Chapter 1: The Official Version

What if Jamal was Robert’s old boyfriend?

Robert---I wake up as the EMT’s put something under my nose. I am told to lay still. I see that the front of my shirt is covered with blood. MY BLOOD! I start to panic. Again I am told to lay still. I have a concussion and a broke nose. Things are starting to come back.

“Mr. Stark can you tell us what happened?” I see that the man asking the questions is a police detective. I look around the room. There is my wife, Sue. She heard the question and slightly shakes her head no.

“I’m not sure. My head hurts”

“He probably has a concussion. We need to get him to the hospital and let the doctors check him out. You’ll have to wait on the questions.”

I am placed on a stretcher and rolled to the ambulance. I did see a body being loaded into a coroners van. I decided to keep quiet. At the hospital I am rolled around to various labs and X-rayed, MRI’ed and CAT-scanned. A doctor shines a light in my eyes and tells me I have a slight concussion. A cop has followed me around and the doctor says it will be best if they wait until the morning to question me. I lay back and go to sleep.

I wake up sometime in the early morning and Sue is sitting by my bedside. She asks how I am and I tell her I feel good, nothing more than a slight headache and of course my nose is sore as hell. She grins and says that I am going to have two black eyes.

“Why did you not let me tell the police what happened?”

“I shot Jamal. He is dead. We need to get our stories straight. We don’t need our sex life spread all over the inter-net.”

She is right about that. A sex scandal could ruin my business.

“This is what I told the police.”

“We were getting ready to go to dinner. We had reservations at the Embers. You were dressed and I was almost ready when the door bell rang. I was in the bedroom but I heard you arguing with your old friend Jamal. Something about the money he wanted to borrow. I heard the conversation get loud and I looked down the hall into the living room and I saw him hit you. You tripped over the coffee table and hit your head. Jamal started down the hall towards me and I ran into the bedroom ad got my pistol. When he came to the door of the bedroom I feared for my life and I shot him. He backed into the hall and died on the floor. I ran to you and used my cell phone to call 911 and requested an ambulance and the police. I told them we were victims of a home invasion and I had killed the perp. I was instructed to place my pistol on the table and open the front door. That’s what I did while I waited on the cops.”

“The fight was over money then?”

“That’s the official story.”

“Got it no problem.”

“Now go back to sleep and we never talked.”

“Love you.”

“Love you more.”