[Critique Group 1] submission for 9/27/17 critique session

[sitting.duck at springmail.com]

I have rewritten Predictable.
For those who read the original, I'm interested in if you think this one is better or worse.
And of course in a general overall critique of it.
I wasn't sure how to punctuate some parts of it.
And, yes, I did mean Bli Duck not Sly Duck. Sly Duck is for children. Bli is my evil twin that writes fiction.

1319 words

Predictable
By Bli Duck

John gently tugged on the slot in the side of the sliding glass door of his soon to be x-wife’s house.
"HA!" he thought. No matter how long she lives she will never learn.
The door slid open almost silently. 
"Fault, patio door," announced the security system.
He slipped through the opening and gently slid the door closed.
He wasn't worried about the security system giving him away. Linda, he knew, would be in the shower at this time of the morning and not hear the tell-tale announcements of his entry.
Confidently, he walked to the kitchen.
As always, there was an old fashioned metal kettle filled with water on the small back burner of the stove.
He clicked the knob clockwise to the high setting.
Then, he went down the hall to her room.
He found and opened the jewelry box that he knew would contain one of her diamond bracelets she was planning to wear to tonight’s fund raiser. She always took it out of the safe ahead of time.
How many times had her lawyer and insurance agent warned her it was best to wear a paste imitation? Oh well, all the better for him that she doesn't listen.
Dropping the bracelet in his breast pocket, he walked casually back to the living room, sat down on the couch, crossed his left ankle over his right knee, clasped his hands behind his head, and leaned back to wait.
His eyes stared blankly at the back wall of the kitchen. Soon it would be over. She would be dead before the divorce was final. The pre-nup gave him a divorce settlement of half a mill, but if either of them passed while married, the entire estate of over 10 million dollars in property, cash, and securities would be liquidated and divided equally between himself and her four adult children.
Two mill was definitely better than a half.
He planned to stash everything under a loose pavestone he had found in the border around the flower garden at the park. After the will was settled, he would tell everyone he was taking a trip to Europe to heal from the loss of the love of his life. He would fence the necklace there. Or, maybe he would just give it as a present to some sweet young French girl. 
He smiled riley to himself as the kettle began to whistle.
"That's funny," he heard Linda say as she opened the door to the bathroom. "I don't remember turning on the kettle."
John chuckled quietly and shook his head. Still talking to herself. She will never change, he thought.
Hum, for some reason, she had gone back to her bedroom. He was beginning to wonder what was up when, at last, Linda came down the hall and crossed the living room on her way to the kitchen. She was dressed in her dull brown corduroy housecoat; her right hand resting in its only pocket. A red bath towel was wrapped around her freshly shampooed hair.
She strolled right past him with only a brief glance at the patio door. He knew that the RP had advanced to the point that she had no or very poor peripheral vision and could not see anything in the area where he was sitting.
Turning around to face the stove she removed her hand from her pocket to turn the knob to the off position.
"Don't touch that dial," commanded John taking the small pistol from his pocket and pointing it at her.
"You really should reconsider locking that patio door," John said rising from the couch and stepping around the coffee table into the dim light so she could see his form.
She looked toward the sound bringing him into her field of vision.
He smiled wryly as her eyes grew large her mouth dropped open in surprise, and her hand dropped back into her pocket.
"But, I guess you won't have any more time to change. The story in the papers will be so sad” It will read something like:

The young heiress was discovered by a friend late Saturday evening when he came by to pick her up for a fund raiser being sponsored by a local club. It is believed that she was killed when she surprised a burglar who entered from the unlocked patio door. She had apparently forgotten to set the alarm so the police were not summoned.
Her heart broken husband of 15 years said he had warned her time and again, but still she would leave that patio door unlocked.

The sound of the kettle whistling muffled the gun shot.
Her arms went up as she staggered and fell backwards.
He waited but there was no sound. He lowered his weapon. He thought about going into the kitchen to make sure she was dead, but he was an expert marksman and he was sure he had not missed. He just couldn't bring himself to look at her. He turned to leave the way he had come.
"Don't move."
startled, he turned to see her standing behind him. She was holding a small pistil in both hands. As she raised it to eye level and aimed it straight at his head her dressing gown came slightly open at the neck revealing a light weight bullet proof vest.
“I knew I should have made a head shot," he said.
"I knew you had come when I heard the kettle whistle. I texted Rob next door and he called the police. They should be here any minute. You know, I think I should just blow you away right now. After all, you did shoot at me. The paper would talk about how devastated I was to find that I had shot and killed my estranged husband thinking he was a burglar.
It will explain how with my poor vision damaged by RP, I was unable to recognize you at this distance and just shot at the figure of the intruder.
The paper will quote me as saying, 'Sure, we had our problems and we were in the process of getting a divorce, but I never wanted him dead. I just feel so bad. It never occurred to me that he would try to rob me.' It would be a just reward for all the verbal and mental abuse you have put me through over the years, not to mention all the toys you have bought yourself with my money, don't you think?”
"you know you can't do it."
"you think not?"
"If you were going to, you would have done it already." John began to raise his own weapon.
"Fault patio door."
John's head whipped around to see a policeman and their neighbor Rob stepping into the living room.
"Freeze," said the officer who was pointing his service revolver at John.
John dropped his pistil and raised his hands.
The officer picked up the gun, and cuffed John's hands behind his back. "I'll need you to come down to the station and make a statement, Ma'am," he said.
Linda went and turned off the stove and moved the shrieking kettle to a cool burner.
Rob was standing next to the officer. "I'll bring her down as soon as possible," he said.
John was charged with robbery and attempted murder.
"with your statement and his history of abuse, there's no question he's going away for a long time," they assured her at the police station.
"Thank you" said Linda. "I feel I can really move on now." She looked up at Rob and smiled. “And, thank you, Rob, I don’t know what might have happened if you and the officer hadn’t arrived when you did.”
"It looked like you had things well in hand," said Rob. "In fact, I get the feeling we may have saved the jerk's life."
"Maybe, I guess we’ll never know."