They were not the types of crimes that an expert like himself needed to study for more than a couple of seconds.
He shook his head. Another time, he thought, I’d simply do it. Perhaps a liquor store that stayed open a bit too late. Get a ski mask and a big handgun. A truly American moment.
He let out his breath in a long, slow whistle.
Not now. Not this close to the end.
Don’t screw up.
He alternately wished he’d killed the young ranger, then the two women, but mostly he was angry with himself for not having anticipated all the problems that were associated with the crime. He went back over the details in his head, bitterly castigating himself: I have always properly prepared for every eventuality; I have always foreseen every dilemma. I should have discovered a better hiding place. He berated himself for choosing the glen in the woods. I liked the damn light and background. I thought like a damn photographer. Not like a killer. So all that work was worthless, worthless, damn, damn, damn!
He tried to defuse his anger with the thought that the ranger’s arrival had been random, unexpected. But this seemed to him to be the stuff of excuse, which was distasteful. I always get the shot, he said to himself. I always get it.
He pounded his hands against the steering wheel and thrashed about sharply in his seat, barely maintaining control over the car, even at a slow speed. He wanted to scream, but was unable. Then he remembered Anne Hampton tied in the motel room. Let her wait, he told himself angrily. Let her worry. Let her suffer.
Let her die.
He inhaled sharply and held his breath for a moment.
He was surprised that these harsh thoughts left him slightly uncomfortable.
He pulled the car to the side of a deserted street in a warehouse district. He put his head back and suddenly felt tired.
It wasn’t her damn fault. It was yours. She did what you asked of her.
He closed his eyes.
Damn. The plan was faulty.
He sighed. Well, it just goes to show: nobody’s perfect.
His anger fled him suddenly and he rolled down the window, letting the stale air of the car mingle with the dark cool of the night.
He laughed out loud. The laughter turned to a childish giggle. Nobody’s perfect, he thought. Right.
But you’re pretty damn close.
He thought of the two women cavorting about in the nude. You didn’t have to kill them, he realized. They will probably die quickly from boredom and stupidity and routine lives that promise nothing and deliver less. What was truly hilarious, he imagined at that second, was that they had just experienced the most unique, exciting, and dangerous moment that they would ever have, regardless of how long they lived. For one sublime afternoon they had come into contact with genius and managed to live through it. And the sows didn’t know it.
He laughed again. Exhaustion crept inside him and he realized that it was important to get some sleep. Well, he thought, everything is still on track. A nice easy drive to New Hampshire in the morning. He thought of taking her to Mount Monadnock or Lake Winnipesaukee or some other nice spot before settling in for the evening. Something quiet and relaxing. He considered a town he knew in Vermont. Out of the way, but beautiful—and still a quick drive to the appointment in New Hampshire. Then a little bit of business before the drive down to the Cape.
His mind filled suddenly with rolling, thick, swelling electronically synthesized music and a picture of the grinning actor wearing the white jumpsuit, black bowler, parachute boots, and fake proboscis. A little bit of the old ultraviolence, he said to himself. Real horror show.
And then freedom.
He thought of Anne Hampton again. Boswell is probably scared out of her wits. He shrugged. That wasn’t terrible; it was wise to keep her off-balance.
But he still felt a twinge of guilt.
Let her up to breathe, he thought. She remains necessary.
That gave him a sense of purpose, and he searched about himself briefly, getting his bearings, ready to head directly back to the motel. He started to consider how he would apologize to her. As he was about to put the car in gear and leave, he spotted the van parked two hundred yards down the street. He knew instantly what it was: Warehouse. Outside of regular police patrol areas. After midnight. Van. It was a simple equation, the sum of which added into breaking and entering. An idea struck him and he smiled.
No, he said to himself.
Then: Why not?
He wanted to burst out laughing, but he cautioned himself: Be careful.
He did not turn the lights on, rolling the car as quietly as possible down toward the van. It was light-colored and suitably battered and nondescript. He could see no movement from the truck, but he kept his pistol in his hand just in case. When he was next to the van, a distant streetlight threw just enough illumination so he was able to make out the license plate number. He paused, noting the doorjamb on the warehouse door that seemed sprung, though it was difficult for him to tell without getting out of the car. This he was wise enough not to do. Not that he feared the man or men inside, but then he would lose the element of surprise. He rolled past, not turning on his headlights until he reached a spot a couple of blocks away.
He stopped at the first gas station with a pay phone and dialed 911.
“Bridgeport police, fire and rescue,” came the flat voice with its studied indifference to emergency.
“I want to report a break-in in progress,” replied Douglas Jeffers.
“Is it happening right now?”
“That’s what I said,” Jeffers insisted, with just the right amount of indignation. “Right now.” He gave the policeman the address and a description of the van and license plate number.
“Thank you. We’re rolling. Can I have your name for our files?”
“No,” said Douglas Jeffers. “Just consider me a concerned citizen.” He hung up the phone. A concerned citizen: he liked that a lot. If they only knew, he thought. He envisioned a pair of robbers, dressed in dark clothes, surprised suddenly by the lights from a police cruiser. He imagined them cursing their luck, rattling their handcuffs in frustration as the police officers passed on those small moments of congratulation and success that accompany a good arrest. If they had any idea who it was that tipped them. Either the good guys or the bad guys. Imagine the looks on their faces.
Then he laughed wildly at the sheer outrage of it all.
Anne Hampton heard the key in the door lock and she stiffened against the ropes. From where she lay, she could not see the door, but she heard it creak as it opened. She made a muffled sound through the gag and tape as the door closed and footsteps approached her. She lifted her head so that her eyes could meet Douglas Jeffers’. She had concentrated hard to remove the weak animal fear that she felt within and replace it with an obstinate, defiant, demanding look. Their eyes met, and Jeffers seemed surprised.
“Well,” he said, “Boswell seems angry.”
He reached down and tore the tape from her mouth. The ripping sound made her think that her lips and cheeks were cut. She held herself motionless while he loosened the gag.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much. Thank you.” She kept her voice even and slightly irate.
Douglas Jeffers laughed.
“Boswell is angry.”
“No,” she said. “Just uncomfortable.”
“That’s to be expected. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head.
“Just stiff.”
“Well, let’s do something about that.”
Douglas Jeffers produced a knife. She could see the blade reflecting the light from the bedside lamp. She breathed in hard, thinking, Boswell, Boswell, he called you Boswell, you have nothing to fear. Not yet, not yet.
He placed the blade flat agains
t her cheek.
“Have you ever noticed how hard it is to tell whether a knife is hot or cold? It depends on what kind of fear you’re experiencing. The touch can seem red-hot or ice-cold, just like the feeling in your stomach and around your heart.”
She didn’t move. She stared ahead.
After a moment he pulled the blade away.
He started to cut the rope and her hands came free.
“I shouldn’t have struck you,” he said matter-of-factly. “It wasn’t your fault.”
She didn’t reply.
“Just call it a moment of weakness.” He paused. “A rare moment.”
He helped her to her feet.
“There you go. A little unsteady, but not so bad. Use the bathroom to clean up.”
She took a few uncertain steps, using the wall to help her maintain her balance. Inside the bathroom she saw that blood had clotted around her lips and nose, but that it washed away with some vigorous scrubbing. She felt all her exhaustion rush back, then, and she had to grip the edges of the sink to keep from collapsing.
When she came out, she saw that Douglas Jeffers had turned down the bed for her. She dropped her jeans to the floor and crawled in gratefully. He disappeared into the bathroom and she heard the water run, then the toilet flush. He came out and hopped into the other bed. He switched off the light and she felt the darkness wash over her like a wave at the beach.
He was silent for a moment, then he spoke:
“Boswell, have you ever thought how fragile life is?”
She didn’t reply.
“It’s not just the living that’s so delicate, but the entirety of, I don’t know, life’s balance. Think of the mother who turns her back for an instant and whose child wanders into the roadway. Or the father who just doesn’t bother, this one time, to fasten his seat belt on the way to work in the family car. Accidents. Disease. Bad luck. Death ends life for some, certainly. But worse, it unsettles. It throws the living off balance, out of whack. It disrupts their centers. Think of all the people you’ve known and who’ve loved you. Imagine for an instant what your death will mean to them . . .”
She closed her eyes and suddenly all her brave intentions vanished and she wanted to sob.
“. . . Or what their death would mean to you. Emptiness. A certain vacuum space inside. Some memories that persist. Maybe a photo album, somewhere. A gravestone. Perhaps a once-a-year visit. We are all linked in so many ways, so dependent on the others to maintain our equilibrium. Sons and fathers. Daughters and mothers. Brothers. Sisters. Everything a tenuous relationship. Too many connections. Everything completely, delicately, chinalike fragile.”
He paused, then repeated the word.
“Fragile. Fragile. Fragile.”
Again he hesitated.
“I hate that more than anything,” he said. His voice was filled with the barest of controls, defined by bitterness. “I hate that you don’t choose who you are. I hate that you have no choices. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, hate, hate, hate . . .”
In the darkness, Anne Hampton could see that Douglas Jeffers was lying on his back, but that both his fists were clenched in the air in front of him.
He exhaled sharply into the night.
“Everyone’s a victim,” he said. “Except me.”
Then she heard him roll over and devote himself to sleep.
In the morning they drove north, finding Route 91 in New Haven, heading past Hartford into Massachusetts. She thought that Jeffers seemed to be acting with control again; he was watching his watch, measuring the distances, careful with his timing. That reassured her, and she relaxed, waiting for something new to happen.
They reached southern Vermont in the early afternoon, continuing north at a steady pace. Anne Hampton wondered, almost idly, whether they were going to Canada. She tried to recall any crimes from that nation, thinking, What could there be up there that he wants to show me? She was unable to remember any, but she was certain that people killed each other there. It’s cold, she thought, it’s frozen and dark and long winters must mean some horror or another emerges.
Before any other thought took root, Douglas Jeffers said, “There’s a little town up here that you should see . . .”
He did not describe Woodstock further, preferring to drive a few hours in quiet. She will see for herself, he thought. He mentally reviewed the elements of the plan that remained. He wanted to check in his briefcase for the letter from the New Hampshire bank, but he knew that was unnecessary. They are expecting you in the morning, he said to himself. It will be quick and precise and the way things should be.
When he turned off the thruway toward the small town, he said, “Have you ever noticed that almost every one of these old New England states has a Woodstock? Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts. Probably even Rhode Island, if they can squeeze it in. Rhode Island. They say: Rowdilan. Or NeHampsha. Of course the important Woodstock was New York’s Woodstock and the festival that actually was held elsewhere. Do you remember it?”
“I was only a kid,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“I was there,” Jeffers said.
“Really? Was it as big as the books say?”
He laughed.
“Actually, I wasn’t there . . .”
She looked confused.
“There are certain common events that become common memories through popular culture. Woodstock was one of them. I knew a guy, once, in the newspaper business, who was the guy who created the Woodstock myth. He was just starting out, the college stringer for the New York Daily News. It was summertime, and so they asked him to go up to the festival, just in case something unusual happened. They had no idea that the crowds were going to be, well, like they were.
“Anyway, he went up the day before, to check on the festival preparations, which was real lucky, because by midmorning the next day, cars had backed up for ten or twenty miles. People were streaming in. Longhairs. Hippies. Bikers. College kids. You probably saw the movie. Anyway, as you know, it became this massive jam of music and people and suddenly a front-page story. So there was my buddy, sitting behind the stage, on the phone to the city desk at the News and there was some editor yelling at him, ‘How many people are there? How many people?’ and of course he had no fucking idea whatsoever. I mean, everywhere he turned there were people and trucks and helicopters buzzing the place and bands turning up the volume and you name it. And the editor yells, ‘We need an official police estimate of the crowd!’ so he runs over to some cop and asks what they’re estimating in terms of crowd size, and of course the cop looks at him like he’s totally berserk, and how the hell should they know. He goes back to the phone and the editor realizes suddenly it’s his ass on the line because here’s the biggest story to come down the pike in some time and he was stupid enough to send some college stringer up to cover it and he can’t get a real reporter in because the roads are jammed and there aren’t any more helicopters for rent because the damn television stations have grabbed them all.
“And my buddy has this inspiration. He decides to lie. He yells into the phone, ‘Police are estimating more than a half-million people have descended upon this sleepy burg. Suddenly Woodstock is the third-largest city in New York State!’ And this the editor loves. Just loves. Because it’s the front-page screamer for the next morning. After the News put the figure on the front page, the Times picked it up and then the AP, and that meant the world. And suddenly my buddy’s lie becomes historical fact . . .”
He snapped his fingers.
“Just like that. And everybody got happy and everybody always assumes that’s how many people were there. Just because my buddy had the good sense to lie to someone who desperately wanted to hear a lie.”
Douglas Jeffers paused. His voice, as so many times before, seemed to ratchet between a schoolboyish storytelling delight and so
me ominous hatred.
“So now I lie as well.”
He grinned, then grimaced.
“I just say I was there. I mean, who’s to check?”
Douglas Jeffers paused, and Anne Hampton saw that he’d diluted the lightheartedness of this story with some darker thought. She plucked out a notebook and scraped down a quick series of notes about Woodstock and a half-million people and some fellow her age plucking a figure from midair.
“You see, in a way, that’s what we do in the news business. We create a commonality of experience. Who can say they weren’t in Vietnam? The pictures invaded us. How about the Watts riot? Or get more current: Beirut. The Mexico City quake. The TWA hijacking. They held a press conference, if you can believe it. The final answer in absurdity. Criminals in the midst of a crime seeking publicity and receiving it. And we were all there, right there, right with them. It depends, it depends.”
He hesitated again.
“The news business is like the old saw about the tree falling in the forest. If no one’s around to hear it, did it make a sound? If a thousand Indians die in the rain forest, but we don’t report it, did it happen?”
Jeffers laughed out loud. His first burst was one of anger, then followed one of release.
“I am sometimes so boring I’m surprised you haven’t killed me.”
The Traveler Page 44
