“I’ve always treated your daughter like she was my own. She told me things that she’d never tell you. She was always afraid of your short temper.”

“Liar,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to hear anything Brian had to say.

“Am I?” he asked. “I’ll bet you didn’t know she was pregnant when she died, did you? No, I can see by the look in your eyes that you didn’t.

“She carried my son’s child. I see you didn’t know that either. Well, guess what – neither did he. She planned to tell him about the baby, but was waiting for the right moment.

“She still lived with you at the time, if you’ll remember, at the other house you own in the city. You and your wife were gone, and that’s just the way she wanted it. She asked him over to tell him that he was a father.

“The two of them got into some kind of an argument. He wanted her to get an abortion, but she refused. In the heat of the argument, she called me at home. I only talked to her for a few seconds.

“I heard a smashing sound, like porcelain breaking, and then she screamed. She sounded so scared. She yelled ‘Brian, help me…’ before the line went dead. My Caller I.D. indicated the call came from your house phone so I wasted no time getting into the city as fast as I could.

“When I arrived, your daughter was already beyond help. I couldn’t call 911; the telephone lay smashed on the floor. In my hurry, I had forgotten my cell phone as well.

Brian paused for a moment. A buzzing fly landed on his cheek and crawled up his nose. He continued staring, ignoring the fly’s internal exploration of his nasal passage. As if choreographed, the insect crawled out and flew away just as Brian began speaking again.

“Seeing your daughter lying on the kitchen floor left me in shock. With the growing pool of blood beneath her, she only had a few more minutes of life at most. She saw me standing over her; the expression on my face probably told her how bad off she really was.

“‘Hold me,’ she begged in sobbing gasps of air.

“I knelt on the floor and cradled her head in my lap. I didn’t care about the blood pouring over me. I only wanted to fulfill a dying girl’s last request. Believe it or not, Carl, watching your girl die in my lap was like losing my own daughter all over again.”

I remembered how a jealous wife had killed Brian’s daughter, Stacy, in cold blood for nothing more than simple flirting. I can’t describe the pain I felt, and she wasn’t even my daughter. Maybe he had a point.

Brian continued before I could consider it further. “At that moment, I wanted nothing more than vengeance on whoever murdered your girl. When I asked who had shot her, the reply – in fact, her absolute last words – refused to register.

“She said, ‘It was your son, Brian.’ Then she died. “That’s when you came barging in the kitchen door. Apparently, she tried to call you first. Maybe she left a voice mail on your cell phone – I don’t know. I’ll never forget the crazed look on your face when you saw your daughter’s dead body lying in my lap. I remember how your eyes ignited in fury when you saw me covered in her blood. That’s when you pulled out this .44 Magnum you always carried.”

He twisted it slightly and I recognized the gun’s customized handle with my name etched on the plating. “If you’d given me a chance to explain then, we wouldn’t be having this pleasant conversation now.”

I stared at Brian. With the big gun pressed painfully against my forehead, it was hard to read his dead, expressionless face. Perhaps he was reconsidering my death.

I wondered how much of his story was true. Had I really killed my best friend needlessly? My memory was fuzzy concerning the events of that night. I remembered a blind, homicidal rage overtaking me. Eventually, I calmed down enough to realize that Brian’s body was lying next to my daughter. The gun in my hand was responsible for the multiple wounds in his chest.

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