The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  He hesitated before continuing.

  “. . . because you’d be much happier if only you’d realize.”

  She waited, to be certain he’d finished.

  “Thanks . . .”

  He shook his head and started to say something but she cut him off.

  “. . . No, I mean it. I know that you believe what you’ve said. And you’ve always played pretty straight with me and I appreciate that.”

  She looked at him hard.

  “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. I’m not crazy. And a couple of weeks off thinking about it isn’t going to change my mind. He’s out there.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy, Merce. Just . . .”

  He couldn’t find the word.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I understand your position.” She stood up. “I don’t mind,” she said, “but I’m still going to go find Susan’s killer.”

  She hesitated a moment.

  “I’ll let you know when I’ve got him.”

  She was not exactly certain what she was going to say to her own boss. That she didn’t believe the Arab had killed Susan; that the killer was still at large; that she wouldn’t rest until he’d been uncovered? Whenever she formulated the sentences to describe the situation she found herself in, it all sounded silly, melodramatic, and unconvincing. She thought: There is something ordinary and trite to revenge. It is a common urge that comes from uncommon circumstances. It carries a package of guilt with it, wrapped up and unavoidable. She knew it was wrong to desire it so, but she was unable to say precisely why.

  The door to Lieutenant Burns’ office was ajar. She knocked hesitantly, then slowly poked her head inside.

  He was sitting at his desk. Spread in front of him were two dozen eight-by-ten color photographs. He looked up and smiled when their eyes met.

  “Ahh, Merce. Just the person I need. Come in and look at this . . .”

  She walked into the office slowly.

  “. . . Around here. Look at these pictures.”

  She stared down at the array of photographs. She saw a body curled in the fetal position in the trunk of a car. It was a young man who would have seemed to be sleeping save for a huge swatch of blood that covered his chest. Detective Barren stared at the pictures, struck with the odd peace that had fixed itself to the man’s face. She picked up different-angled shots of the car trunk, seeing the same quiet, the same blood and tissue. She wondered idly what the young man had done to deserve his death, knowing the answer intuitively: Nine times out of ten, in Miami at least, youth and death translated into drugs.

  “You know, Peter, what strikes me is he wasn’t scared.”

  Lieutenant Burns eyed her cautiously.

  “I mean, we know enough about the physiology of death to speculate a little. And this fellow seems, well, too comfortable. If you or I had been snatched, thrown into the trunk of a car, and driven out to . . . to where?”

  “A rock pit in South Dade . . .”

  “Right, some rock pit. And then blasted by a shotgun . . . it was a shotgun, right? I mean, the guy’s chest is just about gone . . .”

  “Twelve gauge. One shot.”

  “. . . Well, what I’m getting at is that we’d see the residue of fear all over him. Eyes would be open, probably. Face rigid. Fingers stiff. Look. The guy’s hands aren’t even handcuffed or tied. When you pulled him out, how much of him was left behind?”

  “Some blood. Some tissue.”

  “Not a lot?”

  “Medium amounts.”

  “And the car. It looks like a brand-new BMW, right?”

  “Six months old.”

  “I bet,” said Detective Barren, “that it belongs to some midlevel drug dealer. A ten-to-twenty-keys a month guy, not a real heavyweight.”

  “Right again.”

  “Did he report it stolen?”

  “I’m checking on that.”

  “Well, this is off the top of my head, and only a guess of course, but if you were to ask me, I’d say the poor guy was shot somewhere else by someone he didn’t expect to be unfriendly, if you know what I mean . . .”

  Lieutenant Burns laughed wryly.

  “. . . Then he was quickly dumped into the back of the car conveniently stolen a little while earlier, driven out to the rock pit . . . where they knew we’d find him quick, not like out in the Everglades, and left there. It seems to me like some dim-witted Colombian drug dealer’s idea on how to frame somebody in the competition. Perhaps someone’s looking to start some bad blood between organizations and this is the first trump played. All specu­lation, mind you. But I don’t know if I’d issue an arrest warrant for the guy whose car it is, either.”

  “Merce, you know why I like working with you?”

  “No, Peter, why?”

  “Because you think like me.”

  Detective Barren smiled.

  “Everyone likes a yes-man. Or in this case, woman.”

  Lieutenant Burns laughed.

  “Well, I agree with what you say about the crime. I had forensics do a test on the guy’s sneakers. No rock pit sand at all. But there were some fresh grass stains. You see any grass in that rock pit? Didn’t think so.”

  He stared down at the pictures.

  “Merce, do you sometimes think the world belongs to the drug dealers? It makes me laugh, sometimes, when I think that they are the new entre­preneurs of our society. I mean, a hundred years ago, two hundred, people came over to this country, worked hard, put down roots, and bettered themselves. The American Dream. What’s the American Dream now, Merce? A hundred-key score and a nice big brand-new BMW.”

  He stood up and gathered all the pictures together. “I’m getting to be too much of a pessimist. Well, anyway, I guess I’ll take a little hike to homicide and talk to the detectives. Got to tell them what they’re up against. Better call in narcotics, too, I suppose.” He looked at her and sat down. “But first, what can I do for you?”

  Detective Barren thought of the young man in the pictures and wondered why someone so young would be so silly as to get involved in the drug trade. No sillier than John Barren going to war over some foolish principle and dying and leaving her to face getting on alone. She felt a sudden rush of sadness for all the silly young men who died one way or another, followed quickly by a flash of impatient anger. How useless, she thought. How terribly useless and selfish. Someone, she thought, cried hard over this young man’s torn body.

  “Merce?”

  “Peter, I need some time.”

  “Because of your niece.”

  “Precisely.”

  “It might be easier to talk to a counselor and stay on the job. You know, keep busy. Idle hands, they say, are the devil’s playground.” He smiled.

  “I won’t be idle.”

  “I mean, I just don’t want you to go off and brood about in your apartment. What are you going to be doing?”

  Finding Susan’s murderer! her mind screamed suddenly. She bit back the words. She forced herself to sound diplomatic.

  “You know, Peter, they were always unable to put together a prosecutable case against Rhotzbadegh for killing Susan. I don’t want to imply I think the county guys didn’t do their part. It’s just, well, it makes me angry. I just wanted to poke around, see what I can come up with. Then maybe spend some time with my sister, you know, help her over this. She’s still taking it very rough.”

  Lieutenant Burns looked carefully at her eyes. She didn’t move.

  “I don’t know what I think about your poking around in the case. I think it’s over. The other stuff, well, of course . . .”

  “How much time can I have?” she asked. It makes no difference, she thought. I’ll take forever. I’ll grow old and gray and stiff and keep searching.

/>   Lieutenant Burns opened a desk drawer and shuffled through a folder. He pulled out a sheet with her name written at the top.

  “Well, you’ve got three weeks’ vacation time and at least two weeks’ compensatory time for overtime work . . . hell, make it three weeks as well. Then the department regs allow for leave under hardship circumstances. I could put you in for a leave, but it would be at reduced pay. Just how long do you think you’ll need?”

  She had no idea.

  “It’s hard to tell.”

  “Of course. I understand. I think.” He eyed her, a bit warily. “Why are you wearing the cannon?”

  “What?”

  He motioned toward her jacket. “The elephant gun. What is it, a forty-five or a nine millimeter?”

  “Nine millimeter.”

  “You need that to look at pictures?”

  “No.”

  “So why?”

  She didn’t reply. Silence enveloped them. Lieutenant Burns looked down at the paper, then up at her.

  “Leave it alone, Merce. It’s over. He’s doing hard time, which is how it should be . . .” He stiffened, his voice taking on a note of officialdom. “Here’s an order: Stay out of the case. It’s closed. All you’re going to buy is more heartache. You want leave, fine, take it. But not to work. To recover. Got it?”

  She didn’t reply. He looked at her and his voice softened.

  “All right. At least I gave you the official lecture . . .”

  She smiled. “Thanks, Peter.”

  “But, Merce, for my sake, please, get yourself straight and get back to work. Okay?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” she said.

  “Okay, take comp time first, then, if you need more, take vacation. After that, call me and we’ll work something out. I’ll have them send the checks to your house. On one condition.”

  “What?”

  “See the department shrink first. Look, they’re gonna make you see him when you come back, anyway. Trust me. All he’s gonna say is take some time, two aspirin, and see him when you come back.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. That’s it then.” He rose again and picked up the stack of pictures. “You want to come with me to homicide? Those idiots usually take some persuading, especially when it means they’re actually gonna have to go out and scare up some witnesses and evidence all by themselves.”

  “No, thanks,” she said. The next time I see homicide, she thought, it will be to bring them a case.

  She bit her lip. Or to turn myself in, she thought.

  The visit with the department psychologist was as perfunctory as Lieutenant Burns had suggested it would be. She described to him a certain amount of restlessness, sleeplessness, inability to concentrate, and fits of depression. She told him that she felt guilty over Susan’s death. She said that she thought she needed time to adjust to the loss. She listened to herself speak, thinking how easy it was to create a believable lie by mixing in some truth. He asked her whether she wanted sleeping pills. She declined the offer. He told her that she would probably be dogged by depression until she treated the sense of loss with therapy, but that he agreed some time off might be beneficial. He said he would fill out the proper departmental forms to provide her with a leave of absence for medical reasons, which would give her almost full pay. She wondered why everyone was concerned with money. Then he told her that he wanted to see her regularly after a month and scheduled an appointment. He filled out a card and they shook hands. She thanked him and threw the card away after closing his office door behind her.

  It was all much easier than she had expected.

  It did not take her long to clear out what she needed from her desk, despite the interruptions from the other members of the evidence-analysis section, who stopped and offered condolences, invitations, and friendship, which touched her. But she was excited, pleased, and anxious to get finished and out.

  The heat was intense when she stepped through the doors of the city police department. The solid red brick of the building seemed to glow like hot coals. She breathed in slowly, as if afraid she would scorch her lungs, lifting her head and peering up into the sky, shading her eyes from the brightness. She felt for an instant as if she had been hit with a spotlight, singled out for observation.

  But that sense passed and she felt a sense of anticipation, almost exhilaration. For the first time in months she could sense the depression sliding from her heart. I’m doing something, she thought. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time. She had a sudden memory of herself, rising in the midst of the nighttime darkness in her sister’s home at the first mewings of baby pain and hunger. She remembered it as something of a ritual: Throw back the blanket, swing her feet out and into slippers in a single move, pluck the bathrobe from where she had spread it at the foot of the bed. “I’m coming,” she would say, loud enough for the baby to hear, loud enough for her sister to know she was taking care of the problem and roll back into sleep. “I’ll be right there, now hush, hush, hush,” speaking the last words in a crooning midnight sleep lilt.

  “I’m coming,” she said out loud, but there was no one to hear her.

  Then she hummed herself a tune as she walked down the steps.

  9. The first thing she did was purchase three cheap cork bulletin boards and a child’s green blackboard. These she took back to her apartment and set them up next to her desk. She wrote susan on a piece of masking tape and stuck it to the top of the first; rhotzbadegh on the second, and others on the third. The blackboard she set up in the center. She moved a bookcase out of the way, grunting as she forced it across the room to give her more space. She took push-pins and mounted a group of eight-by-ten color shots of the crime scene in the center of Susan’s board. Then she put up the list of evidence seized and the statements of the two gay men who found her body. The Rhotzbadegh board filled swiftly too, with the evidence lists from his house and copies of the newspaper articles he’d clipped. She took a picture of him and placed it on the board, where she could watch it.

  She felt an odd release in the activity. Be a detective, she thought. Make a case.

  But first destroy the one they’ve got.

  The inside of the student union at the university seemed cavernous and dark. It had not been difficult to find the people Susan had been with the night of her death. It was exam period and they were anxious to talk. To chatter, really. Anything, Detective Barren thought, to break the drudgery of studying, although their tanned faces spoke more of time spent in the sun than in any library.

  “How are you certain?” Detective Barren asked one girl, a dark-haired young woman with the nervous habit of looking directly at a person while listening to their question, then letting her eyes wander wildly about the room as she answered. Must drive her professors mad, thought Detective Barren. “How do you know that Susan disappeared by eleven p.m. that night?”

  “Because we’d agreed we were going to leave by eleven. It was important, we each had an early class and we’d promised that no matter how good a time either of us was having, we were going to leave. It was going to be up to me to get her, you see, or her to get me. We were dancing and I lost sight of her. But at ten thirty I started looking hard and by ten forty-five I’d gotten the guys to help. Teddy even went out to the parking lot and all around outside. I mean, we couldn’t have missed her, even in the crowd. I mean, Susan, you know, she always stood out, anyway. She couldn’t hide, even in this place when it’s packed. She was like that.”

  I know, thought Detective Barren.

  “You didn’t see her with anyone special, anyone you didn’t know?”

  “Well, the problem was, it was the beginning of the semester. Everyone was new. Everyone was a stranger. There were freshmen and new graduate students. There were some of the new faculty members, too, but they got out early. I mea
n, everything was new and exciting and friendly. But I didn’t see her with anyone suspicious, if that’s what you mean.”

  Detective Barren sighed and turned to another student, a huge, brawny young man wearing a tee-shirt. She wondered why he wasn’t cold in the over-airconditioned room.

  “You tell me how come you know Rhotzbadegh was here until midnight.”

  “I told the other detectives but I’ll go through it again. It’s simple, really. I had a date that was going to meet me at midnight . . .”

  “Midnight?”

  “Yeah. Sounds romantic doesn’t it? It was just, well, she was taking this film history course and they had to go see some Russian guy’s flick. Long, I mean, real long. She wasn’t going to get out until after eleven. So we agreed to meet here. I squirreled down in a corner of the bar where I could keep an eye on the door. She was real pretty and I didn’t want, I don’t know, I didn’t want her to have to be looking for me, you know. Too many single guys would be willing to help, if you get my meaning. Anyway, I get to talking to the dude sitting next to me. I mean, weird, right? Major-league weird. But kind of a goof, too, the way he was talking about girls and how wicked they are. But he’d say that, and I’d look at him, and then he’d laugh, and I’d laugh and I wouldn’t take it too seriously. But still, I mean, it wasn’t the kind of conversation you’d forget . . .”

  Detective Barren looked up from her notepad. “What were you drinking?”

  “Two beers. That’s the limit. The team was still doing two-a-days and man, drink too much and you’ll puke your guts out at practice.”

  The other students hooted. “More like two six-packs,” said one. Susan’s friend added:

  “I saw you that night, Tony. You were ripped.”

  “Well, maybe a little . . .”

  “Two beers is what you told the coaches, right?” Detective Barren said.

  The young man nodded.