But neither are suicidal people usually in a careless rush. They are, for once, masters of their own destiny, their own fate. Some wrestle with temptation, others indulge the moment. Whatever stew of miseries brought them to this point is about to be erased, banished- forever. A calm sets in, a moment of contemplation, perhaps. Some compose an informative or angry or apologetic note; many become surprisingly detached, methodical, ritualistic.

A psychiatrist friend once explained all this to me, further mentioning that the precise method of suicide often exposes a great deal about the victim's mood and mind-state.

Dead men tell no tales, as our pirate friends liked to say. But they often do leave road maps.

A common and I suppose reasonable impulse is to arrange a painless ending, or at least a swift one. But how they do it, that's what matters.

Scarring, scalding, or defacing their own bodies is often verboten; thus the popularity of overdosing, poisoning, carbon monoxide, or a plastic bag over the head-methods that leave the departed vessel intact, which matters for some reason. Some turn their final act into a public spectacle, flinging themselves off high buildings into busy thoroughfares, or rounding up an audience by calling the cops. Others take the opposite approach, finding an isolated spot to erase all evidence of their existence, anonymously leaping off tall bridges into deep waters, or presetting a fire to incinerate their corpse.

Unfortunately, we were in a bar, the shrink was a she, I was three sheets to the wind, and I was more interested in her 38D than her PhD. I am often ashamed by own pigginess, but anyway, I understood this: Suicide is like performance art. For the investigator, if you know how to read the signs, it's like a message from the dead. The victim is communicating something.