Judith Wilkinson

"Who was the last person she spoke to before you?"

It took a great deal of willpower not to glance fervently from corpse to detective, detective to corpse, my right hand to my left. I blinked slowly, furrowed my eyebrows, set a slight quiver to my bottom lip. Murder mystery, I told myself firmly. We're playing a game, and you're sure as hell not climbing into the back of a patrol car tonight.

"Ronnie was sleeping upstairs - she's the night nurse, I think."

Two of the detectives in the house headed toward the second floor. Fairly certain that the thick walls of the upstairs bedrooms were just enough to drown out muffled midnight cries downstairs, I placed myself into a wooden dining room chair.

The men had come in quietly, their expected presence all but sweet. The loud shuffling of snow-covered boots as they made their way inside. The cold of the house, since they'd left both front doors propped open. The night air heaved in and out loudly, its muted exhales more relieving than the sharp intakes of winter breath. The way the man in the glasses near the scorching fireplace picked up insignificant items with two gloved fingers as Judith Wilkinson's body was being transported from the facility. 

I shuddered, thumping the sides of my arms with closed fists as a plea for warmth. It was frighteningly cold, but I soon became grateful the detectives weren't searching the home on a warmer night. A vision of flies tracing their way through truthful evidence. A half-eaten spaghetti dinner next to an empty glass of water. A set of hot rollers in the opened bathroom near the stairs - heated, but never used. A navy velour pillow on a pea green patio chair outside, one side dark with drool and mushed etchings of a nose, ear, chin.

There were inconsistencies only there, as the navy color matched the furniture in the living room, not the deck. I had no doubts the men wouldn't notice at such a late hour.

An officer approached me, and I feigned apprehension. His eyes kind, feet cautious as they approached.

"Robin, can I talk to you outside on the porch?"

As I stood, my heart beat in my head and out my ears, in my throat and out my mouth, in my chest and through my pullover. Ronnie, the night nurse, wobbled down the stairs with the aid of the two detectives. Her eyes found mine, so I searched them. Ronnie was terrified. Ronnie was grieving. Ronnie was relieved to see me. 

She hadn't heard a thing.

The officer introduced himself as either Steve or Dave. The wind cut through his words like quick shrieks. When we reached the patio, I meant to step in front of him to claim the seat holding the dark pillow, but he pulled out the chair next to it with a gesture.

"Thanks. Gentleman," I murmured grudgingly with a blank smile to the man whose eyes I'd not yet met. Once I sat, he took a chair across from mine. The only empty seat remaining was to my left, his right. The blue pillow there sat overturned, but I thankfully couldn't make out any evidence on it from the darkened sundeck.

The streets were dimly lit and piled with snow. I wondered if the detectives had brought anything to scrape the newly fallen sleet off their car windshields.

"I'm told you were watching Judith from ten last night to four in the morning, yes?"

My eyes finally met his, but in the flickering porch lights, the man's face was an oval shadow. 

"I made her spaghetti," I began the mantra out loud, "and she started watching Dynasty afterward -"

"You were watching it with her?"

"No." Breathe. "She asked me to run her a bath, because her feet were hurting her. She said the cold makes her bones cry."

The shadow-faced officer seemed to smile, so I reciprocated weakly. He waited, so I continued.

"She began dozing off in the living room, on the couch. I asked her, 'Judith, do you want to go to sleep now? It's late.'"

A memory flashed before my eyes, halting my speech. Judith sleeping on the couch, mouth gaping as she wheezed in and out. I'd walked past the television before her four times before deciding she was asleep enough. Asleep enough. My stomach and heart danced wildly inside of me for a moment.

"Why were you taking care of Mrs. Wilkinson? I'm aware you're not part of the night staff here."

"I used to work here every summer, since I was sixteen. I've known Judith for a long time. But she knew her time was coming, because she had a disease, you know? She asked if I could be here to take care of her for a month or two."

"You only took care of her? No other patients?"

"We like to call them 'guests' here. And no, just her." I smiled tightly again.

The man was silent for a moment, staring at my face. I didn't fear his scrutiny, since our appearances had become obscured in the night. He wouldn't know sorrow from conviction in this frame. Somewhere, I heard the click of a pen.

"So you said you arrived when -"

A flashlight shined on us from the front door. Another officer had appeared on the patio. Behind him, the home's interior seemed calm, aside from Ronnie's teary face.

"Dave, we're heading off now. We've already questioned Ms. Wright here."

There was a loud static noise as the radio on the man's hip announced something like an order. While he responded to the message, his flashlight remained on the two of us sitting. Dave's face was fully visible now, and I saw him looking at me with narrowed eyes. My heart bounced in my chest as I felt the seconds pass. I suppressed urges to babble to the man, to tell him a funny childhood story or list compliments Judith had given me over the years.

I had no wish to draw more attention to myself, or the pillow that sat - now illuminated in bright focused light - as evidence against me and my crime. My eyes wished so badly to dart to the pillow, and to make sure the old woman's likeliness wasn't engraved into the material facing us like a flashing neon advertisement.

Thoughts of Dave's face falling as he realized I killed her out of curiosity. Because it was so easy that it felt correct. That pushing away an old woman's arms as she fights suffocation is nearly easier than lifting a full pot of spaghetti noodles over the sink.

Dave's bewilderment as I explained the sickening sound of phlegm in her sleeping throat, how it sounded like a bark when she finally woke up to a cushion pressed against her eyes and lips. The same Dynasty episode that she'd always fall asleep before finishing. The fact that I'd been diluting her water glasses with sleeping agents every night for two weeks just to stare at her elderly face in deep thought.

Judith had been bold, and kind, and even funny at times. Physically, the woman was slobbish and frail.

The man in the doorway flicked his flashlight in another direction as Dave stood up. They began walking into the house together, so I wiped my teary eyes and quickly rubbed away any patterns in the pillow next to me.

The group of men began to say things that sounded like conclusions. "Tomorrow", "from now on", "be careful". Ronnie thanked them, then placed her head down on the kitchen table. I was thankful for her, that she had been the only one in the home during the night aside from me. That girl slept hard, and I'd known from my first murderous fantasy that she would be no obstacle to my plans. As I walked our guests out, I thought of what I would tell Ronnie and the other staff at the nursing home in the coming morning. 

Judith suffocated.

Her respiratory system just gave out.

Judith died in her sleep.

I don't know what happened. 

It wasn't her time.

With a restrained smile, I lifted the door props as the men gathered on the patio. The snow looked thick on their windshields, but some officers had already began wiping theirs clean with flat objects and forearms.

"Sorry this had to be such an event at this hour," one of the detectives told me. "But it seemed like suspected foul play at the start. At least, some of us thought so."

I looked up at him.

"We got a call from her the other night. Your patient, Judith. Said she felt like someone was trying to end her."

A sour taste rose in my throat, but I was too close to the end to choke now. The man stared down at me, suddenly chuckling and shaking his head. 

"Seems like she was just at that age, got paranoid. Happens."

With a shrug, the man was off. I watched as Dave entered a black vehicle without a backward glance, first tucking away something small and square in the trunk. Shivering in the cold, I managed to get the front doors to swing shut.

I closed the nursing home entrance to a gently tarnished exterior canvas. The streets covered high in snow, tracks left by cars which had slowly disappeared. Houses decorated for Christmas, windows darkened for sleep. A wide patio covered in large footprints, adorned with three pillow-less chairs.