An Image of Death

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  I turned up the heat. A weak flow of air filtered out of the vents. My Volvo was getting old and cantankerous. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not a tightfisted person. Or a misanthrope. But my ex-husband’s child support payments are negligible, and producing videos is how I support my fourteen-year-old and myself. Playing Lady Bountiful, as noble as it may be, doesn’t put food on my table.

  It was barely four when I drove past the forest preserve, but daylight was already fading. It had snowed again last night, and the tree branches were bowed out with a ribbon of white. The coating was so thick that the skinny, dark edges of the branches underneath looked like a drop shadow. Still, there was something soothing—almost elemental—about the combination of brown branch, white mantle, and pale sky.

  By the time I turned onto our street, the heater finally kicked in, and I made it to the house in relative comfort. I live in a small three-bedroom colonial that I struggled to hang on to after the divorce. It’s not new or plush, but they’ll have to carry me out feet-first. I pulled into the garage and went inside.

  “Rachel?”

  No reply. I ran upstairs and changed into a pair of sweats, then went into the bathroom. The mascara I’d put on this morning was still there; gray eyes fringed with clumpy black lashes stared back at me in the mirror. I ran a brush through my hair, which used to be black but is increasingly streaked with gray. I sighed. I’d never be as well preserved as the Women Who Lunch. They could afford plastic surgeons and exotic beauty treatments. The best I could do was a fresh application of concealer. Still, I hang on to the fact that a guy once told me I could pass for Grace Slick. Never mind that it was thirty years ago, and we’d been in a dark room smoking weed.

  I was downstairs chopping tomatoes for a batch of chili—this was turning out to be a day of continuous meals—when the kitchen door flew open.

  “Hi, Mom.” Rachel bounded in, accompanied by a gust of frigid air. “What’s for dinner? I’m starved!”

  I shivered.

  “Oh. Sorry.” Rachel slammed the door and sniffed her way to the stove. Her cheeks were flushed, and despite the weather, her blond curls were damp.

  “Were you running?”

  She nodded. She’d been trying to stay in shape for her newly discovered passion, field hockey. Soccer with a stick, she called it. Even though it was a fall sport, she was thinking ahead to next season—a significant feat for a fourteen-year-old. Not only was she jogging regularly, but she was also exercising with a huge rubber ball.

  I wouldn’t admit it, but I was thrilled. Her keen interest in the sporting life—regardless of how long it lasted—was a sign that our troubles of last fall had abated. That, for the moment, she was navigating the Sturm und Drang of adolescence smoothly. The best part was the occasional flash of maturity that hinted at the magnificent adult she would become. I kissed the top of her head, not an easy task, since she’s only two inches shorter than me.

  “It’s chili.”

  “No kidding. It took almost a mile to warm up.”

  When I gestured to the package of chili seasoning, she shot me one of those exasperated teenage expressions that says for all her adult ways, she still has a few years to go.

  “And bread and salad. But it’s going to be a while.”

  “No prob.” She headed out of the kitchen. “I’ll do some rotation exercises.” She’d made me buy her one of those huge rubber balls for Hanukkah and was doing all sorts of twists, contortions, and stretching. To increase flexibility, she claimed.

  We didn’t eat until 7:00, and we were finished by 7:10. I was stacking plates in the dishwasher when the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Rachel said.

  The front door groaned as she opened it. The car wasn’t the only thing feeling its age.

  “No one’s here.” Then, “Oh.” The whine of a vehicle pulling away floated through the door. “It’s a package.”

  I wiped my hands on a towel. I couldn’t remember ordering anything that would bring UPS to the house. Especially after the holidays, when I’m at my most parsimonious.

  Rachel came into the kitchen carrying a lumpy manila envelope. She flipped it over, shrugged, then handed it to me. There was no label on the package, and my name, the E in Foreman missing, was scrawled in formal cursive. The handwriting, filled with swirls and curlicues, leaned left, not right.

  There was nothing else on the envelope. No markings. No UPC code. I chewed on a nail. The anthrax scare might be over, but once my confidence in public institutions has been shaken, it never rebounds to the same level. And I have a history of mistrust toward institutions. “I’m guessing it wasn’t UPS.”

  Rachel shook her head. “Some kind of van dropped it off.”

  “A minivan?”

  “No. Bigger. Well, boxier, I think. I only saw it from the back.”

  I studied the envelope. Except for the lump, it looked innocuous. I didn’t hear any ticking or smell anything unusual. It crossed my mind to call the police, but village detective Dan O’Malley has had enough of me for a lifetime. What would I say, anyway? A package came, and I’m afraid to open it?

  Still.

  I looked up at Rachel, then headed toward the steps.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m taking it down to the garage.”

  “Mom, it’s just an envelope.”

  “I realize that. I want to check it out.”

  “You’re being really paranoid, you know.” She took a step forward as if to snatch it from me.

  “Young lady, don’t you dare.”

  She stopped and shook her head. “You’re nuts.”

  I hesitated. She had a point. If something untoward was going to happen, it probably would have occurred by now. I went to the cleaning supply cabinet and took out a pair of yellow rubber gloves.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  I slipped the gloves over my hands. “You have my permission to go upstairs anytime you want.”

  She raised her chin. A defiant silence caromed around the room.

  I backtracked to a drawer and took out my Cutco knife. A neighbor’s son sold it to me two summers ago, and it’s the sharpest knife I own. Brandishing it in one hand, I edged up to the table, bent over, and slit the envelope at one end.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nothing blew up. No cloud of toxic poison dispersed above our heads. I looked over at Rachel. She didn’t say anything, but her eyebrows shot up, just like my father’s when he’s about to say “Nu?”

  I grabbed it and peered inside. The bulge turned out to be a VHS cassette. I took it out. It was a workhorse brand of videotape, the kind that’s sold in supermarkets and drugstores. There were no markings on it, and no label on the top or the spine. I turned the envelope upside down, thinking a note might fall out. Nothing did.

  “I wonder what it is.”

  “Try videotape,” Rachel said.

  “Thanks for your observation. But who would send me a tape? And why?”

  “Hello…you are a video producer.”

  I produce industrials: product introductions, training films, and corporate videos, but I didn’t have anything in production at the moment, and I couldn’t think of any former clients with a reason to send me a tape. “No one drops off tapes in the middle of the night. Why didn’t they come in?”

  Rachel shrugged. “What are we waiting for? Let’s look at it.”

  I tightened my grip on the tape. My gut told me not to let her see it. What if it was some porno hotshot with a stable of girls? Or some kind of booby trap that would blow up when I pushed Play? I couldn’t think of anyone who would actually go to the trouble to do that—my enemies are more the gossipy, backbiting kind—but I had been involved in some scary things recently.

  “Muhhtherrr.…” A sulky look spread across my daughter’s face.

  I was probably overreacting, ratcheting up my protective instincts to compensate for the lack of a male presence at home. Rachel was right. It was probabl
y nothing. I loosened my hold. “Okay. Go turn it on.”

  Rachel skipped into the family room and flipped on the VCR. I followed, slipped the tape into the deck, and hit Play.

  A burst of snow zipped across the screen. Then it cut to black. We waited. More black, but no picture. We watched for a full minute. The TV screen stayed dark. Rachel zapped the remote and fast-forwarded another few minutes. Still no picture.

  She frowned. “Nothing’s on it.”

  “Maybe it’s a prank.”

  We let the tape advance even more. No snow. No picture. Nothing.

  Relinquishing the remote, Rachel got up. “I’m out of here. Call me if something happens.” She headed for the stairs.

  I settled back on the couch. The tape was still rolling. I watched indifferently, wondering why someone had sent me a blank tape. I’d just about convinced myself to eject it when an image materialized on the screen.

  It was a black-and-white picture, but the focus was soft, and there was hardly any contrast. I paused the tape and fiddled with the settings on the TV, but when I restarted the tape, the quality was only marginally improved. I was looking down at a wide angle of a room. From the wall panels and floor tiles, I thought it was someone’s basement, but when I saw the window with light seeping in around the edges, I realized it couldn’t be belowground. A room addition, maybe. Except the only furniture in the room was two chairs and a coffee table. Not your average family room.

  A figure huddled in one of the chairs, but I couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. After a moment, the figure rose and raced across the room. When it reached the other side, it fumbled with something on the wall. Light filled the frame, and I saw the figure was female. But her movements were rapid-fire and jerky, like an old Charlie Chaplin movie where he waddles across the screen at warp speed.

  I was about to pause the tape for a closer look, when the woman darted from the light switch to a door on the opposite wall, the only wall without paneling. She grabbed the doorknob and twisted, but the door stayed closed. Her shoulders sagged.

  I frowned. From the angle of the shot, the camera must have been mounted on the ceiling, or near it. It was as if someone had installed a surveillance camera in the house. Some parents did that these days to monitor their babysitter while they were at work. I looked for a baby toy or a blanket wadded up in a corner, but found no evidence of a nanny or her young charge. So why was a camera recording what was happening in the room?

  The woman’s gaze swept up to the ceiling. Thick chin-length hair framed her face, but I couldn’t make out any features. She lurched back to the chair and stripped off her coat. A slim woman, she was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. She put her head in her hands. Then she abruptly raised her head up. The outside door opened and two figures hurried in. The woman stood up.

  I gasped when I saw what happened next. Was this some kind of trick? A hoax? You could do all sorts of things with video these days. I rewound the tape and put the VCR on slow advance, which, as a video producer, was one of the extra features I allowed myself when I bought the machine. As the tape rolled, I noticed that the black portion looked uneven and bumpy, as if the tape had been repeatedly erased or recorded over.

  The action slowed, but the image was still jerky. Still, when the woman gazed at the camera, I could see bruises on her face. The droop in her shoulders, moreover, said she was exhausted. The expression in her eyes, too. Maybe this wasn’t a joke.

  When the figures first burst in, the woman leaped out of her chair as if she’d been waiting for them, but when they closed in, she staggered back against the wall. Their faces were hidden by ski masks, but their bulk and the way they moved indicated they were men. As they bore down on her, she twisted around and threw an arm over her head. A puff of smoke exploded beside her, and she crumpled to the floor. Something dark began to creep across her chest.

  The two men hurriedly escaped through the door they’d come in. One of the men favored his right leg. The woman lay on the floor alone. The only movement was the stain on her t-shirt, silently expanding like the petals of a dark flower. The picture went black.

  ***

  I stopped the tape and took deep breaths to center myself. A woman had been alive. Now she was dead. It didn’t look—or feel—like a hoax. For one thing, if someone was going to alter reality, the quality of the image would have been better. People who play around with video have sophisticated software and equipment. Chances are they wouldn’t create a scene with a grainy, wide-angle, static shot. This was chillingly real.

  I looked toward the stairs. Thank God Rachel hadn’t seen it. She’d seen murders on TV, but stripped of the Hollywood trappings, this was the unequivocal cold-blooded taking of a human life. What do you say to a child who witnesses something like that?

  When my breathing returned to normal, I raised the shade on the window. A sharp, clear night, the lights on my neighbor’s house winked in the breeze, and the snow cover produced a flat, eerie light that eliminated shadows. Without the scrim of leafy trees and bushes, it’s hard to sneak up on people in winter. I’d been feeling safer than I had in months.

  Still as I peered down the block, an uneasy feeling crept up my back. Was the tape some kind of warning? A signal that I should beware? But why? And of what? I’d promised David and my father I wouldn’t get involved in any more risky activities. I’d be the consummate suburban mom. Take care of my family. Stay close to home. This didn’t augur well for it. I lowered the shade.

  I took the tape out of the deck and popped the tab to prevent it from being recorded over. Then I started into the kitchen to call the police. The phone rang before I got there.

  With a teenager in the house, you don’t worry about answering the phone. It’s never for you. So I was surprised when Rachel yelled down the steps.

  “Mom. It’s David.”

  I still don’t know quite what to call David Linden. He’s too old for “boyfriend,” but too young for “companion.” Too conservative for “lover,” and not PC enough for “significant other.” But David is the man I love—and almost lost. I’m not very good at intimacy—just ask my ex-husband. David and I have experienced a few problems in that area, too, but we’re trying. Still, I sometimes sense a distance between us, as if he’s not sure whether to trust me completely. I can’t blame him. I’m not, either. I took the call in the kitchen.

  “Ellie, how are you?”

  I looked down at the tape in my hand. I wanted to tell him about it, but I knew he wouldn’t be pleased. “Fine,” I lied.

  He didn’t pick up on the falseness in my voice. “Something pretty amazing happened today,” he said.

  Though he’s well into his fifties, David can sound like an enthusiastic boy at times. It’s one of his most endearing qualities. I glanced at the photo of him that sits beside the coffeepot, the one where he’s running a hand through his prematurely white hair. His blue eyes were bright. “What?”

  “I got a letter from a woman who lives in the village my mother came from.”

  “In the Black Forest?”

  “Outside Freiburg.”

  David’s mother had come to the States as a teenager in the thirties, the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. She met David’s father here, but he died at the end of the war. Seven years later, she died, too, in a car accident, and David spent most of his youth in foster care. As an adult, he’d become passionate about tracing his roots. That’s how we’d first met, in a roundabout, tangled way.

  “She says she might have information about my uncle.”

  “Lisle’s brother?”

  “Yes. I can’t believe it, Ellie, but she thinks he could be alive!”

  I sank back onto the couch. “But I thought—”

  “The last letter my mother ever got from him, he said he was going to try to pass. Actually, your father told me about it. I guess she showed it to him.”

  My father had befriended David’s mother soon after she arrived in this country—that�
�s part of the tangled history we share. In fact, they’d been more than friends at one point, and I’m convinced their link was one of the reasons David became so attached to us. In his eyes, we were mishpocha. Family.

  “Anyway, this woman, Mrs. Freidrich, said another man in the village got an anonymous letter, asking questions that made them think whoever sent it lived there once upon a time.”

  “Anonymous?”

  “Yes. But here’s the thing: The writer asked what happened to the Gottliebs, and specifically, the girl who went to America.”

  “Oh, David.” I felt goose bumps on my arms.

  “I know.” He paused. “It’s the middle of the night in Europe, but first thing tomorrow, I’m calling Mrs. Freidrich.”

  “She speaks English?”

  “Someone from the bank will translate what I don’t understand.”

  “Tell me again…how did you meet this woman?”

  “When I first went over there years ago to trace my mother’s family, she was very helpful. She told me things about my mother and her family I never knew. I gave her my card. You know, just in case she thought of something else.”

  “But the letter wasn’t sent to her?”

  “No. It went to one of her neighbors. I’m going ask them to fax me a copy.”

  “Hold on a minute.” I switched the phone to my other ear. “Something doesn’t make sense.”

  “What?”

  “You said the letter was anonymous?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why would someone ask questions—specific questions about the Gottliebs—but not include their name or address for a reply?”

  “I’m not sure that’s the case. There may not be a signature, but there could be an address or post office box. That’s why I need to talk to the man who received it.”

  “I guess.” I started to pace around the kitchen. “But why the anonymity? Particularly if it is someone who used to live there?”

  “I don’t know, Ellie.” His voice sounded raspy. “But do you realize what this could mean? I…I might have family of my own. Alive. After all this time!”