I guess I belong here, but then again maybe not. 'Here' is the Hempstead County jail where I may be for some time ... well at least until the trial is over, anyway. Why am I here, you may ask? Well, I guess they think I killed my wife and son. Again you might ask, why? Well, let me explain.

I'm Bob Saunders and I have been married to my beautiful bride, Carol, for seventeen years. We have ... er had a son who had turned fifteen just last month. It seems he had a unique birthday wish, which only he and his mother knew about. She gave him his wish the day after his birthday. Yeah, I'll get to that wish in a minute. Let me tell this my way, OK?

I met Carol in high school and we dated off and on since our sophomore year, then permanently in college, until we married in our junior year. Carol received her degree in education and physical education, while mine was in business and accounting. I wrangled a job at a very prestigious accounting firm here in our home town of Springfield. Carol started teaching at the middle school. Then, when our son, Sam, moved up to high school, Carol followed him over as their new vice principal.

We had some trouble when we started to have a family. I could get Carol pregnant at the drop of a hat, but she couldn't carry them to term. Something in her blood treated the fetus as a foreign body, and attacked it. After losing two pregnancies, the doctor finally found the problem and prescribed some medicine for her, almost immediately after the last D & C.

Lo and behold, six weeks later Carol was pregnant again, and this time she was able to carry Sam to term. The doctor did say that she shouldn't try to have more children as it was very risky for both her and the baby, so she had her tubes tied right after the delivery.

Because of all the trouble we had in getting Sam, he was doted on by both of us. I really wanted a girl so I could express the same kind of love Carol showered on Sam but, alas, it was not to be. We talked of adoption, but Carol was dead set against it. Why I don't know. Anyway, it didn't hurt my love life much until Sam turned nine or ten. We had been married for almost thirteen years when our sex life slowly dwindled to maybe once a week, and before our fourteenth anniversary it was over, it was down to maybe once every other month.

I tried to talk to Carol about it, but she said she was too busy with everything else in her life, and besides, we were getting older and my work was getting me down as well. I asked her to go to the doctor to get checked out. She told me he said it may have something to do with early menopause due to her being on some replacement hormone medicines because of her tubes being tied for so long. Anyway, our sex tapered off to the point of nothing. I was back to Rosie Palm and her five sisters for relief.

Since I had advanced in my company, I was now a chief accountant and had fifteen people working under me. My stress at work was mounting, but I was getting paid quite well for my services. So when April came around this year, Carol approached me. She asked if we could continue living as we were if she took an extended leave of absence for a year or two. She wanted to tutor Sam and get him into the advanced classes for his last three years in high school. That way he would have a good chance for scholarships to college which would put less of a burden on us. Maybe we could travel, once he was safely ensconced in college.

We had always promised ourselves that when we were able, we would like to cruise the Caribbean and also up the coast to Alaska. The cruises we wanted were either three weeks or a month long. Carol could swing that with her being off during the summer, but I just couldn't commit to being away that long from my job, and still expect to have it waiting for me when I got back. So we put it off till I was much higher in the company and Sam was in college or out on his own.

The way Carol presented her theory; it looked like a sound idea. It would allow us to travel sooner if Sam could get a good scholarship. So I let her take the time off and I buckled down and worked as much as I could so that we wouldn't miss the extra income. Carol stopped working on May 28^th. She stayed home with Sam for the summer to get him prepared to test out on several subjects, so he could skip at least one grade ... maybe two. Me, I usually came home about eight, exhausted and tired. I ate a light supper and headed to bed. What else was there for me to do? On the weekends, I helped with Sam's subjects in math and business. Other than that, things were the same; no sex and tired all the time, but I knew that I could see a faint light at the end of the tunnel. Little did I know that that light was the damn train that derailed my life, rather than the end of the tunnel.

Things progressed well, or maybe not so well, but we got through the days; and I slept the nights next to my wife. Then Sam's birthday came up on the 18^th of October. We got Sam a new backpack, and some video games, but it was mostly clothes. He was already outgrowing the stuff we'd bought in August for the start of school.

Sam seemed to act a little funny around me right before, and just after, his birthday. It was almost as if he knew a secret and wanted to tell me, but couldn't. I passed it off as teenaged angst, and left it alone. He would tell me when he felt the time was right, I hoped.

Two days ago, we had a problem with the power in our office building. It seemed that some idiot driver crossed in front of a semi, and the semi plowed into the power substation that provided power to our building, as well as several others in the area. At 1:25 PM, we were told to go home. We would be called when we could come back to work.

I headed to the grocery store to pick up our weekly groceries. I picked up a bouquet of flowers to give to Carol, hoping that I just might 'get lucky' this afternoon before Sam came home from school. I arrived home about three and started putting groceries away. I though it funny that Carol didn't hear me come in the back door. Oh well, she might be napping. She didn't come to bed last night until almost midnight, saying she was helping Sam study.

I finished up with the groceries, put the flowers in a nice vase and put them on the kitchen table, along with some candles for atmosphere. I lit the candles and then went up to our room to change.

That is when my life ended. I opened the bedroom door, and there spread out on the bed was my wife, naked, and my son plowing my field. I stood there and just gaped at the scene, I never said a word. I left, quietly closing the door, and went back downstairs and turned the gas on one of the burners. I grabbed an old pot that had been left on the stove one too many times and burned the bottom and left a residue inside the pan. I let some water spill on the burner and it went out leaving the gas on.

I then went back out of the house and drove away.

I went to the diner down the street and waited. About forty-five minutes later, I heard a big bang. Then about ten minutes later several fire trucks, an ambulance, and police cars raced up the street toward my house. I waited another ten minutes and left the diner after giving the waitress a very nice tip.

I slowly drove home, well as close as I could get to home and looked at what was left of my house. The detached garage was still standing, although charred in places, Carol's car was still in the garage and seemed unharmed, but the shrubs and small trees around the smoldering remains of where our house had stood was just charred and wet ruins. It seems that a gas leak had found an ignition source, and blown the kitchen up into the upstairs master bedroom.

The two people in the bed upstairs were burnt to a crisp. It seems that when the kitchen blew, it weakened the floor, and the bed came crashing down into the inferno. The two on the bed were turned into almost instant crispy critters.