Death Trance

by R. D. Zimmerman

  “Come on,” I said, opening my car door.

  Even as we got out and started across the quiet street, however, I couldn't help feeling we were being observed, as if in fact there was someone out there behind a bush or perhaps in a vehicle, watching, waiting. Down the street I saw a rusty old red van, imagined it filled with two, three, four, or perhaps many more Dragons, and realized how stupid we were to have returned to my place.

  My distant directress broke in, calling, “Alex, hold it there for a moment.”

  Toni and I had made it across the street, up to the sidewalk in front of my building. There was a slight breeze overhead, the leaves rustled. And then everything was interrupted. In an instant it all slowed like a film grinding to a stop. All of it—us, the leaves, the distant sounds.

  “Good. Now study that time. Is someone out there? Is there something your subconscious would like to make known? If so, this is a good time to release that information.”

  It was as if I were stepping out of myself, leaving my living body and moving ghostly out of it. I did that. I separated from that still-frozen part of me, and I looked around. There were houses, most of them stucco, most of them good-sized. Well-maintained, too. And two or three apartment buildings like mine, dark redbrick, three stories, six units. Down the street, to the south, I saw someone walking a dog. To the north all was equally quiet, and—

  Wait. That wasn't right. I'd seen something back there. We'd driven in from that direction and there was something odd. But what?

  “Alex, your eyes and mind take in much more than you can actually notice. You're given a vast array of stimuli each time you open your eyes, but you can only absorb and focus on a small fraction of that. That's why this trance is beneficial. You can freeze a screen of your memory and take a closer look at it. Just imagine you're doing that—freeze-framing a film.”

  All of a sudden things were backing up. Time was reversing itself. Yes, I had noticed something, seen something odd. It really didn't strike me at the time, but looking back, something was off. Twenty-seventh Street, which ran east and west, was a narrow street, and there was no parking on one side, the south side, yet there was a vehicle there.

  “What color?”

  I squinted, couldn't tell.

  “Light or dark?”

  Dark. Definitely dark. Kind of boxy, too. A truck or something, and across the front were letters.

  “What letters?”

  It said something. I squinted, concentrated, saw: MITSUBISHI.

  “Good. Now, can you tell if there's anyone in it?”

  Yes. There was a dark figure, the shape of someone behind the driver's wheel. A Dragon? Tyler perhaps? Or was it Jenkins himself? Couldn't the detective have sped over, arrived before us? Quite possibly. It was apparent, too, that whoever was in that vehicle was in fact watching Toni and me. I could see movement, discern that the focus was upon us.

  “Very good. What else?”

  Nothing. Only that much was clear—we were being watched, someone was waiting to strike.

  “Go back to where you were.” A deep, luxurious breath. “Continue from there.”

  I zipped back ahead, found myself again on the sidewalk with Toni. I didn't like this, the two of us out on a dark street. No one else around. Breaking the odd silence, a car door slammed, then I heard footsteps, quick ones. Someone running. I turned, looked back toward Twenty-seventh. Was someone coming from back there, from that truck? Wait, no. Those hurried steps were coming from the alley behind my building, weren't they? Toni heard it, too, and I took her hand and we started running down the sidewalk, up the walk to my building, up those concrete steps. I heaved open the outer door and the two of us charged into the vestibule. With trembling hands, I lifted the key to the door.

  And then froze.

  Carved into the molding of the door was no longer just a faint letter, the one that Tyler had started the other night. No, now there were two, a set of initials deeply cut into the dark old oak: R.T.

  “Toni, look.”

  She gasped, said nothing. My eyes fell to the floor. Chips of wood were lying there undisturbed, not swept out of the way by feet or an opened door. That meant this was freshly done. Rob Tyler had just been here. I had a horrible thought and turned around.

  He was there, just emerging from behind a tree. That shaved head. That sick smile. I saw it all through the glass door. The big hunting knife, too, which he held in his hand.

  “Oh, God,” said Toni.

  I fumbled to get the key into the lock, and as I struggled to open the door, I glanced over my shoulder. Tyler was coming up the walk. Oh, Jesus. Only twenty feet separated us.

  “Hey, assholes,” shouted Tyler from just outside. “Do you know what Dragons do to people who spy on ‘em? Do you? Liz ever tell you? Huh? Well—”

  The lock clicked and I heaved open the inner door, and as Toni and I rushed inside, I shouted, “Fuck you, Tyler!”

  Once in, I turned, pushed the inside door shut, made sure it locked, and then looked out through its window. Toni came up next to me. We peered through the glass, through the vestibule, through the outer door, and outside. The walk out front was empty. Tyler was gone.

  “Maybe he's going around back,” I said. “Come on, let's get upstairs.”

  Toni and I didn't waste any time climbing to my apartment, and once we were inside my place, I locked both locks on my front door, then went back to the kitchen and checked the rear door. Nothing wrong there, nothing kicked in or even tampered with.

  When I returned to the living room, I found Toni in the darkened sunroom, staring out the window and down at the street.

  “No sign of him,” she said. “Maybe he's gone.”

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  I dropped down on the couch, and that's when I realized how exhausted I was. Everything seemed to ache. I checked my watch. It was after eleven. No wonder. Toni looked even more worn out. Her eyes were puffy, face red, and that wonderful hair was quite disheveled.

  She came in and sat next to me, and said, “What a night.” She rubbed her face with both hands. “I wonder how he did it. Jenkins, I mean. How he killed Liz.”

  I hated to say it, but I had to. “Or if he really did. We can't get too far ahead of this. There's still the chance that Jenkins might be undercover. And we can't rule out Bozo down there. Tyler, I mean. He could have killed both your sister and Chris.”

  “I suppose.” She anxiously kneaded her hands. “But if Jenkins is really a Dragon he could be covering for Tyler. That could be Jenkins's role in the Dragons—keeping the police off their backs. Or maybe… maybe he had Tyler kill Liz. You know, Jenkins ordered him to do it.”

  It was a disgusting thought, but a viable possibility. One that made sense, too. Maybe the Dragons had learned of Liz's plans to write about them, and before she could do so, they ordered Tyler to kill her. What had Tyler just said, Did Liz ever tell you what Dragons do to people who spy on them? What the hell did that mean?

  “On the other hand, if Jenkins is actually covering for Tyler or if he even ordered him to do it,” I said, “then that would mean they actually knew each other. We know they're both members of the Dragons, and we also know that the identities of the members are probably guarded. After all, they're masked, so we can't really say they collaborated on killing Liz or Chris because we don't know if Tyler and Jenkins really know one another.”

  I thought of ways to connect the two, of ways to ascertain if in fact Jenkins and Tyler were in contact with each other after their Dragon duties. I shook my head, cursed myself. The damn photos we'd taken at the St. Croix.

  We'd given the pictures and negatives—everything—to Jenkins. Shit, that had been stupid. I'd been tired, freaked out by Chris's murder, only too willing to trust the police. Those pictures had been our only possible proof of his involvement in the Dragons. Was there anything else in them, anything we might have missed?

  Toni flopped her head back on the couch, stared up at the ceiling, s
aid, “Wait a minute.” She rubbed her eyes, her forehead. “Does all this mean that Jenkins could have been Liz's other boyfriend, the second one Chris had seen her with? It does, doesn't it?”

  This terrible sensation sank to the bottom of my stomach, started chewing at me. “Oh, God. We were the ones who told Jenkins that Chris had seen Liz with someone else. We told him Chris knew Liz had another boyfriend.”

  So Jenkins could have killed Chris to keep her from talking. It could easily have gone that way. All too easily. How else would someone know we'd spoken with Chris?

  My mind was whirling, skipping around for thoughts, possibilities. I glanced across the room and my attention was caught by a blinking red light. The answering machine. The red light was flashing because I had a message. Instinctively, impulsively, I rose, crossed the room to the table by the phone, and pressed the button. The thing clattered and spun, and released a message from one of the Larses, three hang-ups, and then two more messages.

  As the second-to-last message began to play, a voice said, “Hello, this is Ruth Harris at The North Center calling Toni Domingo. I gave your message and number to Laura, and I do believe she tried to call you.”

  I cut in, saying, “The hang-ups.”

  “Unfortunately, however,” continued Laura's counselor on the machine, “Laura became quite upset late this afternoon and decided to leave the program. She left the campus a few hours ago. If she contacts you we hope you'll encourage her to return—her treatment was going quite well. Feel free to give me a call at 459-3186. Oh, area code 612—the same as the Twin Cities.”

  I leaned against the wall, watched Toni's shocked and annoyed expression. She stopped the machine, looked at me.

  “Typical. Laura's got this uncanny way of getting into trouble at the worst possible time.”

  “I didn't know there was ever a good time.”

  “No, but I swear to God she has some sixth sense, this radar, that knows exactly when I'm stressed out the most. That's when she cries out for help. Just watch, she'll probably turn up here.” Toni shook her head, ran her hand through her hair. “There's nothing I can do for her. Not now, not tonight.”

  Angrily she hit the button on the machine, and it played the last message.

  “Hi, this is Ed Dawson returning a call from Toni Domingo,” said the steady and polite voice. “I'll be in session the rest of the afternoon, but feel free to leave a message with my answering service and I'll call you back as soon as I can. Hope everything's okay.”

  He slowly gave his number, which quickly brought Toni to her feet and sent her charging toward me and the phone.

  “What are you going to do, call him now?” I asked.

  “Absolutely. Liz told Chris she was dating someone else, so you'd think Liz would have told her shrink, too. I know Dawson didn't say anything about it, but you never know. Play back his number, would you?”

  “Sure,” I said, picking up on her thought, and doing as she asked. “Maybe Liz just called this other guy a… a friend or something.”

  “Exactly.”

  Seconds later Toni was speaking with Dawson's answering service, telling them it was an emergency.

  “Does Dr. Dawson have a beeper?” she demanded. “Good, then you've got to page him—now, tonight. Yes, right away.”

  The operator on the other end was obviously balking at the thought of bothering a client so late at night.

  “Listen,” commanded Toni, “tell him someone else was killed tonight. Murdered. Tell him that, would you? And tell him I need to speak to him as soon as possible.”

  As we waited for Dawson's return call, Toni went out on the dark sunporch, peered out several windows, still seeing no sign of Tyler. She then found a chair in a corner out there, lowered herself into it, and disappeared into sulky, lonely thought. She might have been pondering Chris's death and Jenkins's possible involvement—there was certainly plenty to think about—but I knew that wasn't the case. No, I was sure she was thinking of Laura, what to do, how to handle her, and I had the good sense to disappear into the back of the apartment.

  About fifteen minutes later, as I was pouring myself a glass of red wine, the phone rang. It was Dr. Ed Dawson, returning Toni's call.

  Chapter 22

  “Alex, I'm going to count from ten down to one.”

  What? No, that was impossible, there wasn't time. Everything was happening so quickly and there was someone crazy out there and Toni was in danger. No, I couldn't possibly stop, not now. Liz was dead, Chris butchered, and I had to figure this out before anyone else met the same fate.

  “It's best if we break here. We can continue tomorrow, Alex. I'm exhausted and you're tired, too. I can hear it in your voice.”

  Sure I was tired. It was late. We'd been through a lot, but there was more to be learned and looked at.

  “Of course there is, and you'll do all of that. Trust me. But it's better to wait and do it when you're not so worn out. When we're both not so tired. If we keep going now, we might miss something.”

  Was she right?

  “Yes, I am. You're doing this regression to look for things you might have missed the first time. That's why you've got to be alert and sharp.”

  Which I certainly wasn't, not right then.

  “Exactly.” She took a long, slow breath. “Good. Now follow me as I count: ten…”

  Jarring me from my trance, the goddess who was watching over me started her chant in reverse, voice soft and soothing. She went on and on, rhythmically, seductively, from ten down to nine to eight and so on, once again sucking me out of the past, counting down, pulling me up. No, she was hooking me like a fish and reeling me in. That's what it was like. I was the big fish being slowly cranked in, and I struggled, made her pull hard, because I was in it deep and heavy, the waters murky and obscure.

  “… and one.”

  My eyes popped open, saw nothing, only black, and then there was a click and a light behind us popped on. I was sitting up by then, and I looked at my hands, the recliner, then over at Maddy with those sunglasses. The big attic, too. I glanced out the window. Oh, it's night. It's dark. Nothing out there but blackness.

  I said, “It must be late.”

  She touched the watch on her left wrist. “Just after midnight. No wonder I'm so tired.”

  I was, too. Exhausted. I felt like I had the beginnings of a hangover, my head dull and thick. I stood, went to the screen doors; I saw Lake Michigan out there, just a hint of moonlight bouncing on it, a huge black plane of water that stretched on forever.

  “Is this making any sense to you?” I asked, my back to Maddy. “Am I just blathering or what?”

  “No, you're being very clear. You're doing an excellent job.”

  “Then why doesn't it seem like I'm getting any closer? Why don't I understand what happened? I don't have any better idea who killed Toni, do you?”

  In a low and calm voice, she said, “I can't talk about that now.”

  I spun around. “What? Why not? Listen, I don't want to have to go through this whole thing if I don't have to.”

  “I'm sure you don't. And neither do I. But I don't want to say anything because I don't want to influence you, not yet anyway. Right now I don't want to prejudice your trance in any way; that would only skew your memory. You're the best source of information, and I don't want to pollute that with any of my hunches.” She reached over for her wheelchair. “Now come over here and give me a hand, would you?”

  She was speaking in her calmer voice. Not the high one, but the inner one. The more honest of the two. Interesting, I thought as I went over to her and helped her from recliner to chair. Yes, we were both wiped out, our defense and pretenses totally down.

  “But Maddy—”

  “Alex, please, no,” she snapped. “I can't talk about it with you. Not yet. It would hurt the process, not help it. Besides, I'm too tired.”

  Obviously so. I'd rarely seen her crabby, but she certainly was now. So was I. We'd pushed hard, too hard perhaps
.

  “We'll finish tomorrow, won't we?” I asked, not eager to relive Toni's murder yet anxious to be done with it.

  “I hope so.”

  She spun her chair around and gave it a big push, hurling herself directly toward a wall.

  “Maddy, the door's not over there!”

  She braked quickly, then bent over, put her face in her hands. I saw her body sort of puff up, then deflate. It was a sob. A big, dry one. What was it, I wondered, that she knew? What had she gleaned from what I'd said?

  “Alex, I'm too tired. Would you push me, please?”

  “Sure.”

  I did, gladly so. I took the chair by the handles in back, pushed Maddy from the big room, back through the attic, past a couple of the old servants’ rooms, and to the elevator. We rode down to the second floor, and I lifted the wooden gate and rolled Maddy into the back hall.

  “Solange will take me from here,” said my sister.

  “Sure,” I replied, and headed to the door that led back to the servants’ quarters.

  “Wait, Alex!” Maddy practically shouted. “Their sitting room's right there.”

  The stress was obviously getting to us both, and I said, “Don't worry, I'm just going to knock.”

  Before I had time to do even that, however, Solange stepped out, her body wrapped in a pink robe.

  “Are you ready for bed?” asked the black woman.

  Maddy bowed her head, quietly said, “Yes.”

  Solange smiled at me and took over, wheeling Maddy up another hall and toward the master bedroom. I followed as far as the bedroom door.

  “Good night,” I called.

  “Night, Alex,” she said, just raising one hand and waving. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  They went off, disappearing into their night ritual, where Solange helped my sister wash and undress and get comfortably settled. When, I wondered as Maddy faded into the night, would my sister divulge her thoughts? And what had she actually picked out of my story?