PRAISE FOR R. D. ZIMMERMAN AND HIS LATEST ACCLAIMED MYSTERY DEATH TRANCE
“COMPELLING AND SUSPENSEFUL.”
—Publishers Weekly
“R. D. Zimmerman shows a great talent for suspense.”
—New York Daily News
“A most unusual heroine in the first of what promises to be an intriguing series.”
—True Tales from Scotland Yard
“Zimmerman's sixth novel again meets the high standards he set with the others.”
—Once Upon a Crime
“Death Trance is a brave departure for Zimmerman. He takes some real chances here and he makes it all work. I'm impressed.”
—Lawrence Block
“R. D. Zimmerman is a wonderful writer of suspense, and surely the most original storyteller of the genre. His exploration of hypnosis as a method of detection takes crime-solving in an intriguing new direction in which the terrors of the past manifest themselves into present danger. I am fascinated by his work.”
—Sharyn McCrumb, author of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
“INTRIGUING”
—The Purloined Letter
“CLEVER … BREATHLESS.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A very different story having many heart-in-your-throat scenes that make it difficult to put down—concise, well-written, fast-paced, exciting!”
—Booked for Murder
“Mesmerizing…an unusual pairing of sleuths. Great suspense with a tremendous sense of the mind's power.”
—Star Tribune
“Utterly fascinating…a unique and promising sleuth if ever there was one.”
—Mystery Loves Company
“R. D. Zimmerman has gone against a couple of conventions—out of calculation.…He does a good job of both… The real test of a detective or mystery novel is its ability to hold the reader's interest and keep those pages turning. Zimmerman succeeds at this quite well.”
—TriCity Herald
ALSO BY R.D. ZIMMERMAN
Closet
Innuendo
Outburst
Hostage
Tribe
Red Trance
Blood Trance
Mindscream
Red Encounter
Blood Russian
The Cross and the Sickle
And by R.D. Zimmerman writing as Robert Alexander
When Dad Came Back As My Dog
The Romanov Bride
Rasputin's Daughter
The Kitchen Boy
Deadfall in Berlin
Death Trance
A Novel of Hypnotic Detection
by
R.D. Zimmerman
ScribblePub
Minneapolis, MN
the most original of the original™
Death Trance
Copyright © 1992 by R.D. Zimmerman
MOBI ISBN: 978-1-61-446023-7
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-61-446022-0
Published in the United States of America
All rights reserved
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the authors or the publisher.
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Death Trance
A Novel of Hypnotic Detection
Prologue
I stood on the edge of Lake Calhoun, hidden in the thick bushes, and my first thought was that I'd never seen anyone murdered before, least of all someone I knew, someone like Toni, whom I'd dated back in my college days. It was evening, most of Minneapolis was quietly at home, and she was out there, just past the beach and talking with that bastard, when the first shot was fired. And I thought, who'd have guessed this was how our tumultuous relationship would end after almost twenty years. Not in one final argument. Not in one last lustful encounter. But in sudden death.
It didn't end, though. Not just then. Not so quickly. Her mother may have once seen a demure little girl in her Antoinette, but the real Toni of medium height and long brown hair was nothing like that. No, not Toni the physician who loved photography and had run countless marathons. Beautiful, yes. Trim, yes. But also muscular and determined. A survivor now bending over, scrambling for shelter.
“Toni!” I screamed, my breath smoking in the cool April night. “Toni, look out!”
I was shouting because I saw someone charging them, rushing through the night and along the edge of the lake, arm out, pistol in hand, racing in for the final kill. I dropped it all, her camera with the infrared film, the walkie-talkie, everything that was supposed to safeguard her, that was supposed to keep this from happening. Then I was running toward her, not knowing what I could do, how I could help. At the same time, that other guy, the one she'd arranged to meet, tore off toward the woods. How was this happening? We were sure we had this all figured out, so why did it look like he was racing for his life as well? Or had he tricked us, had he and his group connived to kill us both, Toni and me, right down here?
“Toni!”
I shouldn't have shouted. Not a second time, because she twisted around toward me, looked in my direction, and she didn't see that person—man or woman, I couldn't tell—running up behind her. Oh, my God, oh, no. If only she'd ducked behind the bench or taken shelter behind the tree because that's when a second shot was fired. I was tearing through the park as fast as I possibly could, feet over grass, over paved path, through sand, and then there was that horrible blast, a reddish one. I could tell she was hit, instantly so.
“No!” I cried.
I wanted her to shout back to me, say, Alex, I'm okay, don't worry. But she didn't. Instead she was stumbling, then falling. No, dropping, and I knew to expect the worst. She just fell so heavily, which only made me run faster across the beach, then across more ground, until I dropped to my knees, skidded across the grass, and to her side.
“Toni, where?” I begged, at first afraid to touch the body heaped in front of me. “Toni, can you hear me? Toni!”
There was nothing. No voice, no groan of any kind. No movement, either. I reached out, touched her, felt an electric shock of a realization zip through me. All that blood, so dark and sticky, was pouring out the side of her head, all over the ground, all over me.
I spun around, pleaded for help, looked toward the woods, saw the last of him, that son of a bitch, escaping in the dark, dashing to freedom and life. Turning the other way, I saw the flat black lake spread out in the night, then the other person, her killer, now zeroing in on me. The intention was clear. I saw that gun.
And as I knelt there clutching my ex-girlfriend's body, I thought, Toni, if I survive this, if I'm not killed now as well, I'll find out. I'll get that revenge. Once for your sister's death and once for yours.
Chapter 1
Her hands came up from the wheelchair and reached for my face, hovering at first, tentative, but then sure and probing, reading my skin, my eyelashes, my wrinkled brow. It amazed me how much she could read via touch, and I didn't try to hide anything. I'd never been able to, not from her, the great seer.
“Alex,” said Madeline, my Audrey-Hepburn-look-alike sister, “you should have come sooner.”
We stood on the long pier. Rather, I stood and my big sister—beautiful, wise, loving,
funny—sat in her wheelchair, a light brown blanket over her lap, oversized sunglasses on her nose. She sat because she was paraplegic, and she touched me, ran her soft, long fingers over my face, through my hair, because she was blind.
“Give me your hand,” she commanded.
Even though it was August, the air was chilly, and it blew off Lake Michigan, over us, around us. I lifted my arm, pushed back the sleeve of my mock turtleneck, the black one that looked hip back in Minneapolis and New York, of course, but very out of place on an island some ten miles southwest of Mackinac Bridge. Lush green trees, aqua-blue water, fine white sand filled every vista. It was all terribly Caribbean up here except there was no salt in the air, only lush pine scents, and, for sure, all of this lasted only a few months. Though it would crop up again next summer and the summer after that, etc., this wonder was temporary. A reward for the harsh winter.
Maddy took my hand, felt my wrist, caressed the thick hair on my forearm, touched me as if we were lovers. We hadn't seen each other since last spring.
“You've put on weight,” she said.
“I haven't biked much this summer.”
I hadn't done much of anything in the five months since Toni had died. Her death haunted me and was either a turning point or a black hole in my life, something that had tripped me and hadn't allowed me to get back up.
“Come on,” said Maddy, letting go of me and placing her hands in her lap. “Let's go up to the house. This is going to work, you'll see. Trust me.”
“Yes, Dr. No.”
“Oh, stop,” she laughed.
That's what I called her. Dr. No of James Bond fame. She lived that kind of unbelievable life here on her own private island. Only my Maddy wasn't evil at all. Just wonderful, so maybe she wasn't Dr. No and not even Dr. Madeline Phillips, a clinical psychologist-cum-stockbroker, but Dr. Yes. I smiled, my wide mouth exposing white teeth.
“Now just help me off the pier, will you? Give me a push. You can leave your things. Alfred will bring them up.”
“What did I bring?” I asked, testing her.
“A large suitcase, a hard-sided one that made you groan as you lifted it from the boat and that made a hard noise when it hit the pier. Also a little carry-on that barely made any noise when you set it down. It's fragile because you put it down slowly, so I suspect that's your computer, your laptop.” She paused. “And…”
“And?”
“Your black leather briefcase. It's still over your shoulder. That one I can smell.”
“But how do you know it's black?” I asked.
“For the same reason I think that soft shirt of yours is black. You always want to prove yourself urbane.”
“You're incorrigible,” I said, taking hold of the back of the wheelchair.
“No more so than you, Little Brother.”
I laughed as I pushed her plank by plank down the long pier. Water and fire, two potentially horrific dangers that she could neither see nor flee from, were really the only things Maddy was afraid of. I didn't doubt, however, that I'd be afraid of the same things if I'd gone blind in my late teens from congenital eye failure—retinitis pigmentosa, to be exact—then in my mid-thirties been struck by a huge, diesel-powered Chicago Transit Authority bus right in the Loop, right in broad daylight, right on a supposedly safe curb. So I eased her off the dock and to the asphalt path that led up to the house.
Her pier. Her path. Her house. And the boat, a huge fiberglass phallic thing driven by Alfred, her Jamaican manservant, that had whizzed me from the northern coast of Michigan over to Maddy's island. Her island. All of it, for Maddy had parlayed the $8.5 million CTA settlement into far, far more. She was that smart. Obtaining the best financial counsel, but mainly using her own wit, she'd plunged into the stock market before the Big Rise and ridden the crest of corporate takeovers and buyouts like a champion surfer. The blind paraplegic girl winning resolutely; she'd bought three million dollars’ worth of Time at about $20 per share, sold it at over $140. Amgen had been another big winner for her, 150,000 shares rising from $15 per share to $125. The last I'd heard, Maddy had more than quintupled what she'd been awarded for having her spinal cord snapped by an inebriated bus driver who'd been thrice warned against drinking. A terrible tragedy that Maddy had, in capitalistic terms at least, championed over. How typical of her.
Behind us I heard Alfred charge the boat's engine and speed over the lightly capping waves. I glanced back, saw the long, cream-colored boat skim sleekly over the water, saw the coffee-black man at its helm as he circled through the sunshine and around to the boathouse.
I took a deep breath, sucked in the green-rich air. The cool wind off the lake faded as we reached shore and the protection of maples and oaks and strands of birches.
“God, it's wonderful here,” I said.
“It is, isn't it? All the trees and all the water. It does wonders for the soul.” From the side of her wheelchair she pulled down a wandlike thing, a probe like a blind person's cane. “I'll take it from here.”
“No electric wheelchair for you, eh?”
“All this wheeling burns up lots of calories. If I had a motorized chair I'd just atrophy, and I won't let myself do that. I can't let myself go. And you shouldn't, either.”
“Thanks for the reminder.”
Maybe it was more like a fishing rod, that thing that was attached to one side of her chair and sticking way out. Whatever it was—Maddy had dreamed it up—she lowered it until it was just touching the path, so that it would lightly skim the paved surface ahead of her. That way she could wheel herself and didn't have to be pushed. That way she could go off on her own, zoom around the narrow blacktopped paths that she'd had laid like lace across the island, and pretend to be independent, not needy of Alfred or Solange, his wife, or all the protection her millions could buy.
Zoom. Her arms bulged and she was off. Christ, she could really tear along in that thing.
“Hey, wait up,” I called, jogging after her. “I've only got feet.”
“Come on, pudge, a brisk walk will do you good!”
“Hey, you crip, be nice.”
“I just don't want to see a handsome guy like you lose it at forty.”
“I'm not forty yet and, you know, you're almost as good as Mom at back-handed compliments.”
“Gaaa-www-ddd!” she shrieked, disappearing over the top of a ridge.
Sister, schmister. I hurried along, just like the faithful brother I had always been and would always be. Long before her paralysis, even before her blindness, I'd been enchanted by Maddy. So much grace. And spunk, particularly as a child, charming all the kids, boys and girls alike. We were similar but different. I liked to think I was as smart as she, but I was never as outgoing, never as popular. Otherwise, while we both had the same chestnut brown hair, mine was long and curly, hers short and wavy. Whereas we were both tallish, I had a squarer body, my broader stature coming from Dad's side of the family. Maddy, too, had one of those long, movie star necks. Yes, I'd probably learned to like necks because of Maddy's. Toni's was almost as good, but not quite. Not so long, so elegant.
I dogged after her, through a grove of swaying trees. Always had been dogging after her. While she'd been the determined blind student and had gotten her Ph.D. in psychology and gone right into a very successful practice —she was on her way to the office the day she was struck by that stupid bus—I had dawdled in college. Studied languages, lots of them. French, Italian, Russian. I was good at all of them. And some German, too. I could get by in that one. I thought I wanted to be an interpreter for the United Nations, but while I got close, I fell short and somehow became a technical writer. That's why I left my hometown, Chicago. Moved to the high-tech mecca of the Midwest, Minneapolis, where I wrote installation manuals for some of the world's fastest computers. It paid well, but after my studies and travels abroad it was excruciatingly boring. Many of the people I worked with rarely traveled beyond Chicago, and the most interesting conversations we had were about who'd jus
t bought the best garage door opener.
I came up and around a corner, saw Maddy atop a small dune, sitting there grinning, a huge beast on either side.
“Oh, for cute,” I said in my best nasally Minnesota accent. I froze. “What are those?”
“Dogs, silly.”
They were tan with black heads, and they stood so tall that their backs were at Maddy's eye level. A glistening glob of saliva hung from the larger one's mouth, and didn't I just hear a slight growl?
“Maddy, I don't think they like me.”
“Nonsense, they're just very protective. Hold out your hand—palm down, of course—and let them smell you. And don't move.”
“Have they had lunch?”
“This one's Fran,” she said, patting the slightly smaller one, “and this one's—”
“Ollie. Clever. Very clever.”
“They're mastiffs, Alex. I got them because we kept getting campers on the northern part of the island. A few prowlers, too.”
“Not anymore, I bet. What do they weigh, two hundred?”
“A little bit more.” To her creatures, she commanded, “This is my brother. Be nice. Nice, Ollie. Nice, Fran.”
They came at me in a slow trot, noses high, ears perked. I was definitely the one with his tail between his legs, and I was quite still as they sniffed my hand, my arm, my butt.
“Maddy, I don't think I like this. Ollie's got her nose in my rear.”
“Oops, sorry.” Maddy clapped her hands twice, and shouted, “Scram!”
In an instant, they were off, bounding into the woods, and I could only imagine the havoc they'd wreaked on the deer population. A thirty-some-acre island was, after all, only so big, particularly for things like those two.
Maddy added, “It's only me and Alfred and Solange out here, you know. The dogs are really wonderful protection.”
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