“Murder?” Excerpt 1 from “The G.O.D. Journal,” a novel by Jeff Posey

Chapter 1, Part 1, from The G.O.D. Journal: a search for gold , a novel by Jeff Posey.

Available in paperback and ebook.

He didn’t mean to kill his wife. It didn’t even feel like he killed her. Certainly didn’t feel like murder. But it looked like murder. So he ran.

He’d done it before. Not murder, but running. Long ago when he’d been his original self he ran away and changed identity. It worked. For twenty years it insulated him from a horrible past, made him wealthy even. Brought him a rich wife. Who cheated on him, pregnant by another man, his next-door neighbor. And now this.

His eyes wheeled around the room. Morning coffee steamed in their cups. The newspaper spread open. Her body on the floor, the heavy bookend in her hand. His bloody handprint on her back, both his hands dripping. So much blood so fast. He wanted to help her, but nothing he could do. Nothing anybody could do. The corner of the coffee table had killed her. All he wanted was for her to stop, and then she fell and he fell with her, the bookend finishing what the coffee table started. He stared at her. It could be him lying there. Why? He knew she didn’t love him. But why this?

Be calm and think, he told himself. He slipped out of his shoes and left them, blood spatter radiating around him, and backed away on socks. In the bathroom, he washed her blood from his hands, took a quick scalding shower. Packed a small bag with clothes and toiletries and a hair clipper for later. He kept basic identification only. A nearly clean man.

He cut through the wild greenbelt that ran behind the mini-estates of his neighborhood, remnant cow pasture grown up in maturing scrub with strands of rusty barbed wire rising weakly from the soil in places. The walk braced him and slowed his racing thoughts. He planned his escape. He couldn’t be caught. Wouldn’t be. He would rather die. But there were holes. Where would he go? Who would he become this time? Could he forget what it felt like to fall onto his wife as she died, her last breath escaping her lips, the final beat of her heart, the last twitch in her muscles? She hated him so badly she wanted to do to him what he accidentally did to her. Did she so prefer the other man? Had he become that unbearable?

At a convenience store that had been an old tumble-down country bait shop when they bought the house, he called a cab.

Twenty minutes later, after a cup of burnt coffee and a honey bun, he directed the cab driver to his bank.

“You ain’t robbin’ it are you?” asked the grizzled-hippie driver.

“No. I leave the robbing of people’s bank accounts to banks.”

The driver laughed and launched into a steady criticism of Wall Street bankers and Washington politicians.

He ignored the driver. JAB, he thought like a flashbulb. JAB like his initials used to be. Punch, stomp, JAB—that’s me! It became a mental mantra that kept him sane during the bad times. Punch, stomp, JAB, run away—that’s me. He smirked. The run is the rebirth. Should be the fun part. He sighed. He’d chosen to be reborn last time, but this time…this time he had no choice. He didn’t mean to kill her. He didn’t want to kill her. He just wanted her to stop. Then she fell. Just after he defended himself from the clubbing bookend in her hand, and he fell with her, on top of her, the blood soaking his hands. He pushed himself up and off of her. That bloody handprint. On the back of her white nightshirt.

It looked bad. He imagined a forensics team detailing the scene. They would see everything. But would they understand what happened? Would they realize what the bookend meant? Did he?

He glanced at the dashboard clock. Nearly nine o’clock. He’d be at the bank just as it opened.

What if they knew already? What if they stopped him? No. No, they hadn’t found her yet. Her boyfriend, Reeves, would find her, that neighbor of his, the sycophantic minion of Pam’s father. What time did he come to her? In the mornings? Afternoons? All day? Would he call the police? Yeah. Yeah, of course he would. Would they suspect the boyfriend? No. No, they wouldn’t. Not with the evidence he left. His shoes right there.

But what if…what if Reeves planned it with her? But why? Pam had family money. She could have divorced him. Why try to cave his head in?

The cab stopped and he asked the driver to wait. Inside the bank he was the first customer. He took most of every liquid account he could access and asked for it in cashier’s checks of one thousand dollars each made “to bearer.” The teller examined him closely against his picture identification. Her eyes showed suspicion. She would remember him.

“Surprise for my wife,” he said with a shrug. “We’re running away to the South Pacific for six months.” He attempted a smile. It’s a happy thing, he told himself. Be happy.

The woman nodded without a mirroring smile, consulted her manager who made a phone call, and then she finally began preparing seventy-two cashier’s checks.

“Thank you, Mr. Oley,” she said, handing him the checks.

“Yes, yes,” he said, taking them. Oley. Tom Oley. That’s who he had been since he turned eighteen. When he escaped JAB. As Tom Oley he’d done well. College. Business. Trophy house. Trophy wife. His company just started drilling the most expensive, deepest exploratory well in Texas history, the culmination of his life’s professional work. All gone because his stupid wife tried to bounce a bookend off his head. After nearly twenty years of being Tom Oley, he walked away with $72,000 in seed money for a new life. The shock of change hadn’t yet fully hit him.

“You richer or poorer after that?” asked the cab driver.

“Some of both,” the former Tom Oley said.

 

Short description for The G.O.D. Journal: After he accidentally kills his wife, Baxter runs. Hiding in his derelict boyhood home in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, he discovers a journal that leads to a treasure of gold. With the guiding hand of a deranged hunter and Wall Street financier, Baxter discovers true gold is concealed in the heart of a woman who helps him search for an Anasazi pictograph that is key to his family treasure. Read the full description….

Hot Water Press publications scheduled for 2013: Annie and the Second Anasazi (a trilogy set in the year 2054), and Soo Potter (an Anasazi historical novel). To find out when they’re available, sign up for notification by email here.