The Traveller (48 page)

‘Everybody stay right here,’ he said. Command had

taken over his voice. Anne Hampton saw the two women

look up, surprised. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ he said. ‘But I

need to check.’ He looked at Anne Hampton. He spoke

quietly to her. ‘Get them into their clothes. Act as if nothing

is happening. Wait right here for me. Say nothing. Do

nothing.’

Jeffers lifted the photo bag and, after giving the two women a smile and a wave, stepped into the pine forest. Anne Hampton thought it was as if he had suddenly been swallowed by the shadows.

She turned to the women. They were looking into the hole in the woods that Jeffers had disappeared into. They were still wrapped together, their arms in casual connection, draped across each other.

Run! thought Anne Hampton. Get away! Can’t you see what is happening?

But instead she said, ‘Why don’t you two get dressed? I think we’re just about finished.’ ‘Oh,’ said one, frowning, ‘I could do this all day.’

Anne Hampton could say nothing. She sat, enveloped by fear, waiting for Douglas Jeffers to return. She glanced down at her hands and told herself: Make them do

something. But she was unable.

Douglas Jeffers felt the coolness of the forest dry the sweat on the back of his neck as he stepped away from the clearing. He walked slowly for ten feet. When he knew that he couldn’t be seen by any of the three women behind him. he picked up his pace. He jogged first, then ran, cutting between the shadows, leaping like a hurdler over the occasional rock or limb in his path. He kept one hand on the bag, to prevent it from bouncing about wildly, the other clearing branches from his eyes. His footsteps made a crunching sound against the pine needles of the forest. He raced the last few yards and emerged from the mottled forest light into the brightness of the road where he’d | parked.

A dark-green park service jeep was pulled up next to the car.

A ranger wearing a Smokey the Bear hat sat on the hood.

He’s unarmed and alone, Jeffers thought.

Jeffers commanded himself: Be quick. He swiftly searched the scene. There was no one else around. His eyes scanned the jeep. He saw no shortwave radio antenna on the car, no telltale shotgun fastened to a holder on the dashboard. He glanced at the ranger and saw that the man did not have a hand-held radio strapped to his waist. He’s isolated and unsuspecting, Jeffers thought. He took a few steps closer and saw that the man was really a boy. A college student, working for the summer. His hand went into the bag and he felt the solid metal barrel of the automatic. You could do it. You could do it and no one would be the wiser.

Inwardly, then, he screamed at himself: Control! What are you? Some punk killer in a convenience store?

He slid his hand from the bag, bringing out his Nikon.

He waved and the ranger waved at him.

‘Hi,’ Jeffers said. ‘I heard your horn. You screwed up my shot good.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ said the ranger. Jeffers saw that he was an unprepossessing type, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. He was slightly built and Jeffers knew the young man would be no match for him. Not physically or mentally. ‘But this

is supposed to be a restricted area. You’re not allowed to bring a car up here. Didn’t you see the sign?’ ‘Yes, but Ranger Wilkerson told me it was okay after I found the owl’s nest.’ “I’m sorry?’

‘Ranger Wilkerson. He’s at central headquarters in the state capital. He’s the guy all the nature photographers talk to when they want to get into the restricted areas. It’s no big deal, really. Did you know I found an eagle’s nest last year?’ ‘In here?’

“Yeah, well, not exactly here, but over that way.’Jeffers gestured widely with his arm, pointing off into nowhere. ‘Took me by surprise, too. I got the pictures into Wildlife Magazine, too, and the Audubon Society came out en masse, almost a little parade through the woods, you know. It was a pretty big show, you know. Weren’t you here then?’ ‘No, this is my first year.’

‘Well,’ said Jeffers, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. I think they put up one of the pictures at your headquarters.’

“Did, uh, you get some kind of pass or something?’ “Sure,’ said Jeffers. ‘It should be in your photography It back at your office. Probably right under the picture of the eagle.’

‘I’ll have to check,’ said the ranger. ‘I didn’t know we had a file.’

“No problem. Check under my name: that’s Jeff Douglas.’ ‘Are you a professional?’

‘No,’ replied Jeffers. ‘I wish. I mean, I’ve sold some shots. Even sold one to National Geographic, but they never used it. But it’s just a hobby, really. I sell insurance.’ ‘Well,’ said the ranger, ‘I’ll still have to check.’ ‘Sure. And what’s your name, so I can call Ranger Wilkerson if there’s some mixup?’

“Oh, I’m Ted Andrews. Ranger Ted Andrews.” He smiled. ‘By the time I get used to saying that, it will be

time to head back to school.’ Jeffers smiled. ‘Look, I was just about finished for the

day, anyway. I want to just go back and make sure I didn’t leave any film boxes or anything laying around. I don”t like to make a mess.’

‘We appreciate that. You wouldn’t believe what some folks just toss away. And I end up cleaning it up.’

‘Low man on the totem pole?’

The ranger laughed. ‘Right.’

‘You don’t have to wait for me,’ Jeffers said. ‘Go check your file, and next time I’ll stop by the office and you’ll see it’s all arranged.’

That’d be okay,’ said the young man. He started back to his jeep and Jeffers looked hard at the man’s back. I could do it now, and it would be easy. He measured the distance. A single shot, no one would hear a thing. No one would know. His hand closed on the pistol butt, but then he dropped it back into the bag. He waved instead, watching the jeep pull out past his car, bouncing up the secondary road.

‘Damn,’ said Jeffers coldly to himself. ‘Dammit to hell.’I

For a moment he felt flushed with fury and he had an overwhelming urge to crush something with his hands. He took a deep breath. Then another. He spat on the ground, clearing his mouth of a bilious, evil taste. Someone’s going to pay for this, he thought.

Out loud, though, he said to no one: ‘They get to live.’

11 One trip to New Hampshire

16

Detective Mercedes Barren drove hard through the glowing

vapors of gray-green highway lights that beat back the

early-morning darkness. It was nearly 3 a.m. and she was

almost alone on the turnpike. An occasional tractor-trailer

careened past in the distance, wailing like some great heart—

broken beast into the edge of roadway lights and night

blackness. She pushed the accelerator down, as if she could

transform the engine’s surge into energy for her own body.

She was exhausted, yet powerless to seek sleep. She knew

the burning images she carried vividly in her head and

sloppily thrust into a paper bag on the seat next to her

would preclude sleep for some time.

The car droned around her and she tried to force the

sound to fill her and take away the terrors of the past hours.

She refused to think of Douglas Jeffers’ apartment, though

a final vision was imposed on her memory: She could see

shattered glass and dozens of broken or twisted picture

frames littering the floor. In her panic and horror, she had

finally simply torn the pictures apart, seeking the hidden

images. The detritus of Jeffers’ art lay in piles strewn

haphazardly about the apartment’s living room, ripped

‘faces and severed moments, staring out at her in violation.

She’d taken the bag of groceries that had been part of her

ruse dedicated to the inquisitive doorman and dumped

them out on the floor. Then she’d refilled the paper sack,

stuffing it with the hidden pictures, creased, folded,

mangled by her impatience and anxiety. When she closed

and locked the door to the apartment, leaving it behind, it

had been like pitching from a nightmare into a waking fear;

like arising from an uneasy dream at the midnight sound of an entering burglar breaking glass, or the tiny crackle of fire from another room.

She drove up a rise on the turnpike. To her right, a huge cargo jet whined and powered in takeoff from Newark Airport, while to her left the massive white oil storage tanks to the port of Newark glistened in floodlights. She felt an incongruity, surrounded by technology, in pursuit of something prehistoric. When the highway swept away from the coast and into darker countryside, she felt comforted. She bent down and peered up into the black sky, catching a glimpse of the moon, hanging low over some trees and buildings.

‘Good night moon,’ she said out loud, the words bursting out from long-held memory, unchecked. ‘Good night room and the red balloon and the three little bears sitting on chairs, good night house and good night mouse, good night to the old lady whispering “hush”, good night nobody, good night mush …’

She tried to remember the other good nights from the book, but she was unsure after so many years. Mittens? Kittens? She saw herself, her niece perched on her lap, head lolled down and eyes closed, bottle drooping from her mouth, welcoming the deep sleep of childhood. She remembered how the words of the book always worked, but she never cut the rhythms short; if Susan fell asleep before the end, I would still read on.

‘Good night moon,’ she said again.

She had found her niece’s picture behind a large full-color portrait profile of three starving African children, whose wide eyes and distended bellies shouted out in agony. It was perhaps the fifteenth or twentieth photograph that she had torn apart in frenzied search. She had reached the limit of self-control when she ripped into the frame, breaking it with her hands. A piece of glass had cracked off, cutting her thumb, not deeply, but enough to streak the picture with fresh blood.

At first she had not recognized her niece. She had seen too many savaged bodies in Jeffers’ apartment to instantly

draw a distinction. But then the shape of the limbs had

suddenly plucked her memory, and the shock of straw—

blond hair, clearly visible even in the black and white

picture, had touched her familiarity. The features were in

some repose, too; the portrait had been taken from a lower

angle and from the side, removing some of the horror that

was so clear in the crime-scene pictures that she had gazed

as so many times. She could see an immediate difference

between the caressing portrait that Jeffers, even in his

huorry, had taken and the clinical, bright, horrible photos

taken by the medical examiner’s office and her fellow crime-scene specialists a few short hours after Jeffers had slipped

away into the night. In the photo she had held in her

hands, Susan seemed merely asleep, and she was thankful

for that small touch.

She had stared deeply at the photograph. She did not

know for how long. She had not cried, but it seemed to her

to drain her soul. Then she had carefully, almost tenderly,

put it aside before going on with the terrible task of

checking the other frames.

She had thought herself calm and in control, but her hands had shaken wildly when finally she had put her niece’s photo in the growing pile along with all the murdered others and had readied herself to leave.

Driving through the darkness, she said to herself: I don’t know who you all are, but I’m here for you now.

I’m here. I’m here. I know. Now I know everything. And I will make things right.

She gripped the steering wheel tightly with her fingers and continued fast toward the morning.

Martin Jeffers could not sleep. Nor did he want to.

He sat in the center of his apartment, the only light coming from a small desktop lamp off in the corner. He debated with himself the single question whether it was better or not to know. He questioned whether, if the detective disappeared, as he supposed she had, and his brother returned, as he knew he would, his usual cryptic, smart-guy self, whether he could simply return to the status quo, the usual uneasy peace between brothers.

He did not know whether he had the strength to reimpose this normality on his life.

He tried to envision facing his brother. In his imagination he saw himself stern, prosecutorial, strong, suddenly invested with the powers that accompanied being firstborn, easily dismissing his brother’s weak jests and jousts until Douglas Jeffers finally succumbed to his relentlessness and told the truth.

And then what?

Martin Jeffers plunged his face into his hands, trying to hide himself from the fantasy he’d created. What would he say? He could not envision his brother tearfully confessing to the crime that had brought the detective into their lives. What would he say? I’m sorry, Marty, but I picked up this girl and everything was going great until she said no, and then I got a little carried away, you know, and maybe I used a little too much force. I’m strong, Marty, and sometimes I forget and suddenly she wasn’t breathing, and it really wasn’t my fault, but hers, and anyway, someone else took the rap for the crime, so why do anything? It’s gone, it’s past, it really, when you think about it, never happened.

He stood up and paced about the dark room.

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it, he said to himself. He was always wild, he always thought he could do whatever he wanted. He wasn’t like me, he wasn’t organized, patient, I can’t stand it. He never, never, never listened to me.

He killed that girl, dammit!

He should pay.

Martin Jeffers sat back down.

Why?

What good would it do?

Again he stood up, then, just as swiftly, slumped back into his chair.

Why do you jump to these conclusions? He addressed himself in the third person, like a debater.

The detective has disappeared. She was crazy anyway. Why are you so swift to believe the worst about Doug?

You’ve been too long with the men in the therapy group.