Cal.E.'s Korner

d.: I have nothing to do but watch college basketball today. Life is sweet!

C: Since d.c. has so rudely cast the responsibility of writing our blog on me with no help from him, I looked in d.c.'s box labeled "Cuts." and found an interesting short story thta d.c. wrote a year or so ago. I’m going to run this short story I found of his for the next several days. It’s a “who done it?” short story set in Southeast Texas called:                                                  

MURDER OR MERCY?

Judith Payne

switched the music off to talk to her public defender. Even though she wasn’t fond of folk music, “Red River Valley" had been her late husband’s favorite song. Since it reminded her of him, she played the song obsessively.

Jim wasn’t really a cowboy. Sure, he was a rancher, but he had hands to do the real work on the ranch. He didn’t break horses or “punch doggies” (vaccinate cattle), nor did he spray herbicides or any other chemicals. That’s why it shocked him and Judith when his doctor told him that he had stage four Leukemia at his annual checkup. The doctor had said that, at Jim’s advanced age, the treatment for the chemotherapy and radiation would cause certain death, so it was better to let him live his life as he saw fit as long as he could. That lasted for six months, and then Jim went into a coma after coming home from an afternoon movie that he and Judith saw together. since they both wanted to see the movie, Judith thought it would be best to see the movie before Jim was incapacitated. Her timing was impeccable.

 Jim’s doctor was sure that he would die within three days after he was comatose,

but he lived for more than three weeks without food or fluids. Doc said that dehydration and starvation reduce pain if one is in his or her final hours. When his dead body was found one morning after the night shift hospice nurse

had been dismissed by Judith before the day shift hospice nurse could get to their ranch house, it arose suspicion that Judith had overdosed him with morphine. That’s why Judith needed a public defender, because all of their considerable assets had been frozen until the case was solved. She was still allowed to live in her home, she was told, until the case was tried. The State was afraid that she would die in prison because of her advanced age. The State didn’t want that to happen before the case was heard as if she was to be indicted by a grand jury. She was warned, though, not to leave the county. That made going to live with one of her children impossible, since they had all settled in Houston, where they had been raised. Jim and Judith moved to the ranching community after Jim retired, but their children were all grown up and on their own by then. They all stayed in the city where they had been raised.

Jim had made enough money as a software engineer

to live the life he had always dreamed of, living on a ranch. Even though he had been born and raised in the city of Houston, Jim Payne desired to get away from the hustle and bustle, as well as the pollution and the ever-present traffic that Houston offered.

Jim Payne dreamed of being a rancher from the time he’d graduated high school and worked his way through college at a local food market. It took him eight years to obtain his master’s degree in computer engineering while he worked full-time, but the job he obtained after graduation paid well.

However, sitting behind a desk for almost forty years had done little to develop the muscles

Jim needed to ride a horse or a four-wheeler around the ranch to make sure that the fences didn’t need mending and all the animals were in place. He also didn’t have a clue as to how to mend a fence if it needed it, or what to do if one of the animals needed help since he had been born and raised in Houston, not the country.  It took him less than six months to decide that he needed help with his new lifestyle. 

It wouldn’t be a strain on their budget to hire a couple of hands, the Paynes reasoned. However, when Jim was struck with cancer, the drugs and treatment he needed to quell his unbearable pain put a serious dent in their savings account. Judith surmised that she may need to sell the ranch and go live with one of her eight children, but she loved the ranch; and she hadn’t adopted the orphan North Korean siblings to take advantage of them, anyway. She and Jim hadn’t adopted them out of pity, either. The couple desperately wanted children  but hadn’t been able to conceive

any after five years of trying. Since they were approaching their forties, their doctor had warned them that adoption would be the best option. When the siblings showed up on the adoption agency’s website, Judith fell in love with them without even seeing any of them.

Judith would be able to afford to continue living on the ranch if Jim died, and he wasn’t cognizant of what was going on, anyway. “Why wouldn’t she just overdose her husband and be done with the whole ordeal?” The local d.a. asked. Since he was running for re-election that year, he decided to pursue the case aggressively in this sleepy ranching town in Southeast Texas. When an overdose of morphine was supposedly found in Jim’s system during his autopsy, Judith was arrested and charged with murder because she was the only person in the house when her husband had died. 

Jim’s doctor objected that Jim would have died within a few hours, anyway, when Judith was arrested after the autopsy was performed.

The coroner gave him a questioning look when he said this and reminded him that he had predicted Jim Payne’s demise three weeks before.

C.: Oh, wow! This seems like a typical d.c. scot mystery, so the most obvious suspect can be eliminated immediately. I would like to know who the real killer is, but I need to fill in for Ralph at The Kennel tonight, so I’ll continue this short story tomorrow, but that’s the end of today’s cat ta(i)le.

You can join me if you join me right here on Cal.E.’s Korner if you want to know the rest of the story.

In the meantime