High School Sweethearts: A mystery.

Jack lies in a pool of his own blood, his shirt stained with tears. An empty pill bottle in his right hand and an empty handgun in his left. The smell of death, gunpowder and soiled underwear filled the room. At just eighteen, Jack had enlisted in the Army despite his fear and apprehension for dying. He was desperate for money for college and of course the promises at the recruiters office sounded “too good to be true” but it was real. Janice was sitting over his body wondering how he got to this point. Her tears dried up hours before, her deputy badge hanging from her neck a notebook in her right hand. She was forced to do her own friends “crime scene” as the lone homicide detective in this small community. One month into basic training his body thinned, jaunt his uniforms loose fitting unlike when he started boot camp. His feet ached and were swollen, his boots tight straining from the sweat soaked socks and leather combined. She smelled his body and noticed rigor had long since passed. The medical examiner could not determine how exactly he died at the scene. His breath smelled of vomit and there was one bullet hole in his heart. The smell consistent with an overdose as they often choke on their own vomit and pills. Two years into his hitch, he was a Specialist working in the commo platoon. Promotions, letters of commendation, soldier of the month meant nothing to him. All he cared about were the letters that came once a week like clockwork. Jackie, she liked to call him that rather than his given name. His high school sweetheart she meant the world to him. Jack was splayed out on the cold steel table holes to track the bullet path. It was inconsistent with the lack of gunpowder residue on his left side. None was found on his right side either. Now they need to determine if the pills were the cause of death. The toxicology report showed high levels of acetaminophen consistent with bottle of Tylenol 3’s found. Liver enzymes consistent as well as his blood alcohol level of .020. His fourth and final year of service he was ready to get out until he found out Janice was getting married to another man. Some man she met at a local VFW hall for a mutual friend’s wedding. Suddenly he was reenlisting for another four years. His attitude had become hard and more businesslike. He was becoming an upper enlisted, he drank a lot on nights and weekends, his soul was empty and hollow. His heart hardened by what he perceived as an emotional attack. His mental state disrupted by one change in his world, no letters weekly. They started showing up every other week, then once a month. Before long, they were more and more sparse. Janice had become a police officer like her husband. It was a small community and as she worked as the only dispatcher, she began to write again. At first, the letters were every week then by the time Jack had reached his seventh year it was almost every day. Janice ran a search on the weapon and it came back empty. The trace on the pills led back to Jack they had been prescribed by his local doctor. He told Janice “I gave them to him for pain associated to his time in the service.” That was all the information she could get him to say due to privacy laws. Just as Jack began his eighteenth year in the Army, Janice was being promoted for the third time to homicide deputy. She told him she was the only detective the office had since her mentor retired a month earlier. The letters began to come infrequently as she found time. But emails came almost daily about anything and everything. Janice never had any kids and Jack never even married still pining for his lost love. Janice was asking the neighbors about any suspicious vehicles or someone around they didn’t recognize. It was kind of hard, as Jack had only moved in a few months ago after his retirement from the Army. Weeks before his retirement Jack sent Janice some money to hire her brother to paint and fix his parent’s house up for him. Janice’s nephew had been living there since he moved out of his Dad’s at age sixteen when his first child was born and he got married. They had outgrown the old place and got a bigger place closer to the schools. The funeral was small since most of Jack’s family died years ago. Janice’s family was all present, this was normal since Jack’s second home was at Janice’s, they had been practically inseparable since age ten when she moved to town. Months after his death still no closer to an answer, Janice was ready to retire herself since her husband left her last week for a young woman in another state he met online. A month after Janice passed away her nephew was cleaning out her home for the estate sale and found two video recordings tape to the back of the china hutch. One was Jack’s goodbye. One was Janice’s confession to putting a bullet in his heart after his death.