Ron Taylor

First Time In The Behind

AB 5592

Chapter 1

"Goddamn it to hell!" Nicole Patterson cried, pounding her fist on the desk top. She picked up the glossy black and white photos and started ripping them to pieces.

"You knew, going into it, that it might come to something like this,"

Bill Archer said. "If you hadn't been suspicious, you'd never have hired me in the first place."

"I know," Nicole said, dropping the torn pictures. She stared at the VCR. The urge was strong within her to yank the tape out of the machine and stomp it with her heels. "It's not you, and it's not the pictures.

I'm just fantasizing that I'm doing this to Roger. The son of a bitch!"

She couldn't believe that she was actually in a detective's office, that she had just seen photograph and videotape evidence her husband was cheating on her. She couldn't believe she had hired the detective to get the evidence in the first place. She'd been positive, in the back of her mind, that there was some other explanation for Roger's behavior. Even if she couldn't imagine what it might be. Even if she had, honestly, always supposed that he was fucking someone else.

"Who is she?" Nicole asked. "Who is the slut?"

"Her name is Becky O'Hara," the detective said, taking a folder from his desk. "This is the profile. She works in a law office. They handle some of the business relating to your father's estate, and I suppose that's how Mr. Patterson first met her. Apparently they've been meeting, mostly at her apartment, sometimes at other places, for about six months."