Death Trance

by R. D. Zimmerman

  I looked through the park, saw a tall figure coming down the pedestrian path, smoking a cigarette. A lone, thin man. Tyler. He was coming from Thirty-fourth, so he must have parked near there, and now he was walking along quite normally as if he were just a normal guy out for a normal stroll along the lake. I spotted him, recognized him at once, his presence unforgettable after that night he'd jumped me in Liz's apartment.

  Over the walkie-talkie I heard rustling, saw Toni now turning, studying, then realizing that, yes, it was Tyler.

  She stood, moved around to the edge of the bench, stopped there, and I only hoped she had the Mace in hand. As he neared, I rose slowly, tried to get a clearer view. My hand clutched the camera, ready to lift it, shoot picture after picture, and capture him on film.

  I heard her voice over the walkie-talkie as Toni said, “Hi, I'm glad you came. I don't want any trouble, I just want to talk about a couple of things.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  His voice was faint, barely audible at first, but then he drew closer. At the same time, I could see him slightly better, too. And the orange glow of his cigarette—it was bright and clear as he sucked on it long and slow.

  “What the fuck's this all about?” he demanded.

  “I need your help.”

  “What do I look like, the Red Cross?”

  “Look it, I know you're a member of the Dragons.”

  “I don't belong to the Masonic dicks if that's what you're talking about.”

  “Don't bullshit me, Tyler. I know more than you think, and we're both in trouble.”

  “So?”

  “Listen, you have to help me. I know you broke into Liz's apartment and stole her journal. She wanted to write an article about the Dragons, so you took what she'd written. You searched her entire apartment, checked everything, and you were sure you got it all. Only you forgot to look in one place—her mailbox. She'd taken pictures of the Dragons, yourself included, and she'd sent them away to be processed. That's where we found them, right in there with all her mail.”

  You're coming on too fast, Toni, I thought. Too hard. Back off. I could hear the anger in her voice. All the frustrations and pain of Liz's death. It was all there in her words. But she was pushing him too hard. Or was she? When she paused, Tyler said nothing and his silence confirmed it all. Yes, it had been him. Yes, he had stolen her journal. He was making that abundantly clear by not refuting anything.

  Finally he said, “I didn't have nothing to do with your sister. We had a couple of fights, sure, but it wasn't me who killed her.”

  “Then who? John, the caretaker?”

  “That dork? Fuck if I know.”

  “Jenkins?”

  “Who the fuck's that?”

  “A cop—a detective actually. He's the one coming after you.”

  “What the—”

  “Don't bullshit me, Tyler. He's a Dragon, he's one of you guys, you know that.”

  “What the fuck are you—”

  That was the last thing I heard. The last thing Tyler said, because right then an explosion ripped the park. Shit. Was that a car backfiring? Fireworks? Oh, my God, Jesus Lord, no. That was a gunshot. I rushed out of the bushes, dashed out onto the bike path. Was that Tyler, was he firing at Toni? No, God, no. The two of them were bending over, ducking. Someone was firing at them. But who? And from where?

  I turned toward Thirty-fourth Street, spotted a figure charging through the dark and toward them. Who was it? I couldn't tell. Couldn't even discern if it was a man or a woman, let alone recognize a face. But I did see an outstretched hand that presumably held a gun.

  “Toni!” I screamed. “Toni, look out!”

  I shouldn't have shouted because she turned toward me, looked for my help, and didn't see the assailant.

  Didn't see that shadow charging them, and because of that she didn't bend over, didn't run the right way or duck behind the bench or run behind the tree, and oh, shit. Another shot. The attacker was running at them, the gun aimed right at them both.

  “Toni!”

  Yet another shot. This time I saw the blast from the gun. The orangish explosion that burst from the tip of the pistol. And that's when I saw her going down, falling because one of those bullets had struck her and blown her off her feet. I dropped everything—camera, walkie-talkie—and ran, my body pumping, feet tearing into ground, arms pulling at air, at nothing, wanting only to be there now. Toni was down, tumbled on the ground, and I had to reach her, help her, protect her from that dark figure who was charging closer and closer.

  “No!” I cried as I tore across the paths, across the beach, feet sinking horribly into thick sand that wanted to grab me, hold me.

  Toni was lying motionless, and Tyler was running, streaking toward the bushes, the woods, fleeing like a deer into darkness. And the assassin was shrieking and yelling, racing after Tyler, waving the gun, trying to take aim, wanting to kill Tyler now that Toni was down. Going after him. Chasing him into the bushes.

  Toni! I raced across the grass, past the trees, and there she was, my Toni, my college sweetheart, a pile of nothing on the ground, collapsed right there by the bench. I fell to my knees, skidded across the ground, touched her, reached for her.

  “Toni, where? Where are you hurt?” I was begging, at first afraid to touch her. “Toni, can you hear me? Toni!”

  She didn't respond, didn't move or make any sort of noise. I took her by the shoulder. Oh, God. I touched her, at first didn't see it all. The blood. Black like oil. It curled around from the side of her head, over her ear, down her neck, onto the ground, and into a puddle because she'd been hit, shot, right there in the temple. I clutched her then. Grabbed her and shook her, screamed her name: Toni! But there was nothing. Only emptiness. An empty body. Her eyes were open, unblinking, staring into the night, and I took her into my lap and wrapped my arms around that warm body, spilling blood all over me and the ground. Sobbing. I was sobbing, holding her, wanting to keep her here in this world with me or close by, whatever. But not there, beyond. I couldn't let her go there because she'd never come back.

  I heard quick, desperate steps, saw her killer now trotting from the bushes, across the grass, straight toward me. Had there been another shot? Was Tyler dead? I didn't know, hadn't noticed a blast, but I didn't care about Tyler or what was going to happen to me. That was pretty obvious. The gun. That hand. Both pointing toward me. Both indicating it was my turn, I was next chosen, this would be an easy execution.

  I saw him, recognized him, shouted, “You fucking bastard, you killed her!”

  Before he could kill me, though, I was suddenly silenced and Toni's killer frozen by a bright light. A beam of whiteness burst out of the blackness, aimed at us both, and shot down my words.

  “Police!” shouted a voice out there behind the light.

  Toni's murderer halted in fear, stopped right then and there, said, “Hey, wait, I'm—”

  “No, don't listen to him!” I screamed at the cop behind the flashlight. “He killed her, he shot her!”

  “What? No, I—”

  The policeman boomed: “Drop your weapon and put your hands on your head!”

  He balked, frozen there in the blinding light. “Wait, you don't—”

  “Now! Drop your weapon now!”

  And the gun tumbled from Lieutenant Jenkins's right hand, hitting the cool April ground with a soft thud.

  Chapter 28

  Leaning against the balcony door, staring out at the fading sky and Lake Michigan, I took a deep breath, said, “If only it had been that simple.”

  Behind me on the recliner, I heard Maddy sniffling. I glanced back, saw my sister pushing up her Beverly Hills sunglasses, mopping her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “There's more, isn't there?” she asked.

  “Of course. That was only the start. Everything got really screwed up after that.”

  Before me the lake was flat and calm, a throbbing blue, and I looked to the west, saw the last of the brilliant sun slipp
ing away. I'd broken free from my trance, leaped into the present, but it didn't fit, this island, this lake, this sunset. Hard to believe that I was here when everything—Toni's murder, the month of April—wasn't ages but only a few minutes in the past. Perhaps Maddy was right. Perhaps now and then weren't really all that far apart.

  I took a deep breath, wished I was a smoker, wished that I could be sucking on a cerebral cigarette, asked, “Shall I go on?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I started pacing, started talking, letting the beginning of the end come out as quickly and effortlessly as if I were still in hypnosis. I told Maddy about that kid, the child policeman, the young guy who looked like he barely shaved and who was with the park police and who didn't even carry a gun, but who had a booming voice and the balls to carry it off, to get Jenkins to surrender like that. He was the one that shone the light on Jenkins. Next, this child cop radioed for an ambulance, which soon came screaming through the night and into the park. Toni was dead, of course. They checked me, too, because of the blood I had all over me. That was Toni's blood, though. I was okay. Unhit.

  Okay except for Jenkins. That pig. That idiot. The cops, a whole bunch of them, were there minutes later, too. And Jenkins kept saying how this was nuts, he hadn't done anything. He'd been called down here, someone had left a message at the office, asked him to meet down here, and that's when he'd heard the shots. He hadn't fired at Toni, he claimed. Someone else had. He'd heard the shots, come running, and had fired his gun at someone else, someone in the bushes.

  “That's when I went nuts,” I said to my sister. “I started screaming, ‘Liar! He's lying! I saw him shoot her!’”

  “But Jenkins denied it?”

  “Over and over, which only made me shout louder and faster. It worked, I guess, because they arrested him, cuffed him and everything, then stuffed him in a squad car.”

  “What about Tyler?”

  “I was sure they'd find his body over in the bushes, his brains blasted out, but they didn't. He disappeared, not a trace of him.” I took a deep breath, pushed on. “Then all the legal stuff started, the depositions and all the cops and detectives and everyone trying to figure out what happened, who and why. It was a mess, really. Jenkins denied it all along. Said I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Nobody believed him, though. Not at first, anyway. Everyone believed me and the child cop who'd seen Jenkins standing there with the gun. So they held Jenkins and posted a high bail. I told them all the stuff about the Dragons. I wanted to get the knife into Jenkins good and deep. So I went into detail about the Dragons and how Toni and I had gone out to the St. Croix and taken the pictures. And I told them about what happened in the basement, you know with John and how Jenkins had been there.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, in the beginning everyone believed me. They brought in John, questioned him, too, but then things started to change. They found the pictures Toni and I had taken out on the St. Croix, and they studied them and it really was Jenkins down there with the Dragons, but he was undercover, it came out. An undercover Dragon, so to speak. He'd been investigating the disappearance of those four women, and so he'd infiltrated the Dragons, tried to learn what they were all about. It was all substantiated, recorded, filed, and approved, too. Okay, so he wasn't a Dragon, not a real one.”

  Then, I explained to Maddy, Jenkins continued to claim he'd come down to Lake Calhoun because he'd gotten some mysterious message at the office and he was worried about us, Toni and me. It turned out there really was such a message—another officer had taken it—although I was sure it was planted. But the thing that really screwed up everything, that got Jenkins released, was the autopsy. They sliced up Toni, the thought of which made me ill for days, and they carved that bullet out of her head, and it fucking didn't match. It came from a different gun, they said. I can't remember what kind of gun they said it was fired from, but it clearly and definitely was not the gun belonging to Detective Tom Jenkins.

  “It was awful, Maddy.” I started pacing, passing the window, circling Maddy on the recliner, moving, shaking, trembling. “After that everyone began to question my story. The cops, I mean. It was like they were determined to prove one of their own was innocent, and so they made me go over and over it, wondering if I hadn't gotten something wrong, if I hadn't missed something. They grilled me, interrogated me, you know, like they were the goddamned Gestapo. They started picking apart everything I said, then finding holes, or so they claimed. Something about the sequence of hearing the shots, seeing the shots. And where everyone was, how it all happened, how Toni fell.”

  “I remember when all that was going on. You called me—you sounded terrible, so depressed.”

  “I was a wreck.”

  I was a wreck, I explained, because it was impossible this possibility that they brought up about there being someone else down there. Someone else who in fact killed Toni. That was their theory, and the thing that complicated it further was that Tyler disappeared. Totally, absolutely. He vanished, so there was no one to substantiate or corroborate my story. Tyler was gone; he'd left the city, the state, maybe the country. The last I saw of that guy was him tearing for the bushes. They never found his body over there or even any blood, so he wasn't hit. He ran into those bushes down by the lake, got clean away, and he just didn't stop running. The cops said they checked his house, his friends, the College of Art and Design, but found nothing. Not a trace of Rob Tyler.

  It was my word against Jenkins's, and so they kept pushing this investigation and pretty soon, after a month or so, they dropped the charges against Jenkins. Dropped everything, said there was significant lack of proof. The fuckers. The goddamned police watching out for the goddamned police. Something was wrong, I knew it. The main thing that got Jenkins off was the bullet thing, how it didn't match his gun.

  “That's when I started thinking, wondering. I mean, that's all I did, just sat around and tried to figure it out.”

  “And what did you come up with?” asked Maddy, still lying flat on the recliner.

  “I think someone in the police force was covering for Tyler.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, I think someone switched the bullets. You know, maybe it was bullshit, this thing about Jenkins infiltrating the Dragons. Maybe he was really one of them. And maybe there was someone in the police force who was also a real Dragon. So this other person, well, after the coroner pulled the bullet from Toni, well, maybe this other person took that bullet and left another. You know, switched them so they wouldn't match.” I paused, stopped, looked down at Maddy. “It's either that or… or… Well, what do you think, Maddy? You've got an idea, don't you?”

  “Go ahead, finish. Or what?”

  “Or Tyler and Jenkins were in it together from the start. You know, they could have both been Dragons, and they might have tricked us, Toni and me. If it was like that, Tyler could have told Jenkins about the meeting down at the lake, so Jenkins would have been waiting for Toni. And after he shot her, you know when Jenkins ran after Tyler, well, maybe he ran after him and instead of shooting him, he switched guns with Tyler. He could have given the real murder weapon to Tyler, who then disappeared, all according to plan.” I caught my breath, returned to the recliner, sat on the edge of it, stared at my sister, said, “It's got to be something like that, don't you think?”

  She lay quite still, then started shaking her head. “No, not necessarily. Sure, Jenkins could have killed Toni, but why not you, too? He knew you were both together, so why wouldn't he have gone after you both?”

  “Because that kid cop came and stopped him just before he was going to shoot.”

  “But Jenkins couldn't have been sure you both were there. Toni had promised to come alone, so why would Jenkins have killed her then? That would have possibly meant leaving you alive to talk, to point fingers, which you nobly did.” As if this were all a parlor game, Maddy lightly said, “No, if Jenkins intended to kill Toni I'm certain he would have been absolutely sure to kill you, t
oo.”

  I hung my head, rubbed my forehead with one hand, pulled at my hair, replied, “That's what I keep coming back to. It's the one thing that doesn't make any sense.” I burst to my feet again, started pacing. “Well, if Jenkins wasn't involved, then what about John? Maybe he was a Dragon and maybe Tyler planted him in the bushes. It could've been him who fired the other gun. Shit, I don't know. Maybe that's all wrong. It could've been him, though. Maybe John was just a crazy caretaker who was fixated on the women in his building. He had a key to both Liz's and Chris's apartments, he could've gotten in and killed them both.”

  Pondering a thought out loud, Maddy slowly said, “What about Laura?”

  I studied my sister, wondered if there was something more she was trying to get at, said, “Yeah, I've thought about her, too. She'd been in Minneapolis earlier that day, and I suppose she could've followed us to the park. But was Laura that angry at Toni; I mean, could she have hated her enough to shoot her? And where the hell is she now? I've written to her, tried to find her, but no luck.”

  This was going to make me nuts, push me over the edge. I had all this information and I kept circling and circling, but couldn't find the real truth to land on. I eyed my sister lying there, lounging on that recliner, then gazed out at the blue-black lake.

  “Okay, Maddy, out with it.”

  “Out with what?”

  “Damm it, Maddy, stop playing games with me!” I shouted, spinning around, staring at her. “You know something.”

  “Alex, when did you start using such bad language?”

  “Maddy, what the hell is it? Did Toni tell you something at Liz's funeral? Do you know something about Liz that I don't?” Suspecting something more devious, I asked, “What do you know about Laura?”

  Maddy lay there, put her hands on either side of her glasses, pushed her glasses up on her nose, then massaged her temple. Took a deep breath. Then she reached down to her left wrist and checked her watch.

  “Well,” she began, “there is something I haven't told you. But I'm hungry, and—”