Free Because You Loved Me by M. William Phelps

with his words, Chris shrugged. Then babbled: “Jeannie…it’s Jeannie. I cannot believe this.”
    “I know, Chris,” said the sergeant. “We’re going to get you out of here as soon as we can.”
    The scene continued to populate. Word spread throughout town. A large crowd continued to grow on the opposite side of the crime scene tape. While Chris spoke to his friend, a detective walked over.
    “We need to get you down to the station so you can answer some questions. You gonna be OK with that?”
    “That’s fine. Absolutely. Anything I can do to help.”
    “Come with me.”
    The detective walked Chris toward an unmarked cruiser. Along the way, he asked questions about Jeanne. Who she was? How did Chris know her? As they walked, making their way through the crowd, Chris heard the detective say to a colleague, “She’s here.”
    She’s here? thought Chris. Who?
    “Great. She’s here already,” said another detective, rolling his eyes.
    “What do you mean? What’s going on? Who’s here?” asked Chris.
    One of the detectives gestured with his head in the direction of the woman. She was holding a notepad, looking around, making her way toward them.
    The woman was a reporter from a local newspaper, a small daily that routinely kept its front-page focus on crime.
    “Oh, great!” said another cop standing close by. “Can you believe it?”
    Chris looked. It was the last thing he needed at the moment: some reporter getting involved as the crime scene unfolded.
    When the two detectives realized the reporter was heading toward them, they ducked Chris into the front seat of a cruiser.
    And that’s where he sat for the next fifteen minutes by himself. Until, “I just couldn’t sit there anymore,” recalled Chris. “So I got out.”
    Donna Shepard was back on the scene walking around. When Chris saw her, he got out of the car and called out, “Donna?”
    “Chris.”
    They hugged. Then Chris paced back and forth as Donna stood by his side and watched.
    Chris asked one of the cops assigned to “watch him,” who was following him wherever he went, if he could use Donna’s bathroom. “I really need to go.”
    “No. Sorry, sir. We can’t let you do that. Can you wait?”
    “No, you don’t understand, I absolutely need to go now, or I’m gonna wet my pants right here.”
    The cop traded dialogue with a colleague for a moment and then told Chris, “Over there…in the back,” and waved his flashlight toward the backyard by some trees.
    “What?”
    “Sorry…but I can’t let you out of my sight.”
    “Can’t I get a little darn privacy here?” Whether he wanted to believe it, every move Chris made was being monitored. He at no time felt police were treating him any differently than they might anyone else at the scene. But as he walked behind a bush to urinate, the cop stood next to him, shining a flashlight on him.
    “I’m not dropping anything here,” said Chris, “I’m just taking a leak.” He felt the cop was looking to see if he tossed something—like a piece of evidence—into the bushes.
    The cop didn’t answer.
    “They had to be sure, I guess,” Chris commented, “that I wasn’t trying to hide evidence or something like that.”
    After Chris finished relieving himself, he walked back toward the front of the house. Another one of Jeanne’s neighbors, Parker Smith, who had just gotten home, approached him. A big guy in his mid-thirties, with rough hands and sharp facial features, Parker was a blue-collar guy trudging through life, working hard to support his family. He knew Jeanne and the kids well. The past few months had been rough for Parker. Out of nowhere one day a few months back, he claimed, his wife asked for a separation. He suspected there was another man involved and had been showing up unannounced at home at various times.
    “What’s going on here?” asked Parker after he ran into Chris.
    “I don’t know…Jeannie’s gone. She’s dead, Parker.”
    From a distance,