The Wrong Man

15

Each in his or her own way felt unease over the following days, almost as if a low-hanging cloud of deep gray fog had settled onto their lives. When Scott replayed the meeting with Michael O’Connell over again in his mind, it seemed curiously inconclusive one instant, then strangely decisive the next.

He told Ashley that he wanted to hear from her daily, just to make sure that things were okay, and so they set up a regular early-evening phone call. Ashley, even with her fiercely independent streak, had not objected. He was unaware that Sally had proposed precisely the same arrangement.

For her part, Sally suddenly found that nothing in her life seemed in order. It was a little as if she had become detached from all the anchors in her existence, with the single exception being Ashley, and even that was tenuous. The purpose for her daily phone calls to her daughter, she came to understand, had as much to do with regaining some sort of foothold on who she was herself as with being reassured that Ashley was okay. After all, she told herself, the incident with O’Connell was merely the sort of commonplace unpleasantness that all young people go through at some point.

But far more disturbing to her was the less-than-effective work she was doing in her law practice, and the growing tension between Hope and herself. Clearly, something was wrong, but she could not bring herself to focus on it. Instead, she threw herself into her various cases, but in a distracted, erratic way, where she would devote too much time to a small issue dogging one case, while ignoring large problems that shouted for attention in others.

Hope merely dragged herself through each day, wondering what was happening. Sally wouldn’t really fill her in, she couldn’t call Scott, and for the first time in all the years she and Sally had been together, she thought it was inappropriate for her to call Ashley. She threw herself into the team, as it pushed toward the play-offs, and into her counseling work with struggling underclassmen. She felt as if she were walking across shards of broken glass.

When Hope received an urgent message from the school’s dean of faculty, it took her by surprise. The command was cryptic: Be in my office at 2 p.m. Sharp.

Some thin, wispy clouds were scudding across a slate-colored sky as Hope hurried across the campus to be on time for her meeting. She could feel a sullen pre-winter cold creeping through the air. The dean’s office was in the main administration building, a remodeled, white Victorian home, with wide, brown wooden doors, and a fireplace in a reception area with a log burning. None of the students ever went there unless they were in deep trouble.

She pushed her way in, nodded to some of the office workers, and went up to the second floor, where the dean of faculty had his small office. He was a veteran of the school and still taught a section of Latin and a class in ancient Greek, clinging to classics that were increasingly unpopular.

“Dean Mitchell?” Hope said, peeking her head through his door. “You wanted to see me?”

In her time at the school, she had spoken with Stephen Mitchell perhaps a dozen times, maybe less. They had served on a committee or two together, in years past, and she knew he had happily attended a championship game she had coached, although his own preference was generally for the boys’ football team. She had always thought him to be funny, in a grumpy prep school, Mr. Chips sort of way, and never thought of him as judgmental-which was her standard for most people. If they could accept who she was, then she was willing to go more than the extra mile to accept them. It went with the territory of living an alternative lifestyle, which was the odious phrase used where Sally and she lived, and which she despised, because it seemed utterly devoid of romance.

“Ah, Hope, yes, yes, yes, please do come in.”

Dean Mitchell spoke with an antiquarian’s wondrously precise sense of words. No slang words or verbal shortcuts for him. He was known to write comments like I frequently despair for the intellectual future of the human race on student papers. He gestured toward a large red overstuffed leather wing chair in front of his desk. It was the sort of chair that swallowed one up, making Hope feel ridiculously small.

“I got your message,” Hope said. “How can I help you, Stephen?”

Dean Mitchell fumbled around for a moment, then spun and looked out the window, as if gathering himself to say something. She did not have long to wait.

“Hope, I believe we have a significant problem.”

“A problem?”

“Yes. Someone has lodged an extremely serious complaint against you.”

“A complaint? What sort of complaint?”

Dean Mitchell hesitated, as if already offended by what he had to say. He ran a hand through thin, gray hair, then adjusted his eyeglasses, before speaking in a heartbreaking tone, as if he were telling someone of a death in their family.

“It would fall under the unfortunate and common rubric of a sexual harassment complaint.”

At nearly the same time that Hope was seated across from Dean Mitchell and hearing the words that she had dreaded almost all of her adult life, Scott was finishing up a session with an upperclassman from his Revolutionary War Readings seminar. The student was struggling. “Don’t you see caution in Washington’s words?” Scott asked. “But at the same time, isn’t there a sense of determination?”

The student nodded. “It still seems too abstract. To deduce motive, opportunity. All the things that we believe Washington innately understood.”

Scott smiled. “You know, the temperature tonight is supposed to really drop down. Frost expected, maybe even some flurries of snow. Why don’t you take some of Washington’s letters outside and read them by flashlight, or even better yet, by candlelight, around midnight right in the middle of the quad. See if they make some additional sense to you then.”

The student smiled. “Seriously? Outside in the dark?”

“Absolutely. And, assuming you don’t catch pneumonia, because you should only take a single woolen blanket out there to keep you warm and you should wear shoes that have holes in the soles, we can continue this discussion, say, middle of the week. Okay?”

The phone on his desk rang and he picked up the receiver as the student’s back disappeared through the door. “Yes? Scott Freeman here.”

“Scott, this is William Burris down at Yale.”

“Hello, Professor. This is a surprise.”

Scott stiffened in his seat. In the world of teaching American history, receiving a call from William Burris was similar to getting a call from the heavens. Pulitzer Prize winner, bestselling author, seated at an endowed professorship at one of the nation’s leading institutions, and adviser, upon occasion, to presidents and other heads of state, Burris had impeccable credentials, with a taste for $2,000 Savile Row suits, which he had custom-made when he lectured at Oxford or Cambridge, or anywhere that could meet his six-figure fee.

“Yes, it has been some time, hasn’t it? When did we last meet? At some society meeting or another?” Burris meant one of the many historical societies that Scott was a member of, and all of which would kill to have Burris list his name on their roster.

“A couple of years, I would imagine. How are you, Professor?”

“Fine, fine,” Burris replied. Scott pictured him seated, gray-haired and imperious, in an office much like his own, except considerably bigger, with a secretary taking messages from agents, producers, editors, kings, and prime ministers, and shooing away students. “Yes, I am fine, even with the looming despair of a pair of losses by the football team to the evil empires of both Princeton and Harvard, an awful possibility this year.”

“Perhaps Admissions can come up with an improved quarterback for next year?”

“One would hope. But, ah, Scott, that is not the purpose of this call.”

“I did not think so. What can I do for you, Professor?”

“Do you recall a piece you wrote for us at the Journal of American History some three years ago? The subject was military movement in the days directly after the battles of Trenton and Princeton, when Washington made so many key and, dare I say it, prescient decisions?”

“Of course, Professor.” Scott did not publish much, and this essay had been particularly helpful at influencing his own department not to cut back on the American history core courses.

“It was a fine piece, Scott,” Burris said slowly. “Evocative and provocative.”

“Thank you. But I fail to see what-”

“The work, ah, the writing, ah, did you have any, ah, outside assistance on formulating your themes and conclusions?”

“I’m not sure that I understand, Professor.”

“The work, the writing, it was all your own? And the research, as well?”

“Yes. I had a student assistant or two, mostly seniors, help with some of the citations. But the writing and the conclusions were my own. I don’t understand what you are driving at, Professor.”

“There has been a most unfortunate allegation made in regard to that piece.”

“An allegation?”

“Yes. A charge of academic dishonesty.”

“What?”

“Plagiarism, Scott. I’m most sorry to say.”

“But that’s absurd!”

“The allegation in front of us cites some troubling similarities between your piece and a paper written in a graduate seminar at another institution.”

Scott took a deep breath. Instantly dizziness circled around him, and he grasped the edge of his desk as if to steady himself.

“Who has made this complaint?”

“Therein lies a problem,” Burris replied. “It came to me electronically, and it was anonymous.”

“Anonymous!”

“But regardless of its authorship, it cannot be ignored. Not in the current academic climate. And certainly not in the public’s eye. The newspapers are voracious when it comes to misdeeds or missteps in the academy. Likely, I hesitate to say, to jump to many erroneous conclusions, in a most embarrassing and ultimately incredibly damaging fashion. So, it would seem to me that the best approach here is to nip this allegation in the bud. Assuming, of course, that you can find your notes and go over every line, chapter, and verse, so that the Journal is satisfied that the allegations are incorrect.”

“Of course, but…,” Scott sputtered. He was almost at a loss for words.

“We must, in this day of rampant second-guessing and dreadful microscopic analysis, seem purer than Lot’s wife, alas.”

“I know, but…,” Scott was stammering.

“I will send you by overnight courier the complaint and the actual verbiage. And then, I suspect, we should speak again.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“And, Scott”-the professor’s voice was even, suddenly cold and almost devoid of tone and energy-“I do hope that we can work all this out privately. But, please, do not underestimate the threat involved. I say this to you as a friend, and as a fellow historian. I’ve seen once promising careers destroyed for far less. Far, far less.” The emphasis in the final words was unnecessary, but undeniably true.

Scott nodded. Friend was not a word he would have used, because when word inevitably got out in academic circles about this charge, he was likely to have none left.

Sally was staring out of the window at the dropping light of the late afternoon. She was in that odd state where a great deal was on her mind, and yet she wasn’t specifically thinking about anything. There was a knock at her door and she spun about to see an office assistant standing sheepishly in the portal, a large white envelope in her hand.

“Sally,” the assistant said, “this just came by courier for you. I wonder if it isn’t something important…”

Sally could think of no pleading nor any other document that she was expecting to arrive in such urgent fashion, but she nodded. “Who is it from?”

“The state bar association.”

Sally took the envelope and looked at it oddly, turning it over in her hand. She could not recall when she had received something from the association, other than dues requests and invitations to dinners, seminars, and speeches that she never attended. None of these ever came by overnight mail, return receipt required.

She tore open the package and removed a single letter. Addressed to her, it came from the head of the state bar, a man she knew only by reputation, a prominent member of a big-time Boston law firm, active in Democratic Party circles with frequent appearances on television talk shows and in newspaper society pages. He was, Sally knew, way out of her league.

She read the short letter carefully. Each second that passed seemed to darken the room around her.

Dear Ms. Freeman-Richards:

This is to inform you of a complaint received by the State Bar Association regarding your handling of the client accounts in the pending matter of Johnson v. Johnson, currently before Judge V. Martinson in Superior Court, Family Division.

The complaint states that funds associated with this matter have been diverted into a private account in your name. This is a violation ofM.G.L. 302, Section 43, and is also a felony under U.S.S. 112, Section 11.

Please be advised that the Bar Association will need your sworn affidavit explaining this matter within the week, or it will be referred to the Hampshire County District Attorney’s Office and to the United States Attorney for the Western District of Massachusetts for prosecution.

Sally thought each word of the letter was caught in her throat, choking her like some wayward piece of meat. “Impossible,” she said out loud. “Absolutely fucking impossible.”

The obscenity clattered around in the room. Sally took a deep breath and spun to her computer. Typing rapidly, she brought up the divorce action cited in the letter from the bar association head. Johnson v. Johnson was not by any description one of her more complicated cases, although it was marred by real animosity between her client, the wife, and her estranged husband. He was a local eye surgeon, father of their two preteen children, a serial cheater, whom Sally had caught trying to move joint assets into an offshore, Bahamas bank account. He had done this particularly clumsily, taking out large cash amounts from their jointly held brokerage account, then charging plane tickets to the Bahamas on his Visa card, in order to get the extra mileage. Sally had successfully moved the court to seize assets and transfer them into her client account pending the final dissolution of the marriage, which was scheduled for sometime after Christmas. By her reckoning, the client account should have had somewhere in excess of $400,000 in it.

It did not.

She stared at the screen and saw that there was less than half that amount.

“That can’t be,” she said, again out loud.

As close to panic as she had ever been, Sally started to go over every transaction in that account. In the past few days more than a quarter million had been extracted through electronic means and transferred to nearly a dozen other accounts. She was unable to access these dozen through the computer, as they were in a series of different names, both of individuals whom she did not recognize and clearly questionable corporations. She also, to her growing anxiety, saw that the last transfer from her client account was made directly into her own checking account. It was for $15,000 and was dated barely twenty-four hours beforehand.

“That cannot be,” she repeated. “How…”

She stopped, right at that second, because the answer to that question was likely to be complicated, and she had no ready answer. All she knew, right at that moment, was that she was likely to be in a great deal of trouble.

“There’s something I just don’t quite get.”

“What’s that?” she asked patiently.

“The why for Michael O’Connell’s love. I mean, he kept saying he loved her, but what had he done in any way, shape, or form that came close to anything that anyone would understand as love?”

“Not too damn much, right?”

“Right. Makes me think that there was something far different on his mind.”

“You may be correct about that,” she replied, as distant, yet as seductive, as always.

She hesitated and, as she often did, seemed to pause to organize her thoughts cautiously. I sensed that she wanted to control the story, but in a way that I couldn’t quite see. This made me shift about uncomfortably. I felt I was being used for something.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that I should give you the name of a man who might help in this regard. A psychologist. He is an expert on obsessive love.” She hesitated again. “Of course, that’s what we call it, but in reality, it has little to do with love. We think of love as roses on Valentine’s Day or maybe greeting-card sentiments. Chocolates in red, heart-shaped boxes, cherubic cupids with wings and tiny bows and arrows, Hollywood romance. But I think it has little to do with any of those things. Love is really much closer to all sorts of dark things within us.”

“You sound cynical,” I said. “And callous.”

She smiled. “I suppose I sound that way. Coming to know someone like Michael O’Connell can, shall we say, give one a different perspective on what precisely constitutes happiness. As I’ve said, he redefined things for folks.”

She shook her head. She reached down to a table and opened a small drawer, rummaging around for an instant or two, before coming out with a small piece of paper and a pencil. “Here.” She wrote down a name. “Talk to this man. Tell him I sent you.”

She put her head back and laughed, although nothing was funny. “And tell him that I waive any conflict-of-interest or physician-client privilege. No, better yet”-she wrote something down swiftly on the piece of paper-“I’ll do that myself.”