UnVailed

There wasn't much to fight over. Piper was mine and had been since we got her as a puppy. The house we lived in belonged to Joy's grandmother, so I wasn't even going to try to take it. It was actually Jim's according to the title.

My brother and I had inherited my dad's house when he died. I had an apartment at the time and Daniel had lived with his wife so they used dad's house and I got a small bit of rent from them for it. When Daniel walked into her boyfriend's apartment and blew them away, her family tried to take the house from Daniel to alleviate their grief.

Luckily I hired a real shark of an attorney and he saved the house. The court found that I owned a controlling interest in the house since Daniel was paying me rent. The family was pissed, but I kept the house, and now I was really glad, because I wouldn't have to move into some crappy apartment.

Joy was pissed off that I had spent the money to fight for the house, but I told her there was no way a cheating whore's family was getting what my dad had busted his ass to pay for. Looking back maybe I should have wondered about her cavalier attitude.

Late Tuesday afternoon I put in an appearance at the hospital. Jim was keeping vigil as I had expected he would. He looked up and saw my face and just shook his head.

"How long?" he asked.

"As far as I can confirm? Six years, since she started selling insurance. But my gut feeling is that there is something more than what we know."

"I can't believe my daughter would be so deceitful."

"Me either. I would have never married her if I knew she was a cheat." I went on to tell him everything Cal had told me.

"I always wondered why she never came back with pictures from her trips," Jim said. "When she was young, she took pictures anytime we went anywhere; even if it was just to Denver. Why didn't I see it?"

"I didn't see it either."

I told him that I wouldn't visit the hospital. again. I couldn't stand the thought of talking to her again. He understood and asked me if I would stay in the house until she was ready to come home just to be sure that nothing got damaged. I told him that I had already planned on it. I also told him that I wouldn't have her served papers until she was recovered.

I realized I was going to miss him and Yvonne. They had treated me like a son for the entire time I had known them. It wasn't their fault they raised a deceitful cunt.

On Wednesday I did a chimney repair job and then I had a hockey game that night. I spent most of the first period in the penalty box serving out roughing majors. Two minutes into the second period I got another and our coach pulled me from the game. He was close friends with Paul so he knew why I was playing rough, but he also didn't want me to get barred from the league.

I was in a poor mood when I got home. We had lost the game, and I took a lot of the blame on myself for letting my personal issues affect my play. No one on the team would allow me to take that blame, and several guys asked me if I'd like them to go see Cal. I might not have been too clear in my rejection of their offer.

When I got home Piper was ready to go outside. As I watched her run around the yard, I reminded myself to go look the fences over at dad's house. As Piper was doing her business and ready to go inside Steven yelled from his window that he'd be over in a few minutes. I wondered what he'd found on Joy's laptop.

I had spent the previous evening pouring through our desk top to see if I could find anything. I looked through all of the bills and bank statements I could find and I couldn't find one thing out of place. "How the fuck is she paying for these trips?"

The only thing I found that was remotely out of place was the fact that she called her friend Fiona more often before her trips. She normally called Fiona once a month, but as her trips got closer the frequency increased to twice a week. I felt fairly confident in two things. Fiona knew more about what was going on than I did, and Fiona wouldn't tell me shit. I had never met the woman; another fact that hadn't struck me as odd until then. When I tried Fiona's number I got just a commercial voice telling me that I'd reached a voice mail box. I suddenly wished that I had Joy's cell phone.

When Steven came into the house he looked like a kid that had discovered where his parent hid the Christmas gifts. "So what did you find Steve?"

"Get me a beer and we'll sit down and I'll show you."

I grabbed a couple of beers from the refrigerator and we sat at the breakfast bar. Steven opened up Joy's lap top and powered it up. "Whoever erased her tracks definitely knew what he was doing," Steven said. "There were some programs on this lap top that I know you didn't put on here. No offense Zeke, you have me do all of your computer stuff."

"I know I don't know shit about computers dude. No offense taken."

"OK, first I found a program that allows Joy to get on the internet and surf without her browser history recording it. Even the history that can't be erased is over ridden. Luckily a friend of mine in the D.O. J. was around yesterday to help me go through this. He ran some of his stuff on it and we found a lot."

"Are you saying that Joy is a computer genius and I didn't know that either?"

"Oh hell no! Joy uses the same password for everything. No this was put together by someone who really knows their stuff."

My brain instantly went through a list of everyone Joy knew who knew jack shit about computers. Once again the name Fiona popped up. She was some kind of wizard at a software company that specialized in Defense stuff. "So what was the bitch hiding?" I asked without a trace of humor in my voice.

"All I could see that she'd accessed from the veiling program was an email account and a bank account."

"So that's how she affords these trips," I said thinking out loud.

"What trips?"

At that point I filled Steven in on what I had discovered from Cal. His eyes got bigger and bigger as I went on. When I finished, he only said, "You know I can't tell Joe you had a badge. He'd never stop bugging you to wear a uniform for him."

"Dude, I wore a suit. Not a patrol...Anyway did you read these emails?"

Emails...Oh yeah. When I got into her account it had been wiped out, but this stays between you and I, I did hack the email server and found a few of the erased emails. Most of them were love letters. You know mooshy stuff like teens write to each other. A few talked about them meeting in Vail this week."

"So any clue who these emails were written to or by?"

"Some were to an email address of one Cal Davis. The others were to jcricket4207. I couldn't find a name attached to the account but one of the emails she calls him Garrett."

"Son of a bitch." "You said it; SONOF A BITCH!"

*****

Before Steven left he showed me how to get into the bank account and email account that he'd found. He restored the emails and changed the password and security info to keep anyone else from re-accessing the account.

He'd done the same with the bank account. It was set up at a bank in Denver in Joy's name. I got in and was flabbergasted by the money that was in the account. Somehow she had amassed over ten thousand dollars under my nose. We didn't hurt for money, but I no clue where she might have gotten it.

I looked at the account history and saw that there had been ATM withdrawals periodically over the life of the account at ATMs that I knew Joy hadn't accessed. There had also been a few withdrawals since Joy had been hospitalized. All of the deposits had been made from local ATMs.

My first order of business was to arrange a transfer of all of those funds to our joint bank account. Once I had that set up, I filled out an on line form to close the account. I was informed that the transaction would occur at 7 am.

With that done I changed all of the contact information on the bank account to my personal email account so that I'd know if anyone tried to change anything. Then I wanted to find out more about Fiona because I was sure she could tell me how a dead fucker had beaten my wife.

When I didn't find anything on Facebook, I went and found Joy's high school yearbooks. I found Garrett, he had graduated with Joy. I looked at the classes around theirs and found nothing. I finally pulled out Joy's freshman year book and saw who I was looking for in the senior class. Fiona Jimenez was Garrett's sister. I had a call to make.

"Hello?" queried the sleepy voice of Detective Phillips. I looked at my clock and saw that it was past one in the morning and suddenly felt bad for calling her.

"Detective Phillips, this is Ze..er I mean Roger Rigby."

"Roger Rigby? Don't you mean Detective Riggs?"

"How did you know I was there?"

'Your friend Detective McMillan forgot to turn the video feed off, so I saw you sit down with Mr. Davis."

"Actually Hugh is my cousin, and obviously not too technically savvy. I didn't call you to talk about Hugh though. I called because I think I know who assaulted my wife."

I heard her perk up and grab for something to write on. I told her about the bank account, leaving out how I'd discovered it and mentioning that I hadn't realized that a debit card had been missing from Joy's personal effects when I picked them up. I cited being stressed as the reason for overlooking the missing card.

I gave her a brief description of Garrett and told her where the card had been used that morning. I then apologized for waking her.

"Hey don't worry about it. It comes with the job. You know, you should have been a cop."

"I keep hearing that. Well I'll let you get back to sleep. Good night."

She said good night and rang off. I envied and pitied her husband at the same time. I envied him getting to listen to that sexy voice while in the throes of passion. I also knew that being a cop even on a smaller force like Vail's puts strains on family. Some spouses can hack it; some, like my mother the whore, can't.

Piper whined and looked at the door: A sign that she needed to go outside. When I took her out I saw Steven on his porch. "Hey Steven do you still have access to the DMV data bases and shit?"

"And shit? I always have access to databases Zeke, you know me better than..."

"Yeah I know, Mr. Hacker Deluxe," I always teased him about his chat nickname. I had gone over one day to ask him something and had seen him in a chat room under the name Hacker Deluxe. I razzed him about it from time to time.

I told him the name I wanted information about and wished him a good night. I knew I had made his night by giving him an excuse to hack into some place. As soon as I was inside my house, my body let me know that it had been a long day and some sleep was definitely going to be needed, so I obliged.

I was awakened the next morning by a ringing phone. The caller ID said it was my father in law so I answered it. "Hi dad."

"Good morning Roger. I just wanted to let you know that the doctors are easing off of the drugs and they expect Joy to come around sometime in the next 24 hours."

"Seems kind of soon doesn't it?" I remember the doctor telling us they planned on keeping her in a coma for at least a week.

"Well I guess they got encouraged by some test results. Have you given any thought to letting her explain and forgiving her?"

"No. As a matter of fact I keep finding more and more deceit. There's no coming back from this," I said. Then I brought him up to date on everything I had found, well except for the secret bank account. He was none too pleased when I identified his daughter's secret lover.

He sounded disappointed, drained and disgusted as he rung off. I didn't tell him either how I planned to pay Joy back for her deceit. I had just made a pot of coffee when Steven came in through my back door.

"You aren't going to believe this," he said. Then suddenly he said, "Oh! Coffee!"

"Morning Steve. Don't you think Joe would find it odd that you're in my house at eight am and he's at work?"

"You're only a cock tease and he knows it," he said as I just barely avoided spitting my coffee out everywhere.

"You said I wasn't going to believe something?" I asked as I handed him a cup of coffee.

He was right. As I looked at what he had found I felt like I had fallen down a weird hole. And as he was laying it all out for me I suddenly saw everything crystal clear.

When Joy had gone to Garrett's funeral, she only half lied. She could have said she was going to see a Jimenez planted she would have been 100% accurate. She'd gone to Fiona's funeral. Fiona had been killed in a car wreck in Laramie, and I would bet my last dime that she accompanied Garrett up there and that had been the start of the affair.

The next piece of information pissed me off even further. The year before, when Joy had called me to join her in Miami, Garrett had been incarcerated. He had been doing ten months for petty theft. He served ten months, and then had to serve four years on parole. As part of his parole agreement, he was banned from leaving the state of Colorado, so I assumed that if I asked Cal, he'd reveal that Joy had pressed for more local fuck retreats.

Up until the time of his arrest, Garrett had been working for a software company, but the funny thing about companies that deal in National Defense; they can't have felons on the payroll. I then wondered if the police would catch him before he realized his gravy boat had been drained.

Later that day I called my lawyer and filled him in on my plan. He laughed and said he could make it all happen and it would be legal. Now all I had to do was wait for Joy to revive herself.

*****

Two weeks after finally coming out her coma, Joy was allowed to be interviewed by the police. I walked down the hallway following Detective Phillips and Detective Albert. They had come down from Vail to interview Joy.

Garrett had been arrested trying to bully a bank teller into giving him money that he thought should be in "his" bank account. When they read the card, which was issued to Joy Riggs, alarm bells had gone off in the teller's head. She went to ask a manager who confirmed that the card had been reported stolen. Bank security held him there until Denver PD came to get him.

When they booked him, they discovered he was wanted for questioning in Vail. His parole officer seemed to take interest in the fact that he'd left Denver without clearing it with him first. Denver was more than happy to give him guest accommodations. I hoped that he had a well hung cell mate.

As Phillips and Albert entered Joy's room I hung back in the hallway. Hugh had been kind enough to talk them into letting me listen in, and Detective Phillips had asked me if there were any questions that I'd like them to ask. I had a million, but I decided to just have them ask one.

They introduced themselves and I heard Jim ask if they'd like for him to close the door. Without missing a beat she explained that since they weren't detaining Joy they couldn't allow the door to be closed, but they had posted a colleague outside the door to discourage eaves dropping. I was wearing a suit and looked the detective part so no one should have thought I looked out of place.

At first Joy seemed hesitant to answer their questions. She hemmed and hawed around until they brought it to her attention that the desk clerk had placed her with two different men. One of course was Cal, and the second was Garrett.

She finally admitted to being with both men but stopped shy of admitting that Garret had beaten her. Then Phillips played a card I hadn't expected. "I'm sure by now you're aware of the fact that your husband thinks you had two separate lovers without his knowledge. Whatever you tell us can be related to him, and when he sees the truth it might move him toward reconciling with you."

"Not a snowball's chance in hell!" I thought as Phillips laid her shit on thick.

Then it all came out. How she'd lied to me in order to accompany Garrett to his sister's funeral. "I felt sorry for him and I knew Roger wouldn't want me to go with him, nor would my dad. I'm sorry daddy. Anyway we decided that weekend that we still loved each other. Only problem was I loved Roger, so Garrett proposed that I sneak away once a month and see him. I didn't see how it could harm Roger so I agreed."

Then she went on to recap everything that Cal had said about how they started up. She claimed she fucked Cal because she got a thrill out of the fact they were both married. When they started going to the meetings and then taking the convention week as well, she decided to do Cal one week and then do Garrett the next. "I felt bad for never having Roger on a trip with me so I gave him Miami."

"Lying fucking cunt!" If I had any regrets about serving her when I was going to, that lie just took them away. Her smugness really pissed me off. Then when they questioned her about the beating she asked that they be lenient on Garrett.

"I made him mad that night. I told him that I was coming off of my birth control so that Roger and I could have a family. Garrett said I should give him an equal chance at making me pregnant. I told him that there was no way Roger would ever believe it was his child if I let that happen."

"As the evening wore on he kept after me to give him a chance to make me pregnant. When I asked him to drop it he flew off the handle. That's the last thing I remember before I woke up here and found out that Roger thinks I cheated and left me."

Her crying jag could have won an Oscar if she hadn't been such a cold calculating cunt. Finally Phillips drove the final nail, and confirmed what I had suspected since I saw her secret email.

"So, on a personal note. May I ask you why you have Jiminy Cricket tattooed on your thigh?"

"That was Garret's idea. He said that way he could be near my pussy all the time and Roger would be none the wiser."

At that point I walked into the room. The cunt actually had the audacity to call me baby. "Hey baby, I'm so sorry but if let me explain..."

I handed her the sheaf of papers in my hand and said. "No need. By the way, you've been served."

I heard her scream as I walked out of the room and off of the ward and into the rest of my life.

*****

Epilogue. 5 years later.

Everyone knows a ringing phone in the middle of the night is not a good sign. For me, it was becoming part of the job. I had the conversation and got the pertinent information then rung off.

I rolled over and kissed my sleeping wife's forehead. Then as had become common place, I went lower and kissed her swollen abdomen. I knew she wasn't fully asleep when I could smell her arousal.

"You better watch you don't start something that you can't finish," she said sleepily. Even before she was pregnant I could get her fired up by kissing or licking her tummy. Often it was on the way to moister pastures below. I was looking forward to becoming a father.

"Sorry babe. Just kissing Charlie Brown good bye."

She gave a chuckle. "Really Zeke? We don't even have his real name picked out and you've given him a nick name?" I laughed and then I got up and got dressed. I had thought of him as Charlie Brown since I had found out that it was a him. Something on the sonogram had looked like Charlie Brown's shirt and the idea had stuck in my head.

"Have a good day baby," I said to my sleeping wife as I headed out. She mumbled some sort of response. I knew her day would be less hectic since she had taken maternity leave with a month to go before D-Day.

Thirty minutes later I had pulled up to the crime scene. I may have not been to that particular trailer before, but in my stint on patrol duty I had been to many like it. The results never surprised me anymore.