The Traveller (59 page)

They listened to a message from a plumber and a tape-recorded sales pitch for a local candidate. Then the tape hissed emptily.

‘There was nothing in the mail here,’ Jeffers said. ‘But it doesn’t get delivered at home until about four.’

‘Screw the mails,’ Detective Barren said blankly. ‘He’s not sending any postcards.’

‘He has before.’

‘And so we get one. Then we’re only four or five days behind him.’

‘But it would tell us, maybe, what direction he was heading.’

She knew this might be true. Still, her frustration gripped her. ‘Screw the mails,’ she said again. She sighed. ‘What about your memory? I have more confidence in that.’

‘I thought he would be there,’ Martin Jeffers replied. ‘I was sure that he’d be there in New Hampshire. It seemed the most logical place to start.’

‘So think again.’

He rolled his head back. ‘Aren’t you exhausted, too?’ he

asked. ‘Christ, we’ve been pushing. It’s getting hard to figure. Don’t you want to take a break?’

‘I’ll rest when it’s over.’

Martin Jeffers nodded. He knew she would not stop until his brother was — and then he paused. He would not fill in the remainder with a word, though he realized what she was saying.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep at it.’

He saw her relax, if only slightly.

After a moment she said:

‘It’s not a difficult proposition, really.’

‘What?’

‘The idea that at any given time one ought to know-where one’s brother is. Or sister, for that matter.’

He thought the question provocative. But he droned his answer.

‘Maybe as children. When we were growing up I always knew. Even through school I always could have told you where he was. But when we became adults, well, adults head off on their own ways. We become independent. We have our own lives. We become more ourselves, less someone’s brother or sister.’

She shook her head irritatedly.

‘Don’t lecture me. That’s not true. Your own profession tells us that the adult only masks with age and responsibility and morality and ethics all the desires of the child. So force yourself back! Think like you used to, not like you do today!’

She glared at him with eyes rimmed with equal parts of exhaustion and tension.

She was completely correct, he realized.

So, instead, he rose from his chair and circled around her nervously. ‘I’m trying, I’m trying. My mind is filled with possibilities. But there are a hundred shared moments between brothers growing up. A thousand. Which is the one that triggers him now?’

‘You know,’ she said. ‘You just block it.’

He smiled. ‘You sound like me.’

Detective Mercedes Barren lifted her hands to her face

and tried to rub away her fatigue. She smiled faintly. You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I push too hard sometimes.’

Her confession surprised her.

‘But you’re right, too,’ he continued. ‘I’m probably blocking it.’

His own bare smile joined hers.

Martin Jeffers looked over at the detective. His stomach clenched as he thought how deep her despair must be. For an instant he thought they should embrace and shed tears together, on to each other’s shoulders, tears for the living, tears for the dead, tears for all the memories. He wanted to touch her in that moment, both angry and sad at the reason they had been thrust together into this small room, in the ever-changing world created and denned by his brother. He felt his hand start forward to touch her arm, but just as swiftly he ordered the muscles to stop, and he jammed his hand into the white pocket of his laboratory coat. Instead, he spoke:

‘Detective, what are you going to do when this is over?’ He held up his hand to make her pause before replying. ‘Regardless of how it comes out.’

She laughed, but without humour.

‘I haven’t really thought of it,’ she said. She shook her head. ‘I suppose I’ll go back to work, as before. I enjoyed what I was doing. I liked the people I worked with. No reason to change.’

That was surely a lie, she thought. She expected nothing ever to be the same again.

She looked at him.

‘And what about you, doctor?’

He nodded.

‘The same.’

We lie well together, she thought wryly to herself.

‘Most lives,’ she said, ‘don’t present that many options, do they?’

‘No,’ he said sadly, ‘they don’t.’

But both were struck then with the same vision: each knew of one man’s life that seemed filled with options.

Detective Mercedes Barren looked over at Martin Jeffers and for an instant tried to envision herself in his position. Then, as the first empathetic feelings crowded her heart, she hardened herself. Concentrate! she shouted to herself. Remember! She saw the lines that ridged the doctor’s eyes, the gray pallor to his skin, and thought he was indeed filled with remorse. What has happened to me has happened, she told herself. What remains for me is justice, which is not an emotion but a need. He’s still living his grief.

She wanted to say something, then, but could not think of anything even vaguely appropriate-Martin Jeffers was aware of the silence between them, and the suddenly lessened degree of tension. He recognized the moment for what it was, knowing its duration would be short. He leaned back in his chair, stretching. But if he appeared relaxed on the outside, inwardly he was rigid:

Spring the trap, now!

‘Look,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re absolutely right. We’ve got to keep at this until I figure out where he’s gone. Someone’s life may be at stake — we don’t know. Let’s just do it, okay?’

Detective Barren nodded in agreement.

‘Here’s what I think,’ he said. He glanced up at the wall clock. ‘It’s getting late in the afternoon. I’ll drop you at your hotel for an hour or so. Just give me long enough to take a shower and get a second wind. Then meet me at my house. We can have a couple of drinks and I’ll pull out every old picture and letter I’ve got, and we’ll try to free-associate an answer to all this. We can set up some sort of chronology. You’ll have to listen to my life story, but maybe if I start to talk it out something will strike true. And anyway, if the phone rings, we’ll both be right there. He’s far more likely to call me at home than here.’

Detective Barren considered the plan. The thought of hot water flooding her body was seductive. For an instant a voice within her shouted caution and she forced her eyes to set on Martin Jeffers. She watched as he rocked slightly in his seat. She searched for anxiety, for nervous motion, for anything other than the discouragement and fatigue

that she felt insistently within herself. She saw nothing. He’s already had a hundred opportunities to run, she thought. He won’t. Not until he hears from his brother.

‘Start with a clearer head,’ he said blandly. ‘See what jumps in.’

All right,’ she replied. ‘I’ll be there at, say, six-thirty.’

‘Six would be fine,’ he said. ‘And we’ll keep at it until we’ve got at least a good idea where to head. And then we’ll just go. The hospital can cut me some time.’

‘Good,’ she said. She felt a sense of body-slackening

release at the idea that they would be acting instead of

waiting. She felt a hot flood inside her, thinking hard of

Douglas Jeffers, feeling once again that she was embarking

on his trail. That comforted her, and blinded her to the

feet that the murderer’s brother had turned his eyes away

suddenly, averting his glance.

Martin Jeffers pulled to the curb in front of Detective Barren’s hotel in Trenton. He took the car out of gear and turned to her.

‘Look, what kind of sandwiches do you like? I’ll stop at the deli on the way to my place so we can eat later.’

She opened the car door and put one foot to the sidewalk.

‘Anything’s okay,’ she said. ‘Roast beef, ham and cheese, tuna fish.’ She smiled. ‘Protestant sandwiches. No corned beef or brisket. No mustard, plenty of mayonnaise.’

He laughed.

‘And some sort of salad if they’ve got anything.’

‘No problem.’

He glanced at his watch.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘be there by six. Let’s get this thing moving.’

She nodded. ‘Don’t worry. See you then.’

‘All right,’ he replied.

He watched as she strode across the hotel entranceway and disappeared into the lobby. He thought that the banality of his plan had been its strongest element. She was so focused on her quarry and the evil he represented in her mind diat she neglected the more mundane possibility that Martin Jeffers might abandon her. Mingle obsession with exhaustion and one is ripe for the unexpected. For an instant he regretted his betrayal. She’s going to kill me, he thought. Then he realized that the colloquialism that had formed in his head was probably not impossible. She might actually kill me.

He argued with himself: Be realistic.

He pulled the car out into the street. Don’t stop. Don’t go home. Do without a change of clothes, or a toothbrush, or anything. Just go. Now. He exhaled sharply and thought of his destination. If I hurry, he told himself, perhaps I can make the last ferry. His mind started to picture the detective at the moment his disappearance became clear to her. He rationalized: This is about saving lives. My brother’s. The detective’s. My own.

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 make-up. 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 Penriington. 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 on to Martin Jeffers’ street. She halted across the street, barely looking

around. She did not want to see any more portraits unfettered happiness. No more Norman Rockwell, she 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.