Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“Nearly all the fuses in the box are rusted except for one, the one that powers your interior lights and recorders. No rust. It looks as if it’s been taken out and put back in quite a lot over the years. The power goes off and it’s only natural that you’d be the one to check the fuse since the box is in the bathroom right behind your desk. I talked to a few of your volunteers and then checked with MLGW. The only time the power seems to go off in your building is when you’re on the phone with a caller who ends up committing suicide.”

She rolled her eyes. “And you’ve made this connection because of rust on fuses?”

“The thing is, when you take fuses in and out, they tend to blow. I’m sure if I checked around at the neighborhood hardware stores I’d find someone who remembered you buying quite a few of them. Not many places have fuse boxes anymore. Fire hazards. Someone will remember.”

“So what?”

“I did a little ransacking through your tapes. Out of the eighteen suicides that you personally talked with, fourteen have tapes that are interrupted halfway through the recording and the logs coincide with your calls to MLGW. You thought you were covering your tracks, but it’s too neat and far too convenient.”

“You’re crazy, Charlie. I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of my apartment now.”

“You catch people at their lowest moments and convince them to take their lives. I’m not sure I ever believed in evil. Not until now.”

Her face flushed and her lips tightened across her teeth in a slash. “You don’t know anything, Charlie. You’ve got no right...” Her voice broke and then she took a deep breath to regain her composure. “You just don’t know.”

“The night we met you said you sometimes resented the people you were trying to help. That made sense. But you don’t resent them. You hate them.”

“Because they’re vicious,” she said quietly. “They’re selfish and controlling and don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. You don’t know, Charlie. You didn’t live with my mother. She used the threat of suicide like a whip against my father and brother and me. If we did something she didn’t like, she’d rage about how her life was hopeless and no one loved her. Then she’d take half a bottle of pills, wait ten minutes, and send me to get help. My whole life she did that to me. Christ, she must have ‘tried’ to kill herself a dozen times.”

“Then she succeeded.”

“Because I helped her. Because I locked the door and held her hand until it was too late to get help.”

“And your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Your daughter too.”

Her eyes flashed. “Goddamn you, no. I didn’t even know that Sarah was thinking about... or depressed... I didn’t know.” She took another deep breath. “I help people. Don’t you understand that? They don’t want to live so I help them die in the only way I know how.”

“You help people? Do you have any idea how many families you’ve destroyed, how many people you’ve shattered?”

“I’m a surgeon, Charlie. Living with someone who’s suicidal is like having cancer. Sometimes malignant tumors have to be removed. Yes, it’s painful, traumatizing, and people grieve for what they’ve lost, but in the end it’s necessary to cut out the cancer so they can move on with their lives.”

I was as weary as I could ever remember being in my life. “I shouldn’t have called you evil, Sandy. You’re not a monster. You’re just a sick and sad woman.”

“Go away, Charlie. I’ve had a long day, and you’re wasting my time. You can’t prove anything, and we both know it.”

In an hour-long television drama, this would be the moment the police burst through the door or I pulled a mini tape recorder from my pocket to show her that her confession had been caught on tape. But the cops weren’t outside, and I didn’t have anything on tape. And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She could have just claimed that she was playing along, telling the maniac who’d broken into her apartment what he wanted to hear because she was afraid. There wasn’t a judge in America foolish enough to admit a recording like that into evidence. But that didn’t matter either because no prosecutor would even attempt to take this case to trial. There was no physical evidence, no real motive that a jury could understand, and the “smoking gun” was an absence of rust on a fuse. Any cop who submitted the case to the D.A.’s office for prosecution would either be busted back to street patrol or sent for a psychiatric evaluation. Sandy McAllister was a serial killer who killed with words, a murderer whose victims wanted to die. A half-bright defense lawyer fresh out of a cow-college law school could get the case thrown out before a jury heard the first witness.

“You’re right,” I said.

She smiled more in certainty than triumph. “Then go home, Charlie, go to bed or go to hell or go to a bar.”

“You’re right about the cops, but it doesn’t matter. Your life is over, Sandy. I’m going to make sure of that.”

“You’re not a murderer, Charlie.”