Weekend Freewrite -2/15/2020 - Single Prompt Option CONTINUATION: filthy rich

avatar
(Edited)

Today's freewrites are a continuation of my response to the #wewrite by @owasco ... this is the wrap-up...

tania-melnyczuk-XTwUN0ESy2A-unsplash.jpg
Source

Captain Hamilton's first impression of Mrs. Abigail Howard: exhausted, even shriveled. An air of sadness was around her, and she seemed small in the large home she had inherited and now lived in alone.

Yet there was also peace about the widow … like a veteran of a long war, scarred, perhaps permanently damaged, but at last victorious.

$5 billion worth of victory, as it happened – Mr. Hugh Howard had left her everything, making her Lofton County's newest billionaire, unless, of course, foul play was involved.

Mr. Howard's children by his first wife had been calling the county sheriff's office, hoping against hope Sheriff Nottingham could find a way to “re-inherit” them. Sheriff Nottingham couldn't go investigate because his lumbago was acting up, but Captain Hamilton had been on call that weekend, and so he had taken the case.

$5 billion worth of pressure … Captain Hamilton knew that Sheriff Nottingham desperately wanted to be able to say county had discovered foul play so that the “re-inherited” Howard children could thank county with some green … almost everybody had plans to add some filthy to any rich they hoped to possess.

Nonetheless, Captain Hamilton looked over the scene and sat down to question Mrs. Howard without any plan but to get at the truth.

“I am very sorry to disturb you so near to your terrible bereavement, and even more sorry to have to question you,” he said.

Mrs. Howard smiled. She must have been beautiful once, and with how she looked with just a man in authority speaking kindly to her, she might yet be beautiful again for the right man.

“I understand, Captain Hamilton,” she said. “Five billion reasons for it, and I'm sure you are hearing from my stepchildren.”

“County is, anyhow – I'm on call for weekend matters, and this happened Saturday, I understand.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Would you please tell me what happened?”

“My husband had a very restrictive diet that he felt was the only thing safe for his health. It was very difficult for me to find food he could eat and enjoyed eating. On Wednesday he asked for a peanut butter sandwich, and in our household that meant three days of work – I had to buy grain-free bread, but also raw peanuts that also needed to be sprouted and roasted before grinding. I finished that on Saturday and presented him the sandwich, but freshly ground peanut butter is very oily, and the bread became soggy.

“Hugh was furious, so I asked him if he just wanted some peanut butter instead, and he was willing. Because he was not going to be getting any nutrients from the bread, I added a bit more to the peanut butter – some Himalayan pink salt, and a little Tasmanian pepperberry to wake up the flavor.

“Ah – commonly called mountain pepper, and nowhere near the nightshade family.”

“Yes … all the members of the nightshade family, and all their close relatives, were off limits for my husband. It was very, very difficult, cooking for him, and ...”

Tears overflowed her eyes.

“It was very difficult, watching him kill himself, and making me help him. I loved him, once.”

Captain Hamilton pulled out a handkerchief and offered it Mrs. Howard, and she took it and thanked him.

“I understand that he was not always kind in his demands,” he said gently.

“Not always,” she said. “I did say that I loved him. Past tense.”

There was a different light in those dark eyes now … beyond the sadness, there was a spark … something of the person that would not be quenched.

“Was he kind when he did not want the sandwich?” the captain asked.

“Not at all. The doctor told me that his flash of anger is what already had his pressure up very high for the weakened condition he was in.”

Mrs. Howard handed Captain Hamilton some paperwork.

“We had been to the doctor the day before,” she said. “He was already in such a bad way. They had been telling him for six months that he was deficient in everything, but he refused and refused and refused to change anything about his diet, and blamed me for all of it.”

“And yet you stayed with him to the very end.”

“I vowed that I would, Captain. I also knew the end was near.”

“After you made the peanut butter, what happened?”

“I brought him a spoonful to try it, and, he liked it! What a relief, for him and for me!”

“What happened next?”

“He wanted more, so I brought him a small bowl. He was angered by that, but I told him that any more would make him sick because he hadn't eaten well for so long. He was eating that when the doorbell rang. It was Emilio, our Saturday in-home support worker. Emilio was very surprised by my news that I had finally created something within my husband's diet that he finally wanted to eat.

“About how long were you at the door, talking with Emilio?”

“I would say about five minutes.”

Captain Hamilton recalled the track he had seen from the carpet in the bedroom to the kitchen … a distinct track, because Mr. Howard by that point was not holding his water well along with his lurching and staggering. It would have taken at least five minutes to get to the kitchen.

“Then what happened?”

“Emilio and I came back to the bedroom, but found out Hugh was not there. The bedroom has a door to the kitchen and is always open because my husband always wanted to see what I was doing, so we looked and there he was, his face in the big bowl of peanut butter. He was lapping it up like a ravenous dog. By the time we got to the kitchen, he had put the bowl down and was licking his face all around his mouth. Emilio took the bowl from him, and Hugh slugged him, took the bowl back, and started licking it clean. I called 9-11 then – all those peanuts, all that salt, and no way to get it out of him. Our home is quite remote, as you can see.

“The only thing we could do is put him back to bed; he was at last satisfied and told me I was finally good for something. Emilio raised him up on his pillows to try to keep the pressure off his brain, but it was too late. He went to sleep and woke no more. As you see in the paperwork, he had a massive stroke around 4:00pm, and was dead on arrival at Lofton County Hospital.”

Captain Hamilton looked through the paperwork, considered the matter for a few moments, and then stood up.

“Thank you for your time, ma'am, and as I said when I came in, my deepest condolences to you on the loss of your husband, and I am very sorry to have to disturb you.”

“I understand, Captain Hamilton. Thank you for being so kind.”

“Well?” Lieutenant O'Reilly said when the captain returned to the Tinyville police station.

“You know how it is – I have an opinion but I'm going to put it all in Morton Data Master and see what the data and its analysis tells me first.”

Lieutenant O'Reilly smiled.

“I know, sir, I know, I know – consistency in evidence handling and giving weight to the data, no matter what we think.”

“I strive to present a proper example at all times, Lieutenant.”

It took two days for Captain Hamilton to gather and work through all the data at hand – once he tabulated it and did all his data entry in Morton Data Master, he was surprised to get a fork in his data.

“Yikes,” he said.

“What are you seeing?” Lieutenant O'Reilly said.

“Two possible outcomes, impossible to resolve without further evidence … although in this case, we are beyond the limits of evidence.”

“The first fork is what we expect, leading to the conclusion of a tragic accident. We know from all anecdotal evidence that Mr. Howard was selfish, greedy, and short-sighted – from the photographs I took, she brought him appropriate portions, but his lack of satisfaction with that and his greed led him to eat himself right to death.

“The second fork makes Mrs. Howard the slickest premeditated murderer Lofton County has seen for a good while, and it is based on matters of timing and access.

“Mrs. Howard knew her husband was half-starved; that's been in the medical records for four months. She has excellent knowledge of nutrition; she knew peanut butter would be more trouble to digest than it was worth in his condition, especially without a sugar source and that much salt in it. She could have known he was so hungry he was going to be frustrated with those small portions, and knew he could see right into the kitchen to the big bowl. She knew what time Emilio was coming, and thus knew she could be away long enough for her husband to stumble into the deadly trap and gorge himself … the little bit of peanut butter at first would give him just enough energy to get to the kitchen.

“The challenge here is that Morton Data Master, given those points of data, could line all of that up as a possible path to murder. Yet that does not say anything about whether an exhausted 33-year-old wife could or would or did. Thus, we see the limitation of the computer program that can take data points and find ways to murder folks that the average human mind might not have thought of before hand.”

“Yikes,” Lieutenant O'Reilly said. “I'm 25 and not exhausted, and I don't know if I could have put all those details together.”

“This is why I say resolving this requires evidence that does not and will not exist,” Captain Hamilton said. “It would require a confession on Mrs. Howard's part to make the murder track conclusive, but why would she do that? The fact remains, even on the murder track: the man ate himself to death, and she didn't force him. Salt, peanuts, and mountain pepper are all the coroner found in his system, and they are not poison and would not have harmed him in the portions we know she gave him. She may have added far too much salt for his condition and intentionally left a path for his greed to take its course, but, outside the world of data points, that's not murder. No court of law would ever be able to deal with that, even if it is true.”

“Because we can't know what she knows, even though Morton Data Master looks at the same evidence and thinks it 'sees' what she should see,” Lieutenant O'Reilly said.

“Which is why humans investigate with the help of tools, but must never become totally dependent on the tools for answers,” Captain Hamilton said.

“I actually think the truth lies somewhere between the tines of the data fork, Lieutenant. Notice in the recording of the interview, she never expresses regret, and particularly not around one point: 'I should have put that big bowl away.' She knew him, his greed, his selfishness. If anyone in the world could predict his behavior, she could. She also said something else that was very telling: she hated that he was making her help him kill himself on that ridiculous diet. When that doorbell rang, and that bowl was still out, there was the chance: he might kill himself on his own, without her help, against her advice. She could have acted subconsciously on that chance, for there is not enough time in the data for it to be premeditated by anybody without Morton Data Master's steel nerves.”

“Wow,” Lieutenant O'Reilly said. “You don't know anybody who could have worked all that out?”

“Oh, you can think of someone,” Captain Hamilton teased, and laughed as his lieutenant jumped, knowing the image of Captain H.F. Lee had come into the lieutenant's mind. “But, even for my deadly cousin, this one is a bit involved, and too much left to chance.

“And that is exactly the reason this fork cannot be resolved, Lieutenant, in this program. This is where the human element of the investigator, and why he must be above reproach in terms of seeking fame and bribes, is essential. The weight of the evidence points to a tragic accident, and there is absolutely no proof of it being anything else, notwithstanding the circumstantial line a computer that counts moves in milliseconds can see as possible. So, officially and ever more: it was an tragic accident. Case closed.”

“You know Sheriff Nottingham is going to be mad, mad, mad,” Lieutenant O'Reilly said.

“One of the perks of the job is to keep his blood boiling,” Captain Hamilton said. “The man is filthy rich off of favors done – not as rich as say Mr. Hugh Howard was, but still quite filthy in his corrupt riches. Mr. Howard's children are filthy rich – not so much as he was, but he paid their mother off and them too to go away, splitting a billion between them. They all can be angry with each other.

“Mrs. Howard may be filthy rich now – Morton Data Master thinks it is a possibility – but we are going to not click 'save' on that and let the matter rest. After the ten years she went through with that man, I'm prepared to say she earned every dime, and if she has a clear conscience, let her enjoy it!”

Photo by Tania Melnyczuk on Unsplash



0
0
0.000
21 comments
avatar
(Edited)

Wow! That's brilliant! What a pleasure to read. And yes, it resolves all the doubts about her motivations. She wanted to do it for a long time but didn't have a chance. So when the chance revealed itself she took it. Great Work!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Thank you ... I did leave it a bit open to interpretation, but laid out the entire gamut from murder to accident so that everyone can reach their own conclusions!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Really? With this amount of money art stake and being that abused. People kill for much smaller amounts. I think the life of a regular Joe worth not more than $300 )))

0
0
0.000
avatar

You're right on that ... I had a relative who told me a man she had known had been killed over a dime!

However, the prompt preceded me adding a few billion to the pot, and in the prompt, the woman is still talking seriously about having signed up to make sure he was happy ... I judged that there was some sincerity there, because one can be manipulated and abused to the point that one no longer thinks of one's self as anything but someone's supply -- love and loyalty warped by pain and fear of the future. It is one of the reasons abusive situations often continue for so long. If someone is broken like that, then the money doesn't matter UNLESS, subconsciously, somewhere in there, the person has a strong core, and that core eventually is pressured too much. Remember how Captain Hamilton observed there was a "spark" in Mrs. Howard? Add to that an opportunity, and ... well, you know what happened!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Sure thing. Your narrative is absolutely brilliant. You showed so many angles. For policemen, their suspicions weren't conclusive to even charge her and bring this case to a trial. Hower to the reader you've given much more information than to a policeman. The reader sees the character from inside and can see how she was subjected to years-long psychological abuse and how she was ready in her mind - only waiting for the opportunity. When the opportunity came she took it. Her plan and the execution were so brilliant that as we say in Russian a "mosquito wouldn't be able to squeeze its nose" into the armоr of her alibi. )))

You've also right about her strong core. I think the situations similar to this one exist and most of the time don't end up in murder simply because an abused person doesn't have a strong core and either cannot step over a moral boundary or even more ofter is afraid that she won't be able to go through with it.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Often it is the fear ... abusers work hard to deny their victims the ability to see a future beyond the abuser. Cult leaders do this also, and slave owners in the U.S. had an extensive system to make my ancestors by the millions feel this way also. There are certain things that can be done to any human being ... but what the abuser cannot know in advance is whether or not certain individuals have a core that is too strong to perpetually be in that position and not realize: eventually, that kind of person will begin to see a future without the abuser, whether that turns out being a Mrs. Harriet Tubman, a Mr. Robert Smalls, or a Mrs. Hugh Howard (of which, in my own family, there were TWO in the last century). Methods vary ... but we are made such that one person may not assume the place of God over another forever. The person who tries may not be ready for the consequences when enough is enough!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Wow! That's interesting. You are a descendant of an amazing family. It's comforting to realize that a human spirit could be so strong that even horrible conditions cannot bend them into spiritual submission!

0
0
0.000
avatar
(Edited)

Taking Ms. Harriet Tubman's estimation -- when speaking of freeing 300 slaves, she said, "I could have freed a thousand, had they known they were slaves" -- as a bar, I go with the idea that three out of every ten people have that "strong core," and if they are able to move, then they could lead some out from the remaining seven out of 10 ... hope, even though the math says that if the beatdown is done well enough, a majority will not recover... but it doesn't take a majority to change things ...

ADDENDUM: The two women were somewhat distant in-laws to me ... by the time I came along, their new husbands from my family were both happily married, well-informed, and VERY careful...

0
0
0.000
avatar

The addendum is a bit too complex for my understanding.

What do you imply by them being "well-informed, and VERY careful..." About what? Being careful about demanding the peanut butter sandwich from their spouses? )))

0
0
0.000
avatar

You DID understand exactly ... they knew what happened and were CAREFUL not to be abusive!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Ahahaha...

It reminded me of one science fiction story, where the young journalist went somewhere to the boonies to track down a witch. He found her. It was a young gal all dirty and smelly. But he was explained that in order for her to do some black magic she should be frustrated.

What he did was - he put her in a hotel where she took a shower and turned out to be very pretty. Then he fed her in a restaurant, took her to the department store and bought her new stylish clothes. And when he saw she fell in love with him, he told her that she has the same size as his fiance and all these clothes are bought for his fiance.

He calculated correctly. The gal became furious and started showing wonders of black magic. The guy got very scared for his very life and promised her to marry her. The story ends with the following sentence (I am paraphrasing translating from a translation)

"Strangely enough, the groom was happy. But who cares about him. More importantly, the bride was happy!"

)))

0
0
0.000
avatar

You have to somehow put both parts together so that all other contestants could see that.

0
0
0.000
avatar

I am touched that you put my little story into your epic work! Excellent elaboration on what might have occurred. I'm not sure if I hope she did it on purpose or not, but I'm glad it's not provable. Thank you for continuing this.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Thank you for the great prompt, so full of possibility ... it was the fact that he was already in bed that opened the door ... with that diet and that attitude, he had to be hanging on by a thread!

I left it a little open to interpretation, and had Captain Hamilton investigate it because he is brilliant but compassionate, and with a firm sense of the limits of the law and human justice ... give him this kind of toss-up, and he will almost always opt to err on the side of caution and mercy, trusting that divine justice will catch up ... remember he said that IF she has a clear conscience, he hopes she enjoys the inheritance! Unstated is his knowledge: if she doesn't, she won't!

0
0
0.000
avatar

I see the trust in divine justice in most of your stories. I love that about them. I am touched that you found enough value in my story to use it not once but twice!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Oh, there was a whole novel in that prompt, but, unlike the way it fell out in November for @nanowrimo, I just didn't have the time -- the year has started off with my hands FULL!

You have indeed picked up one of the two great themes of all my writing: divine justice (because human justice fails but is not the final arbiter). The other is redemption (divine grace and mercy). Captain Hamilton, Rev. and Mrs. Baxter, and Mrs. Thornton are the characters who represent full and untroubled acceptance of these matters: they do all that they can and don't worry about what they can't because they have devout faith in God that He will do what only He can. This is actually how I basically live from day to day, although life in Big Loft is less messy than, say, life in real San Francisco!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Congratulations @deeanndmathews! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You published a post every day of the week

You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:

Valentine's day challenge - Give a badge to your beloved!

You can upvote this notification to help all Steem users. Learn how here!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Have you worked in law enforcement? I'm impressed at your knowledge of the investigative process, and the problems prosecutors have when they know a murder's been committed but they also know there's no way they could win the case.

Great job!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Nope, didn't work in law enforcement ... but grew up on everything from Sherlock Holmes, everything Agatha Christie, Perry Mason, Matlock, and then grew up and became a journalist who studied the investigative side with interest and used it both as an award-winning reporter in college and then as an editor, seeing if stories actually hung together, in real life -- before coming onto a senior housing board where we couldn't hire an investigator yet because of what was going on ... so, I put in the work, to the point that investigators and law enforcement officers and lawyers asked the exact question you did! I also learned the limits of what can be found and what can be proven in that process -- there was a bruising court case! So, quiet community investigator with investigative journalism background ... I also do research to make sure I'm writing within the rough limits.

One more thing: I'm Black (or, African-American, but I'm old school), so I know how the law and procedure are not followed at all when there is an assumption of guilt, and I know too many people who have suffered that. It isn't a matter of history: I got new stories TODAY of folks who have been brutally mistreated by police for just being Black, male, and driving a good car in a well-off neighborhood where they LIVED. My pastor is a retired law enforcement officer, and has been educating the entire church on what procedures are in play in certain situations, what decisions private prisons are making in our state, and how we can avoid deadly situations as much as possible. We also have reached out to our local police station, and they know: if they let something go down and get out of line, we know and WILL call them out. I have the new captain's card ... and, he is part of the inspiration for thoughtful Captain Hamilton.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Amazing! A real investigative reporter I think, really gets into the nitty-gritty of a case and they pick up some really good skills, which is apparently part of your life story!

Things haven't been fair, that's for sure! I do think the second chance act (is that what it's called?) that got that lady, Alice Johnson, who had been sentenced to life in prison for drugs, out of prison now and back with her family, is a good thing, that should have been done before now.

She spent 21 years of her life in prison. That's sad. Pedophiles that rape kids don't spend that much time in prison. It was a travesty of justice!

0
0
0.000