on the Johnson's house. It was a copy of the final payment and stated that the mortgage had been paid in full with one payment on January 10, 2000. It looked like Mrs. Johnson had settled a life insurance policy and then paid off her house a few months later.

Harry never checked for an insurance policy on Mr. Johnson because he had no reason to suspect Mrs. Johnson of being the killer. I wasn't so sure, though I couldn't think of her as a pistol shooter avid enough to reload her own ammunition. The insurance policy was just something I'd check out at some point because it could have been a motive for Mrs. Johnson to murder her husband.

It was lunchtime by then, so I drove to a fast food joint and had a burger, then went back to my desk. I was sitting there re-reading the file for the tenth time when the Captain called me.

"Rich, I know you're up to your eyeballs in your cold case, but I'm short a detective today and I have a homicide that I need investigated. Brian Ames, one of our patrol officers, watched it happen and the victim and the killer are on their way to the morgue, but could you go have a look around and confirm what he says happened?"

Well, I wasn't coming up with anything on my cold case, so I drove to the address the Captain gave me.

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The murder didn't need a detective for any other reason than to comply with police department protocol because Brian had been on the scene, watched the shooting, and when the killer pointed his pistol at Brian, Brian put him down with two shots center mass.

Brian filled me in on the details.

"I got a call to go to a house on South Elm because of a domestic disturbance. When I got here, two men were on the front porch and they were arguing. I'd just radioed that I was on scene when one of the guys whips out a revolver and lets the other guy have one in the chest. I got out, stood behind my car with my weapon drawn and yelled at the guy to drop his gun. All he did was turn toward me and raise the pistol. Since I was there by myself, I figured that was threat enough and put him on the ground with two shots and then called for backup and the EMT's.

"I was giving CPR to the guy when a woman ran out of the house and asked me if he was dead. I was sure he was, but I told her to go back into the house and wait until the EMT's got there. Once the EMT's had said there was nothing they could do for him, I went in the house to talk to the woman.

"She said the victim was her ex and he'd been bothering her by asking her to come back to him. The killer was the boyfriend she was living with, and he decided things had gone far enough. I don't think he intended to kill the ex, but while I was watching, the victim pulled a knife and started toward the killer.

"The killer could probably have claimed self defense if he hadn't pointed his pistol at me. I was only about twenty feet from where it all happened, I didn't know who was who, and I didn't really think about what I was doing. As soon as the guy brought his pistol up, I knew he was going to try to shoot me. I just beat him to the punch."

All I did was talk to the woman. She wasn't married to the killer, but she'd been living with him for a couple months. She said her ex was very controlling and that's why she divorced him. She didn't seem all that upset about her boyfriend being killed. She kept asking me what was going to happen to her now. When I left the scene I was thinking her ex might have been controlling to some extent, but the woman didn't seem like the type to be concerned with anything but herself.

By the time I got back to the station and wrote up my initial report, it was almost five, so I went home.

}|{

Rochelle was sitting at her laptop when I walked in the door, and she didn't look up. I went to our bedroom and changed clothes and she was still there when I came back out.

I chuckled.

"You must have found something pretty important."

Rochelle did look up then.

"I think I did. I'm not sure how it relates to this case, but I could make it relate in a novel.

"I wasn't finding anything more about either the Johnson's or the Stinson's in the newspaper archives, so I tired the civil court system. I was thinking that if Mrs. Johnson killed her husband she had probably tried to divorce him first. I didn't find anything about a divorce, but what I did find is really interesting.

"It was in 1996, and the court case was brought by Mr. Roy Johnson. He was asking the court to order a paternity test to determine if he or Mr. Arnold Stinson was the father of his new daughter. The judge ordered the test and I found the resolution to the case. The daughter was fathered by Mr. Johnson.

"When I read the synopsis of the case, I was wondering why Mr. Johnson would want a paternity test unless he thought his wife was having an affair with Mr. Stinson. If I put that in a novel, I'd have Mr. Stinson declared to be the baby's father and then have Mr. Johnson kill him. I haven't figure out how it happened in this case though. It's also odd both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Stinson remained close friends after that. Maybe Mrs. Johnson was upset that her husband had doubted her and she killed him for doing that. I haven't figured out a way for her to do that though."

I shrugged.

"Every time I tell myself something couldn't possibly happen, it does. What we need to do now is start talking to all the parties involved. I'd bet my last dollar one of them knows who the killer is and how it went down. We just have to find out which one.

Rochelle didn't say anything for a while, and when she did, she was frowning.

"What if Mr. Stinson fathering a child with Mrs. Johnson had been the intent and the paternity test was just to see if it had worked. To me that's pretty strange but it is a recognized fetish. There are some men who get sexual pleasure by thinking about their wife being impregnated by another man. Some want to watch the act. There are also men who have the fantasy of impregnating women they're not married to.

"Believe it or not, there are women who get sexual pleasure from having unprotected sex knowing they might get pregnant. They don't really want to be pregnant, but taking the risk turns them on. Maybe Mrs. Johnson was that way."

Rochelle thought for another few seconds and then frowned again.

"What if both couples were switching partners from time to time? That's even more common and unfortunately sometimes results in one of the partners concluding that his or her alternate partner is better. Maybe Mrs. Johnson thought Mr. Stinson was a better partner and killed her husband to get him out of the picture, or maybe Mr. Stinson decided he didn't like sharing Mrs. Johnson with her husband and killed him so he could have Mrs. Johnson all to himself. I could write either plot into a novel."

I smiled because Rochelle was inventing novel plots again without any evidence that either might be true. Both were motives I'd seen before though.

"Well, like I said, he only way we're going to find out is to talk to them. They're all in their sixties by now, so they're probably not working. Let's go see what they have to say tomorrow."

Rochelle nodded.

"I agree, but can you let me talk to Mrs. Johnson before you do? If there was an affair or any of the other scenarios, she might tell another woman before she'd tell you."

}|{

The next morning, I drove to the Stinson's house and Rochelle drove to visit Mrs. Johnson.

The Stinson residence sat on ten acres out in the country. Mrs. Grace Stinson answered my knock on the Stinson's front door. The picture on her driver's license was like most driver's license pictures and didn't do the woman standing in her doorway justice at all. According to her license, she was sixty-six, but she looked more like fifty. I saw a few silver hairs in her shoulder length brown hair, but age hadn't done much to change the heavy breasts, slightly thick waist, and wide hips of a sensuous, mature woman. I showed her my badge and asked if her husband was home. She asked why and I lied.

"I'm working on a case from last year where a hunter shot another hunter with a bow and arrow. One of our officers met your husband at the last big sporting goods expo, and said your husband was an avid bow hunter and would know what circumstances would need to be present for an accidental shooting with a bow. I just need to ask your husband if what we found at the scene makes any sense to him."

Mrs. Stinson said her husband was in the back yard and led me to a gate in the fence.

I'd been a little surprised to find a shooting range in their back yard, but there it was. Actually, there were three ranges. One was about fifty yards deep and had big archery targets sitting on stands at maybe ten, twenty, and thirty yards with one other target at the end of the range.

The second range was obviously for pistols because it looked about the same as the police range where I qualify with my Sig every year. There were frames for silhouette targets at five, ten, fifteen, and twenty yards.

I figured the third was a rifle range because it stretched back on the property for at least the length of a football field. Like the pistol range, there were target frames spaced at regular intervals. A golf cart sat under a small structure with a roof but no sides and there was a shooting bench across the front. I figured the golf cart was how Mr. Johnson got from the firing line out to the targets.

All three ranges had been bulldozed flat and the resulting soil piled up into high burms at the end of each range.

Mr. Stinson was sitting in a lawn chair and holding cup of coffee when Mrs. Stinson introduced me.

"Roy, this is Detective Owens. He wants to ask you about a hunting accident he's investigating."

I was watching Mr. Stinson's face for any sign that he was nervous, but all I saw was a frown.

"Why me, Detective?"

"Well, like your wife said, I'm investigating a death from last fall. A bow hunter was found shot by another bow hunter's arrow. We can't figure out how it happened. One of the other officers met you at the big outdoor expo last year said you were a bow hunter so I wondered if you could help me out."

Mr. Stinson smiled then.

"What do you want to know?"

"Well, first of all, our crime scene techs are confused because the arrow went all the way through my victim. They found the arrow stuck in a tree behind him. I have no experience at all at bow hunting, but in the movies, the arrow always stays stuck in the deer. Is it possible that an arrow could go all the way through a person?"

Mr. Stinson put down his coffee cup and leaned forward.

"Depends upon the poundage of the bow and how far away the other hunter was. I hunt with a seventy-pound compound bow and as long as I'm within about ten yards and the arrow doesn't hit a large bone, it'll go completely through a deer. At twenty, it'll still be a through and through as long as it's just in the ribs. A sharp broadhead will easily cut through a deer's ribs."

I wrote that down in my notebook.

"OK, that answers two of my questions. Another question we have is if the hunter was that close to the victim, wouldn't he have seen the victim? I thought you always had to wear orange clothing."

Mr. Stinson smiled again.

"Here in Tennessee, hunter orange is required for any hunting except for the bow hunting only season. Most of us wear camo then, so your victim could very well have not been seen.

"It still shouldn't have happened though. No man who calls himself a hunter would ever shoot at a deer he couldn't see well enough to see a good target zone. Your victim must have been behind a bush or something and the other hunter shot because he heard a sound or saw the brush move. Happens with gun hunters too once in a while, so the color of the clothing doesn't matter all that much if the hunter doesn't make sure of his target."

I wrote that down in my notebook and then looked up and smiled.

"That's all my questions, and I thank you for answering them. It'll help us a lot.

"By the way, you have a really nice range set up. You must practice a lot."

Mr. Stinson grinned.

"That's why I get my limit of deer every year."

"It looks like you must shoot a pistol and a rifle too. That middle range looks a lot like the police range the Knoxville PD uses."

He nodded.

"I hunt all the seasons -- archery, muzzle loader, and rifle. As far as pistol shooting, I do my share. I carry anytime I'm off the property, and unless you practice, a gun on your belt is pretty much just a club if you've emptied the magazine and missed every shot."

I had him talking and I wanted him to say more. Most of the people I know who are into shooting love to talk. I nodded.

"I get to the range about once a month just to keep myself sharp. I've never had to shoot anybody with my Sig 9 mil, but if I had to, he'd go down fast. A few of the patrol officers strap a.380 on their ankle as a backup, but I wouldn't be confident with anything smaller than a 9 mil or the.357 mag snub-nosed revolver I carry as a backup. I know one officer who even carries a.32 auto as a backup. I don't think that's a big enough caliber."

Mr. Stinson smiled.

"You might be surprised. A lot of the European military carried smaller calibers for a long time. The Germans used to carry the Mauser 96 and it was only about.30 caliber. When they developed the Luger, they developed it around same cartridge. It wasn't until later that they changed it to a 9 mil. The Russian military carried the Tokarev TT-33 for quite a while. It's interchangeable with the original Mauser cartridge but it's a little hotter. It's a 7.62 by 25. You can't find a TT-33 much anymore but there are Czech and Chinese copies still for sale. Years ago, I had a TT-33. It'll put any man on his ass with one shot center mass. Traded it for a Luger some guy brought back from WWII because the Luger was a better pistol."

I thanked Mr. Stinson again and then drove back to the station. I didn't have enough to do anything as far as arresting Mr. Stinson or getting a search warrant for the pistol I was almost certain had been used to kill Mr. Johnson, but I was more convinced than ever that he was my killer. He'd even told me he had once owned a pistol that used the same ammunition as the case the crime scene techs had found. He'd also said he didn't have it anymore, but that could have been just a way to steer me away from him. My hope was that Mrs. Johnson would give me the motive that would tie everything together.

}|{

I didn't get to talk to Rochelle until I went home that night. When I got there, she was writing down something in her steno pad. I asked what she'd found out and Rochelle grinned.

"A lot more than you'd probably have gotten from her. I introduced my self as Ann Owens and told her I was doing research for a self-help book for women who had lost their husbands when they were still young. I said I'd looked in the newspaper archives for such women and her name was among the names I'd found.

"Then I said from what I'd read, her husband was killed in a hunting accident. She nodded and said that was true, but she'd found a way to get on with life without a husband. I said that was exactly what I wanted to write about and asked her to tell me her story.

"She told me the same story Harry recorded in his report, but I didn't question her about that. I asked her how she managed to cope with being alone again. What she told me probably wasn't all the truth, but it's enough for you to make her tell you everything.

"She said she'd never have been all right again if it hadn't been for her sister and her husband. She said they were there for her from the day her husband was killed and still were. I asked her how they helped her.

"She started by telling me that her sister's husband came over every Saturday and mowed her grass for her, and that if anything in the house went wrong, he'd come right over and fix it. She said her sister was always there to talk with her and after those talks she felt better about herself and her situation.

"That was about all I could get her to tell me other than she usually spent the holidays with her sister and her husband because her two kids lived in Los Angeles and Washington State and never came home for the holidays. It didn't seem like she was all that upset that they didn't, so I think there's something deeper going on there.

"It looked to me like her grass needed to be mowed, so I'm going back there on Saturday morning to see who shows up. She said Mr. Stinson always mows her yard on Saturday morning."

I said that was a good idea, so I'd drive over to the Stinson's house in my personal car and see what time he left.

}|{

For the rest of that week, our cold case stayed cold. I'd changed my mind back to Mr. Stinson being the killer and we had some really enticing information, but still no proof of anything.

I spent the rest of the week reviewing old cases that haven't been solved and picked out a few that looked interesting. I copied all the files on those cases and put them in a drawer of my desk so I could share them with Rochelle.

}|{

At six AM the next Saturday, I drove my personal car, a Buick SUV, out to a country road that intersected with the road that ran past the Stinson house. I was far enough away I needed binoculars to see much, but I was also far enough away I didn't think anyone would find my car to be unusual.

About seven, Mr. Stinson got into a black Dodge Ram pickup towing a trailer and drove toward Knoxville. He had both a riding lawnmower and a push mower on the trailer. I watched the house for another half-hour but didn't see anybody come out. After driving back to Knoxville, I drove past the house where Mrs. Johnson lived and parked far enough up the street that I had to use my binoculars again. On the way I passed Rochelle sitting in her red Blazer that was parked across the street from the Johnson house. I called Rochelle's cell phone and asked if she'd seen me. She said she had. I asked her to stay where she was and take any pictures she had an opportunity to take.

The same black Dodge Ram pickup and trailer was parked in Mrs. Johnson's drive, and Mr. Stinson was riding his riding mower around her back yard. He finished, drove the riding mower up a set of ramps on the trailer, and then sat the push mower on the ground. After another half an hour, he put the push mower back on the trailer and took out what looked like a battery powered string trimmer out of the truck bed. He made some passes with the trimmer around the house, walk, and drive and then put the trimmer back in the truck bed, pushed in the trailer ramps, and closed the endgate.

I figured he was done and would leave, but he didn't. He went into the house and stayed there for another hour and a half.

Now, I'm a suspicious sort anyway, but there was no way Mr. Stinson was in that house just having coffee and talking politics with Mrs. Johnson. I couldn't see in any windows, so I wasn't sure what they were doing in here, but I had a pretty good idea. It wasn't until the front door opened and Mr. Stinson walked out that I knew.

Mrs. Stinson stood in the door while he kissed her, and it was pretty obvious what they'd been doing. The only clothes Mrs. Johnson appeared to be wearing was a terry cloth robe that was open enough at the neck to show me some really nice breasts. Those breasts were sitting pretty low, so I didn't think she was wearing a bra. When she took a step toward Mr. Stinson, her robe opened enough I could see most of her right leg. That leg was pretty nice for a woman who was sixty-six.

After kissing Mrs. Johnson and giving her right breast a little squeeze, Mr. Stinson got back into his pickup, backed out of the drive and started back to his house. I called Rochelle again and asked her to stay where she was while I followed Mr. Stinson to see where he went.

It had taken me fourteen minutes to drive from the Stinson house to the Johnson house, so I let Mr. Stinson get ahead of me by fifteen minutes. When I drove past the Stinson house, the truck and trailer were sitting in the drive and Mr. Stinson was backing the riding mower down the ramps. I didn't stop because I'd already figured out what was going on, or at least I thought I had.

My theory was that Mr. Stinson and Mrs. Johnson were still having an affair, and his mowing and repair jobs were just a way to justify seeing Mrs. Johnson to Mrs. Stinson. With that theory and everything else I knew, I thought I could bring them all in for questioning and maybe get a search warrant for the Stinson property.

When I got back home I called Rochelle to see if anything was happening at the Johnson house. She said Mrs. Johnson had come out of the house and got into her car. She had followed her to a Wal-Mart a few blocks away.

"I'm parked where I can see her car and I'm going to wait here and see what she buys and if she goes anywhere else. If she does, I'll keep following her. If she just goes home, I'll drive back home too."

Two hours later, Rochelle walked in the door and grinned.

"You think I take a long time to grocery shop. I waited on Mrs. Johnson for an hour before she loaded her trunk from her shopping buggy. She didn't buy a lot, at least not enough for her to have spent an hour in there, and I couldn't see most of what she had because it was in those plastic bags.

"I did see something that seemed odd though. Three of the bags had bottlenecks sticking out of them, you know, necks like a wine bottle has. I counted two in each bag. When she unloaded her trunk when she got home, I saw that two of the bottles had slipped out of the plastic bags. They were bottles of wine. What in the world would she be doing with six bottles of wine?"

I shrugged and said maybe she was drinking wine to forget her husband. Rochelle shook her head and grinned.

"After twenty-six years? Maybe the first year, but not twenty-six. Besides, I didn't see a wine bottle anywhere in her kitchen. What I think is she's planning a party."

"And you think that party is with the Stinson's?"

Rochelle nodded and grinned again.

"Well, look at it. She was only thirty-nine when her husband was killed. Why didn't she find another husband? I mean, the woman looks really good for her age. She was probably even better when she was thirty-nine. She wouldn't have had any problems attracting men."

I shrugged.

"Her son was gone but she had a three year old daughter living with her. A lot of men couldn't handle that."

Rochelle smiled.

"Is that what you'd have done if I had had a daughter when we met?"

That question caused me to think a little because it wasn't something I'd ever thought much about. I knew my job had caused my divorce and I hadn't been looking to repeat that mistake so I'd never looked for another woman. Rochelle kind of wormed her way past my defenses until there was nothing I could do about it.

"It would depend. I knew you were divorced so that wasn't a problem. It would have been a problem for me if you had a daughter at home. That would have put me in the position of trying to be a father when the girl's real father would probably have had visiting rights at some frequency. I'd have been forced into the position of trying to help you raise the girl while her real father might be telling her the opposite of what we were telling her.

"I've seen too many domestic disturbances caused by that sort of thing and as a patrol officer I hauled in at least half a dozen kids who to tired of the arguing and just ran away. That's no way for a child to grow up and it might have split us up at some point, so no, I wouldn't have let you get as close to me as you did."

Rochelle smiled again.

"Mrs. Johnson wasn't divorced. Her husband and the girl's father was dead and buried in a cemetery. The girl would have only been about three years old and probably wouldn't remember much about her real father. You could have stepped into that role if you liked the girl and her mother enough. I can see how there might be a problem with the son since he was twenty-one, but he wasn't living at home by then. If that had been the case with me, would that have changed your opinion?"

I nodded.

"It might have. I don't know. I've never encountered a woman like that. Are you thinking that Mrs. Johnson didn't look for another husband?"

Rochelle grinned.

"That's exactly what I'm thinking. I'm thinking Mrs. Johnson didn't look for a husband because she already had one. She had Mr. Stinson."

"Wouldn't Mrs. Stinson have had something to say about that? I'm sure you would have."

Rochelle nodded.

"Yes, I'd have said no, but if they were trading partners, she'd already have known and agreed with the arrangement. Maybe Mrs. Stinson likes knowing her husband is sleeping with another woman. If you believe the literature, there have been women like that since the 1500's. They were called cuckqueens at one time. I think I remember reading that they're now call a cuckholdress.

"There might be another explanation too. While I was waiting on her to come out of Wal-Mart, I did some research on my phone. You've heard of polyamoury where one partner, usually a man, has more than one female partner. Sometimes it can be the reverse as well, with one woman having more than one male partner.

"Did you know that there's another version of this? It's called polyfidelity. That's where married people share partners but only within a select small group. Maybe that's what this is. Mr. and Mrs. Stinson and Mrs. Johnson have become sort of a poly family."

Well, all those theories were possible. I only knew of one way to prove which one or to disprove them all. It was time to bring them all in for questioning. I couldn't do that until Monday, but Rochelle and I could continue to gather evidence. We decided to take a drive out to both houses that evening after dinner.

}|{

It was about eight when we drove past the Johnson house and saw that her car wasn't in the drive where Rochelle said she'd left it after she went shopping. There weren't any lights on in the house either. It was doubtful that Mrs. Johnson went to bed that early. She had to be somewhere else.

We drove out of town then and out to the Stinson house. There, sitting in the Stinson driveway was the car Rochelle had followed from Mrs. Johnson's house to Wal-Mart and back. There were a few lights on in the house including the ceiling light in the living room. I shut off my lights and drove past the house slowly while Rochelle looked out her window.

A few seconds after that, Rochelle started to chuckle.

"Remember that I told you Mrs. Johnson looked great for her age? Well, she still looks great with nothing on. So does Mrs. Stinson. They're both standing there with a wine class in their hand."

"They're naked?"

"Well, they are from the waist up and guess what. They just kissed each other. Maybe Mr. Stinson isn't the reason Mrs. Johnson never looked for a husband. Maybe it was Mrs. Stinson. No, wait... Mr. Stinson just walked up to them. He looks naked too and he just squeezed Mrs. Stinson's left breast. Now he's doing the same to Mrs. Johnson's right breast. It looks to me like they're all having a ball."

There wasn't much use in sticking around. What ever happened probably wasn't going to happen where we could see it. We drove back home and planned to drive back out on Sunday.

}|{

We didn't make it back out to the Stinson house until after lunch. When Rochelle woke me up she said watching Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Stinson had given her some ideas she wanted to try out. I asked her if she was thinking about becoming a lesbian and she laughed.

"Not in a million years, but it did look pretty hot when Mr. Stinson squeezed their breasts. Squeeze one of mine so I can feel what that feels like."

Well, one thing led to another and that led to me plugged into Rochelle while she danced around on the bed. When the orgasm swept her away, I was too far gone to do anything except hold on to keep my cock in her while I spurted three times.

When we did finally make the drive, Mrs. Johnson's car was still in the Stinson drive so she'd apparently stayed there all night. I was beginning to believe that one of Rochelle's theories was right. We just had to connect that theory to the murder of Mr. Johnson. That was going to be hard unless one of them confessed because all we had was some evidence any defense lawyer would claim to be just coincidence.

When I looked at what we knew about the three people involved, Mr. Stinson seemed to be pretty confident so he probably wouldn't change the story he'd used before. I wasn't sure about Mrs. Stinson, but if she was a party to her husband sleeping with another woman, she'd probably try to defend him.

Mrs. Johnson was a different story. She was the one who lost her husband and while she might or might not have had anything to do with his murder, I was pretty sure she'd figured it out. According to Rochelle, Mrs. Johnson had seemed to be pretty submissive as well, a trait that figured into her relationship with the Stinson's and a trait I could probably use to my advantage.

On Monday morning, I drove my plain sedan to Mrs. Johnson's house and knocked on her door. When she answered, I introduced myself and asked if she'd come down to the station and talk to me.

The look on her face was like I'd just asked her to strip naked and run down the street.

"Detective, I don't why you want to talk to me, but I don't want to talk to you."

She started to close the door in my face, but I stopped it with my foot.

"Mrs. Johnson, I want to talk to you about your husband's death. You can either get in my car or I can arrest you, put you in cuffs, and put you in my car. Right now what your neighbors are seeing is a man in a suit talking to you. I could be a salesman for all they know. As soon as I put the cuffs on you, they'll know I'm a cop and that you're in trouble. You decide what your neighbors are going to see."

She looked at me and said, "I didn't kill my husband."

I smiled.

"I didn't say you did. All I did was ask you to come down to the station with me so we can talk. Now, my handcuffs are in a case under my jacket. You have until I reach for them to decide, so either follow me or turn around and put your hands behind your back."

}|{

The only thing Mrs. Johnson had asked is if she could get her purse. I watched her walk to the table beside the door, put her cell phone in her purse and then pick it up. A minute later she'd locked her door and was in my back seat and on the way to the station. It's standard procedure for any suspect in a police car to be handcuffed, but I didn't think Mrs. Johnson was going to try to get away. I just made sure she was buckled in.

I'd been watching her in my rear view mirror and when she pulled out her cell phone, I pulled over to the curb and turned on my lights.

"Mrs. Johnson, I'm trying to make this as painless for you as possible but I can't allow you to call or text anybody. That might affect my investigation. Hand that cell phone to me. I won't look at it, but I can't let you use it. If you don't give me your phone, I'll have no option but to take the phone and handcuff you."

She didn't look happy, but she handed me her cell phone. I put it on the passenger seat, shut off my lights and drove the rest of the way to the station.

}|{

When I got to the station, I walked Mrs. Johnson to an interrogation room and told her I'd get her some water or a soft drink if she wanted. She asked for a bottle of water so I walked out, and went to get it. I also went to get some help. Like Rochelle had said, sometimes women won't tell a man everything, but they might tell a woman. I was going to put the fear of God into Mrs. Johnson and then leave her alone with Detective Bernice Masters.

Bernice is in her fifties and she's been a detective for ten years. If you saw Bernice outside of the station, you'd think she was anybody's grandmother. That's how she conducts an interrogation too unless she has to get tough. Bernice is perfectly capable of getting tough but usually she doesn't have to.

I sat the bottle of water down in front of Mrs. Johnson and then introduced her to Bernice.

"Mrs. Johnson, this is Detective Bernice Masters. She's going to listen to our conversation.

"Now, I said I wanted to talk about your husband's death. Do you have anything to say before we start?"

Mrs. Johnson shook her head.

"I don't have anything to say that I didn't tell the police back then."

I wasn't going to pull any punches with her. I'd let Bernice calm her down once I got done.

"Mrs. Johnson, I need to advise you that this interview is being recorded. I also need to advise you that anything you say can be used in your trial should I decide to charge you, so you need to tell the truth. You have the right to have an attorney present during this interview. Do you understand what I just said?"

Mrs. Johnson nodded.

"Do you want an attorney present? If you can't afford an attorney, I can get one for you."

She said she didn't need an attorney because she hadn't done anything wrong.

I opened my case file and leafed through a couple papers, then looked up at Mrs. Johnson.

"I know what you told the detective who talked to you. It's written right here. You said you couldn't think of any reason anyone would kill your husband. That wasn't right, though, was it?"

She frowned.

"There was nothing else to tell."

I turned a couple of pages in my file and then looked up at Mrs. Johnson again.

"Why didn't you tell the detective about the court order for a paternity test your husband went to court to get in 1996?"

That question made Mrs. Johnson look down at her lap.

"That was because Roy thought he might not be the father of our daughter. I didn't think it was important."

"Why would he think that?"

She started to wring her hands.

"I don't know why he'd have thought that."

Bernice had been listening quietly, but then she turned to me and said, "Rich, you need to go get a cup of coffee."

I left the interrogation room, but I went to the room beside it, the room with one-way glass. I sat down to listen to what Bernice and Mrs. Johnson said.

Bernice reached across the table and patted Mrs. Johnson on the hand.

"You don't know how hard it is working with some men like I have to. They get used to being tough with male suspects and when they have to talk to a woman they try to scare her to death.

"It doesn't matter, but was your child a little girl or a little boy?"

Mrs. Johnson smiled.

"She was a little girl. We named her Bethany."

Bernice smiled back.

"What a wonderful name for a little girl. I'll bet she really likes it, doesn't she?"

"Well, she didn't when she started school. She wanted to be called Beth because that's what her daddy called her. I called her teachers each year and asked them to call her Beth and she was all right after that. When she went to college, she started using Bethany again. She said Bethany sounded more grown up than Beth."

Bernice smiled.

"Sounds like my Jamie. We always called him Jamie, but his real name is James. When he went to college he started using James again.

"So what are your kids doing now?"

Mrs. Johnson looked up and her smile looked genuine.

"Jason is an engineer for the State of Washington EPA and Bethany is a computer engineer in Los Angeles."

"You should be proud of both of them. I'll bet you miss them, don't you, but they probably come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas don't they?"

Mrs. Johnson shook her head.

"No, they haven't been home for years. Jason is married with three kids of his own and he says it would cost too much. Bethany isn't married, but she always has some project that she has to work on over the holidays."

Bernice nodded.

"I know how you must feel. Our kids are both cops in Florida. If they're not putting things back together after a hurricane, they're trying to catch drug runners or trying to keep the college kids in check over spring break. We always tried to drive down to see them at Christmas. We didn't have any reason to stay in Knoxville, so we took our vacation at Christmas."

I could see Mrs. Johnson relaxing more and more. She wasn't just sitting there anymore. She was looking at Bernice when she spoke and she was smiling when they talked about her kids. Bernice was what they call in interrogation class "developing a connection" with the suspect. I was waiting for Bernice to ask her about her husband. Bernice did, but she didn't do what I thought she'd do.

"Mrs. Johnson, we have something in common. I lost my husband to a heart attack a year and a half ago. If I hadn't had a lot of help from the people in the police department, I don't know if I could have made it through that. How did you?"

Mrs. Johnson smiled.

"I had Grace and Arny to help me through it. Grace always listened to me and Arny took over doing the things that Roy used to do. Grace knew how I was feeling because we lost our father a year before Roy was... before Roy had his accident. She told me that things always happen for a reason and that I should get on with my life instead of trying to figure out what happened. I thought she was wrong for almost a year, but then I realized she was right."

That statement was interesting to me. Mrs. Johnson had almost said her husband was murdered, but then changed to his death being an accident. It was almost like she'd been coached to say it was an accident.

Bernice followed up that question with one I'd never have asked Mrs. Johnson.

"Mrs. Johnson, if Grace and Arny were such good friends, that friendship must go back for years."

Mrs. Johnson smiled.

"Well, Grace is my half sister so we lived in the same house from the time I was two until we I got married to Roy. Arny is a lot like Roy in some respects, so I liked Arny and Grace liked Roy. Roy and Arny liked each other too, so basically we were all friends from the time I married Roy and Grace married Arny. When Mom and Dad passed away, Arny and Grace were my only family in the world."

Bernice ventured out then.

"You know, I have a brother in law like that. I suppose my sister and I both chose men who were about the same. My brother in law was a little bigger than my husband... well, heavier and taller anyway. It sounds strange, but I used to wonder how it would be if we... well, I mean would it feel the same or not? I went through a period after our kids when I was feeling pretty down. My boobs got bigger but my husband liked that. My butt got bigger too and he wasn't all that thrilled about that. My brother in law said it didn't make any difference to him and I found that to be... well... exciting if you know what I mean. Did you ever think about that with Arny?"

I figured right there is when Mrs. Johnson would demand a lawyer, but she didn't. She just looked at her hands.

"Well... Arny told me the same thing, so... well... yes, I did think about it sometimes."

Bernice smiled and stroked Mrs. Johnson's hand.

"Maybe that's why your husband thought he might not be your little girl's father?"

Mrs. Johnson surprised me then because she started giving Bernice a biography of her life.

"You have to understand something about me. When I was eighteen, I was really curious about boys. Girls back then didn't have sex as early as they seem to today, so I didn't do anything about it until I graduated from high school. I met Roy at my job and one thing led to another. We tried everything I'd read about and I ended up pregnant with our son. We got married because that was what you did back then.

"A lot of those marriages didn't work out, but Roy and I did until our son was born. A month before that, I couldn't do anything and for almost six months after he was born, I was usually too tired. Roy didn't complain but I knew he didn't like it. I told Grace about it and she said she'd seen it too and had talked to Arny about it.

"What Arny told her was that if she wanted to, she could have sex with Roy as long as she didn't get pregnant and it didn't become a permanent thing. I about fell over when she asked me if I'd agree to that.

"At first I said I'd never agree, but Grace reminded me that women have needs too and I shouldn't judge Roy just because he needed something I couldn't give him for a while. She said she'd seen me get the same way if Roy was out of town on a business trip. I had to agree that there were times that I needed to have sex too.

"Well, Grace and I are a lot alike that way. She was just smarter with Arny than I was with Roy. She didn't get pregnant. I understood what she was telling me, so I finally said I'd agree. The next Saturday, Roy spent the night at their house and Arny spent the night with me. Arny and I didn't do anything, but Roy and Grace did. She told me afterwards that if I hadn't been her sister she'd have been a little jealous of me.

"We continued like that until Jason could sleep through the night without being fed or having his diapers changed. Then, Roy and I started having sex again, not almost every night like before, but several times a week. I thought he'd stopped being with Grace, but he hadn't. When I asked Grace about what they were doing, she said she liked Roy but she didn't love him, and that sex with Roy wasn't better than sex with Arny. It was just different and she liked different.

"Then she told me maybe I should try out Arny. She said Arny liked me and since Roy was sleeping with her, Arny would like the chance to sleep with me even if it was just once.

"Well, I told Grace I could never do that, and she asked me why. To tell the truth, when I thought about it, sex with Roy had become pretty much the same every time. It wasn't bad sex because I usually had an orgasm, but it was always the same. Because of that, I couldn't give Grace an answer.

"Grace just grinned at me and said, "You've thought about it, haven't you?"

Mrs. Johnson looked up a Bernice then.

"Well, I had, not enough to do anything about it, but I had thought about it. Does that make me a bad woman?"

Bernice smiled.

"No, Honey, I think it makes you a normal woman. Most women like sex. A lot of us need sex. We just like having sex when we want to. I'm one of those women, but at my age finding a man who can is tricky. I think you were lucky to have Arny. You did have sex with him, didn't you?"

Mrs. Johnson nodded.

"Yes, I did, the next Saturday."

"And after that?"

Mrs. Johnson smiled.

"We sort of fell into a routine. Roy and I would sleep together during the week, and on the weekends, we'd take Jason to my mother's and go to Arny and Grace's house. Roy would take Grace into the spare bedroom and Arny and I would use the master bedroom."

Bernice smiled again.

"I wish I could have found friends like that. I guess that's why your husband thought maybe he wasn't your daughter's father?"

Mrs. Johnson nodded.

"He just had to know for sure. Once he knew, he was satisfied."

Bernie wrote something down in her notebook and then said, "What about since then?"

Mrs. Johnson wiped her eyes.

"Sorry, but you're making me think about Roy again.

"After Bethany was born, I couldn't do it for real again for a while, but that didn't matter to any of us. On the weekends, Roy would go with Grace and I would go with Arny. For a while, all Arny and I did was play around. I'd do him with my hand and once I was pretty much healed, he'd do me with a finger. Once I could do it again, we went back like we always had done except Jason was in college. We hired a nanny to watch Bethany.

"When Roy had his accident, Arny and Grace were very supportive. Arny said he'd step in and do the things that Roy had been doing so I wouldn't have to hire somebody to do it. Grace was also really understanding. She said we were sisters and sisters should share everything. I didn't know she meant we should share Arny until one weekend when Arny came over to mow my yard. He mowed my yard, and then he asked if there was anything else I needed done.

"It had been almost six months since Roy's accident and I'd gotten used to living alone except for one thing. Arny said he could take care of that one thing and he did. After that, it was just me, Arny and Grace, but it was good for me and I think good for them. Grace told me their sex life was getting pretty stale before we started getting together.

Bernice smiled.

"You and Mrs. Stinson... I mean, after I lost my husband and couldn't find another man, I wondered about a woman instead. Did you and Mrs. Stinson ever..."

Mrs. Johnson nodded.

"I didn't want to at first, but when Grace started to help Arny with me, I found out I liked that too."

Bernice patted Mrs. Johnson's hand.

"Well, Honey, don't beat yourself up for doing something that makes you feel good. There are a lot of women who wish they could do the same thing."

Bernice thanked Mrs. Johnson for being honest and said she believe that she hadn't had anything to do with her husband's accident. Then Bernice picked up the file and stood up. That was my cue to meet her in the hall outside the interrogation room

When Bernice left the room, I was standing outside the door. Bernice shut the door and locked it, and then asked me if I'd been listening. I said I had.

Bernice said she thought Mrs. Johnson was probably just a woman who felt she wasn't very desirable after her children were born, and that between Mr. and Mrs. Stinson, they'd convinced her she was just as desirable as before.

"What I think is she was just playing their game because it made her feel good about herself. I don't think she'd ever have done anything to her husband. She was sleeping with Mr. Stinson, but she still loved her husband or she'd have divorced him.

"I don't think she knows who killed her husband either. If she did, she'd have slipped up and told me she liked Mr. Stinson more than she liked her husband. She didn't do that, and she had tears in her eyes at one point. Not many women can fake tears. They can fake the face and the voice, but not the tears.

"I'll write this up in my report, but I think you need to look at Mr. and Mrs. Stinson to find your killer."

I still had the problem that if I released Mrs. Johnson, she was sure to call her sister and tell her what had happened. That would have given Mr. and Mrs. Stinson some time to at least agree on a story that proved them innocent. It might give them time to leave the area.

I wasn't going to let them slip out of my grasp when I had Mrs. Johnson on tape and explaining what had been going on for years. That smelled to me like either Mr. Stinson or Mrs. Stinson, or maybe both wanted Mr. Johnson out of the way.

I walked down to Judge Mitchell's office, showed her what I knew and what I suspected, and asked her for an arrest warrant for Mr. and Mrs. Stinson and a search warrant for their property. Once I had those in hand, I asked the Captain to send two patrol officers to the Stinson residence and bring them in for questioning. I also gave a copy of the search warrant to Ron's Crime Scene Techs and asked them to follow the patrol officers to the Stinson residence. I gave both teams half an hour, and then told Mrs. Johnson I'd take her back home.

}|{

I wanted to see what the techs found at the Stinson residence so I let the Stinson's sit in a holding cell until I had some concrete evidence. What the techs found was enough to put my killer, who I suspected was Mr. Stinson, in prison for life.

There wasn't much in the house except a scrapbook of pictures of the Johnson's and the Stinson's doing things together. The shed beside the firing range was a different story. In that shed, the techs found a lot of things that were going to put cuffs on Mr. Stinson.

The shed had two parts. The front part was Mr. Stinson's working area and had a reloading setup for several different piston, rifle, and shotgun cartridges. It also had some stuff that one of the techs said was for working on bows and arrows. What was important to my case was a set of forming dies for 7.62 x 25 pistol cartridges, and a box of 7.62 bullets.

I didn't have a weapon until one of the techs opened a door in the back of the work area. Behind that door was a safe door that opened with a key much like you'd see on a gun cabinet. Two hours later, a locksmith had figured out how that safe door worked and opened it. When I stepped inside and turned on the light switch, I figured I had my killer.

The room had been built with concrete blocks placed inside the outside shed walls. It would have been really hard to break into other than by going through the roof, but there was corrugated roofing nailed to the ceiling joists to make that pretty hard too. There was a dehumidifier running against one wall with a hose that ran outside.

There were at least fifteen revolvers and pistols in racks and another dozen or so rifles and shotguns along with three compound bows and several arrows. As the techs inventoried the safe, they found a Tokarev T33 that looked like it had seen better days and another pistol that used the same cartridges, a Zastava M57. Along with those two pistols, they found a thousand rounds of ammunition in four old US Army ammo cans. There were other ammo cans with cartridges for the rifles, shotguns, and other pistols.

We took all the firearms and the 7.62 x 25 tooling back to the station and put everything into the evidence locker except the two 7.62 pistols, the reloading tooling, and a box of twenty-five cartridges. I took those to Jack and asked him if he could match either handgun or the reloading dies to the cartridge case the old techs had found at the crime scene.

While Jack was doing that, I went back to the evidence room with the arrow that had been found sticking out of Mr. Johnson's chest. It took only a few minutes to pick out the same brand, lot number, spine stiffness and fletching of that arrow from the boxes of arrows the techs had collected. That arrow had come from a box of arrows Mr. Stinson had in his gunroom.

An hour later, Jack called me.

"Rich, I'm writing a report, but I knew you'd want the information as soon as you could get it.

"Because I didn't have the original bullet, I couldn't get a match for bullets fired from either pistol. I did find a match though, but not to the Tokarev. The case found at the scene had some marks on the sides caused by the lips of the magazine and the feed ramp. There were also marks on the base and recessed rim where the cartridge impressed into the bolt face and where the extractor grabbed it.

"The marks on the side of the case match those from cartridges fired from the Zastava as do the location of the extractor marks and the impression left by the bolt face. I can't prove that the Zastava is your murder weapon without a bullet match, but I can say with about ninety percent certainty that the case from the scene was fired through the Zastava.

"Oh, there's one more thing that's a little less certain, but it's there. The forming die isn't a carbide die and at some point it developed a burr on the leading edge that seats at the bottom of the reformed case. That burr would have left a short, deep scratch on the case when it was reformed from the 5.56 brass, and the resizing die the guy used didn't take it out. Since that forming die was only used one time during the initial reforming, your killer apparently didn't notice it. After that, he might not have noticed it because cases don't show that they were completely resized. Mostly he was just resizing the case neck and shoulder. The same scratches are on both the cartridge found at the scene and the cartridges I just fired."

I had enough then to charge either Mr. Stinson or Mrs. Stinson with the murder of Mr. Johnson. My bet was on Mr. Stinson. I didn't think Mrs. Stinson had the skills to pull off a murder without being seen. If she knew Mr. Stinson had killed Mr. Johnson though, she was still an accessory. That's what I was going to tell her when I talked to her.

I called Rochelle and told her I'd probably be late getting home.

}|{

It was about seven when I got home. Rochelle was sitting on our couch watching television, and smiled.

"I have our dinner warming in the oven. It's nothing fancy, just a chicken casserole, but it turned out pretty good. You wash up and change while I dish it up."

The casserole was good. Telling Rochelle what happened was even better.

She asked if we'd solved the case and I nodded.

"Yes, and the killer was Mr. Stinson just like Harry thought."

Rochelle frowned.

"I thought so too, but everybody said they were best friends. Why would he kill his best friend?"

"Well, it was like one of your theories, but it ended up a lot deeper than we both thought.

"The whole thing started long before the paternity test. It started back in 1979 when the Johnson's son was born. According to Mrs. Johnson, because she couldn't have sex for a while, Mr. Stinson offered to share his wife with Mr. Johnson. Apparently, both Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Stinson were good with that arrangement. It became a regular Saturday occurrence for Mr. Johnson to spend the night with Mrs. Stinson and Mr. Stinson would spend the night on Mrs. Johnson's couch.

"Once Mrs. Johnson had recovered, she and her husband began having sex again, but the relationship didn't change except that Mrs. Stinson convinced Mrs. Johnson that she should try out Mr. Stinson. Mrs. Johnson did and liked what he did with her. The double affair became what you called a poly family. It was almost every weekend that they got together and switched partners.

"That was why Mr. Johnson requested the paternity test. I gather he wasn't too concerned that he might not be the father. He just wanted to know for sure.

"Like her first pregnancy, Mrs. Johnson had to abstain for a while, but she only abstained from actual sex. While Mr. Johnson was having sex with Mrs. Stinson, Mr. Stinson and Mrs. Johnson were still having sex but without actual penetration.

"What put the cat through the wringer was Mr. Stinson began to suspect that Mrs. Stinson was starting to like sex with Mr. Johnson more than she liked sex with her husband. She told me that wasn't true, but she probably did get a little louder with Mr. Johnson than she did with Mr. Stinson. She said it was because Mr. Stinson didn't like giving her oral sex and Mr. Johnson did. She said she had no idea that her husband might kill Mr. Johnson, but when she learned about the circumstances, she wondered if that was the case. I believe she was telling me the truth. She doesn't seem like a woman who would ever say anything against her husband unless she was pretty sure.

"When I met with Mr. Stinson, the first words out of his mouth after I advised him of his rights was that he wanted a public defender. It took an hour to get a lawyer into the interrogation room and then another hour for them to talk while I cooled my heels over a cup of coffee and decided how I was going to approach the interrogation. When I knocked on the door and asked them if they were ready to talk, the lawyer said they were.

"When I talked to Mr. Stinson at his house, he impressed me as very self-confident and more than a little egotistical. I intended to break him down with the evidence I had and see how he'd react.

"I started by telling him I had an iron-clad motive for him to kill Mr. Johnson, and that he himself had admitted he and Mr. Johnson were the only two people in those woods that day. His lawyer said I couldn't prove that there were only two people in those woods and I said I had a sworn statement from the property owner that they were the only two. I then said if there was another person in those woods, it was strange that the cartridge case Harry found there was an exact match to cases fired from the Zastava pistol we found in Mr. Stinson's workshop. His lawyer didn't have an answer for that.

"I then laid out my theory for what had happened. I said I believed that since both couples were switching wives on the weekend, Mr. Stinson had become jealous of Mr. Johnson and decided to get him out of the picture. That way, Mr. Stinson would have both his wife and Mrs. Johnson all to himself. I said what I figured happened was that both men walked to Mr. Johnson's tree stand where Mr. Stinson shot Mr. Johnson and then tried to disguise the bullet track by pushing an arrow through the bullet hole. He then walked to his own tree stand, stayed there for five or so hours, and then reported Mr. Johnson's death to the police. I said I didn't think any jury would believe Mr. Stinson's story about the killing being an accident since that arrow matched the brand and lot number we found on arrows in Mr. Stinson's workshop.

"He wouldn't break. He and his lawyer both kept saying that was just circumstantial evidence and would be easy to refute in court. Mr. Stinson said he might have taken the pistol out to the woods sometime before but had forgotten what day. His lawyer said that a lot of men and women switch partners and nobody gets killed so that wasn't much of a motive. He went on to say that if Mrs. Johnson hadn't decided to join in, it wouldn't have been much of an affair in the first place. I had to remind them that Mrs. Stinson admitted that she encouraged Mrs. Johnson to sleep with Mr. Stinson, so it was likely both were involved.

"It was when I said I was going to charge both Mr. Stinson and his wife with premeditated murder that he finally broke. He said it was all his doing but wasn't because he was jealous of Mr. Johnson. It was because his wife had decided that sex with Mrs. Johnson was better than sex with him.

"I asked him why he hadn't killed Mrs. Johnson instead and he said he couldn't take away his wife's lover. If he killed Mr. Johnson, Mrs. Stinson would still have her lover and he'd get Mrs. Johnson too. He said Mrs. Johnson liked having sex with Mrs. Stinson, but liked sex with him better. I don't know if that's true or not, but it was a motive for murder and that's what I told him.

"His lawyer asked for some time alone, something I'd expected, so I left them alone and walked into the viewing room beside the interrogation room to see what the DA had to say. He'd watched both interrogations. I asked him what he thought.

"Jim said it didn't seem to him like Mr. Stinson was a danger to the community and that at his age, he probably wouldn't last longer than ten years in prison. Jim had no concerns about getting a conviction for Mr. Stinson. He didn't think he could convict Mrs. Stinson of anything except having an affair with her sister's husband. For those reasons, he agreed to reduce the charge for Mr. Stinson to manslaughter with a prison term between ten and fifteen years and he wouldn't charge Mrs. Stinson with anything.

"When I went back to the interrogation room, Mr. Stinson's lawyer asked if we could arrange a plea deal. He said Mr. Stinson would plead guilty to negligent homicide and accept a sentence of a year in prison and five years of parole.

"I laughed and asked what kind of fool he thought the DA was. I told him that since the murder was obviously planned and that Mr. Stinson had attempted to cover it up as an accident by pushing the arrow through Mr. Johnson's body, he was lucky the DA wasn't going to ask for the death penalty.

"Then I said the DA might agree to dropping the charge to manslaughter with a sentence of fifteen to twenty years. There was some whispered conversation between them and then the lawyer said fifteen years seemed like a long sentence for manslaughter.

"I said if Mr. Stinson wrote out a confession that was substantiated by the evidence, I'd go talk to the DA. His lawyer agreed with the stipulation that neither Mrs. Johnson or Mrs. Stinson would be charged with anything. I handed him a confession form and a pen.

"Mr. Stinson will go before a judge in two days and confess. The DA is going to ask for a sentence of ten to fifteen years. By that night, Mr. Stinson will be in prison."

Rochelle asked what I thought would happen to Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Stinson.

I shrugged and smiled.

"From what Mr. Stinson told me, they won't miss him all that much. He said he always had to come second after they'd both finished. I'd expect they'll keep doing what they do every weekend. They shared Mr. Stinson. Maybe they can share some guy to mow their grass and fix things."

Rochelle grinned then.

"Well, I'm glad I have you. I couldn't do it with another woman. How about if we go to bed and you show me how a real man can make a woman feel?"

Well, what could I do except say yes, especially after Rochelle pulled her top off? I'd been so intent on telling her about the case that I hadn't noticed before, but she wasn't wearing a bra. When I asked her if she forgot to wear one, she grinned and said that wasn't the only thing she'd forgotten to put on, and that if I didn't do something pretty quick, she was going to have a problem in her shorts.

I could believe that would happen because it's happened before. See, when we solve a case Rochelle gets all excited and when Rochelle gets excited she gets... well we'll be needing a towel so she don't soak the bed sheets and the mattress.

All I said was that we'd get to that after dessert.

Rochelle scratched under her breasts and then grinned.

"I thought I might be your dessert."

Well, what's a middle aged detective who lives with an extremely desirable woman to do in such a case? I don't know what most men would do, but I know what I did.

"Maybe you'd like to be dessert twice?"