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Mark started to worry and quickly walked back up to the door and rang the bell again. A few seconds more went by so he knocked loudly, but still no answer. Etiquette be damned, he opened the door and shouted. “Hello?! Jen?!”
The house was empty and the echo seemed incredibly loud, but there was no one in the front room. Mark slowly opened the door wider and walked inside. “Helloooo?!” he yelled again, but still no answer. As Mark’s eyes grew accustomed to the light he noticed Jen’s purse on the pass through leading to the kitchen. She was here, maybe just in one of the bedrooms, talking. With the echo it might be hard to hear, Mark rationalized.
Mark walked down the hall to the bedrooms. This was a larger house, and much nicer than the one they lived in. He could see why Jen was so set on having it. The yard was even big enough to have their hot tub and still leave room for guests to come over for barbeques. Jen sure had good taste. Mark admired his wife daily for little things that were seemingly unimportant, but these were the reasons why he always said he was ‘very married’, he loved her with everything he had.
This house had three large bedrooms and two bathrooms. He opened the first bedroom and was impressed with how big it was, this would be Katie’s room. Mark continued along the hall until he came on the first bathroom. This would be Katie’s bathroom, Jen even talked about adding a doorway to connect it to Katie’s room to give her some privacy. Mark was not the handy type and Jen knew this. The additions and changes would require a professional carpenter, he would only mess things up.
Next was the second bedroom, a little smaller than the first but it would be perfect for the new baby that Jen had talked about having. Jen was at a point in her career where she felt she had to choose, family or work, and she had decided that family should come first. She had arranged for someone to take over her work at the hospital as on-site administrator and she would oversee everything using her home computer. She would only have to go into work once a week for a short meeting. At first the hospital board had flat out refused but in the end Jen held her ground and they agreed to her terms rather than lose her completely.
Mark was becoming more nervous by the second. Surely they were in the master bedroom. Jen was probably discussing how she would decorate it and boring the real estate agent. The poor man was probably afraid to lose the sale if he didn’t listen to every word. Mark laughed to himself. Jen could be pushy, a trait that Katie had picked up from her mother. Again Mark admired his wife, her pushiness had been a big part in him proposing to her. She knew what she wanted and she was going to have it her way. He often wondered if he would have had the courage to ask her to marry him if she had not brought the subject up herself. Mark always thought that Jen was way out of his league. Why would a woman like Jen want to marry a man like him?
Mark opened the door and was stunned by what he saw. Jen and the man, he assumed was the real estate agent, were both tied to a chair. The man was younger than Mark had pictured, maybe in his late thirties and somewhat athletic in appearance. Truthfully, he looked more like a tennis coach than a real estate agent. The man’s throat had been cut and the blood had soaked his shirt before pooling on the floor. Jen seemed unharmed but maybe unconscious, she wasn’t moving. She did look very pale but Mark wasn’t sure why.
“Jen!” Mark yelled as he rushed over to her, then everything went black.
Mark woke in a hospital bed, both hands cuffed to the rails and his feet in shackles. He felt strange, his head was foggy and he couldn’t see straight. He also had a strange ringing in his ears, making everything he heard sound muffled. Soon the ringing stopped and he could make out what he assumed was a nurse and a police officer standing outside his door.
“You can’t move him to the prison until he wakes up. If you do, you risk killing him. He has a major concussion,” the nurse was explaining.
“I don’t think you understand, this man brutally killed his wife and her lover. And it looked like he tortured them first. Drained the wife’s blood while the boyfriend watched, then let the boyfriend bleed out slowly.” The police officers tone was one of hatred.
“Oh please, have you looked at the man. How could he overpower his wife and her boyfriend?” The nurses condescending tone didn’t sway the officer.
“We think he had help, whoever knocked him out and stabbed him must have decided they wanted to leave a patsy. Maybe this was for money? The couple was very well off and the real estate guy did pretty well for himself. Maybe this was a blackmail gone wrong. Maybe the partner got greedy and took off with the cash? We don’t know much at this point but this guy was definitely in on it.” Mark could hear the distain in the officer’s voice. The officer was certain that Mark had killed them.
Mark wondered how he could hear them so clearly, then he realized he could hear many people talking. Some of these people had to be farther down the hall. He heard a nurse pick up a phone and clearly heard the person on the other end call for a crash team in room twelve. Mark looked up at the door and his eyes began to focus. The number three was on his door. Mark felt a sharp pain in his left arm and tried to move it but it was no use so he glanced down and saw what looked like two injection marks right on his veins. Who had drugged him? Why twice? Who had knocked him out? Someone set him up! Someone had been there waiting for him, but why?!
