False Accusations

         As a steady breeze fluttered past, Sandra Richardson brushed a wisp of her chestnut brown hair out of her eye and back behind her ear. As she continued to walk, her eyes seemingly fixated upon the ground, she did not raise her head so as to look up at the gorgeous mid-April morning. She was concentrating intensely, and making a desperate attempt to group all of her drifting thoughts together into a single heap. She was not sure she had been aware of exactly what had happened over the course of the past three days, nor was she completely certain that she wanted to know. Still, if she didn’t figure it out soon enough, she felt as if she would go completely insane.

         Involuntarily recalling the disheveled fragments of events from days prior, Sandra became suddenly aware of the unpleasantness of them and shuddered with discomfort. Rising slowly from the recliner beside the coffee table in her living room, she made her way toward the set of desk drawers in the corner of the room. Pulling out the drawer second from the top, she began rummaging hectically through it. When she discovered it did not contain what she sought, she closed it and opened another; second to the bottom, third from the bottom, and lastly the top drawer, searching each one with a frantic commotion. When she was absolutely certain that none of the drawers contained the crucial photographs, she returned to her chair and sat back into it. She was only disillusioning herself, she contemplated. After all, the pictures hadn’t been in there that morning, although they had been yesterday and she couldn’t remember moving them. She didn’t know where else to look, as she had searched her small apartment six times over and came up empty handed. She was left to consider only the worst possible scenario. They had been there, looking for her.

         Sandra was back out in the warm April weather the next morning, as she had needed to pick up a few grocery items from the store. She was a little apprehensive about venturing out again on her own, but she didn’t want to burden anyone by calling and asking them to accompany her. She was sure no one knew about what had happened, anyway, and they wouldn’t understand her predicament or why she needed to be escorted only two blocks from her apartment. The night before, she had stayed up until all hours of the morning piecing together what she could have of the past circumstances. She managed to understand more than she had previously, but still had a long way to go to find out exactly what was going on.

         So far as Sandra could tell, the men that had approached her as she left her home for a short walk that dreadful night had been sent there purposefully. The incidents that followed didn’t seem to be by chance. They seemed to recognize her, and were on her like a pack of wild dogs on a raw steak. They outnumbered her four or five to one, and all were carrying guns. Despite these facts, Sandra had managed to escape them. She could recall wrenching violently away from their firm grips and running to hide in the dark shadows of a nearby alleyway. When the men started in the wrong direction after her, Sandra fled and made it safely back to her apartment. Why they were after her, Sandra was still uncertain, but she had a few theories. Her strongest was that it had something to do with the old woman who had lived in the apartment above her’s and had passed away the night prior to the men’s pursuit. This made logical sense considering they had wanted the photographs of this old woman so desperately.

         Sandra awoke the next morning, her mind a complete blank from the time she had been halfway to the store to where she was now. She stared up at a cold, cement ceiling and three identical, adjacent walls. The fourth wall was constructed of harsh, black iron bars, the door of which was locked securely. As she came to her senses and peered through the bars, her gaze fell
upon a uniformed man standing thirty yards away, talking to a man of similar dress. Recognizing
the first man at once as one of her attackers, Sandra let out a loud, maniacal scream. The name
on his shirt read “Smith.” The man Smith had been talking to approached Sandra, and yelled at
her harshly to keep quiet before she awoke the others in the facility, who were still asleep. Sandra could not contain her terror and refused the order. The two men further ignored her, and
continued their conversation.

         As Sandra was unable to comprehend her actions, she was tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity, and was to be dealt with accordingly. The death of the elderly woman in the apartment above her’s was no common household accident, but Sandra simply couldn’t understand that, even though she had admitted that she was the one responsible for her death. She was questioned intensely, and answered as best she could. She was asked several times what her motivation for committing such a despicable act had been, but Sandra claimed not to have had one, or at the very least not to have known what it had been. Sandra had gone up to bring the woman her mail, as she had a great difficulty walking down the six flights of stairs and back up again, and the elevator happened to be out of commission that day. Sandra stuck to her claim that she was only trying to help the poor woman by being a good neighbor. All Sandra declared to remember was catching a glimpse of the handle of the gun as the woman opened her foldout desk to stash her opened mail, and watching it disappear again as it closed. The next thing Sandra knew, the gun was in her hand as the woman milled about her bedroom, the trigger was pulled, the gun and something else she had on her at the time was dropping away from her, the woman was dead. Sandra told of the overwhelming feelings that came over her during those moments: rage, jealousy, desire. She had no control over these emotions, and did not know where they stemmed from. She had simply let them run their course
naturally as had been displayed through her actions. Sandra said she had not known she was dead. She assumed she had only frightened the woman and figured she was now simply resting, as she had fallen face forward onto her bed. The woman’s scream of agonizing pain was mistaken by Sandra for a sigh of relief and relaxation, a yawn, as she herself often expelled herself before sleeping.
“She looked so peaceful, I wanted to capture the moment,” Sandra explained to the investigators
when they inquired about the photographs they had encountered, as truthfully as she believed it to be. “I didn’t think she’d mind. I wanted to be able to look at the pictures, so they could remind me how to be peaceful. Calm. I have problems staying calm. I just thought it would have been nice to learn how to stay that way for a while. I didn’t know she had died until later that evening, when I saw her being wheeled from the apartment on a stretcher. She was old, I thought she just died as people tend to do when they get up to around her age.” Sandra’s eyes never shifted, and neither they nor her voice changed in mood or tone as she answered the prodding questions. “And,” she began again, questioningly, “how did you come to such a conclusion, when even I couldn’t figure out
what had happened?” The investigator said nothing, but produced from a paper bag sitting next to him on the table a small, black wallet, with Sandra’s name and address displayed on the driver’s licence encased in the front pouch.
“Thanks,” he said, handing back to her what was found on the floor, next to where the gun had been dropped in the woman’s apartment. “You have been most helpful.”
“No,” Sandra corrected him. “Thank YOU. I was about to go crazy trying to figure everything
out on my own. It just didn’t make sense to me. I appreciate the help.”