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the home of Judge Middlebrooks.  Minton had told us that the judge had put out the hit on his own wife. The only unanswered question is, why?
    I turned the police radio all the way down.  We exited the car quietly trying not to make any sound.  We left the car doors slightly ajar.  We both moved up to the house.  Capt. Davis moved a little slower than me. He was sweating bullets now, more nervous than I’d ever seen him. This should be a routine arrest—I wondered what was bugging him.  We looked inside the windows.  The house was dark.  I remember seeing the reflection of one light in a room in the back as we were walking up. 
    I signaled Capt. Davis to follow me.  We quietly sneaked around the lit window. The window was slightly opened and we looked inside.  There he was, Judge Middlebrooks, holding a gun and pointing it at Chief Pate who was tied up.  They were in a hallway that was connected to the room we were at. 
    “Keep an eye on him while I call dispatch.” I whispered.
    “Ok.”
    It didn’t take me long but I had to repeat a few words to the dispatcher because I was whispering.  She was new but finally got the message.  You have to learn to listen well when somebody is whispering, but it’s part of the job.
    “I’m going to try and get inside.”
    “Let’s wait for backup.”
    “It may be too late by then,” I whispered.
    “Okay,” he whispered.  “Be careful.”
    The window moved with ease.  I looked around to make sure I wouldn’t fall on anything when I cleared the window.  Judge Middlebrooks was angry at the chief, and using his gun to make the point repeatedly. Then I heard what I had come to hear.
    “You slept with my wife!”
    He then hit the chief with the gun. 
    I was almost through the window when he was about to hit the chief again.  I felt something give way as I stepped down on the floor. Loose floorboard probably.  Whatever it was, it got the judge’s attention.  He didn’t ask any questions.  He started shooting at the window.  I fell on the floor and took cover at the corner of the wall. 
    “Give it up Judge, this is the police.  This is Detective Jackson.  We have you surrounded.”
    I peeked around the corner.  He fired a shot down the hallway. 
    “Look Judge, we know that you had your wife killed because she was having an affair with Chief Pate.  So come on and give yourself up.  Enough blood has been shed.  This won’t make it right and you know it!”
    “You don’t have a clue, Detective.” The judge was getting all misty-eyed. He began to choke on his words. 
    “You don’t know how it feels to only love one woman,” he began, reliving his whole life in relationship to the woman he’d had killed. “To give her anything she desires, but it’s never enough. I grew up dreaming of a woman as beautiful as Julia was, made myself into this man I became, all so that I might deserve her when the time came. You talk about poor? I grew up in a house where a square meal was a luxury! I worked my way through law school doing anything I could, just so I could become a gentleman, worthy of a good life with a woman who appreciated fine things.”
    The judge was standing in the middle of his fine things now, in his well-appointed mansion, holding a gun in his slightly-trembling hand, expressing emotions it looked like he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in his whole life.
    “When I met Julia, I vowed to give her everything I could afford. I gave and gave but it was never enough for her. She spent her mornings buying things—designer clothes, imported furniture, top of the line everything . I would never tell her we couldn’t afford it. I thought I could win her love if only she saw how much I would do for her.
    “Then, one morning I had a slight heart palpitation in my office. My doctor said it wasn’t serious but it would be a good idea to take the rest of the day off. I came home, and found her in bed— in our bed —with this