I’m rewriting a novella I originally wrote 6 years ago...

It was 3:38 a.m. on a Saturday morning. The body was grotesquely pinned to the large juniper tree just off forestry road 240. He was a Caucasian male, approximately 6’2” and 200 pounds, with dark brown hair that was peppered with gray around his temples. The force of the arrow slammed his face into the rough bark, rendering him practically unidentifiable. He was clad in camouflage sweatpants and a hunter green sweatshirt; his feet were bare. The shaft of the arrow extended about ten inches from his right shoulder blade; the neon orange and gold fletchings splattered with blood as a nice pool of blood accumulated beneath him, soaking into the ground.

A pair of hunters who were spotlighting in the area looking for elk found the victim and called it in.

“Nice shot, huh?” reverberated the gruff voice of Sgt. Eddie Walker. Detective Obvious, my pain-in-the-ass partner. Who he had to fuck to make sergeant I will never know. Eddie was in his early 50's, about 5’9” and 200 pounds. His salt-and-pepper hair, brown eyes, and overall disheveled appearance reminded me of Peter Falk in “Columbo” sans the trenchcoat and cigar. Eddie was thrice-divorced with two grown daughters he barely knew with ex-number-one. We had been partners since I was promoted to homicide almost three years ago.

Being a cop is not conducive to successful relationships, despite the majority of pop-culture-television-legal-drama bullshit which suggests that law enforcement personnel can have happy and enduring marriages, or, at the very least, exciting sex lives with co-workers. I’m sure there are some, but in all reality, it’s a tough life and we are all married to our jobs and, to a lesser degree, our partners. Hence the high rate of alcoholism and suicide. And divorce.