The Traveler

by John Katzenbach

  He was rapidly flooded with emotions. I can’t go to a hospital, he thought. Walk into an emergency room and say, here, fix this gunshot wound without asking any questions. He was struck with a simple, almost silly realization: It’s over. Ended by an unlucky shot from a confused child.

  “Boswell,” he said gently, “you’ve killed me.”

  He raised his own weapon, bringing it to bear on Anne Hampton.

  She gasped and her fingers let slide Detective Barren’s gun. It crashed to the floor. She stood rigid, expecting her own death to storm from the pistol. I tried, she thought. I tried.

  Detective Barren saw the young woman drop her hands to her sides, giving in to stunned acquiescence. She saw Douglas Jeffers sight down his weapon, ready to fire. It was as if everything that had happened to her coalesced in that second, and memory and strength combined to defeat pain. She dragged herself toward the murderer, screaming, “No! No! No! Susan! Run! I’ll save you!” and knowing that this time she could, she could, she could. She thrashed across the floor with every fiber of residual strength she could find. She reached out for the murderer’s leg, to pull him off-balance, to bring him down on her. “Run!” she cried again, her mind now oblivious to anything except all the agonies that had dogged her for so many months. “Susan,” she moaned, as she flung her hands forward, nails scratching, in a desperate effort to seize the man she had chased for so long.

  Martin Jeffers threw himself out of the chair, still bound by the rope. He was screaming “No! No! No!” as he stumbled, falling to one knee, then rising, pushing himself forward as his brother paused so curiously in the deadly business at hand. Martin Jeffers thrust himself in front of the young woman.

  Then he turned to his brother.

  “No, Doug,” he said. “No more.”

  The two brothers’ eyes met. Martin Jeffers saw his brother’s leap first with flame, then suddenly subside.

  “Please,” he said.

  Douglas Jeffers stepped back, still aiming at Anne Hampton, and now at Martin Jeffers as well. He glanced down at the detective writhing on the floor.

  “Please.” He heard the voice and thought of his brother in all the lost moments of childhood, when Marty called out and needed him at his side.

  Douglas Jeffers hesitated again. He put his hand to his waist and it came up bloody. He heard the word “Please” one more time.

  Then he turned and disappeared through the door.

  Holt Overholser came sailing down the driveway to the house on Finger Point and spotted the man rushing from the front porch. He flipped on the switch that turned on the red and blue strobes on the truck’s roof. As Holt braked the truck violently, he saw the man turn and carefully assume a shooter’s stance.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Holt shouted, ducking as the windshield exploded. “Holy Mother of Christ!”

  He scrambled for his own service revolver, the terrible thought jumping unbidden into his mind that he just might have forgotten to load the damn thing this year.

  He didn’t bother to check. Brandishing the pistol, he slid from the car and fired four shots in the direction of the fleeing man. The first shot struck the hood of the Ford, making a sound like a cat in heat. The second shot exploded into the ground about ten feet in front of the truck. The third crashed into the house filled with the people he was unwittingly trying to save, and the fourth sped off into night’s oblivion.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Holt said. He tried to force himself to remember what he’d been taught, and he finally assumed a proper stance, feet spread, both hands on the weapon, slightly crouched, ready for action.

  But there was none to be had.

  The night opened endlessly before him.

  “Holy Christ,” Holt said. He rushed toward the house. If the West Tisbury police department had any procedure for events such as these, Holt surely would have written it. But he hadn’t, and they didn’t, so he just barged ahead blithely into the house, gun held ready.

  What he saw simply confused him more.

  Anne Hampton had loosened Martin Jeffers’ hands, and the two of them were helping Detective Barren onto a couch.

  “Jesus Crutch on a Christ,” Holt said loudly.

  Anne Hampton gestured toward the back room.

  “The Simmons family is in there,” she said. “Help them.”

  Holt raced to the door and saw the family tied and gagged. He bent down and tore the bonds off Mr. Simmons. “Get your family free,” he said. Then he ran back out into the main room. Anne Hampton and Martin Jeffers were trying to treat Detective Barren’s bleeding leg.

  Holt saw the telephone and picked it up. He dialed 911 and waited until he heard Lizzie Barry’s voice. She seemed infuriatingly calm to him.

  “Police, Fire, Emergency,” she said.

  “Jesus, Lizzie, it’s Holt. I’ve got some kinda situation here, I don’t know, Jesus, I mean, he was shooting at me!”

  “Holt,” replied Lizzie Barry with utter control, “what is your location exactly?”

  “Jesus, I mean, gunshots! I coulda been killed. I’m down at Finger Point, Jesus!”

  “All right, Holt, stay calm. Is this an emergency?”

  “Jesus Crutch on a Christ,” Holt misspoke again. “You bet it is!”

  “All right,” she said. “State police will be moving within minutes. Do you need an ambulance?”

  “Jesus, we need an ambulance, we need everybody! The Coast Guard, the state cops, Christ! We need the Marines!”

  “All right, Holt, help is on the way.”

  Lizzie Barry began making the proper calls and sirens started up throughout the night.

  Martin Jeffers and Anne Hampton sat on either side of Detective Barren. Anne Hampton asked, “Can you take it? Help is coming.”

  Detective Mercedes Barren leaned her head on the young woman’s shoulder. She nodded. Martin Jeffers looked confused for an instant. “Did you get that, Boswell?” he asked. “Did you hear what he said? He said, ‘Jesus Crutch . . .’” Anne Hampton smiled. “I got it,” she said. Martin Jeffers laughed and put his arm around both women.

  The three of them looked at each other. “It’s over, I guess,” Anne Hampton said. The others nodded, and they all bent their heads together. Tears started to run down Martin Jeffers’ face, and he was joined then by Detective Barren and Anne Hampton, neither of whom cried from pain, but from some great, unfathomable release that moved within all of them.

  Holt Overholser looked upon the three people sitting on the couch and thought first they must be crazy and then that the detective would be crippled forever with a wound like that. He did not realize that the same was equally true for all three.

  Douglas Jeffers ignored the shots fired by the policeman who’d blocked his route to the car and raced across the sandy spit of land to the spot where he knew whoever lived at Finger Point would leave their boats. He saw two Sailfish pulled up on the beach and a dark inflatable dinghy with a small outboard engine next to them. He grabbed the anchor rope to the inflatable and within seconds had the boat pointed toward the crashing surf sounds of South Beach. He pumped the small bulb on the gas line twice, then pulled the starter cord. The little engine coughed once, then caught, and he thrust it into gear.

  He was aware of the engine noise interrupting the night solitude. He thought: It cannot be helped.

  He steered the boat out of the absolute confidence of memory, for the spot where the pond came closest to the ocean and where he knew the rolling surf was only fifty yards of flat sand away from the calm pond waters.

  I could have killed them all.

  He smiled. They know it.

  As he drove, he checked the clip in his pistol. There were seven shots remaining in the 9 millimeter. She was using the same weapon, he thought idly. Probably says something.

  He saw
the beach looming ahead, a strip of vague blond light drawn across the endlessness of night. The sound of the waves on the ocean side seemed redoubled. He pointed the dinghy into the beach and felt the sand grab at the underside, scraping at the thick rubber.

  He cut off the engine and pivoted it up so to not lose the prop in the sand. He stood and stepped from the inflatable onto the beach.

  It’s just the way it always was.

  He stayed motionless, almost entranced by the steady explosion of waves against the sandy beach. It is so constant, so powerful, he thought. It makes us small.

  He bent and grasped the inflatable by the bow, pulling it from the water. The effort made his side ache and he was suddenly aware of the pain created by Anne Hampton’s shot.

  He shrugged it off.

  Struggling, he pulled the boat ten feet across the sand.

  I never would have thought she had it in her. I never would have thought she could do it. He was oddly proud of her. I always knew she had strength. She just didn’t know where to look for it.

  He forced the boat across the beach. It made a swishing sound as he tugged at it.

  Images surrounded him, from all the places he’d been and all the photos he’d taken. No one could touch me, he thought.

  He leaned against the weight of the sand, moving the inflatable inexorably toward the surf.

  My pictures were always the best. Color, black and white. Made no difference. I always caught the moment just right. They spoke. They cried out. They told stories.

  He sank to his knees in the water wash, grasping his side, his head spinning.

  It hurts, Marty, it hurts.

  He shook himself upright. Keep going.

  He started to sing then: “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream . . .”

  He lunged forward with each word, pulling the inflatable into the shallow water that ran away from him, back to the ocean. He dropped his grip on the bow and moved to the side as the rubber boat started to bob in the thin water. He could see a steady, thick roller heading toward the beach and he pushed forward to meet it.

  White-green water crashed about him, swirling, as he thrust the boat into the waves.

  He grabbed the side and flung one leg over as the inflatable spun about. With his one leg, he straightened the dinghy and shoved hard against the mushy sand, meeting the next wave bow-first.

  He rode up, dizzyingly, catching a glimpse of the moon hanging just above the waters, so close he thought he could grab it. Then he was swept down the back side of the wave, into the trough. The surf exploded around him, and in the bottom of the dinghy he was awash. He spun about and jammed down the motor, pulling the starter cord simultaneously. The engine started right up, and he goosed it, just catching the next wave as it rose up in front of him, threatening to dash him back on the beach. The dinghy shot forward, riding past the crash of boiling white water.

  He jammed the accelerator handle, and the inflatable surged again.

  In a second, as if touched by some mystery, he was out of the surf action, riding on the deep black water, bobbing about, the engine noise steadily driving him from shore.

  No Man’s Land, he said to himself.

  I’ve always wanted to go to No Man’s Land.

  He steered away from the beach, leaving the dark mass of the island behind, heading toward the open sea. He guessed at the direction of the target range and pointed the dinghy that way.

  He saw the moon again, and it comforted him.

  He whispered to himself: “Oh, the Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat . . .”

  He smiled to himself and skipped ahead. He sang out blissfully: “So hand in hand, they danced on the sand by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon . . .”

  He thought of his brother. Marty always liked rhymes. He pictured his mother and wondered what had become of her. He realized that she had looked out upon the night when she left them, just as he did this. And it swallowed her up forever, he told himself.

  His adoptive father jumped into his imagination. He scowled but understood. “I’m coming, you bastard!” he shouted. “I’m coming!” The words raced across the swells, devoured by the night. He thought of the end of the fight against the rip that pulled so terrifyingly. He must have been exhausted and defeated. It must have been like falling into a deep and painless sleep.

  He felt the blood again, and torn flesh.

  “It hurts,” he said.

  Then he comforted himself. “It’ll be all right.”

  The land had dropped far away by now, and he shut his eyes. The engine lulled him, and the steady, gentle pushing of the waves was like rocking a baby, beckoning, urging him to sleep. I’m tired, he said to himself. So tired.

  It was wondrously peaceful and he remembered the snatch of another rhyme. He whispered: “Weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease . . .” He rolled his head back and felt a great and final exhaustion within him. He sang low to himself: “. . . asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.”

  The idea filled him with a satisfied defiance.

  “They never caught me,” he said. “They couldn’t.”

  It seemed terribly right to him.

  He shut off the engine and sat listening to the ocean flowing about him. Then he took his pistol and aimed it down between his feet. He fired all seven shots.

  The dinghy shuddered.

  Black water boiled up around him.

  It’s warm, he thought with childish pleasure. It’s warm.

  He reached out and embraced the coal-dark sea.