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the stool out from beneath your feet. This way, all you have to do to save yourself is stand up. No, Arthur Rosen had been determined to die. He got his wish.
    The cop in me knew he was gone at a glance, beyond resuscitation. I wanted to admonish Dr. Prince, warn him to touch nothing. I wanted to grab him by the shoulder, back him out of the room, and call 911. Instead, I pulled out my knife and cut the belt. Dr. Prince stretched the body out on the floor, removed the ligature from Rosen’s neck, and began the exercise in futility that was CPR.
    “Where’s the phone?”
    “Forget it,” he said, abandoning his efforts. “He’s cold. The blood’s begun to settle.”
    “Okay, Doc, you go call this in. I’ll secure the scene. Anyway, you’re gonna have to deal with all the other patients’ reactions. That’s not gonna be easy.”
    He stood and left without comment. I closed the door behind him. No need for a curious passerby to wander on in. Word would spread soon enough. In institutions, bad word spread on the wind. And I wanted a private look around. Cops are trained to treat the scene of an apparent suicide no differently from how they would treat the scene of a homicide. My snooping was bound to screw up the forensics some, but that was just too damned bad. Both the doctor and myself had already gotten a good start by handling the body so much. What would it hurt if I handled it a little more?
    I gently rolled Arthur Rosen onto his stomach. Other than the angry ligature marks around his throat and what looked to be an old burn scar on his left forearm, there was nothing remarkable about his body. He just seemed frail, and lighter than I expected. Though I didn’t really know him, I suspected the years of smoking, torment, and medication had taken a heavy toll on him.
    I checked his hands, his fingers. His nails were dirty, and he seemed to have some fresh cuts on the tips of both index fingers, but I couldn’t be sure how fresh. Maybe he’d cut them days ago or had split the skin while rigging his belt. No matter how much uniformed cops may brag about it, they don’t usually get up close and personal with stiffs. They know the smell of death, but they don’t know the feel. They may touch a throat to check for a pulse. That’s about it, though. Mostly it’s hands off. The detectives and crime-scene guys have all the real fun.
    I rolled him back over and tried replacing his arms as they had fallen after I cut him down. I’m not sure I got it right. I stood up, a little too fast, I think. The stink was getting to me for sure, and just maybe it crossed my mind that my refusal to take the case had been the last straw, that my words had been the last bit of motivation Arthur Rosen needed to stick his head in a noose and keep it there. I was pretty nauseous and grabbed the first solid thing I could get my hands on—the dresser. I steadied myself. I found myself looking into the mirror. I didn’t like what I saw, and what the mirror saw didn’t like me. The nauseousness was ebbing away when I spotted something other than my sorry face in the lower right-hand corner of the reflection.
    I turned and walked quickly to the opposite wall, to the side of the bed. I pulled the nightstand away from the side of the bed. Several words were scrawled on the wall in crude block letters. WRONG. HAMMERLING. FIRE. POEMS. JUDAS . There was one more word, a name, my name. PRAGER . Only my name was different. It was smeared in reddish-brown lettering for which Arthur’s veins had contributed the ink. Apparently, the cuts on Arthur’s fingers were very fresh. Below the graffiti, and, until now, hidden beneath the night table, were a stack of yellowed newspapers. They were copies of some rag called the Catskill Tribune . I had begun to thumb through them when I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I rolled the papers up and tucked them under my jacket.
    The footsteps out in the hall were coming in my direction. I scanned the