When a voice cries, does anybody hear? When a city bleeds, does anybody see? Twenty years in homicide, I more wonder does anybody care.

#

Somewhere between a wide-awake thought and a booze snooze, I close my eyes and roll over. I won’t sleep. I can’t sleep. The cases I’ve cracked drop the lids. The ones I haven’t neither let up nor let go. Tonight’s insomnia takes me back twenty years. It was a late night in a hard rain when four fire fighters pulled a body out from under a train. In the morgue, in a pocket, I found a suicide note claiming self-defense as the victim’s last resort to silence the voices. In a sense, I took a statement from a dead guy.

Our lab later determined the note had been composed on a Model 15 Teletype machine. Minus any evidence of depression or stress prior to the deceased taking his life, no eye-witnesses, and suicide notes typically handwritten, I concluded a suspicious death. The open case has haunted me ever since.

Twenty years later, I’m assigned to our attempted suicide section. It happens. They jump off a bridge and live, overdose and recover, pull the trigger and miss, or in some of the more telling instances—the necktie, the clothesline, or the zip cord snaps before the spine does.

#

Investigating a suicide attempt, my partner and I proceed to a six-flat on the city’s south side. A climb to the third floor reveals the usual cigarette butts, wine bottles, and hypodermic needles along the way. The location, the victim’s apartment, is nondescript and orderly. The circumstances, reminiscent of a previous case all too familiar, involves another train jumper. There are no eye-witnesses and a death note stuffed in a pocket was again composed on a Model 15 Teletype. If nothing else, I’m at least encouraged that a hot clue might now crack a cold case.

Across the hall, I knock twice and announce, “Police!” When three deadbolts unload and a crack of daylight breaks between an apartment door and a steel jam, I flash my badge across two half-inch security cables. After the expected hesitancy two plain-clothes detectives imply, the rasp of a smoker’s voice croaks, “Whaddya want?”

“Excuse us ma’am. I’m Lieutenant Thalia Marino and this is Sergeant Grady Turner. We’re homicide detectives investigating the attempted suicide of your neighbor, Mister Freudenberger.”

“So, whaddya want?”

“We’d like to ask you some questions. You know, anything you might provide to establish probable cause—hopeless, lonely, depressed.”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

In time, an elderly woman slides the cables away to pull the door open. Still in a bathrobe at three in the afternoon, her powdered face—comparable to a Halloween makeover gone horribly well, leads me to believe she might proclaim trick-or-treat.

“May we step inside?”

Her eyes drift away with the request before she tilts her head toward an unmade Murphy bed. Instead, we pull a pair of broken chairs out from under a matching table. The woman prefers the bed, perches on an edge, and lights a cigarette.

A scarecrow figure I’d guess about mid-seventies, her sunken, thin, and not particularly welcoming face wears a pair of bulging cheekbones below a perpetual squint. Atop her forehead a mop of flossy white hangs from a collision of runaway highlights and a worse haircut. Short and slight, from her skeletal frame her sandaled feet dangle at least a foot off the floor, and around her neck a white cotton cord loops through an apartment key indicative to a number of times she’d inadvertently locked herself out.

The place reeks of stale smoke and spilled beer. A sink full of dishes and an unflushed toilet further add to the ambience. In the kitchen, a pile of accumulated laundry rises above a no less determined mountain of bagged garbage. Per procedure, I open a notebook to a timeline of the crime, or what I refer to as the beginning of the end—of an almost suicide. “May I please have your full name and association to Mister Freudenberger.”

The woman leans into her words and rags, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Grady’s clicking tongue forewarns his reply. “What’s on your tax returns and what’s your relationship to the suspect?”

“Oh, so now he’s a criminal.”

 I explain, “An attempted suicide is a crime. We investigate crimes, and our hope is that Mister Freudenberger gets the intervention he needs so we won’t have to trouble you again.”

She curls a lip after an awkward pause, then volunteers, “Agnes Francine Rummel, and I gots no associations with your suspect. I stay outta his way, and he better stay outta mine.”

“Had he ever appeared anxious, withdrawn, or irritable?” Grady asked the obvious.

“Yeah. But he’s kinda schizo, you know.”

“Please explain.”

“He forgets where he is, where he’s going. He leaves his door open, the water running, the gas on. He talks to himself—or the voices, I suppose. Who knows?”

Grady glances my way before drilling deeper, “Could we say the two of you were friends?”

“Hell NO!”

“Please explain.”

“He’s always whining `bout me make’n too much noise. The radio, the television. Even if I’m on the phone. We didn’t get along.”

“Hmm, had he ever mentioned how he might take his life?”

“Never. Though, if he had, I’da told him just put a gun to a temple and keep pulling the trigger till the headache goes away.”

“Was he seeing a doctor or on medication for depression?” Grady stayed with the routine.

“Dunno.”

“Was he recently giving things away, drinking heavily, or exhibiting mood swings?”

“Dunno.”

Getting nothing and going nowhere, I close my notebook. “Miz Rummel, with your consent, we’d like to look around. So-doing, we might find something that’ll jog your memory.”

“Jog it for what? Whaddya looking for?”

“We don’t know till we find it,” Grady echoes the standard reply.

“You ain’t gonna find nuttin.”

Knowing exactly what I’m looking for, I bird-dog anything typed, written, or scribbled. When I reach the bottom of a wastebasket, Grady emerges from the bedroom. “Nothing.” I give him a nod and request he search the bagged garbage. “Miz Rummel, where were you at the time of Mister Freudenberger’s almost suicide?”

She twice repeats the question. “I-I stepped out for a paper and some smokes.”

I look around and don’t see any newspapers. “Grady?”

“Yeah.”

“You find any newspapers?”

“Not yet.”

“Miz Rummel, as it was raining at the time did you get wet?”

She again repeats the question. “I don’t recall.”

“Have you an umbrella?”

“Why?”

“Well, since it was just last night and it’s a sauna in here, it might still be wet.” She walks away shaking her head and returns with a foldaway umbrella. When I open the canopy, the panels feel damp to the touch.

“So, now you’re thinking I’m hiding something?”

“Miz Rummel, I’m always thinking.”

When she returned to the edge of the bed, she put a hand to her chin and asked the void between us, “I wonder why he did it?”

Seizing an opportunity, I prime her to where she’s headed. “Maybe he didn’t do it?”

Her voice raises to a screech. “What are you saying?”

“What if he was pushed?” The question hit her hard enough that she slipped off the bed.

“Didn’t he leave a suicide note?”

“Not if he was pushed.”

“Well, did he leave a note or not?”

I let that line out with the bait, and didn’t answer it. “As a majority of suicides are impulsive, there’s seldom enough time to leave anything behind. Hence, unless a victim lives and tells we rarely know.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“What question?”

“You know what I mean.”

I knew exactly what she meant, but left her in the dark.

“You think he’ll live?”

I study her reaction with, “Not a doctor, I can’t say.”

She folded and unfolded her arms as her eyes roamed the room. “He’ll just try it again.”

“What if he didn’t try it the first time?” When her hands clasp one over the other, I

fan the embers. “I think he’ll come around, start talking, and we’ll find something.”

A bead of sweat glistens above her upper lip as she swallows, looks away, and begins rubbing an arm. I call these inner fears revealed “tells” and ever hopeful they connect the next dot to the next clue.

“No newspapers,” Grady informs me.

The woman, eyes fixed on my partner, lets a held breath go.

“Miz Rummel, where did you purchase the cigarettes you bought last night?”

She repeats my question before replying, “The usual place, Tipsy’s Tap.”

“And what brand, please?”

She shows me the pack. “Grady, please make a call. Get anybody who answers at Tipsy’s to verify they sell Chesterfield Kings.”

When Grady asks if he may use her phone, she freezes, puts a finger to a lip, then nods.

“What time was this Miz Rummel?”

She hesitated to say, “Oh, I dunno. The ten o’clock news just came on, so I’d have to say shortly after ten.”

“Miz Rummel, would there be anybody about this time who could support your presence when you bought these cigarettes at Tipsy’s?”

“I was in and out.”

“Nobody behind the bar?”

“They have a machine.”

When Grady hung up the phone, he turned to me then the woman. “Because of the storm last night, Tipsy’s lost power at six and were closed by seven.”

The woman’s head flung back in a dramatic effort to recall, “They were cleaning up. The door was unlocked, so I slipped in, got what I came for, and was gone before anyone saw me.”

Grady’s lower lip protruded into a rather dubious yet conceivable explanation.

“Miz Rummel, when I asked earlier where you were at the time of Mister Freudenberger’s almost suicide, you have now confirmed within fifteen minutes of when a brakeman said they were passing the Havard Street platform—otherwise known as the scene of the crime.”

“Just a coincidence?” Grady surmised.

As I studied her expression, the woman showed no emotion, neither a quivering lip nor even a quick-grab breath. Lifeless and likely heartless, she could have been made of stone.

“Miz Rummel, I’d also like to inform you of a remarkably similar case twenty years ago. At that time, I found a death note on an apparent suicide victim claiming self-defense from his voices.” To my surprise, she reacted with no surprise. “As in the case of Mister Freudenberger, the victim had an unfortunate meeting with a moving train, and in both cases the death notes were composed on a Model 15 Teletype machine.”

“So, you did find a note,” she nodded her words.

“Nevertheless,” Grady followed my lead, “have you ever had access to one of these Teletype machines?”

The woman blinked twice, then mulled the question in an apparent delay to think of something to say. “The-the Rock Island had them.”

“And you worked there?” Grady kept at her.

“I’m retired. When the railroad went under, I went with it.”

“Have you kept in contact with any of your former coworkers since your retirement?” he inquired.

I observed she flinched with the question, then followed it by the expected delay before she could not deny, “There’s a few of us still around.”

“Around where?”

“What?”

“Your associates that are still around. We need to question these coworkers.”

“It’s procedure,” I offered.

#

While it was a good day, it wasn’t a great day. Finding enough circumstantial and speculative evidence to put a jury to sleep, we needed something substantial, something convincing. As I caught a glimpse of Grady rocking back on his heels, I knew he knew what I knew. When I nodded, he pulled a notebook from the inside of his coat. As he then thumbed the pages, I could almost hear the creak of the spring as he set our last trap.

“When your janitor, Mister Fletcher—incidentally now a character witness—let Lieutenant Marino and me into Mister Freudenberger’s apartment, the lieutenant noticed the name on your door. Upon closer inspection, she recognized the slightly askew printing wore a specific characteristic. All the legs of all the letters were bowed—similar to the letters produced on a Model 15 Teletype.”

As Grady let that settle, her face tightened. “So what?”

“So, your janitor told us you put the name up only a week ago. He helped you center the frame and drill the hole. And as this name installation directly preceded Mister Freudenberger’s attempted suicide, to which we have a death note composed on a Model 15 Teletype machine, this in of itself coincides with the timeline of the crime.”

In the presence of the moment and more alert than even we expected, the woman grew erect, looked about the room, and snapped, “Whatever do you mean?”

Grady closed his notebook. “The letters on your door are unique to a particular typeface found only on a Model 15 Teletype machine. A curious fluke, wouldn’t you say?” 

Her eyes fell away with the question, and after a long lull evolved to a longer wait, she again challenged, “So what?”

Grady shook his head. “So, who typed the name on your door, and more specifically where?”

When her eyes met mine, I sucked a breath and divulged, “Miz Rummel, we need the names of these coworkers, and if nothing comes of it, we’re sorry we bothered you.”

“And if something does?” she bit her words.

My brows raised with the possibility, “Then that might make you a prime suspect for the attempted murder in the first-degree of your neighbor, Mister Freudenberger.” I let that simmer awhile before offering, “I’m sorry.”

The woman lights another cigarette, crumples the empty pack, and lets it fall to the floor. Already a prisoner of her predicament, I hold no reservations that she’ll adjust from where she is to where she’s headed.

In time, when the butt goes out and the smoke clears, she slides off the bed and whispers, “I’ll get my coat.”

When I propose we wait in the hall, she doesn’t answer. Instead, she disappears into the bedroom. A minute later, a sharp crack resonates from the room followed by a heavy thud. We rush in—too late.

#

The next week, before a felony review board, I closed the case. In so-doing, I recounted to a special prosecutor how there were three victims as a result of the crimes. Unmoved, he heard not a word. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t care.

#

Grady and I are still banging on doors, interviewing witnesses, and chasing clues. If it was just a job, we wouldn’t do it. While I’d describe homicide as the challenge of finding and fitting that last piece to a puzzle, the reward neither relieves the pain nor restores the loss. Our best hope is that the next time we rush in—we won’t be too late.

END