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.
“Did you have any idea?” I asked quietly. “Did either of you?”
“Of course not,” she said sadly. “No one knew.”
More silence and then she made her last plea.
“Think about it, John. It’s better to heal in private.”
“Like with Sarah?”
“What do you mean?”
“You never talked about it. . . you never talked to me.”
“I can’t talk about that now.”
“You never can. It’s only been twenty years.”
“Don’t be sarcastic about something like that.”
“I’m sorry. Look, I’m not trying to be like this.”
“Just think about what I asked you.”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
She hung up as angry with me as I was with her. It bothered me that she didn’t want me to write about Sean. It was almost as if she was still protecting and favoring him. He was gone. I was still here.
I straightened up in my seat so I could look over the sound partitions of the pod my desk was in. I could see the newsroom was filling up now. Glenn was out of his office and at the city desk talking with the morning editor about the coverage plan for the abortion-doctor shooting. I slumped back down in my chair so they wouldn’t see me and get the idea of assigning me to rewrite. I was always dodging rewrite. They’d send out a bunch of reporters to a crime scene or disaster and these people would call their info back to me. I then had to write up the story on deadline and decide which names went on the byline. It was the newspaper business at its most fast and furious, but I was burned out by it. I just wanted to write my stories about murder and be left alone.
I almost took the printout up to the cafeteria so I’d be out of sight but decided to take my chances. I went back to reading. The most impressive piece had run in the New York Times five months earlier. No surprise there. The Times was the Holy Grail of journalism. The best. I started reading the piece and then decided to put it down and save it for last. After I had scanned and read through the rest of the material, I went up for another cup of coffee, then started to reread the Times article, taking my time with it.
The news peg was the seemingly unrelated suicides of three of New York’s finest within a six-week period. The victims didn’t know each other but all succumbed to the police blues, as it was called in the article. Two with their guns at home; one hanged himself in a heroin shooting gallery while six stoned hypes watched in dazed horror. The article reported at length on the ongoing police suicide study being conducted jointly by the FBI’s Behavioral Science Services in Quantico, Virginia, and the Law Enforcement Foundation. The article quoted the foundation’s director, Nathan Ford, and I wrote the name down in my notebook before going on. Ford said the project had studied every reported police suicide in the last five years looking for similarities in causes. He said the bottom line was that it was impossible to determine who might be susceptible to the police blues. But once diagnosed, it could be properly treated if a suffering officer sought help. Ford said the goal of the project was to build a database that could be translated into a protocol that would help police managers spot officers with the police blues before it was too late.
The Times article included a sidebar story about a year-old Chicago case where the officer had come forward but still was not saved. As I read, my stomach tightened. The article said Chicago police detective John Brooks had begun therapy sessions with a psychiatrist after a particular homicide case he was assigned to began bothering him. The case was the kidnapping and murder of a twelve-year-old boy named Bobby Smathers. The boy was missing for two days before his remains were found in a snowbank near the Lincoln Park Zoo. He had been strangled. Eight of his fingers were missing.
An autopsy determined that the fingers had been severed before his death. That, and not being able to identify and catch the killer, apparently was too much for Brooks to take.
Mr. Brooks, a highly regarded investigator, took the death of the precocious, brown-eyed boy unusually hard.
After supervisors and colleagues became aware that it was affecting his work, he took a four-week leave and began intensive therapy sessions with Dr. Ronald Cantor, whom he was referred to by a Chicago Police Department psychologist.
At the start of these sessions, according to Dr. Cantor, Brooks openly spoke of his suicidal feelings and said he was haunted by dreams of the young boy screaming in agony.
After twenty therapy sessions over a four-week period, Dr. Cantor approved of the detective’s return to his assignment in the homicide unit. Mr. Brooks by all accounts functioned properly and continued to handle and solve several new homicide cases. He told friends that his nightmares were gone. Known as “Jumpin’ John” because of his frenetic, go get’em attitude, Mr. Brooks even continued his ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of the killer of Bobby Smathers.