brother's suicide. That out of the way, I would begin exploring the causes and frequency of police suicide.
The previous message on the tube was from Laurie Prine in the library. It had been sent at four-thirty Monday. All it said was, 'Interesting stuff on Nexis. It's on the counter.'
I sent a message back thanking her for the quick search and saying I had unexpectedly been tied up in Boulder but would pick up the search package right away. I thought she had an interest in me, though I had never responded to her on anything other than the professional level. You have to be careful and be sure. You make a wanted advance and you're cool. You make an unwanted advance and you get a personnel complaint. My view is that it's better just to avoid the whole thing.
Next I scrolled through the AP and UPI wires to see if there was anything interesting going on. There was a story about a doctor being shot outside a women's clinic in Colorado Springs. An anti-abortion activist was in custody, but the doctor had not died yet. I made an electronic copy of the story and transferred it to my personal storage basket, but I didn't think I'd ever do anything with it unless the doctor died.
There was a knock on my door and I looked through the peephole before opening it. It was Jane, who lived across the hall and down one. She'd been there about a year and I'd met her when she asked for help moving some furniture around when she was setting up her place. She was impressed when I told her I was a newspaper reporter, not knowing anything about what it was like. We'd gone to the movies twice and dinner once and spent a day skiing at Keystone but these outings were spread over the year she'd been in the building and nothing ever seemed to come of it. I think it was my hesitation, not hers. She was attractive in an outdoorsy sort of way and maybe that was it. I was outdoorsy myself-at least in my mind-and wanted something different from that.
'Hello, Jack. I saw your car in the garage last night so I knew you were back. How was the trip?'
'It was good. It was good to get away.'
'Did you ski?'
'A little bit. I went out to Telluride.'
'Sounds nice. You know, I was going to tell you but you already left, if you're ever going away again, I could take care of your plants or pick up the mail or whatever. Just ask.'
'Oh, thanks. But I don't really have any plants. I end up traveling a lot overnight for the job, so I don't keep any.'
I turned from the door and looked back into the apartment as if to make sure. I guess I should have invited her in for coffee but I didn't.
'You on your way to work?' I asked instead.
'Yeah.'
'Me, too. I better get going. But, listen, once I get settled in, let's do something. A movie or something.'
We both liked DeNiro movies. That was the one thing we had.
'Okay, call me.'
'I will.'
After closing the door I chastised myself again for not inviting her in. In the dining room I shut the computer down and my eyes caught on the inch-thick stack of paper next to the printer. My unfinished novel. I had started it more than a year earlier but it wasn't going anywhere. It was supposed to be about a writer who becomes a quadriplegic in a motorcycle accident. With the money from the legal settlement, he hires a beautiful young woman from the local university to type for him as he orally composes the sentences. But soon he realizes she is editing and rewriting what he tells her before she even types it in. And what dawns on him is that she is the better writer. Soon he sits mute in the room while she writes. He only watches. He wants to kill her, strangle her with his hands. But he can't move his hands to do it. He is in hell.
The stack of pages sat there on the table daring me to try again. I don't know why I didn't shove it into a drawer with the other one I had started and never finished years earlier. But I didn't. I guess I wanted it there where I could see it.
The Rocky's newsroom was deserted when I got there. The morning editor and the early reporter were at the city desk but I didn't see anybody else. Most of the staffers didn't start coming in until nine or later. My first stop was the cafeteria for more coffee and then I swung by the library, where I took a thick computer printout with my name on it off the counter. I checked Laurie Prine's desk to thank her in person but she wasn't in yet, either.
Back at my desk I could see into Greg Glenn's office. He was there, on the phone as usual. I began my usual routine of reading the Rocky and the Post in tandem. I always enjoyed this, the daily judging of the Denver newspaper war. If you were keeping tabs, exclusive stories always scored the most points. But, generally, the papers covered the same stories and this was the trench war, where the real battle was. I would read our story and then I would read theirs, seeing who wrote it better, who had the best information. I didn't always pull for the Rocky. In fact, most times I didn't. I worked with some real assholes and didn't mind seeing their butts kicked by the Post. I would never admit this to anyone, though. It was the nature of the business and the competition. We competed with the other newspaper, we competed with each other. That was why I was sure some of them watched me whenever I walked through the newsroom. To some of the younger reporters I was almost a hero, with the kind of story clips, talent and beat to shoot for. To some of the others, I'm sure I was a pathetic hack with an undeservedly cushy beat. A dinosaur. They wanted to shoot at me. But that was okay. I understood this. I'd think the same thing if I were in their position.
The Denver papers were feeders for the bigger dailies in New York and L.A. and Chicago and Washington. I probably should have moved on long ago and had even turned down an offer with the L.A. Times a few years back. But not before I used it as leverage with Glenn to get my murder beat. He thought the offer was for a hot shot job covering the cops. I didn't tell him it was a job in a suburban section called the Valley Edition. He offered to create the murder beat for me if I stayed. Sometimes I thought I had made a mistake taking Glenn's offer. Maybe it would be good to start somewhere fresh.
We had done all right in the morning competition. I put the papers aside and picked up the library printout. Laurie Prine had found several stories in the eastern papers analyzing the pathology of police suicides and a handful of smaller spot news reports on specific suicides from around the country. She had the discretion not to print the Denver Post report on my brother.
Most of the longer reports examined suicide as a job risk that went with police work. Each started with a particular cop's suicide and then steered the story into a discussion among shrinks and police experts on what made cops eat their guns. All of the stories concluded that there was a causal relationship between police suicide and job stress and a traumatic event in the life of the victim.
The articles were valuable because what experts I would need for my story were named right there. And several pieces mentioned an ongoing FBI-sponsored study on police suicides at the Law Enforcement Foundation in Washington, D.C. I highlighted this, figuring that I could use updated statistics from the bureau or foundation to lend my story freshness and credibility.
The phone rang and it was my mother. We hadn't spoken since the funeral. After a few preliminary questions about my trip and how everybody was doing, she got to the point.
'Riley told me you are going to write about Sean.'
It wasn't a question but I answered as if it was.
'Yes, I am.'
'Why, John?'
She was the only one who called me John.
'Because I have to. I… just can't go on now like it didn't happen. I have to at least try to understand.'
'You always took things apart when you were a boy. You remember? All the toys you ruined.'
'What are you talking about, Mom? This is-'
'What I am saying is that when you take things apart you can't always put them back together again. Then what have you got? Nothing, Johnny, you have nothing.'
'Mom, you're not making sense. Look, I have to do this.'
I did not understand why I was so quick to anger when I talked to her.
'Have you thought about anyone else besides yourself? Do you know how putting this in the paper can hurt people?'
'You mean Dad? It might also help him.'
There was a long silence and I imagined her in her kitchen at the table, eyes closed and holding the phone to her ear. My father was probably sitting there, too, afraid to talk to me about it.
