Blood Trance

by R. D. Zimmerman

  I poked her with my worry, gently asking, “You're not asleep, are you?”

  Her head moved slightly from side to side, and I was silent, lying there on my leather recliner, staring at my sister. I knew I believed in hypnosis, didn't know about ESP, but decided to give it a try. As hard as I could, I thought: Wake up! I silently chanted that over and over, my eyes focused on Maddy as I tried to beam that order over to her. And on the fourth or fifth time I saw her eyelids begin to flutter.

  She turned toward me as if she were sighted, said, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you want me to wake up?”

  “Oh.” Could my sister and I be so tightly linked? “I just felt like we got disconnected there. I wasn't sure whether to go on or… or, I don't know. Did I lose you?”

  “No, I was just digesting it all.”

  She rubbed her face, her mouth, like a queen bee who'd just gobbled up all that her drone—namely me —had brought back to the hive from the vast and distant fields. That was my job, I supposed, not just to bring back information from the outer world but to recreate the universe that lay beyond the limits of this island. I was to make Maddy feel not like a prisoner locked sightlessly in a wheelchair but like a wise and sage queen, someone with absolute and mystical powers. And I guessed it was working because I could sense what I'd just fetched for her was highly satisfying. Yes, studying that beautiful face and that long neck, I could tell there was something churning now deep inside her. Something formidable.

  “What is it?” I asked. “And don't say ‘Nothing.’”

  Nothing meant there was something she didn't want to tell me. Nothing meant she knew something she didn't want me to find out. Nothing meant I was doomed to ignorant forages into the hypnotic past.

  She smirked because I'd anticipated correctly, then said, “It all makes sense, doesn't it?”

  “Don't answer my question with a question.”

  “But it makes sense. That's all I'm saying. Why Loretta came to see me, I mean. It just sews everything together. Loretta didn't come to see me because she was a friend of Ray's and he'd recommended me to her for her own personal problems. No, she was no friend of his. Not by any means. Her family had ruined him and his life. Her family had killed his only child. So it's just as I thought. Loretta came to me to confess this horrible thing. Loretta came to see me as a patient because she felt horribly guilty for what her brother had done to Ray.”

  But everybody knew what Billy had done, I thought. It was no secret. The police knew, all the neighbors knew, and it was probably in the papers.

  I sat up, straddling the recliner, held my hands way in front of me, stretched, and said, “But didn't everyone know? What was there left to confess?”

  “I suppose not much. Good point.”

  Maddy retreated into silence. She was very much into the belief that for every action there was a reaction. People do things for a reason, she had often told me. Or what they perceive as a logical reason. So what could Loretta's coming to Maddy actually have accomplished? What had Loretta known that no one else had?

  I ventured, “I'd guess she wanted to tell you something that the police didn't know about.” Then again, perhaps it was much simpler, so I said, “Or maybe she just wanted to help Ray. Maybe she thought if she told you how sorry Billy was or something like that you could then help Ray. Or maybe she just wanted forgiveness.”

  “No, I don't know about forgiveness.” Maddy bit one of her thumbnails. “She wasn't involved in the accident, so there really was nothing for her to be forgiven for. But you're close.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I think you're partly right. Loretta came to see me, Ray Preston's therapist, because there was something she wanted to tell me. Something that she hoped I would in turn tell Ray.”

  So Maddy was to have been nothing more than a medium, a vehicle for getting information to Ray Preston? I stared up at the ceiling that soared way above me, then turned, and my eye was caught by the Tiffany glass dome that capped the stairwell.

  “But if Loretta knew something no one else did,” I said, “why wouldn't she just go to the police? Or just tell Ray directly?”

  “Because she was scared. Because she couldn't go against her family so openly.” Maddy was nodding. “It makes sense. In therapy I learned one thing about Loretta—that she's very fearful of her family, that she needs their approval of her. At the same time she's such a moral person. She loves reading classical literature because she's fascinated by the dilemmas. And she's always tried to do what's right. So she might have been trying to do the right thing by getting some information to Ray via me without her family knowing about it.”

  “But what on earth could Loretta have known that no one else did, particularly then—what was it, a year or so after the accident?”

  Maddy lay there, rolled her head away from me. I saw her bite her bottom lip, shake her head. Her handicaps had created any number of nearly insurmountable barriers, but to look at Maddy was to be deceived. She was so animated it was hard to believe she couldn't just jump up. She got around so well it was easy to forget she was blind. And she seemed so fucking well adjusted and happy about life it was nearly impossible to discern the pain she kept so well hidden.

  “After my accident, I was so angry,” she confessed. “At first I wasn't. I thought I could beat it. They told me I'd never walk again, but I was determined to prove them wrong. I was a survivor, I told myself. Someone who championed over the impossible, and I tried and I tried.”

  “I know. I was there. You were in physical therapy almost all day, every day.”

  “But they were right, you know. I kept hypnotizing myself, thinking I was going to perform a miracle, that somehow through hypnosis I could make myself heal. One day I put myself under, I lifted myself up on my bed, swung my legs around, and told myself I could walk. And I was sure I could. But as soon as I slipped off the bed, I just crumpled to the floor. I landed smack, face first on the linoleum, and I just cried and cried and cried until a couple of nurses came and hoisted me up like a wet rag and put me in bed. I wanted to die after that. Being blind was one thing; losing the use of my legs was more than I could bear. What good was I, what could I do with my life, who was going to love me?”

  I sat up and reached out. At first she wouldn't take my hand. So I took her arm, brought it around, squeezed her hand between mine. And I wouldn't let go. This was something altogether rare, my sister opening up like this.

  “I was so angry,” she said, now tightly grasping my hand as well. “You've no idea how full of rage I was.”

  “No, I don't. You never let it show.”

  “Well, I was. Totally. And I hated myself. All I wanted was to rip out my eyes, chop off my legs. Then later I got mad at the doctors and of course I was furious at the bus driver himself. I had fantasies about taking that jerk and breaking him into a million pieces. I wanted to slice him open and punish him for what he'd done to me. And I wanted to go after the bus company, too, because it was their fault as well. They should never have let him drive.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I was so full of anger that I couldn't even begin to heal emotionally until I'd accomplished something like all that. And I did. I got my justice not by killing someone or blowing up the bus headquarters, but legally. I sued them head to toe and I was awarded all that money. Eight million dollars. All that wonderful money, which means nothing to me except wonderful and glorious revenge that I can count over and over again. Revenge that I keep reinvesting and turning into bigger and bigger revenge.” She laughed. “You understand, don't you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You don't think I'm crazy?”

  “Maddy, I'm in awe of you.”

  “Oh, stop, Alex. None of that. You would have done better than I did in all this.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Like hell, nothing. You're stronger than you know. Trust me. I'm not only your sister, but an exc
ellent shrink.”

  “Maddy, let's go away. Let's take a trip. Let me take you to Europe—what about Italy? Or Russia?” I added, “You have so much life left to live. You're so wonderful and so beautiful. You should see yourself.”

  “Believe me, I wish I could see myself. The last image I have of me is of some skinny, awkward teenager. Then my sight went.”

  “I mean it, Maddy, you're a very attractive woman. Do you remember Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's? That's who you remind me of, her, Audrey Hepburn.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “No, I'm serious. Picture her and envision yourself. You can be quite confident of that,” I said. “So what do you say? Let's get away for a while. You need to get out of here and meet some new people.”

  “I'll think about it.” She laughed, lifted my hand to her lips, kissed me on the back of my knuckles. “So I think she understood that as well.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Loretta, silly.”

  “Maddy, wait.” It was hard to get Maddy onto the subject of herself, and I didn't want to get her off it so quickly. “What about St. Petersburg? It's beautiful and I haven't been there since I was a student.”

  “First things first,” interrupted my sister. “So don't you see? Through all her reading Loretta understood the need for justice as a means of revenge.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I'm a half step behind you.”

  “What I'm saying is that Loretta came to see me because she knew Ray Preston couldn't heal until justice was done.”

  “But Maddy…”

  Had my sister been talking about her innermost thoughts not in order to shed light on herself but on Loretta? Of course, and Maddy had made her point, passed over my idea of a trip, and was now back to her client, whom she hoped I would better understand. Oh, shit.

  “Don't you see, Alex? Loretta knew Billy had to be caught and put on trial. That's why she came specifically to me, to tell me, Ray Preston's therapist, where that child's killer was. That's what she wanted to do, reveal where Billy was hiding.”

  I gave up trying to steer the conversation, which Maddy so absolutely controlled, and I asked, “You mean she intended to tell you so that you could in turn tell Ray?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you couldn't have done that, Maddy. You said it yourself, client confidentiality. There's no way you could have revealed what one client told you, particularly not to another client.”

  “You know that, and I know that, but I don't think Loretta did. And I think she wrote me because Billy had returned to Chicago and resurfaced. He was hiding at the car wash and Loretta had to tell someone.”

  “My God, you don't think she told Ray Preston, do you?”

  “Quite possibly,” replied Maddy.

  Somehow, though, Ray Preston had known. Why else would he have done what he did after that night at the car wash, where else would all that rage have come from? And who but Loretta would have told him?

  “But maybe,” I ventured, “Loretta told Ray thinking that he'd only tell the police. Maybe she didn't expect that he'd go after Billy himself. She didn't realize that until it was too late, until it was—”

  “Truly a matter of life and death.” Maddy then said, “So Billy was back in Chicago, Ray was hunting for him, and Loretta was afraid that her plan had backfired. Instead of bringing legal justice against Billy, she was afraid he'd be the victim of bloody revenge. Which is why she wrote me.”

  I settled back on the recliner, all these ideas and possibilities soaring through my mind. It was beginning to make sense, to mesh together with what I knew was about to happen after I left Helen's. Whom I was about to see. What I was about to learn.

  Chapter 19

  I went to the library. I left the rather pitiful Helen and her rather pitiful cigarette and definitely pitiful cup of coffee. Left them all at her dinette table. I passed across the perfectly white carpet in the living room, out the front door, into my rental car. And then I headed down the snaky streets of the subdivision, out onto the big concrete road, and to the library.

  I found it less than half a mile from Loretta's house, a large structure, a modern building of white stucco and few windows, located just past her subdivision and on the other side of the main road. It was an island surrounded by a sea of cars, just like all the malls sprouting out here on the prairie. I imagined it was as hard as a Pacific island for Loretta to reach, too. With her fear of leaving the house, it must have been tremendously difficult for her to head off on foot, dive across all the roads, swim among all these sharklike vehicles, and finally find refuge in the stacks of books. But she did, apparently religiously so. Escape to a library. Escape in a book. That was certainly how Loretta explored the world beyond this prisonly suburb.

  I parked and went up one flight, where I entered the library. Inside I passed the checkout line, paused on the deep-blue carpeting, and looked around. Open stacks radiated out in all directions, the magazines and audiovisual materials located off to the left, the children's room off to the right. I heard voices above, looked up, and saw first a broad skylight and then a railing. So there was a second floor as well.

  Loretta might not be here, I thought, as I headed toward the magazines. On my drive over, I had kept an eye on the sidewalks, hadn't seen her, but who knew what route she took to and from the library. With any luck, though, she'd be here. I'd find her and somehow get her to answer a couple of key questions, and maybe this thing of car washes and car accidents would all come together.

  The magazine section was an open area, the racks of periodicals facing out into a grouping of chairs and couches. There were two older men and a young girl sitting around, but, no, I realized, Loretta would never choose so open a space to sit, nor would she choose so passing a thing as a magazine to read. If she were anywhere, she'd be squirreled away in a carrel or a corner or perhaps a private study room. And ten to one she'd be in fiction.

  I did only a brief check of the children's room, where a librarian with a name tag that read PAMELA had twenty or so kids engrossed in a story. Next a quick glance in the travel area, where a handful of people were gathered. And then I headed up the stairs toward the books that empowered the imagination. As I climbed toward the fiction department, I began to sense it. I knew before I even saw her.

  “Knew what?”

  That she wasn't alone. That he was there. The floor was blue. The walls a harsh, stark white. But I kept seeing, sensing, feeling a light-brown color. I stopped halfway up, looked behind me, half expected to see someone back there, perhaps even a ghostly creature. Instead the stairs beneath were empty. I turned, continued my ascent, and reached a huge room with stacks shooting off in every direction. She was up here, I knew, and I started in one direction, came to a copy center, where a young blond girl stood behind a counter making reproductions for an older woman. I turned, started down that end of the stacks. On a whim, I headed up one of the stacks, then stopped. I looked behind me. I caught the last of it. Just a glimpse of a leg. Brown pants. Quickly, I spun and headed to the end. Nothing. Only a teenaged boy seated at a carrel.

  I went up to the kid, demanded, “Did you just see some guy wearing brown pants?”

  He had a mouthful of braces and a face full of pimples; he looked at me, shrugged, said, “I guess.”

  “Where'd he go?”

  The kid pointed toward the far wall. “That way, I think,”

  I trotted off. That way was back toward the copy center, but up ahead I could see only the older woman and the blond girl. As I rushed past the stacks, I glanced down one aisle. A man in dark brown pants and tan shirt was running, hurrying away. I skidded to a halt, charged after him. Just as quickly, he ducked to the left, disappeared. I broke into a full run, came to the end of the stacks, turned left, saw no one, then charged up another aisle. He was up ahead, glancing over his shoulder in fright, looking right at me. Running away from me.

  “Snap that picture and hold it. Describe him.
”

  Broad forehead. Long blondish-brown hair. Deep eyes. Skinny. And filthy. Face all smudged. Brown pants and shirt that were streaked with dirt. In an instant I saw the resemblance. Yes, this was definitely Loretta's brother.

  He saw me and took the first right, darted down another stack of books. I came to the corner, charged after him. But the next corridor was empty, just a long, thin passage lined on either side with shelf after shelf of books. I spun around. Billy was rushing down the row behind me. I burst into a run, sailing through the quiet library. He glanced back, stared at me with wide, terrified eyes, and pushed himself on faster and farther. Jabbing one hand out, he smacked a row of books, pulled at them, and sent them sailing through the air and crashing to the floor. He did it again, sent a couple of dozen more books to the ground. When I reached the minefield of literature, I had to slow as I skipped and hobbled over the novels. Nevertheless, I landed on one, skidded, reached out and knocked another handful of books into the air.

  When I reached the end of the stacks, I emerged into the large space at the top of the stairs and beneath the skylight. Billy was nowhere to be seen. He'd either headed down or perhaps, I thought, looking from side to side, he'd sought refuge in one of the back rooms. Or maybe he was hiding in a study carrel.

  A man's voice rose sharply from the stairwell. I darted to the edge, peered over the railing. Billy was flying down, two steps at a time, and a male librarian was calling after him, telling him to slow down. Billy paid no attention, of course, tearing off like the fugitive he was. I raced around to the top of the stairs, then down, past the librarian who yelled at me, past a couple of kids who stared at me. I came around the bottom of the staircase, darted toward the checkout line.

  A figure stepped out in front of me, a hand like a traffic cop's held right up to me.