False Witness

by Worthington, T. S.

  False Witness

  By T.S. Worthington

  Copyright 2016 by Make Profits Easy LLC

  profitsdaily123@aol.com

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 1

  “An Act of Betrayal”

  “Another drink?”

  Declan Pierce stared at his empty whiskey glass and the empty beer glass beside it. They were great apart but they were even better together; it was what he liked to think of as an alcoholic’s version of peanut butter and jelly. He held up both glasses and then glanced up at the bartender.

  Her name was Milly. She’d been his loyal bar matron at Arnie’s bar, his favorite hangout, for the past year and a half. She was tall, blonde, curvy, beautiful face, and the star of every wet dream he’d ever had since he was twelve. And she was fun. He realized that a sexy bartender will flirt with a man to get him to buy more drinks and leave more tips, but either she was the best actress in the world or she secretly had a thing for him.

  He realized that he’d had far too much to drink because he was getting to that point where women way out of his league started looking like they were totally in his league. In fact sometimes he thought he might be too good for them.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes on both.”

  “You got it,” Milly said.

  As she turned around to prepare his drinks he could not help but stare at her ass. He’d been watching her ass almost daily for the past year and a half and he could swear that it was just getting better and better every time he saw it. It was almost like God had decided that he would just take his time with this one and just chip away at it until it was absolutely perfect. Declan thought it was perfect to begin with, but he was sure that it would be better tomorrow.

  Yep. He was damn drunk.

  Milly sat his drinks back on the bar in front of him and he nodded a thank you. He tried to verbalize it but all that really came out was a weird kind of grunt.

  He sat there for a few moments wondering if he was even going to finish the drinks in front of him. He knew he probably would, but he didn’t want to. It wasn’t his fault though. He knew that he was hurting and that he had a disease that was not going to go away, but it had never been this bad.

  It was not his fault.

  It was hers. It was Maria’s fault. His wife. His angel. His whole world.

  The bitch.

  It pained him to think of her that way, but that was precisely what she was. She was destroying him and she didn’t even know it. She didn’t care. It was all fun and games for her. Was that how she saw him? A game? A joke?

  He bit his lip to hold the tears back from his eyes. Why was she doing this to him? He knew it was happening. He had tried to talk himself out of this train of thought, but the evidence was all there.

  She was cheating on him. He didn’t want to believe a word of it, but he was to the point where he could not deny that it was happening. He wanted to just make it all disappear and take his world back to the way it was before, but that was just not going to happen.

  He thought back three weeks before when he came home to an empty house after working all day chasing scumbags. The cop life was hard and he knew it was hard being married to a cop. The hours were crazy, the pay was lousy, the perks were shit but that was what his wife had signed onto. And that was what you did when you made that decision to marry a cop. You married the job to and you were often playing second fiddle to it. He hated it and did his best to change that, but there was only so much he could do that was out of his hands.

  And he thought Maria understood that. He thought she was ok with him being a cop and that she was happy. They had their ups and downs of course. The job would do that to anybody. She knew that he had problems with the bottle but he kept it in check and that was also not so uncommon for cops. When you saw the worst in humanity on a daily basis the demons stayed with you sometimes and you found that sometimes they would not leave and sometimes they brought their friends over and over until the point that your entire head was filled with a party of disturbing images. It ate away at him sometimes and he could not remember the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep.

  But the only thing that kept him together, really kept him together—the bottle was only a quick Band-Aid—was Maria. He knew that no matter what kind of shit he’d had to deal with that day when he got home his amazing wife would be there to comfort him, talk to him, and remind him that he was a human being and that someone in this world loved him.

  And now that illusion had been shattered completely. He didn’t know for sure. He knew but he did not have real proof yet, only his suspicions which had been honed by fifteen years working vice on the tough streets of New York City. He’d learned quickly how to spot something out of nothing and never to back down once he felt he had a strong instinct or a hint that there was something amiss. He had rarely been wrong. This was what he was good at.

  And he knew that his beloved wife of ten years was cheating on him.

  He wondered why. Was it because he was not available enough? Were the hours the problem? Was it because his façade of humanity was starting to slip away to reveal the truth about what the past thirteen years had done to him?

  He didn’t know. And truthfully he didn’t care. She was his wife. She was supposed to be there no matter what. Maria had betrayed him, was betraying him. Most likely right now as he sat there sipping his whiskey and drinking his beer.

  Declan checked his watch. It was about time.

  He finished his whiskey, chugged his beer, placed cash on the bar, and walked out before Milly even knew he was gone. She would probably insist that he get a cab, but he had business to attend to and she did not know how well he could drive intoxicated. He’d been doing it daily for years.

  It was only a ten minute drive to his house. The night was warm and quiet for once. He wondered if all of the crime in the city just stopped when he wasn’t on the job sometimes. When he was working it seemed that he saw people doing horrible things to each other around every corner, but when he was not working the place reminded him of small town U.S. A.

  He made the drive in silence. Usually he had the radio turned to one of his favorite nineties rock stations on his XM radio, but tonight he needed to think. He just needed to get his head space right.

  He might be killing someone before the night was over.

  The wind whipping in the open window felt good on his face. It truly was one of the simplest and best ways to fight off the stench of intoxication. Yep, an old alcoholic like him knew all the tricks.

  He pulled to a stop at the end of his street and watched the house for several minutes, just getting a read on the neighborhood. There were no cars parked in front of his house, but the garage was closed and with his car gone it should have just been Maria’s Jeep sitting in there. But there were no windows to check it out or even tell that maybe no one was even there.

  Declan pulled out a cigarette and lit up. He took a few relaxing drags just trying to get himself calmed down enough that he could approach this objectively. He didn’t want to go in there and let his emotions get the better of him; that could end very badly for him and for all who might be involved.

  He had to play it cool.

  His mind had run over the possible scenarios over and over and none of them ended particularly well fo
r Maria or the man she was with. He thought about all the things that had happened for him to become suspicious in the first place.

  She was usually home when he got off work and she suddenly started working late. Maria was a bookkeeper when he met her and recently she had taken it back up again, but she was always done by four p.m. And then it became five and six in the evening and she would not be home when he got there. And then when he drove by the house when he had to work nights on a stakeout or a sting and she would not be home.

  And then he had found the text from the unlisted, unknown number in her phone. She was good at hiding things, but she was not that good. Declan observed what her new phone password was when she was answering a text from one of her girlfriends one day. She did not know he was that close to her when she was folding laundry and he was making a snack in the kitchen. But he had observed her typing it in.

  He thought it was clever that she’d changed the password. He knew what it was a long time ago, but he never checked her phone and she never checked his. They had enough trust in each other to never violate each other’s personal space like that, or so she thought.

  Maria had been careful not to enter any real information from this person and to delete the texts the second she got them and read them. But one night they went to Tucker’s for dinner and she went to the ladies room. She inadvertently left her phone on the table under her napkin.

  She was gone a minute and it vibrated. Declan read the text and deleted it so she was none the wiser. It was then that he had devised this plot. He was going to get to the bottom of it all if it was the last thing he did on this planet.

  Declan finished the cigarette, dropped it out the window, and walked towards his house in a relaxed manner. He didn’t need to alarm anybody as to what he was doing. Not that his neighbors paid any attention to anybody else around anyway.

  When he reached the door he unlocked the alarm system with the app on his phone and quietly entered. He was not worried about his wife being downstairs. No, he knew she would be somewhere else. From outside he could tell the house was dark and a moment before unlocking the door he peered into the living room from the small windows in the door.

  And then he stepped inside, quietly taking off his shoes so as to not make noise or track in dirt. His wife was a total clean freak and she would know that someone else had been there if the carpet was suddenly dirtier than normal.

  It felt weird being in his house when he wasn’t supposed to be there and his wife did not know he was there. He had never snuck into his own house before and it was leaving him with a feeling that he wasn’t supposed to be doing this.

  Or maybe he just didn’t want to do this because of what he might find and what he might do after that. Was that what was going on? He didn’t know. He just didn’t know but he was not going to think about it then. It was important for him to keep his mind going on the mission he had assigned himself.

  Maria thought he was fishing at Lake Crestwood. He went there a few times a year just to get away from things. Maria never came with him because she despised fishing but it had become a traditional thing that he did about every six months. Typically he would go there and just reflect on things. Truthfully he came back worse off than he’d been when he left, but he enjoyed it anyway. Most of it was just himself being alone, drinking, fishing, and crying over the hell that his life had become because of that damn miserable job.

  And of course he could have quit, but something about it drew him there and kept him from moving on to something else. If he’d moved away from the job would his marriage have been better? Would he have been able to keep Maria interested and happy? Probably would have helped, he knew. But none of that should have mattered. She said that she wanted to be with him forever. Marriage vows were taken seriously by him. It was the hip new thing to do nowadays but not for him. He said “I do” because he meant it.

  Declan took a deep breath and began up the stairs, carefully taking one step at a time to make sure he wasn’t heard. From the stairs he could hear moans coming from the bedroom.

  He stopped in mid step. There was no denying that sound. He had heard his wife make those same noises when they were first married. Over the years their love life began to falter and the sex became less and less and when it did happen it became boring and routine. Eventually his wife acted like she wasn’t even interested anymore and was really just trying to get it over with so she could go back to her TV show or her new book she was reading.

  So eventually Declan just stopped being interested himself. The way their sex was now made him feel more ashamed than happy. There was no pleasure in it; it was so routine, so boring. And it made him feel like he was wasting her time.

  But the sounds he was hearing as he neared the top of the steps were making him enraged with envy, grief, and loss. He had never experienced those three emotions occurring at the same exact time before.

  He walked slowly to the end of the hall, standing outside of the bedroom door. He was not sure how to proceed now that he was there. It had been built up inside of his mind so much that now he just didn’t know what to do next. Should he break the door down and then just take it from there? Maybe pull his gun out and just start firing without giving anyone any time to explain anything? Or did he leave right now, find a quiet place to park his car, put his gun in his mouth, and pull the trigger?

  He wanted to do all of those things. But he knew that he couldn’t bring himself to do it then. He loved his wife. She was everything to him. He didn’t think that he could hurt her no matter what vile, horrible, and disgusting thing she had done to him and to their marriage. But he had to do something to release the rage growing inside.

  He couldn’t remember a time when he was filled with so many negative emotions. The fact that he was at all lucid or could rationalize any feeling he was having was surprising to him.

  Footsteps.

  There were footsteps getting close to him. Shit!

  Declan quickly tiptoed down the hall and stepped into the spare bedroom that they used as a computer room/ home office. He no sooner slipped out of the view of the hallway and he heard the bedroom door open up. Someone was coming towards him.

  He stepped back into the darkness of the room where he would be completely out of view of the dark hallway. A second later a large figure walked mere inches in front of him. He wasn’t quite able to make out if he recognized the figure, but something about it was familiar.

  He heard the man opening the bathroom door a second later.

  This was his chance. Declan peered around the corner just as the figure flicked on the bathroom light a moment before entering and closing the door behind him.

  Declan got a perfect view of his wife’s lover.

  John Farnsworth.

  Declan staggered back around the corner quickly lightly bumping his arm on the edge of the large computer desk. He groaned hoping that no one had heard the noise.

  John Farnsworth. He couldn’t believe it. His own partner was sleeping with his wife.

  John had been transferred to Declan’s precinct about two months before. Declan had been working solo which did make the job way too hard for a month at that point after his old partner Skip Thomas retired. He liked Skip and he’d learned a lot from him in the past ten years.

  But John was a different animal. Declan hoped that they would get along and become good friends. To cops who were partners it was even more important to be great friends. It was crucial for great teamwork. You have to know that the other person has your back and actually cares about you or it will seriously inhibit your performance.

  But this was not happening. John was the biggest ass hat that Declan had ever met. He was cocky, he would not listen to anybody despite being a rookie with only three years on the force who had just been promoted to vice. The guy acted like he had twenty years on the job. He was just an all-around despicable person.

  And now he was banging his wife.

  Decla
n tried to control his breathing. The newfound knowledge was taking his anger to a much more extreme level. The logical rationale he had been praising himself for having just a few moments earlier was now gone. He was on the verge of total frenzy.

  He imagined himself running into the bathroom and delivering a heavy kick to the side of John’s head. His head would fly against the bathroom tile knocking him senseless while Declan rained vicious punches down on his face turning it into a bloody mess.

  Then he would pull his belt off and wrap it around his neck. Placing his feet on the back of John’s neck he would pull the belt hard with both hands and push at the same time with his legs, feeling the sharp edges of the belt cutting through his neck effectively decapitating the pig at least halfway. That would feel so good… just ripping his fucking head right off his shoulders and ignoring Maria’s cries as she begged him to stop. He was killing him…

  Declan snapped back to reality as the door opened on the still flushing toilet. He stepped back a bit just to make sure he was out of view and watched John walking back to the bedroom.

  “Did you miss me?” John’s voice smirked, muffled by the wall.

  “Oh yeah…”

  The sound of Maria’s excited, sexy reply brought the tears pouring out of Declan’s eyes.

  He knew it was happening. He knew it in his heart of hearts, but even with all of the evidence the heart still holds out hope that it is not true. Maybe he was mistaken… but no. It was happening. And it was even worse than he thought.

  His wife, who he loved more than oxygen, was cheating on him with someone he despised.

  Somehow he did not allow himself to go into the bedroom. Instead he found his way quietly out of the house, reset the alarm, and then walked to his car.

  He drove through town and back to his hotel room he had booked for the night. There he downed a fifth of whiskey and debated suicide for the longest time. He’d toyed with the idea before, but something always pulled him back. It was usually Maria; he would think of her and the pain would begin to melt away, or at least pull back enough for him to think clearly and realized that offing himself was the stupidest thing that anyone could ever do.