|
A Beautiful Day to Die
The birds were singing their best aria; the gentle breeze from the lake carried the smell of pine needles and sunshine. Spring in New Hampshire is a gift to all those who survived the frozen winter.
I’m Calvin Crowell and live in a small cottage on Canobie Lake NH. At 30 years old I’m not doing to badly. I sell real estate in Cambridge MA. The drive back and forth to work everyday is a bitch, but the benefits of living in NH are worth the extra efforts. My wife and I met at a night club where we both worked and later stayed together.
Being a late riser I start off grumpy, but to get into work on time I leave my house before 7:30AM
We’re rushing to get dressed for work this morning, as usual. If I’m late my boss gives me a hard time all day. Carefully keeping the bedroom door closed so my sister in law won’t see me dressing, I rush around the room. My sister-in-law is 16 years old and a bit of a problem. She’s staying with us for a few days and sleeping downstairs in the living room. If she looks up she’ll be able to see right into the bedroom. Her life right now is falling apart. She’s living on the street in her home town of Cambridge MA and nothing is coming easy for her. She just quit school and is spiraling out of control. No one can get through to her. That’s what I’m hoping this week-end will do.
Last week-end she was at a party and one of her friends, out of his mind on something, shot himself in the head in an attempted suicide. He talked about killing himself for months and he finally stole a gun and did it, but for some reason he didn’t die. The bullet lodged in his brain and he’s in a coma. Dory, my sister in law, was in the room when he did it and is confused about it. She said he did everything he was suppose to do: held the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger. The gun went off and shot him in the head, but he didn’t die. He’s left in a deep coma and the prognosis is not good.
Talking to her, I can’t tell if she’s sad, angry or what. The way she’s asking me questions gives me the idea she’s more disappointed that he failed in his attempted suicide; than that he attempted suicide in the first place. She keeps asking if he will die and why didn’t he die right away. I’m not a doctor and I have nothing to do with this situation, so of course, I have no answers.
Her sister and I talked her into coming to NH to our house to stay with us for a while to get over the tragedy and maybe dry her off drugs. Last night she cross examined me about this and what exactly went wrong with the gun that it didn’t do its job of killing her friend. Trying to be helpful I explained that the frontal lobe (the front part of the brain) can be odd because people have survived when pipes and other hard solid objects have pierced the front part of the brain and the person has lived and even, in some cases, gotten completely over the damage done to the brain. I’m familiar with this only because of television shows about strange happenings. I hope she is not thinking of killing herself; I give her more credit than that. She is not stupid just young and thinks she knows everything. She is careful not to talk as if suicide is a viable alternative to her life’s troubles.
The situation she is in right now is not good. Her mother is older, in her sixties, and not very aware of what is happening with the kids of Dories age today. Dory’s friends are all into drugs and living on the street. There really is no control or supervision in her life. Sometimes she spends the night at a local shelter in Cambridge, but just as likely she will sleep in a cardboard box or in some handy bed of anyone who will let her spend the night. Dory is not unattractive and I’m sure, from the way she talks, there is no shortage of places for her to crash. A while ago she talked to me about a couple of foreigners letting her spend the night if she had sex with them both and she was not crazy about that scene but for a bed she did it anyway. Looking back on it now, I see her value system was totally out of whack.
At 16 Dory is way out of her depth, in fact I’m out of my depth trying to counsel her about her life, this makes us both clueless. What the hell do I tell a young girl, who should be just learning about boys, instead of deciding to have sex with two men at a time just to have a bed for the night? I’m shocked and can’t understand how far she is willing to go for life’s basics.
She won’t go home, that’s too restricting, but she will live on the street and do all this crap for a nightly bed. If I was into religion I would be looking for a priest or rabbi to counsel her. But since I’m not and have trust issues of strangers I don’t know what to do.
“Dory get dressed we’ll take you into town for the day and later I’ll pick you up to come back here.”
“I’d like to stay here today. I don’t want to go back into town it’s too depressing.”
Marla, my wife spoke up.
“You should come in with us and stay with mom today. She hasn’t seen you for a while.”
Dory replied.
“I don’t want to see her today she’ll just give me shit.”
“Come-on Dory, mom loves you and she promised she wouldn’t give you a hard time.”
“I really want to spend one day in the peace and quiet of the lake. Maybe I can rake out in front of the cottage next door. I know you want that done.”
We owned the two cottages next to us and intended to fix them up and rent them.
“Dory, this is Friday and you’ll have all week-end to sit around in the peace and quiet.”
“You know if we go into town mom and I will argue and I’ll leave and spend the day with my friends and by tonight I’ll be back on pills or something. At least this way I’ll have one good day without anything.”
“All right, but Charles and Clara are right next door if you need anything. Also call me if there’s a problem. OK?”
“OK, that sounds good. Now go before you’re late for work.”
On the way into work Marla and I argued about her staying at the house. Actually neither of us wanted her to stay there alone. But, truthfully we were a little happy she was not roaming loose in Cambridge getting into more trouble.
Once in work our day took on its natural course. Marla went off to her office by the subway, which saves me driving into the Boston morning rush hour traffic. Inside the door of my office I got into my salesman’s role answering real estate questions right away.
The phone was ringing off the hook with people looking for a house or apartment so they can relocate to Cambridge close to their schools. The real estate business keeps me hopping between telephone calls and showing clients property I don’t stop moving until well after 4:00 PM. Cambridge MA has a couple of famous colleges and a large number of students.
Marla got back from her work at 4:30 as usual and relaxed in the client’s chair, waiting for me until 5:15 when we finally left for the day. With the week end ahead of us both of us are looking forward to a couple of days off. Actually I was looking forward to doing something with Dory, like fishing or maybe going out for a sail in my new yacht the 10 foot Sun Fisher moored at my dock on the lake. I had traded my speed boat for the sail boat this winter and looked forward to learning how to sail. Unfortunately my wife hates the sail boat, we went for a sail last week end and she cried all the way until I parked at the dock again 5 minutes later. My wife hates boating, I sold the speed boat because she said it was too fast and too much trouble on our lake. We’ll see, maybe Dory will like sailing, I hope.
The ride back to NH is pretty straight forward. Route 93 goes straight from Cambridge to Salem NH, our home town This time of year is so beautiful in New England. With the trees coming back to life and the ground thawing out, life is renewing itself.
I love the way my yard looks and smells in the spring. With millions of little green leaf buds in every tree making the trees look as if there’s a green mist in them; and the birds and squirrels running free all over the place. In the late afternoon like now, the spring air smells of earth and pine sap warmed by the afternoon sun. A smell I’ve always loved. As I approach the house the smell of fresh cut grass is overpowering. Charles next door cut his 20 square foot patch of lawn today and the smell is not unpleasant. The house is about 100 feet from where I usually park the car and down a slope heading toward the lake, which is right in front of the house, we approach from the back. Our bedroom window, which faces the driveway, is open because I see the curtains blowing inside the screen. That keeps the house smelling fresh and also tells me I left another window open because the curtains only blow when there’s a cross breeze.
“If I don’t hear Dory, when we get inside the door I’ll call out to her.”
“Cal, she might be asleep, she said she was going to take it easy all day.”
“Dory are you here.” I shout as we open the front door.
No answer. As we move around the house Marla, comes running down the stairs.
“Cal something is wrong Dory is laying across our bed not moving. I head upstairs to check on Dory. At the top of the stairs I noticed Dory is lying across our bed with her head hanging over the window side of the bed.
“Dory, I’m sorry to wake you, we’re home.”
As I talk to her I’m moving around to where her head is and once on the window side of the bed I see blood all down the outside of the bed, coming from her head.
“Dory! Shit! DORY! Marla don’t come up here, something is wrong with Dory call 911.”
I try to take her pulse from her wrist but I’m shaking so hard I don’t know what I’m doing. Lifting her right hand up away from under her head I’m trying to take a pulse. At some point I feel a pulse and think she might be just unconscious.
“Marla Call an ambulance she’s bleeding pretty badly.”
As I stand over the bed with Dory lying across it like that I don’t know what to think. The smell of fresh cut grass mixed with the smell of her blood is sickening. What a beautiful day, its June and pretty warm for NH. I’m looking out the huge window in our bedroom and can’t see anything at all. I keep seeing the blood down the side of the bed. I don’t see what caused the wound, actually with her face turned to the left she is laying on the right side of her head and no wound or damage is visible. When I touched her, her skin is very cold and unyielding. Looking around the room now, nothing catches my eye, I’m kind of out of it. Some time later an ambulance rushes into the driveway behind our car. The attendants jump out and drag a stretcher out of the back.
I watch from my vantage point in the bedroom as they seem to move in slow motion getting out of the ambulance and opening doors getting equipment.
I go downstairs to show them the way and a minute later they enter the house and take over. A few minutes after the ambulance arrived the police pulled into the drive. As the police enter the house the paramedics pronounce Dory dead and the police take over. Now our bedroom is restricted. It’s a crime scene and no one can touch anything until the crime techs, in those days called finger print men, finish there examination.
Actually the two young cops don’t stay in the room either; one came down stairs to talk to us and the other stayed upstairs guarding the door to the bedroom. The two cops have radioed for the detectives and now we’re all waiting. It didn’t take long for the detectives to arrive.
Paul Gannet and Joe Swift are the detectives and they separate my wife and me. They begin to question us, as a team of forensic people having just arrived themselves, comb through the bedroom. At first they were kind of loose and sympathetic but then I heard one of the forensic people say there were two shots fired. Now the questions became more pointed and mean spirited. All the police seemed to tense up with the revelation of the two shots. This means it must have been murder. She was shot in the head and it’s difficult for a suicide to shoot themselves in the head twice.
I have to admit Detective Joe swift was a gentleman through-out the entire questioning. He never raised his voice or got accusatory. Even though there were several bad signs in this case. First, she was lying across our bed; this might be a sign that she resented the bed and us. Also it could be a sign she was familiar with our bed from sleeping with me in it and making a last statement with killing herself there. Or if I murdered her there it was over an argument we had and I left her where she lay. To these police officers just the fact that she was a young pretty girl and I was a relatively young married man and additionally she was in our bed dead from a gunshot wound to the head, something was wrong with this scene. Now add to that, the gun was fired twice by the two spent casings in the barrel and of course the gun was mine, which I admitted to, suspicion was rampant. When asked why she was in our bed, my answer was the simple truth. I, of course had no idea. This wasn’t even 24 hours she was in my house.
We had recently moved from across town and still had most of our possessions in boxes. She would have found the gun in a box just inside the door of our bedroom was I carelessly left it two days before. As I said, we had just moved and I did not have the time to distribute and secure our possessions.
Actually I never saw the gun until after it was thoroughly examined by the police. When I first saw Dory the gun was under her head and I didn’t move her head. I took her pulse by putting my thumb and forefinger on either side of her wrist, which was under her head. As I took her pulse I moved her hand out and away from her head to get at her wrist, then put it back down again this time next to her head, which put it in a different position no longer under her head Apparently, the fact that we were in Cambridge and Boston all day and could easily prove it made the police move very cautiously. While we were waiting for the police and ambulance originally I called my brother Eric, to come up and stand with us. He had been trained as a lawyer and might be support.
At this point I had nothing to feel guilty about but, given the circumstances I felt guilty never the less. I never thought either of us needed a lawyer, but for the moment I felt out of control and unable to handle all that was happening so fast.
After about an hour of questioning Joe and his partner stopped questioning us and now talked with the forensic people. When my brother Eric arrived he made an entrance as was his style and within five minutes had insulted the chief of police and my sister in law with off hand and dumb comments. At first he said something to the chief of police in regard to the hick town cops doing an investigation. He felt that they should have the NH State police doing the investigation. Then he announced to no one in particular that:
“The little back pack Dory traveled with, which had only a box of Kotex pads and a t-shirt in it, was a poor legacy for her 17 years of life.”
At the time Marla didn’t say a word but she never forgot his comments and hated him for them for the rest of her life. She came to attach the death of her sister to my brother as if he had something to do with it.
Looking back it was a mistake to ask my bother to help us. In this situation he caused more problems and bad feelings.
That first night we spent the night with my brother and his wife at their house in Winchester MA. Early the next morning I drove back to NH with another brother in law and Dory’s younger brother Frankie. We went back to the house to remove the bed and clean up the bedroom. I assumed we, my wife and I, would continue to live in the house. While we were there cleaning up Joe Swift the detective arrived and said he needed to examine the room again and made us wait downstairs.
Apparently the second shot fired from my gun did not hit Dory. This changed everything for the police. While they thought she had two bullets in her head, to them that was murder, but if one shot went astray, that apparently was not completely unusual. After a very short search, Joe found the bullet hole where Dory had missed her head and the bullet went into the molding against the outside wall along the floor. When he explained that they were originally investigating the death as a murder I said I was surprised they did not look closer at me;
“We didn’t look at you after we realized if you were in Boston and Cambridge from early in the morning until after 6:00 PM you couldn’t have killed Dory who died before 11:00 AM. Now, finding the spent bullet in the floor molding proved that Dory had killed herself. Dory put the gun to her head and when she pulled the trigger she jerked the gun which then pointed to the wall as it fired. The bullet struck the molding along the wall and imbedded itself into the wall.
He explained that she had gun powder burns along her face in a way that did not coincide with the fatal bullet to her head. So, she apparently had first shot and missed her head, then shot again. At this the police were completely satisfied with the findings, they accounted for everything that had been found.
After removing the mattress and box spring, which we took to the town dump we went down to the Sears store and got another mattress and box spring. After checking with my wife I thought it was a mutual decision to immediately move back into the house. At first we slept downstairs, avoiding the bedroom, but then we moved back into the bedroom the following night and my wife never said a word. Unfortunately it never occurred to me that sleeping in that bed might be a problem. I assumed changing the mattress and box spring as I had the next day, made the bed all right to sleep in.
At the time she said nothing but later she admitted it was one of the reasons we later divorced. From the moment Dory killed herself our marriage was over. Apparently my wife blamed me for her sister’s death saying later, that if I had left her in Cambridge she might have continued using drugs but she would not have had the opportunity to kill herself. I, on the other hand believed that using drugs was still killing herself, just a lot slower.
This situation was ironic because Dory had complained to me that her friend hadn’t died from the bullet to the head and in fact was still in the hospital in a coma when we buried Dory three days later.
I know Dory did not hate me or my wife, but at 16 years old she was not smart enough or mature enough to understand the consequences of her actions and its effect on others. My wife and I divorced a few years later. The rift which started at Dory’s death, kept getting wider until it was all that was left of our marriage.
At least we’re alive. Dory at 16 quit school and got so involved with drugs she couldn’t see straight. She lived a life of hell running from drugged out friends to fiendish rapists and most of the time couldn’t tell which was which between them. She felt her only alternative was death and made it happen with determination and purpose. With her questions the night before she killed herself, she outsmarted me and got all the knowledge she needed to make the suicide work.
For awhile there were rumors of a gang of motorcycle crazies coming into my yard in NH and killing Dory. Especially since Dory had made two calls to friends before she died, but in the end there was no real evidence against her suicide.
This was truly an American tragedy in a land of plenty she spent the last days of her life compromising her dignity and self esteem in exchange for the simplest basics of food and shelter and at the same time refusing all the helping hands extended to her. Sometimes, when I see the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” I worry that my blundering interference in Dories life caused her death.
|
