The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  She drove up a rise on the turnpike. To her right, a huge cargo jet whined and powered in takeoff from Newark Airport, while to her left the massive white oil storage tanks of the port of Newark glistened in floodlights. She felt an incongruity, surrounded by technology, in pursuit of something prehistoric. When the highway swept away from the coast and into darker countryside, she felt comforted. She bent down and peered up into the black sky, catching a glimpse of the moon, hanging low over some trees and buildings.

  “Good night moon,” she said out loud, the words bursting out from long-held memory, unchecked. “Good night room and the red balloon and the three little bears sitting on chairs, good night house and good night mouse, good night to the old lady whispering ‘hush,’ good night nobody, good night mush . . .”

  She tried to remember the other good nights from the book, but she was unsure after so many years. Mittens? Kittens? She saw herself, her niece perched on her lap, head lolled down and eyes closed, bottle drooping from her mouth, welcoming the deep sleep of childhood. She remembered how the words of the book always worked, but she never cut the rhythms short; if Susan fell asleep before the end, I would still read on.

  “Good night moon,” she said again.

  She had found her niece’s picture behind a large full-color portrait profile of three starving African children, whose wide eyes and distended bellies shouted out in agony. It was perhaps the fifteenth or twentieth photograph that she had torn apart in frenzied search. She had reached the limit of self-control when she ripped into the frame, breaking it with her hands. A piece of glass had cracked off, cutting her thumb, not deeply, but enough to streak the picture with fresh blood.

  At first she had not recognized her niece. She had seen too many savaged bodies in Jeffers’ apartment to instantly draw a distinction. But then the shape of the limbs had suddenly plucked her memory, and the shock of straw-blond hair, clearly visible even in the black and white picture, had touched her familiarity. The features were in some repose, too; the portrait had been taken from a lower angle and from the side, removing some of the horror that was so clear in the crime-scene pictures that she had gazed at so many times. She could see an immediate difference between the caressing portrait that Jeffers, even in his hurry, had taken and the clinical, bright, horrible photos taken by the medical examiner’s office and her fellow crime-scene specialists a few short hours after Jeffers had slipped away into the night. In the photo she had held in her hands, Susan seemed merely asleep, and she was thankful for that small touch.

  She had stared deeply at the photograph. She did not know for how long. She had not cried, but it seemed to her to drain her soul. Then she had carefully, almost tenderly, put it aside before going on with the terrible task of checking the other frames.

  She had thought herself calm and in control, but her hands had shaken wildly when finally she had put her niece’s photo in the growing pile along with all the murdered others and had readied herself to leave.

  Driving through the darkness, she said to herself: I don’t know who you all are, but I’m here for you now.

  I’m here. I’m here. I know. Now I know everything.

  And I will make things right.

  She gripped the steering wheel tightly with her fingers and continued fast toward the morning.

  Martin Jeffers could not sleep. Nor did he want to.

  He sat in the center of his apartment, the only light coming from a small desktop lamp off in the corner. He debated with himself the single question whether it was better or not to know. He questioned whether, if the detective disappeared, as he supposed she had, and his brother returned, as he knew he would, his usual cryptic, smart-guy self, whether he could simply return to the status quo, the usual uneasy peace between brothers.

  He did not know whether he had the strength to reimpose this normality on his life.

  He tried to envision facing his brother. In his imagination he saw himself stern, prosecutorial, strong, suddenly invested with the powers that accompanied being firstborn, easily dismissing his brother’s weak jests and jousts until Douglas Jeffers finally succumbed to his relentlessness and told the truth.

  And then what?

  Martin Jeffers plunged his face into his hands, trying to hide himself from the fantasy he’d created. What would he say? He could not envision his brother tearfully confessing to the crime that had brought the detective into their lives. What would he say? I’m sorry, Marty, but I picked up this girl and everything was going great until she said no, and then I got a little carried away, you know, and maybe I used a little too much force. I’m strong, Marty, and sometimes I forget and suddenly she wasn’t breathing, and it really wasn’t my fault, but hers, and anyway, someone else took the rap for the crime, so why do anything? It’s gone, it’s past, it really, when you think about it, never happened.

  He stood up and paced about the dark room.

  I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, he said to himself. He was always wild, he always thought he could do whatever he wanted. He wasn’t like me, he wasn’t organized, patient, I can’t stand it. He never, never, never listened to me.

  He killed that girl, dammit!

  He should pay.

  Martin Jeffers sat back down.

  Why?

  What good would it do?

  Again he stood up, then, just as swiftly, slumped back into his chair.

  Why do you jump to these conclusions? He addressed himself in the third person, like a debater.

  The detective has disappeared. She was crazy anyway. Why are you so swift to believe the worst about Doug? You’ve been too long with the men in the therapy group. You’ve heard too many lies, too many evasions, too many phony reconstructions. You’ve heard blame shifted about from one person to the next, never assumed by the guilty. You’ve heard horror after horror year after year and nothing has ever changed and it has finally skewered your thinking about completely so that now you’re willing to leap to the most ridiculous conclusions.

  Go to bed. Get some sleep. Things will sort out.

  He smiled to himself. That is hardly the kind of attitude that four years of medical school and four more years of internship and residency at the mental hospital should prompt. Where did Freud write: Things will work out? What neo-Jungian approach is that? Did you pick that up from some journal or some scholarly lecture? Perhaps from Dear Abby or Ann Landers? When have you ever known things just to work out? He heard himself laugh, briefly, and the sound echoed emptily in the apartment. Still, it was a tenet of his profession to await events rather than prompt them, and there was nothing wrong with that.

  We shall see, he said to himself.

  We shall see what Detective Barren has to say—if she ever shows up again.

  We shall see what Doug has to say.

  And then we shall figure out what to do.

  This seemed to him to be like a plan of action, the decision to wait for something to happen. It pleased him and he felt suddenly tired. Christ, he said to himself, how do you expect to ever reach any conclusions about this mess without getting some rest?

  He rose again and looked over at a small digital clock that blinked its numerals in red. It was four a.m. He stretched and yawned. He ordered himself: Go to bed. His mind answered with a military snap: Yes, sir!

  He took three steps toward the bedroom.

  Things will sort themselves out.

  And the doorbell rang.

  It was a high-pitched, irritating sound that struck his heart. It startled him deeply and he jumped involuntarily.

  He took a great breath.

  Who? he wondered.

  My God, he thought.

  He took another breath. What the hell? It’s four a.m.

  It rang again, buzzing swiftly and insistently.

  His mind twirled in confusion and he
walked to the door. There was a small, circular peephole, and he peered through it.

  Standing outside was the detective.

  His heart plunged and he felt suddenly dizzy and nauseated and he wanted to be sick. He fought off the sensation and he reached for the doorknob.

  As soon as she heard a hand start to open the door, Detective Mercedes Barren reached behind her, to where she had stuck her 9-­millimeter pistol beneath her shirt, tucked into the belt of her jeans. She freed the weapon and swung it forward, just behind the paper sack she carried in her other arm.

  She raised the gun to eye level as the door swung open.

  She thrust the barrel forward so that it hovered an inch from Martin Jeffers’ nose.

  She saw him pale quickly and take a sudden step back in surprise.

  “Don’t move,” she said, her voice deadly cold and even. “Is he here? If you lie I will kill you.”

  Martin Jeffers shook his head.

  Using the gun to gesture, she slipped into the apartment. She glanced around quickly. She could sense they were alone, but she was not willing to put trust in her sensation.

  “Please, detective, put the gun away. He’s not here and I still don’t know where he is.”

  “I’ll believe you after I take a look around.” She maneuvered so she could see into the other rooms. After a quick inspection, never moving the gun too much, so that it could not instantly be brought to bear on Martin Jeffers, she returned to the living room and gestured for the doctor to sit down.

  “I can’t believe that . . .” Martin Jeffers started, but she cut him off sharply.

  “I don’t care what you can or can’t believe.”

  They were both silent. After an instant he spoke.

  “You were supposed to meet me yesterday morning. Not here. Not now. What’s going on? And please put that cannon away. It scares the bejesus out of me.”

  “It should. And I’ll put it away when I want.”

  They continued to stare at each other.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  “Can you find him?”

  “I don’t know. No. Maybe. I don’t know. But certainly not . . .”

  “I haven’t got too much time. No one does.”

  Martin Jeffers managed to compose himself. He ignored her mysterious statement.

  “Look, detective, what are you doing here in the middle of the night? We had an agreed-upon appointment and you never show and then suddenly you’re at my apartment at four in the morning threatening me with a gun. What the hell is going on?”

  Detective Barren sat in a chair across from him. The gun still waved in the air between them. She pulled the envelope containing Douglas Jeffers’ apartment key from her pocket and tossed it to the brother.

  He looked at it. “Where the hell did you get this?”

  “From your desk.”

  “You broke in here? Christ, what kind of cop are you?”

  “Would you have given it to me?”

  “Not on your life.”

  Jeffers started to stand, filled with violation and anger.

  She raised the gun.

  He stared at it and sat back down.

  “Threats are childish,” he said.

  “I went to your brother’s apartment,” she said.

  “So?”

  She had placed the paper sack at her feet. She reached in and pulled out the photograph of Susan. She tossed it to Martin Jeffers, who looked at it for several seconds.

  “That is my niece,” she said bitterly.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “I found it at your brother’s apartment.”

  Martin Jeffers’ head spun suddenly. He breathed harshly. He blurted out: “Well, there must be some explanation . . .”

  Her voice was like a frozen morning: “There is.”

  “I mean, he must have . . .”

  She interrupted:

  “Don’t make some fucking stupid excuse.”

  “I mean, he could have obtained this picture in any number of ways . . . I mean, after all, he’s a professional.”

  She did not reply. She simply reached into the paper bag and pulled out another photo. She dropped this in front of Martin Jeffers. Again, he looked deeply at the two photographs.

  “But this isn’t the same person,” he said finally.

  She threw another photo in front of him.

  He spread the three out, looking carefully at the pictures.

  “But I don’t get it, neither is . . .”

  She slammed another picture in front of him.

  He glanced at this, then he sat back in his chair.

  She was breathing hard, as if near the end of a long run.

  She slapped yet another picture down. Then another and another and another, until finally she dumped the entire stack on the brother’s lap.

  “You don’t get it? You don’t get it? You don’t get it?” she repeated as each flopped in front of him.

  Martin Jeffers looked around wildly, as if searching for something to grasp hold of and steady himself.

  “Now,” she said with all the pent-up rage barely leashed, “where is he? Where is your brother? Where? Where? Where?”

  Martin Jeffers put his head into his hands.

  She leaped across to his side, pulling him back sharply by the shoulder.

  “If you cry I will kill you,” she said viciously. She did not know whether or not she meant this; it was that she suddenly couldn’t stand the idea of the murderer’s brother shedding a tear for himself, for Douglas Jeffers, for anyone other than those people spread about him.

  “I don’t know!” he said, his voice cracking with stress.

  “You know!”

  “No!”

  She stared at him. He looked at the pictures.

  Her voice was filled with controlled fury: “Will you find him?”

  Jeffers hesitated, two answers screaming inside his head.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Maybe. I can try.”

  She slumped into a chair. She wanted to cry, then, herself.

  But instead they just sat across from each other, staring into the gap between them.

  The dawn light caught the two sitting amidst the pile of photographs, silent. It was Martin Jeffers, his own mind a disaster of crushed emotions, who spoke first:

  “I suppose the first step, now, is for you to contact your superiors, tell them what you think you’re up against . . .”

  “No,” replied Detective Barren.

  “Well, maybe we should talk to the FBI,” Jeffers went on, oblivious to her refusal. “They have a branch office down in Trenton, and I know a couple of the agents. They’re equipped to help, I guess . . .”

  “No,” she said again.

  Jeffers looked over at her. He swiftly filled with rage. He tried to bite back his words, but his tongue was loosened by exhaustion and sorrow.

  “Look, detective, if you think I’m going to help you hunt my brother down to satisfy some personal vendetta, you’re mistaken! Worse, you’re crazy! Forget it and get the hell out of here!”

  Detective Mercedes Barren looked at Martin Jeffers.

  “You don’t understand,” she said quietly.

  “Well, detective, it seems to me that you’re awfully good at making threats with that big fucking gun . . .” He surprised himself by using an obscenity. “But you’re not too damn forthcoming with details. If my brother has committed crimes, well, then, there’s an established procedure for investigating him . . .”

  He had the unsettling feeling that he’d said those words before and they had been equally useless then.

  “It won’t work,” she
said. Defeat mocked her.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because of me.”

  She sighed deeply and felt fatigue insinuate itself throughout her body and mind. Martin Jeffers watched her, aware suddenly that something was bent, twisted, wrong; he slid effortlessly into his professional posture, waiting, quiet, patient, knowing the explanation would eventually arrive.

  The silence filled with weak morning light.

  “Because of me,” the detective said again.

  She took a deep breath.

  “I am the best, you know? I was always the best. I made one mistake, once, and I’ve got the scar to show for it. But that was all. I lived. I recovered. I made no more mistakes. It didn’t matter what kind of case it was, I was always the best. The information I got, the evidence I procured, the arrests I made, everything! It was always right. It was always true. It was always accurate. When I got onto a case, there was only one conclusion: the bad guys got busted. Then they went to prison. It didn’t matter to me what kind of lawyer they got, what kind of defense they had. Alibi? Forget it. I put them away. All of them . . .

  “I was together, you know? I had to be. All my life people stole from me and I was powerless to do anything about it. But not when I became a cop. I was right. Always. I was always right.”

  She slung her head back and looked to the heavens. After a moment she looked at Martin Jeffers.

  “You have to understand: there is no evidence.”

  Martin Jeffers shook his head.