The Ryan Report -- Episode 311 "Nikki Heat"

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It’s a dirty little secret, but every cop knows that the least reliable evidence you can ever have is an eyewitness. I’ll take an incriminating credit card receipt or tire tread over the next-door-neighbor who swears she saw the crime happen any day. The reason why?People are uncertain – their mind shifts from day to day. They can be convinced that so & so is the killer right up until the day of the trial – when they begin to doubt themselves, their eyesight and the entire universe. And then you’re really in trouble. That credit card receipt, though? It’s going to say the same thing from now until the end of time.

The point I’m trying to make, in my own homicide detective sort of way, is that the hardest thing to do as a human being is make up your mind. Because being a human being isn’t a mathematical equation, you’ll never know for certain that the decision you make is the right one, that it’s the correct one.All you have to go on is your head and your heart, and that can be pretty scary.

And what’s one of the biggest decisions you’re ever going to make? Asking the love of your life to marry you. This isn’t what movie you’re going to see Friday night or what size TV you should buy for the bedroom – this is the big kahuna of decisions, the lifetime commitment one. It’s enough to reduce a grown man to uncontrollable fits of shaking and flop-sweat – not that I know anything about that. Just a rumor I heard somewhere.

Of course, it didn’t help that the case we were on turned out to be full of people who were unhappy with the lifetime commitment decisions that they’d made. There’s really nothing like building murder suspect theory around people looking to divorce to make you take a good hard look at your upcoming decision on whether to jump the broom or not.Especially when you consider that they’d probably like to use that broom to pummel each other into oblivion.

Then there’s working with Richard Castle, who’s divorced two wives and is clearly in no rush to marry the next one (especially since he even went so far as to date his last ex-wife again).He’s not exactly the sort of person who convinces you to get married anytime soon. Plus, I’ve got former Mr. Single Man Esposito as my partner and best friend – he may be “settled down” now, but he rants and raves about not getting “tied down” anytime soon.

So a pretty formidable set of forces are arrayed against me proposing anytime soon – murderous marrieds, comittmentphobic co-workers and good old-fashioned human indecisiveness. But when the time came, I didn’t have a doubt in my head or in my heart. In the middle of the Precinct, surrounded by the friends who I’ve come to consider my family, it was the most natural thing to get down on one knee in front of the girl I’m going to spend the rest of my life with and say, “Jennifer Scout Duffy-O’Malley, will you make me the happiest guy in the world and marry me?”

And, happily, she didn’t have any doubts either. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to hear the single syllable in “Yes!”