The Traveller (63 page)

She had gone directly into the bedroom for what she needed: the faded old newspaper. She had been filled with a momentary anger when she scanned the story for details, only to learn that it was less specific than she needed.

But, she thought, that old country cop was perfect.

She remembered how she’d driven hard out of New Jersey, battling the afternoon traffic around Manhattan, screaming with frustration at the delays on the road.

She had had to wait what seemed an interminable time in Woods Hole, pacing about the ferry office, clenching her hands together. The ferry ride itself had been tedious, the picture-postcard images of the setting sun and sailboats cutting through the green waters had been lost on her.

But she’d had singular success when she’d gone to the rental-car location closest to the ferry landing. She thought of the smallish man who’d taken her credit card and handed her the keys, and who had also informed her that she was

absolutely correct, a Martin Jeffers had come in on the morning ferry.

‘Said he had business down island. Friend of yours?’

‘Well, competitors, really.’

‘Must be real estate. All you guys are always hustling about, trying to beat out the next guy. Or gal.’

She had not corrected him. ‘Well, it’s a tough buck.’

‘Not here. Everybody’s making out like bandits.’

He had looked at her license. ‘Don’t get too many from Florida here. Mainly New York, Washington, Boston. Not Miami.’

‘I work for a large firm,’ she had lied. ‘Lots of offices.’

‘Well,’ the clerk had continued, ‘I think there’s too much damn development up here, anyway.’

She had sensed a touch of anger in his voice.

‘Really?’ she had replied. ‘I work for a company that specializes in antique-property restoration. Not like my buddy Jeffers. He does motels and condo complexes.’

‘Damn,’ the clerk had said. ‘Wish I hadn’t given him the car.’

‘What sort of car was that?’

‘A white Chevy Celebrity. Tag number eight-one-seven triple J. Keep your eyes open for it.’

‘Thanks,’ she had replied. ‘I will. Did he say where he was going exactly?’

‘Nope.’

‘Well, I’ll run him to ground.’

‘Good luck. Bring that car back by 8 p.m. tomorrow to avoid the extra charge.’

She clicked on the high beams and went down a small dip in the highway. Every hundred yards she saw another dirt road leading off to her right, and she swore angrily to herself, thinking each one looked the same. Keep going. Keep going. Look for the sand pit, like the chief said. Another car came toward her, lights blinking, signaling her to lower hers. She finally complied, and the other car slid by on the narrow roadway with a whooshing sound. It seemed to Detective Barren to have passed only inches from her and she felt a momentary panic. She watched the red

taillights disappear and was suddenly surrounded by blackness again.

She stared into the night.

‘It’s here,’ she said out loud, the sound of her voice in the car comforting. ‘I know it is.’

She drove on, slowing the car to a crawl. . ‘Come on, come on, where are you?’

She was alone and adrift, the island’s dark like the ocean. She stared up at the skyline, barely able to distinguish where the trees ended and the heavens started. She felt unsettled, as if she were dangling above the water, holding on to the slimmest strand of rope. She could feel tension racing unchecked through her body. I’m close, she thought. I’m close. She felt a smothering sensation, as though there were no air inside the car whatsoever. He’s here, I know at. Where? Where? She gritted her teeth together, grinding them. She squeezed her hands on the steering wheel until her knuckles were white. She raised her voice to herself, almost shouting against the solitude of the car and the night: ‘Come on, come on!’

And then she saw the turnoff.

Anne Hampton sat at the table, staring at the open notebook in front of her. She saw the words: I do what I do because I have to, because I want to. Because something within all of us tells us what to do, and if we ignore it, it will crush us with desire.

She had scribbled the younger brother’s reply beneath: You can get help. It doesn’t have to be.

She shook her head. That was the completely wrong tack to take with Douglas Jeffers. She looked at the notes again. This part of the conversation was several hours old. Perhaps he’s figured out another approach. But she doubted it. She thought the brother seemed lost, unable to comprehend, driven to confrontation, then barely able to articulate a sentence, much less persuade the older brother to set down his gun. She closed her eyes. I could have told him that, she said to herself. I could have told him that it was all set, now, there was no way out, no end to the script

other than the one Douglas Jeffers had invented sometime earlier, in some other era, deep in the past, when I was still just a student and someone’s daughter and eons before I became the murderer’s biographer.

Anne Hampton wondered idly what would happen to them all now. She felt detached, almost as if she were someone else, standing outside her body, invisible to all the others, watching the events unfold on a stage. She remembered that she had felt this way before, during some of the murders, during the first moments in the motel. How long ago was that? She could not tell. She thought that was always what memory was like; it seems like so many snapshots in the mind, film clips with ragged edges and blinking, jerky motions. I can see myself running through the snow, she thought. I can see the hurt and cold in my face, but I cannot recall how the sensation felt anymore. I couldn’t save him, she thought. She saw the derelict and the lone man on the street and the two lucky women — what were their names? — then the teenagers in the car. I can’t save anybody. I can’t, I can’t. I wasn’t allowed. I wanted to, oh God, I wanted to save him, he was my brother, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I can’t.

She wanted to weep, but knew it would not be permitted.

‘Boswell!’

She looked up sharply at the sound of Douglas Jeffers’ voice. She jumped from her chair.

‘Take some water in to our guests.’

She nodded and ran to the kitchen. She found a pitcher in the cabinet above the stove and filled it with water. Walking quickly, but careful not to spill any, she maneuvered past the living room, where the two brothers sat opposite each other, now wordless, after a day of talk. She opened the door to the downstairs bedroom and entered softly. She thought they might be asleep and didn’t want to wake anyone. But at the scraping of her feet on the wood floor, she saw four sets of eyebrows soar in panicked anticipation.

She felt wretched.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ she said. She knew how silly

her words sounded, how foolish it was to try to comfort them. She knew they would die, and soon. That had been the plan all along.

That they were nobodies didn’t matter to him, this she knew. What was important was that they were there, in this location, which she knew was important to him. She remembered his words, spoken under his breath, seconds before breaking in through a sliding porch door, left benignly unlocked, open to summer breezes:

‘I need to fill this house with ghosts.’

She put her hand on the woman’s arm gently, reassuringly. ‘I’ve brought you some water,’ she said, ‘just nod if you want a drink. You first, Mrs Simmons?’

The woman nodded, and Anne Hampton loosened the gag from the woman’s mouth. She held the jug up to the woman’s lips. ‘Don’t take too much,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if he’ll let me take you to the bathroom.’ The woman stopped in midgulp and nodded again.

‘I’m scared,’ the woman said, taking advantage of the loosened gag. ‘Can’t you help us? You seem like such a nice girl. You’re not much older than the twins, please, please …’

Anne Hampton was about to respond when she heard a voice from the living room. ‘No talking. Just one drink. Don’t make me enforce the rules.’

‘Please,’ the woman whispered.

‘I’m sorry,’ Anne Hampton whispered back. She replaced the gag, but not so tightly. The woman nodded gratefully.

Anne Hampton moved first to one of the twins, then the other. ‘Don’t talk,’ she whispered to each. When she reached the father she hesitated. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t try anything. Don’t force him.’ The man nodded and she loosened the gag. He drank and then she replaced the handkerchief. For a moment he strained against the rope that bound all of them together. She heard the man say, despite the gag in his mouth, ‘Help us, please,’ but she could not respond.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

She closed the door on the family and went back into the main room.

‘How’re they doing?’ Douglas Jeffers asked,

‘They’re scared.’

‘They should be.’

‘Doug, please,’ Martin Jeffers said. ‘At least let them go. What have they done …”

The older brother cut the younger one off abruptly.

‘Haven’t you learned anything all day? Christ, Marty, I’ve explained and explained. It is important that they haven’t done anything. That’s crucial. Can’t you see? The guilty never get punished, only the innocent. That’s the way the world works. The innocent and the powerless. They make up the victim class.’

Douglas Jeffers shook his head.

‘It can’t be that hard for you to understand.’

‘I’m trying, Doug, believe me, I’m trying.’

Douglas Jeffers looked harshly at his brother.

‘Try harder.’

They lapsed into silence. Douglas Jeffers toyed with his automatic pistol while Martin Jeffers sat quietly. Anne Hampton moved across the room and took up her seat, opening a new notepad.

‘Get it all down, Boswell.’

She nodded and waited. She thought: It is all madness. Everywhere. There is no normalcy left in the world, only hurt and death and insanity. And I’m part of it. Completely.

She took the pen and wrote: No one gets out alive.

She surprised herself. It was the first time she’d written any thought of her own in the notebooks. She stared down at the phrase. It terrified her.

The words on the pages shimmered and wavered like heat above one of the black highways they’d traveled. She fought off the exhaustion and the deadly thought and reconstructed the day in her head, blocking fear with memory.

She did not know why Douglas Jeffers had postponed killing the Simmons family, only that they had herded them all from their beds, tied, blindfolded, and gagged, into the

side room. He’d left them there while he’d relaxed, feet up on the couch, savoring the rising sun. He’d then fixed a leisurely breakfast. He had only said that keeping them caged for a day heightened the game. She had been surprised; it had seemed almost as if he did not want to hurry himself, that he was luxuriating in the situation, not wanting to rush on to the next. The jeopardy of their circumstances seemed not to affect him. She did not know what it was that was causing him to pause and greet things with such studied delay, but it scared her.

We’re at the end, she had thought.

It’s the last scene, and he wants to play it for what it’s worth. Two thoughts had intruded in the maze of her fears:

What will he do to them?

What will he do to me?

Douglas Jeffers had made eggs and bacon, but she had been unable to swallow anything. They were just finishing when the car came down the driveway. She had been horrifed at the thought of somebody stumbling in on Douglas Jeffers. Then her terror had redoubled at the sight of the brother. She had instantly assumed he would be the same. When he wasn’t, it had confused and disturbed her more.

She looked at the two men again.

They were only a few feet apart, but she wondered how distant they really were. She had the vague understanding that it was important to her, but she could not guess why.

She wanted to scream at them: I want to live!

But, instead, she sat patiently, quietly, awaiting instructions.

So far they had spent the day just as one would expect any pair of brothers. They’d talked of old things, of memories. They had laughed a bit. But by the early afternoon the conversation had disintegrated, wilting under the inexorable pressure of the situation, and now they sat apart, waiting.

She looked back a half-dozen pages in her notebook and saw some of what she had written down. Martin Jeffers

had said, ‘Doug, I can’t believe why we’re here. Can we talk about it?’

And Douglas Jeffers’ reply: ‘Believe it.’

She looked up at the pair and saw Martin Jeffers shift in his seat. She did not know what to think of him. Will he save me? She wondered suddenly.

‘Doug, why are you doing this?’

‘Asked and answered. That’s what the attorneys say in a court case when they’re trying to protect their witness from cross-examination. Asked and answered. Go on to the next question.’

‘There is only one question.’

‘Not true, Marty, not true. Certainly there’s why, I’ll grant you that. But there’s also how and when, and what are you going to do now. That seems most relevant.’

‘All right,’ Martin Jeffers agreed, ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Don’t ask.’

Douglas Jeffers burst out laughing. The sound seemed alien, impossible, in the small room. Anne Hampton recognized the laugh from all the worst moments. She hoped the younger brother would have the sense to back down.

He did. He sat quietly. After a few moments the older brother waved his hand in the air as if clearing the space between them.

‘Tell me,’ said Douglas Jeffers. ‘How much do you know?’

‘I know everything.’

The older brother paused.

‘Well, that’s not good. Not good at all.’

He hesitated before continuing.

‘So that means you went to my place. I thought you would wait until it was over. You were supposed to wait.’

‘No, actually, someone else did.’

‘Who?’

Martin Jeffers stopped. He suddenly had no idea what to say. He thought of all the times he’d been in intense conversation with one criminal or another. He’d always know what gestures to make, how to act. This time he drew

a complete blank. He stared across at his brother, and at the gun waving about in his hands. But he saw the child behind the man and realized: I am one, too. The younger brother. A massive, burning resentment started to grow within him. Always last to know. Always the last to get anything. He always did exactly what he wanted, regardless of what I thought. He never listened to me. He always treated me like some unwanted appendage. He was always in charge. He was always important. I was always nothing. The afterthought. Always, always. He suddenly hated everything and wanted to hurt his brother.