"The Talk" Leads to Explosive End

I could see the deputy was clearly in pain, and I made sure to sympathize with him and apologize for having to get him out in this awful, early February weather. When we got inside my home, he didn't shadow me like he was required to do. Instead, the deputy sat in one of the comfortable family room chairs while I made my rounds picking up more clothes and getting ready to tag my equipment for the move.

To say I was shocked would be a lie because looking around, it was clear that Maria and Flannagan were playing house in my house. The signs were everywhere. I found three pairs of Maria's panties - lacy sexy panties I'd never seen - clearly rolled down her shapely legs and tossed aside, as she and Flannagan obviously 'christened' the kitchen table, the dining room table, and the sofa. In all our married years, she'd never tossed her discarded underwear casually aside like this. The knife twisted and shoved in a lot deeper.

As I was sorting and packing more clothes, I saw clear evidence that Flannagan had been staying in my home, sleeping in my bed, and using anything he wanted, including my wife. I took several photos of the evidence. These included photos of his clothes in my closet, his toiletries on my bathroom vanity, and even some of his medications on the bedside table, including Viagra! Next to the Viagra was a half-used bottle of anal lube and a long purple dildo with a weird flange on the base.

After hurriedly grabbing my clothes and a few personal items, I packed them in a large duffle bag, which I left with the deputy. I then checked on my office equipment and discovered the items were missing. I so notified the deputy, who then played twenty questions. It was as if I didn't realize exactly where I'd left my property. I showed him the photos I'd taken the day we ran out of time, which shows where we left the equipment. Then, I showed Deputy Brown the empty space.

All the synapses finally closed in his brain and completed the circuit, and the deputy said, "They can't do that!" 'Obviously, Deputy Brown is future detective material,' I thought to myself.

After checking the whole first floor, I decided to check the basement, and my first clue was a huge, fresh gouge in one of the wooden basement steps. Sure enough, at the foot of the stairs, I saw the plotter printer completely destroyed. Someone hurled it downstairs, along with the other printers and a printer stand. I found both filing cabinets, battered from their unceremonious tumble down the stairs. One was almost resting on the bottom steps. The second filing cabinet had glanced off the first one and was lying almost against the water heater. This was the one I'd shut off the weekend before last.

I returned upstairs, and when I told deputy Brown he had a quick look at the destruction and retired to the kitchen table to write his report of the incident. Returning to the basement, I took a closer look at the water heater and discovered that the damaged, rusted pipe connection was torn loose. It was clearly the impact of the second filing cabinet, which broke the the weakened connection. I observed that the broken parts still touched, and the break wasn't evident in the dim light. However, the ball valve was still in the 'closed' position as when I'd shut it off.

For the first time in my life, I did something with malicious intent. Call me crazy or desperate, but I saw an opportunity and took it. The smirks, the condescension, the blatant disrespect, the bullshit restraining order, the threats, and the images of them fucking, and the reality of Maria rubbing my face in it...pushed me over the line. I'm not ducking the responsibility, but it's also not like I woke up that morning and decided to do something evil. Anyway, I'm living with the consequences now, and it cannot be undone.

With the sleeve of my jacket over my hand, I pushed the ball valve handle to a little more than half-open, consistent with the second filing cabinet bumping against it. Immediately, I smelled natural gas. Wasting no time, I stepped away and took flash photos of the destroyed printers and smashed filing cabinets. In two of the images, you can plainly see the valve in its half-open position. You can see the broken connection in the background of one photo, which shows the pipes still aligned.

From the the basement stairs, I looked at the central heating unit located at the other end of the basement. I heard the roar of the fan and saw the faint glow of the natural gas flame through the sight-glass as the unit fought against the February cold. Highly flammable natural gas slowly leaked into the basement, and fate assumed control, as I stepped into the kitchen and closed the door behind me.

To hide my nervousness, I showed quiet, righteous outrage at what my wife and her boyfriend had done to my valuable equipment. As he scribbled, I looked at the closed basement door and thanked myself for all the weather stripping I'd used to seal that drafty old door. If anyone discovered the gas leak, I would offer my severe head cold as a defense against not smelling it. If asked why I didn't see the half-open gas valve, I could plead being too upset and distracted by the sight of my destroyed printers and smashed filing cabinets to notice it.

The deputy saw my trembling hands and said sympathetically, "It's going to be okay. I'm sure the judge will cite them for contempt, and they've violated a couple of laws. I'm puttin' it all in my report, Mr. Brown. I've got your back on this, sir." He smiled and pointed to his paperwork for emphasis.

I nodded. "Yes sir, Deputy Brown, and thanks. I appreciate it."

As we drove away, Maria passed us on her return to the house and stared straight ahead. The deputy noticed this and said, "She's pretty cold, ain't she?"

I just nodded and stared out at the familiar passing countryside. 'What the hell have I done?' I thought as panic welled up inside me. 'I can't undo this without admitting I knew about it!' The drive back to town was long and quiet.

Later that afternoon, Acton Forsythe called me and said, "I have good news. Judge Smith cited your wife and Flannagan for contempt of court and has recommended the DA charge them with criminal mischief and willful destruction of private property over $1500."

"Recommended?" I snickered.

"Truthfully, I had the same reaction. It's no accident Smith is on this case. He and Flannagan Sr. were law partners before Senior got appointed to the State Resource Planning Commission and Smith ran for district judge," Acton stated. "They'll plead out to something petty. Yes, literally a petty crime, and pay restitution."

"Fuck politics." I exhaled in frustration. "I'm having two jobs printed professionally at the cost of about 200-bucks each. I want that, too."

"I'll mention it to the court clerk first thing tomorrow. And keep the receipts." We spent several minutes discussing the hearing on Friday concerning the temporary restraining order. Forsythe told me that our chances of overturning it were not too good until after my trial on the domestic assault charges, which might not be for several months.

Back at my apartment, I couldn't relax or even breathe well. I was developing a chronic, dry cough. Suffering as I was, I went over to the main house, where Sandra gave me a brand-new bottle of Nyquil-PM. "I always buy a couple of bottles at the beginning of winter," she told me.

I was sitting propped up on the apartment sofa when Robert knocked on my door. He brought me a tea-pot wrapped in the towel. It was a genuine hot toddy, courtesy of Sandra, which I gratefully drank.

Robert and I talked for a while, and I must've dozed off. I woke up to pee, and the digital clock showed 12:37. The gas leak, Maria, Fuck-Face, none of it was in my conscious mind as chemical-induced sleep still clung tightly to me.

SHATTERED

A loud banging brought me awake, and despite the lingering effects of the toddy and cold medicine, I rose uncertainly to my feet. It was Robert at the door again, and the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. Something happened at my house, and it was terrible. Sudden panic over my actions threatened to cut my legs out from under me, and I stood shakily.

"What is it?" I shouted, both angry and frightened. Yes, both emotions were real. I knew my ass was on the hook for whatever occurred, and I hoped I'd left no clues or made no mistakes in covering my tracks! Guilt and remorse would come later.

He was stunned for a moment, and then I saw Sandra's tearful face over his shoulder. "There's been an explosion at your house!" he said hoarsely. I realized emotion constrained Robert's voice. "It's... it's bad, man! Really bad!" Sandra wrapped her arms around him from behind.

Still dressed in my jeans from the day before, I threw on a warm shirt over my t-shirt. Shaking with fear and fever, it took some effort to slip on my socks and boots. Sandra helped me with my coat, and we hurried towards Robert's car.

My mind was replaying everything that I knew and had done. As we drove to my house, I asked the obvious questions, to which I always received the response of 'We don't know!' There was a good chance it wasn't as bad as I feared.

The $64,000 question was, 'What did I expect to happen when I decided to act?' It surprised me that I'd never even considered the outcome. 'Was I lashing out in anger? Was I fighting back at a corrupt, politicized situation illegally tilted against me? Did I even care at this point?'

Sandra took my worried, stoic silence as concern for Maria. I was staring out the passenger side rear window of Robert's BMW when she turned in her seat and looked at me sympathetically. Sandra grasped my hand like the sweet sister-in-law and good friend she was. "We're here for you, Dave. It's what families do!"

We turned off the main highway onto county road 14, and against the pre-dawn glow, I could see a pall of smoke curling up over the distant tree line. My tears were genuine as we drove closer. A deputy stopped us about a quarter-mile from the house but let us proceed when I identified myself.

I was shocked at how complete the devastation was. The almost-intact roof lay smoldering against the garage, and the shattered walls had blown outward. The floors and interior walls were a tangled mass of boards and debris that filled the basement hole. Clothes, papers, photographs, pieces of furniture, bricks from the first-floor exterior, and lumber lay everywhere. I picked up a blowing paper and saw it was a cell phone bill from last October. Sandra retrieved a photo of Andi at summer camp when she was about 10.

While there was a flash fire with the explosion, very little had burned. The nearby volunteer fire department had been there within minutes and had shut off the utilities and knocked down the small, incipient stage fires that were beginning to take hold. They'd even recovered my safe, which we hid in an internal wall in the master bedroom closet behind a shoe rack. They found it in the middle of the driveway near the garage.

My life, my wife, and everything I possessed lay shattered before me. Incongruously, family memories were blowing around me in the freshening breeze. Without warning, my knees collapsed, and they helped me into the back of an ambulance where they gave me oxygen and checked my vital signs.

The EMT warned me that with my fever, low blood oxygen level, and rasping lungs, that I probably had pneumonia. It took about 15-minutes for me to recover enough to go back to the grim task of what I was confronting. Sandra and Robert had their arms around me as we silently watched the firemen find and drape the two bodies with yellow plastic sheets. A weak, cold winter sun peeked over the horizon, bathing the scene in a burnished, yellow light.

What was I feeling? Grief? Guilt? Anger? Fear? Loss? All of the above? It was impossible to tell because those feelings manifest themselves in such similar ways that I could not sort them out properly. Maybe this violent event desensitized me and broke the part of me that could sort emotions and deal with them. Perhaps some reptilian survival instinct took over to save what was left of me. I became nauseous and lightheaded, and I welcomed the darkening oblivion that buckled my knees and dragged me away from that awful scene...

The next thing I recall was being in a hospital bed breathing in soothing, moist coolness through an oxygen mask. My vital signs crawled across the monitor to the steady rhythm of my beating heart. Andi rested uneasily in a chair weeping, and I wondered why she was not in school. Then, it hit me. Her mother is dead, and her father is... What was I doing here?

I must've gasped because Andi was on me in an instant, holding me and crying, "Oh, Daddy! Please be okay! You're all we have, Daddy!"

Then, I remembered my home, blown to pieces, debris strewn all over the gentle rise of ground we'd teasingly named 'Brown's Mountain'. I cried for the loss of my marriage and for the woman I loved with all my heart. I wept for the loss of my humanity and for the place and things we'd called home and everything that word once meant. Was I a murderer? Was it self-defense? Maria and Brent didn't care about his wife or me. But was this literally overkill? So many powerful, conflicting emotions filled me.

As Andi and I spoke about the explosion and the events of the past weeks and months, she told me that Drew was taking care of the funeral arrangements for his mother. It disturbed me that my 20-year-old son took on this grim task. For this, I felt more guilt and sadness than I felt for my actions that created this chaos.

As if reading my mind, Andi added, "Grandma and Robert are helping him. Aunt Sandra, Aunt Tina, and Uncle Art have people out at the house recovering what they can, especially the photos and your papers. There wasn't a lot of fire, so it's mostly just scattered and buried. They still won't let anyone in the house ruins because the fire marshal, sheriff's department, and some others are looking for the cause."

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, which I noticed were identical to Maria's, and continued, "There are probably fifty people out there helping, even in this cold. So many people love you, Daddy!" Andi omitted her mother from that statement, even though we both knew Maria was beloved by many, probably more than me.

"Baby," I said, "your mother was loved by a lot more people than I am. She was like Grandma in that way."

Andi nodded and choked back more tears, and then the dam burst. "Oh, Daddy... Daddy... why did she... what happened to my Momma?" The pain wracking my daughter was absolute. I cried along with her, for my daughter, for my wife, and for my tortured soul. Why did I do what I did? How could I ever forgive myself? Or live with this?

Well, there I was. It was clear I had two choices: confess my actions or live with them. At the very least, it was manslaughter or murder-one. With Flannigan Senior pushing it, no telling how they would pursue punishment if I confessed. That realization decided it. Maybe I was in complete denial and felt justification of my actions, but here's how I saw things:

First, I didn't start this shit. If my wife was having a psychotic episode caused by hormones or a psychological problem, Flannigan shouldn't have taken advantage of her. Moreover, being married and 'dating' a married woman was wrong on every level. At one end of 'wrong' was the sheer immorality of it. On the other end of 'wrong' was that Flannigan was an officer of the court who would use his legal status and political connections to marginalize any opposition by his wife or me. He and his old man were not shy about putting the finger on Lady Justice's scale using money, power, and influence to control, manipulate and destroy. I reasoned that all I did was use my only means to right that imbalance. Take away my wife, and I'll take your namesake, Brent Flannigan Senior! Vigilante justice? Guerilla warfare? I guess that's what it was, and like guerilla fighters everywhere, it was the only fight I could wage or afford. Now, I am paying for it and will do so for the rest of my life.

After thinking it through, I'd be lying if I didn't say I felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. Was I deluded, and am I still? Maybe, but I still carry terrible guilt with me, and I work every day to atone for that guilt.

INQUEST

A severe case of double pneumonia and severe sinusitis kept me in the hospital for four more days. Acton Forsythe discussed the obvious with me; they dropped the domestic assault charges because the complainant and two principal witnesses were deceased. The same for the restraining order.

Forsythe also discussed the upcoming Justice of the Peace Inquest Hearing. Texas law requires a Justice of the Peace Inquest in smaller counties - those without a Medical Examiner - where deaths of a suspicious, violent or undetermined nature occur.

The case was complex, and it took time to gather all of the facts and subpoena the witnesses. Thus, the inquest date was over two weeks after I left the hospital. A six-person jury would judge the facts and testimony with the Justice of the Peace presiding. The District Attorney assisted with the questioning.

A J.P. Inquest is an investigative hearing, and my lawyer would not be present. He did tell me the presence of a jury was not to the liking of old man Flannigan. He knew if only the J.P. conducted the inquest, I could probably be railroaded straight to TDJC in Huntsville using his political clout, money, and influence.

Word leaked out about what Junior and Maria were doing in my marital bed in the family home. Every local politician decided to cast this politically tainted turd into the capable hands of six average Texans, whose judgment and common sense have been called upon thousands of times to make the right decision, political expedience be damned. Yes, even the scummiest politician knows you cannot pick up a turd by the clean end. Having six of my peers facing me was the first even break I'd had since the night of 'The Talk'.

The irony, of course, is that I was guilty of what the old man wanted to convict me of, but he didn't give a damn whether I was truly guilty or not. He reasoned that I was in that basement that day, so I must be guilty. Hell, even BATF from Dallas was out there swabbing, testing soil, and doing everything they could to find explosive residue and found nothing.

In his report, Deputy Brown stated that I had photos of the damage done to my equipment, so it was no surprise that my images and his report, along with our testimony, were subpoenaed for the hearing.

On the first day of the inquest, they called me to testify at 10:42 and didn't finish with me until 12:28! I stuck to my story. The evidentiary rules and procedures are more informal than in a criminal trial. Only a person accused of a crime associated with the deaths being investigated can have counsel present. Much of what takes place in these inquests is a common-sense look at what happened. I've heard it described as being informally formal.

The Justice of the Peace, with the District Attorney's help, questioned me as they did all the witnesses. No, I didn't smell natural gas because I had a horrible cold that soon turned into pneumonia and sinusitis, which required hospitalization the day of the explosion. My strong, lingering, post-viral cough and the fact that I still looked ill after more than two weeks probably reinforced my credibility. No, I didn't notice the gas valve's partially open position because I was upset and focused on the destroyed tools that helped me earn a living. Plus, with just a single light at the top of the stairs, it's always pretty gloomy down there.

Blow-ups of four of my twelve photos, all shot with flash, clearly showed the position of the valve and damage to the filing cabinets. One of the photos showed black paint from the second filing cabinet they threw downstairs transferred onto the water heater. In that same photo, what fire investigators determined to be the 'broken/leaking connection' showed it was still in place - if not actually connected - and could easily be overlooked.