All Comments on 'The Pursuit of Justice'

This one and the last one are so well written. You just wrote a great story here, with a huge surprise there. That caught me flat footed.

just moreso and better for some than others, TK U MLJ LV NV

To keep all these great stories from having scores in the 4.70-4.80 range. One bombs must really be flying. This is a great story.

I guess I told you before, this is a great story, easily pro level.

Same as Polk...just different method...find out why she betrayed him.

...that wife was involved when you had him watching for wife's reaction when he mentioned murder victim's name.

Also one has to figure lover was doing certain debasing things to his wife.

Tough to figure attraction as guy was described as out of shape mope

Have to admire your work... it was pretty early on that there were enough hints to figure out that Ashton/Sidney was leading a double life... but I figured that maybe the hit was a warning to the mob boss (whose enforcer seemed to really be looking for the accountant.). But you held off the infidelity issue and the murder very well until you wanted to spring it! Good show.

As for the wife.... hmmmmm. Divorce her is the easy answer, but keep in mind that it is VERY difficult to make a spouse testify against the other. So one might want to consider measures short of dumping here — letting her know that you've discovered her conference dalliances (but not identifying with who), maybe making her quit her job and not giving here the opportunity to stray again. She sounds like the sort of person who might punish herself for her sins more than he could ever do... don't know, but fun to consider!

Everything about this story is solid. Well written, awesome editing, easy read, and most of all believable. Well done, to me, the best story of the day.

that to her there was no difference in fucking Polk or her husband. She never acted any different at any time so an affair, probably lots of affairs, was no big deal for her. That doesn't sound like a caring wife to me. Why she stayed with the cop is probably a mystery. Did she love him? He thought maybe she did, but wasn't too sure. My take on this would be to confront her in such a manner that she would have to say yea or nay. And then put her ass on the street, or under the ground. He could kill the guy but he didn't do anything to him, she was the one who broke her promise, gladly it seems, so she should be accountable just like Polk. He did say she worked for a big law firm. nuff said. Seemed to drag in places and I didn't like that the wife most likely got away with cheating, she'll do it again with someone else. Still gave it a 4.

I guess the ending was unsatisfactory for me. I would like to see it maybe ending with Clarice being told that Newton was Polk and he was dead and then maybe saying her conferences just wont be the same. Still a 5 from me, well written.

Newton is sniveling mess begging for his life but refuses to reveal how affair with cop's wife started. Sorry that is unbelievable

How many affairs has wife had. Certainly he would want to continue monitoring her at seminars. Most likely she is addicted to the ''naughtiness''

Never did like stories that author chooses to end with ''what would you do?'' To me that indicates writer got bored with his or her own story. Brief epilogue was called for. He monitors her, she starts up with another guy. Confronts her and divorce.

By cop's admission and he is expert at reading people, wife has absolutely no remorse about engaging in sex with another man with whom she has no emotional connection. Only inference to be drawn is she has had other affairs and will continue to have them.

Other than cheating, he views her as perfect cop's wife. So monitor her actions at seminar as she WILL cheat again. Meanwhile begin he has his own dalliances.

If she ever confronts him, that will be time to have discussion.

Bad ending... Justice hurts and they both should accept her losing everything... his sense of justice will require her to leave because she has ruined the relationship... cancer spreads unless excised.

but so is his wife! So what difference does it make what he does, except satisfy a mild curiosity. She fucks other men for the fun of it, whenever the opportunity presents itself. Sounds like the sex is really good, but not important. Kinda like her marriage? And she will continue to fuck other men, for the same reason. Why not? Unless hubby just tells her one day, oh, hey, I know you're not fucking Ashton Polk any more, but if you want to stay married you can't fuck any other men either. Or would you rather just get a divorce?

Except he'll always wonder for how long and why she was fucking Polk, and if she is still doing it with other men. Remember, she's a slut of opportunity, not compulsion. And if one day the UPS man presents an opportunity, how is doofus ever going to know? In his shoes I would simply become her husband of opportunity, and nothing more. Stay and enjoy the experienced skilled whore, and the money her job brings in, until a better opportunity comes along for him. She only fucked around when it was hidden and fell right in her lap, so maybe he won't have to share her that often. And I seriously doubt she'll care when she learns some day in the future that she was now sharing her husband with similarly convenient and serendipitous fuck partners. After all, its just about the fucking, and that, along with her marriage vows, just doesn't mean that much to her.

Two emotionless whack jobs who might as well stay together and enjoy some shallow casual sex, sometimes with each other. Neither one has anything to lose by staying in a now sterile marriage. And I don't doubt she would abandon him in a New York minute if one of her opportunity fucks out turned into a real romance, superior to what she has with her husband. She's an accountant, and will go with whatever she estimates to be the superior return on investment. He should approach their future together with great uncertainty, and keep his eyes open for his own superior opportunity. Remember, men age like wine, women age like cheese.

Great story, if a bit meandering and wordy with distracting extraneous side information. Could have easily been 3 or 4 pages with the stuffing removed. I guess it was also a bit dishonest, having the cop relate to the reader his suspicions and conjectures about the case when he already knew exactly what happened, and why.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading it. Thanks for the effort.

I've always liked Jezzaz and this was no different. Good thing its Sunday; that was a long one.

5 stars all the way.

Which was Clarice. RGitis is spreading! Get vaccinated jezzaz!

It is very hard to care about his marriage when the extent of it is them sharing Chinese food seemingly every other day and watching television.

But that is the author's choice.

Bits I liked: the descriptiveness of the police work. The seemingly irrelevant story about him as a Merchant Marine which paid off in the end. Hot Lesbian action...which you decided to stiff us from reading about, simply inferring it. Then again, why should I like women who don't like me? That is the failure of the Lesbian fantasy.

How would the blackmail victims know one another? Just curious. Not something I personally would share over aperitifs, but the Rich are different people, I've heard. Hemmingway thought differently, but he was more of a Dude than that dud Fitz.

I can't see how this doesn't slowly spiral down into a far worse marriage than he has now. Little things. Comments. Far less laughter. The occasional look she catches which is more loathing than loving. Suspicion every time she leaves the state. He won't be able to get time off to check her out every single time and that will wear.

I am a bit miffed at the lack of the reveal with Clarice but as always, your writing is quite good. You, unlike some more 'nautical' writers, know how to actually write sentences which are not sentence fragments and know how to use conjunctions and commas properly.

I enjoyed this as a police procedural, and it would have been a good fit for Non-Erotic. The wife was such a non-character in the story that it was difficult for me to care about her or their marriage in the way most LW stories seem to want you to.

That we'd discover the wife had been cheating with the accountant was adequately foreshadowed, and that the cop was the actual killer was a nice twist, but it was tough to tell whether the cop or his wife actually cared at all about the cheating or the marriage, or if the cop just murdered the guy out of pragmatism and pride.

I mean, as presented, the answer to the question posed at the end seems blindingly obvious: Either have a nice amicable divorce because both you and your wife are clearly just going through the motions, or decide that you're okay with your wife fucking around on you because you like your comfortable facade of a marriage and you're unlikely to trip over her next affair partner like you did the first (most recent?) one.

In either event, it just doesn't feel like the answer to that question matters, because it didn't feel like the marriage mattered.

Writing is good, but if it's first person from the protagonist's point of view, and you hide something he knows all along, it isn't a story and it isn't a mystery.

I read your comment with interest.

Now, looking back on this, and looking around at what other people wrote, I think you are right.

At the time, when I was writing this, I was all about the _mystery_ more than I was about the relationship. I was doing everything I could to preserve the mystery of who actually did the murder. I felt that the red herring of the fact that Newton and Polk where the same person - which I figured quite a lot of people would actually foresee - would hide the actual twist at the end. I did try and load the story with very small hints, and _not_ have the Tulley character lie in his internal monologue, and spent too much time on that and not enough on the actual marriage.

You are quite right - there is not enough of the home relationship to make it a correct balance. Thanks for pointing that out - it's nice to get some constructive criticism for a change!

This is now ready for a whole different kind of story more typical of LW stories. His wife screws around on him with at least one really sleazy POS. With the attendant lies, betrayal, etc. Not possible for him to ignore, especially given the person he has been portrayed as.

Questions -- how has his life with her changed since he found out? How about his feelings? Could have been dealt with in this account.

The circumstances of the assignations at the conferences seem pretty weird, How does THAT happen? And he really needs to know if there is any possible way to keep from divorce. What could convince him it wouldn't happen again? I have no idea, but authors have gone there.

I did not see the twist at the end coming, although the merchant marine anecdote should have telegraphed that possibility. Character development is strong enough to merit a part two. I think I would retire and go back to sea.

Who else is she screwing out of town?

I felt the main weakness was not making the marriage more central to the plot. It felt more like an aside that neither of the characters cared about all that much. When you did the big reveal that the main character's wife was sleeping with the dead man, it was hard to care because we knew so little about her or the two of them as a couple (other than they liked Netflix and Chinese food). I also dislike the ending, since it shorted what should have been the major dramatic scene of the story, his confrontation with his wife. I don't expect things to be tied in a neat bow, but some resolution would be nice. I feel many authors dodge dealing with the confrontation between a spouse and their cheating partner because it's hard to write. Much easier to chop things off, never explaining the 'why' and leaving that to the reader.

It always amuses me when people deny the fact that the capacity for violence is a part of all humans. The 'there is never any excuse for violence' lie is ridiculous. There are situations that call for it. I'm not sure that this was such a case, but that's part of the drama. That doesn't make him a sociopath or psychopath. It makes him a human driven to extreme emotional distress.

I agree with another comment. Our hero knows what happened but tells the story as if he hasn’t a clue. Along with that, we have the JPB treatment of seven pages with no resolution regarding the wife. I agree with other comments. Wifey cheated so easily, I bet it’s not the first time. Plus we have what seems a plot hole; both detectives are thorough and read all the detailed reports. Hero’s wife was planned as eventual entertainment for the crime boss’s friends, just not used yet by the dead accountant/perv. The computer geeks would have restored this from the hard drive even if our hero/detective deleted it. So why didn’t the partner know, or maybe the captain? Provides strong motive for our detective to become a murder suspect, doesn’t it?

you don't finish this it is #1. FTDS. TK

Right up to the denouement. Then hated it. Too contrived, too tricky. Didn't vote 'cause I didn't want to 1 bomb it

I liked the story right up to the lack of an ending. Story was told as if the detective wasn't involved but then hind sight is 20/20 when you have read the last few paragraphs.

Don't like that there was no definitive end to the story. Too many questions left unanswered. Other than that it was well written and I was engaged with the characters.

I don't have to have every thing cut and dried but I would like the basics covered and they weren't with this ending.

Woodmanone

Good story but for gods sake finish it

Gave it one star because I hate unfinished stories. 9 pages to leave us hanging

I broke my normal scoring protocol and gave it a 5. Usually the tale has to move me but this just turned the page and was entertaining as hell. Thx for your efforts.

Plus you dragged the. Unfinished over 9 pages

Needlessly complicated, needlessly l-o-n-g.

"After all, its just about the fucking, and that, along with her marriage vows, just doesn't mean that much to her." - Except that it's "just fucking" when SHE'S doing it. He's a cheating bastard when he's doing it!

I know it was needed for the twist, but it's kind of cheap to have us be in his head and have him look like he doesn't know what he DOES know.

Maybe if the story was somehow told in non-omniscient third person POV?

I definitely would have liked to see her reaction to Polk's name. It's kind of critical that we don't know how she started, otherwise how can we know she won't start again with someone else?

Very enjoyable story with a sound, well thought out plot.

I also agree that a glimpse into the home life and some sort of backstory on Clarise and Polk’s relationship would be interesting and help close an open loop in this wonderful mystery.

Thanks for the enjoyable read.

a crime, suspects, detectives and drama! Thanks for putting this tale together and posting it for all of us readers. It was well written and held the readers' interest right to the very end. Well done!

"Clarice, I know you were fucking Ashton Polk. Would you care to tell me about it?"

Her jaw dropped as a look of terror came over her face.

Excellent detective procedural. Sympathetic and well developed detectives. They connected with me on an emotional level. I felt like a part of the story. Gave you 4*s Jezzaz. Only caught one minor inconsistency in the story. It isn't important.

So now I am sooo disillusioned😣. He isn't a white hat fighting crime. Just another ordinary man. Doing a difficult job. Taking advantage of his position, sigh.....

Thanks for the story. I look forward to the second chapter!! These folks are too interesting to only be in one story, lol.

AMerryman

P.S. That's eight, and time for a break.

I gave it a five, of course. This was a massive effort, a good mystery and I very much enjoyed reading it. I'm a doctor, not a literary critic, so I won't do that thing. I'll just say great job, and I'm looking forward to reading more stories from you, my friend. Thanks for being an easy guy with whom to work. and thanks for all the effort you put into writing a seven page story, Randi.

I couldn’t just leave it. I would have to confront her. Could I get past it? Well, you could write that story a whole lot better than I could! I wish you would.

Great effort! I enjoyed it completely. Fortunately, I am neither a literary critic nor cop, so it was all good for me. Thank you! Five stars!

Well written and a great plot line. I have very mixed emotions about a follow up. You could take it in many great directions but I think that unfinished is good here.

I HATE that type of ending! That being said, the story was indeed excellent. Great plot and well written. Easy 5*’s but damn....

Oh, if you don't complete this story, or at least let Finish the Damn Story do it; someone else might sleep with the fishes. Lol.

Divorce probably.

Confront for sure.

She cheated, a lot and for a long time

What makes a second chapter so interesting is he really cannot confront Clarise.

Chicago cops are not know for following the law, when it's expedient. As told in the story.

So Jezzaz would have a real challenge getting satisfaction for the protagonist,without creating suspicion. That would just makes it more intriguing for us🤔.

AMerryman

That ending is the laziest kind there is, marred the whole story for me.

Quite frankly it is the author giving up on his craft.

I was sure you'll get 5 starrs from me, but at the end...... you fffuckedd up....

2 starrs

FTDS is dead. Has been for years. Anonymous posters on this site are unlikely to change that status. But if you want to keep trying, go for it.

....The story was posted in LW! So where oh where was the Loving Wife in the first 6 pages? There wasn't one until the final reveal! My suspicions were alerted from the beginning, but I have to give you the "only at out of town conferences, no prior planning ever" wrinkle; that was very clever. Echoes of "A Smart Set Of Cheaters."

With the setup you've built, a sequel would be welcomed by all. Was she a serial cheater? What was the attraction to Newton/Polk? How does she react when the news showing his photo hits the streets?

Thanks for this fine tale on MMT day! Five * in spite of the flagrant JPB non-ending! ;-)

The final scene could be somenthing like this "I enter the house, she was comin down for the stairs, the smile of her face disapear the moment our eyes meet each other, she knew that i knew"

Good story with a great noir flavor, the plot advanced naturally, the characters were good and the couple of twist while not very unheard were well executed... as personal note, i will divorce her, not only for the affair, but the lack of guilt or remorse that she has demostrated so far.

I truly enjoy your style of writing so much. This story was very good. Thank you!

Thought the story was outstanding until the end. Should have finished the story one way or another. It's your story and should have your ending. I gave it a 4. Thanks for the story and please keep writing.

"Buckeye Fan"

Kept me interested from beginning to end. Thank you.

An Epilogue would havebeen nice, since this is the Loving Wives section. Work to do for FTDS.

Did he remove it somehow. Otherwise someone else would see it during the investigation and maybe ask a question or two. He should just show her the dossier and let her know what Polk had intended for her. She might not go looking for a replacement for that scumbag. If he doesn't confront her, she will just cheat again. He should separate from her and see some other women. Maybe her would find a better woman and let Clarice go away for good.

why did she cheat?

I need to know what happens next. You did a great job on this story, but you can't leave your readers hanging with this one.

In every way up to your usual high standard--a totally engaging and absorbing story. I do agree with earlier commenters about how this marriage is so underplayed in the story (except for repeated comments about what a great wife Clarice is). This particularly matters once we learned that she was involved with Polk, as I'm guessing many readers started to suspect. Why is this going on, if the marriage was so great?

And the lack of a true ending, in the sense of a marital confrontation and subsequent resolution, is really frustrating. I don't suppose you're planning a next chapter, but it would be great if you'd write one.

Thanks, ohio

Just friggin awesome! Hated to see this story end, hoping there's more to come. Five Stars! And thank you for it.

I am really beginning to think that this kind of story should have a category of itself, This twisted tale is so much more fun than simple BTB or RACC,

Detective removed wife's info and replaced it with gangster's stripper girlfriend's photo and facts.

Respect to the marriage since there aren't any kids involved I'm not sure why the husband would say. Clearly he had some sort of emotional Reliance on his wife but she obviously did not have the same connection to him.

The other problem with the wife cheating is that it could have exposed him the husband and cop to Blackmail and manipulation if it was found out by somebody what the wife was actually doing.

The entire story was well written, and very well conceived. The twist in who done it was especially good, because it came after we thought the mystery was solved. A first a false ending, then BAM! You hit us with a new level of intensity.

Bravo Legend Jezzaz!

So good until that ol' JPB special of an ending. 7 pages is too long for a non-ending.

What would I do? Divorce her, of course. If she can act totally normal like nothing has changed - nothing probably HAS changed. She's been cheating the whole marriage.

I wouldn't have killed anyone, though. Since he did...he may as well complete the set, I suppose.

Thanks for the story,

Cog

Figured it out in chapter 3. Not bragging. I do this all the time. You gave too much away too early on, especially the wife. Fun read, though JPB

ending sucks.

A great mistery, good plot

and well written.

What to do with a wife

who has mostly been

a great partner, but then

also betrayed her husband?

For me, a tough question.

I liked it left unanswered.

Usually in a cheating kind

of LW stories, we need that answer.

But this wasn't that kind of a story.

This was a mistery.

With Clarice's cheating a biproduct.

Very cleverly intwined in the story.

I know many will disagree,

but for me, the non ending isn't

just ok here. it makes the story stronger.

So kudos to the writer!

Top ratings from me.

I knew his wife was a cheater as soon as he mentioned her. Decent story though. 4*.

With a very good and credible twist right at the end.

Well done, Jezzaz!

Wife is a cheater ,and the instead of dealing with her ,this detective kills the scum bag braking every rule of his career as a police officer . Makes him just as bad as the scum who he offed .

An average thriller with a great end twist. Four out of five. (I would give it 4.5 if I could.) Well written and good dialogue.

I would have liked a little more emotion from the protagonist.

Also there is a little author cheat in the middle when the protagonist makes love to his wife and doesn't think about something relevant to the story. But i won't say more so I don't give it away.

Also the ending is unresolved. Sequel please.

Was sure Clarice was the one who silenced the guy we thought was on the lam. I disliked the 1st person obfuscation but enjoyed the ride. Thank you.

...hire a lawyer, and confess every crime that you have admitted to and hope to be charged with the ones you have not.

Darn Man, you fooled me on your last chapter and didn’t see that coming. For ex-cops that was a trip down memory lane with some good insight for those who weren’t. I thought the story flowed well and left with wondering on his final outcome. Guess I will have draw my own conclusions. Thanks.

Boy, this was a really good mystery. I really got into it and was all over the place trying to figure it out. The dead guy's wife, the society ladies, the criminal boss...who did it.

(Never figured it out) What a real nice twist at the end. Amazing.

The bad part is the guy doesn't know what to do with the cheating wife? She has been cheating for over 2 years or more and he doesn't know what to so with her. It should be obvious.

Thanks for a very interesting story up until the last couple paragraphs.

Should have been 5* but see title

When you get HOME SHOOT Her in the Brain pan

You didn’t include the name drop and the reaction. I assume to do we can imagine it ourselves but I thought it made the story incomplete. I would’ve been fine with you not including what happened after but again I’m irritated that we don’t get to find out if she knew. Especially with that long soliloquy at the end.

I love the untangling in mystery novels as the better authors - John Sandford, John LeCarre, Michael Connelly - lead the reader through the investigation and clues to the final outcome. This ranks right up there with the greats.

His wife has done an excellent job of both being a wife and an occasional mistress. I'd expect him to slowly play out the story of the investigation, say along with the news reports, and gradually see if she realizes that he knew about her affair.

Cold revenge but that might be the only way he could rebuild any trust. Without that the relationship is hollow and remains gutted in the end.

Might even be an interesting sequel!?

The clues that Newton and Polk were the same person were obvious pretty early on, and it was mystifying why such otherwise smart detectives were missing it. And then it turned out that one of them was "missing it" deliberately.

As for what he should do about his cheating wife, he's painted himself into a corner. If he confronts her about her cheating with Newton/Polk, or does anything that connects either of them personally to the guy, his carefully crafted case scenario will be endangered. So he either needs to be satisfied that he's eliminated the threat to his otherwise perfect marriage and live with it, or come up with some other explanation for deciding to divorce her.

What would you do? is not enough

Two years of cheating is plenty for a confrontation. This needs to be resolved.

Nicely done but needs a sequel. The cheating bitch, slut wife has got to expire to hell and with the knowledge that her husband knows about the affair. She cuckolded him for two years. She'll just do it again with someone else.

Another high quality story by this author, an a quite un-Literotica mode for the most part. We are tricked by the unreliable narrator: all his inner dialog and confusion was a smoke screen, since he really knew what was going on. The ending is appropriately vague. If your wife can compartmentalize so well, what do you do? I’d love to read a detective noire story where the poor slob wasn’t divorced and married to the bottle. Keep her, guy: break the trend and don’t burn your bridges. I am assuming the wife met the guy at a conference and just fell into the affair. The fact that he was going to pimp her out was a missed bullet. If he has to spill the beans, he has that information to back things up.

It is just missing an ending. Any ending.

Just needs an ending!

What a crappy way to end a story

Well, first off, I’d finish the damned story. All that time spent writing, editing, getting SEVEN pages submitted as a story, and no ENDING?! This is a very good story, I really got into the “whodunnit” factor of it. This author is too good a writer not to know that the story needed a solid ending, not just the “What would you do?” copout crap at the end. So either he just tired of the story and DID cop out and blow off the ending or he is planning a follow-up story. I hope it’s the latter.

She may be loving at home, but no telling what disease or other shit shes bringing home with her and if shes doing it with 1, she will be doing it again if hes gone. A good btb combined with a potential reconciliation if shes contrite enough. But no way i dont put her through sone hell just to find out wtf shes thinking.

I want to know.

Still, 5-stars.

Very interesting would like to have the wife's story

I thought I’d comment on that.

The ending is the way it is for two reasons.

1) this was a story about the mystery. It was really about the cheating wife - it was about why he did what he did. The challenge here given to the authors was to write a mystery. So I did. The cheating is incidental; it’s there to give the protagonist a reason to do what he did. And it’s there so it’ll fit in Loving Wives without too many people complaining about the category it was placed in.

And

2) whatever ending I would have written would have been complained about. For the authoritarians among us, unless his wife was publicly beheaded, no ending would have been good enough. For others, they would complain that he didn’t find some way to punish but reconcile. There is, unfortunately, no way to win this discussion in the loving wives category, because the entire category is a mix of diametrically opposed viewpoints - the wife sharing people and the people who want to see whatever they define cheating as punished.

Since there’s no winning this argument, I just decided in this case to side step it entirely. The story wasn’t about that anyway. It was focusing on the mystery.

The weak link in the story is the Chancey Moon pictures. The motive for the murder charge on Phillips is based on the assumption that Polk was having sex with Chancey. But she was Phillips girlfriend and in a fit of jealousy he had Polk killed.

Now the case is a blockbuster and both the state and the FBI are involved. The evidence supporting the motive would be scrutinized to the nth degree. There was a complete dossier on every target for blackmail. Would a few pictures extracted from a commercial website provide convincing evidence that Polk had sex with Chaucey or could have blackmailed her? Did John have the time and the resources to construct a "complete dossier" on her?

I think the faked photos would be discovered leading to three conclusions:

1- The DA did not have a motive to support the charge of murder

2 - The files were tampered with probably by the real murderer so the investigation would continue. As long as the investigation is open John is at some risk.

3 - The value of all these files would be compromised since evidence of tampering would cast a shadow over the credibility of whole investigation.

Tampering with the files is the Achilles heel of the story. John would have been wiser to simply copy Clarise's file then delete the original. A deleted file would not raise suspicions of tampering. There's more than enough evidence to convict Phillips on numerous major felonies. John gets his revenge and nothing could lead back to him even though the murder case remains unsolved.

As others have commented they seemed to have a marriage of convenience with no deep feeling or commitment between them. However, John would be severely effected without her companionship given his age and the nature of his job.

He should confront her but does not have to divulge the source of the information. If pushed he could simply state her name appeared in the Polk files with no embellishment.

The simplest solution is an open marriage by mutual agreement. John has an extremely irregular schedule, he shouldn't have any problem finding time to satisfy his sexual urges without embarrassing Clarise. She is free to continue to slut herself at conferences provided she gets tested upon return. If she doesn't agree he should start looking for her replacement while they continue to order Chinese takeout, watch TV, and provide each other companionship if not a loving relationship (which they don't seem to have anyway).

In my book he shot the wrong person. Maybe framing his cheating whore of a wife might have been better.

Keep her. The fucker likely blackmailed her.

Kill that slick bitch, how stupid can you be to a cop wide cheating

Well... How about he gets home, there's a squad car in front of the house and the uniformed cops sadly inform him that the bitch was just killed by a hit and run Uber driver?

Case Closed. 🤣

Great story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Didn’t see that ending coming - He has to confess to her and stay with her - if he killed for her what else would he do?

From your question about what you should do--put on the spot, ask her why she was having an affair with Polk and see what her response and her body language showed. The sex would really bother me. I could not just let it go.

Confront the wife with the evidence of her affair with Polk and get all your questions answered. Tell her Polk is dead and you want answers. Make her take a lie detector test to make sure Polk was the only one. Use her as a sex toy every day, your personal sex slave. Find someone to have a little extra on the side for as long as her affair lasted, then let her know about your affair so she will understand your pain.

Well, not really "in one." They were essentially separate and therefore distracting. By the way "reigning me in"? Homophones are a problem unless you are well-acquainted with the language.