The Suicide Gene Read online

  “But you’re worried about Matt McKinney.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You think he’s making the phone calls.”

  “Actually—” Sharon bit down so hard on her lip that she tasted blood. “—I don’t. That’s another reason I’m worried. I’m not sure why, but I don’t think it’s him.”

  He paused then nodded. “It’s not his style.”

  “No, it isn’t. He’s too smart for that.”

  Sharon hesitated. When Giff said no more, she broke and uttered words she knew he did not want to hear.

  “I think he’s about to sever the doctor-client relationship.”

  “Stop counseling?”

  “Yes. I think he’s going to stop coming. I’m afraid he’ll disappear for a while then show up later—accidently, of course—and finagle his way into her life. Wine and dine her.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He said something that made me believe his May appointment would be his last.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I tried to change his appointment on the twenty-first to the twentieth. I was trying to free some time for Emma.”

  “And?”

  “He agreed but said only if he could reschedule his last one to May seventh. Melanie had scheduled one for him on the sixth. She does that sometimes. Schedules two in advance.”

  Giff shifted forward, lifted the April page of his desk calendar, glanced at the May sheet for a moment, then released the page, and leaned back.

  “It didn’t register with me at the time that he said ‘last one.’ Then, in the middle of our conversation, I received an email from Rebekka, the new girl, saying Emma asked if she could take one of her clients—Charles Brown. We’ve been switching some over. Charles had an appointment with Emma on the twenty-first, too, so I cancel his instead. I apologized to Matt, and said we could keep his original appointment. Then I asked if he still wanted to change the appointment on the sixth. He said, ‘no, keep the last one the same.’ Later, it struck me. He said ‘last one’ twice.”

  “Odd.” Giff’s glance fell to his April calendar. He lifted a corner, took a look at May again, then let the edges slip from his fingers.

  “I might be reading too much into it,” she said.

  “So he left the second one on the sixth?” Again he seemed to study the April calendar. He picked up a pen and circled the twentieth and twenty-first.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  She watched him turn the page and circle the sixth and seventh of May. A quiet, pensive moment passed between them, and finally, Sharon continued.

  “I’m hoping—praying—he meant the last one Melanie scheduled not his ‘last’ one. You know what I mean? But I’m paranoid about his feelings for Emma. My saving grace has been he’s a client of hers and sharp enough to know he can’t ask her out.”

  “Didn’t Emma say she was referring the McKinneys to another psychiatrist?” he asked, his gaze distant.

  “Yes, but the twins wouldn’t go, so she never mentioned it to Matt.”

  “Then he is still her client,” he said, his eyes focused on the calendar. “For now.”

  “Yes, for now.” She stood up. “But I wanted you to know what he said.”

  He nodded and blinked in perfect unison like he stamped and sealed it. “Duly noted.” Then he added, “Why don’t we both keep an eye on Matt?”

  “Yes, let’s do that,” she agreed, then again attempted to encourage him. “Giff? Don’t give up on her. You’re good for her, and someday she’ll be good for you, too.”

  ****

  Someday? He watched her stuff her empty bag into her purse and leave, the word still reverberating in his head. He didn’t want Emma someday. He wanted her now.

  His stomach churned some unfamiliar feeling and his thoughts drifted from Sharon to Emma and to Matt. What was that he felt? Dread? Anger? Fear? Jealousy? He didn’t know.

  At twenty-nine years old, twenty-three litigated cases decorated his resume. Twenty-two of those, won. He had settled additional cases before they went to trial, so many he couldn’t count them. Indisputably, he understood the definition of success. In the past six months, he had turned down offers to join some of Erie’s best law firms, and now his own firm was doing well enough for him to cut back on his overtime and play a little poker, his favorite pastime, when Emma was busy.

  But for his mother’s illness, life fell easily upon him. He had other family members who loved and supported him, a grounded firm with three associates—two recent hires—working for him, money in the bank set aside to buy his first house, and his school loans had just been paid off. He visited his mom two or three times a week, attended Mass on Sunday, lived decently, exercised moderately, and had his head on straight. His life, he knew, was pointed in the right direction. He was confident, sure of his current standings, and never feared a challenge.

  Then in walked Emma.

  Chapter 23

  Thursday, April 16, 2015

  Twenty-eight days.

  The murder saga throbbed at the back of her mind. She couldn’t decide what to do with this secret.

  She had increased her running after Mary revealed the story, adding a few morning runs of thinking time. She had been back to pounding the pavement for two months after a five-month hiatus. Not running a step from August until February slowed her down, but she labored through the miles and began feeling as in shape as the previous summer.

  Old running friends helped. The gang, whom Josh introduced her to two years ago, met on Saturdays for a flat run on the peninsula and midweek for a hilly run through the woods. Thankfully, Josh no longer ran with the pack. He now sweated through expensive fitted singlets at a posh, new gym. Traded credentials with new acquaintances in a locker room where attendants handed out towels and swanky bottled water. Giff came with her now on Saturdays when his caseload permitted.

  And the runners liked Giff, which made for more relaxed runs. They never cared for Josh. His conversations revolved around his practice, workouts, running and cycling times. He one-upped everybody. Amazingly, he never noticed their do-you-believe-this-guy innuendos. Emma did. She saw them roll their eyes, heard them whisper at the back of the pack, while he bragged up front.

  Now, the eye rolling stopped. Last week, one runner, LeAnn, mentioned she loved Giff’s sense of humor, and another, Carol, said everyone enjoyed his company. Carol put her hand on Emma’s arm at the end of one long run, looked her in the eye, and said, “Life is too short. I’m glad to see you happy. We all love Giff, Emma.”

  Emma understood. They didn’t like Josh. The two of them had never been invited to any of the runners’ get-togethers. That changed when she started showing up with Giff. Invites came. Could she meet them Sunday for a vineyard run and wine tasting afterward? Bring Giff. Did she like the philharmonic, want to see a movie, join a book club? Ask Giff, too.

  Most she was too busy for, but she and Giff did join them one Friday at the casino for gambling and dinner. Giff let Emma in on his big secret that night.

  “My first boss told me poker players make the best attorneys,” he said with a twinkle in his eye that made her heart swell. “That’s the reason he hired me.”

  Turned out that boss was right. Giff excelled in poker and litigation.

  “It’s kinesics. If you watch people, really watch them, they talk to you without saying anything at all,” he whispered to her right before he took a seat at the poker table that night. “I know whether a person will stay in the game or fold, vote guilty or not guilty, long before they know themselves. You might say, I can see their hand.”

  That confidence and savvy intuition was what had allowed him to open his own practice eighteen months after graduating from Widener Law School. And on that Friday evening at the casino, with Emma and friends watching, he pocketed six hundred dollars from an hour’s worth of play and bought drinks for everyone at dinner. Paying that bill would have put Josh in a coma.

  Emma spent the
prior two weekends at Giff’s apartment and had called Josh five times. She’d ruled him out as the perpetrator of the hang-up calls and had begun to feel like she was stalking him. About the divorce petition. They still sat somewhere in his apartment—alias mistress pad. She was anxious to sign the papers now that Giff had won over her parents with his candid conversation during their visits, unlike Josh who barely acknowledged them even when he graced them with his presence. Her mother adored Giff and her father now punctuated the end of every phone conversation with a “How’s Giff?”

  Before Mary flogged her with the murder mystery, life had begun moving along at a steady pace. She took Ally’s advice and met with a counselor, Michelle Christy. Doctor Christy listened without judgement as Emma confessed her struggle with depression since her early teens and her counseling of the McKinneys despite believing, at the time, they were her birth family. Michelle suggested she refer the McKinneys elsewhere. She did. She referred them to Michelle. But the referral didn’t go well. Emma talked to both twins on two separate phone calls.

  The conversations had been enlightening.

  “Over my dead body,” Minnie had said, voice raised. “If you think I’m starting up with anyone else, you are sadly mistaken. Are you talking all of us or just me?”

  “I’d like to refer your entire family to Doctor Christy, Minnie,” Emma answered, and Minnie broke into hysteria.

  “Please let me be in the room when you tell Matt. I want to see his face,” she howled. Emma felt her fiery laugh crackle over the airwaves like sparks igniting in rapid succession at the top of an electric fence. The sound rushed toward her until it burned her eardrums. “Do you think you can get rid of us that easily? Wait until they hear you want to dump us.”

  She had never witnessed that Minnie before. Five minutes later she tried Mary.

  “I’m not switching,” Mary responded. No laugh. “You can’t seriously believe Minnie or Matt would see someone else now, can you? Mel maybe, but the two of them? Never. I’m not going either.”

  Emma dropped it. Didn’t call Matt and didn’t let on to the three of them that she had already broached the subject with Mel. Mel promised to make appointments with Doctor Christy. Emma was fairly certain only Mel would keep hers.

  Her attempts botched, Emma sought advice from her peers. Scheduled a conference call with Ally, Doctor Christy, and Doctor Cameron. She explained the twins’ refusal of the referral and rejection of medication. All agreed that unless either consented, Emma could do nothing. Her only options? Continue seeing them without prescribing medication or release them. She noted the conference call and readied herself to face the cases alone.

  She could have flipped a coin on which twin’s transcript to review first today. She picked Mary’s:

  Patient: Mary McKinney

  Psychiatrist: Dr. Emma Kerr

  Date: April 15, 2015 1 p.m.

  ****

  Mary: What did Minnie say about Melissa last week?

  Dr. Kerr: Let’s concentrate on your feelings.

  Mary: I knew she wouldn’t talk about her.

  Dr. Kerr: Have you considered the possibility that Melissa took her life because your grandparents fell in love?

  Mary: Hogwash. C’mon, Doctor Kerr, you’re an intelligent girl. Why would my grandfather be crying about it years later? Asking his wife what she had done?

  Dr. Kerr: It’s possible your grandmother admitted their relationship to her sister before the suicide, and your grandfather was hearing that for the first time on the night of their argument.

  Mary: That’s a stretch.

  Dr. Kerr: (Pause.) Because of your age, you may not have understood.

  Mary: Oh, I understood.

  Dr. Kerr: (Pause.) A high percentage of suicides are caused by severed relationships, Mary.

  Mary: Oh, it was due to a severing all right. (Laugh.) Severed veins. My grandmother drugged her, slit her wrists, and stuffed her in the bathtub.

  Dr. Kerr: Did you hear them say that directly?

  Mary: No.

  Dr. Kerr: Then it is possible you misunderstood.

  Mary: No. I didn’t. My grandmother hated her sister, and she was furious when my mother named the baby Melissa after her at my grandfather’s request.

  ****

  There was no convincing Mary of any scenario other than murder. They danced through the subject coolly for a good part of the hour, both of them trying to lead. Emma also discussed the benefits of medication at times in life when depression overwhelmed a person. Mary wasn’t having it.

  Emma moved to Minnie’s.

  Patient: Minnie McKinney

  Psychiatrist: Dr. Emma Kerr

  Date: April 15, 2015 4:30 p.m.

  ****

  Minnie: I don’t want to talk about Mary or Sara or Melissa.

  Dr. Kerr: What would you like to discuss?

  Minnie: Dates. I’d like to talk about dates.

  Dr. Kerr: Dates?

  Minnie: Yes. Dates are everything don’t you think?

  Dr. Kerr: What do you mean?

  Minnie: Well, take Matt for instance. Dates and details mean everything to him. He’s an analyst, programmer, consumed with details. He’s meticulous. Prompt. His life so neatly organized and stacked that if it were the Tower of Babel, he would have reached God.

  Dr. Kerr: Is your life organized?

  Minnie: I don’t want to talk about my life. I want to talk about Matt’s. He runs the whole family, you know.

  Dr. Kerr: Matt?

  Minnie: Yes, Matt.

  Dr. Kerr: I thought Mel was the family organizer.

  Minnie: (Laugh.) Oh, Doctor Kerr, he has you so buffaloed. Mel does everything Matt tells her. Everyone does. All this time you thought Mary and I were the crazy ones. You know what he is don’t you?

  Dr. Kerr: What’s that?

  Minnie: A Wednesday child.

  Dr. Kerr: Wednesday child?

  Minnie: (Laugh.) Yes, I am, too. But whatever you do, don’t tell him I said that.

  Dr. Kerr: What you say in your sessions is between you and me—no one else.

  Minnie: (Laugh.) Oh, that’s funny. You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Did Mary tell you his IQ was 149?

  Dr. Kerr: I thought she said 153.

  Minnie: Correct. It is. You’re learning.

  ****

  Throwing their siblings under the bus was becoming the McKinney norm. Their bizarreness abounded in proliferating leaps. What was this Wednesday child innuendo about? Another game? Well okay, I’ll play along.

  She tried recalling the nursery rhyme. Wednesday’s child is what? Work for a living? No, she thought, that was Thursday’s child or maybe Tuesday’s.

  She googled “Wednesday’s child is” and the Mother Goose nursery rhyme emerged on the screen. Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace; Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go.

  She swung her chair back and forth and allowed her mind to absorb the words. The soft glow of the screen pivoted on her face with each swing. Like an interrogation lamp drawing thoughts out of her.

  She opened her calendar to her appointment history and brought up the dates of Minnie’s appointments: Wednesday, October 29; Monday, November 3; Tuesday, November 25; Tuesday, December 2; Wednesday, December 17; Tuesday, January 13; Thursday, January 29-cancellation; Wednesday, February 11; Wednesday, March 11; Wednesday, April 8; Wednesday, April 15; and another scheduled for Wednesday, May 6.

  She half expected them all to be Wednesday. That they weren’t relieved her. She opened Mary’s. All were the same except, oddly, in May Mel scheduled Mary on the fourth and Minnie on the sixth.

  Her left hand brushed over the screen softly, her light touch trying to smooth the distractions, clear her vision. It’s there, she thought, what she’s trying to tell me is there in front of me.

  She brought up Mel’s dates, the appointment-maker: Wednesday, October 29; Tuesday, November 11; Wednesday, December 3; Tuesday
, December 9; Wednesday, January 7; Wednesday, January 21; Friday, February 20; Wednesday, March 18-cancelled; Wednesday, April 15; and another scheduled for Friday, May 1.

  She stored each of their dates in a single document, labelled it McKinney Days, and then did that final search. The best for last.

  She sat back in her chair, anxious, as she waited for Matt’s dates to appear. She fully expected to see what flashed in front of her: Wednesday, October 29-cancelled; Thursday, October 30-cancelled; Tuesday, November 4-cancelled; Wednesday, November 5; Wednesday, November 26; Wednesday, December 10; Wednesday, January 14; Wednesday, January 28; Wednesday, February 18; Wednesday, March 25; Wednesday, April 21; and another scheduled for Wednesday, May 6.

  “All Wednesday,” she whispered, “every one kept.”

  She thought back to October, when Mel scheduled their first appointments. Matt cancelled his, and she herself made effort to reschedule the session to Tuesday and then Thursday. She left messages on his cell and wondered when he didn’t show if she should have left messages with Mel. Who was in control?

  She changed windows back to Minnie’s transcripts.

  ****

  Dr. Kerr: I’m learning?

  Minnie: (Laugh.) Yes. I think you’re finally getting it.

  Dr. Kerr: What am I finally getting?

  Minnie: That it’s an extremely dangerous combination, Doctor Kerr. You of all people should know that.

  ****

  Me of all people, a dangerous combination? Of what? Intelligence and woe?

  She had no idea what her IQ was or on what day of the week she was born. Could Minnie know? Impossible. Yet, hadn’t Mary known the number of years she had counseled? Hadn’t Matt made that ambiguous remark about her falling in love with the wrong man?

  A long time ago, Emma had devised a scheme to counsel the McKinney family, to manipulate her way into their lives and determine if they were blood relatives. Now, she wondered if she had truly done the manipulating. This feels like Mastermind.