I Like Cops, Part II: Melts in your mouth...

I really hate suicide.

I expect most people do.

It's not a particularly uncommon sentiment.

I don't imagine you'll find many folks who think that immediate and total self-destruction is a really GOOD idea. I know that in some cultures and at certain points in history, suicide was considered an honorable course of action... especially if one had been defeated in battle or had dishonored their family/clan/sect in some fashion... whatever. But, as a medical examiner, I have never encountered a scene in which the deceased person was found hunched over an altar in full Samurai garb with a katana jammed through their gullet. Nor have I ever been on a call in which a perpetrator was caught with a garrison of imprisoned adversaries in his basement- all of whom died after chewing mortal wounds into their wrists rather than face the shame of capture. Therefore, I must maintain that these days, there aren't a lot of valid reasons for suicide.

That said, I suppose my rationale for hating suicide isn't exactly typical. I mean, sure... I appreciate the thought that suicide tears a hole in the metaphysical cohesion of the human race and all that happy-horse-shit. But more than anything, I hate that suicide takes one person's problems, and makes them EVERYONE'S problems. The kind of devastation that a suicide leaves behind, in my opinion, is never justified. I don't care how unhappy the person was. Suicide is mean... REALLY mean. And judging by my professional experience, suicide and murder are neck and neck in terms of which act causes a more tumultuous aftermath. Death is messy and heart-breaking, even under the most natural circumstances. Suicide takes all of the difficulties that we, as human beings, have with death.... mixes them with napalm and sprays them all over anyone unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity. Suicide is Death, weaponized.

THAT said-

I will admit that there have been a couple of situations in which I was compelled to concede that suicide was probably the best option for all parties involved... logically speaking. I remember one instance in which a guy with a raging case of throat cancer decided to end his life in his back-yard gazebo with a hunting rifle. His larynx had been removed so he couldn't speak, nor could he chew or swallow his food. There was no hope that he would ever be able to engage in either of these activities again. He had raw, seeping, open wounds all over his neck and face which were, no doubt, unbelievably painful. He was no longer able to lie down, but had to sleep in a reclining chair in his living room. The list of suffering went on. The fact was: throat cancer was (and is) a vicious beast of a pathology. The guy left behind a note that basically stated: “Look, I'm in tons of pain... all the time. I can't do this anymore.”

I looked around they guy's living room, which had essentially been converted into a make-shift hospital. I looked over his body, noting all of the physical markers that testified to his misery. And after doing so, I pretty much concluded that this poor dude had every right to end his own life. Furthermore his family, though sad, gave every indication that they agreed with me... even though none of us said as much out loud. He was even considerate enough to do the deed outside where there wouldn't be too much of a mess- which may sound calloused, but just think about it. Imagine trying to get over a loved one's suicide. Now imagine trying to get over a loved one's suicide when their blood is splattered all over the carpet... It makes a difference.

The other suicide in which I had to admit that it wasn't such a bad idea, well, it was something along the same vein. It happened back when I was a paramedic and we had been called to retrieve a woman who had been found in her home at an assisted living facility for the elderly and infirm. She had been found unconscious on her floor after having taken pretty much every medication she could find... and in case you weren't aware of this little fact regarding elderly people... they tend to have LOTS of pills around. We already had her loaded onto the stretcher when I spotted the suicide note. It came in the form of monogrammed stationary in a lovely shade of textured, egg-shell white. The handwriting was a sweeping, graceful script, heralding back to a time when the written word was more than a means of communication... it was an art. Moreover, the note itself read less like your typical “Goodbye cruel world!” drivel, and more like our girl was a veteran socialite who was graciously excusing herself from the season's most esteemed formal ball.

In essence she stated:

“My lovelies, I've had a marvelous time. Thank you so much for your hospitality, but it's late, I'm terribly exhausted and I really must be going. Ta-ta!”

Of course that's not an exact quote, but that was kind of how her suicide note felt. And given it was so eloquently stated, I was inspired to give her leave to exit with all the dignity and grace she commanded. Ta-ta indeed, I thought to myself as (despite our earnest efforts) she continued to deteriorate into cardiac and respiratory arrest while enroute to the hospital. You were truly a lady in every sense of the word... Daahhh-ling.

No other suicides I've investigated has ever been so... clean. And recently, I had one of the more... ambiguous suicide deaths, the kind that really makes me uncomfortable. But I wasn't uncomfortable about the death nearly so much as I was uncomfortable with my own reaction to it. While the throat cancer fellow and the wonderfully polite woman really seemed to be doing themselves a favor... it could be argued that this guy really did the whole human race a favor.

I know, I know. I'm a terrible person for suggesting such a thing. But every now and then I have to admit I run across folks who I'm really not too sorry to see removed from the planet. And the only people who seem to understand this sentiment, are the police. Cops are always on hand to witness the chaos with me and as a result they're are familiar with the ambiguous nature of “tragedy”. This is another reason why I like cops, because they get it. They're exposed to many of the same twisted depravities that I am exposed to... They see how death can be a blessing, or a necessity... or even a joke. And cops always have to deal with the suicides... right along with me.

So, in honor of their work, sacrifice and humor-

*****                                         I Like Cops, Part II:                                            **************

Melts in Your Mouth... Not on the Side of the Highway at 3 a.m.

The call came in innocuously enough. It was dispatched as a gun-shot suicide and I went... because I have to. 

 

I found myself standing over the inert corpse of a young man who had decided to end it all by shooting himself in the chest. It was a little unusual due to the fact that generally, gun-shot suicides usually shoot themselves in the head.

Recently though, this has not been the case.

While it is true that men are more likely than women to commit suicide via self-inflicted gun-shot wound, more and more often I see guys who opt to leave their heads and faces intact.

This guy was one such character.

I'm not sure if he took it to the chest because he wanted to look good in the event of an open casket. If that was the case he probably should have planned for some way to be found before a week had passed between his death and the discovery of his body... a week in a hot, humid environment. I don't mind “decomps” (decomposed bodies) so much anymore in an aesthetic sense, but I DO mind decomps when they're found in ridiculously inaccessible locations. This guy had decided to close himself up in the tiny closet of his back bedroom before pulling the trigger... leaving us with not only the unimaginably miserable task of investigating his stinky suicide, but ALSO leaving us with the dilemma of how to get his oozing remains out of his apartment. On the upside, his family wasn't actually THERE to witness the mess. He had been discovered by his girlfriend who came to check on him after he never showed up for his weekly, court appointed anger-management classes.

I clearly remember my own double-take when I heard this information, and I recalled passing the forlorn, mousy-looking girl as I got out of my truck and followed the cops into the residence. She had all but cowered in the hallway as she waited outside, clutching the decedent's ecstatic little dog to her chest as we surveyed the scene and tried to make heads or tails of what had happened with this guy. The dog was clearly having the time of his life, wiggling happily as he tried to climb out of the girl's arm and get a really good whiff of everyone who passed him. She, on the other hand, was staring at the floor, trying unsuccessfully to angle herself in such a way so that no one would see the shiner she was sporting: a purple halo around her left eye. We all saw it.

“That was his girl-friend?” I asked the officer who was briefing me on the situation.

“Yeah, she came in and when she smelled the place, she freaked out and called 911. I guess she's a nurse or something... anyway, she recognized the smell. She didn't actually see him.”

“I don't know... maybe she shot him herself and left him here to marinate for a few days before 'finding' him. Did you see that black eye of hers...” all this as I pressed on the guy's chest, causing a small volcano of putrid fluid to bubble up in the chest wound.

The cop kept talking, nervously tugging on her collar and shifting her weight from side to side. She and the other police officers at the scene were clearly rattled, but I opted NOT to give them any shit about it. One REALLY has to be exposed to a LOT of decomposing bodies before being rendered immune to their... unpleasantness. For starters, their odor is truly, indescribably rank... I mean eye-watering, gut-churning, lunch-in-your-throat gross. Secondly, they're visually disconcerting in that, after enough time passes, they hardly even look human anymore. These particular officers could hardly stand to glance at our dead guy. And it probably didn't help calm their nerves at all when I mentioned that his arms might fall off if we tried to drag him out of the closet by his limbs. After that gem, everyone had retreated back into the kitchen and did their best to look very small and extremely busy when I called for help with moving the body. But the one, female cop had bravely stepped forward into the the mouth of madness... er... closet of madness and stood as my assistant, babbling away, as I went about my grisly business.

“Well” she said as she locked eyes on the far wall, determined to avoid actually watching me work, “We ran a criminal history, it looks like this guy has a couple of domestics with the girl-friend out front. He's also a known meth-dealer... Looks like the mother of his kid has a restraining order against him... along with the mother of his OTHER kid- which actually hasn't been born yet...”

The officer went on as I gave the guy's pockets a pat-down... thereby locating his cell phone, which had inadvertently been glued into the back pocket of his jeans by all the dried blood. I handed the slimy device to the officer who turned it on and began scrolling through text-messages- a standard practice in suicides because text messages have become the most common means by which people send their farewells to friends and family. This guy was no exception. The barrage of text messages we found on the phone indicated that the pulverized girlfriend out front had actually had enough of getting the shit kicked out of her. She had broken up with our dead guy.... an act for which she kept apologizing... again and again.

“I'm sorry!” Her text message read, “I just can't do this anymore- please don't be angry with me!”

“Whatevs, biotch!” He had texted back, “You're a stupid cunt and I'm gonna make sure you don't get invited to my funeral!”

(One should note that while sharing this tender goodbye with his now-ex-girl-friend, he was intermittently sexting some OTHER girl who apparently hadn't yet caught on to the fact that this ass-hole was an abusive, two-timing douche.)

The officer and I finished up in the closet and emerged to talk to the girlfriend. She was sobbing uncontrollably by that point and, in between gingerly wiping tears away from her bruised and swollen eye, kept wailing:

“It was MY fault! He did this because of ME!”

I've dealt with battered women before, and I know better than to try to tell them anything they aren't ready to hear. When I was a paramedic I had to transport a woman to the hospital who had been forcibly held down by her boyfriend who had then turned a clothing iron on it's highest setting and proceeded to “brand” her 6 or 7 times with the scorching surface.

“I just LOVE him SO MUCH”, she had wailed, hanging over the edge of the stretcher like a rag doll. We had no choice to transport her in that position because the most severe of the burns had been centrally inflicted, directly on her buttocks. Thus, the mere act of sitting resulted in excruciating pain. “I don't know what I'd do without him!” she howled.

I resisted the urge to tell her that, for starters, without him she might be able to actually sit down.

Similarly, I resisted the urge to tell this, latest, girl that her boyfriend had clearly done this because he wanted to and, quite frankly, he probably did her a huge favor by bowing out of her life... and his own for that matter. I also resisted the urge to tell her that, knowing what I know about the human race, she wouldn't have too much trouble finding another ass-hole who would be happy to treat her like dirt as well... if it's what she really wanted.

As I said my farewells to the girlfriend (who ended up keeping the guy's dog- YAY happy ending!) I turned back to the apartment and my stalwart, female officer was now helping the funeral home load our stiff onto their cot. She rejoined me in the kitchen as the decedent was rolled out and we gave the apartment one last look for anything of consequence that we may have missed.

We picked up a few more bongs, an ample supply of marijuana, a rather large baggie containing what I can only assume was cocaine, a couple of syringes and a few sets of hand-cuffs. I was just packing up my supplies in the kitchen when I spotted it.

“Oh, MAN! Look!” I called to the officer.

Her eyes followed my gesture to where I was pointing. In the corner of the kitchen counter, was a large jar of fun-size M&M packs... you know... the kind people give to kids for Halloween.

The officer groaned.

“Oh my GOD, I am SOOOOO hungry...” she wailed.

“Ugh... me too” I agreed. This call had dropped at 3pm and it was now inching toward 7. Obviously, neither of us had eaten, and now that the rotting corpse had vacated the premises, our appetites had returned with all the vengeance of a wrathful spirit who liked to beat his girlfriend and wanted his dog back.

The officer glanced at the jar, then glanced back at me.

“Soooo... I'm allergic to chocolate...” she began, “but if those M&M's were never there... I certainly wouldn't miss them- these things escape our attention all the time.”

“Oh, jeez, no... I COULDN'T eat his M&M's.” I protested. “I have NEVER taken anything from a scene for my own keeping... that's just something you DON'T do...”

And I meant it... to this day I never ate a single one of those M&M's.

Suicides are like buses, in that you can expect them to come along with some degree of regularity. And it wasn't too long later, I found myself standing on the side of a rural highway at 1:30 in the morning, getting another briefing on another suicide... a briefing that began with a grinning officer walking up to me as I blearily tumbled out of my truck and into the confused, dancing web of spinning police lights.

“Hope you're up for a hike!” the sergeant hollered over the roar of a passing semi-truck.

As it turned out, this dead guy had hanged himself from a tree... a tree which stood no less than 3/4 of a mile from the road, walled in behind long acres of 8-foot tall blackberry bushes... At least I think they were blackberries. With all the flashing strobe lights from the emergency vehicles, the foliage looked like a grove of glittering disco-balls.

Growing up in Arizona, I never really learned an appreciation for plants with thorns. In the high desert no greenery had a chance to grow large enough to be threatening in any way. As a child, I remember hearing the story of “Sleeping Beauty” and how her castle was surrounded by brambles so thick that no one could find a way through them. I was completely incredulous at the time. How could such a thing exist... brambles so thick no one could find a way through them! Impossible!

or so I thought...

“I'm gonna take you through, okay?” another officer called to me as he raised a machete (where the hell did he get a machete) over his head and commenced hacking his way through the tangle.

I stepped in behind the officer and was quickly engulfed in the thicket... as well as engulfed in astonishment. I could barely move 6 inches forward without snagging my clothes, my bag, my hair on a million inch-long thorns that seemed to eagerly lean forward to stab me. The otherwise short hike began to feel more like we were trying to swim through an ocean of rusty fish hooks. The path that the officers had already cut prior to my arrival had been swallowed up by the darkness and the going was slow. Whereas a brisk pace would have gotten us to the site of the suicide in less than 10 minutes, we were wrestling with nature for no less than an hour before my escort and I burst through the last of the blackberries and found ourselves standing on a sharp slope which dumped out in a creek bed 15 feet below. Our arrival won us an enthusiastic round of applause from the group of deputies who had been standing by at the scene, waiting for someone with some form of authority to tell them they could go home.

"Hey guys!" I called to them as I scrambled across the shifting dirt to join the 4 of them where they stood, crowded on a small patch of weeds- perhaps the only level ground in the immediate area (and the only place where one could avoid slipping down the embankment into the darkness) "So," I said, glancing around me, "... where's our guy?"

They pointed upwards.

"Damn," I whistled "He's really up there, isn't he?"

... and he was. It's another misconception that suicidal people hang themselves from great heights and are found dangling above the earth like an old-fashioned lynching. I would estimate that as few as 5% of suicidal hangings are actual "full-suspensions". Usually people misjudge the amount of give in their ligature, they mis-gauge the height, they underestimate how far their neck can actually stretch- and they end up with their feet resting on the ground- sometimes they even end up on their knees.

Not this guy.

This guy had climbed up into this tree as high as his own weight allowed. He then looped a piece of twine around his throat a few times and flung himself off the down-hill side of the tree. The end effect being that he was no less than 15 feet off the sloped ground. Getting him down was going to be a serious chore.

"Well... shit." I said frankly, staring up at our incredibly inconvenient situation.

The deputies all tittered like a gaggle of kindergarteners. I blinked at them in surprise for a second, then dimly recalled some of the information the sergeant had offered prior to my adventure into the black-berry wilds:

The dead guy's family had suspected he was depressed and contemplating suicide, and this general area was something of a hang-out (tee-hee) for him when he was low. When the guy didn't come home from work, the family had come out here looking for him. Upon finding his car with the suicide note taped to the dashboard, they called 911 and the search had commenced. Almost all of these deputies had been clamoring, tearing and hacking their way though the foliage for no less than 5 hours before they had finally located the suspended corpse.

Now, in the dead (tee-hee) of night and dizzy from dehydration and hunger, the sheriff's deputies were all haggard, torn, bleeding and deliriously jubilant that the whole ordeal was nearing it's end.

(I've often said that when I'm working, no one's ever happy to see me. I'm the Grim Reaper's publicist and my presence means I'm cleaning up after my one and only client. However, this adage is NOT true when it comes to cops. They're always delighted to see me. If I have arrived on their scene, it means they are, officially, in the home stretch.)

"Sooooo," I turned to my cohorts "who has an idea for getting him down?"

They all stared at me blankly. Apparently all higher brain function had ceased around midnight and not one of them had prepared for the inevitable problem of how to retrieve the dead guy from the tree.

"Ummmm- we... could... uh..."

It WAS something of a quandary, Our guy was no dainty flower... and he was SO high up in a tree that was precariously placed on SUCH a steep slope. Attempting to climb up, cut the rope and lower him down was not a possibility. Nor could we just cut it and let him fall. Not only would it have been a profoundly indecent act to drop the guy like the inert meat-sack he now was, we also ran the risk of his body hitting the ground and rolling 100 yards downhill into a creek... presenting a whole other conundrum.

"Let's call the fire department...." one of the officers grinned, an idea that prompted a chorus of cheers from the others.

"I think that's a brilliant idea!" I responded

Let me explain.

There's something of a sibling rivalry between the firemen and the police. Everybody loves firemen. Firemen are the public's favorite. They're all strong and healthy and high-profile and shit. They save lives and put out fires and blah blah blah... The thing is, firemen don't really DO a whole lot. They hang around in their station, they lift weights, they cook chili and they play with their equipment a whole lot... that is to say, they practice cutting cars open with the "jaws of life". In some systems, fire-guys go on emergency medical calls and slap oxygen masks on people. But all in all, firemen don't really have to do much thinking and they don't really have to deal with the ugly side of emergencies... the side where people are misbehaving and someone has to make them stop, the side where someone has to thread through the complicated story and figure out what, exactly, happened and who's to blame. The side where people who don't want to be handled... have to be handled. Firemen emerge from the smoky carcass of a building, smeared with soot but shining like rubber-suited-messiahs. When it comes to their conscience and reputation- firemen just don't like to get dirty.

Police, on the other hand, catch shit from everyone. Police get blamed for everything. Police have to stick around after the blood stops flowing and the fire is extinguished... and figure out how to make sure it all doesn't happen again. Then police have to write long-ass reports explaining everything that was done and why. (To be fair, firemen have to write reports too. But their reports generally consist of two sentences: "It was on fire. We put it out".) Police get stuck with the hard job. Meanwhile, everyone's cheering for the fire department and women are flinging their panties at them in a shower of pheromones and adoration.

And that's why, that night, we decided it was officially the fire department's job to get the dead guy out of the tree.

I won't go into profound detail, suffice to say the fire-department was awoken out of a deep sleep and appeared on scene looking tousled and indignant... a situation which probably was NOT helped by the fact that when they first glimpsed the corpse, they became visibly flustered and admitted that they thought we had called them to get a CAT out of a tree. No joke... they actually told us that's what they believed they heard over the radio.

“Dude...” one of the deputies marveled (while the others snickered and made little meow-ing sounds behind their hands) “... why on earth would the Medical Examiner want you to get a cat out of a tree?”

The lieutenant, who was clearly about as bright as a damp matchstick, shrugged in a pouty fashion and stomped off to go cry in the bushes.

The firemen's confusion and general disgruntlement only added to our delight. Had they been chipper and enthusiastic, it totally would have taken all of the steam out of our passive-aggressive locomotive. The Sheriff's deputies, in contrast, became increasingly more jovial since not only was the whole ordeal nearing it's end, but they ALSO got to inflict a deplorably inconvenient and thankless situation on a bunch of prima-donnas who were accustomed to adrenaline charged scenarios with crowds of cheering witnesses.

The hose-haulers huffed, and grunted and barked orders at each other and us. Their scowls deepened with every step they took. They heaved and hauled and, even with all their ropes, pulleys and well-maintained muscles, it still took eight of them to wrestle the dead guy down from the tree and out of the blackberry grove. When they DID finally have our decedent packaged up and ready to go on my stretcher, they didn't hang around for a split second longer than necessary. The whole crowd of them clamored back onto their truck and retreated back to the fire station where, doubtless, they spent the rest of the night braiding their hair, eating s'mores and spooning with each other for comfort.

On the other hand, the deputies, sergeant and I took a few minutes on the side of the darkened highway to cop-a-squat, bust open some bottled water and shoot-the-shit. They passed me a bottle of water and invited me to perch on the rear bumper of a squad car along with them. Overcome with their generosity, I dipped into my jump bag and presented each of the officers with a fun-size bag on M&M's which I had been saving for just such an occasion since... well... since the LAST suicide I had been on... one in which I truly felt the dead guy would have WANTED to bequeath his candy to a group of deserving individuals.

“Man, I needed these...” one of the officers grunted as he tilted his head back and dumped the bag right down his throat.

“Yeah,” one of the others agreed as, one by one, he happily flipped the candies up into the darkness and caught them in his open mouth. “Seriously, Grace, Thank you sooooo much for this.”

“Don't thank me,” I told him. “Thank Alex Quinn*.”

“Who's Alex Quinn?”

I grinned.

“Just one of law-enforcement's biggest fans.”

“Awesome! Hey...” the officer glanced around and noted that I was not actually partaking in the impromptu snack. “Aren't you gonna have any? Do you want some of mine?”

“Nah, “ I said, waving away the candy. “They're for you guys.”

“Well, thanks again” he said, shrugging. “I'll see you later, I was supposed to be off a couple of hours ago.”

One by one, the officers got back into their patrol cars and sped off into the night... off to face whatever curve-balls the human race could throw at them. Each took a second to thank me for the M&M's and asked that I let my “friend” know that they appreciated his gracious donation to the Oswald County Sheriff's Department.

Maybe I should have felt guilty. I don't think it was necessarily criminal to *ahem* redistribute that dead guy's M&M's to the police, but I know it wasn't exactly ethical either. Oh well. On judgment day I guess I'll just have to take the heat for that one.

Or maybe I won't.

Maybe when I stand before the throne of the almighty, Alex Quinn himself will appear and state that, by giving away his M&M's, I knocked a few minutes off his sentence in purgatory or something... maybe I'll be rewarded...

To be honest, I don't care. I just wanted to do something nice for the cops... because I like cops. They're decent people, on the whole...

… and I think if most people knew cops like I know cops, they'd want to shower their local police force with M&M's too.


(*Of course his name isn't actually Alex Quinn... you think I'd incriminate myself like that?  Come on...)