The next few hours pass in a blur of surrealness and shock. Am I really here? Is this really happening? Despite what my senses tell me, it’s hard to believe that this still isn’t a terrible joke, or a nightmare, that I will soon wake up from.
The police officers take me to the morgue. I have to identify the body. Halfway there, in the back of their cruiser, I start screaming that I left my son alone, unattended. The cops are halfway back to my house before I remember he’s at his grandparents’.
I don’t remember arriving at the morgue, or making my way downstairs. I do remember the smell. Antiseptic, death, and pickles. I learn later that this is the formaldehyde. What I do remember is the mortician opening the drawer and pulling out my husband. Sean.
He is grayer than I remember, and smaller. It is like in death, some of his structure and mass have left him. If I didn’t know better, I would think he was a doll, or a wax figure at Madame Toussaud’s. I want to push my finger into his arm, to check that it is really flesh there. But I don’t. Instead I laugh. The cops must think I’m insane, but they don’t say anything. The mortician looks at me calmly. No doubt he’s seen this kind of thing before.
“Is this Sean Leonard Jones?” He asks.
I don’t know how I answer, but they all seem satisfied, so I must have responded in the affirmative. What I don’t say is: no. That is not my husband. But that’s the truth.
When we come up out of the morgue, the light seems brighter than it did before. It blinds me, and as I put a hand up to shield my eyes, I stumble. One of the cops catches me.
We must drive to the police station next, because that’s the next thing I’m cognizant of. Sitting in the waiting room of the station. It’s like I’ve just woken up from a nap, except I know I had to be awake in order to get here. My phone is in my hand, and when I look down at it, I see I’m in the middle of texting my mum.
I’ve written, Can you keep Donnie a little longer? Something’s come up.
Of course, my mum has written back. Everything okay?
I responded with a Thumbs Up emoji.
I have no memory of any of this.
The waiting room is empty, and I stand and walk up to the woman behind the counter. “Excuse me, but can you tell me what I’m doing here?” I ask her. My voice is very calm, but she still looks surprised and a little suspicious.
“The inspectrors will be ready to interview you in a couple of minutes, love,” she says, finally seeming to decide that I’m harmless. “Why don’t you sit down? I can get you a cup of tea, if you’d like.”
I nod, and she’s just brought me a cup of tea in a styrofoam cup when the same police officers who came to the house open a door from the back and come into the waiting room, very serious looks on their faces.
“Jazz Jones?” One asks, as he approaches me. “We’re ready for you now.”
He’s speaking very gently, and when I struggle to get up, he helps me to my feet.
Inside the briefing room, the cops gets down to brass tacks very quickly. They keep asking me where I was, what had happened that day, and if I knew anyone who would have a grudge against us.
I’m at a loss as to how to answer. Every question leaves me gagging for air. How can I explain to these men what our life was like? I tell them I’d lost my job, but don’t go into the specifics about my fight with Julie. I just say that she had been harassing me for a long time at work.
“So you have just lost your job, you came home, got in a fight with your husband, and he went out on a walk?” One of the cops clarifies.
“Yes,” I whisper. “And then… and then…” I look up at them, my eyes swimming with teras for the first time. “You said it was a hit-and-run? Did you see the car that did it?”
“There were a few witnesses,” one of them says. “None of them saw the actual hit-and-run, but a few saw a black SUV driving erratically, speeding, through the streets, just after.”
“Did they get the license plate?”
“Unfortunately, no. But we have CCTV in the area. Don’t worry, we’ll find it.”
Don’t worry, we’ll find it. Don’t worry, we’ll find the man who murdered your husband. Who left you a widow, pregnant and with a five-year-old.
“I want to ask you again, Mrs Jones: do you know anyone who might have wished your husband harm?”
I look up into the calm, patient eyes of the cop, and a pain scissors through my stomach. I gasp, and the two officers start in surprise. Smiling weakly, I try to shrug it off. Then it hits me again, like someone cutting through me, from the inside out. Like the baby is trying to burst from me, Alien-style. Placing a hand against my stomach, I try not to cry out as another wave of nausea and pain shoots through me. It’s not just my stomach, either. It’s lower. There is also a tightening, almost a pulsing, between my legs, but deep, almost around my… cervix.
And then I know what’s happening. I’ve felt this way before, once before, although it was different then. It was natural and expected, beautiful in a way.
I stand up, so suddenly that both officers look startled. “I have to use the toilet,” I say, and they don’t object as I practically sprint from the room.
In the toilet, I yank down my suit pants--I’m still wearing the clothes I wore to the office this morning--and my knickers, then squat down on the toilet. Looking down, my stomach fills with vomit as I see the red stain on my knickers. And there’s more. It’s coming from my vagina, and when I reach down and touch the folds of my skin, there is red, almost black, globules on blood.
Blood clots.
I feel as if I might be sick, but, after steadying myself, I wipe the blood on my thigh and wait. Options are coursing through me. I should go to the hospital, have the cops call the ambulance, and head straight there. They might be able to stop this from happening, or at least make sure that I don’t hemorrhage. I’ll need to call Sean as well…
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And then it hits me again. Sean is gone. Sean is dead. If I make it to the hospital and they save the baby, I’ll be having it alone, in seven or eight months. He won’t be by my side to help me through the labor. He won’t be there to hold the baby. He won’t be there to congratulate me and tell me what a good job I did. He won’t be there to raise this child with me.
That’s when the scream is torn from my throat. At the same time, another surge of pain rockets through me. It’s too late. I know it instinctively. Even if I could get to the hospital in time, there would be no saving the baby. I’m having a miscarriage. My body is rejecting the baby that caused my husband’s death.
It’s early enough in the pregnancy that I don’t see anything other than blood and a few clots. For this, I thank whatever God exists for small mercies. I don’t want to see anything more. It’s hard enough to face this. I just sit on the toilet and let the pregnancy wash out of me, crying silently. Other women come in and out of the restroom, but none of them seem to notice me. I make no noise.
When it’s over, I feel only relief. Briefly, I wonder if this would have happened if Sean hadn’t died. Perhaps this pregnancy would have ended anyway and saved me the heartache and guilt--and potential legal battles with Jason--that were coming.
Jason. He won’t be happy to know I’ve miscarried. But at least he won’t be able to force himself into my life now.
Jason.
The man who said he would do anything to make sure we end up together.
A black SUV.
Do you know anyone who might have wished your husband harm?
Jason. Jason wished my husband harm. He knew that he couldn’t convince me to leave Sean, and he also knew that ruining my relationship with Sean would only make me hate him. So he eliminated Sean. Then he could position himself as the supportive shoulder to cry on, the man I could lean on in my grief, the man who would take care of me.
Clarity seers through me. I grab at the toilet paper, pull a wad from the dispenser, and clean myself up. Then I make my way slowly and carefully back to the interview room.
“Mrs Jones?” The blonde officer looks concerned as I come back into the room. He and his colleague both stand. “You look pale. Are you well?”
“I just had a miscarriage in your toilet,” I say, as I sit back down in front of the cops.
“What?” Both men look as if I have just uttered the most disgusting words they’ve ever heard. “We should get you to the hospital, Mrs Jones.”
“Fine. But I want to answer your question first. I know who killed my husband.”
“You do?”
“It’s my ex, Jason Shipman. He wanted me to get back together with him. He thinks the baby is his. Was his…”
“Mrs Jones.” Blonde cop leans forward. “Were you having an affair?”
“Yes, but I’d ended it. Jason is crazy. He’s an alcoholic, and he threatened me. He told me he’s do anything to get me back.” My hands clench into fists. “And then he killed my husband.”
It becomes a waiting game after that. I have to wait for the police to investigate Jason, and I have no idea how long that will take. They investigate me, too. I’m not stupid; I understand their line of questioning, the way they try to get out of me whether or not I was working with Jason to off my husband. But they won’t find anything. The Weekend Club has been deleted from our computer, from my phone. I’ve deleted all texts from Jason. And there’s plenty of CCTV in our neighbourhood for them to see I didn’t leave the house during the time when Sean died.
Anyway, the fact that I want Jason behind bars goes a long way to convince them that I hate him and want nothing to do with him.
Trying to put Jason behind bars is distracting. Perhaps that’s why I’m focusing on it. Because if I let myself think too hard about my life, I think I might lose my mind.
First of all, there’s Donnie. I have to tell him that his father has died, and it is the worst moment of my life. Worse even than when I learned of it myself, or when I had to identify his body. Donnie doesn’t understand at first, and then he does. The screams that fill the apartment shatter whatever joy I had left in my heart. Shatter any hope. Worse than that, he seems to regress after that. He begins wetting the bed, something he’s never done regularly before. He wakes up in the night with nightmares. Eventually, I let him share a bed with me. It doesn’t stop the bed-wetting, but it does stop the nightmares. And during the day, he’s temperamental and moody. Sometimes he’ll start screaming at me for no reason, or throw things, or refuse to eat. Other times he’ll lay on the sofa, saying nothing, barely moving, for hours.
It’s everything I want to do, but can’t. I have to hold it together for him, but I don’t know how to do that.
Secondly, there’s Sean’s parents to deal with. There’s no way to tell them about the investigation into Jason without also telling them about my affair. In the wake of their grief, this betrayal cuts them to the core. They tell me they want nothing to do with me ever again.
“What about your grandson?” I ask, astonished, when we discuss this over the phone, several weeks after Sean’s death.
“If he’s even our grandson,” Sean’s mum snorts. “Who knows if Sean was really even the father?”
“We’re going away for a while, Jazz,” Sean’s dad says, more gently. “We need to get away, somewhere warm, to deal with… this grief. When we get back, then maybe we can figure out how much of Donnie we want to see.”
On top of it all, Sean’s life insurance policy won’t pay out until the police investigation is concluded. It’s because I was a suspect, at least peripherally, or so I gather from several Google searches. If I’m suspected of having a hand in my husband’s death, then I will lose my status as beneficiary. And without my job, that means money is very tight. I’m going to have to borrow from my pension just to make our next mortgage payment.
My parents loan me some money, and that helps bandaid over things, but it’s a temporary fix. I’m going to have to find another job, and in my current state of depression – combined with the fact I was fired from my last job – I don’t know if that’s possible.
Jason doesn’t text me. He must have been spooked by the cops showing up and asking questions. Maybe he’s afraid that if he reaches out, it will make him look more guilty. Sometimes, in my lowest moments, I wonder if maybe he didn’t do it; if he’s innocent; if I should text him, and beg him to help me out. He has money to burn, after all. And I know that he’d give me whatever I needed.
About a month after Sean’s death, the detectives tied to the case come to see me. I’m home, like I always am, and Donnie is sleeping, so I take them out onto the balcony where we won’t wake him.
“I’m sorry, Mrs Jones,” one of the detectives begins, “but we could find no evidence linking Mr Shipman to your husband’s death.”
I just stare at them, disbelieving. The other detective continues, “He has an alibi for the day in question, and our investigation didn’t come up with any evidence that he hired or persuaded someone else to carry out the hit-and-run.”
“But…” I cast around for something to convince the detectives. “He’s represented lots of very bad people. He told me! Couldn’t one of them have done it for him? Maybe they didn’t leave a paper trail.”
The detectives look at each other, and a small nod passes between them. “Although Mr Shipman has some connections to organised crime,” the first one says, turning back to me, “we have no reason to believe, at this moment, that he employed any of them to carry out a hit on your husband. Of course, if any evidence presents itself, then we will investigate it thoroughly. As for a paper trail… these days, where so much of our banking is online, there is almost always some sort of indication that money has changed hands. But we could find no evidence of that.”
“What if someone owed him a favour?” I insist. “Maybe it wasn’t money that exchanged hands, but something less formal.”
The detective shakes his head. “We can only go off of the evidence, Mrs Jones.”
They leave, and for one wild moment, I think about throwing myself off of the balcony. It’s not really a real thought; I’m not going to leave Donnie alone. But there is something tempting about the idea of oblivion. Of never having to think again.
But oblivion might make me feel better, but it would still allow Jason to walk away free. And that’s a fate I couldn’t bear.
Instead, I go back into the apartment, where I search through the kitchen drawers until I find what I’m looking for. If the police can’t be counted on to meet out justice, then I will take matters into my own hands.