High Crime Area Read Online Free PDF Page B

cultivated land, and stare out into the wilderness in which there are no names for things, as there are no familiar things. For what words would be adequate at this time, so long after the fact?— God damn your soul to Hell. Disgusting old bitch, this is not the punishment you deserve.
    Her hands tried to grip my wrists, to push away the pillow. But her hands grew feeble. I smelled urine. I did not flinch. A pillow held tight over the face of an elderly cardiac patient will snuff out her life within minutes, if you do not flinch.
    When I was sure that it was over, I removed the pillow. The pillowcase was soaked with the woman’s saliva, tears. Her body that was surprisingly heavy, with a hard round stomach like an inverted bowl, lay limp and unresisting now. The face like a bulldog’s face, contorted in death. I heard a harsh panting sound—my breathing. Hers had ceased, abruptly.
    When death is only a matter of seconds, you think that it might be revoked. Life might be called back, if one had the skill.
    But no. Once the match is shaken out, the flame is gone.
    Without haste, with the precision of a veteran orderly, I removed the pillow from the soiled pillowcase, and pushed it snugly inside a fresh pillowcase. I took time to shake the pillow well down into the pillowcase. This action so frequently performed by me, in my role as orderly, like clockwork I executed it within seconds.
    The bedclothes were badly rumpled, as if churned. These I tidied deftly, tucking in bedsheets as you learn to do in the U.S. Army as well.
    There is pleasure in executing small perfect things. One, two, three—completed! On to the next.
    (The soiled pillowcase I might have tossed into the laundry. No one would have thought to look for it there—for the death of the eighty-four-year-old nun would not be considered a “suspicious” death. Yet, I was cautious, taking time to fold the pillowcase neatly to slide it into my backpack, to be disposed of when I left work.)
    I lifted Sister Mary Alphonsus’s limp head, to wind the strip of cheap gauzy curtain around it, and to hide her flushed and contorted face. Bride of Christ! Here is your wedding veil.
    Why did I take time to do this?—why, to risk suspicion where there would be no suspicion?
    I’ve thought of it, often. But I don’t know why.
    A smile comes over my face at such times—a strange slow smile. Am I happy, is that why I am smiling? Or—is the smile involuntary, a kind of grimace?
    I could not have explained any of this. Not even to my father. It seemed the “right” thing to do, at the time. It would be my secret forever.
    â€œDorothy Milgrum” had left no will, it would be revealed. And so, the deceased woman’s modest estate would be appropriated by the State of Wisconsin.
    How much did “Dorothy Milgrum” accumulate, in her years as chief administrator of Craigmillnar? It could not have been much. It was whispered among the staff that there was barely enough money for a decent headstone in the St. Simon’s churchyard at Craigmillnar, where Sister Mary Alphonsus had secured a plot for herself years before.
    I was the orderly charged with emptying, cleaning, and preparing the room for the next resident.
    In the bureau in Sister Mary Alphonsus’s room, amid her old-woman undergarments, stockings, and woolen socks, there was a packet of letters. I appropriated these, for there was no one to prevent me. It was a surprise to see so many handwritten letters, dated 1950s. Who’d written to the Mother Superior at Craigmillnar so often? And why had the Mother Superior kept these letters? The return address was Cincinnati, Ohio. The stationery was a pale rose color. The salutation was Dear Dotty . The signature was faded maroon ink—it looked like Irene. I tried to read a few lines, but could not decipher the curlycue handwriting. Another nun? A dear friend? There was also a packet of snapshots, yellow