Being the Murdered Housekeeper
Text by Cathy Ulrich, Interactives by Lucy ZhangThe thing about being the murdered housekeeper is you set the plot in motion.
Killer pleads guilty, sentenced to 20 years
"It was the meth," says xxxxx, the sole suspect in last winter's Dew Drop Inn slayings. "The meth made me crazy...
You will be discarded after you are stabbed, the newspapers will say discarded, will say found, will say last victim. They won't say wrong place, wrong time, and neither will the police when they call your oldest daughter with the news, and she will say you're joking, right, tell me you're joking. She will say: It has to be a joke.
...it was dark when Det. Mulvaney got the call. Dark and cold. When he arrived at the scene of the gruesome murders at the Dew Drop Inn, snow was beginning to fall. He could make out the outline of the suspect's bloody footprints under the glow of his flashlight...
She will be the one who has to call your other children: her two brothers, her three sisters, one by one. Her voice will be cracked and weak when she calls her youngest sister, the baby, her voice will be a whisper: It's about Mom. Something has happened to Mom.
Your youngest daughter will be young enough she still remembers how you tucked her in at night, for bed, how you lingered at the door after you stroked her hair and kissed her face, how good night from your mouth was a lullaby. She will remember how you told her be brave, little one. Be strong.
He's not a bad boy, killer's mother says
Clutching a photo of her son as a child in his Little League uniform to her chest, xxxx spoke to reporters about her son, accused in the slayings at the Dew Drop Inn...
Your sons will be the ones to pick up your belongings from the mortuary where you are taken; they will meet their sisters in the mortuary parking lot, hug them the way they have always done, too tightly and rough, and your daughters will allow it this once, just this once, arching-backed, wet-faced, soft, sad sighs escaping their lips.
They will hold a reception at your church after the service, and you will be in a cloisonné urn that the housekeeping department took a collection for, the maids, the laundry staff, the desk clerks sliding crumpled bills into the envelope as it is pass around. The new girl will have a twenty that her parents gave her for gas; she'll put it in the envelope, wake early the rest of the week, and walk.
The Dew Drop Inn, site of a grisly slaying of two guests and a housekeeper, has been put up for sale...
The new girl will be the one who cleans your last room after the police are done with it, after the crime scene cleaners have gone. Your last room, she'll think, your last room.
She'll stretch new white sheets on the bed, knuckle a thick spread over top, dust in the ignored corners and vacuum in lines back and forth across the floor to get all the footprints out. She will be the one to find your nametag where it had fallen between the bed and the stand, where no one else thought to look. She will be the one who tucks it into her deep pocket, who keeps it always: your name. She will run the vacuum over the floor, run the vacuum over the floor, run the vacuum over the floor, and eventually they will send the head housekeeper to stop her.
They were an average couple on an anniversary trip when terror struck. Xxxxx, 52, and his wife, xxxx, 47, stopped at the Dew Drop Inn to rest their heads before continuing on their way home after a long-awaited trip to Mount Rushmore...
It's clean now, she'll say, touch the new girl on the shoulder. It's clean enough.
She'll come to your service, they all will, in their street clothes, taking a moment to recognize each other, I've only ever seen you in your uniform, sit together in the hard-backed pews, and the new girl will turn her hands over, look at the tearing of her cuticles from the rough bedspreads, try not to cry.
And after, at the reception, they will eat the tamales your oldest daughter made from your recipe, they will assure her, one by one, they're just like hers. Just like your mother made them, and then go back to the hotel, where there are still rooms needing to be cleaned.