Chapter 113: Eligible for Rehire
On the fourth of June a letter went from Ashworth Grange & Bell to the Office of the State’s Attorney of Cook County.
Two paragraphs. Very courteous.
It asked the office to consider whether Lily Marie Carter had committed one hundred and eighty-seven violations of 720 ILCS 5/14-2, and noted that the firm stood ready to assist.
Adeyemi telephoned me about it before Vukovich did.
She checks the docket every morning and has done since January.
“Are you frightened,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Good. Be frightened accurately.”
I could hear her turning pages.
“A Class 4 felony carries one to three. First offense, no record, you would not go to prison.”
“You would be a convicted felon. And a convicted felon does not sit the NCLEX in this state.”
I had not told anybody about the NCLEX.
I had looked it up twice in April on a library computer and closed the tab both times.
“I didn’t say I was going to—”
“You will,” she said. “Everyone does eventually. Let me finish.”
Vukovich declined the referral in writing on the eighteenth of June and sent me a copy, which she did not have to do.
Her reasons were three and none of them was that she liked me.
That Judge Salcedo had already found, in a written order, that the foyer recording fell outside the statute on two independent grounds.
That the remaining files had been made under a written authorization from the parent and lawful occupant of the residence.
That does not settle the question. It destroys the mental state.
And that the office would not prosecute its own witness on a referral from the party against whom she testified.
She added a fourth paragraph that was not a reason, and it was the only part I read twice.
The 2025 recordings remain a different matter. The limitation period on those runs to December 2028. This office takes no position on them today.
So: eighteen months of not being sure.
That is what the four hours and eleven minutes with Ana’s voice cost me.
I have never been charged.
I say that plainly, because I spent a year and a half waiting for a piece of paper that never came.
The waiting was the punishment.
On the twenty-fourth of June I went to the Evidence and Recovered Property Section on South Rockwell Street, with a court order and my driver’s license.
It took ninety minutes and four windows.
They brought it out in a manila envelope with a red evidence seal across the flap.
Inventory number 15784332, written on it in marker.
I signed a line, and a man behind bulletproof glass slid it under the gap.
That was that.
I did not open it in the building. I did not open it on the bus.
I opened it that night on the floor of the studio on Wolcott, with a pair of nail scissors.
Everything was in it.
The recorder. The lanyard I had cut off it in September because the police asked me to.
Two AAA batteries in a small bag, taken out separately, dead.
I put new batteries in and it turned on.
The file count on the screen said 000, because they had imaged it and wiped it, which is what they do.
I turned it off again and put it in the drawer with the spare keys.
Ana’s estate closed on the thirtieth of June.
Order approving the final account and discharging the administrator. Case 2027 P 000414, closed.
Fifteen pages of citation returns sit inside it forever, which is the only reason any of this exists.
The last document of that legal year came on the seventh of July and was four lines long.
I had asked the family office for an employment letter, because you cannot apply to a nursing program with a gap and no explanation.
It was on Halloway Kesten letterhead, signed by somebody in human resources whose name I had never heard.
Ms. Lily M. Carter was employed in a household staff capacity from 4 August 2025 to 30 November 2026. Her employment concluded by elimination of position.
Then the fourth line.
Eligible for rehire: No.
I sat on the edge of the bed with that letter and then reached for a pen, which is what I have done my whole life.
Employed 483 days. Suspended on day 408. Paid until day 424. Position eliminated on day 483.
Nineteen breathing events logged. One hundred and eighty-seven files. Forty-one pages produced. One conviction. One amended death certificate. Two words at the bottom of a letter.
Eligible for rehire: No.
That is the honest total. I have never dressed it up for anybody.
I put the letter in the sleeve with the coding sheet, the certified Articles and the death certificate. The sleeve had got fat. I bought a second one.
Twenty days later a man from the business desk of the Chicago Tribune published two thousand four hundred words about an invoice, and the second phase of this began.