Death Trance

by R. D. Zimmerman

  I eyed Toni, still thinking about the history of Liz's medication. That was what I wanted to know. Aside from what and how much she was taking, could Liz have been abusing drugs? After all, she was the daughter of an alcoholic; chemical abuse could have run in the family.

  Toni, however, seemed eager to move on, and she said, “Thank you, Doctor. You've been very helpful.”

  “I'm glad, then.” He looked away, shook his head. “She really was a delightful young woman. Such a tragedy.”

  “Yeah, she was a good kid.” Toni took a deep breath, let it out. “You know, I was thinking about looking up Rob Tyler. Maybe I will.”

  “That might not be a bad idea.” Dawson smoothed his blue tie. “I know they spoke, but maybe they even saw each other before she died.”

  “Maybe,” muttered Toni.

  A rush of fear zipped through my veins. Rob Tyler. Why did I sense as if we'd already met? What was it that I knew about him? We shook Dawson's hand, made for the elevator, but suddenly all I could see in front of me was the vision of a tall, lanky guy, shaved head, small eyes. Yes, a clear image, one that I didn't care for at all.

  I turned to Toni, caught her eyes, and in that instant our minds broadcast the identical message: Yes, the sooner the better.

  Chapter 9

  He wasn't that hard to find, this Rob Tyler. Of course we didn't go to his place first off. No, we left Dr. Dawson's, rode silently down in the elevator, strode silently across the granite pavement of Nicollet Mall. Toni put on sunglasses even before we were outside and looped her hand in my arm and cried slowly and very silently. Then we headed for one of the few true remaining landmarks in downtown Minneapolis, Peter's Grill, where the turkey in the club sandwiches was real, not rolled and pressed, steamed or dry-cleaned, and the apple pie fresh and tart and made just back there in the kitchen. Real, original comfort food, not conceptualized fluff. Toni let me cruise-direct—choose the booth, order the food, ask for more coffee (which I really didn't have to do at all since the professional waitresses, aka grandmothers, kept the cups almost always topped off)—and she sat there, I would say, having trouble digesting it all. If she'd been a smoker, I know she would have been sucking long, deep drags. If she'd been an easy crier, I know she would have fallen apart in long, wet sobs. As it was, her few tears quickly ebbed.

  “God, Alex, it was awful. I came up here a few days after she was reported missing. The police told me about those other women who'd been murdered, you know, all hacked up or something. That's all I thought about the first night I was up here, that she was the next one, the next victim. My biggest fear was that they wouldn't find her body for months. But they did—they found her that next morning.” As we waited for our toasted sandwiches to be rushed to us, Toni said, “So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she really did it… jumped off that bridge, I mean.”

  Frankly, it seemed that way; I thought it quite possible that the drugs had backfired or she'd overdosed or simply hadn't been taking them. The murder angle had seemed an odd one, a long stretch. Liz's letter to Toni now seemed the product of someone who was at the top of a tall high, while Liz's letter to Dawson seemed to have been written by someone at the other end of that spectrum, the low end. Unfortunately, the latter was apparently the more recent of the two and therefore the more accurate reflection of Liz's mental state toward the end of her life. And the guy we'd discovered in Liz's apartment? Sure, an ordinary dink of a burglar, just as Jenkins had suggested. All of that made sense, fit neatly into place. I could see why Liz's death had been so quickly judged one of personal choice.

  “Yeah,” I said, stirring my coffee, thinking that it was probably, obviously, suicide. “There doesn't seem to be a question in Dawson's mind, either.”

  But even if it was suicide, there were still a myriad questions, mainly, of course, why? And second, surely, what had precipitated it? Had Liz's whole life been leading up to that moment, just waiting for it? Or had it merely been a biochemical reaction, one leading to a black hole of depression? I was curious, of course, but I could have lived without knowing. Toni, however, probably couldn't, and my latest thing being resolution, I knew she'd be far more content for the rest of her life if she could piece together her sister's life and understand why it had fallen apart.

  So I asked, “You want to look up this Rob Tyler?”

  She smiled. Looked at me and smiled again, because our thoughts had always traveled in sync, and apparently they still did.

  “Let's,” she replied, and took a long, slow sip of coffee.

  I then had the good sense to shut up and just let Toni slip into sisterly memories, to tumble into them, which made for a quiet meal in a restaurant full of din. Lots of lawyers and stockbrokers, men and women in their conformist suits, pumping up on caffeine.

  After the pie, I told Toni I'd try calling this guy, and went to the phone by the johns, called the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and asked for Rob Tyler's phone number. Which I was promptly given and which I promptly called. The phone was picked up on the third ring.

  “Is Rob Tyler there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you got him,” replied a deep, scratchy voice that sounded like it had been up too late boozing. “Who wants to know?”

  “Alex Phillips, a friend of Toni Domingo's, Liz's sister. Toni's up here from Chicago, and she'd like to talk to you.”

  A stretched pause. “What about?”

  Was this a moron or what? “About Liz.” Apparently I had to spell it out, so I added, “Toni's just trying to find out a few things—what Liz was like the week before it happened, if she was up or down. You know, a few things like that. Not much. Toni's just trying to figure out why it happened, why Liz killed herself, and she was wondering if you might have talked to her.”

  “Nope.” He grunted and groaned, then blurted, “Listen, Liz and I broke up a month or so before she jumped. She creeped me out. Got it? I didn't like her anymore, and I don't know anything.” Then for a kicker, he said, “Gotta go.”

  And he hung up.

  I stood there, stared at the phone, said, “Hello? Hello?” and when there was definitely nothing, muttered, “Asshole,” and slammed the receiver back in place.

  As I approached our booth, Toni looked up, raised eyebrows arching above those brown eyes, and asked, “Did you reach him?”

  “Yeah.” I slid into the booth. “But the jerk hung up on me. Says he broke up with Liz a month before she died and doesn't know a thing.”

  “What?” Toni stared out the windows for a moment, then turned back to me, saying, “Come on.”

  That's what I'd always liked about Toni. She had guts and was determined. Resourceful, too. I was sure she was an incredible physician, too. It all added up to that, her intelligence and everything.

  So we paid, leaving a generous tip because the waitress truly did remind me of my grandmother, and although I would never have flung change at my Nanna for fear of insulting her, I certainly didn't want this one to go uncared for. Which might have been the whole point. Maybe Peter's used grandmother waitresses the way the gypsies used kids to beg. The sympathy-pity factor soared.

  We proceeded back to the phone by the rest rooms, where we fished up a phone book. There were three Robert Tylers in Minneapolis, but only one that matched the number I'd already called. So there was his name, his number, and the one thing that we wanted: his address.

  “Harriet Avenue South,” I said. “That makes sense—not too far from the College of Art and Design and really close to Liz's, too.”

  “Great. Let's go—he's there now.”

  With a renewed sense of purpose and mission, we traveled quickly back to the car, down the spiral ramp, out onto the sunny street. It didn't take long. Less than twenty minutes after I'd spoken to Rob Tyler and he'd hung up on me, we were there.

  The house, an older, clapboard thing with a porch, looked rather dead. Toni and I crossed the small weedy front yard and climbed the steps. We found the place oddly quiet. I'd been expecting a stereo, big
and loud, or perhaps drums, loud and stupid. But instead there was nothing, no reply to the bell, which I pushed long and hard.

  “Hey, look at this,” said Toni, peering at the mailbox, a beat-up black one hanging on the other side of the door.

  Taped and retaped, then taped again to the mailbox was a photo of six people. Two women and four guys. All with shaved heads. All piled there on some ratty couch, a mass of legs and arms, shoes and leather coats. And, à la The Monkees of the sixties, there was a lettered banner above that read HEY, HEY WE'RE THE SKINHEADS!

  Great, I thought. Was our Rob a neo-Nazi, too?

  “This one,” said Toni, her finger tapping the picture. “That's him.”

  I looked closer, saw a thin guy, gangly, shaved head, both ears pierced, and said, “He's a real looker.”

  Studying the photo, a sense of déjà vu clouded my mind. Then again, didn't all these guys look alike?

  Weren't punkers as conformist as suburban housewives, both trapped in a ridiculous mind-set and equally strict dress code?

  I leaned on the bell, this time as long and as hard as a meter reader, and finally we heard something. Footsteps. Someone moving, albeit not fast at all. At last the door opened, and she stood there, a very pale woman, late twenties, her hair shoe-polish black and about an inch long, and four or maybe five noserings piercing her right nostril.

  I smiled, asked, “Is Rob Tyler here?”

  “What, Rob?”

  All groggy as if she'd been woken from a deep sleep, she studied us with little eyes, shrugged, turned away, and shut the door. I looked at Toni. Who is this lady? I asked silently.

  Toni said, “What are we supposed to do, wait?”

  “Beats me.”

  We stood there maybe a minute longer. I was all set to ring the bell again when I heard steps once more, and the door was opened a second time. Rob Tyler. Just like he was in the photo, just like I pictured him in my mind. Thin face, completely shaven head, round and smooth. His beard was a bit bristly, coarse black hairs piercing from his chin and cheeks. He wore a rumpled black shirt that had a skeleton painted on the right sleeve, tight black jeans, and black, worn-out canvas shoes. He stared at us, and the pale woman who'd answered the door moved up right behind, wrapping her arms around him.

  Toni said, “Hi, Rob.”

  Tyler looked totally lost, and he half-turned back to the woman. “Sandra, who're these people?”

  Toni didn't miss a beat. “I'm Toni Domingo, Liz's sister. We met once.”

  “Oh. Oh, yeah.” Tyler looked at me. “Let me guess, and you're the guy that called and woke me from my nap.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, like I told you, I don't know nothing about Liz.” Tyler put a flat hand to his chest. “Excuse me, I don't mean no offense to the dead, but me and Liz busted up. She kind of bugged me and she was just too boring, you know? Sandra, here, well, she's my girl now.”

  He reached back, put his arm around the woman, and pulled her tight against him. She yawned, scratched her short, black hair, then started kissing him on the back.

  “Listen,” began Toni, “I know you talked with Liz after you broke up. I know you called her a few times. Did you see her, too? Do you remember if you saw her that week she died?”

  Sandra pulled back, made a sour face, and hit Tyler with the back of her fist, saying, “Aw, Rob, have you been cheatin’ on me again?”

  He turned, rubbed his bristly beard over her bristly head. “No, baby, not at all. I don't know what these people are talkin’ about. Now you go back inside. I'll be right there.” He turned her around, pushed her. “Go on, get!”

  I said, “Rob, we're just trying to—”

  “Wait.” He lifted a finger at me, took a deep breath. “Sandra and me, we got something good going. We do good art together—I sculpt, she sculpts. Metal stuff, you know. Welded stuff. I don't want to mess it up, you dig?”

  “Sure.”

  “So I got to tell you, I really don't know diddly about Liz. Sure we talked after we broke up. But I didn't call her, oh, no. She called me, and she kept calling, you know, wanting to go out for coffee.”

  Toni was quick to ask, “Why? What did she want? What did she sound like on the phone?”

  “Oh, man.” Tyler shook his head, stepped back, started to close the door. “I don't need this. Got it? I don't need no more trouble. I had enough shit with Liz poking around here.”

  Toni glanced at me, then at Tyler, and demanded, “What in hell's that mean?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  I saw Toni clench her hands, saw her try and stay cool. “Rob, I'm not trying to blame anyone, I'm just trying to piece it all together. Liz is dead and I just want to find out why it happened. Maybe you can't talk now, I don't know, but if you think of anything, call me. Would you do that, please? I'm at the Holiday Inn at Seven Corners.”

  “Yeah, right, maybe we can do lunch.” He bared his teeth, stepped back, closed the door, and called out, “Good-bye!”

  “Hey, wait!” I called as I reached out, ready to push the door back open.

  Toni grabbed me by the arm, said, “Let's get out of here.”

  “But—”

  “He doesn't want to talk. Come on!”

  Toni broke away, hurrying off the porch of that dump of a house. I descended, following after her, barely noticing the warm air, the bright sky. By the time I caught up with her, she was standing next to the car, rubbing her forehead, undoubtedly wishing she were anywhere but here.

  “Toni, why the—”

  “Alex, please. Just open the door.”

  I knew that tone of voice as well as I knew that chipped tooth of hers. She was saying, Don't Tread on Me. Did that also mean she was wishing she were with anyone but me? I was being paranoid, of course, but just to play it safe I shut up, silently unlocking her door, then going around to the driver's side and getting in. I slipped in the key, making no rush, half-expecting Toni to stop me, but she didn't. Within seconds we were heading down the street.

  “What a jerk,” I said.

  “Really.”

  I slowly pulled to a stop sign, looked both ways, puttered on down a street where the diseased elms had been hacked down and spindly trees planted in their place. Liz hadn't killed herself over some idiot like Tyler, had she? She couldn't have been upset because of a breakup with that turkey, could she have? Shouldn't she have been relieved?

  There was something else, though. Something itching at the back of my mind. What was it? What was the other ninety percent of my mind trying to tell the ten percent?

  “Take a breath, a deep one, and let it float from your subconscious to your conscious mind. Just imagine a gate opening and letting that information out.”

  Lungs full, lungs empty, and what came to my mind's eye? The image of Rob Tyler standing in the doorway. Hey, hey, I'm a skinhead. Blackness. The color black. That's what my mind kept pushing up. But black what? Hair? Shirt? Jeans? Yes, all of Tyler's clothing was black, right down to his shoes.

  Shoes.

  I pulled over, glided into a parking space on the quiet street.

  “What's the matter?” asked Toni.

  “I was just thinking of Tyler and that picture of him.”

  “So?”

  “So his shoes were the same as that guy's, the one who broke into Liz's apartment. They were both black canvas high-tops.”

  There were lots of shoes in the world like that. Millions, perhaps billions. Sure. But why did it all seem to make such perfect sense?

  “Another thing, I was thinking the guy at Liz's might've been bald, and maybe that's right. Maybe I didn't notice the color of his hair because his head was shaved.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Toni, staring out the windshield at a big Oldsmobile parked in front of us. “He could've had a key.”

  “What?”

  “A key—Tyler's probably got a key to Liz's apartment.” Toni looked at me. “Turn around.”

  Which I did, cutting the w
heel of my Honda as sharply left as I could, spinning us around, heading us back. So I'd been right. No one had actually broken into Liz's apartment the other night. Someone had had a key and just let himself in, and that more than likely was Liz's former boyfriend, Rob Tyler. I had a new hatred for him. Stealing from your dead girlfriend. How disgusting. What had he been after? Just a notebook or perhaps more? Money? Stereo? Camera? Sure, whatever would have offered quick cash.

  I raced up to the stop sign, slowed, then pressed down on the gas. As soon as we were zooming forward, however, Toni's hand was on my arm.

  “Wait!” she ordered. “Pull over, quick!”

  Up ahead and through some budding bushes I saw movement. Rob Tyler movement? I swerved over, zipped us behind a Jeep. We peered up, around, through. A guy was descending from the porch of the house, making his way across the street, heading for a vehicle.

  “That's him,” I said, pressing against the side window.

  I saw him fully, now wearing a black leather coat—all studded and hanging with chains—black jeans, those black shoes. The very same ones that had danced around me as the intruder swung the lamp at me? I'd certainly never be one hundred percent positive, but the lanky shape, the dark jeans and shoes… they all looked so familiar.

  I reached for the door handle, envisioned myself pinning him up against a car, and said, “Come on, he can't get away from us now.”

  “No!” replied Toni. “Just sit still.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We're going to follow the asshole.”

  “What?”

  “If he had a key to Liz's before, he's still got it.” She smiled, ran her hand through her thick hair. “And if that's where he's going now, we can call the cops and nail him.”

  Of course. Right. Always clever, that Toni. So we let our man, Rob Tyler, start up an old beater, a midnight-blue Duster that was riddled with rust holes, and let him pull out. When he was halfway down the block, I pulled out. This wasn't going to be hard, tailing him. No, not at all.

  Chapter 10