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said.
    “We hardly ever have sex,” Erika said after a slight hesitation. “When we were first married, we did, but then it really slowed off to the point that I don’t even think we had sex while we were on vacation (in Ocean City).”
    It was once or twice a month, Erika said, if she was lucky—and if she pleaded and pleaded with BJ for it.
    “I would practically have to beg.”
    The problem wasn’t her, however, she went on to explain. BJ had even told her one day what it was that was going on with him.
    According to Erika, BJ told her, “Sex is not what excites me. It’s not what gets me off. If you want me to have sex with you, then fine. I’ll take the time out of my day, if that’s what I have to do to make you happy.”
    She was curious, of course, as was the state’s attorney and Bernal. The questions then became: What excited BJ? What was it that stimulated this failed SEAL, who had been trained to kill with his bare hands and to get out of just about any situation he found himself in?
    Erika said BJ had turned into the type of person who “swerved to hit animals on the road, instead of not to hit them.”
    He was perpetually chasing a thrill.
    Bernal asked Erika what else.
    “BJ is the kind of person that, when he’s bored, he makes lists of, like, one hundred thirty ways to torture someone.”
    Pen and paper.
    Detective Bernal asked Erika for an example.
    She spoke of BJ’s mistress, the woman from Arkansas that he’d had an affair with. To prove that this woman indeed had had an affair with BJ (he would not admit to it) and that she had no idea he was married, the woman had called Erika and told her intimate details about BJ that only someone who had slept with him would have known. The mistress also said BJ had a separate cell phone set aside just for her.
    Erika found out this was true.
    But he still would not admit to the affair.
    “So what does BJ do?” Erika told Bernal, shaking her head in disbelief. “He gets on the computer. He sends her an e-mail and it says—again, forgive my language—‘Hey, bitch, you better tell my wife I never fucked you. . . . ’” Erika went on to say that BJ promised the mistress that if she didn’t call Erika and tell her it was all a lie, he would drive down to Arkansas and “amputate your bastard kids with a butcher—with a butter knife” and then “board up the windows and doors” and torch her house down. He signed the e-mail, “Your worst enemy, BJ.”
    That e-mail, according to a naval investigation report I was able to obtain, was the beginning of the end for BJ Sifrit and his relationship with the military, along with several incidents involving cars, foul language, and threats.
    Erika talked about what truly turned BJ on: getting chased by the police. He would actually instigate pursuits with cops. BJ drove a hot rod, a bright orange (with black stripes) 1972 Chevelle, all decked out. It was a fast car, a muscle car. He was your typical gearhead. There was one time, Erika recalled, when she and BJ were cruising down the main strip in Virginia Beach, Pacific Avenue.
    “It’s like a strip,” she explained, “where you cruise, like, twenty miles an hour.”
    BJ spotted some cops hanging around a 7-Eleven convenience store. He pulled up. Revved the engine. Then pulled the car up in front of the cruiser and took off like a racing flag had been waved, burning rubber, leaving a trail of smoke behind him.
    “He did that purposely?” Bernal asked when Erika was finished telling the story.
    “I’d say weekly.”
    “Why do you think?”
    “Because that’s what got him off: to outrun police.”
    There was another instance—the episode that solidified BJ’s ousting from the navy—shortly after Erika’s father bought her a new Audi. Erika and BJ had met up with two of his friends, who had spent the day drinking at a bar. They were afraid of getting popped for a DUI and getting expelled from the navy, so BJ offered to follow them back to