“How’d
you do it?” I asked. “Huh?”
“How’d
you
try
to do the sane thing?”
“Every
way
in the
book,”
he said.
“And
yes,
there are books about it. Lots of ’em.
We
can’t
have
them in here, but I
have
’em all at
home.”
He unbuttoned the perfectly pressed left sleeve of his shirt with an unsteady hand and rolled it
up.
Long, uneven mounds of scar tissue like small worms beneath his skin ran along the bottom side of his twitching wrists.
“Razor,”
he said. He continued rolling his sleeve up to reveal the track marks on his arms. “Overdose.” He then reached up and
tugged
on his collar. Around his neck were rings of scars and bruises—old scars and new rope burns.
“Hanging.”
Carefully unbuttoning his neat, clean, crisp shirt, he exposed a thin white scar on his side. “Knife.”
“If you were trying to qualify yourself as an expert on the subject,” I said, “you’ve succeeded.”
“I’ve also tried
pills,
poison, carbon monoxide, plastic bag, cyanide, self-starvation, and gunshot,” he said, pushing his hair back to reveal an old gunshot scar
over
his
ear.
“And
it’s
all still a mystery to me. Like death or life or God.
It’s
a
mystery.
People think if they could just know what the guy was thinking . . . But all they
have
to do is ask us and we could tell them.
We
don’t
know.
We
can’t
tell you. Those who’ve done it
couldn’t
tell you if they were
here.”
I nodded, but
didn’t
say
anything.
“The number of suicides each year is probably five times greater than what we think,” he said. “Most anybody is capable of it under the right circumstances. And the decision to do it is usually a cumulative one. So when someone takes his life,
it’s
because of a buildup of several factors, none of which by themselves
would
cause him to do it.
You’ve
heard of the straw that broke the
camel’s
back, well,
that’s
how it
happens.
You
have
all this shit and it just keeps piling up on you and then maybe it levels out. Maybe for a long time. But then this one tiny little thing comes along, and maybe
it’s
nothing.
Maybe it
doesn’t
amount to a tiny piece of
straw,
but
it’s
the final straw and
it’s
just too
much
to handle, so you
go
for
it.”
“And
you
don’t
see evidence of that in
Lance’s
or
Danny’s
lives?”
He shook his head. “But all sorts of people commit suicide.
There’s
no profile. Think about the difference between Hitler and Hemingway or Judas and Juliet and yet they all did
it.”
“You
know so
much,”
Merrill said, “why you so unsuccessful at it?”
“What I do is about luck, not skill. Everything to do with chance. The universe is such a random place, I . . . my attempts contain the possibility for intervention. I let fate decide.”
“
Sheeit
,” Merrill said.
“You
really think fate wants your
sorry
ass around?”
“T
he
killer’s
calling card
didn’t
make you think you should tell me about your little club?”
I’d
found Lance Phillips in line at the barbershop and called him
over away
from the other inmates waiting for a bad buzz cut.
“Huh?” Lance said.
He looked around
constantly,
scanning the compound. He was obviously nervous, distracted, scared.
It was a brilliant, beautiful September
day,
and the compound was abuzz, inmates swarming about like bees at the height of tupelo season.
“I felt it in
my pocket,”
he said.
“Tried
to look at it, but
couldn’t
make it out. I was nearly unconscious.”
“It was a playing card.”
“Oh.”
“From the cold-case deck. Had a missing person on
it.”
All around
us,
inmates were moving—in and out of dorms, in and out of canteen lines, in and out of the barbershop. A steady stream of them flowed toward the center gate and a steady stream flowed back. Cigarettes were being rolled, trash was being talked, deals were being made, and everywhere seen and unseen, intentional and not, threats, slights, disses were being both issued and noted.
“Miguel what’s-his-name you mentioned?”
“Morales.
Yeah.
What’s
your connection with him?”
“None. I mean, that I know
of.
I’ve never—”
“Card was a king of hearts. That mean anything to you?”
He shook his head. “Should it?
You
know who tried to kill me?”
“Forget about the cold-case deck for a
minute,”
I said. “In a regular deck the king of hearts is also known as—”
“Oh fuck
me,”
he said, his eyes growing wide and even more fearful.
“You
think this has something to do with the Suicide Kings?”
“Whatta you think?”
“But why not put a suicide king in
my
pocket? Why the one with Miguel Morales?”
“Maybe
that’s
all he had at the
time,”
I said. “He put a regular suicide king in
Danny’s
pocket.”
He looked down and frowned, his eyes busy blinking back tears, but only for a moment, then he was back to scanning the passing inmates, looking
over
his shoulder.
“They tell you I found him?”
I shook my head. Not telling me
much
of
anything.
“I got out of Medical very late. He was already in my bunk asleep. He got in it a lot. I’ve got a thicker roll, more comfortable—guys always trying to sleep in my rack, but Danny just always felt safer up there. I
didn’t
mind. I left him in it—just got in
his.
Did that get him killed? That would be . . . I
don’t
know,
ironic. Man
that’s
. . . I
didn’t
sleep well. Got up first and found him. Still
can’t
believe
it.”
I nodded. “He was a Suicide King too?”
He nodded.
“Poor
Danny.
The Kings are
active
now? I
haven’t
even thought about it in . . . a long
time.”
“Why’d
you guys do it in the first place?” I said.
He
shrugged.
“Why
give
other inmates a motive to kill you?” I asked. “Why—”
“We’re
not those kind of
inmates,”
he said.
“We
were all
nerds,
not thugs. The only person any of us ever thought about hurting was
ourselves.
It was just something to
do.
We
were bored. Brent said
it’d
be cool.”
“You
don’t
think nerds kill for money?”
“Not
us,
I’m telling you, but that was part of the fun. It was exciting—for a while, then it became boring like everything else around here and we let the whole thing drop—including the
policies.
Now
there’s
no motivation.”
I
didn’t
say anything, just thought about what he had said. If the policies were no longer in effect there would be no money
motive.
“I
can’t
believe you figured out the
killer’s
message about suicide kings from the Miguel Morales cold-case card,” he said.
“If I’m right.”
“I’m impressed, Chaplain. And I’m not easily impressed.
Wow.
You
live
up to the
hype.”
As we talked, nearly every inmate who passed us strained to hear what we were saying or asked me for something. It happened everywhere I went—Chaplain, when you gonna hook me up with a phone call? Chaplain, I need to come see you? Chaplain, help a brother out with some extra greeting cards? Chaplain, I need some extra time in the library? Chaplain, I need to come practice
my
music.
Chaplain, Chaplain, Chaplain.
“Does the fact that the
killer’s
leaving suicide kings let you know who it is?”
He shook his head.
“You
think
it’s
one of the club?”
“Who else?”
“But why? That was so long ago. Nothing to gain.”
“Not
necessarily.”
“I guarantee the policies
have
lapsed. And if the others are like me, they’ll think you
can’t
collect if
it’s
suicide.”
“Which might be why
he’s
leaving the cards—let us know
it’s
not.”
“Then
he’s
risking getting caught.”
“Probably figures
he’s
too smart for that.”
“Against
you?
He’d
be
crazy.
I still
can’t
get
over
how you—”
“Anybody
outside the club know about it? Anybody
have
anything against the members?”
He started to shake his head, then stopped. “There was one guy who went through with it back then . . . Ralph
Meeks.
Think someone could be retaliating for him? Club
didn’t
kill him,
didn’t
do anything, but someone might blame
us.”
“Worth
looking
into.”
“How long you think I’ll last out here?” he asked. “I can get you put in Protective Management or Confinement.”
“As
vulnerable as I am out here, I think
it’s
safer than being locked in a cell. I know you’ll figure out who the killer
is.
Just do it before he kills me and not
after,
okay?”
I
was walking back to the upper compound with a list of all the members of the Suicide Kings when I ran into Hahn.
“Any
thoughts on why inmates
would
form
a suicide club and put each other in their wills and make each other the beneficiaries of their life insurance policies?
You’ve
worked
closely with these
guys.
What motivates them to do something like that?”
“Who in particular?” I told
her.
She shook her head. “Not just one
thing.
A few of them are—or were—genuinely clinically depressed.
Don’t
care about anything, can be talked into
anything.
A few of the others are so grandiose, so . . . They truly feel invincible.”
“Like Brent Allen.” She nodded.
As usual, Hahn drew the attention of the entire compound. A few of the caged animals made an attempt at
subtlety,
but most leered and sneered and stared and ogled. There were catcalls and lewd comments, though none quite loud enough for us to make out what was being said or by whom.
And as usual, I
couldn’t
help but imagine how it must make her feel. She
didn’t
react,
didn’t
respond—at least not in any overt
way
they could see—but I sensed her tensing, saw the subtle tightness in her
body,
the slight awkwardness of her gait.
We
walked past the last canteen and dorms and were less than a hundred yards from the center gate. The inmates around us thinned out, and so did the unpleasant and unwanted attention
my
young, attractive
coworker
was
receiving.
“They’re so out of touch with
reality,
they feel like superheroes or something. They
don’t
think they can die, but if they do they think they’ll transcend death, come back
somehow.
Others are looking for excitement, a rush, a high, and
don’t
care how they get it.
It’s
like playing Russian Roulette. All of them are different, but nearly all of them are self-destructive in some
way.
It’s
no different from risky behavior of any kind.”
J
amie
Lee’s
face lit up when she saw me, and in doing
so,
lit up the room. And I
couldn’t
help but smile. She was one of the most pleasant people at the institution and was quickly becoming one of my favorite
coworkers.
“Hello
handsome,”
she said.
I turned and looked
over
my shoulder to make sure she was talking to me.
“Yeah, you,”
she said.
“You
get better looking every time I see you. If I were straight . .
.”
“You’d
still be old enough to be
my
mother.”
“
What’s
your point?” she said with a wicked, bare-lipped smile.