The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  Still, he thought again, she’s going to be angry enough to shoot me when she sees me again. It did not occur to him that his brother might feel the same.

  Martin Jeffers cleared his head and drove hard, struggling with the late-afternoon traffic.

  Detective Mercedes Barren stepped naked from the shower, toweling herself off slowly. After she had rubbed her body into a gleaming redness, she wrapped the white bath towel around her hair and flopped onto the bed, refreshed in part by the water, but equally by a moment of solitude. She stretched her body, feeling the muscles tense, then slowly relax. She lay back and ran her hands over her figure. She felt sore, as if she’d been in an accident, or in a fight, and her injuries were all concealed beneath the surface of her skin, internal. She closed her eyes and recognized the drowning pull of sleep. She fought against it, opening first one eye, then the other, blinking away the demands of her body. She argued with herself, pleading with all the currents in her body that demanded rest, first cajoling, then negotiating, and finally promising nerves, muscles, and brain that she would rest, surely, soon, and deeply as well.

  But not yet.

  She summoned some strength from within her and sat up on the bed. She shouted orders, Prussian-like, to her arms and hands, a drill sergeant for the body: Get the clothes. Put them on. Get going.

  Still battling against the rebellious demands of her body, she dressed herself in jeans and sportshirt. She took time to fix her hair and apply some makeup. She had a need to look less bedraggled by events than she actually felt. She refused to let frustration defeat her. After a few moments she looked at herself in the mirror. Well, she insisted, if not refreshed, at least you look ready.

  She glanced over at the red digital alarm clock that rested on the bedstand table. So I’ll be a little early, she thought. We can just get started sooner.

  She drove slowly through the lengthening shadows, leaving the small city behind and maneuvering through the suburban traffic toward the doctor’s apartment in Pennington. She was reminded of John Barren’s opinion of the state of New Jersey. He had always loved the state, she remembered, because no other place combined so many varieties of life: abject Newark poverty, incredible Princeton wealth, funky Asbury Park, Flemington farmland. It was a state capable of extraordinary beauty in some regions and exceptional ugliness in others. Her eyes roamed about, fixing on the tree-lined road which cut through rolling green hills. This, she thought, is the nice part.

  She turned off the primary highway and drove into Pennington. She could see the usual suburban-evening theater: fathers arriving home in business suits, kids playing on the sidewalks or in side yards, mothers fixing dinners. It grated on her somehow. It seemed too normal, too ideal. Detective Barren spotted a pair of teenage girls, giggling on a street corner, heads together in typical teenage conspiracy. But you’re not safe! she thought suddenly. Her heart tightened and her breathing constricted. She had an overwhelming urge to stop and shout at all the assembled happy people: But you don’t know! You don’t understand! None of you are safe!

  She exhaled slowly and turned the car onto Martin Jeffers’ street. She halted across the street, barely looking around. She did not want to see any more portraits of unfettered happiness. No more Norman Rockwell, she told herself. Back to Salvador Dali.

  She stepped from the car and stopped dead.

  Her skin suddenly seemed to crawl.

  Something is wrong, she thought. Something is out of place and mistaken. Her head reeled suddenly.

  He’s here!

  She looked wildly about, but saw nothing that wasn’t in its proper location. She informed herself that she was being exceptionally paranoid, but she still scoured the windows of the houses on the street, trying to detect a pair of eyes burning into her.

  She could see none.

  Moving very slowly, she maneuvered her purse around to her right side. Trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, she lowered her hand beneath its brown leather flap. The 9 millimeter took up almost all the pocketbook. She gripped the handle.

  She felt a momentary panic: Is a round chambered?

  She could not remember. She clicked off the safety and told herself to assume there was no bullet in the firing chamber. Cock the gun first, she told herself. You’re being crazy, because there’s nothing wrong, but chamber a round anyway. She kept hold of the grip and slid her left hand in on top, slamming the gun’s action back, loading it, ready to fire. She could feel the short hairs on her arms standing on edge; she thought of herself as a dog, filled with unusual smells, hackles rising without really understanding what the danger was, but accepting the demands of instinct born of centuries.

  She looked at Martin Jeffers’ apartment. She felt her mouth go dry.

  Where’s his car? her brain screamed.

  She took a step sideways, then another, peering into the small driveway. No car. She walked out into the street to give herself a better look up and down.

  No car.

  She told herself: He probably went to the deli. That’s it.

  But every nerve in her body told her that reassurance was wrong. She made certain that the pistol would slip free from her purse when she demanded it.

  She walked to the front door and stepped inside.

  What she saw made her heart plummet.

  Martin Jeffers’ mail lay uncollected on the floor in front of his apartment.

  No, she said. No!

  She stepped to the door and removed the pistol. With her free hand she pounded on the wood frame.

  There was no response.

  She waited, then pounded again.

  Again nothing.

  She made no effort to conceal the gun as she walked outdoors and around the side of the building. She stared in the windows, pausing at the one where she’d broken into the apartment what suddenly seemed a very long time before.

  She saw no movement. The interior remained dark.

  She walked back to the front door and pounded again.

  Silence continued to greet her.

  She stepped back, staring at the bolted door. She thought it oddly symbolic. I’m locked out. I should have known, I did know, I just refused to acknowledge it, that he would close me out. They are brothers, she thought. Then she slumped down, sitting on the steps that rose to the upper floors of the building.

  He’s gone, she said to herself matter-of-factly.

  He knows and he’s gone.

  She felt one momentary rush of rage that evaporated as swiftly as it arrived. She remained sitting, feeling nothing save a great, gray, utterly absorbing cloud of defeat that rained despair on her heart.

  A tractor-trailer had jackknifed on Route 95, not far from Mystic, Con­necticut, backing up traffic for a half-dozen miles. Martin Jeffers shifted impatiently in his seat, his face bathed by the blue and yellow strobes of a rescue crew and the state police cruisers. Every few seconds the red taillights of the car in front of him would flash and he would have to brake hard himself. He hated the jam-up; it intruded on the frantic press of memories which called to him from the recesses of his imagination. He tried to think of good moments they’d shared, instants in time that create the relationship between brothers: a night spent camping, the construction of a tree house, a halting, embarrassed discussion about girls that disintegrated into a conversation about masturbation. That made him smile. Doug never admitted to anything, but was always filled with the advice of a frequent practitioner, regardless of the subject. He remembered a moment when he was six or seven and had been set upon by other neighborhood boys armed to the teeth with snowballs. He’d been unable to outrun the missiles or the gibes of the others. It was a benign challenge, one that stemmed not from competition or animosity but from six new inches of snow falling steadily and the cancellation of classes that day. Doug had listened to his story of ambush and at
tack, then carefully decked himself in scarf and winter coat and galoshes and led the way out the rear door. His brother had led him around the back, around the block, and finally up from behind, crawling the last fifty yards on their stomachs behind a white-decked hedgerow. Their assault was commandolike and marvelously successful. Two shots crashed in snowy explosion into the faces of a pair of his tormentors before they had any idea where the grenades were coming from.

  Even then, Martin Jeffers thought abruptly, Doug knew how to stalk his prey.

  He looked ahead and saw a row of flares burning orange into the roadway. A state trooper with a yellow-lensed flashlight was waving the cars through frantically. Still, people slowed to peer at the wreck.

  We are always fascinated by disaster, Martin Jeffers knew.

  We crane our heads to see nightmare. We slow to investigate misery.

  He wished, suddenly, that he were above curiosity, but realized he wasn’t. He, too, slowed in passing, catching a glimpse of a single shrouded figure deathly still on the road.

  In ancient times, he told himself, a traveler spotting such an inopportune omen would turn back, grateful that the heavens had shown him a sign foretelling the tragedy that awaited him. But I am modern. I am not superstitious.

  He drove on. He glanced at his wristwatch and knew that he would miss the last ferry at Woods Hole. Damn, he said to himself. I’ll have to catch the first boat in the morning. He hoped the ferry company still scheduled a six a.m. boat. He remembered a good motel within walking distance of the dock. For a moment he toyed with the idea of calling the detective once he’d checked in; not to tell her where he was, but to apologize and try to explain that he was doing what he must, what was dictated by flesh and blood. He wanted her to forgive him. He wanted her to forgive herself. She will blame herself for leaving me alone, even if just for a few minutes. She should realize there were a dozen moments that I could have abandoned her. He knew it was the sort of rationalization that would infuriate her. Well, he said to himself, you were wrong about New Hampshire. Maybe you’re wrong about Finger Point as well. The head plays a confidence game with the heart.

  “Maybe he won’t be there,” Martin Jeffers said aloud. “Maybe I’ll just embarrass myself by knocking on the door of some vacationing family who’ll think I’m crazy and that will be it.”

  Detective Barren slipped from his mind’s eye, replaced by his brother. He felt a great swirl within him. He was caught in a perfect pull of emotions: equal parts demanding he confront his brother and equal parts hoping he wouldn’t have to.

  The night had moved into position and he felt more alone than he ever had since the evening in New Hampshire more than three decades earlier.

  Detective Mercedes Barren remained rooted on the hallway steps outside Martin Jeffers’ apartment, letting the darkness sweep over her.

  She was filled with memories of her own; of her husband, of her niece. A portrait of Susan filled her, but it wasn’t the Susan that she’d seen strangled and molested and discarded beneath a few scrub ferns in the park, but the Susan who would come to dinner and play loud music and dance about Detective Barren’s home, suffused with sounds, barely able to contain all the life she had. Then this image faded, and Detective Barren saw the little girl, dressed in pinks and bows, running to greet her, making the detective feel, if only for an instant, completely whole, completely loved. She thought of John Barren, rolling over in the middle of the night with demands of affection, and the friendly, familiar sensation of welcoming him to her body. She thought: If only I’d known. If only someone had told me: Make every moment special, for your time is short.

  She saw herself as a child, gripping her father’s hand.

  She looked over at the dark door to Martin Jeffers’ apartment. Well, she said to herself, use some of your father’s logic. It was the only thing he had to will to you. It’s helped you before. What would he do?

  Examine the facts. Investigate each element.

  All right, she said to herself. Let’s take it simply.

  He said: Meet you here.

  A lie.

  She thought what a wondrous lie it was. Simple, benign, especially the touch about the sandwiches. Use the familiarity of the past days against her.

  But when did the lying start?

  She reviewed their last meeting, in his office. He didn’t indicate anything had changed. But something obviously had. He didn’t receive any phone calls. There was no mail. He clearly didn’t return to his apartment and then decide to leave. The decision had to have been made by the time they were in his office. She reviewed the situation again. No, she thought quickly, there was nothing from Douglas Jeffers.

  So it must have been something he remembered.

  She sat back in the darkness and thought deeply.

  He went to individual sessions and then to that damn group of perverts. Then he came back to the office and then he began lying and then he disappeared. She sat up and then stood up. She began to pace about the entranceway, concentrating hard. Her exhaustion slid away in the fury of her mind at work. She felt a wealth of adrenaline pumping through her. Back on the case, she thought. You’re back on the case. Act like a damn detective. Now, though, you’ve got two quarries.

  “All right,” she said out loud. “Start at the hospital. Start with the patients he saw. Get the list from his secretary. If she won’t give it to you, steal it.”

  These last words echoed in the small area.

  She breathed in hard. She saw again her niece, her husband, her father. She smiled and dismissed the images from her head. Work, she thought. She replaced the vision with twin portraits of Martin and Douglas Jeffers.

  I’m coming, she said to herself. I’m still after you.

  Weak dawn light flowed over the ferry bow, and Martin Jeffers felt the chill of morning air surround him. He pulled the lapels of his lab coat tighter and let the breeze wash over him. He could see miles of rolling gray-green ocean glistening in the first light. He turned his back to the wind and watched the island loom up in the distance. He could see the shoreline trimmed with proper summer homes, then, a short ways farther in the distance, the white glow of Vineyard Haven, where the ferry would dock. Sunlight hit upon a row of a half-dozen fuel tanks next to the docks. In the harbor, dozens of sailboats bobbed at moorings. He thought of the small slapping sound that wavelets make against the hull of a sailboat.

  The ferry moved fast through the morning seas. As it approached the slip, it blared out a single raucous blast on the air horn. Martin Jeffers saw some of the other passengers jump, startled by the sound.

  The ferry bumped to a stop, its huge diesel engines grinding the bow into the dock. There was a momentary pause while gangways were lowered and people started to exit. Martin Jeffers pushed through the early crowd of people. The lines of cars waiting to get on the ferry were already stretched up the street. It reminded Jeffers how close they were to the end of the summer; the boat over had been almost empty. Returning to the mainland, it would be filled.

  He looked about briefly as he exited the ferry and walked across the loading area, past the ticket office. He thought: It’s all the same, but different. More buildings. New shops. A new parking lot. But it’s all the same, still.

  I thought I would never come back here.

  He started to count the years, then stopped. He knew the house would be there, just the same, next to the pond, across from the ocean. His eyes scanned the crowds of people and cars. It will still be isolated and wild, he said to himself. It will have stayed the same.

  He did not base this conclusion on any fact, more an overwhelming sensation of familiarity.

  It was, he thought, the best worst place.

  He remembered what the Lost Boys had said. And he’d come to that place where they’d told him to look.

  Look for a death.

&nbs
p; Well, he said to himself, I’m here.

  And this is the place for both.

  He hurried across the street to Island Rent-A-Car, washing his mind of everything save the insistent fear that he would be right.

  The clerk was eating a doughnut and sipping coffee.

  “How can I help you?”

  “Martin Jeffers. I made a reservation last night with the late guy.”

  “Yup. Saw his note this morning. On the early ferry, right? Said you wanted a car for a couple of days, right? A little vacation?”

  “A little business. Could be short. Could drag out a bit.”

  “Just so’s we have the car back Friday. Labor Day weekend, you know. All booked up. Everything is.”

  “No problem,” Jeffers lied.

  “You got an island address for the form?”

  He hesitated. “Yeah. Chilmark. Out on Quansoo. Sorry, there’s no phone.”

  “Best beach, though.”

  “Right you are.”

  “Of course,” the clerk said as he filled out the forms, “I don’t go down there too much. I ain’t much of a swimmer and those waves and the undertow and all that stuff scares the daylights out of me. But the surfers, they love it. You ain’t a surfer, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Those kids are always renting the cars and trying to drive them out on the beach and getting them stuck and tearing up the transmissions and all.”

  The man picked up a set of keys hanging on the wall behind him. “You need a map?” he asked.

  “No, unless things have changed much in the past couple of years.”

  “Things always change. That’s the nature of life. But the roads ain’t, if that’s what you mean.” The clerk shoved a form at Martin Jeffers for his signature. “All set. It’s the white Chevy just outside the door. Return with a tank of gas, okay? Before Friday.”