Bad Medicine by Eileen Dreyer Read Free Book Online Page B

him that Tyrell had simply not had the strength to survive.
    Rhett took notes, asked questions, and moved on. Just as they all did.
    "What about Pearl?" he asked.
    "Blood alcohol was two-fifty, so that empty gin bottle did belong to her. The rest of the tox screen is pending. The rest of the autopsy was unremarkable."
    "Did Dr. Johnson do it?"
    "Terry Freeman. Winnie was there."
    Rhett snorted. "Poor Freeman. You did the profile?"
    Molly scowled, picked apart a wilted petal. "I did the profile."
    Psychosocial profiles were done on all suicide victims. Interviews with family and friends who would be able to trace the person's final days toward disaster.
    Was she drinking any more than usual, Mrs. Johnson?
    Was there a problem on the job?
    Pearl's mother had sat in that stuffy, impersonal little room and ripped apart tissues just like Molly picked at scarlet petals in her yard, hands trembling, eyes full, her voice tight as pain.
    "You don't understand," Mrs. Johnson had kept saying, shaking her head as if that could rid her of the notion that her daughter might really be dead. "She was so happy. So... strong. Especially when she was fighting for that gambling bill. Lord, but she did love a good fight, and she hadn't had one since she left the prosecutor's office."
    "When did that change, Mrs. Johnson?" Molly had asked, the questionnaire waiting in her hands for its answers. Each blank worth a point. Four points equals depression. Drinking? Not sleeping? Agitated, preoccupied? Talking about dying? Beep. You do go on to Final Jeopardy.
    Molly asked the questions, filled in the blanks, and looked just about anywhere but into Ettie Johnson's eyes.
    "I don't know," the woman had answered. "I don't... just the last few days, she been so... quiet. Sittin' in her room all night and not telling me why. Just tellin' me she was sorry. What for? What should my little girl be sorry for?"
    Molly thought she knew. But Molly didn't have the proof anymore, so nobody else really wanted to believe her. It didn't matter. She still had enough points for a depression, enough factors for a suicide. Molly gave Pearl's mother the numbers for Crisis Intervention, for Grieving Support Groups, for Suicide Survivors. And then Molly had gotten the hell out of Warsaw.
    "Her mother has been treated for bi-polar disorder for years," Molly told Rhett, focusing her gaze over to where she could see people strolling out on Euclid through the cedar trees that isolated her. "My guess is that Pearl got her first taste and did the big dirt dive. The people at city hall said she'd been uncommunicative for the last two or three days, smelled alcohol on her breath. Anxious. Not eating. And she missed the biggest press conference of her career."
    "And her alcohol level was two-fifty?"
    "Yup."
    Rhett nodded, understanding.
    Alcohol, the great suicide toggle switch. Everyone, at one time in his life, dabbled with suicidal ideations. Maybe just a quick flirtation, an ugly temptation. A way out of weariness or pain or loss. Maybe serious courtship with the danger of death. An answer to desperation.
    Most people, no matter what, walked by the lure. Laughed or cursed or simply closed their eyes. Unless there was alcohol on board.Something about alcohol blocks up every self-preservational instinct in man. Something about alcohol makes man impatient, uncertain, unreachable.
    Something about alcohol disintegrates the distance between temptation and reality.
    Molly never drank in the summer. Never.
    "You never did find the note?" Rhett asked.
    It actually took Molly a minute to pull her thoughts back to the conversation in her backyard. Overhead, the trees creaked, and beyond a plane threaded through the dim and milky sky. Water chattered over the rocks at the edge of her pond. Life was quiet and ordered and pleasant, just as her parents had wanted to believe.
    "I did everything but put on waders and dive into the trash compactors in the basement," Molly admitted. "I don't know