Angels Fall

you think I'd just leave him?"
    He rose, a patient, cautious man. Taking out his key, he uncuffed her. "You sit right there." He touched the gun in his holster as warning. "I don't want any trouble. And I don't want any bruises or signs on your wrists showing some M.E. you've been restrained. Rub the circulation back into them. Do it now." Her arms ached like a fever, and trembled with it as she rubbed her wrists. "I said we called and reported to the state police."
    "You'd've done that, Brody would've said so when he came out here. Told him I found out information on the killing from the state police myself. Asked him to come out here and meet me, and them, to get the details before we made an arrest."
    Going to the table, he picked up the plastic cup of water and the pill he'd set out. "Want you to take this."
    "No."
    "It's one of yours, said it was for anxiety. Might help a little, and I want them to find drugs in your system. You're going to take it, Reece, or I'm going to force it down your throat." She took the glass, the pill.
    Satisfied, he sat, rested his hands on his knees. "We'll give that a few minutes to work for you, then we'll get started. I'm sorry it's come to this, that's the truth. Brody's been a friend of mine, and I've got nothing against you. But I've got to protect my family."
    "Were you protecting them when you screwed Deena Black?"
    His face tightened, but he nodded. "I made a mistake. A human mistake. I love my wife, my kids. Nothing's more important. But there are needs, that's all. Two, three times a year I took care of those needs. None of it ever touched my family. I'd say I was a better husband, better daddy, better man for taking care of them."
    He believed it, Reece realized. How many people deluded themselves into believing cheating was somehow honorable?
    "You took care of them with Deena."
    "One night. It was supposed to be just one night. What difference could it make to anyone but me? Just sex, that's all. Things a man needs but doesn't want his wife doing. One night out of so many others. But I couldn't stop. Something about her got into me. Like a sickness. I couldn't leave her alone, and for a while I thought, I guess I thought it was love. And that I could have them both." 
    "The dark and the light," Reece said.
    "That's right." He smiled with terrible sadness. "I gave Deena all I could. She kept wanting more. The kind of more I couldn't give. She wanted me to leave Debbie, leave my kids behind. I was never going to do that, never going to lose my wife and kids. We had a fight, terrible fight, and I woke up. You could say I woke up from a long, dark dream. I broke it off then and there."
    "But she wouldn't let it stay broken off." Wake up, Brody, she thought desperately. Wake up and tell me what to do.
    "She kept calling me. She wanted money, ten thousand or she'd tell my wife. I didn't have that kind of money, and I told her. She said I'd better find it if I wanted to keep my happy home. How you feeling?  Calmer?"
    "I saw you, by the river. I saw you kill her."
    "I was just going to reason with her. I told her to come here. I used to bring her here, here to the cabin when I was in that long, dark dream. But when she came, I couldn't talk to her here, not here, not again. Maybe you should have two of those pills."
    "You took her down to the river."
    "Wanted to walk, that's all. Never planned it. We just walked, we kept walking until we came to the river. I told her maybe I could scrape together a couple thousand, stake her, if she left Wyoming. Even when I said it I knew it wouldn't work. Once you pay, you never stop. Said she wasn't settling for crumbs. Wanted the whole cake. I could take it out of the money we had for the kids. I don't know why I told her we've put by money for our kids, for their college. She wanted it. Not ten now, she said, but twenty-five. Twenty-five or I'd end up with nothing. No wife, no kids, no reputation.
    "I called her a whore, because that's what she was, what she'd always been. And she came at me. And when I pushed her down and told her it was done, she came at me again, screaming.
    "You saw how it was."
    "Yes, I saw how it was."
    "She was going to ruin me, she swore it. No matter what I paid now, she was taking it all. She was going to tell Debbie every dirty little thing we'd ever done together. I couldn't even hear her anymore. It was like wasps buzzing in my head. But she was on the ground, under me, and my hands were around her throat. I