Free The Traveller by John Katzenbach Page A

counts off and pronouncing the
    maximum term. The years were adding up swiftly and
    suddenly the judge concluded and the two defense attorneys
    stepped aside, replaced instantly by two immense prison
    guards who firmly and deliberately began to lead Sadegh
    Rhotzbadegh from the courtroom. She heard the judge
    declare a recess and disappear, black robe blurring,
    through a side door. The reporters were on their feet around
    her, and there were questions and answers flooding the air.
    One family pushed by, shaking their heads. Another
    stopped to inveigh against the system. Detective Barren
    saw the prosecutors shaking hands with a grinning Detective Perry. Then she stepped forward and watched the
    Lebanese student. He was almost to the prisoner’s exit
    when he stopped and turned, eyes searching. They met
    with Detective Barren’s, and they locked together for an
    instant. For the first time his eyes seemed, not scared, but
    filled with sadness. The two people looked at each other.
    He shook his head vigorously, as if trying to insist, trying
    to pass some negative of importance. She saw him mouth
    a word or two but wasn’t sure what they were.
    And then he disappeared. Swallowed up. She heard the door slam shut and lock.
    She felt, then, a complete emptiness.
    At first she did everything to excess. Accustomed to an easy two-mile run on the beach in the mornings, she upped it to five miles in forty-five minutes, aching and panting with lost breath in the aftermath. At work she pursued every aspect of each of her cases two or three times, precision and exactitude a comfort to her. She began to drink more, too, finding sleep elusive unless aided. A friend offered her Valium, but she used what she thought ruefully was the remainder of her good sense to turn down the drugs. She recognized that she was behaving exotically, desperately, and knew also that she was in trouble. Her dreams, when she could sleep, were fitful, filled with the Lebanese student, or Susan, or her own dead husband. Sometimes she saw the face of the man who’d shot her, sometimes her father, who looked at her curiously, tearfully, as if saddened, even in death.
    She hated the idea that it was over. She knew the procedure. Sadegh Rhotzbadegh would be sent to the classification center in mid-Florida, where he would get his physical and mental examinations. Then, in due course, he would be shipped up to the maximum-security unit at Raiford, to begin his prison life, begin living out his days.
    That he lived dismayed her.
    In her mind’s eye she replayed over and again the small shrug that had passed between them, trying to decipher, amidst the confusion and terror and madness, what he’d meant with that final shaking of the head. She would lie in bed at night, thinking. She would slow it, like fancy television camerawork, trying to separate each motion into a whole. His head bent first to the right, then the left, his mouth opening, words formed, but evaporating in the noise.
    She took to spending time each weekend on the police
    range. It gave her some satisfaction to sharpen her skills
    with the standard issue .38 Police Special. The sensation as
    the weapon bucked and thrust in her hand was sensual,
    relaxing. She purchased a Browning 9-millimeter semiautomatic. a large, violent gun, and grew proficient with that,
    too. She went to Lieutenant Burns and requested a transfer out of crime-scene analysis and back to the street. ‘I’d like to go back on patrol duty.’
    What?’
    “Take a regular shift. Maybe a beat.’
    ‘No chance.’
    “This is an official request.’
    ‘So? I should let you go out there and blow some purse snatcher away? You think I’m crazy? Request denied. If you want to go above my head, fine. If you want to go to the union, fine, but the bottom line’s gonna stay the same.’
    “I want out.’
    ‘No, you don’t. You want peace. I can’t give you that. Only time can.’
    But she knew none. She called Detective