Read High Crime Area for Free Online

and curling. In these, Sister Mary Alphonsus was a young woman in her thirties—with sharp shining eyes, bulldog-face, wide glistening smile. She wore her nun’s dark robes with a certain swagger, as a young priest might wear such attire. The wimple was tight around her face, dazzling-white. Her face looked cruelly and yet sensuously pinched, as in a vise.
    In several snapshots the youthful Sister Mary Alphonsus was standing close beside another nun, a stocky broad-shouldered middle-aged woman with a moon-face and very white skin. Both women smiled radiantly at the camera. The older woman had flung off her nun’s hood, her hair was close-cropped, gray. The older woman was taller than Sister Mary Alphonsus by an inch or so.
    In the background was a lakeside scene—a rowboat at shore, fishing poles.
    In the last of the snapshots the women were again standing close together, now both bare-headed, arms around each other’s waist. These were thick arms and thick waists—these were husky women. Then I saw—it was a shock to see—that both women were barefoot in the grass, at the edge of a pebbly lakeside shore.
    I thought— They took these pictures with a time exposure. It was a new idea then .
    The snapshots and the letters covered in faded-maroon ink I burnt as I’d burnt the pillowcase soaked with a dead woman’s saliva. If it had been in my power I would have burnt all trace of Sister Mary Alphonsus on this earth but the truth is, some smudge of the woman’s sick soul will endure, multiplied how many hundreds of times, in the memories of others.
    I would say nothing—not ever—to my father or to my uncle Denis but a certain long level look passed between us, a look of understanding, yet a look too of yearning, for what was concealed, that could not be revealed. When I next saw them, and the subject of the nun’s death arose. My father had kept a newspaper to show me, the front-page headlines, though I didn’t need to see the headlines, knowing what they were. In a hoarse voice Dad said— Good riddance to bad rubbage.
    By which Dad meant rubbish . But I would not correct him.
    Now that months have passed there is not much likelihood of a formal inquiry into the death of Sister Mary Alphonsus aka “Dorothy Milgrum.” The Oybwa County medical examiner has never contacted us. Dr. Godai has left Eau Claire to return to Minneapolis, it has been announced. (Many, including me, were disappointed to hear that Dr. Godai is leaving us so soon though it isn’t surprising that a vigorous young doctor like Dr. Godai would prefer to live and work in Minneapolis, and not Eau Claire.) Yet, I have prepared my statement for the medical examiner. I have not written out this statement, for such a statement might seem incriminating if written out, but I have memorized the opening.
    Early shift is 6:30 A . M . which was when I arrived at the elder care facility at Eau Claire where I have been an orderly for two years. Maybe thirty minutes after that, when the elderly nun’s body was discovered in her bed.

High
    How much, she was asking.
    For she knew: she was being exploited.
    Her age. Her naïveté. Her uneasiness. Her good tasteful expensive clothes. Her hat .
    Over her shimmering silver hair, a black cloche cashmere hat.
    And it was the wrong part of town. For a woman like her.
    How much she asked, and when she was told she understood that yes, she was being exploited. No other customers on this rainy weekday night in the vicinity of the boarded-up train depot would pay so much. She was being laughed-at. She was being eyed. She was being assessed. It was being gauged of her— Could we take all her money, could we take her car keys and her car, would she dare to report us? Rich bitch .
    She knew. She suspected. She was very frightened but she was very excited. She thought I am the person who is here, this must be me. I can do this.
    She paid. Never any doubt