Chapter One

The Psychological Autopsy

Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness. You won't get there so quick, not by natural means. You buy your ticket and you climb on board. That ticket costs everything you have. But it's just a one-way. This train takes you into the night, and leaves you there. It's the night train.

Now I feel that someone is inside of me, like an intruder, her flashlight playing. Jennifer Rockwell is inside of me, trying to reveal what I dont want to see.

Suicide is a mind-body problem that ends violently and without any winner.

I've got to slow this shit down. I've got to slow it all down.

What I'm doing here, with my ballpoint, my tape recorder, and my PC-its the same as what Paulie No was doing in the ME's office, with his clamp, his electric saw, his trayfull of knives. Only we call it the psychological autopsy.

I can do this. I am trained to do this.

Recall:

For a time, though only a short time, and only once to my face, they used to call me "Suicide Mike." This was thought to be too offensive, even for downtown, and they soon abandoned it. Offensive not to the poor bastards found slumped in carseats in sealed garages, or half submerged in crimson bathtubs. Offensive to me: It meant I was fool enough to take any bum call. Because a suicide didn't do a damn thing for your solve rate or your overtime. On the midnights the phone would ring and Mac or O'Boye would be pouting over the cupped receiver and saying, How about you handle this one, Mike? Its an s.d. and I need dough for my mother's operation. A suspicious death-not the murder he craves. For little-boy-lost here also believes that suicides