The Traveller by John Katzenbach Read Free Book Online

American. No abnormalities noted. Life reduced to so many facts and figures. No way to measure youth, enthusiasm, and future. Detective Barren felt queasy and was thankful that the medical examiner in his compulsive thoroughness had neglected to send the autopsy slides.
    On her way home from the office that night, Detective Barren stopped at a small bookstore. The clerk was a beady-eyed man who rubbed his hands together frequently, punctuating his voice with body motion. Detective Barren thought him a perfect reincarnation of Uriah Heep.
    ‘Something to escape in? A novel, I suppose, an adventure, or a gothic horror story. A romance, or a mystery. What shall it be?’
    ‘Real escape,’ said Detective Barren, ‘is substituting one reality for another.’
    The clerk thought for a moment.
    ‘You’re a nonfiction type, huh?’
    ‘No. Maybe. I just don’t feel romantic. But I want something distracting.’
    She left with two books. A history of the British campaign in the Falkland Islands and a new translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia. There was a gourmet shop down the street, and she indulged herself in a pasta salad and a bottle of what the counterman assured her was an excellent Californian Chardonnay. She would eat well, she thought, read a bit. There was a football game on the television that night which she could watch until she fell sleep. This was a secret passion. She smiled to herself; she hid her enthusiasm from her co-workers. They were threatened enough by her female competence. If she tried to usurp their game as well… So
    she enjoyed in private. Buying single game tickets, sitting in the Orange Bowl end zone, or staying home and plopping down in front of her television by herself, her concession to her own gender represented perhaps by the glass of white wine in a cut-glass long-stemmed goblet rather than the can of light beer. But, she thought, she did dress for the occasion. If the Dolphins were playing, she would break out her aqua and orange tee-shirt and watch sweaty-palmed as any man. She recognized a level of foolishness in her behavior, but thought it harmed no one and she was comfortable with it. She thought of Susan, coming over one Sunday a year earlier and watching in almost open-mouthed amazement as Detective Barren, swearing frequently, unable to sit still, stalked around the living room of her apartment in obvious agony, relieved only by la forty-nine-yard field goal by the Dolphins’ kicker in the waning seconds of the game. Detective Barren smiled at the memory.
    “If only they knew …’ Susan had said.
    ‘Shh. Secrecy,’ her aunt replied. ‘Tell no one.’
    :Oh, Aunt Merce,’ Susan had said finally, ‘why is it I never know what to make of you?’ And then they’d embraced. ‘But why football? Why sports?’ the niece persisted.
    ‘Because we all need victories in our lives,’ Detective Barren replied.
    Several times over the next few days Detective Barren
    fought off the urge to telephone the county homicide detectives. As she went about her own business, processing other
    crimes, working evidence, she envisioned what was
    happening. She saw the tail working the killer, silently
    mirroring his movements while other detectives ran down
    his whereabouts, started showing his picture to witnesses,
    patting together all the minor pieces of a criminal case.
    Some ten days after Susan’s murder, Detective Barren
    was on the witness stand in a murder case; from the locations that shell casings had been discovered inside the house where a drug dealer and his girlfriend had been murdered, Detective Barren had reconstructed the entire crime. Her testimony was important, not crucial; consequently her cross-examination by the contract killer’s high-priced attorney was more of a badgering than a blistering. She knew that she could not be shaken on facts; she was working hard, however, not to let the attorney so confuse the jury that the impact of what she had to say was lost. She heard