Power Corrupts

The following is a work of fiction and not a docu-drama. As always, constructive comments are always welcome and appreciated.

*****

The jury had just been released for the day, having heard closing arguments from both the defense and the prosecution. It was fairly late in the afternoon, about 4:00, so the judge ordered the jury back to the hotel where they had been sequestered for the two-week trial, which was the culmination of an investigation that lasted nearly a year. The defendant was taken back to the Tarrant County Correction Center in Fort Worth and nothing more would happen until Monday when the jury reconvened.

So I decided to walk back to my room at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Dallas, stopping at a bar along the way for a quick beer and a bite to eat. I had just finished my burger and was halfway through my beer when I heard a female voice behind me.

"Hey, cowboy, buy a girl something to drink?" she asked.

I turned around and looked at the source of the question. She looked familiar and then it hit me.

"Ashley? Ashley Marks, is that really you?" I asked.

"Yup, it's me," she said, flashing a smile that could melt the polar ice cap. I invited her to sit down and waved to the waitress.

"My God, how long has it been? Sixteen, seventeen years now? How are ya doing," I asked.

"I think it's been seventeen years," she said. Ashley had been one of my best friends in high school, along with Steve Jenkins and Jolene Carter. Together, we were known as the 'Four Musketeers.' That changed, though, when Ashley's father took a job in Austin during our senior year. I hadn't seen nor heard anything from her since then.

"I'm doing okay," she said. "Went to college at the University of Texas, graduated, got married, divorced and now I'm a reporter for the Austin Statesman."

"Wow, you've had quite a life. What happened?" I asked. She shrugged her shoulders.

"I was married," she said, with emphasis on the "I."

"Unfortunately, he wasn't. Or at least, he had a hard time remembering his vows. After I caught him cheating the third time I said enough and kicked his city-boy ass to the curb," she said. "I think he ended up managing a McDonald's in Beaumont someplace."

"Sorry to hear that," I said. "I know how it feels, believe me. So, what brings you up to the 'Big D'?"

"I've been covering the Jenkins trial the last couple weeks. What a mess. I watched you testify the other day, in fact," she said. "I'm really sorry about Jolene. Whatever her faults, she didn't deserve to die like that."

I didn't say anything to that. No, Jolene didn't deserve to die the way she did. I would have preferred something more painful, like burning at the stake, but that opportunity - like so many other things, was taken from me by a man I once thought of as my best friend.

"So, how are you coping, Bill Jennings?" she said, breaking my train of thought.

"About as well as expected, considering the last sixteen years or so of my life has been nothing but a sham," I said.

"At least you have your children," she said. I nodded.

"Yeah, I guess," I said. "They're mine, legally anyway."

"You may not be the sperm donor, but trust me, you're their father in all the ways that really matter," she said.

"I guess you're right," I said. "It still doesn't make me feel any better, though."

"Look, I have to make a confession here," she began. I looked at her, wondering what she had up her sleeve.

"You know, every reporter in that courtroom is going to want your story. I'd like to be the one who tells it, if that's okay with you," she said. "I know you're probably having a lot of trust issues and I fully understand. But no one there knows you like I do. Look, if it'll help, we'll sign a contract. You give me exclusive rights to your story and I'll protect you from the wolves. Kinda like a publicist, you know. I won't publish anything without letting you look it over first. My editor has already approved it and I want this done right."

I knew deep down that she was right. I had already been accosted by reporters from every major news outlet in the country - CNN, Fox News, the Associated Press, you name it. Even a bunch of smaller but well-known bloggers had reached out to me. It was all so overwhelming. Something told me I could trust her so I made up my mind.

"Okay, Ashley," I said. "You have a deal. So how does this work, exactly? Do we do this here, do we take it to my hotel room, or your hotel room? What did you have in mind?"

"Well," she said, "I've been wanting to see the old homestead for a while now. It's only what, two to two and a half hours west of here by car? It's still fairly early and the jury's not scheduled to begin deliberations until Monday morning, so that gives us the weekend. Why don't we take a drive back and you can show me where it all happened? You can give me details on the way and after we get there I can maybe talk to your kids and your parents, if that's okay."

I thought for a moment before saying yes. It would be a good break from the trial and I figured it might be nice to show Ashley around a bit and maybe reconnect.

"Sounds good," I said. "Where are you staying?

"I'm at the Hilton just around the corner. You?" she asked.

"Same. You want to grab a few things first before we head out?" She nodded and we agreed to meet at my truck in the parking area. "You can't miss it," I told her. "It's a big blue crew cab."

"Same old Bill. Gotta have the biggest pickup in the state. Give me about a half hour after we get there so I can change into something a bit more comfortable and grab a few things, okay?" she asked. I agreed and we headed off.

The sun had just dipped below the horizon by the time we got on to Interstate 20 headed toward Abilene. I was glad as I hated driving into the sun.

Ashley had changed out of her professional reporter attire and was now wearing a knee-length denim skirt with a white western-style blouse. She looked just as pretty to me now as she did back in school. I also got a good look at her shapely legs and felt a familiar stirring below my belt. She smiled.

"I know what you're thinking, cowboy," she said.

"Oh, really?" I asked.

"You're thinking something like, 'why didn't I hook up with Ashley instead of Jolene?'" I laughed.

"Your finely-tuned reporter instincts tell you that?" I asked.

"No, the way you're checking out my legs did. Like you used to do back in school," she said. "Betcha thought I forgot about that."

"Well, legs like those are pretty hard to forget," I told her. I always liked looking at her legs back then, especially when she wore that little cheerleader uniform. She smiled and pulled out her recorder. "So tell me, Ashley, is there a Mr. Right somewhere in Austin"?

"No," she said. "After my divorce I focused almost entirely on work. As you can imagine, I've had a lot of trust issues with men and until now I just haven't met anyone I really care to spend any time with."

"Sorry to hear that," I said. She laughed.

"Somehow, I doubt that," she said. Damn those reporter instincts. "Anyway, what do ya say we get this little road show going?"

"Yeah, okay," I said. She placed her recorder on the dash, making sure it wouldn't fall off.

"You don't mind if I record this, do you?" she asked. I shook my head.

"Not at all," I said. "I want you to get this right."

I took a sip of coffee and thought a bit before starting.

"Well, Ashley, as you know, Steve and I, along with you and Jolene were really tight in school. After you left, it was just the three of us mostly. I asked Jolene to marry me right after graduation and she said yes.

"Steve and I both joined the Marines right out of high school. Both of us went to San Diego for boot camp and even went into the same platoon. Jolene and I agreed that we'd get married after I finished my advance training. After boot camp Steve and I got separated. He ended up in infantry and I got computer electronics. So he was assigned to Camp Pendleton and I was sent to Quantico, Virginia.

"Anyway, about a month or so later, Steve messed his knee up pretty bad and ended up getting a medical discharge. You noticed he still walks with a slight limp."

"Couldn't they have given him a desk job?" Ashley asked.

"No, it doesn't work that way," I said. "Everyone in the Corps is a basic rifleman, regardless of their MOS, or specialty. Even clerks and computer types like me have to meet the physical requirements for combat.

"So Steve went back home and his father pulled some strings to get him on with the county."

"That's right, his dad was a county commissioner, wasn't he?" Ashley asked. I nodded.

"Yep. Right up until he died. That's how Steve first got elected. I guess the voters thought enough of old man Jenkins to elect his son.

"So I finished school, came home and got married. Steve was my best man. I learned much later that he was also Jolene's 'best' man, if you know what I mean."

"That bitch," Ashley said.

"Anyway, I ended up on the west coast and almost nine months to the day of our wedding, Bryan was born. About a year later, I got sent to Okinawa for a year-long unaccompanied tour. We came home for a month and I let Jolene and Bryan stay in my house, which I inherited from my grandparents. We figured that it would be easier on them with both our parents there.

"After that tour, I came home, packed up Jolene and Bryan and we went to my next duty station, which was Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. A little less than nine months later, Jessica was born. Jolene had a hard time with the pregnancy and insisted I get a vasectomy. She argued that if we ever wanted another child I could always have it reversed. So I went along with it. If I knew then what I know now, though, things would've been quite different."

"Looking at the pictures, it's pretty easy to see Steve's features in the kids," Ashley said. "Didn't you notice that when they were born?"

"That's a pretty fair question," I said. "You may recall that when we were younger, people often said Steve and I could pass as brothers. We both have the same color hair and the same eyes. Hell, we even have similar earlobes. No, they both looked a lot like me when they were toddlers and they both have their mother's eyes and nose. It wasn't until they got to be much older before I started seeing the resemblance. When we get to my house, you'll see the baby pictures.

"Anyway, I finished my time in the Corps and we all came back home. Dad took me to his computer shop and introduced me to all the other guys. I went straight to work for him, which was really nice. Unfortunately, that also meant doing quite a bit of travel."

"Did that ever bother Jolene," Ashley asked. I shook my head.

"Nope. Just the opposite. She seemed to relish the fact that I was going out servicing customers and building networks. Dad got clients in Dallas, Abilene, Wichita Falls, Amarillo, all over. Heck, we even had clients in Houston and Oklahoma City. Jolene thought it was great that I was building up such a large client base," I said. "In reality, my absence gave her all the time she needed to bring Steve into our house and into our bed. Of course, I learned that much later."

"You mean she actually did Steve in your marital bed?" Ashley asked.

"Yeah. All the freaking time," I said. "That's why I burned it and the mattress after she got shot."

"I don't blame you," Ashley said.

"I burned a few other things as well, like the couch and the recliner Steve used to use," I said. "Jolene's wedding dress also got torched." Ashley winced at that.

"So Steve was a regular fixture at your house, then," Ashley said.

"Yeah, so much so that he had his own recliner, even. I really didn't mind at the time, since I considered him a friend. He'd come over, especially on Sunday after church. We'd start watching a ball game and he'd almost always end up falling asleep in that damn chair.

"The kids also began calling calling him 'Uncle Steve,' pretty much at Jolene's insistence. At the time, it bugged me, but now I know why.

"Hey, I don't know about you, but I could go for a warm-up on my coffee. You about ready for a pit stop?" I asked.

Ashley turned off her recorder. "Sure," she said. "I could go for that and a smoke break, if that's okay with you." I nodded and pulled off at the next exit.

Having taken a break from the drive, we jumped back on the highway headed toward Abilene. Ashley pulled out her recorder and set it back on the dash.

"So all this time you never had a clue that Jolene was cheating on you with Steve?" she asked.

"No, I guess I was the typical clueless husband. She never disrespected me, at least to my face, and there was never any hint of sex happening in the house when I was gone. I guess they were pretty careful all those years," I said.

"So when did you find out?" she asked.

"About a year ago, I was sent to Los Angeles for a month-long training program in an ERP package we contracted to support for a client in San Antonio. Jolene and the kids were great about emailing me and calling me every day. One weekend, I got an email from Bryan. Jolene and Steve took the kids to the lake fishing and he caught a pretty big bass. So he sent me a picture," I said.

I pulled out my phone and handed it to Ashley, telling her what album to open. The picture I was looking for showed Bryan holding up a big fish. Right next to him was Steve. Jolene was on the other side of Bryan with her left hand on Steve's right shoulder.

"What do you see in that picture?" I asked Ashley.

"My God," she exclaimed. "They look so much alike. They even have the same dimples."

"Yeah," I said. "I noticed that as well. Now, take a look at Jolene's left hand. What stands out about that?" Ashley positioned the picture and zoomed in using her fingers.

"I don't see any rings," she said.

"That's right," I said. "You'll never guess where they were." Ashley gave me a quizzical look. I guided her to the folder where I kept pictures from Jessica.

"Take a look there until you see one with an ashtray," I said.

"Okay, I got it," she said.

"Zoom in on that picture and tell me what you see." Her eyes got wide as she zoomed in on the picture.

"Is that what I think it is?" she asked. I nodded.

"Yep. The very ring I placed on her finger when I married her. Along with my great-grandmother's engagement ring. And guess whose cigarette butts are in that tray?"

"Let me guess - Steve's," she said.

"Oh, there's more," I told her. "That ashtray is not just in our bedroom, it's on my nightstand. Which means Steve was in our bed, probably with Jolene." Ashley began tearing up.

"How could she do that to you? And you say Jessica sent this?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "She often helped her mother clean house, which meant clearing out and wiping all the ashtrays. She saw that before they left, took a picture and sent it to me. She was very upset."

"I can imagine," Ashley said. "Did she say anything to Jolene?"

"Not that I know of. I wrote her back and told her not to say anything to her mom. I also told her to take the rings out and put them in her pocket and mail them to me." Ashley laughed.

"I'll bet Jolene was fit to be tied over that," she said.

"Yeah, Jessica was a real trooper the whole time. She did what I asked, but Jolene went nuts trying to find those rings. She even had Steve come over to help her look for them. They dug through trash, opened up the traps under the sinks, you name it. I wish I could've been there to record it."

"So what did you do," Ashley asked.

"Well, my course was finished on a Friday afternoon, so I drove straight through and got home that Saturday night. Jolene met me outside, crying that she'd lost grandmother's ring. She was absolutely beside herself. I asked all the usual questions, you know, did you look everywhere, did you set them on the sink, and so on. She kept insisting she looked all over.

"That's when I reached into my pocket and pulled them out. I thought she was going to pass out. 'How did you get them,' she asked me. I just said a trusted friend found them and mailed them to me. I never mentioned Jessica's role cause I figured she'd rip the girl a new one. I just told her 'don't put them in the ashtray the next time Steve comes over.' It was priceless. Her eyes got as big as saucers and she started crying, giving me all the usual bullshit that she loves me.

"Oh, sorry," I said when I saw the look on Ashley's face. "I didn't mean to cuss."

"That's okay," she said. "I've heard and said a lot worse, believe me. So tell me, what did you do then?"

"Well, I pretty much knew then that it was over between us," I said. "I didn't have any real evidence of their cheating, no photos or anything like that. I figured I'd start doing some investigating and get things ready, you know. The first thing I wanted to do was get DNA tests done. I needed to find out if the kids were mine. I also got hold of some surveillance gear from our shop. Motion-activated hi-def cameras, voice-activated audio recorders, the works. I even put a bug on our phone. Everything went to my home server and that got backed up to the cloud. I waited until she was out shopping and put it all in.

"The DNA was pretty easy to do. One of our clients in Dallas is a lab that does those kind of tests and they got me everything I needed. I got the samples from the kids, asking them to never say anything to their mother. Took my own sample and waited for the next Sunday when Steve came over. As usual, he fell asleep in that recliner he always sat in, so it was pretty easy to grab a swab from inside his cheek.

"Took me a week to get the results because I asked the lab to mail them to the shop. Sure enough, the tests showed a 99.9 percent chance that Steve was the father of both children, which meant that he and Jolene had been at it for at least 16 years if not longer."

"And all that time you never had a clue?" Ashley asked.

"No. Not a clue. I'm sure if I sat down and analyzed it carefully I might have figured it all out, but that's just it. Before then, she never gave me any reason to question her fidelity. Our sex life was always good, even after the children were born.

"So, I waited to get some kind of other evidence. And that didn't take very long. A week after I installed all the gear, I got my first piece of video evidence.

"I ended up going to Oklahoma City for a server install and knew I'd be there for a couple days. The kids were over at my parents' house so that left Jolene to her own devices. Not long after I left, she called Steve and arranged to have him come over for the night. I called from my hotel in OK City and spoke to her briefly, just to let her know I was there. She told me she loved me but by then I really didn't give a shit. After that call, I logged into my home server and waited. Sure enough, about 9:00 that night, they were in our bed doing the dirty deed. Naturally, he didn't use a condom, which really ticked me off.

"What was worse than watching the two of them rut like animals was what I heard them say, though."

"What was that?" Ashley asked.

"Hang on," I said. "I gotta take this exit. Then it's another 30 minutes."

I had to focus during this part of the trip. It was getting pretty dark and this particular road didn't have any lights, guard rails or white lines denoting the sides. Someone not looking carefully could very easily end up in the ditch, or worse.

Additionally, this particular road ran close to where Steve's drug-running buddies used to operate. Most of them had been arrested or otherwise put out of operation after Steve went down, but I was always on the lookout. I had to replace my windshield a couple times after they shot it out. Plus, there were a lot of critters out here - mostly armadillos and deer.