The Traveller (23 page)

Sanctuary, she thought.

She closed the book and went to bed.

10

She was shading her eyes from the noontime glare and almost missed the small square green sign by the side of the road. It was set back a few yards farther than most roadside signs, which Detective Barren thought reflected a concession to distaste. No one wants a prison as a neighbor. It said: lake butler classification and evaluation center f.s.d.o.c. next right. There was a dusty black macadam road a hundred yards up from the sign. The road cut between two stands of tall pine trees, their needles turning a brownish green in the unrelenting Florida summer sun. Detective Barren slowly steered her car down the road, passing beneath a huge willow tree that threw shade down defiantly. The road curled around, across a brown field where some cattle grazed idly, contentedly, and Detective Barren caught her first sight of a cluster of low gray buildings that seemed to glow in the midday heat. She stopped the car to read a large black and yellow sign that dominated the side of the road: caution, anyone passing

OVER YELLOW LINE SUBJECT TO SEARCH. ANYONE CARRYING CONTRABAND INTO L.B.C.E.C. WILL BE PROSECUTED TO

fullest extent of law. Painted across the road surface was a wide strip of yellow. Detective Barren accelerated gently, picking up her first sight of a twelve-foot-tall, barbed-wire-topped chainlink fence that surrounded the clutch of buildings.

Detective Barren parked the car in an area designated visitors and walked toward a pair of wide glass doors. Another sign informed her that this building housed the prison administration, although the word ‘prison’ was not used. This was typical: We live in an enlightened age which is dependent upon euphemism, she thought. Thus, prisons are correctional facilities, manned not by guards but by correction officers, and prisoners are subjects. If we change the designation, somehow we believe the reality to be less evil and distasteful, though in actuality nothing ever changes. She stepped through the doors into the dark, cool interior, where she was blinded by the sudden shift in light.

Her eyes adjusted slowly. Then she walked to a receptionist.

Within a few minutes she had checked her automatic with a uniformed security guard who’d eyed her with suspicion when she produced the heavy pistol and been ushered into a small office with the name and title of Arthur Gonzales, Classification Officer, on the door. It was a cramped space, filled with file cabinets, a small, cluttered desk, and two chairs. A window overlooked the prison’s exercise area. Detective Barren stared out, watching a small cluster of men playing basketball. They were stripped to their waists, and sweat made their bodies gleam as they maneuvered about the court. The window was closed to contain the air conditioning and Detective Barren could not hear the men. But she knew the sounds they were making, of sneakers pounding the cement surface and bodies slapping together.

She thought idly of her husband, who’d loved the game.

‘There’s a zone, Merce, a time, I guess, I don’t know, but you get hot. It’s like no other sport I can think of, but you just get possessed by this sense that you can throw anything toward the basket and it will fall. Hot. Electric, I suppose. It’s hard to describe, but it sometimes seems that you can jump just a little higher, a little faster, and that the basket seems suddenly closer and the rim wider, and you know, you just know, that what you put up will slip in. It just happens, you see, in the course of the game. I don’t know why. And then, just as the sensation arrives, it disappears. The ball starts to clank about and fall off. Your feet slow down. The magic evaporates. Maybe it passes on to someone else. You become mortal, suddenly, sadly. But the moments of immortaility, Merce, they’re something. It’s as if you’ve been touched. Graced by some god of athletics. And until his mood changes and he plucks someone else out, you’re on fire …’

She smiled.

He would take her to the outdoor courts on summer mornings and they would play against each other. At first

he restricted himself to shooting only left-handed. Then she beat him one morning on a running, giggling jump-shot.

She smiled again, thinking how foolish men were with their games. Foolish but a little bit wonderful, as well. What she had liked about John was that the morning she beat him, he’d been the first to announce the event to her family. Without alibi, as well. Of course, the next day he’d suddenly shifted the ball from left to right and swooped past her. That was how he announced that the rules of their game were changing.

‘Cheater!’ she’d yelled.

‘No, no, no,’ he’d replied. ‘Just returning to the proper balance between the sexes.’

That night he’d been especially tender and tentative when he touched her.

Detective Barren shook her head and couldn’t prevent the memory from making her grin.

She turned when she heard the door open behind her.

A rotund man in a pair of tan double-knit slacks and a white guayabera shirt entered. He stuck out his hand and said, ‘Hello, detective, how can I help you?’ in a tone that told her that he no more wanted to see her or help her than he wanted to catch a disease. He instantly buried his head in files of paper, as if to indicate that her presence demanded only a portion of his attention. All detectives hate dealing with prison personnel, she thought. Because they always act like this. They are concerned with logistics and containment, who gets sent where and what bed does he occupy. Not issues of guilt or innocence.

She sat down opposite him.

‘Sadegh Rhotzbadegh.’

‘He is one of my clients, yes …’

A new euphemism, thought Detective Barren.

‘I would like to interview him, please.’

‘Is this another case like the ones he pleaded to?’

‘Yes.’

‘And this is an official request?’

‘No. Not really. Informal.’

‘No? Even so, I would probably counsel him to seek legal assistance before talking with you …’

Just whose side are you on? thought Detective Barren angrily. She kept her thoughts to herself.

‘Mr Gonzales, this is an informal inquiry. I believe Mr Rhotzbadegh has been unfairly linked to a crime, and I think he can swiftly clear the matter up. He does, of course, have the right to an attorney. I will read him his rights if need be …”

She looked hard across the table.

‘ … But you sure as hell don’t have the right to tell him anything. Much less give him advice. Now, if you want me to talk to your supervisor …’

‘No, of course, that won’t be necessary.’

He shuffled some papers quickly.

‘Well?’

‘Well, Mr Rhotzbadegh is currently in his activities period. There is a rest time which follows, right before dinner. You can talk then … if he’ll see you. He has the right, you know, to refuse …’

‘But you’re going to see he doesn’t exercise that right.’

‘Well, I can’t…’

‘You sure as hell can. I didn’t drive three and one-half hours just to have a convicted killer say, “No thanks, not today”. You get him and bring him to a room where he and I can talk. If he wants to sit there and not say anything, well, that’s his business and mine. Not yours.’

‘I can arrange for the room. But…’

‘But what?’

‘Well, we have just finished our evaluation and he’s scheduled to be shipped out at the end of the week …’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, he’s going to the psychiatric facility at Gainesville. We don’t think he’d be safe in the regular population.’

‘You don’t think he’d be safe!’

‘Well, he’s decompensated …’

You think he needs to be protected!’

‘That’s the opinion of the evaluation and classification staff.’

‘So you’re going to send him to some country club?’

‘It’s a maximum-security unit.’

‘Sure.’

‘Well, that’s where he’s going.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Detective, if we send him to the state prison, someone will kill him. He’s, well, no other word to describe it, he’s obnoxious and near-psychotic. The other men don’t like his religious mumblings. Or his conceited postures. Rapists have enough trouble in general population without these, uh, characteristics. What can I say?’

Detective Barren absorbed the news slowly. Her mouth was dry and her stomach churned. She shook her head.

‘Just set up the interview room,’ she said.

Sadegh Rhotzbadegh’s eyes darted about wildly as he entered the small office, almost as if he were trying to print the room’s layout in his imagination. After this momentary assessment he brought his glance to bear on Detective Barren, who sat patiently at a small table in the center of the room. The table and two chairs were the only furniture. Rhotzbadegh stared at her, then took a sudden step forward, paused, and a stride backward, his eyes first reflecting anger, then fear, and finally settling on a confused compliance. He stood still, waiting for the detective to make some motion, which she did, waving him toward the empty chair across from her. He’s gained weight, Detective Barren thought, and lost some of the wiry strength he had. Prison kitchen starches, she thought. Rhotzbadegh sat, shifting about in the chair, finally perching on the edge, balancing forward and eyeing Detective Barren. She met his glance and held it until he turned away. Then she spoke:

‘First I want to inform you of your rights. You have the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney …”

He interrupted.

‘I know those things. I have heard them many times and do not need to hear them again. Tell me why you have come to see Sadegh Rhotzbadegh! Why have you summoned him from his rest?’

‘You know why.’

He laughed.

‘No, you must tell me.’

‘Susan Lewis. My niece.’

‘I remember that name, but it seems to be in a dream. Tell me more so that I may remember better.’

‘September. The University of Miami student union.’

‘This remains a mystery to me.’

He laughed again, then continued.

‘Why should I remember this person?’

He giggled girlishly.

‘What reason do I have for remembering this person? Is she someone great, someone remarkable? Someone important, perhaps? I think not. Therefore there is no reason for Sadegh Rhotzbadegh to remember this person.’

Rhotzbadegh leaned backward in his chair, relaxing, folding his arms across his chest and grinning in a self-satisfied fashion.

Detective Barren breathed deeply and locked her eyes onto his. She waited a moment before speaking, talking in a low, even, harsh voice: ‘Because if you do not start remembering, I will personally rip your face off, right here, right now.’

Rhotzbadegh stiffened suddenly in his seat, immediately timid.

‘You cannot do this!’

‘Don’t try me.’

He bent forward, flexing his arm and showing Detective Barren the bulge of his arm muscles. ‘You think you have the strength …’

She interrupted, leaning forward eagerly.

‘What do you think?’

She watched his eyes as they tried to measure the depth of her intentions. She narrowed her own glance until she was staring through slits, her face set. Rhotzbadegh suddenly sobbed and covered his face.

‘I have nightmares,’ he said.

‘You damn well ought to,’ replied Detective Barren.

‘I see faces, people, but I cannot recall their names.’

‘I know who they are.’

Tears started to form in the corners of his eyes and he rubbed at them.

‘God is not with me. No longer, no longer. I am abandoned.’

‘Maybe he wasn’t so damn pleased with what you were doing.’

‘No! He told me!’

‘You misunderstood.’

Rhotzbadegh paused. He produced a tattered handkerchief from a pocket and blew his nose three times hard.

‘This,’ he said, in a tone suffused with despair, ‘is a possibility.’

He wiped his nose vigorously.

‘Still,’ he continued, ‘I will search him out again. I will learn his messages and find the true path. Then he will welcome me to his bosom in the garden, where I will reside for eternity.’

‘Great. I’m glad for you.’

He didn’t catch her sarcasm.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

Detective Barren reached down into her bag and pulled out a simple child’s schoolbox ruler. ‘Stick out your hand,’ she said. ‘Spread the fingers.’

Rhotzbadegh complied. She held the ruler up to his hand. The distance between thumb and index finger was five and three-quarter inches. Damn, she thought. He could have made the marks.

‘My hands reach out for God,’ he said.

‘Let me know if you manage to touch him.’ she said.

Rhotzbadegh looked about the room again. Then he pushed back his chair and rose. He walked over and placed his back firmly against one wall of the interview room. Then, counting loudly, he paced the distance across, bumping up against the opposite wall as he said twenty-one. He executed a military-style about-face and returned to his seat.

‘Twenty-one paces,’ he said, shaking his head as if in surprise. ‘Twenty-one full paces.’ He jumped up and leaped

to the wall across from Detective Barren. Then he stepped off that distance, walking past the detective without glancing down.

‘Nineteen paces!’

He returned again to his chair.

‘My cell measures only nine paces by eight paces. I feel sometimes as if my heart has been caged.’

He put his head in his hands and sobbed.

‘They will not let me into the yard with the other men,’ he whined. ‘They fear for my safety. They think that I will be executed. I cannot sleep at night. I cannot eat. I think my food tastes of poison. They have put something in the water to make me drowsy and then they will come and kill me. I have to fight them at every step.’

‘The girls?’

‘They are the worst. They come in my dreams and they help these men who would kill me.’

‘Who are they?’

‘I do not know …’

‘The hell you don’t! Think! Dammit, I want some answers.’

Rhotzbadegh lifted his nose in mock snobbery.

‘These are my dreams. I do not have to share them with you.’

Detective Barren stared hard at the little man but inwardly she sighed. Useless, she thought. His mind goes everywhere but where I want it. She reached down into her purse and took out a simple yearbook picture of her niece.