Trust Me (7 page)

CHAPTER 13

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Holly was making breakfast when the phone rang.
She picked it up and said, “Good morning,” assuming that it was Art. He had taken to calling her every morning at 8:30, telling her each time that an attitude adjustment now can change the whole day. She found it flattering, somehow, and would walk around the kitchen making coffee and eggs, talking and sparring with him on her cordless.

“Hey.” It was definitely not Art. “You’re nice and chirpy this early in the morning. Sounds like you were expecting a call.” It was Tony, and Tony was never up this early unless he’d been up all night.

“Hello, how have you been?” It had been less than a week but seemed like months since she had seen him.

“Well, I’m almost on top of the world. I got a label wants to pick us up, do an album. Band’s sounding great . . .” There was a pause. “I used to know a girl named Holly that was glad to see me once in a while.”

“Are you calling to apologize?” she asked. She realized she didn’t even care, didn’t want the apology. She just wanted to get off the phone.

“Are you sure I owe you an apology?” Tony’s voice wasn’t quite right; it was high and hollow. His cocaine voice, she used to call it.

“Oh forget it, Tony. People punch me all the time and then call back like nothing happened. Shit, I think I’ll just spend the day looking for someone new to push me around my own goddamned living room and give me another black eye.” She hadn’t planned to say any of this. In fact, she realized, she had blocked the event and the thought of talking to Tony again.

“Hey,” Tony said, “it takes two to tango. You were sneaky. I got mad. I’m over it. Listen,”—and she could tell he was switching subjects on her, like a salesman changing tack—“I’m looking at a truly great opportunity right now and it’s gonna sail by me if I don’t jump on it, like immediately.”

“So what’s that got to do with me?” She knew what was coming.

“You know, there’s something about your tone that’s—naw, forget it. Here’s the deal. I need three grand until tomorrow night. It’s a done deal. It’ll totally solve all my problems.”

“Tony, you’re out of your fucking mind. Forget it. Go to sleep. Leave me alone.” She heard a drawn out inhalation, like someone clearing their sinuses, but longer, and then the clinking of ice. She could picture him snorting the coke and then draining his drink, then giving his head an abrupt shake like a fighter who’s just been punched.

“Pay you back thirty-five hundred. That’s more than your money’s making in your dumb little bank account.” Tony was usually very good at getting what he wanted, but at some point of intoxication he totally lost his touch.

“Goodbye, Tony. Don’t call again.” She heard him yell “Don’t you hang up on me, you self-righteous little cunt,” and then she put down the phone.

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She was still sitting at the kitchen table when the phone rang again. It was ten minutes after the conversation with Tony, and she hadn’t moved since she had hung up. She let her answering machine pick up this new call, figuring that Tony might have decided he had more to say.

After listening to her own greeting, though, she was relieved to hear that this time it really was Art. She picked up the line and the answering device cut out.

“Hi.” She wondered if she sounded odd.

“Good morning, Holly. Are we screening our calls today?” Somehow it seemed that he always knew what she was doing.

“Tony just called me.”

“Oh, your ex. A very decent person, about to become successful, as you once told me. How did his call make you feel?”

“Terrible.” She realized that she didn’t want to talk about it. “I wish he would disappear.”

“Even if he did disappear, don’t you know that you’re a magnet for the Tonys of this world?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Holly, the Tonys have their radar set to your frequency. Yours just happens to be set to theirs. Until you change your frequency, there will always be another Tony.”

She realized Art was right. Nothing ever seemed to change when it came to men. The nice guys were always boring, and the exciting ones were, well, like Tony. “So how do I change frequencies?”

Art replied, “That’s exactly what the SOL process is about. We access the child within us, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we follow Bobbi’s suggestions, and everything changes. Including the people we attract and want to attract.”

“All this and more from one fifteen-hundred-dollar seminar.” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“Holly, skepticism is a very good thing. It shows a discriminating mind. Cynicism is a great excuse for staying stuck. Listen . . .” It was that same salesman’s technique that Tony had used. “Why do you think people spend the money? You saw the people at Bobbi’s talk. They aren’t lonely-hearts types looking for a place to be dreary together. They’re people committed to changing their lives, transforming themselves. Furthermore, Holly, you’re getting this thing for free.”

“What do you mean,” she asked.

“I mean that I am sponsoring you into the program. Mentoring you—it helps me and it helps you. Now let me ask you this: How much good did therapy ever do you?”

She hadn’t told him, but she had been through years of therapy. “It’s hard to tell,” she said. “I don’t know what life would have been without it. Sometimes it seemed pretty useless.”

“Right. But you kept on going because you were after something. What was it?”

“I don’t know. Happiness?” There was more to it than that, she thought. She needed to change the way she felt.

“You wanted to change the way that you felt, and you always thought that if you could just get down to some bottom line, to some first cause, that you would find the magic key that would open the door to freedom. And then everything would be different. Am I right?”

She turned on the coffee maker. “You make it sound so naive, like it was a dumb thing to hope for.”

“Yes, it is naive; no, it’s not a dumb thing to hope for. It’s naive to think you can just get there passively, expect to get fixed lying on a couch. I used to try to fix it with alcohol. Always looking for that magic key.”

She asked, “What happened?” and poured a bowl of granola.

“I went to AA and things got better. But then I found out about regression therapy and inner child work, and I realized alcoholism wasn’t my problem—it was my response to my problem.”

Holly was curious. “So can you drink like a normal person now?”

Art laughed. “No, if I put alcohol into my system, it would still trigger an alcoholic response.”

“What’s that?”

“I would keep drinking, and then all that old stuff would come up again and I’d be back to square one.” Art was silent for a moment. She put him on speakerphone, got milk from the refrigerator and poured it onto the granola. She removed the coffee pot and poured the steaming black brew into a mug.

Art spoke again. “So, attitude adjustment time. Tony and all the ones like him can be in your past. You didn’t step through the doors of SOL by accident—you came looking for something. We began last week at Joanie’s house, now let’s continue. I’ll mentor. You’ll be amazed.”

She stirred her coffee and spoke into the room, “Why me?”

“Why not?” Art responded, and his chuckle seemed to bounce around Holly’s kitchen. “Listen, put down your coffee and try something, okay?”

Had she really made noise sipping her coffee? “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Go over to your doorway,” Art’s voice said, “and put the backs of your hands up against the frame on either side of you. Keep your arms straight.” Art’s games were always pretty interesting, so she transferred her cereal and coffee to the kitchen table and then went to the doorway. “Okay, now what?”

“Now,” Art said, “press outward like you’re trying to make the doorway wider. Are you doing it?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “So what’s this all about?”

“Push harder. Don’t lighten up. Now listen. You are in a box. Just like your life is in a box. No matter how hard you push, the box stays the same. There is no freedom in the box. Are you with me?”

“Yes,” she said, “but my arms are getting sore.”

“That’s right,” Art replied. “It’s very exhausting spending your life trying to get out of the box. It uses up all your energy so there’s none left for the things that really matter.”

“Art, I can’t do this any more. What’s the point?”

“The point?” Art chuckled again. “The point, Holly, is to step out of the box. Just take a step forward.”

She stepped forward, and to her amazement her arms floated up entirely of their own accord, like the wings of a wild bird in a sudden breeze.

“You see?” Art’s voice filled the room. “Freedom’s just a step away. Let’s get together.”

CHAPTER 14

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Ron stared at the pile of folders.
Some jobs required stomach and stamina he wasn’t sure he had. This was one of them. The simple fact that the eight files each documented a life cut short weighed on him to the point that he wanted to just get up and walk away. After all, there wasn’t even a story here, just a hunch, a puzzle he probably couldn’t write about even if he solved it.

Suddenly unsure of what to do, he closed his eyes and quieted his mind. He had grown to trust the silence and whatever answers came out of it. After a moment, he opened his eyes and reached for the top file.

There was a case number on the folder’s tab. He opened the file and looked at the face page attached to the back cover. It was a standard form, identified at the bottom as SHAD49. The box at the top was titled “Incident,” and contained only one word: “suicide.” There was the case number again, and the time and date of the “incident,” as well as the time of police notification.

This one said “11:50 p.m.”—it was a year and a half old. In the box titled “victim’s name,” he read “Nancy Mills.” She had been twenty-four years old. She was from Mar Vista. Wearing jeans, sweater, and a ski parka. Under “synopsis,” he read that Nancy Mills had jumped from the palisades in Santa Monica. He had stood at those same cliffs, looking out over the bay; they ran the length of Ocean Avenue, divided from it by a strip of grass and a path. Tourists mingled with strolling locals and a motley collection of homeless people. Only a low fence separated the path from the edge of the cliff, and directly below cars raced by on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Cause of death, the report read, was a broken neck, probably incurred upon striking the cliff side before the completion of her fall. She had landed in some shrubbery only a few feet from the highway.

He flipped the page up. Under it was a transmittal form—a summary that would have been forwarded to a statewide agency to tabulate statistics. This was followed by a page titled “evidence,” which referred to items found on the deceased, clothes, contents of purse and pocket, and the notation, “photos.”

Next was a full narrative of the event. It detailed the condition of the body, the name of the witness who called the police (a motorist, northbound on the PCH), and concluded with a note that the family of the victim had been notified and “see coroner’s report.”

He scanned the coroner’s report long enough to see the words “No physical evidence indicating second party—death by suicide.” Following the report was a Xerox page that showed a driver’s license and what appeared to be a nurse’s badge from Saint John’s Hospital.

He made some entries in his notebook and flipped back to the beginning of the file. Stapled to the inside cover was an envelope. The file was depressing, but his left-brain, analytical mind had taken over.

There were three photos of the girl’s body. Two were full body shots taken from different angles. The third was a close-up, head and shoulders. It looked like a photo of a sleeping person. The hair was tousled but still framed the girl’s features attractively. She had high cheekbones and nice, clear features, he thought. He remembered Joe’s comment about how all the girls were attractive and made a decision.

He rolled his chair back and laid each file on the floor, four to a row, and removed the photographs from each. He laid the photos out on their respective folders and bent over to study the lot of them. Joe was right. Even the grimmer shots revealed a physical attractiveness far beyond any random sample of the population. And, they were consistent in type: blond, tall, slender. This, he thought, was a clear thread connecting all eight incidents. Where there was one, he knew, there would surely be others.

By the time Joe got back, Ron had gathered up the files, replaced the photos, and made notes on each incident. Joe was chewing on a bagel when he came in. “You know,” he said, with his mouth full, “if these came glazed it could be a big hit.”

Ron glanced up from his notebook. “Right, lox and cream cheese; gimme that on a glazed.”

Joe nodded toward the stack of files. “So? Is there a single-bullet theory?” He moved the files over and sat on the desk

Ron leaned back in his chair and flipped a few pages in his notebook. “Okay,” he said, “for starters, you noticed what all these girls looked like. Do you think it’s just a coincidence?”

Joe said, “In the absence of some other point of commonality, I have to call it random, inconclusive. Weird, but not enough to get a cop excited.”

“Okay,” Ron replied, “you’ve got bad guys to chase. But I’m going to follow up on some of this stuff. Call the families, maybe. Did you know that two of the girls had DUIs and had been referred to alcohol counseling?”

“So? That fits—most suicides have histories of depression, substance abuse. What else have you got?”

Ron checked his notes again, running his pencil down a page. “Here, Laura Hunsaker, age twenty-six. Found at the bottom of a ravine in Idyllwild last summer.”

“Yeah, what about it?” Joe finished his bagel and wiped his hands together.

“It seems that the Sheriff’s department out there investigated it as possible foul play before they sent it over here.” Ron checked his notes and pulled the corresponding file. “Here, read the third line from the bottom.”

Joe scanned the report. He whistled when he got to the end. “I’ll be damned. Halcion. That’s what they found in Marilyn Fenner. Listen, you find a real thread here, I’ll take you out to San Nicholas Island. We’ll catch the biggest damn fish you ever saw.”

“Are you blowing me off?” Ron asked.

“No, hell no.” Joe replied. “I think it just got more interesting. I just can’t give it any of my time until you bring me something solid.”

Ron put his notebook back in his briefcase and stood up. “Joe, thanks for sticking your neck out like this.”

“Aw shit, just exposing the department to lawsuits from eight families. That would put me back in uniform, pronto.”

They started walking toward the lobby. “I don’t see a story here yet, Joe. And if there is one, this conversation won’t be in it.” They shook hands and Ron stepped out the door into a warm, breezy evening.