Outburst

by R. D. Zimmerman

  Yet now she was here in this Minnesota, without a computer and cut off from that new world. Consequently, she felt more isolated and alone than ever before.

  It was a tiny room with dark-pine paneling and a single bed, on which Kris now dropped herself. She bowed her face into her hands and tried to hold back the tears. She was such a fool, such an idiot. She never fell in love with anyone her own age, only guys a lot older than she. Oh, and straight. Often married to boot. It was just like her shrink had told her: She went for the guys she could never have, the ones that were perpetually and eternally unavailable. But did she listen to that? Learn anything? Hell, no, for here she'd done it again, fallen crazy in love with a guy she could never have. What was even more stupid was that late this afternoon she'd gone and blurted it out to her shrink.

  Seated in his small office downtown, Kris had said, “You're never going to believe who I have a crush on.”

  “Try me,” replied Dorsey, a small man with thick gray hair and heavy glasses that did little to mask his intense eyes.

  “Stuart Hawkins. You know, the judge, the one who's in the paper all the time. He's just so…I don't know … so sexy. I can't stop thinking about him.”

  Dorsey had sat in his hard wooden chair for a long time, those beady eyes not blinking, his thin lips not moving. Or had he been trying to stuff his amusement? Had that been it? The very possibility had made Kris so pissed that she'd almost blurted it out, told him that just a couple of weeks ago she'd finger-fucked the good judge.

  But then Dorsey had muttered his usual nonjudgmental, nonindicative grunt, saying only, “Oh.”

  And Kris had tapped every bit of her considerable will to be silent, because, no, she guessed Dorsey wouldn't have believed her. At best, he'd just chalk it up as another of her fantasies, all too many of which focused on so-called straight-acting, straight-appearing fatherly types. Could she help it if she just wanted a good lay from a solid hunk?

  Blotting her eyes, Kris pushed herself to her feet, then crossed to the small half-bath, a tiny room packed into one corner of her bedroom. Kris stepped in, flicked on the light, and looked at herself in the mirror of the minute medicine cabinet. Ew. Nasty. She saw hair that was wet and tousled, puffy red eyes, and a face that was definitely not male, one that was in fact becoming less so by the day. While she'd always have her small Adam's apple—which neither surgery nor drugs could ever eliminate—the months of hormone therapy had already had an amazing overall effect. In that way she was lucky: Because her testicles had long ago been removed, she wasn't having to take large doses of estrogen to suppress testosterone production. And as soon as she'd started taking it orally, she had been quick to see breast development, a softening of her skin and body, not to mention the improvement in her complexion, which had cleared so beautifully. The estrogen had even aided in the effectiveness of the facial electrolysis she'd had out in California. Now rubbing her smooth chin and cheeks, she recalled the Cadillac of treatments she'd endured, which had cost a whopping four thousand bucks and had been paid for entirely by her transgender mentor, a wealthy heiress and sometime lawyer who'd already done likewise. Kris had been unsure at the time, but the procedure, which had lasted seventy-one and a half horribly painful hours, had been definitely worth it.

  She reached for her makeup bag, rumbled through her cosmetics, and the first thing that came to hand was, oddly, her old double-headed razor, now crusted with rust and so dull the blade would barely cut butter. Holding it between her long painted fingernails—fake fingernails, naturally, because the night of the infamous accident she'd also lost the tips of three fingers—she wondered why she'd never thrown it away, at the same time realizing she never would. It was true: Once she'd been so desperate to escape her problems and this world that she'd considered suicide. A few years back she'd held this very same razor much as she did now. Back then, however, she'd popped out the blade and pressed it against her left wrist. All she'd had to do was apply a little pressure, cut through her skin, and bleed out. After all, she'd thought that night, wasn't a miserable fate like that the destiny of every weirdo like her?

  But then she'd stopped, suddenly realizing what it all meant.

  And suddenly angry for the first time in her young life, furious that she'd been pushed that far, to the very brink.

  It was true: The only image she'd ever seen of someone like herself was, over and over again, the one straight society had presented, that of the sick, psycho killer who had no place in this world. But did she really hate herself that much, was she really so evil, so horrible? Absolutely not! And so the very next instant she'd taken back her life, calmly lifting the blade from her wrist and putting it back in the razor, if only to say one thing and one thing alone: Fuck ‘em.

  “Krissy!” now called a tiny voice.

  Shocked back into the present, Kris spun around.

  “Mom says she's sorry,” said Rachel, standing in the middle of the bedroom in an oversize T-shirt. “Will you read me the story?”

  “Oh, honey, I don't know, I—”

  “Come on, please!”

  “But I had such a long day.”

  “Krissy, you didn't finish the story last night, the one about the owl.”

  Kris stared down at the girl, saw her straight hair curling just at the ends, the face all round and hopelessly angelic. Wasn't that the kid she was supposed to have been?

  “Okay, okay …” said Kris with a smile. “I'll be right there.”

  “No, come on. Come with me now,” begged Rachel, stepping into the bathroom and wrapping both of her tiny hands around the wrist Kris had once wanted to slit.

  “Sure, sweet thing.”

  Setting the rusty razor down on the edge of the sink, Kris looked quickly at her image in the mirror. Screw the system, she thought as she was led away. Screw the programmed system that says you have to be one or the other, M or F.

  5

  “I'm not crazy,” said Todd. “I saw someone get shot.”

  The day after the storm, the day after Mark Forrest—if indeed that was his real name—had vanished, Todd stood on the Stone Arch Bridge, staring through the haze at the roaring falls of St. Anthony. The mighty Mississippi was all the mightier from last night's torrential rains, and a continuous wall of water burst over the concrete apron, rushed and swirled its way toward the inevitable gulf.

  Todd felt a hand on his back, and then heard Steve Rawlins say, “I'm sure you did.” Nodding to the sheriff's boats anchored down below and the handful of divers, Rawlins added, “And I'm sure they'll find the body soon.”

  The air was close and hot, a slight rain was falling, and Todd pulled up the collar of his shirt. “This just doesn't make any sense.”

  Last night Rawlins had taken charge because, of course, he and his partner, Neal Foster, were in Car 1110, meaning that as the homicide investigators on duty the case was automatically theirs. The trouble was that at first there'd been no indication of any crime—no gun, no bullet casing, not to mention any sign of a body. Thanks to the heavy rains, there hadn't even been any visible traces of blood. Insisting, however, that this be thoroughly handled, Rawlins had called Car 21, the Bureau of Investigation team, and the guys on duty in that division had gotten out their pump bottle of luminol and sprayed the chemical on part of the bridge. As the summer light had faded, they'd then shone a black light on the spot and certain proteins had fluoresced, indicating blood and plenty of it. A full investigation had been immediately set in motion.

  And now a bunch of divers were down there bobbing for a body.

  “I was standing right here,” began Todd, hanging on to the railing, “wondering if anyone would show.”

  “Okay.” Rawlins was a rugged kind of guy, who was nevertheless naturally patient, thorough. “Go on. Just take it slow.”

  “And then someone came up behind and touched me. It was him, this guy, this Mark Forrest.”

  “The mysterious Mr. X. We're still searching, but no one by that name has been rep
orted as missing.”

  “Well, this guy, whatever his name was, was no bum. I got the sense that he was gay, but I could be wrong. Anyway, he was gorgeous, and someone's going to want him back, someone's going to come looking for him. You can trust me on that one.”

  “He said he was here because you called him?”

  “Right. And I was here because I got a call from someone, a guy, who said something about blackmail.” Todd shook his head. “So obviously there was some sort of setup going on.”

  “I guess so.” Rawlins scratched his neck and asked, “Do you think the whole shooting could have been staged somehow?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, fake bullet, an old bag of blood. A scam of sorts for a television reporter.”

  “Maybe, but why? I can't think how it would connect to any of the stories I'm working on. Not even the one about the drug dealers in the suburbs.” Recalling the look on Mark Forrest's face, he added, “I haven't seen that many people shot, but it sure as hell looked real to me. And Forrest certainly didn't look like some kind of shyster. If anything, he seemed very genuine.”

  For the third or fourth time they walked through exactly what had happened. And where. Todd was sure of the exact spot he'd been standing when Forrest had approached him. He was able to recall what they'd done as soon as the rain had started pelting down. He remembered, too, when he'd first seen the approaching figure.

  “Then the wind hit,” said Todd. “It just came roaring down the river with nothing to block it. I thought it was a tornado.”

  But it hadn't been. There hadn't been any great vortex, no massive twirling wind sucking everything upward. Rather, it had been the nearly as destructive straight-line winds, which were brought by derechos, a phenomenon of squall-line thunderstorms that sent blasts of cold air hurling downward in a straight, broad, destructive swath. And yesterday's sheer wall of force had bowled over the plains at, according to weather experts—which every other person in Minnesota considered himself to be—nearly one hundred miles per hour and dumped over two inches of rain in ten minutes.

  “So the last time you saw Mark Forrest,” Rawlins said as he moved to the railing on the other side of the bridge, “he was standing here.”

  “Clutching the bullet wound.” Todd ran over the sequence in his mind. “Then that sign hit me and I blacked out for a few minutes.”

  So as best they could figure, one of three things had taken place. Mark Forrest had been blown into the river. The person who shot him had dragged away his body. Or it had been a total ruse and no one had been killed.

  Todd crossed to the metal railing, which was tall, nearly chest high, and said, “But I don't get how anyone could have been blown over this. I mean, maybe if that had been a tornado he could have been sucked up and dumped into the river. But the wind just came hard from one side, so if anything it would have just pinned him against the railing, not thrown him up and over. And the guy with the gun wasn't very big, I'm sure of that, so if he'd dragged Forrest away there would have been bloodstains or drag marks or…or something.”

  “Yeah, the B of I guys did a pretty good job of going over the entire bridge,” said Rawlins, for they had combed everything, including the parking areas on either side of the river. “Here's another possibility: The assailant dumped the body over the railing while you were blacked out.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Peering down at the small fleet of boats and the turgid water, Todd considered that possibility, thinking how it was the one scenario that made the most sense. But if that were really the case, if Forrest had been heaved into the Mississippi, where was the body and when would this vast river give it up? The current was swift here, with swirls of root-beerlike foam curling and turning, and Todd gazed from one bank to the other. On his right the ruins of the Gold Medal flour mill towered in the haze like an abandoned castle, on the left stood an amalgamation of dark brick buildings, while straight ahead, maybe a half mile downstream, the murky waters churned over another dam and through another lock. If the body of Mark Forrest were really in the Mississippi, would the divers be able to find it, or had it disappeared permanently into the mucky bottom?

  Todd stared down at one of the columns of the bridge and said, “If he'd been tossed over, it would have been somewhere around here. Maybe he would have struck the side of the bridge, but I don't see any blood.”

  “Neither do I,” seconded Rawlins, who stared through the haze at a small group of cops combing the far bank. “We should probably check out the next lock, see if there's anything hung up down there.”

  “That's a pretty thought.”

  Rawlins walked down the bridge about fifty feet to the spot where his partner, Neal Foster, stood leaning on the railing and watching the sheriff's divers far below. Nearing sixty, bald, and paunchy, Foster had been on the force forever and was one of the more respected investigators around. Three years ago when his partner had retired, he'd brought Rawlins from the juvenile division into homicide when they'd been working on a bridge case, a juvenile homicide. Rawlins now spoke briefly with him, Foster shrugged, and Rawlins headed back to Todd.

  “Foster's going to stick it out here,” said Rawlins. “Come on.”

  As the rain misted them, they walked briskly toward the downtown bank of the river.

  “Thanks for taking this so seriously,” said Todd, gently squeezing Rawlins on the arm.

  “Thank God you weren't hurt.”

  “No shit. Do you think the police would have been so thorough about this if you weren't involved?”

  “I sure as hell hope so. After all, the luminol did show blood—and a lot of it too,” said Rawlins. “But don't forget, they know you. You're Mr. TV. Actually, one of the guys wondered if this wasn't a drill, a test to see if they were really doing their job.”

  “You mean they were worried it was part of some exposé or something?”

  “Exactly.”

  Todd shook his head, said, “Everyone's jaded, aren't they?”

  Rawlins shrugged. “Especially me.”

  “Enough of that.”

  “Oh, that's right. I'm supposed to be happy and hopeful.”

  “Just positive,” said Todd, instantly regretting his choice of words.

  With a dark laugh, Rawlins looked over his shoulder to make sure no one could overhear—on the force and everywhere else he was out about his sexuality, but most definitely not about his health—then said, “That's the one thing I wish I could forget.”

  Back in the parking lot, they left Rawlins's Taurus and proceeded in Todd's dark-green Grand Cherokee. This next stretch of the Great River Road, a riverside parkway with a road, bike path, and pedestrian path, had yet to be completed, and so he turned just past the renovated mill that housed the Whitney Hotel. Heading by another mill, a now-desolate building where sluices had once powered looms that had woven blankets by the thousands, he came to Washington Avenue and turned left. Neither one of them had ever been down to the next lock and dam, so neither one of them knew how to get down there. With the windshield wipers swiping slowly back and forth and the air conditioner on high just to thin the thick air, Todd took one turn, which ended in a dead end. Struggling to see through the slow rain, Rawlins suggested another road, which led past a liquor store and ended at some railroad tracks. In the end, Todd decided to drive to the west bank of the University of Minnesota.

  “The parkway starts again down there,” he said. “I think we can park down on the flats and walk up toward the next lock.”

  “Great. That'll give us a good look at the river too.”

  Where once had stood a shantytown inhabited by dirt-poor Scandinavian immigrants, where later had been piled an enormous mountain of coal used by the U, now stretched a new portion of the river parkway. Todd drove down a steep road that led to the river, turned left, and entered one end of a long public lot that had recently been constructed. He drove toward the end, parked, and he and Rawlins got out and plugged the meter with a c
ouple of quarters.

  The rain fell in an annoying tempo between a mist and a light drizzle, not something that called for an umbrella, but enough to dampen everything. Todd glanced across the river, which was none too wide at this point, and looked up the tall, ragged limestone cliff at the university buildings on the east bank. This definitely felt like an old river, one that had been cutting itself deeper and deeper into the earth for thousands of years. And this area definitely felt like a lost part of the city, something hidden away like a scruffy, shameful child. The city in its own sluggish way was trying to reclaim the Mississippi, turn it from a workhorse of water power and barge traffic into a recreational treasure. When the parkway was completed, when the road and paths were extended upriver another mile or two to the Stone Arch Bridge, that just might happen too. In the meantime, though, this was an obscure place, unknown to most, used by an anonymous few. Todd heard a car, looked over his shoulder, and saw a rusty white Honda Civic station wagon pulling into a far corner. So what was their story, that man and woman in the front seat, what were they doing down here on such a dreary day?

  The parkway simply stopped, a band of pavement that ended and immediately turned into dirt. Random young trees sprouted every which way, and Todd and Rawlins cut through them and made their way to a hidden beach. Todd pushed aside some branches, came upon some sand, and walked right up the quickly moving water.

  “You know,” he said, staring at the water, “we drink the water from this river every day, but I don't think I've ever been this close to the river itself. I don't think I've ever been to a place where I could just stick my foot in it.” He looked straight up, saw an abandoned steel train trestle towering way overhead and covered with graffiti. “Many jumpers?”

  Rawlins shrugged. “A couple or three every year, usually in winter when they're guaranteed a quick death. Some guy jumped off this one, what was it, last March. Smashed right through some ice floes.”

  “How long did it take to find his body?”

  “Almost two weeks.”