My Husband Leaves Evidence That Any Crime Scene Investigator Could Follow

I often imagine those detectives on Law & Order narrating their view of how a crime might have been committed in our house.

I love my husband. But after almost 32 years of marriage, I don’t need a professional tracker to tell me where my husband has been and what he’s been doing. He leaves a trail that even a blind and smell-impaired bloodhound could follow.

As I pick up behind him, and remind myself that these are small issues in the life-cycle of a long-term marriage, I often imagine those detectives on Law & Order, narrating their view of how a crime might have been committed in our house:

Detective: I’d speculate that our victim had just come home from his bike ride.

Inexperienced Partner: How do you know that, detective?

Detective: His bike is in the garage, next to the dust-covered one that belongs to his wife. She never uses it. And he’s left the garage door open. His personality type suggests he’s done this more than a few times.

Inexperienced Partner: Wouldn’t his wife have noticed the garage door open?

Detective: Not if she was in her office working on the next ‘Great American Novel.’ But she would have suspected it. Next, he came in the house, which is where we found his gloves, dropped by the front door, here, which is not where they belong. He then went over to the kitchen counter where he ate a piece of chocolate from the candy dish they keep for the grandkids. You can see he left the candy wrapper here, on the counter, just above the trash can, not in it. He then went to the refrigerator and made himself some yogurt with blueberries. Here’s a blueberry on the counter, and the dishes—in the sink—not in the dishwasher.

IP: How do you know he was the one who had the yogurt?

Detective: See this chair? He didn’t push it back in when he finished eating. Textbook husband.

IP: You are so smart, Detective!

Detective:  From here, he went to the family room and turned on the TV.

IP: He was watching TV?

Detective: Maybe. Maybe not. But the TV was on and paused in the middle of some old war movie from the ‘60s or ‘70s and no one was watching it.

IP: Why didn’t he turn it off if he wasn’t watching it?

Detective:  He was establishing his dominance over the TV. It looks like he started watching The Dirty Dozen, Kelly’s Heroes or The Longest Day. His wife thinks they’re all the same. He buried the remote, here, under all these throw pillows his wife bought. He’d left them askew and out-of-place, probably to keep his wife from finding the remote and changing the channel to The Great British Baking Show or something.

IP: Your powers of observation are remarkable!

Detective: I was married once. Now our victim goes into the master bedroom. You can see here he emptied his pockets on the dresser, not in his office, as he’s been told to do countless times. He threw his jeans over the decorative settee and the rest of his clothes and underwear in a heap, here, next to the laundry hamper, but not in it.

IP: No surprise there.

Detective: We found our victim on the bathroom floor. He was conscious, but completely wrapped, mummified really, in toilet paper.

IP: Did the victim say what provoked the attack?

Detective: The last thing he remembers is making a comment to his wife about her not replacing the toilet paper roll…