The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  “The only person I was ever pissed off enough to want to kill was, man, my old lady.” Jeffers looked up and saw Steele talking. “She complained, man, day and night. Morning, noon, afternoon. Hell, sometimes I thought she was complaining in her sleep . . .”

  The others laughed. Jeffers saw heads nod.

  “You know, it made no difference where we were or what we were doing. She just made me feel, uh, little, you know? Small.”

  There was quiet before Steele continued. Jeffers had a brief flash of the man’s dossier. He had preyed on his own neighborhood, leaving his job as a plumber on lunch hours and finding housewives alone.

  The room was silent.

  “I suppose,” Steele said, “if I could have figured out a way of getting back at her, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Jeffers made a notation, thinking: But you did.

  He glanced down at his watch. The session was almost over. He wondered for a moment why his brother refused to join him for dinner or overnight or any extended visit at all.

  “It’s a sentimental journey . . .”

  What had he meant? He felt a rush of anger himself. Doug was capable of blistering directness one instant and unfathomable obtuseness the next. He felt a sudden empty feeling inside, wondering: How well do I know my brother? Then adding, as if by rote: How well do I know myself? He had a quick picture of the rest of his day: rounds. Several individual therapy sessions. Dinner alone in his apartment. A ball game on television, a chapter in a book, and bed. More of the same in the morning. A routine is a kind of protection, he thought. He wondered what his brother found to protect himself. And from what? That gets an easy answer, he thought. He looked around the room.

  We protect ourselves only from ourselves.

  “I follow on the heels of evil . . .” He smiled. That was Doug. A certain dramatic flair. For an instant he felt a complete jealousy. Then he let it pass, thinking: Well, we are who we are, and then felt embarrassed. Not much insight there, he said to himself. He wondered again: How close are we?

  To his right, Simon the orderly stirred. He stretched and got to his feet.

  He heard the men start to shuffle in their chairs and he thought of a grade-school classroom in the few moments before the recess bell rings.

  “All right,” Martin Jeffers said. “Enough for today.”

  He stood up and thought: Closer than you think.

  Martin Jeffers watched the men as they rose and wandered out of the day room singly or in pairs. He heard an occasional laugh echoing down the outside corridor. When he was left alone, he gathered his notes and papers together, made a few entries in his daily log, and walked through the day room, feeling the warmth of the sunshine as it hit his back. The room was silent and he thought the session had been a success: no fights, no irreconcilable arguments, though Miller and Meriwether would bear watching. There had been a little progress, he thought. Perhaps Weingarten’s story was something that could be followed up on. He resolved to bring up jealousy at the next session and shut the day-room door behind him.

  The hospital corridor was empty and he moved swiftly past the entrance to one of the wards. He glanced in the window of the door and saw the same lethargic picture that he’d seen every day. A few people standing around talking, others talking to themselves. Some read, some played chess or checkers. So much of the time in a mental hospital is spent simply getting from one day to the next. The patients become expert at the practice of elongating time: meals were interminable. Activities were stretched. Time was wasted deliberately, passionately. It was not that unreasonable, he thought, for people to whom time had lost all urgency.

  When he arrived at his office he discovered a note taped to the door: call dr. harrison’s office asap. Dr. Harrison was the hospital’s administrator. Jeffers looked at the note, wondering what it was about. He unlocked his door and set his papers down. For a moment he stared about himself at the tired steel bookshelf sagging with papers, files, and textbooks. There was a calendar on the wall with pictorial scenes from Vermont. He had a sudden pleasurable memory: That was fun there, he thought. Fishing, camping. He remembered a trout that Doug had caught and thrown back, only to hear their father laugh. “It’ll die,” the druggist said. “Once you touch them, you wipe some of the fish slime off their bodies and they get cold and die. Can’t throw a trout back, no sir.” And then their father had continued laughing, pointing at his brother. Martin Jeffers wondered for a moment whether it was true. He had never checked. He felt an odd embarrassment as he thought how he had gone through life believing, from that moment on, that you couldn’t throw a trout back into the water without killing it simultaneously. Doctor Harrison is a fisherman, he thought. Dammit, I’ll ask him.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed the administrator’s extension. The secretary picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Martha. Marty Jeffers here. I got your note. What’s on the chief’s mind?”

  “Oh, Doctor Jeffers,” the secretary said. “I don’t know exactly, but there’s a detective here. All the way from Florida. Miami, she says, and she wants to talk to you . . .”

  The secretary hesitated and Jeffers pictured palm trees and beaches. “I’ve never been to Miami,” he said. “Always wanted to go.”

  “Oh, doctor,” the secretary continued. “She says it’s a murder investigation.”

  Jeffers wondered for a moment whether the trout knew, after it had been touched, that it was doomed to die; whether it swam off, searching out some lonely eddy behind a cluster of rocks to shiver itself to death, cruelly confused and betrayed by its own environment.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said.

  V

  A SINGULAR PURSUIT

  8. The words echoed within her: trace alcohol.

  At first she wondered whether her cheeks had been scarred by her tears in the same way that she felt her heart had been ripped and torn by her unchecked grief. She looked up at herself in the mirror, half-expecting to see permanent red welts on her skin, marking the paths her misery had flowed. There were none. She rubbed her eyes hard and felt a vast exhaustion enter her body, fatigue pushing aside and storming the barriers of resolve and perseverance and taking over inside her. She breathed out slowly, battling lightheadedness and residual nausea.

  Detective Mercedes Barren wanted desperately to organize her thoughts, but was defeated by emotion. She gripped the edges of the sink and held tight for an instant, trying to clear her mind of everything, as though by creating a blank slate she could control what she thought and felt. She took a deep breath, and, moving with exaggerated deliberateness, turned on the faucets. She felt flushed and overheated so she ran cold water over her wrists, remembering it was her husband who had told her that this would cool her down quickly—an athlete’s trick. Then she splashed water on her face and looked up again into the mirror, staring at her reflection.

  I am old, thought Detective Barren.

  I am thin, brittle, and tired and I am unhappy and there are creases in my skin, on my forehead, and in the corners next to my eyes that were not there not so long ago. She looked at her hands, counting the veins on the backs. An old woman’s hands, she thought.

  Detective Barren turned away from the mirror and walked back into the living room of her small apartment. She glanced momentarily at the stacks of reports and file folders stuffed with statements, analyses of evidence, photographs, transcripts, psychological reports, and lists of items seized that formed into the paper substance of a criminal investigation. It was all piled haphazardly on her small desk. She walked to it and began idly to sort and arrange the documents, trying to impress reason on the mass of material. Susan’s legacy, she thought, and again she bit back tears.

  She wondered how long she had cried.

  She went to the window and looked out at the pale-blue morning sky. It was cloudless and oppressively bri
ght. It seemed to her that the air was filled with the reflection of the sun exploding off the expanse of blue sea so close to the city. It was a day without darkness, without even a taste of disorder, and this angered her. She put her hand against the glass of the window and felt the tropical heat. For an instant she wanted to draw back her fist and thrust it through the window. She wanted to hear the glass shatter and fall. She wanted to feel physical pain. She stopped herself when she became aware that her hand had balled itself into a fist, turned away from the window, and surveyed her apartment.

  “Well,” she said to herself out loud, “that’s it, then.”

  She felt as though something had finished and something different was beginning, but she was not certain precisely what. She rubbed a tear away from her eye and took a deep breath, then another. There was a picture of her niece in a simple silver frame on top of the bookcase, and she walked slowly over to the picture and looked at it. “Well,” she said again. “I guess it’s time to start over.” She put the picture down and felt a rush of sadness slip through her body, like a cool wind in the last few seconds before a hard rain. “I’m sorry,” she said to herself. “I’m so very, very sorry.” But she was unsure to whom she was apologizing.

  The woman officer behind the reception desk at the Dade County Sheriff’s Office was abrupt:

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. I don’t believe I need one . . .” replied Detective Barren.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t let you up to homicide unless there’s someone expecting you. Who is it you want to see?”

  Detective Barren sighed loudly, irritatedly, swiftly fishing her own gold shield out of her purse.

  “I want to see Detective Perry. Right now. Pick up your phone, officer, and call his office. Right now.”

  The woman held out her hand for the badge. Detective Barren handed it over and the woman carefully noted the shield number on a form. She handed the badge back and, without meeting Detective Barren’s eyes, dialed the number for homicide. After a moment she spoke:

  “Detective Perry, please.”

  There was a momentary pause.

  “Detective Perry? There’s a Detective Barren from City here to see you.”

  Another pause.

  The woman officer hung up.

  “Third floor,” she said.

  “I know,” said Detective Barren.

  The elevator ride seemed to take much longer than she remembered. She suddenly wished that there were a mirror available; she wanted to check her makeup, to make certain that all the outward signs of grief were properly concealed. She straightened herself self-consciously. She had selected her clothing that morning with far more care than usual, knowing that appearances were important when connected to what she was going to say. She had ruled out her dark blue and gray courtroom suits in favor of a simple, light-colored cotton blazer and khaki skirt. She wanted to seem loose, easy, and relaxed—informal. The jacket was cut stylishly large. Once upon a time, she had thought as she slipped it on, it would have been called baggy. Now it was oversize. But it was an excellent design to hide the shoulder harness which held her 9 millimeter. It was not her usual choice of weapons. Ordinarily she simply stuffed a short-barreled .38-caliber revolver into her handbag and forgot about it for the remainder of the day. But she had felt a wild sense of insecurity after she had dressed, had looked up suddenly at a sound outside her door, feeling the small hairs on the back of her neck stand. She had discovered herself strapping on the large automatic pistol without even thinking, and now she could feel its weight and bulk and she welcomed it.

  The elevator doors rolled open with a swooshing sound.

  “Hey, Merce! Over here!”

  She turned and saw Detective Perry waving to her from a corridor. She walked toward him quickly. He was holding out his hand and she shook it. He gave her a little wave as well and started walking toward his desk.

  “Come on—you want coffee? So how’re you doing?” he asked, but, hardly pausing for an answer, he launched ahead. “You know, I was just thinking about you the other day. We had a rape-murder, the kid out in South Miami, right along the canal, you probably saw it in the papers, and all I could think of was that boxer you busted. Intuition won’t get you a search warrant, isn’t that how you put it? Anyway, I had this feeling, you see, that the killer wasn’t really a murderer, right? I mean, it was a straight-forward rape all the way, but the kid’s skull got fractured. She was unconscious when she died, the coroner says. I got to thinking maybe he didn’t realize, you know? Maybe he didn’t know how hard he hit her, right? So I got a couple of guys and a policewoman to dress up like a teenager, and we staked the place out last night—the same spot, can you believe, where the first crime took place, and bingo! Who should come walking up to our lady cop but some guy with scratch marks healing up all over his face. Wanna party? the creep asks. I got a party for you, the detective says back. Guy copped out finally after a couple hours of denials. You know something, Merce? We’d all be useless if the bad guys weren’t so damn dumb most of the time. So, as you can see, I had a helluva night. Helluva night. Christ, the type of night that makes it seem worthwhile . . .”

  He looked at Detective Barren before continuing.

  “. . . So here I am, finishing some paperwork before heading home to the wife and kids, and who calls up from the lobby? This I gather is not a social call, huh? Have a seat.”

  He motioned across his desktop to a chair and they both sat down.

  “You’re being real quiet,” he said.

  “Sounds like a good bust. A real good bust.” It occurred to her that she liked Detective Perry and she was suddenly sad because she knew that he would not like her after they completed their conversation. “It helps,” she said.

  “What helps?”

  “That so many of them are dumb.”

  He laughed. “No kidding.”

  He looked over the clutter of papers at Detective Barren.

  “Merce,” he said softly, “why are you here?”

  She hesitated for a few seconds before replying in an equally soft voice:

  “He didn’t do it.”

  Detective Perry stared at her as silence surrounded them. Then he got up from his seat and walked about. She watched him carefully.

  “Merce,” Detective Perry finally responded, “let it go.”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “Let it go, Merce.”

  “He didn’t do it!”

  “Okay. Let’s say he didn’t. How do you know? How can you be sure?”

  “Trace alcohol.”

  “What?”

  “Trace alcohol. The bite mark on Susan’s body was swabbed and saliva tests were run. They turned up trace alcohol.”

  “Right. I remember. So what?”

  “He said he was a Shiite Muslim.”

  “Right.”

  “Sincere.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. So?”

  “Won’t touch a drop of alcohol. Not a beer. Not a scotch. Not a glass of wine.”

  Detective Perry sat down heavily.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it for starters.”

  “Got anything else?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Merce, why’re you doing this to yourself?”

  “What?”

  “Why are you punishing yourself?”

  “I’m not. I’m merely trying to find Susan’s killer.”

  “We found him. He’s in prison for the rest of eternity. When he dies he’ll probably go to hell. He will go to hell. Merce, give it up.”

  “You’re not goddamn listening to me! Trace alcohol!”

  “Merce, please . . .” Defeat and sadness crawled into his voice. “I’m tired. I’m really tired.
You know as well as I that this guy picked up half his victims in bars or student unions. You’re saying he never had a beer? Bull! He was crazy, Merce! He was sick crazy. He’d have done anything, anything! to get his victims. The rest, all the religious garbage, that was just, I don’t know, cover-up crap. Self-justification. Madness, hell, I don’t know . . .”

  Detective Perry rolled back in his chair.

  “I’m tired, Merce. I shouldn’t have to tell you of all people that that damn saliva testing will turn up trace alcohol if the creep rinsed his mouth out with mouthwash before committing the crime. Hell, you know that better than I do. You’re the expert. You know.”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  “Merce, I’m sorry. He did. He killed her. He killed all of them. You’re going to have to learn to live with it. Please, Merce. Please learn to live with it.”

  Detective Barren looked at Detective Perry. She wavered for a moment, measuring all the sadness and discouragement in his voice. She thought how crazy she must sound. Then she thought, vaguely, in an undefined, vaporish way, of her niece and she toughened quickly.

  “Will you help me?”

  “Merce . . .”

  “Will you help me, goddammit!”

  “Give me a break . . .”

  “Will you help me!”

  “Merce. Get help. See the department shrink. Talk to your goddamn minister. Take a vacation. Read a book. Hell, I don’t know, but don’t ask me to help you.”

  “Let me have the file then.”

  “Christ, Merce, you’ve already got everything we had. I gave you everything before the guilty plea.”

  “You’re not holding anything back?”

  Anger flashed across Detective Perry’s face.

  “No! Goddammit! What a fucking question!”

  “I needed to know.”

  “You knew already!”

  They were both quiet, staring at each other. After a moment Detective Perry spoke again. His voice was slow and sad.

  “I’m sorry you feel this way. Look, your niece’s murder has been cleared by us. If you turn up some hard piece of evidence, well, you can always come on back and we’ll take a look at it. But, Merce, it’s over. At least it should be. I wish you’d see it that way . . .”