Mitch met Diane at a bar. She was funny, intelligent and beautiful. They clicked right away. He sensed she was the one. Diane had two kids, a little boy and a little girl, by her ex-husband, but Mitch didn’t care. As their relationship deepened, she told him how she was having a custody battle with her ex over who got custody of their kids. She said her ex had more money and with a better lawyer got temporary custody of them.
Diane told Mitch how her ex-husband, who looked like a nice guy, was really a son of a bitch and often beat the shit out of her. He thought to himself how he’d kick her ex-husband’s ass if he ever laid a hand on her again.
One day, months later, Diane called Mitch crying. She said her ex had punched her and molested her kids, and how she wished he was dead. The seed planted, he kept thinking about killing her ex until Diane called him about her ex threatening to kill her; then he decided to act.
When her kids were with her for an overnight stay, he drove to her ex-husband’s home in the country, knocked on his door, and when he answered, fired six bullets into his head. Mitch dragged his dead body to his car folded it and shoved it into the trunk of his car. He cleaned up blood inside the ex’s house and drove to Walmart and bought a shovel.
After that, he drove a hundred miles away and buried the ex under a dark night sky in a remote woods a state away. He was sure, as far as anyone would know, the ex was just a missing person and that no one would find his corpse.
Mitch got away with the crime, but his relationship with Diane fizzled out. She had no use for him after he told her he killed her ex-husband. He’d served his purpose. Now day and night his killing her ex-husband plagues his conscience, and he believes the ex wasn’t the bad man Diane claimed he was. He believes she conned him into killing an innocent man.
Sometimes he feels he should confess his crime to the police, but changes his mind when he thinks about being in prison for life. And even though he became religious, he worries about going to hell.
Bob Boyd