“Where are they buried?”
“They were both cremated. One doesn’t erect monuments to people like them. Not unless one is totally out of . . .” He stopped, thinking that his brother was, in an unusually oblique, psychiatric way, doing precisely that.
Detective Barren gathered in the information, mentally filing it, and looked up at the house. There’s a monument, she thought, and an idea struck her.
“Wait here for a moment.”
“Not a chance,” he said.
They both exited the car and walked up to the house.
Detective Barren rang the doorbell. After a few seconds she heard footsteps running inside and a young voice crying, “I’ll get it! I’ll get it! It’s probably Jimmy!” The door was flung open and she looked down at a towheaded child of five or six. He looked at Detective Barren and Martin Jeffers, seemed disappointed, and turned and yelled back into the house, “Mom! It’s adults!” Betrayal tinged his voice. Then he turned and said, “Hi!”
“Is your mom or dad at home?” she asked.
Before the child answered, Detective Barren heard the quick pace of embarrassment, and a woman about her own age, dressed in jeans and carrying a gardening spade, hove into view.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her forehead. “I was out back and we’re expecting a playmate. What can I do for you?”
“Hello,” said Detective Barren. She held up her gold detective shield. “My name is Mercedes Barren and I’m a police detective. We’re investigating the disappearance of this man . . .” She held out the photograph of Douglas Jeffers. “We wondered whether you might have seen him?”
The woman looked at the picture, clearly taken aback by the thought that she was talking to a detective in the middle of a hot Saturday morning.
“No,” she said. “Why? Why would I see him? Is something wrong?”
“It’s nothing to be alarmed at,” Detective Barren lied. “The gentleman, who is related to my partner here, used to live in this neighborhood. We just thought, since he was missing, that he might have come looking at where he grew up, that’s all. Nothing to be alarmed at. And this was a real long shot, as well.”
“Oh,” said the woman, as if Detective Barren’s mingling of lies and truths answered questions as opposed to raising a thousand new ones. “Oh,” she said again. She looked at the picture. “I’m sorry, we haven’t seen the man.”
“Let me see,” said the child.
“No,” said the mother. “Billy, leave us alone.”
“I want to see!” he insisted.
She looked at Detective Barren.
“He needs his playmate,” she said.
The detective bent down and showed the child the picture.
“Ever see him?” she asked.
The child regarded the picture at length.
“Yes. Maybe he was here.”
Detective Barren stiffened inwardly and she felt Martin Jeffers take a quick step forward.
“Billy!” said the mother. “This is serious! It’s not a game.”
“Maybe I saw him,” said the child. “Maybe he came here, too.”
“Billy,” said Detective Barren evenly, friendly. “Where did you see him?”
The child half-waved, half-pointed out toward the road.
“Did he say anything? What did he do?”
The child was instantly shy.
“No. Nothing.”
“Did you see a car? Or anyone else?”
“Nope.”
“When was this?”
“A while ago.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing. Maybe I saw him, that’s all.”
Detective Barren heard a car crunch down the gravel of the driveway behind her. She saw the child’s eyes brighten.
“There they are!” he said to his mother. “There they are! Can I go out, please?”
The mother looked at Detective Barren, who straightened up and nodded. “Sure,” said the woman. The child burst out of the house, past the detective and Martin Jeffers. His mother stepped out beside them, watching the child and his friend start to play. She waved at the other mother, behind the wheel of the typical large station wagon. “I’m not sure I’d place too much credence . . .” she started.
“Don’t worry,” Detective Barren interrupted. “I don’t. And I don’t think he saw anyone.”
“I don’t think so either,” she said.
“Thanks for your help,” Detective Barren said. She and Martin Jeffers walked back to his car. She paused and waved at the boy, but he was swept away in excited play and did not see her.
In the car Martin Jeffers asked, “What do you really think?”
She hesitated for a moment.
“I don’t think he was here,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he added.
They both paused.
“Maybe, though,” he said.
“Maybe.”
Another pause.
“I think he was here,” he said.
“So do I,” said Detective Barren.
Martin Jeffers nodded and put the car in gear. It was not lost on him how easily and simply she’d lied to the mother. Then he gently turned the car and drove away from the house and the elusive, hallucinatory vision of their quarry and all their combined, unspoken memories.
Much of the drive to New Hampshire was done in silence, with only the roadway sounds intruding on their individual thoughts. They made a few efforts at small talk. Just past New Haven, Martin Jeffers asked:
“Are you married, detective?”
She thought of lying, of obfuscating, then inwardly shrugged, thinking the effort would be too great.
“No. Widowed.”
“Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry.” This was convention.
“It was many years ago. I married young and he died in the war.”
“The war seemed to affect everyone one way or another.”
“Did you go?”
“No, they instituted the draft lottery when my time came up and I pulled three hundred and forty-seven. I’m not usually a lucky person, but this time I was. They never came knocking.”
“What about your brother?”
“It’s odd, really. He was over there a couple of times, but always on assignment from some magazine or newspaper. And he dropped out of college, too. He should have been a prime target for the draft, but he never was nailed. I don’t know why.”
He paused, then asked:
“You seem young. But you never remarried?”
She smiled despite herself.
“High school sweetheart. Hard to find someone who can compete with all those runaway teenage emotions and the way they translate into adult memories.”
Martin Jeffers had laughed a little.
“Quite true,” he said. He continued, asking, “Why police work?”
“It was an accident, I guess. They had had an equal-opportunity suit down in Miami right about the time I got there. I saw an ad in the paper because they were under a court order to hire more women and minorities, and thought I’d give it a shot . . .” She laughed again. “Isn’t that the American way? Well, I answered the ad, almost on a lark, really. Then I discovered it was something that I did well. Finally, it was something I did best. How about yourself?”
“Psychiatry? Well, two reasons, actually. One, I didn’t really like blood, and you’ve got to be pretty familiar with the stuff to be a successful physician; and two, I couldn’t stand the idea of losing patients. That steered me away from a lot of branches of the profession. I guess there’s a three, too. It’s always interesting. People create infinite variations on several common themes . . .”
“That’s true,” she said.
&
nbsp; “See,” he replied, “we sound alike again.”
She nodded. She thought of the Dear John letter she’d read in his files. “No one to share all this with?”
She saw him order his thoughts before speaking.
“No . . . not really. I’m not sure why, but I have developed a pretty closed life, what with the work at the hospital demanding so much time. And then, in psychiatry as well as any branch of medicine, there’s a great deal of self-education and keeping up that requires a lot of time. So, no—no one really.”
She nodded and thought: And you’re terrified, too. Terrified of yourself.
The conversation evaporated in the rhythmic thump of tires on macadam and the steady drone of the engine. Detective Barren thought they jousted well. She conceded a significant degree of impressiveness to the doctor; he has been put under a greal deal of stress, she thought, yet he still controls his tongue. She had dealt with many sophisticated men, criminals mainly, who, when put under less stress than he’d confronted, would open up like flowers in bloom.
She wondered if he was correct about his brother: Confronted with evidence and the truth, perhaps he would confess. She considered this as a problem. A confession, even an egotistical, boasting one, could be sufficient to make him on the crimes. She pictured her niece’s body lying beneath the ferns and dark palm shadows. Perhaps not all, but certainly some. Police literature is filled with the confessions of men who, when picked up for jaywalking, suddenly start admitting to serial murders. She remembered the man in Texas, with his claims exceeding two or three hundred. He was a drifter with a peculiarly homicidal bent. Lucas, she recalled. She recollected seeing a picture of him in a news magazine, standing with a detective who wore a ten-gallon hat, in front of a map of the southeastern United States. The hat was white, which she supposed was the way things were done in Texas. Maybe the bad guys were required to wear black. The map on the wall behind the two men was dotted, littered with small colored push-pins, and it had taken her a moment to realize the connection between the map, the pins, and the man grinning obscenely for the camera.
All artists are egotists, she thought. So are all murderers.
She envisioned Douglas Jeffers. Perhaps his brother is correct. Perhaps he will lay claim to his crimes, gaining a degree of satisfaction from the publicity.
She visualized him smiling, posing, accepting that extraordinary and perverse American celebrity that accompanies sensational crimes. He would revel in the attention.
She was flooded with images: Charlie Manson in a courtroom, suddenly holding up the Los Angeles Times for the jurors hearing the Tate-LaBianca cases to see, with its massive, screaming headline: manson guilty, nixon says; David Berkowitz slipping into his own sentencing hearing, chanting “Stacy was a whore, Stacy was a whore,” drawing out the o sound like some crazed mantra and the poor victim’s family frantic and struggling, trying to reach their tormentor. The New York Times had carried a remarkable pen-and-ink drawing the following day. She and the other detectives in her unit had stared at it in sad disbelief; Dr. Jeffrey McDonald telling an interviewer from 60 Minutes that he did not kill his wife and two small children at all, certainly not in some near-psychotic fit of rage, and that his murder conviction was all some mistake, or worse, some conspiracy.
She envisioned others made into instant celebrities by crime and accusation: She pictured the aristocratic Claus von Bülow, wearing a contented, wry smile, posing for a celebrity photographer from Vanity Fair in black leather alongside his lover in the days after he was acquitted of the crime of injecting his wife with insulin and plunging her into an irreversible coma. She could see Bernhard Goetz pausing before a bank of microphones, peering benignly over the rims of his glasses and telling the mass of notepads and flashbulbs and the six o’clock news that he didn’t do anything wrong when he shot the four teenagers who accosted him on the subway.
She saw Douglas Jeffers joining the same parade and the thought sickened her.
She rolled down her window and breathed in deeply.
“You all right?” asked Martin Jeffers.
“Yes,” she replied. “I just needed a little fresh air.”
“Do you want to stop?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Not until we get there.”
They drove on.
It was well after dark when they reached the outskirts of Manchester. They had stopped once for gasoline and Detective Barren had run into the cafeteria-style restaurant at the thruway rest stop while Martin Jeffers filled up the tank and checked the oil. She had purchased some coffee, a couple of sodas and two sandwiches, tuna fish and ham and cheese. The sandwiches were on soggy white bread and came sealed in see-through plastic containers. When she got back into the car, she had offered them to Jeffers. “Take your pick,” she said.
“More like pick your poison,” he had replied, eyeing the sandwiches. He had seized the ham and cheese and bitten into it quickly. “I love tuna fish,” he had said.
She had joined his laughter.
He thought then how long it had been since he’d heard a woman laugh unfettered. He did not think he would hear her laughter again. He reminded himself why she was with him and what she would do if she had the opportunity.
So he cautioned himself to be apprehensive. Not outwardly, he told himself. But question everything inwardly.
Do not mistake some laughter for trust, he said to himself. Or a smile for actual affection.
Trust nothing. Stay alert. He steeled himself against the fatigue of the road and of emotion and drove on into the increasing darkness.
On the outskirts of Manchester he spotted a Holiday Inn sign standing sharply against the blackness of the New Hampshire night. He gestured and asked:
“How’s that? We’re not going to get anything done tonight anyway. And we’ve both been up for hours . . .”
She nodded, part of her refusing to accept her exhaustion, another part of her demanding that she acquiesce to it. “Fine.” Each filled out registration papers and used their own credit cards, which seemed to take the night clerk by surprise. When he handed them their keys, Detective Barren suddenly produced the picture of Douglas Jeffers and thrust it at the man.
“Seen him?” she demanded. “Has he been here anytime in the past few weeks?”
The man looked at the picture.
“Can’t say that I remember the face,” he said.
“Check your register,” said Martin Jeffers. “Look for Douglas Jeffers. He’s my brother.”
“I can’t do that . . .” said the clerk.
Detective Barren produced her gold shield.
“Yes, you can,” she said.
He looked at the badge.
“We don’t have a register,” he said. “It’s all computer. It cleans out the names every week . . .”
“Try it anyway,” Martin Jeffers said.
The clerk nodded. He punched some letters in on a computer keyboard.
“Nope,” he said.
“Does that tie in with other Holiday Inn computers?” Detective Barren asked.
“Yeah, actually, it does,” said the clerk. “Just for the three that are in this area.”
“Try them,” she demanded again.
“Well,” he said, “I’m not sure I know how to do that, but let me try.” He fiddled with the keyboard, making a rapid clicking noise as he tried combinations of letters and numbers. “Hey!” he said suddenly.
“The name!” said Martin Jeffers.
“No, no, no, sorry,” said the clerk. “It’s just I figured it out. Now let me check names.” Again he punched letters. Then he shook his head. “Not in the last seven days,” he told them.
“Thanks for trying,” said Detective Barren.
“Is the guy in trouble?” asked the clerk.
“You might s
ay that,” said Detective Barren. “But at the moment he’s just one of the missing.”
The clerk nodded.
Martin Jeffers carried her duffle bag to her room. She let him do this to give it an air of innocence. She knew that if she had insisted on carrying it, he would recognize that was where she kept the gun. She knew he would probably figure it out anyway if he thought about it. But perhaps he wouldn’t, and she was always searching for whatever edge she could find.
At the door to their rooms, they looked at each other.
“Do you want to try to find something to eat?” Martin Jeffers asked.
She shook her head.
“Good,” he said.
They stood in silence.
“I need your word,” he said.
“What?”
“Promise that when I go in here, you won’t head off without me.”
She almost smiled. That was what she had feared from him.
“If you’ll make the same promise.”
He nodded. “We’re agreed then?”
She nodded as well.
“Why don’t we start at nine,” he said. “Leave a wake-up call at the desk.”
“Eight,” she said firmly. “See you then.”
Moving at the same speed, each opened the door to their room and stepped inside. It seemed an odd ballet, out of sight, but not, thanks to thin motel walls, necessarily out of hearing. They both paused, straining to hear some noise from the other’s room. Then each moved into the center of the room and, realizing that the other was next door, and probably listening with the same lack of trust, each bustled about for a moment before falling into bed.
Manchester was once a busy industrial town, and it still retained a sense of blue-collar grime and hard work, with stolid brick buildings and factories that were only partially concealed by the richness of New Hampshire’s late-summer green. Detective Mercedes Barren and Martin Jeffers ate a quiet, brief breakfast, then set out amidst the early churchgoers and bright sunshine. They spoke little, nor did they have some established plan; they merely cruised the streets, stopping at fast-food restaurants, gas stations, other motels, and hotels—anyplace that Douglas Jeffers might have settled briefly and made just enough of a connection for someone to recall his picture.
The Traveler Page 42
