He shrugged. He exhaled slowly. He looked up.
And I saw what you seldom see in the grief-struck. Panic. A primitive panic, a low-IQ panic, in the eyes— it makes you consider the meaning of the word harebrained. And it made me panic. I thought: He’s in a nightmare and now I am too. What do I do if he starts screaming? Start screaming? Should everybody start screaming?
“How is Miriam?”
“Very quiet,” he said, after a while.
I waited. “Take your time, Colonel,” I said. I thought it might be a good idea to do something null and soothing, like maybe get to some bills. “Say as much as you want or as little as you want.”
Tom Rockwell was Squad Supervisor during much of my time in Homicide. That was before he climbed into his personal express elevator and pushed the button marked Penthouse. In the space of ten years he made lieutenant as Shift Commander, then captain in charge of Crimes Against Persons, then full colonel as head of CID. He’s brass now: He isn’t a police, he’s a politician, juggling stats and budgets and PR. He could make Dep Comm for Operations. Christ, he could make Mayor. “It’s all head-doctoring and kissing ass,” he once said to me. “You know what I am? I’m not a cop. I’m a communicator.” But now Colonel Tom, the communicator, just sat there, very quietly.
“Mike. There’s something went on here.”
Again I waited.
“Something’s wrong.”
“I feel that too,” I said.
The diplomatic response—but his eyes leveled in.
“What’s your read on it, Mike? Not as a friend. As a police.”
“As a police? As a police I have to say that it looks like a suicide, Colonel Tom. But it could have been an accident. There was the rag there, and the 303. You think maybe she was cleaning it and…”
He flinched. And of course I understood. Yeah. What was she doing with the .22 in her mouth? Maybe tasting it. Tasting death. And then she—
“It’s Trader,” he said. “It has to be Trader.”
Well, this demanded some time to settle. Okay. Now: It is sometimes true that an apparent suicide will, on inspection, come back a homicide. But that inspection takes about two seconds. It is ten o’clock on a Saturday night, in Destry or Oxville. Some jig has just blown his chick to bits with a shotgun. But a couple of spikes later he hatches a brilliant scheme: He’ll make it look like she did it. So he gives the weapon a wipe and props her up on the bed or wherever. He might even muster the initiative to scrawl out a note, in his own fair hand. We used to have one of these notes tacked to the squadroom noticeboard. It read: “Good By Crule Whirld.” Well this is some sad shit, Marvis, you say when you get there, responding to Marvis’s call. What happened? And Marvis says, She was depress. Discreetly, Marvis leaves the room. He’s done his bit. What more can a man do? Now it’s our turn. You glance at the corpse: There’s no burn or shell wadding in the wound and the blood spatter is on the wrong pillow. And the wrong wall. You follow Marvis into the kitchen and he’s standing there with a glassine bag in one hand and a hot spoon in the other. Homicide. Heroin. Nice, Marvis. Come on. Downtown. Because you’re a murdering piece of shit. And a degenerate motherfucker. That’s why. A homicide come dressed to the ball as a suicide: This you expect from a braindead jackboy in the Seventy-Seven. But from Trader Faulkner, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science at CSU? Please. The smart murder just never happens. That’s all bullshit. That’s all so…pathetic. The Professor did it. Oh, sure. Murder is dumb and then even dumber. Only two things will make you any good at it: Luck and practice. If you’re dealing with the reasonably young and healthy, and if the means is violent, then the homicide/suicide gray area is TV, is bullshit, is ketchup. Make no mistake, we would see it if it was there—because we want suicides to be homicides. We would infinitely prefer it. A made homicide means overtime, a clearance stat, and high fives in the squad-room. And a suicide is no damn use to anyone.