The Traveller (7 page)

she herself had once been, at the idea of being alive, and horrified at the awkward sense of relief that speaks inside youth at moments of death, saying: At least my life goes on. Detective Barren read: ‘ … I cannot wait for the year to get going. In midterm we are going on a week-long laboratory in the Bahamas. We take the research boat down and spend a week underwater. I wish you could be there to share it with me. I think about those last few nights and what we shared …’ Detective Barren smiled. What had they shared? For an odd moment she hoped that her niece had known real passion and abandonment, given into desire completely. It would mitigate somewhat the violation of her last moments.

Then she had put the letter away. Reading it, she thought, was somehow unfair. But she had experienced a momentary pleasure, as if Susan had, if not been resurrected, at least for the barest of instants been restored. This made the detective feel a great sense of guilt, and she had occupied herself with the packing, setting aside the letter and a few others like it for forwarding to the gawky boy.

Keep busy, she told herself.

Ten days after the arrest of Sadegh Rhotzbadegh she called Detective Perry at county homicide. It was late in the afternoon on a Tuesday, the day the grand jury usually met. He came to the telephone swiftly, apologetically.

‘Jesus, Merce, I’m sorry I haven’t called, it’s just been so goddamn busy …’

‘That’s all right,’ she replied. ‘Did you go to the grand jury today?’

‘Well, yes and no.’

‘Explain that to me.’

‘Well, yes we went to the grand jury and yes, we’re expecting first-degree murder indictments today. But not on Susan’s case and one other.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Look, the MO was the same on all five homicides in Dade and one in Broward County at the community college there. He was taking a course up there in electrical engineering. Anyway, he had newspaper clippings of all six killings in his house. His blood type matches the blood from one of the semen samples found near Susan’s body — but not the other. And there’s the question of age on the sample that matches. He is a very common blood type and it was not possible to type it down much further. The best the lab could do was to get him into a twenty-five-percentile category.’

“They couldn’t eliminate further?’

‘No. Same thing in the Broward case.’

‘On one of the other Dade cases there’s nothing, just the newspaper clipping.’

‘So?’

‘Well, the bottom line is, we link him through jewelry, through the lingerie discovered at his house, through a shoe, which for some ungodly reason he kept, to three Of the six homicides. Link isn’t the right word. Nailed is more like it. So what it amounts to is this: we’re clearing all the cases. But we’re only going for three indictments. Now, we may introduce evidence of the others if it gets to a death-penalty phase of a trial - but that’s down the line.’ Detective Barren sat silently, thinking.

‘Merce, I’m sorry. The point is, the guy’s going to go away. Maybe the death penalty. Isn’t that what counts?’ ‘Don’t give up,’ she said. ‘What?’

‘What about his car?’ ‘It was clean except for an earring.’ Detective Barren started to speak but was cut off. ‘… No — I know what you’re thinking. It belonged to one of the other girls. We haven’t matched the earring found at Susan’s body. If we could, well, bingo.’ ‘Don’t give up.’

“Merce, we won’t. We’ll keep at it. But you know how these things work. I have to justify manpower and time to my superiors. They’ve cleared the case. We’re going to get a conviction. The guy’s history. My bureaucracy isn’t any damn different from yours.’ “Damn,’ she said.

I don’t blame you.’ ‘I feel cheated.’

‘Don’t look at it that way. Think of the people who commit murders and skate. C’mon, Merce, you know how unusual it is for us to make a case on some random killer like this creep. You got to be satisfied with seeing him do hard time for the cases we can lock.’ ‘He never copped out?’

‘Nah. He’s too crazy smart for that. You know, one of his courses at the university was in constitutional law.’ ‘He’s not…’

‘Not a chance. I mean, I’m sure they’ll give the old insanity plea a ride, and I got to admit the guy’s not playing with a full deck. Actually, it’s more like he’s shuffled a couple of decks together. I mean he’s definitely not all there. But even if Allah was whispering in his ear to kill those girls, he as sure as hell wasn’t telling our boy also to rape them. That’s not how Allah works, even on his bad days. And it sure isn’t how some paranoid schizophrenic operates, either.’

They were silent for a moment.

Detective Barren felt uncomfortable, as if the room had suddenly grown hot. She heard Detective Perry’s voice on the line.

‘Look, Merce, don’t hesitate to call. If we get anything else I’ll let you know.’

She thanked him and hung up the telephone. It was, she thought, completely unfair and unreasonable and precisely how the system of justice operates. She hated herself for being so familiar with the trade-offs and corner cutting that marks the legal system. That what had happened to Susan’s murder was completely understandable from the policeman’s point of view made her angrier. She was outraged with herself for understanding.

She could not sleep that night. She watched all the late-night talk shows and finally read Aeschylus until dawn, when, as the first few lights of morning crept into her apartment, she changed to reading the opening stanzas of the Odyssey, but even the classics could not settle her. She

went to work early that day and stayed late, working fever-shly on paperwork, redoing reports, analyses, and crime-scene workups, rendering her output as perfect as she could make it, until, finally, well into the evening darkness again, she went home and after stripping to her underwear and a tee-shirt, she put her pillow and a blanket on the floor and slept on the hardwood, thinking all the time that she wanted to know no comfort.

Liquid time enveloped her. She felt as if all her feelings had somehow been placed on hold while she waited for some sort of resolution to Susan’s death. After the indictment for three first-degree murder counts was announced, Detective Barren went to the chief of homicide prosecution at the state attorney’s office, reminding him, through her presence, that though uncharged with Susan’s death, the Lebanese student still was responsible for it. She attended every court hearing, every meeting by the two young prosecutors assigned to the cases. She reviewed the assembly of evidence, considered it, then went and reviewed it again. She tried to anticipate areas of weakness that could be exploited by the public defenders that were charged with defending Sadegh Rhotzbadegh. She sent memos to the prosecutors with her every consideration, then followed up the memos with either a visit or, at the least, a telephone call, until convinced that the perceived gap in the case was closed. She knew that they found her behavior infuriating, especially in the pedantic way she would go over every aspect of the case. But she had also seen too many cases lost by lack of vigor on the part of the prosecution, lack of anticipation, and she was determined that this would not

happen.

And when she had exhausted her mind and memory in

constant review of evidence, she would go to the county

jail, where the Lebanese student occupied a single cell in

the highest-security wing. Past the electronic locking

systems, down corridors gray with the crimes of men,

through metal detectors and past a sign that declared:

UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY TO WEST WING IS PUNISHABLE BY PROSecUtion. She would draw up a chair in the corridor outside the cell where the Lebanese student lived and simply watch him. The first time she did that, he’d laughed and shouted obscenities in her direction. When that failed to change her visage, he’d exposed himself. Once he grabbed the bars of the cell, spitting, raging, trying to reach through at her. Finally, however, he cowered, removing himself to a spot behind the toilet, occasionally peeking over the top to see if the detective was still there. She was careful never to speak to him, nor really listen to anything he might say. She let the force of her silence fill him, she hoped, with dread.

She told no one of those clandestine visits. And the jail personnel, fully aware of the reasons behind her attention, never logged her entry or departure on any official form. It was, the captain of the security unit told her in passing, the least they could do.

She attended the evidentiary hearing, when the defense tried to suppress the items seized at the student’s house. She sat in the front row, eyes pouring onto the back of the student. She knew he could feel her gaze, and it was with great satisfaction that she noticed him wiggle in his seat and occasionally turn and meet the detective’s glance. The evidence was not suppressed. She whispered, ‘Good going,’ to her friend Fred, the county detective, after he finished his testimony. ‘Piece of cake,’ he whispered back, striding out of the courtroom.

She attended a mental competency hearing for Sadegh Rhotzbadegh. She heard the defense attorneys argue that their client was decompensating under great stress, which, she was glad to note, the judge said was a normal state for someone facing the death penalty.

Months passed. Miami’s winter arrived. The daytime light seemed to gain a new clarity, unburdened by harsh tropical heat. At night Detective Barren would sit on her porch and let the cool air wash her like a bath. She thought of little save the upcoming trial; her only pleasure or release from the concentration on the case came when she would go to the old Orange Bowl, her end-zone ticket in hand,

and stomp and cheer and wave a white handkerchief at the

enemy as the Dolphins cruised through their schedule.

When they lost the conference championship game on a

bleak, New England sort of day, wet, steady drizzle and

wind blowing in the open end of the stadium, chilling the

shirtsleeved crowd so unaccustomed to any weather other

than warm, she felt an awful coldness inside. A fan’s death,

she thought. Losses are inevitable, yet terrible. To follow

the game was always, ultimately, to know the wretech—

edness of defeat. That night she consumed almost an entire

bottle of wine before sleeping. She awakened with a head—

ache, and thought that the team from Los Angeles was

filled with Lebanese football players.

In the evening, a week before the trial date, she received a call from Detective Perry. He sounded excited. “Merce,” he said, ‘it’s going down tomorrow.’ ‘What?’

It’s guilty-plea time.’ No trial?’

‘No. He’s going to cop to the three cases.’ What’s the deal.’ He gets to live. That’s all.’ “How much time?’

‘The max on each. He does a mandatory twenty-five calendar, straight time, hard time, no gain time, no good time. All consecutive. Seventy-five years straight. Also he’s gonna cop to some assaults, so the judge is going to add on some more time. He’ll score a hundred easy. We can go up to Raiford Prison and dig his grave, ‘cause that’s where he’s gonna die. He’ll never get out.’ ‘He should get the death penalty.’

“Merce, Merce. He’s in front of Judge Rule. The old bastard’s had a dozen first-degree murder cases before him, including that biker-torture case, and he still hasn’t fried anyone. You remember that case, Merce?’ “I remember.’

‘Cattle prods, Merce. Zippo lighters.’ “I remember, dammit.’ Those guys are just doing twenty-fives.’

‘It still …’

He interrupted her.

‘Sure, it pisses you off. It pisses off the other victims’ families, too. But they’re going along. Everyone’s a little wary of the guy’s insanity defense, too.’

‘Bullshit! The guy may be screwed a little tight…’

He interrupted her again.

‘I know, I know. But those two guys defending him walked that guy who cut up his girlfriend with a hacksaw into a mental hospital last year.’

‘Yeah, but…’ ‘No buts. You want to take the chance?’

She thought hard for a moment. Before she responded, Detective Perry cut into her thoughts.

‘And don’t think for a minute that you could do the creep yourself. I know about all those jailhouse visits, Merce. Don’t think it.’

‘He deserves to die.’

‘He is going to die, Merce.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘We’re all going to die.’

‘Merce,’ Detective Perry said. His voice had softened. ‘Merce. Give it a rest. The guy’s going away. He’s history. It’s over, understand? Don’t make me make this speech. Hell, you probably know it by heart. You’ve probably given it a few times yourself. It’s over. Over, Got it?’

‘Over.’

‘Right.’

‘Over.’

‘Will be, at nine in the morning.’

‘See you there,’ she said, hanging up the phone.

Sadegh Rhotzbadegh seemed mouselike, timid, shivering, though the press of people jammed into the courtroom made the air thick, hot, and stifling. When he spotted Detective Barren sitting in her customary front-row seat he shrank close to the side of one of his public defenders, who turned and glowered at the detective. There was a stiffening in the courtroom as the judge swept in. An elderly man a shock of white hair that gave him a slightly demented

look, the judge surveyed the courtroom quickly, noting the lineup of victims’ families and television and newspaper reporters, filling all the chairs and pressed up against the walls. It was an old courtroom, with pictures of distinguished judges staring down, now in utter anonymity, from dark walls.

‘We’ll take Mr Rhotzbadegh first,’ he said. ‘There is, I believe, a plea.’

“Yes, your honor.’ One of the young prosecutors had risen. ‘Simply put, in return for a guilty plea to all outstanding charges, the state will waive its pursuit of the death penalty. It is our understanding that Mr Rhotzbadegh will then receive maximum terms on all counts, running consecutively. That would be a total of one hundred and eleven years.’

He sat down. The judge looked at the defense table.

That is correct,’ said one of the defense attorneys.

The judge looked at the defendant. The Lebanese student