The third decedent on her list had been the forty-year-old CEO of one of the largest real-estate development firms in the country. Married. Three children. “?‘I’m not supposed to leave a note. But you must know I’m happy to be doing this. It’ll be a pleasant journey.’?”
“Shared words with the previous one,” Moshe said, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Pleasant. Journey. In both, it’s implied they’re following instructions, or at least some kind of guidance.”
Jane quoted from the network executive: “?‘I have been told.’?” Then from the real-estate developer: “?‘I’m not supposed to…’?”
“Exactly. Was the CEO in New York, maybe in the same circles as the network executive?”
“No. Los Angeles.”
“How did he kill himself?”
“In his garage. A vintage Mercedes. Carbon monoxide poisoning. How likely is it the two notes would be so similar?”
“Odds against are astronomical. Read another.”
This note had been left by a twenty-six-year-old woman, a gifted software writer who had graduated from a job at Microsoft to an entrepreneurial partnership with the company. Unmarried. The sole support of her disabled parents. “?‘There is a spider in my brain. It talks to me.’?”
When she looked up from her notebook and met Moshe’s eyes across the table, Jane saw that he had been as chilled by those words as she had been when she’d first read them.
“Three out of four seem to hear voices,” the psychiatrist said. “But in this fourth instance, as in the others, the usual hallmarks of paranoid schizophrenia aren’t as obvious as you might at first think. In a classic case, the patient believes the menacing voices come from outside, from powerful forces that wish to persecute and deceive him. A spider in the brain…that is new to me.”
35
* * *
LATE SNOW FELL in Telluride, the Colorado night breathing softly, so that the storm had no bite, the flakes slanting at the slightest angle, an inch of ermine on the ground, Nature knitting lace on the rough bark of the conifers.
April Winchester shone the flashlight on the massive old hemlock, so tall that the beam could not travel to its uppermost reaches, which disappeared into the dark and snow. It was a tree taller than the night, reaching through the storm, all the way to the stars, a conceit that pleased her and made her smile.
When she brought the light down the trunk, she found their two names, where he had scaled away a section of bark and carved his declaration into the underlying wood. ED LOVES APRIL.
Edward, her Eddie, had always been a romantic. He had carved the same words into the trunk of a red maple in Vermont when they were both fourteen, almost sixteen years earlier.
This latest statement of profound affection had been scored into the hemlock only eleven months ago, when they bought their winter residence outside of Telluride. They were both avid skiers.
Out of season, they lived in Laguna Beach, California. Whether on the warm coast or in the San Juan Mountains, he wrote his novels, and she wrote songs, and the life they had imagined, as teenagers, unspooled with a grace exceeding their most extravagant dreams.
He’d written four novels, all memorable and significant bestsellers. She’d written more than fifty published songs, twenty-two of which, performed by various artists, had risen into the top forty, twelve into the top ten. Four had achieved the coveted number one.
She looked back at the house, a low-profile structure of native stone and reclaimed wood, its exquisite lines harmonizing with the landscape. The first-floor windows were full of warm light, but only Eddie’s study was bright on the second floor.
He was powering through the end of a difficult scene and wanted to finish before they made dinner together.
She had been preparing something for him in the kitchen, just had to get away from it for a few minutes, so she’d come out to the hemlock on a whim. She was wearing high-top trainers, not boots, a pleated white silk skirt, and a thin over-the-hips sweater. This eclectic look delighted Eddie and would bring him to bed in full readiness after dinner, but it wasn’t suitable to a winter storm.
When she had rushed out of the house, enchanted by the snow, she’d been oblivious of the cold. Now she began to shiver. When she acknowledged the chill, it took a firmer grip on her, and she began to shudder violently.
She hurried back to the house, where she pulled off the snow-caked high-tops and left them in the mudroom. In the kitchen, snow fell from her clothes and hair, melting on the reclaimed wide-plank chestnut floor. She felt that she should care about the melting snow, should wipe it up, but in fact she didn’t care.
On the drainboard by the sink was the treat she had prepared for Eddie, to ease him through the final page of the troublesome scene in his novel. On a tray were a plate containing cubes of Havarti cheese and a measure of salted-and-peppered almonds, a wineglass, and a bottle of sauvignon blanc, from which she would pour him a serving after she put everything down on his desk.
Take it to him, take it to him, take it to him….
She enjoyed doing special things like this for Eddie. He was always so appreciative.
Still casting off snow, hair dripping, she carried the tray to the back stairs. She was halfway to the second floor when she made the strangest discovery. She didn’t have the tray. She was carrying a knife. A trimming knife.
She stared at it, bewildered. She had not been at the wine while she put together the treat for him. She did have a tendency now and then to be absentminded, but not to this extent.
No cheese, no nuts, no wine. Just a trimming knife. How silly. Where had her mind wandered? Well, this would not do, would not do at all.
She returned to the kitchen to get the tray.
36
* * *
BEYOND THE KITCHEN WINDOWS, the sky over L.A. and environs was pure peacockery, fanned with iridescent blues and greens and smoky orange, a last bright challenge to the inevitable darkness coming.
The fifth decedent on Jane’s list was an attorney, thirty-six, recently appointed to a judgeship on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Unmarried. His suicide note had been found in an envelope bearing his parents’ names. He had shot himself in the head. “?‘I love you. You have never failed me. Don’t be sad. I have done this a hundred times in my dreams. It will not hurt.’?”
“This is somewhat more in the tradition of such notes,” Moshe Steinitz said. “In particular, the assurances of love, the exemption from blame. But the rest of it…I have never heard of anyone who had repetitive dreams of suicide.”
“Could dreams be programmed?” Jane asked.
“Programmed? What do you mean?”
“Say by a hypnotist, someone using drugs and subliminal suggestion? Could programmed dreams be used to somehow make the dreamer actually desire to kill himself?”
“In comic books, perhaps, or movies. Hypnotism is a better stage act than it is a form of behavioral modification or control.”
The sixth example in Jane’s notebook was the message left by Eileen Root, who, before she hanged herself, suggested that she was somehow fulfilling an obligation to an imaginary childhood friend. “?‘Sweet Sayso says he’s lonely all these years, why did Leenie stop needing him, he was always there for Leenie, now I need to be there for him.’?”
“This is the fourth of six who hears voices,” Moshe noted. “And there’s a definite schizoid quality to an imaginary friend from her childhood resurfacing in the present. Did she mention this Sayso to her husband, to anyone, in the weeks before she killed herself?”
“Apparently not.”
“How close were she and her husband?”
“Very close, I think.”
“Did he see any signs of disassociation from reality?”
“No.”
The seventh note had been written by the forty-year-old vice president of the mortgage division of one of the country’s five largest banks. “?‘I hear the call, it is ceaseless, waking and sleeping, the soft sweet whisper and the smell of roses.’?”
37
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