The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  He pointed over the pond.

  “It’s all wild land. The only person who lives out there is an old sheep farmer named Johnson. He’s crazy. Literally. Steals motorboat engines from the summer people whose boats he doesn’t like. He shoots his shotgun at folks who drive their cars on the sand dunes. Once he made a homemade land mine and tank trap for the kids and tourists who tried to use his road to get to the beach. The old bastard once chased me off his property at gunpoint. That was twenty years ago, but he hasn’t changed a bit. He was discharged from the Army with a mental disability and it hasn’t gotten any better. He’s certifiable, but an old islander, so they let him get away with things. The summer people, of course, think he’s quaint.”

  Jeffers paused. When he spoke again, it was with complete fury.

  “They’re going to blame him at first for what we do.”

  Then he pointed down the road.

  “This land ends in a point that projects into the pond. Finger Point. A half mile down this road is a house. If you look carefully, you can just see the roof line. It’s the only place out here. People pay great sums of money for the right kinds of isolation. Anyway, that’s where we’re going.”

  Jeffers abruptly rolled the window up and thrust the car into reverse. The car bumped wildly while he backed it into the forest. He spun the wheel sharply, sliding the car into a small turnoff that she hadn’t noticed. Then he shut off the engine.

  “All right,” he said. “We’re here. Wait.”

  Jeffers walked to the back of the car and seized the duffle bag where he kept the weapons. He opened the zipper and pulled out a pair of black workmen’s coveralls and several other items. He slipped one of the set on, then put a pistol in the belt. He reloaded the rifle and chambered a round. Then he slung the duffle over his back.

  “All right,” he said. “Out of the car.”

  She complied instantly.

  “Put this on.”

  She slid on the black coveralls and thought: I am part of the night.

  He appraised her.

  “Good. Good. You almost look the part. You just need this.”

  He handed her a small knit hat. She looked at it quizzically.

  “Like this!” he said, his voice suddenly at the edge of rage. He stepped to her and, grabbing the hat, thrust it on her head. Then, in a single, violent motion, he pulled the rolled brim down. It was a ski mask. She thought she might suffocate beneath the tight-fitting wool. She saw he’d pulled his down as well.

  “Real horror show,” he said. He turned and trotted down the road and she hurried to keep pace.

  XIII

  AN IRREGULAR SESSION OF THE LOST BOYS

  18. Detective Mercedes Barren waited impatiently in Martin Jeffers’ office, agonizing over lost time. She had trouble sitting; whenever she rested in a chair, she felt as if an angry impulse surged through her, reminding her that the killer wasn’t waiting for her somewhere with his feet up on some desk. He’s out there, she told herself, just past my reach. He’s doing something. Her head flooded with the images she’d stolen from his apartment. She grimaced and thought: I’ll never lose them. Those pictures will be with me forever.

  She slowly rubbed her hands across her eyes and remembered a lecture from her first days at the police academy, when an FBI agent had come in, arms and pockets and head filled with crime statistics. He had used clock models and a steadily droning voice to demonstrate how often each armed robbery, each burglary, each murder took place in the United States. She thought: ten p.m., a ghetto crap game turns to knives; eleven p.m., a suburban couple’s argument results in gunplay; midnight, Douglas Jeffers sweet-talks another woman into his car. She wanted to grab hold of something and shake it violently. She wanted to see something shatter and break. She wanted crashing noise. But all that surrounded her was a steady, infuriating silence, and she had to console herself by pacing around the room, fiddling with her papers, envisioning moments past and moments to come, trying to prepare herself mentally for confrontation.

  It will happen, she told herself.

  And I will be ready.

  She thought of herself as a warrior preparing for battle.

  Mercedes Barren remembered how Achilles had oiled his body before his fight with Hector. He’d known he would win, because that was preordained, but known as well that his own demise was fast approaching, signaled by his victory that day. Then she dismissed the image: He won, but lost. That isn’t what you intend. Knights in the Middle Ages would pray before a fight, imploring divine guidance, but you know what you have to do. No one, not even the heavens, needs to tell you. Of course, Roland was obstinate; he would not sound his horn, and it cost him his friend’s life and his own, but he gained immortality. She smiled to herself: Bad idea. Then she asked herself: Are you any different? She refused herself an answer. She considered the rituals of the samurai and the ghost-dancing of the Plains Indians. The spirit filled them and they believed that the horse soldiers’ bullets would pass right through them. Unfortunately they were right. The only problem was that the bullets took their lives, as well, which wasn’t what had been advertised. Sitting Bull was old and wise, and knew this, but fought anyway.

  She considered whether John Barren had done anything special before a fight. Had he dressed with any special care, like some superstitious athlete who wears the same socks every game so as not to upset the god that guides victories and prevents injuries? She imagined that he had; he was a romantic, filled with foolish ideas about chivalry and myth that probably penetrated even the muck and swamps of Vietnam. She smiled, recalling that when they had sent home his possessions, weeks after they’d sent back what remained of him, what made her eyes redden and tears flow freely was a dog-eared copy of The Once and Future King.

  She wondered what he’d failed to do on the day he died. Was there some special charm or amulet that he’d neglected? Did he violate the order of dress in some small yet deadly way? What did he do to upset the delicate equilibrium of life?

  She wondered too, whether he knew it, walking along beneath the sun, eyes wide, senses on edge, but aware in the recess of his mind that something was not right on this day that looked and smelled and sounded like every other day.

  He would have shaken it off and marched on, she thought.

  March on.

  He would say to me: Do what you must. Do what is right.

  She thrust her hands out in front of her.

  They were steady.

  She turned them over, looking at the palms. Dry.

  It is time to get ready, she thought.

  Then she clenched the hands into two solid, balled fists. Choose the battle ground, she said, directing her mental energies at the ethereal Douglas Jeffers. Do something. Contact your brother.

  She envisioned Martin Jeffers. She glanced at the wall clock. He’s on his way to that damn group, she thought. I’m stuck here, waiting for him to remember something, or his brother to call, or the mail to arrive with a postcard that says: Hi! Having wonderful time! Wish you were here!

  Fury filled her and she struggled around the office for the hundredth time, realizing how tenuous was her grasp on the brother, how dependent she was upon him and thus incapable of doing anything save the hardest, most impossible work of all, which is waiting.

  Martin Jeffers stared out at the assembled men and saw that he had always been wrong, pitying them the weakness of their perversions when his acquiescence and unseeing impotence were infinitely more depraved.

  Oedipus, at least, looked upon the horror and tore his eyes from his face. His blindness was just. Martin Jeffers forced a smile, reflecting the inward thought that the Oedipal myth was sacred to his profession. But we don’t acknowledge what happened after. We don’t remember that after the desire and the act, the one-time king was forced by guilt to wander blindly through life in rag
s, his feet driven step upon step by the depth of his despair.

  He wondered if the same emotions were so clear on his own face. He tried to force his usual semidetached professional gaze out into the center of the room, but he knew he was unsuccessful. He looked across at the men, warily.

  The membership of the Lost Boys was restless. They shifted about in their seats, making small, uncomfortable noises. He knew they had noted his fatigue in the previous day’s session, knew, as well, that he had spent another sleepless night, and he wore that exhaustion equally obviously. He had sleepwalked through Monday, after returning late from New Hampshire, barely listening to the usual mix of mundane complaints and ills that made up his routine day. He had thought he would embrace a day of regularity, that it would somehow postpone all the difficult feelings, but he discovered that they were too powerful. His mind remained filled only with images of his brother.

  He was overcome with a sudden rush of anger.

  He saw his brother in a familiar pose, insouciant, grinning. Without a care in the world.

  Then the vision grew darker and he pictured his brother with eyes set, deadly: the stalker, all business and bitterness.

  A killer.

  Why have you done these things? he asked the man in his mind’s eye. Why have you become what you are? How can you do it, over and over, and not show it every waking instant?

  But the brother in his mind faded, refusing to answer, and Martin Jeffers realized how foolish his questions were. Even if it is ridiculous to ask, he thought, I still must.

  He felt his hands tighten on the arms of the chair and his anger redoubled, bursting forth, flowering, and he wanted to scream at the brother in his mind: Why have you done these things? Why? Why?

  And then a greater anger still:

  Why have you done these things to me?

  He took a deep breath and looked out again at the waiting therapy group. He knew he had to say something, to get the group started, and then he would be able to lose himself in the steadiness of their conversation. But instead of tossing out a subject or idea for the men to worry and chew, he thought of New Hampshire and tried to remember the last moment he’d seen his real mother. She was fixed in a memory, a pale face, framed in a car window, turning back just once before rolling steadily out of his life. He could see it as clearly as on the night it had happened. He had never described the sight to anyone, least of all his own therapist. He knew that violated a fundamental trust, one that he hypocritically demanded of his own patients. I am not free, he thought. I don’t expect to he. I never will be. He thought again of his real mother. What had we done wrong? He knew the answer: nothing. The ancients had it completely backward, he thought. Psychiatry has proven that it is the sins of the parents that are visited upon the children. We were abandoned, then we were treated cruelly, lovelessly. The twin pillars of despair. Is it any surprise that Doug has risen up, as an adult, to exact a measure of revenge on a world that hated him so?

  But why him and not me?

  Where is he?

  “So, doc, what’s bugging you? You look like you’ve got one foot in the grave.”

  “Yeah. You gonna take us with you?”

  This prompted nervous laughter from the room.

  Martin Jeffers looked up and saw that it was Bryan and Senderling asking the questions. But all the men’s faces wore the same impatient inquisitiveness.

  His first reaction was to ignore the questions and try to launch the group into another direction. That would have been the proper technique. After all, the group’s focus should be on themselves, not on the group leader. But at the same time he was filled with an insistent anger that told him to throw away all the precious tenets of his profession and rely, for a moment, on the street smarts of the men.

  “Do I look that bad?” he asked the assembly.

  There was a momentary silence. The direct question surprised them. After a moment Miller growled from the back of the room:

  “Yeah, you look bad. Like something’s on your mind . . .”

  He laughed cruelly.

  “. . . which sure is a change.”

  Again quiet dominated the room until Wasserman sputtered:

  “If you d-d-d-don’t f-f-f-feel so hot, we c-c-c-can come back tomorrow . . .”

  Jeffers shook his head. “I feel fine. Physically.”

  “So what is it, doc? You got some kind of emotional flu?” This was Senderling, and Bryan laughed with him. That was a good image: emotional flu. I’ll use that, someday, Jeffers thought.

  “I’m concerned about a friend,” he said.

  There was a pause before Miller jumped back in. “You’re a hell of a lot more than concerned,” he said. “You’re worried sick. Hell, I ain’t a doctor, but I can see that. Something a lot more, huh? More than just concern?”

  Jeffers didn’t answer. He searched the eyes, glowing about him, and thought the twelve men were like some damned jury waiting for him to slip and convict himself from his own words. He fixed his eyes on Miller.

  “Tell me,” he said, filling his voice with insistence. “Tell me how you got started.”

  “What do you mean?” Miller replied, shifting in his seat.

  Like all sex offenders, he hated a direct question, preferring to be queried in some oblique fashion so that he could control the route of the conversation. Jeffers thought they were all probably taken aback by bluntness.

  “I want to know how you got started doing what you do.”

  “You mean, the, uh . . .”

  “That’s right. What you do to women. Tell me.”

  The room had gone completely quiet. The forcefulness of Jeffers’ demand had stopped all of them. He knew that he was violating established procedures. But suddenly he was tired of rules, tired of waiting, tired of passivity.

  “Tell me!” His voice was raised louder than it had ever been within the confines of the day room.

  “Hell, I don’t know . . .”

  “Yes, you do!” Jeffers eyed all the men. “You all know. Think back! The first time. What went through your mind? What started you?”

  He waited.

  Pope broke the silence. Jeffers looked at the older man, who stared back with obvious hatred for anyone who probed at his memory. “Opportunity,” he said.

  “Please explain,” Jeffers replied.

  “We all knew who we were. Maybe we hadn’t quite said it to ourselves yet. Maybe the words hadn’t formed in the head, the way they do, but still, we knew, you know. And so it became a matter of waiting for the right opportunity. The demand was there, doc. You know you’re gonna do something, you know. It’s gonna happen. It just needs the right—I don’t know what do you call it—circumstances . . .”

  He saw heads start to nod in agreement.

  “Sometimes”—it was Knight, interrupting—“once you make the decision to be what you are, it like takes over. You just start looking. Looking and looking and looking. Nothing’s gonna come along and change anything, because it’s already all set. You’re looking. And when you find what you’re looking for . . .”

  “I s-s-s-still hated it,” Wasserman interrupted jerkily.

  “So did I,” said Weingarten. “But that didn’t mean a thing.”

  “Right.” It was Pope again. “It didn’t mean nothing . . .”

  Parker: “’Cause once you’re started, it’s happening, man.”

  Meriwether: “Whether you hate it, or you hate yourself, or hate the person you’re going to do it to, it makes little difference.”

  Martin Jeffers absorbed the men’s words.

  “But the first time . . .” he started, only to have Pope jump in.

  “You don’t understand! The first time is only the first time it happens physically! In your head, man, in your head, you’ve already do
ne it a hundred times! A million!”

  “To whom?” Jeffers asked.

  “To everyone!”

  Jeffers thought hard.

  He saw the men sitting forward, on the edges of their chairs, anticipating his questions. They were alert, interested, excited, more engaged than he’d seen them before. He saw the predatory ridge in their eyes, and thought of all the people who’d seen the same hard look before being smothered, or choked and beaten and then violated.

  “But there had to be something,” he asked slowly. “There had to be some moment, or some word, or something had to happen that allowed you to become what you are . . .”

  He stared hard at the men.

  “Something allowed you. What?”

  Again silence. The men were considering the question.

  Wasserman stuttered: “I r-r-r-remember my m-m-m-mom telling me I’d n-n-n-never be the m-m-m-man my d-d-d-daddy was. I never f-f-f-forgot that, and when I d-d-d-did it the f-f-f-first time, it was all I could t-t-t-think about.”

  He looked about the room and his stutter evaporated for an instant:

  “And I damn well was!”

  “Well, it wasn’t anything like that for me,” Senderling said. “It was just I got tired of waiting, you know. I mean there was this one gal in the office, a real tease, you know, and, man, I guess everybody had a piece of her action, so I just took mine.”

  Bryan snorted. “You mean she wouldn’t go out with you.”

  “No, no, it wasn’t like that.”

  The men started to hoot.

  Bryan kept at it. “She turned you down and so you waited for her in her apartment building’s garage. You told me about it yourself.”

  “She was a bitch,” Senderling said. “She deserved it.”

  “Just because she said no?” Jeffers asked.

  “Right!”

  “But why did you decide to do it this time? Other women had told you no, certainly,” Jeffers asked.