Then, a miracle. If you could call it that.
After The Scenes of the Crime had come out, reporters had appeared to interview him. One article – in The New York Times – contained this stark quotation from author Rhyme:
“No, I’m not planning any more books. The fact is, my next big project is killing myself. It’s quite a challenge. I’ve been looking for someone to help me for the past six months.”
That screeching-stop line got the attention of the NYPD counseling service and several people from Rhyme’s past, most notably Blaine (who told him he was nuts to consider it, he had to quit thinking only about himself – just like when they’d been together – and, now that she was here, she thought she should mention that she was remarrying).
The quotation also caught the attention of William Berger, who’d called unexpectedly one night from Seattle. After a few moments of pleasant conversation Berger explained that he’d read the article about Rhyme. Then a hollow pause and he’d asked, “Ever hear of the Lethe Society?”
Rhyme had. It was a pro-euthanasia group he’d been trying to track down for months. It was far more aggressive than Safe Passage or the Hemlock Society. “Our volunteers are wanted for questioning in dozens of assisted suicides throughout the country,” Berger explained. “We have to keep a low profile.”
He said he wanted to follow up on Rhyme’s request. Berger refused to act quickly and they’d had several conversations over the past seven or eight months. Today was their first meeting.
“There’s no way you can pass, by yourself?”
Pass…
“Short of Gene Harrod’s approach, no. And even that’s a little iffy.”
Harrod was young man in Boston, a quad, who decided he wanted to kill himself. Unable to find anyone to help him he finally committed suicide the only way he was able to. With the little control he had he set a fire in his apartment and when it was blazing drove his wheelchair into it, setting himself aflame. He died of third-degree burns.
The case was often raised by right-to-deathers as an example of the tragedy that anti-euthanasia laws can cause.
Berger was familiar with the case and shook his head sympathetically. “No, that’s no way for anyone to die.” He assayed Rhyme’s body, the wires, the control panels. “What are your mechanical skills?”
Rhyme explained about the ECUs – the E &J controller that his ring finger operated, the sip-and-puff control for his mouth, the chin joysticks, and the computer dictation unit that could type out words on the screen as he spoke them.
“But everything has to be set up by someone else?” Berger asked. “For instance, someone would have to go to the store, buy a gun, mount it, rig the trigger and hook it up to your controller?”
“Yes.”
Making that person guilty of a conspiracy to commit murder, as well as manslaughter.
“What about your equipment?” Rhyme asked. “It’s effective?”
“Equipment?”
“What you use? To, uhm, do the deed?”
“It’s very effective. I’ve never had a patient complain.”
Rhyme blinked and Berger laughed. Rhyme joined him. If you can’t laugh about death what can you laugh about?
“Take a look.”
“You have it with you?” Hope blossomed in Rhyme’s heart. It was the first time he’d felt that warm sensation in years.
The doctor opened his attaché case and – rather ceremonially, Rhyme thought – set out a bottle of brandy. A small bottle of pills. A plastic bag and a rubber band.
“What’s the drug?”
“Seconal. Nobody prescribes it anymore. In the old days suicide was a lot easier. These babies’d do the trick, no question. Now, it’s almost impossible to kill yourself with modern tranquilizers. Halcion, Librium, Dalmane, Xanax… You may sleep for a long time but you’re going to wake up eventually.”
“And the bag?”
“Ah, the bag.” Berger picked it up. “That’s the emblem of the Lethe Society. Unofficially, of course – it’s not like we have a logo. If the pills and the brandy aren’t enough then we use the bag. Over the head, with a rubber band around the neck. We add a little ice inside because it gets pretty hot after a few minutes.”
Rhyme couldn’t take his eyes off the trio of implements. The bag, thick plastic, like a painter’s drop cloth. The brandy was cheap, he observed, and the drugs generic.
“This’s a nice house,” Berger said, looking around. “ Central Park West… Do you live on disability?”
“Some. I’ve also done consulting for the police and the FBI. After the accident… the construction company that was doing the excavating settled for three million. They swore there was no liability but there’s apparently a rule of law that a quadriplegic automatically wins any lawsuits against construction companies, no matter who was at fault. At least if the plaintiff comes to court and drools.”
“And you wrote that book, right?”
“I get some money from that. Not a lot. It was a ‘better-seller.’ Not a best-seller.”
Berger picked up a copy of The Scenes of the Crime, flipped through it. “Famous crime scenes. Look at all this.” He laughed. “There are, what, forty, fifty scenes?”
“Fifty-one.”
Rhyme had revisited – in his mind and imagination, since he’d written it after the accident – as many old crime scenes in New York City as he could recall. Some solved, some not. He’d written about the Old Brewery, the notorious tenement in Five Points, where thirteen unrelated murders were recorded on a single night in 1839. About Charles Aubridge Deacon, who murdered his mother on July 13, 1863, during the Civil War draft riots, claiming former slaves had killed her and fueling the rampage against blacks. About architect Stanford White’s love-triangle murder atop the original Madison Square Garden and about Judge Crater’s disappearance. About George Metesky, the mad bomber of the ’50s, and Murph the Surf, who boosted the Star of India diamond.
“Nineteenth-century building supplies, underground streams, butler’s schools,” Berger recited, flipping through the book, “gay baths, Chinatown whorehouses, Russian Orthodox churches… How d’you learn all this about the city?”
Rhyme shrugged. In his years as head of IRD he’d studied as much about the city as he had about forensics. Its history, politics, geology, sociology, infrastructure. He said, “Criminalistics doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The more you know about your environment, the better you can apply -”
Just as he heard the enthusiasm creep into his voice he stopped abruptly.
Furious with himself that he’d been foxed so easily.
“Nice try, Dr. Berger,” Rhyme said stiffly.
“Ah, come on. Call me Bill. Please.”
Rhyme wasn’t going to be derailed. “I’ve heard it before. Take a big, clean, smooth piece of paper and write down all the reasons why I should kill myself. And then take another big, clean smooth piece of paper and write all the reasons why I shouldn’t. Words like productive, useful, interesting, challenging come to mind. Big words. Ten-dollar words. They don’t mean shit to me. Besides, I couldn’t pick up a fucking pencil to save my soul.”
“ Lincoln,” Berger continued kindly, “I have to make sure you’re the appropriate candidate for the program.”
“'Candidate'? 'Program'? Ah, the tyranny of euphemism,” Rhyme said bitterly. “Doctor, I’ve made up my mind. I’d like to do it today. Now, as a matter of fact.”
“Why today?”
Rhyme’s eyes had returned to the bottles and the bag. He whispered, “Why not? What’s today? August twenty-third? That’s as good a day to die as any.”
The doctor tapped his narrow lips. “I have to spend some time talking to you, Lincoln. If I’m convinced that you really want to go ahead -”