The Traveller (37 page)

He looked at her briefly but didn’t expect her to answer.

‘Do you know what I experienced afterwards? The most seductive fear. The sensation that you get when you realize after the fact that you’ve been in great jeopardy. The kind of fear that takes shape and reforms in nightmares. I walked around in a kind of twilight, thinking I was becoming paranoid, imagining every minute that any one of these schoolboy errors was going to manifest itself in a detective carrying an arrest warrant. It never happened, of course, but the feeling was like being electrified, constantly.

‘My pictures, too. Sharper. Better. Filled with passion. Odd, huh? From fear came art. I was driven to succeed. I remember being unable to sleep one night a couple of days afterwards. I was so filled with excitement. It had just taken me over, you see. I decided I would drive about, just watching the nighttime city glow. Maybe that could help me contain my feelings. I was listening to the police scanner. All photographers keep lots of radios about, this wasn’t unusual. You always listen, because you never know. And this was one of those nights.

‘I heard this voice come on, a clear channel, excited, near panic: Help, help, officer down, officer down … and they gave the address. It was only a couple of blocks away. A state trooper, you see, made a routine traffic stop on a car driving with a taillight out. And for his trouble he’d taken a thirty-eight round in the chest. It had been four guys who’d just done a liquor store. And I got there before

anyone. Before any other cops, before rescue. Just me, my camera, and the kid who’d witnessed the shooting from across the highway where he’d been changing a flat and had called in for help. He had the trooper’s head in his lap. Click! Click! Help me, the kid said. Click! Help us! he said. What are you doing? Click! Please … Click! Thirty seconds maybe. Then I helped him. I took the trooper’s hand and felt for a pulse. At first it was there, but then, just like dusk, it faded and disappeared. And then everywhere, lights and sirens. God! Those were fantastic pictures!’

Jeffers paused. His voice became slower, more cautious.

‘So I became a student of murder.’

Silence.

‘I had to.’

She poised her pencil above the notebook, trying to shed anxiety from her mind and simply concentrate on what he was saying. She told herself to think like she was back in a classroom and that this was just another lecture. She realized that was foolish.

Douglas Jeffers’ head filled with images and he wondered idly whether he should start anecdotally. He stole a look at Anne Hampton and saw that she was waiting, pale, shaken, on some rim of terror, but waiting nonetheless. He felt a momentary gratification, thinking: She’s mine now.

Then he launched ahead.

‘I had been terribly lucky, and I’m not fond of relying on luck. I started spending my spare time in libraries, reading. I read works of literature and works of science. I read legal case histories and medical tracts. I read murderers’ confessions and prison reports. I read the memoirs of detectives, pathologists, criminal-defense attorneys, prosecutors, and professional hit men. I purch-ashed books on weaponry. I studied physiology. I put on a white lab coat and went to anatomy lectures at Columbian Medical School. I needed to know, you see, how exactly precisely, people died.

‘I read newspapers and magazines. I subscribed to Your Detective and Police. I spent hours studying the writings of

a number of prominent forensic psychiatrists. I learned about sex murderers, mass murderers, professional murderers, military murderers. I studied massacres and murder conspiracies. I became intimate with de Sade, Bluebeard, Albert DeSalvo and Charles Whitman and My Lai Four or the Shatilla refugee camps. I knew Raskolnikov and Mengele and Kurtz and Idi Amin and William Bonney, whom you probably know as Billy the Kid. I know about the PLO and the Red Brigades. I could tell you about Charles Manson, or Elmer Wayne Henley, or Wayne Gacy or Richard Speck or Jack Abbott or Lucky Luciano and Al Capone. From Saint Valentine’s Day to the Freeway Murders. From the Salem Witch Trials to Miami’s drug wars to San Francisco’s unsolved Zodiac. I know about 007 from fiction and MI-5 in reality. I could explain why Bruno Richard Hauptmann probably wasn’t a murderer, although they executed him, or why Gary Gilmore was really just a loser who happened to kill, but he got executed, too. In fact, I studied just about every execution I could. I read everything from Camus’ essay on the death penalty to McLendon’s novel Deathwork, and then I read the Warren Commission Report and congressional testimony exposing the workings of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam…

‘Did you know,’ Douglas Jeffers continued, ‘that in some states, court records and police reports become part of the public record? For example: I went down to North Florida not so long ago and read up on the case of one Gerald Stano. Interesting guy. Intelligent. Friendly. Outgoing. Not your reclusive loner by any means. Held a steady job as a mechanic. Did well. Everyone liked him, even the homicide detectives. He had only one small flaw …’

Jeffers paused for effect.

‘ … When he went on a date with a woman, he wouldn’t settle for a chaste handshake or peck on the cheek to say goodnight.’

Jeffers laughed.

‘No, Mr. Stano preferred to kill his dates.’

He glanced at Anne Hampton, assessing the pained look on her face.

‘Slicing and dicing them …’

Another pause.

‘Could have been as many as forty.’

Jeffers waited again before continuing.

‘You’ve got to admire him his consistency, if for no other reason. He treated everyone the same. Every woman, that is …’

Anne Hampton remained quiet, waiting for Jeffers to speak. She saw him take a deep breath.

‘So you see what I became,’ Jeffers said, his voice fairly ringing. ‘I became an expert.’

‘And then,’ he said, after taking a deep breath, ‘I was ready to be a killer. Not some lucky jerk who got away with a random murder of a prostitute. But a complete, calculating, professional homicidal machine. But not a hit man, taking orders from some lowlife mobster or Colombian drug dealer. But a murderer completely in business for myself.

‘And that’s what I am.’

He drove in silence for hours.

Jeffers did not elaborate further. He thought to himself: Well, that’s enough for her to absorb for a bit. And what he had in mind next he believed would elevate her to yet another level.

Anne Hampton was grateful for the quiet. She tried to force herself to think of simple things, like the smell of an apple pie baking, or the sensation of slipping on a silk shirt, but they were elusive.

They crossed the river in Memphis in the dead of night. She saw the lights reflecting off the steady black water and Jeffers told her about the time the Cuyahoga River burned in Cleveland. The toxic wastes dumped into the water had caught fire, he said. How do you put out a body of water that’s on fire? He described shooting pictures of firemen at night, outlined by the soaring flames. They passed a sign as they crossed, which said, in a cheeriness that contra dicted the hour: you’re leaving Memphis - come back soon!

Jeffers sang, ‘Ohhhh, momma, can this really be the end? To be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again …’

He looked over at her and saw she did not recognize the tune. He shrugged. ‘My generation,’ he said. He laughed. ‘Don’t make me feel so old.’

She did not know what to say.

They stayed on the interstate in Arkansas. It was well after midnight when they stopped at a Howard Johnson’s. She thought the clash of orange and aqua disturbing late at night, as if the color scheme should be changed as night fell, to something more somber and less jarring.

In the morning they were on the road early, and drove for two hours before stopping for breakfast. Jeffers was ravenous, and he forced her to eat substantially, as well: eggs, pancakes, toast, sausages, several cups of coffee and juice.

‘Why so much?’ she asked.

‘Big day,’ he replied between bites. ‘Big night. Ball game in St Louis. Game time, eight. Surprises to follow. Eat up.’

She obliged him.

After breakfast, though, he did not drive immediately back to the interstate. Instead he pulled into the parking lot of a large suburban shopping mall. Anne Hampton looked at him.

‘Why are we stopping?’

He reached over quickly and grabbed her face, with his thumb and forefinger digging into her cheeks.

‘Just stay close, say nothing, and be educated!’ he hissed.

She nodded and he released her.

‘Watch, listen, and learn,’ he said.

He walked quickly through the deepening crowd of people arriving at the mall. She had to hurry to keep pace. Stores flashed about her, and she saw her reflection in the plate glass of one boutique. She heard voices all around, mostly kids yelling and running away from their parents, so she was surrounded by cries: Jennifer or Joseph or Joshua, stop that this minute! Which they never did. She heard couples talking over purchases and teenagers talking

over boys, girls, records. These snatches of life around her seemed strangely distant, as if taking place in some other part of history. She quickened her pace at Douglas Jeffers’ side. He seemed oblivious to the crowd, striding purposefully ahead.

He escorted her into a sporting goods store, where he plucked out a pair of red St Louis Cardinals baseball hats. He pointed at a plastic snoutlike hat device and laughed mockingly. ‘They wear those pig hats to University of Arkansas games. Razorbacks. All I can say is, you damn well better win if your fans are going to wear those.’

He paid cash for the two hats, then headed back through the mall. ‘One more stop,’ he said.

Inside the large Sears department store, he headed to the office products section. At the counter he purchased a small ream of typewriter paper and a package of business-sized envelopes. Then he walked over to a line of demonstration typewriters. He turned to her and said, ‘Watch carefully. Stick very close.’

In a swift motion he produced from a pocket a set of skin-tight surgical gloves. He slid them on and quickly tore open the typewriter paper box. Moving without hesitation, he handed Anne Hampton the box and quickly spun a single sheet into one of the demonstration typewriters. He hesitated for an instant, searching quickly about to ascertain if anyone was close or if anyone was paying attention to them. Certain they were not noticed, he bent down to the typewriter. . Then he typed:

Yu guyz ar so dum, yu shud bag it, Cuz I just naled another faggit

luv an kissies, Yu no who

He spun the page out of the typewriter, folded it in three, and placed it inside an envelope. Still wearing the gloves, he put the envelope into his pocket. Then he removed the gloves, glanced about to make certain again that they

hadn’t been noticed, and without a word to Anne Hampton paced off.

Her mind a jumble, she rushed to his side, breathing hard to keep even with his stride.

He said nothing when they returned to the car, but gestured toward the seat belt. She strapped herself in and kept quiet.

He drove steadily throughout the day and into the evening, doggedly keeping to the speed limit, or driving the prevailing speed, so they were passed by as many cars as they passed themselves. She wondered why it always seemed that Jeffers knew precisely where they were going, and how long it would take. He said to her, ‘We should make it by the bottom of the second inning,’ but they had to park a little farther from the stadium than he’d anticipated, so that by the time they got to the gate it was the top of the third. They both wore the red caps he’d purchased earlier in the day. Jeffers produced two tickets at the turnstile, whipping them from his wallet with a flourish.

She was taken aback by the gesture, and more by the realization that he’d purchased the tickets far in advance.

‘Should be a good one,’ he said to the gatetender.

‘Yeah, except they’re up a couple already and ain’t no one figured out how to hit that kid yet.’ He was an old man with white hair growing in his earlobes. One ear had a hearing aid attached to it. She saw he’d plugged in a cheap portable radio earphone in the other ear. He ignored them and reached for the tickets of the next set of late arrivals.

They rapidly made their way through the aisles, bumping into people, stepping around vendors.

The huge crowd and constant throb of noise unsettled her. She felt as if she were afloat in space, weightless, and that the swells of sound would sweep her away. She pressed close to Jeffers; at one point, when a rowdy group of teenagers tried to push between them, she reached out for his hand.

In the home half of the fifth, Jeffers announced he was

hungry again. ‘Listen,’ he said to her, ‘just run over . -concession stand and get us some hot dogs.’

She stared at him in disbelief.

Around them was a tidal flood of sound: the sta right-hander for the Mets had been throwing in his usual overpowering fashion, and the Cardinals had nothing to show for their efforts but the short end of a 2-0 score. But as Jeffers had made his request, the leadoff man had walked and the next batter promptly lined a base hit to right. The crowd surged in anticipation, and a steady rhythmic clapping of encouragement filled the stadium. She had to yell for him to hear.

‘I can’t,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

She felt his hand suddenly on her leg, the fingers biting into the muscle, squeezing it painfully.

‘I just can’t,’ she said, tears forming in her eyes.

He stared at her. He thought: Perfect.

‘What’s wrong?’

She shook her head. She didn’t know. She knew only that she was terrified of the noise, of the people, and of the world that he’d suddenly let into their lives.

‘Please,’ she said.

He could not hear her; the next batter had singled and the runner had scored from second, avoiding the catcher’s lunging tag in a cloud of dust. But he saw her mouth the word and that was enough for him.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just this once.’

He released her leg.

She nodded thanks.

‘That’s what they call a bang-bang play,’ he said.