Death Trance

by R. D. Zimmerman

  “He was married to his work—a very ambitious guy—but otherwise not really.”

  “What do you mean, not really? You either are or you aren't.”

  “The extra lemons are for you. Did you get any?”

  I reached down, took another, said, “Well, was he married or wasn't he?”

  “No, he was just divorced, but he was still sort of married in his head, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh.”

  Maddy smiled, drank some tea, settled back into lounge position, a giddy expression on her face. “We've never talked like this, have we?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I had a few boyfriends, you know. I went out on dates. Not a lot, mostly with blind men, though there were a few seeing ones, too.”

  “And him?”

  “Seeing. Definitely. He had a Jeep or a Dodge-something, and he used to drive me out to the Indiana Dunes and then right down on the beach. He had a place where he could sneak down, you see, and it was all very exciting, racing along the edge of the lake and everything, all that splashing water.” She sighed. “There was a moody side of him that I never really got to know, but he was special, really he was. Or rather we were special together. What's the saying? One soul in two bodies, that was us. Soul mates.”

  “Why didn't you ever tell me?”

  “He worked in my office, you see, so at first we were very hush-hush about it. He was like that, too. Very secretive, you know. I got used to that, I guess. In fact it was kind of fun—we had a special secret. Eventually we told a few people, but then…”

  Maddy's face fell. I watched her, my blind sister with the long neck and the Beverly Hills sunglasses, and I knew I'd seen her in pain before, but never in hurt. Her mouth grew tiny, her body still.

  “But then?” I prompted.

  “I was hit by that bus, you see, and I was in the hospital, and it really was very difficult for me to get around, and—”

  “He never came to the hospital, did he?”

  She shook her head.

  No, he didn't. Otherwise I would have met him because I'd been there almost every day. All of Maddy's vast number of friends were there, and I knew them all now. But not him, this guy I now hated because Maddy had been deeply depressed in the hospital—I remembered that all too well—not simply because she'd been crippled, but also because there was no Mr. Wonderful in her life. Only Mr. Shmuck.

  “Anyway, he could be like that, terribly abrupt, so I'm not that surprised he shut me out,” continued Maddy with a helpless shrug. “He had this wonderful job opportunity out in the Bay Area. A private clinic was falling apart, and he went in, bought it, and turned it into a huge success.”

  “And you never heard from him again?”

  She shook her head. “He must be happy because he must be rich now, which is what he wanted.”

  “What an asshole,” I said.

  Maddy mustered a smile. I set my iced tea on the floor, reached out, and touched her on the knee. She gave no reaction, and I realized, of course, that she couldn't feel my hand there, couldn't see it either, so I touched her on the arm, which brought more of a smile and most of the warmth back to her face.

  “Thank you.” She took a long, deep breath, tried to huff all that hurt out of her body, and said, “Now what'll it be? More trance or are we done for the day?”

  “More trance.”

  I couldn't leave Toni. In hypnosis I'd found her, couldn't just drop her. I had to return.

  But I couldn't stop thinking of my sister, either, and how hurt she felt and how little I could do for her and how little she really needed me—not to get the phone, not to pay for anything because she had all those tens of millions of dollars.

  “Maddy, you mentioned earlier you needed my help on something. What is it?”

  “Later, Alex.”

  “No, tell me. I'll do anything for you. You know that.”

  She put down her iced tea, took my hand in her glass-chilled grasp, said, “I do know that, Alex. Absolutely. And I do want your help. There is something you can do for me, but I don't want to get into that now. Let's finish this.”

  “But—”

  “Alex, really, we'll get into it later. You can help me after we're through. First things first. I don't want to distract you. I don't want to detract from what you're trying to accomplish. What you're trying to do is both very difficult and very, well, exhausting.”

  Yes, there was the matter of Toni and who killed her. That was why I was here. To use forensic hypnosis in an attempt to identify her killer. All right, I thought, turning, settling back into the recliner, so Maddy was right. Again.

  “Okay,” I said, pulling the lever so the bottom part came up, caught my feet, lifted them up. “But you promise you'll let me help you?”

  “Promise.” She took one of those cueing deep breaths. “In… out. Are you comfortable?”

  I squirmed a bit, wormed my way into the leathery folds of the recliner. “Yes.”

  “Then just relax. Take a deep breath. Hold it. Let it go. Now another…”

  I did as she commanded, my sister the sorceress, following her instructions, her induction into that other world, the hypnotic one that I lusted for. I took those breaths. Felt my body grow lighter. I rolled my eyes up, closed my eyelids, breathed again. It worked. Quite well, actually. Within moments I was on the fringe of another trance of another world. Several minutes later I was quite deep. I let her lead me, did as she commanded, and then I was gone. Very much so. Back into that black vortex.

  And she called to me, “Now, where were we?”

  Where were we? I knew, quite literally. Back in Minneapolis.

  Chapter 6

  Liz's apartment was close, but her neighborhood, across Hennepin and Lyndale and up a couple of streets, quickly changed from pseudo-yuppie to quasi-punk, which made it less boring but perhaps a bit more dangerous. After Chicago, however, nothing up here in Minneapolis really seemed all that threatening. Just last month a friend had confronted a burglar in her house. He'd broken in during the middle of the night, had been on the way up the stairs, and my friend was standing there in her nightgown, and when the burglar saw her, he said, “Excuse me,” turned and calmly walked out of the house. Only in Minnesota.

  So the neighborhood couldn't have been the reason I was afraid. But I was. I pulled over, parked behind a dark brown van, and Toni and I sat inside my Honda as the early spring light faded away. I looked up at the small redbrick apartment building and felt a tremor of fear ripple through me. We shouldn't go up there, up those concrete steps, through that door.

  “We can skip this part if you want, Alex. If this is too hard, we can pass over it and move on.”

  No, I had to push into this because I was certain there was something to be learned up there in that apartment. Liz had left something behind that would tell us about her fate, so we had to go. I was sure of this, but why?

  “Because you've returned to the past with knowledge of the future.” The voice much wiser than I added, “Don't worry, you'll survive what's about to happen. And so will Toni. Her time has not yet been called.”

  Right. I knew that. But what was all this? Was I some sort of spy or hidden observer watching this or was I really back there, really doing my life all over again?

  “Alex, just be assured that it's not the middle of the night and you're not down by the lake. There will be no man with a gun, not yet.”

  I felt a hand on my arm, which pulled me back into whatever reality this was. I looked down, saw Toni's long, thin fingers touching me.

  “You look a little spacey,” said Toni. “Are you all right?”

  “What?” I asked, shaking my head, taking a deep breath, returning to that moment. “Oh, sure. Yeah, I'm fine.” I reached for the car door handle. “Let's go. You have the key, don't you?”

  She nodded, Toni who was supposed to have been gone forever, and climbed out of the car. I stared after her, couldn't quite believe it still, had to pinch myself. I
didn't think I'd just lost Toni, I thought she had gone forever, disappeared over the horizon, never to return. I circled the car and was now just two steps behind her, having changed into jeans and a faded denim shirt. Toni was still in her tan shirt, jeans, and those too-weird hacked-off cowboy boots. And we were about to go into Liz's apartment, which I knew was stupid even though I did nothing to the contrary.

  “Which is Liz's place?” I asked.

  “That one.”

  Toni raised her finger without really looking, and I saw her point to a ground-floor corner window covered with a water-stained white curtain that hung limply from a rod. My pulse dialed itself up to high as if I knew there was someone inside there, lurking in a corner or hiding in some closet of the apartment. Come on, I told myself. Get a grip.

  We entered a beat-up lobby, the tiled floor all chewed up, and I checked the row of brass mailboxes. L. Domingo's box was packed, letters and junk mail bulging out.

  “Remind me to look for the mailbox key,” I suggested.

  “What? Oh, yeah. Look at that,” said Toni, glancing at the box as she lifted a key to the front door. “Classy building, huh? You'd think John, the caretaker, would help out. He just lives upstairs. Then again, Liz always said he was kind of dense. Oh, and a word from the wise. If we run into him, don't let him know you're from Chicago. He grew up across the street from Wrigley Field, and he'll corner you and talk for hours about the Cubs and the Bears.”

  The hallway was dark. Old green paint everywhere. Some old fixtures above. And a carpet that had had the life trampled out of it years ago. We turned left, and Toni lifted the key to the first door, put a hand to her mouth, closed her eyes. So she was just as unsure as I was.

  “May I?” I asked.

  She nodded, and I slipped the brass key into the lock, twisted, and pushed the door into our dubious fate. It was a dingy place—wallpaper old and faded, all the curtains and shades drawn. There was an old brown couch propped up on two dictionaries, a stereo, a haphazard stack of CDs, a big, fat upholstered chair. And not too much else at first glance. So what had I been afraid of? There wasn't anything in here except possibly, and probably, cockroaches.

  “Come on,” I said, reaching out and taking Toni's hand in mine. “It's all right.”

  Soft skin, doctor's skin, well scrubbed, smooth. That was what her hands were like. I'd forgotten that, but was reminded again of all our funny and wonderful times, as if her skin supplied a direct link to the past. I offered a small, reassuring smile, she looked at me and blinked her thanks, and so we went in, crossed the threshold, and entered the apartment a dead person had left behind. I didn't envy Toni this. I'd had to sort through my dad's things after his death, and it was awful, particularly since I'd had to do it mostly on my own. All the sorting and lifting of boxes.

  “Sorry.”

  No, no, it was okay because Maddy had done other things. Some of the financial and legal matters. It was just hard. Mother couldn't face up to it. So I'd done it, which was why I knew how hard this was for Toni. Particularly if she believed her sister's death was not one Liz had bought of her own volition.

  “Oh, God,” muttered Toni.

  It was depressing. Dark and dingy. Stale and stuffy. My eyes looked around, searched for the old peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was around here somewhere, I thought, my hand falling from Toni's. The kitchen? I left Toni stranded in the middle of the living room and moved toward the rear of the place, with the oak flooring —which was in nearly every apartment and home within the city limits of Minneapolis—creaking under my weight like fresh ice. I entered a narrow hallway that led from the living room, passed down this gray corridor, and stopped at the entry to the little kitchen. And there it was. The sandwich. The coffee. Sitting right there on the edge of the chipped porcelain sink.

  I should have stopped right there. I shouldn't have gone on. But I did. I couldn't help myself; it was as if some other sense had picked up an alien presence. So I went on down the narrow, windowless hallway and back toward a blackened doorway, which had to be to the bedroom. Behind me I heard something dragging across wood. I glanced back, saw Toni hauling a chair over, then heard her plunk herself down. She could do only so much, go only so fast.

  Something else struck my ears, pricked at me. A soft scraping noise. Oh, shit, I thought. Was someone else in here? Had that been a heavy boot moving across the floor? I froze, heard something again. A gentle movement, a Hitchcockian one, as if a person were lurking, hoping not to be discovered. I stiffened, thought about backing down the hallway, retreating to the living room. I nearly called back to Toni, but why should I add to her trauma? Why should I spook her unnecessarily? It was probably a mouse or a rat or some really big bug. Something beating against the tattered shades, a Hannibal-the-Cannibal kind of moth.

  Get a grip. There couldn't be anyone in here, could there? No, the front door had been locked. Still, I was in no hurry. There was no sense in announcing myself any more than I already had. I put one foot down ever so gingerly. There was a back door on my right, then another. I stopped. The door was thickly painted with the years of many tenants. Layers of them. I reached for the glass knob, twisted it. A black hole of a closet emerged. Coats, boots. Things stuffed in there, packed from floor to top shelf. No one could be in here, but—

  But then suddenly something came crashing out. I yelled. This hard thing came ripping down, plunging toward my head, smacking me. I jumped back.

  “Alex?” called Toni. “What—”

  I yelled again, nearly jumped out of my clothes as a boxed Monopoly game tumbled down, burst open, showered me with the American-as-apple-pie cards and a whole suburb's worth of little green plastic houses.

  “Oh, crap,” I muttered. To Toni, I called, “It's nothing. Something just fell out of the closet.”

  Cursing, I stepped in and around the game paraphernalia scattered across the floor. Moved on. I needed to despook this place. Open all the shades, turn on the lights, open the windows, get rid of the chokingly stale air. That's right, I thought. This place needed to be reclaimed by the living. So I continued, glancing to the left and into the bathroom with its little hexagon-tile floor, tub with window above it, peeling white paint.

  I heard it again. That slight noise. I froze. It was coming from the bedroom. My aroused heart took note and swelled with long, deep beats. But this was silly. Very silly. I took a step, another. No one could be in there. If no one was in there, though, then why was the bedroom door only partially open? What about the police—I'd forgotten to ask Toni if they'd already been here. Perhaps they'd come to ascertain… ascertain what? Next of kin? That it had indeed been a suicide?

  Swish. That was what I was hearing. Nice and soft and slow. As if someone were hiding in the bedroom and moving very, very slowly. I didn't like this. I eased open the bedroom door, pushed it just a bit. There were jeans on the floor. A bra, dropped right on a small rug. I saw a mattress on the floor, too, and cream-colored sheets heaved aside. So what was unusual about this, how different was this than my own bedroom? Not very.

  That's when I heard it again, that noise. My hand flattened on the door, slowly coaxed it wider, heard it perfectly now. I saw the source. A partially open window—pulled up some six or so inches—the wind billowing against the closed shade, the closed shade brushing against the windowsill. I shook my head. Had I seen too many movies or what?

  I strode into the bedroom, made directly for the window, which I intended to throw open as wide and fully as possible. I was maybe halfway across the room, however, when I sensed something else. Something extremely odd. This time it was the bedroom door, and it was closing behind me. I froze, turned around. There was a figure there. A man taller than me, with a woman's stocking pulled crudely over his head. He'd been hiding behind the door, and now that I was in the bedroom, he was closing the door, then twisting the little lock beneath the glass knob.

  Oh, shit. Here I was, trapped with some hood of a burglar, and Toni, my only chance at o
utnumbering this thug, was locked out of the bedroom. My mind bolted ahead, raced for a way to thwart all this, and—

  “Alex, replay this scene slowly as if it were a film or a video. You've come back looking for something, a clue of some sort. You saw it all before, now you have time to study it.”

  Time banged to a halt. Freeze frame. I glanced to the left, saw a dresser. A cheap dresser made from press-board. One of the drawers was yanked open. Several pairs of hose were dangling from it. So this guy, whoever he was, hadn't been expecting anyone. He'd searched Liz's drawers, found a pair of nylons, pulled one leg over his face. I looked back at him. Face grotesquely mushed beneath the nylon. Lips flattened, nose pugged out. No moustache.

  “What's he wearing?”

  He had on a T-shirt, black, with some sort of eagle on it. Beneath one of the sleeves… beneath the right sleeve, there was a tattoo. I caught only a hint of it, couldn't tell what it was, but it looked like a dragon. Yes, there was some sort of curling, serpentine tail—that's what was poking down. And jeans, of course. He wore ratty old black jeans and… and black high-top gym shoes. Canvas ones.

  Shit, he dropped some papers or something from a folder, and from atop a dresser he snatched a shadeless lamp, a big, heavy wooden one.

  I couldn't hold the scene still any longer.

  In a flash of a second, in a lightning rush of adrenaline, everything dialed back up to full speed. The guy came at me, lamp held back, ready to swing. Great. I'd come in here thinking I might find a mouse and instead discovered some thug who was apparently intent on batting me out of existence.

  My eyes groped for something, anything, a tool, a device, protection, a weapon. A shoe. In the corner of my eye I spotted a shoe on the floor, and I scooped down and hurled it at him. The attacker laughed, knocked it away as if it were cotton candy. I eyed a pillow on the bed. Against a lamp of that size and weight a pillow would be silly armor. An alarm clock. I dove down, grabbed it, heaved, watched him swing the lamp Mickey Mantle-like, and a split second later I was showered with pieces of digital plastic.