High Crime Area Read Online Free PDF

drinking for more than two hours. The men’s voices were low-pitched, trembling with rage. I had scarcely spoken except to murmur My God and Yes. For I was shocked and sickened by what the men had told me—and yet, not so surprised. As my mother would be shocked and sickened and yet—not so surprised. Your father isn’t a man for looking back.
    Leaving the pub with my father and my uncle seeing the men older than I’d recalled, each of them walking unsteadily as in fear of pain. And I realized I’d been seeing my father and my uncle walking this way, all of my life. Big men, men for whom the physical life is the primary life, men-who-don’t-complain, men who laugh at discomfort, these were men who’d been deeply wounded as boys, the memory of pain in their tissues, joints, and bones, pain of which they would not ever speak, for to speak in such a way was to betray weakness, and a man does not ever betray weakness. And I felt a son’s rage, and a sick fear that I would not be equal to this rage. For I thought Why have they told me this? Why now?
    My car was at my parents’ house. My father drove me back, with Denis. Wasn’t I going to stay the night? my father asked. Laying his hand on my arm. And my mother too asked, wasn’t I going to stay the night, my bed was all made up. Seeing in the men’s flushed faces that something had been revealed, she could not share. I told them no, I wasn’t staying. Not tonight. I had to get back to Eau Claire that night.
    My father walked me back outside, to my car in the driveway. And he did not say She is at that place you work —is she. She is in your “care.”
    That November morning, the morning of the discovery of the body, I was the first of the early shift to arrive.
    In the pitch-dark pelting rain making my way to the side-entrance of the facility. At this early hour the building was but partially lighted, with a warm look inside. No one? No one to see me? Quickly and stealthily I made my way to Unit D, that was near-deserted at this hour. Soon the facility would come awake: the nursing staff and the orderlies would begin their rounds, the patients would be “up” for their interminable day. But not just yet, for it was 5:46 A . M .
    From a closet I removed a single pillowcase. In the pocket of my waterproof parka was a three-foot strip of gauzy curtain I’d found in a trash can. I’d snatched it out of the trash—not sure why. A smile had twisted my mouth— What’s this? I thought I would find a purpose for it.
    I have learned to trust such instincts. I have learned not to question my motives.
    Quietly then I pushed open the door to Sister Mary Alphonsus’s room which was at the end of a corridor. I did not breathe, my rubber-soled sneakers made no sound. Yet the elderly nun was part-awakened by my presence.
    I shut the door behind me. Without hesitating, as if I’d practiced this maneuver many times, I stooped over her bed, gripped her shoulder with one hand to hold her still, with the other yanked the pillow out from beneath her head, and pressed it over her face. So swiftly and unerringly I’d moved, Sister Mary Alphonsus had no time to comprehend what was happening, still less to cry out for help. Now in the throes of death she struggled like a maddened animal, her fingers clawing at my wrists.
    I was wearing gloves. Her nails would not lacerate my bare skin.
    In this struggle of several minutes I crouched over the figure in the bed, the head and face obscured by the pillow. I was panting, my heart beat quickly but calmly. I did not utter a word.
    I thought of my father Douglas, and of my uncle Denis. I thought of my uncle Patrick as a child, whom I had never seen. Buried in a pauper’s grave, and his bones scattered and lost. But I did not speak. I did not accuse the evil woman, for what was there to say? You soon come to the end of speech as you come to the end of