No Further Action

**Am I a decent man?

How can I be, after what I’ve done?**

If my life were a jigsaw puzzle, it would look from a distance like every piece were present and correct and in its rightful order. The edges straight and square, the surface perfectly smooth, the picture complete. And that – I would have said once – is what makes me a decent man.

But that was before Anna Johnson…

I could blame Anna for the things that go wrong. For the decisions I make, the ones my work colleagues question, the ones that turn away my wife and my son, and the ones no one else knows about. I could blame her for the dreams, unsettling and lifelike. And I could blame her, too, for the fear that invades my body, the physical sensations I can’t control, right when I need control the most.

I could blame Anna for all of this because it starts with her. But the more I learn about Anna Johnson, about who she really is, the closer I step to that jigsaw of my own life. And the closer I get, the more I see… The uneven edge along one side, the pieces forced to fit their wrong positions, the picture out of focus, distorted, a lie.

My name is PC Steven William Fuller. And I used to be a decent man.