The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  “Just set up the interview room,” she said.

  Sadegh Rhotzbadegh’s eyes darted about wildly as he entered the small office, almost as if he were trying to print the room’s layout in his imagination. After this momentary assessment he brought his glance to bear on Detective Barren, who sat patiently at a small table in the center of the room. The table and two chairs were the only furniture. Rhotzbadegh stared at her, then took a sudden step forward, paused, and a stride backward, his eyes first reflecting anger, then fear, and finally settling on a confused compliance. He stood still, waiting for the detective to make some motion, which she did, waving him toward the empty chair across from her. He’s gained weight, Detective Barren thought, and lost some of the wiry strength he had. Prison kitchen starches, she thought. Rhotzbadegh sat, shifting about in the chair, finally perching on the edge, balancing forward and eyeing Detective Barren. She met his glance and held it until he turned away. Then she spoke:

  “First I want to inform you of your rights. You have the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney . . .”

  He interrupted.

  “I know those things. I have heard them many times and do not need to hear them again. Tell me why you have come to see Sadegh Rhotzbadegh! Why have you summoned him from his rest?”

  “You know why.”

  He laughed.

  “No, you must tell me.”

  “Susan Lewis. My niece.”

  “I remember that name, but it seems to be in a dream. Tell me more so that I may remember better.”

  “September. The University of Miami student union.”

  “This remains a mystery to me.”

  He laughed again, then continued.

  “Why should I remember this person?”

  He giggled girlishly.

  “What reason do I have for remembering this person? Is she someone great, someone remarkable? Someone important, perhaps? I think not. Therefore there is no reason for Sadegh Rhotzbadegh to remember this person.”

  Rhotzbadegh leaned backward in his chair, relaxing, folding his arms across his chest and grinning in a self-satisfied fashion.

  Detective Barren breathed deeply and locked her eyes onto his. She waited a moment before speaking, talking in a low, even, harsh voice: “Because if you do not start remembering, I will personally rip your face off, right here, right now.”

  Rhotzbadegh stiffened suddenly in his seat, immediately timid.

  “You cannot do this!”

  “Don’t try me.”

  He bent forward, flexing his arm and showing Detective Barren the bulge of his arm muscles. “You think you have the strength . . .”

  She interrupted, leaning forward eagerly.

  “What do you think?”

  She watched his eyes as they tried to measure the depth of her intentions. She narrowed her own glance until she was staring through slits, her face set. Rhotzbadegh suddenly sobbed and covered his face.

  “I have nightmares,” he said.

  “You damn well ought to,” replied Detective Barren.

  “I see faces, people, but I cannot recall their names.”

  “I know who they are.”

  Tears started to form in the corners of his eyes and he rubbed at them.

  “God is not with me. No longer, no longer. I am abandoned.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t so damn pleased with what you were doing.”

  “No! He told me!”

  “You misunderstood.”

  Rhotzbadegh paused. He produced a tattered handkerchief from a pocket and blew his nose three times hard.

  “This,” he said, in a tone suffused with despair, “is a possibility.”

  He wiped his nose vigorously.

  “Still,” he continued, “I will search him out again. I will learn his messages and find the true path. Then he will welcome me to his bosom in the garden, where I will reside for eternity.”

  “Great. I’m glad for you.”

  He didn’t catch her sarcasm.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Detective Barren reached down into her bag and pulled out a simple child’s schoolbox ruler. “Stick out your hand,” she said. “Spread the fingers.”

  Rhotzbadegh complied. She held the ruler up to his hand. The distance between thumb and index finger was five and three-­quarters inches. Damn, she thought. He could have made the marks.

  “My hands reach out for God,” he said.

  “Let me know if you manage to touch him,” she said.

  Rhotzbadegh looked about the room again. Then he pushed back his chair and rose. He walked over and placed his back firmly against one wall of the interview room. Then, counting loudly, he paced the distance across, bumping up against the opposite wall as he said twenty-one. He executed a military-style about-face and returned to his seat.

  “Twenty-one paces,” he said, shaking his head as if in surprise. “Twenty-one full paces.” He jumped up and leaped to the wall across from Detective Barren. Then he stepped off that distance, walking past the detective without glancing down.

  “Nineteen paces!”

  He returned again to his chair.

  “My cell measures only nine paces by eight paces. I feel sometimes as if my heart has been caged.”

  He put his head in his hands and sobbed.

  “They will not let me into the yard with the other men,” he whined. “They fear for my safety. They think that I will be executed. I cannot sleep at night. I cannot eat. I think my food tastes of poison. They have put something in the water to make me drowsy and then they will come and kill me. I have to fight them at every step.”

  “The girls?”

  “They are the worst. They come in my dreams and they help these men who would kill me.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I do not know . . .”

  “The hell you don’t! Think! Dammit, I want some answers.”

  Rhotzbadegh lifted his nose in mock snobbery.

  “These are my dreams. I do not have to share them with you.”

  Detective Barren stared hard at the little man but inwardly she sighed. Useless, she thought. His mind goes everywhere but where I want it. She reached down into her purse and took out a simple yearbook picture of her niece.

  “Does she come in your dreams?”

  Rhotzbadegh eyed the picture. He plucked it from the table and moved it close to his face, then held it out at arm’s length. “This one, not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She comes in the dreams, but all she does is watch the others. She cries alone. It is the others who are my tormentors.”

  He leaned across the table conspiratorially, his voice low.

  “Sometimes they laugh! But it is I who live and laugh last.”

  Detective Barren took the picture and held it up directly in Rhotzbadegh’s line of vision. She raised her voice, demanding, insistent, frightening, mustering everything into a single question: “Did you kill this young woman?”

  There was silence.

  “Did you snatch her from the parking lot outside the student union at the University of Miami?”

  More silence.

  “Did you smash her head and take her to Matheson-Hammock Park and leave her there to die?”

  He didn’t respond.

  Detective Barren lowered the picture and stared at Rhotzbadegh. She felt the hatred slip from her heart, emptying her of emotion. His eyes were filling again as he cowered at the anger in her questions. She felt no sympathy, nothing, just a need to fill a great vacuum within her.

  She whispered: “Tell me!”

  He lowered his face into his hands momentarily, then raised them. “I cannot say!” he sobbed. “I cannot say!”
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  He took a deep breath and swiveled in his chair as if rooted by agony.

  “It seems to be a memory. It sounds like that which I would do. I remember the student union, with all the filth of dancing and alcohol and laughter. An evil place. God will someday cleanse it with a great fire. This I know . . .”

  “The girl!” Detective Barren interrupted.

  “I was there. The bodies surrounded me. This I know. But the rest . . .”

  He shook his head.

  “She comes in the dream, but I do not know her, not like the others.”

  “Why did you clip the story from the newspaper?”

  “I had to keep a record! How else would God know that I had followed his wishes? It was proof!”

  “For this one why did you need proof?”

  “That is why I am confused,” he cried. “I had my—my—my prizes from the others. But she I do not remember.”

  “When she comes in the dream, what does she say?”

  “She says nothing. She stands aside and watches. I do not hate her quite like the others.”

  He paused.

  “I need to sleep. God grant me sleep. Can you help me, detective, help me sleep? I am so tired. And yet I cannot. I must not. They come and torment my dreams. My enemies plot while my eyes are closed. I will not arise, one day.”

  He continued crying gently.

  “This frightens you?” Detective Barren asked.

  He shifted suddenly, throwing himself out of the chair and standing rigidly before her, his chest puffed out, his muscles flexed. His voice was no longer whining, but bellowing:

  “Fear? Nothing frightens Sadegh Rhotzbadegh. I fear nothing!” He pounded on his chest. “Hear me! Nothing! God is with me. He protects me. I am afraid of nothing!”

  Rhotzbadegh stared at Detective Barren. She let the silence lie in the room before replying slowly.

  “You ought to be,” she said.

  It was late when Detective Barren finally reached her apartment. She had driven back from the classification center at a steady, minimal pace, letting other drivers swoop past her readily as she stuck doggedly to the speed limit. She felt a difficult emptiness inside her, an unruly, awkward sensation, as if the organs inside her body had shifted about somehow, slightly out of position. The thought made her smile when she considered how her friend the medical examiner would react. She easily envisioned his high-pitched voice reaching new sopranic levels as he sliced through her: “What’s this, her appendix has moved! Her spleen has wandered! Her stomach has traveled! Her heart has packed up and moved away!” Detective Barren laughed out loud.

  It was not so far-fetched, she thought.

  She remembered a visit, two years after John Barren’s death, from a slender man who stuttered, but just slightly. He had been a member of John’s platoon, and he sat across from her in a restaurant and told her about her husband. He’d been very brave, the man said. Once, pinned down, he’d rushed out to bring back the wounded point man. They always did that, the VC, the man said. Bring down the point man. Then bring down the medic, because the medic always goes. Then bring down the men who owe the medic, which is everybody.

  “John was the best of us,” the man said.

  She had nodded and said nothing. It was something she had known without being told.

  “I just wanted you to know,” the man said. He had risen.

  “Thank you,” she said, more for him than herself. “It helps.”

  She’d known it was a lie.

  “I hope so,” the man said.

  He hesitated.

  “I was the p-p-p-p-point man.”

  She’d nodded. “I guessed.”

  They had looked at each other.

  After a brief silence she had asked, “What are you going to do now?”

  He smiled. “It’s back to the VA hospital for me. More surgery on the old guts. That’s the trouble with getting wounded. Bullets tear the hell out of things. Army surgeons are great improvisers. They’re like the guy everybody always knew in high school, the guy who could tinker around with any engine, fiddle here, adjust there, until he got the thing running okay. That’s what they’re doing to me. They’ve got intestines going north, digestive tract heading south. Pretty soon they’ll get it all mapped out the way they want it.”

  “Then what?”

  He’d shrugged. In her mind’s eye, Detective Barren often pictured that young man’s shoulders slumping against reality. Whenever she thought of the war, that was what she remembered: a wounded man shrugging at the future.

  She wondered sometimes whether John would have been the same. He’d never had the chance to know disappointment. Never known frustration or denial or bad luck. He’d never been fired, never been rejected, never told to get lost, never told to take a hike. Never known loss.

  Not like she had.

  Detective Barren threw her notepad and briefcase on her small desk, kicked off her shoes, and went into her kitchen. She grabbed some lettuce, cheese, and fruit from the refrigerator. Rabbit food, she thought. She made herself a plate, then left it on her table. She went into her bedroom and dropped her skirt to the floor. She washed her hands and face, then padded out, half naked. She ate, trying not to think of Rhotzbadegh, trying not to fill herself with despair. She barely tasted the food.

  He could have been direct, she thought angrily.

  Dammit! Dreams! He sees her in a dream, but she doesn’t torment him! What the hell does that mean? That he didn’t kill her? Probably. Probably.

  She smiled sadly, suddenly envisioning herself going to Detective Perry. Great news! she would say. The creep dreams! Clear-cut evidence that he didn’t kill Susan.

  She shook her head.

  What a mess. What a hopeless mess.

  She finished the salad and pushed the plate away. All right, she said to herself. Enough. Enough! Stop wasting your time with the Arab.

  Clear your mind and start all over again.

  She rose from the table and carried her dishes to the sink. She washed them carefully, dipping her hands into near-scalding water, gritting her teeth but making herself do it. She put the dishes away and went into her living room. She looked at the stacks of papers on her desk for what she thought was the millionth time. Maybe the billionth. It’s in there, she thought. There is something in there.

  “In the morning,” she said out loud, “go to homicide and start pulling cross-referenced cases. Check out lists of known sex offenders. Go back to the school and find out if Susan had any enemies. Run the modus operandi through the NCIC computers. Maybe the FBI as well. Check for similar crimes after the Arab was arrested . . .”

  She stopped and thought. She looked out the window.

  “Out there,” she said.

  She smiled. You didn’t think it would be easy. You didn’t really expect to prove the Arab didn’t do it and open the official investigation again. You’re still on your own, and that’s not terrible.

  Not terrible at all.

  She stared at the picture of Susan in the bookcase. Don’t worry, she thought, I’m getting there. I’m getting there.

  But her eyes were filling rapidly with tears.

  She turned away and stared again out into the blackness of the tropical night. The sky was filled with the constellations, and Detective Barren saw one star burn brightly, shoot quickly across the void, then disappear.

  “Oh, damn,” she said. She felt tears flowing freely down her face, but she remained rigid.

  After standing empty for minutes, she finally turned. Clear the mind, she thought. She walked to the television set and clicked it on. She was surprised to see a pair of local sports announcers talking animatedly on camera, and in the background she made out the Orange Bowl in downtown Miami.

  “. . . Well,
this has been a pretty exciting start to the Dolphins’ preseason,” one announcer was saying. “We’re getting ready to start the fourth quarter of the first exhibition game of the year, with the score tied at twenty-four and the Saints with the ball on their own twenty.”

  She had forgotten the start of the football exhibition season. “Not like you,” she said, chastising herself. “Not like you at all . . .” She grabbed her glass of wine and settled in front of the television set.

  “The ultimate in mind erasure,” she said. “Come on, Fins!”

  She watched in oblivious delight, letting the course of the game sweep away her thoughts and tears, comfortable, alone. The start of a new season, she thought. For them and me.

  Midway through the fourth quarter the Saints kicked a field goal to go ahead by three. A minute later, a rookie running back for the Dolphins dropped the ball on his own thirty-yard line. This resulted in another Saints’ field goal, and they led by six points as the game started to dwindle away. But as the game hurried toward its conclusion, the Dolphins rallied. Biting off chunks of yardage, they progressed down the field, until with less than a minute to play, they reached the Saints’ one-yard line. It was fourth down and the game was in the balance. “Come on! Dammit! Get the ball in there!” She smashed her fist into her open palm. “Come on!”

  She watched as the quarterback approached the line. “Over the top, dammit! Just smash it over the top!” Both teams were bunched in, awaiting the blast at the center, strength against strength. She loved it. “Just bash it in there!” she yelled.

  Suddenly the two lines converged and Detective Barren saw the quarterback spin and hand the ball to a halfback flying toward the middle. There was a great crash, and the crowd noise swelled in anticipation. Then the stadium shook with sound as the crowd jumped to its feet, shouting out a great cry. Detective Barren, like the thousands in the stadium, rose up in half-cheer, half-cry, because she, like they, saw that the quarterback had not given up the ball, but had only faked the handoff and was now churning desperately, alone, without protection, for the corner of the end zone. Simultaneously, the Saints’ outside linebacker, a large, violent man, was bearing down on the quarterback, angling sharply so that they would meet just shy of the goal line, in the very corner of the playing field. “Go! Go! Go!” shouted Detective Barren, her voice blending with the wall of crowd noise coming through the television set. “Put your head down!”