The Perfect Woman

By

Jerry A.G. Ericsson

All of my life, it seems, I have traveled this great land searching for that right woman. You know the kind of which I speak, one who, while not the most beautiful woman on earth, is it the top five-hundred, while not the most intelligent on earth, is among the top one-thousand, while not the most pleasant person in the world, numbers within the top one hundred-thousand.

Then one day, exactly five days past the day I gave up my search, five days into my long trip home, five days in my retreat to reality, where one accepts a person for whom they are, five days – just five simple days and there she was, leaving the City of Thunder Head, as I entered. Oh, my friend, I can tell you that while she was not perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world, she was the most beautiful woman I had in all my life seen. While she was not the most intelligent person in the world, she was the most intelligent that I ever met in my short life span of twenty-one years. While she was not the most pleasant woman in the world, she was the most pleasant person who I had ever met.

We met, we spoke we fell in love.

Five days later, I ask her to be my wife, and to my dismay I learned she was already married. Married, to the most arrogant, most hateful, most despicable person in the entire world. It was not that she loved her husband, but she was married to him never the less, to the most pleasant, intelligent beautiful woman I had ever met, that was everything. She could not, nay, would not leave her husband. “After all” she said, “I agreed to marry him, and he agreed to allow my father to keep his heavily mortgaged business.”

Oh! Woh is me! One so wonderful could do no less then stand by such a bargain, for after all to do any other, she would not be the wonderful person whom I had fallen totally in love with.

What to do in this situation, my heart was so broken that I could hardly think. That probably was the reason that I came up with such an impossible solution to such a tremendous problem, for would it not be so, my logical mind would have rejected such a plan when it first entered my head, in favor of one that made more sense.

My plan was simple; I would lure her husband the banker to a quiet place in the nearby forest, and try to reason with him. If he would not be reasoned with, then I would simply have to kill him, and make the murder look like a botched kidnapping. Oh it was a simple plan all right, but my love would hear nothing of violence, for she was so perfect in every way that she could not understand that this would end our painful separation, and allow us to live on in total happiness.

After arguing with my wonderful beautiful pleasant love for several hours, I agreed to drop my plan, and wait one more week to see if there were some way she could talk him into releasing her from the forced marriage. I knew it would never happen, for I knew what a horrible person her husband was. Not that I had ever met him, for you see, she simply would not allow this, but from her description, and being the most wonderful woman I had ever met, I knew she could not – would not ever lie to me about something so important to the two of us.

That evening, I decided that despite having promised my newfound love that I would wait, instead I would proceed with my murderous plan.

The next morning, I called her husband’s bank, and asked to speak with him. Being the president of the bank, I needed a good reason to tell his secretary. The best reason I could come up with was a totally incredible lie, but you see, my head was swimming so with unrequited love that thinking straight was not within me. When he got on the phone, I introduced myself as a developer, interested in developing a piece of property into a residential neighborhood. I told him that it would involve a considerable sum of money, and that if he were interested, I could use his bank as the local banking firm to handle the transaction. He took the bait and agreed to meet with me at the property location.

A few hours later, he showed up at the agreed to location, parked his black sports car on the side of the road behind mine. I told him that the location was just off the road to the north, and lead him back into the woods. The rest was simple, I retrieved the old Army .45 automatic that I had picked up in the local pawnshop from my belt, turned and shot him squarely between his eyes. This part of the mission completed, I dragged his lifeless body a few yards further back in the woods, and dropped it into the shallow grave that I dug just hours ago. I quickly covered the body with dirt, then took a rake that I brought to the site earlier, and raked the leaves and brush over the grave until I couldn’t tell that the area had been disturbed, and it blended into the background perfectly. Then I walked back to where the shooting had taken place, and retrieved the spent cartridge case from the ground, and with the rake, covered the blood and footprints so it looked like the surrounding rubble. Then I got into his sports car, and drove it to the old railroad pond

back in the woods, near town and pushed it into the deep water, where I hoped it would remain for many years. This work completed, I returned to my car, and drove back into town, as though nothing had happened.

The next morning, I placed a ransom call to his lovely wife, disguising my voice so as not to alert her, in case there was anyone else present. Then I sat back and turned on the TV. I tuned it into the local radio station, and while the days programming scrolled by, the voice on the radio talked of school lunch menus, and what was being served in the local eateries. Within minuets the announcer interrupted his regularly scheduled programming with this breaking news. The local bank president had been kidnapped. The local police were turning the case over to the FBI, in hopes of a quick solution to the crime.

I couldn’t have been five minutes until the knock at my motel room door broke my thoughts. I walked to the door, and to my surprise, there stood a police officer gun in hand. He quickly informed me of my rights, then placed me under arrest for Felony Murder. Seems there are bears in those woods, curious bears, bears who know how to dig, and among the woods and bears, there are boy scouts in those woods, boy scouts who notify police when they discover shallow graves uncovered by curious bears. How could I know that my lovely find had caller ID! How could I know that this most beautiful, most pleasant, most intelligent woman whom I had ever in my life was also mostly in love with the Chief of Police, who’s arms she was in when my ransom call came in.

Now, as I walk down that final mile, to the death chamber, a priest at one elbow, the warden at the other, I can’t seem to get that simple announcement in today’s paper out of my mind, the one that announced the happy marriage of the Police Chief to the most rich widow of the local Banker.