Free Murder Suicide by Keith Ablow

more," Clevenger said.
    Reese took another step forward.  Anderson started to move between them, but Clevenger signaled him to stay back.
    "Five calls," Reese said.  "Do most of your patients call you half-a-dozen times in a few hours?"  He spoke through clenched teeth.  "Do you even know Grace’s history, Dr. Clevenger?  Did you bother to get her records before you saw her?  Did you talk to her last psychiatrist?"
    Those questions brought Clevenger back to another uncomfortable memory of his session with Grace Baxter — the way her ‘contract for safety’ had rolled off her tongue, making him wonder how many times she had worried psychiatrists before.  But he hadn’t asked her.
    "Three suicide attempts," Reese said.  "Nine admissions to locked units."
    Clevenger dropped his gaze for an instant, then made himself look Reese in the eyes, again.
    "You didn’t have an hour for her, maybe at the end of your busy day?  You had somewhere to be?"
    "I’m sorry about your wife," Clevenger said.
    Reese leaned to whisper in Clevenger’s ear.  His breath was 80 proof.  "You go up to our bedroom and take a look at her.  Go see what you’ve done."  He stepped aside.
    Clevenger walked past him, up the sweeping staircase to the second floor, with Anderson close behind.  He heard Mike Coady’s voice down the hall and headed toward it.  He froze as he walked into the master bedroom.
    Anderson put a hand on his shoulder.  "She must have been stumbling around trying to get to the bed."
    The comforter had been folded away from Baxter, who lay naked on bedclothes drenched with blood.  The walls and carpet were speckled with it.  A section of the light blue velvet drapes that hung over the windows had been pulled to the ground and lay in a blood-stained heap on the floor.
    Clevenger walked to the bed along a plastic pathway rolled out by the crime scene investigators.  He looked down at Baxter.  Ruby lacerations criss-crossed her neck — a real hack job.  Her wrists had each been cut once horizontally.  She was still wearing her wedding diamond bracelets and Rolex watch.  They were covered in blood.
    Coady walked to the opposite side of the bed.  "Patient of yours?"
    "She told me they felt like handcuffs," Clevenger said.
    "Huh?"
    "The bracelets," he said.  "The watch."
    "Pretty fancy handcuffs."
    "Yes, they were."
    "She got both carotids," Coady said.  "The bathroom’s even more of a mess."
    "What did she use?"
    "Carpet knife.  They’re renovating the third floor.  Her husband says it must belong to one of the contractors."
    Clevenger nodded.
    "She left him a note," Coady said.  He held out a plastic bag with a piece of five-by-eight stationery inside.
    Clevenger took the bag.  The stationery was blood-splattered, but legible.
     
My Love,

I cannot go on.  As I fall off to sleep each night and as I leave sleep each morning I have only precious moments when I feel alive, before I wake fully to what my life has become.  Imagine having only those few instants of happiness in an entire day and night, the sweetest and most fleeting illusion of freedom, and you may understand and even forgive what I have done.

I remember each of our kisses, every touch.  When you entered me, I entered you.  I escaped and left my pain behind.  I cannot face it alone.

I was wrong to rely on you for my happiness.  Your life is your own.  But the idea of you leaving me darkens my horizon so completely that I cannot see any future, nor bear one more step toward it.

Please forgive me, everything.

Forever,

Grace
     
    "Husband says they were talking about splitting up," Coady said.  "He’d seen a lawyer."
    Clevenger handed the bag back to him.  "Is there somewhere we can talk?"
    "Follow me."
    Clevenger followed Coady along another length of plastic, into the bathroom.  The walls were mirrored.  Everywhere Clevenger turned he saw himself covered in blood that had sprayed from Baxter’s carotids.  A cold sweat gripped