The Wrong Man

16

Ashley moved away from the window cautiously, just as she had every day for more than two weeks.

She was unaware of what was taking place with the three people who constituted her family, focused instead on the near constant sensation that she was being watched. The problem was, every time the feeling threatened to overcome her, she could find no concrete evidence to support it. A quick and sudden turn while walking to a class or to her job at the museum turned up nothing except some surprised and inconvenienced pedestrians behind her. She had taken to darting onto the T just as the train doors were closing, then intensely eyeing all the other passengers as if the old lady reading the Herald or the workman in the battered Red Sox cap could be O’Connell in some elaborate disguise. At home, she edged to the corner of the window in her apartment and peered up and down her street. She listened at her door for some telltale noise before exiting. She started varying her route when she went out, even if only heading to the grocery store or pharmacy. She purchased a telephone with caller ID and added the same service to her cell phone. She spoke to her neighbors, asking them if any of them had noticed anything out of the ordinary or, in particular, if they had seen a man fitting Michael O’Connell’s description hanging around the entranceway or by the street corner or maybe in back. None were able to help, in that none could recall seeing anyone like him acting suspiciously.

But the more she tried to force herself to imagine that Michael O’Connell wasn’t anywhere near her, the closer he actually seemed to be.

She could not put her finger on something concrete and say out loud, “That’s him,” but dozens of small things, telltale signs, told her that he was neither out of her life nor really keeping much distance. She came home to her apartment one day and discovered that someone had scratched a large X in the paint on her door, probably using nothing more sophisticated than a penknife or even a spare key. On another occasion, her mailbox had been opened, and her paltry pile of bills, flyers, credit card offers, and catalogs had been strewn about the foyer.

At the museum where she worked, items on her desk kept being moved. One day the phone would be at her right hand, the next, shifted to her left. One day she came in and found the top drawer locked-something she never did, because she didn’t keep anything remotely valuable inside.

Both at work and at her home, her phone would often ring once or twice, then stop. When she picked it up, it buzzed with a dial tone. And when she checked the caller identification, it came up with either a “private party” notation or a number she didn’t recognize. She tried hitting*69 several times to redial the incoming call, but each time got a busy signal or electronic interference.

She was unsure what to do. In her daily phone calls with both Sally and Scott, she described some of these things, but not all, because some seemed simply too bizarre to mention. Others seemed to be the sort of ordinary mishaps that plague life-such as when the professor in one of her graduate courses was unable to access her undergraduate transcript electronically, and computer services at her college were unable to discover why a series of blocks were on her files. They removed these, but only after considerable effort.

When Ashley rocked in her chair alone in her apartment, watching the night close in outside, she thought that everything was O’Connell and nothing was O’Connell. With her uncertainty came frustration, followed by outright anger.

After all, she kept insisting to herself, he had given his word. She kept telling herself this, even if she didn’t really believe one word of it. And the more she thought about it, the less reassuring it was.

Scott spent a restless night waiting for the package from Professor Burris at Yale to arrive by courier. Few things are more dangerous to an academic career than a charge of plagiarism, and Scott knew that he had to move swiftly and efficiently. His first step had been to find the box in his basement at home where he had stored all his notes for the piece for The Journal of American History. Then he had sent e-mail messages to the two students whom he’d enlisted three years earlier to help with the citations and research. He was lucky to have a contact address for both. He did not specify exactly what he had been accused of when he wrote them. He merely said that a fellow historian had asked some questions about the piece he’d authored, and he might need to rely upon their recollections of their work. It was just an effort to put them on alert, as he waited for the material in dispute to arrive on his doorstep.

It was all he could do.

He was at his desk at the college when the overnight deliveryman arrived, carrying a large envelope for Scott. He signed for it quickly and was just tearing into the envelope when the phone rang.

“Professor Freeman?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Ted Morris over at the college newspaper.”

Scott hesitated. “Are you in one of my classes, Mr. Morris? If so…”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

“I’m quite busy. But what is it I can help you with?”

He could sense some reluctance in the momentary pause before the student replied.

“We have received a tip, an allegation really, and I’m just following it up.”

“A tip?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure that I follow,” Scott said, but this was a lie, because he knew exactly what was coming.

“There is an allegation, Professor, that you are engaged in a, well, for lack of a better phrase, an issue of academic integrity.” Ted Morris was being careful about what he said.

“Who told you that?”

“Ah, is that relevant, sir?”

“Well, it might be.”

“Apparently it came from a disgruntled graduate student at a Southern university. But that’s about all I can tell you.”

“I don’t know that I know any graduate students at any schools down South,” Scott said with a little false levity in his voice. “But ‘disgruntled’ is a description that unfortunately applies to just about every grad student at some point in their academic career. It pretty much goes with the territory, don’t you think, Ted?” He dropped the formal Mr. from the student’s name, just to underscore their respective roles. He had authority and power-or, at the very least, he wanted Ted Morris at the campus newspaper to think this.

Ted Morris paused and, to Scott’s immediate dismay, wouldn’t be distracted.

“But the question in front of us is simple. Have you been accused-”

“No one has accused me of anything. At least not that I know of,” Scott scrambled quickly. “Nothing that isn’t completely routine in academic circles-”

Scott took a long breath. He guessed that Ted Morris was writing down every word.

“I understand, Professor. Routine. But still, I think I should come speak with you in person.”

“I’m pretty busy. But I have office hours on Friday. Come by then.”

That would give him several days.

“We’re under some deadline pressure here, Professor.”

“I can’t help you on that. I’ve always discovered that rushed things are inevitably confused or, worse, erroneous.”

This was a bluff. But he needed to put off the student on the phone.

“Okay, Friday. And, Professor, one other thing.”

“What’s that, Ted?” he said with his most condescending voice.

“You should know that I string for the Globe and the Times. ”

Scott swallowed hard. “Well,” he said, affecting as much phony enthusiasm as he could, “that’s excellent. There are many fine stories on this campus that those papers should be interested in. Well, see you on Friday, then,” Scott said, hoping that he had deflected and obscured enough so that the student would simply wait until Friday before calling the city desk at either paper and with a few short words explode Scott’s entire career.

He hung up the telephone thinking that he had never thought he would be scared, no, terrified, of the sound of a student’s voice. Then he quickly bent to the material from Professor Burris, anxiety filling him as he read every word.

Hope went into the ladies’ room adjacent to the Admissions Office, knowing it was likely to be the one place on campus where she could be alone for a few moments. As the door shut behind her, she gave in to the turmoil within her and burst out in a deep, unbridled sob of despair.

The accusation against her had arrived at the dean’s office via an anonymous e-mail, claiming that Hope had cornered a student in a steamy section of the women’s locker room, just outside the showers, when the student was alone after a sports practice. The e-mail described how Hope had fondled the young woman’s breasts and reached for her crotch, while all the time whispering to the fifteen-year-old about the many advantages of sex with a woman. When the teenager had resisted the advances, Hope had threatened to manipulate the student’s grades if she ever complained to any authorities or to her parents. The e-mail ended by urging the school administration to “take whatever appropriate means necessary” to avoid a lawsuit, and perhaps criminal prosecution. It used such words as predatory and statutory rape along with homosexual enlistment to describe Hope’s behavior.

Not one word of it was true. Not one moment described in such near pornographic detail had ever occurred.

Hope doubted the truth would help her in the slightest.

The ugly recitation of events played into all sorts of fears and wild, uninformed suppositions. It played to the worst in people, with coarse description and frightening images.

That it never happened, that she had no idea who the young woman was, that she made it a point never to enter the women’s locker room at the gym without another faculty member present for precisely this reason, that she always carried herself with nunlike integrity whenever anything even vaguely sexual in nature came up at the school, and that she was careful never to flaunt her relationship with Sally-all suddenly meant nothing.

That the complaint was anonymous also meant nothing. Rumor and innuendo would fly around the school, and people would spend their time trying to guess who it had happened to, not whether it had ever happened. In a high school or private school setting, nothing is as explosive as allegations of illicit sexual behavior. A reasoned, cautious assessment of the charges would never take place, Hope knew. And her denials, forcefully delivered to the dean, probably wouldn’t mean much. She worried, too, what the reaction would be in the community that she and Sally considered their home. Other women in partnerships like theirs would likely rally vocally and angrily to her cause. She could imagine rallies and speeches and newspaper articles and demonstrations outside the gates of her school, all ostensibly on her behalf. Many women like Hope hated being stigmatized and would want to stand up and refuse to be ignored. This was inevitable. And, she suspected, it would destroy any chance she had of quietly extricating herself from the situation.

She went over to the sink and splashed cold water on her face over and over, as if she could somehow wash away what might happen to her. She did not want to be anyone’s cause, and she didn’t want to lose the trust of the students that she had spent so many years building.

She had told the dean, “None of this happened. Nothing like this has ever taken place. How can I prove my innocence without names, dates, times, all that sort of information?”

He had agreed with her and had agreed, for the time being, to keep the allegation under wraps, although by necessity he was going to have to discuss it with the head of the school and maybe even inform the chairman of the board of trustees. Hope knew rumors were inevitable. She had started to say this, but then stopped, because she understood there was little she could do. The dean suggested she continue with ordinary school behavior until additional information became available. “Keep coaching, Hope,” Dean Mitchell had said. “Win the league championship. Keep all your scheduled counseling appointments with students, but…” Then he’d hesitated.

“But what?” Hope had asked.

“Keep the door open at all times.”

Staring at her red-rimmed eyes in the bathroom mirror, Hope had never in her life felt so vulnerable. She exited the bathroom, understanding that the world she had thought was safe had become incredibly dangerous.

Sally scrambled to make sense of the documents in front of her, all the time feeling as if the heat in the room had increased, sweat dripping from her, as if she were in the midst of an aggressive workout.

There was little doubt in her mind that someone had managed to acquire her electronic password and had subsequently wreaked havoc with her client account. She was furious with herself for not making the password more difficult to decipher. The case in question was a divorce, so she had come up with DIVLAW. By contacting security officers at the various banks that had received the deposits ripped from the supposedly sacrosanct client account, she was able to restore the greater part of the money, or at least put it in a freeze so that no one could access it. The banks had agreed to put electronic traps on some of the funds, so that anyone trying to withdraw any amount either through the computer or in person would be traced. But she was not completely successful at manipulating the money. Several transactions had been put through a dizzying series of deposits and withdrawals, ultimately disappearing into an offshore bank account that Sally could not penetrate, and when she called the banks, they were less sympathetic to her tale of identity theft than she would have hoped.

Her instinct was to hire her own lawyer, but she held off on this for the moment. Instead, she took the entirety of the home-equity line of credit that she had on the house she shared with Hope and deposited that amount back into the client account, zeroing it out, while at the same time putting herself, and her unwary partner, into significant debt. It would take some months, she thought, to earn the income to undo the financial damage that had taken place, but, she hoped, at least for the interim she was safe.

She drafted a letter to the state bar association carefully. It outlined some of the transactions and said that they were performed by an unknown party, but that she had restored the client account out of her own funds and, in concert with the bank, rendered it safe from another electronic assault. She hoped that this letter would forestall any action by a prosecutor, or state bar investigation, at least until she determined who had done this to her. She thought of requesting information about who had complained to the bar association, but, she knew, until they had decided to pursue the matter themselves, they weren’t going to tell her how the complaint had arrived at their offices. So she was destined to be kept in the dark for some time to come.

Sally had never really thought of herself as a particularly tough-minded lawyer. Her strongest suit was mediation, getting opposing sides to agree. She hated those moments where compromise was no longer a possibility.

But when she wheeled around in her office chair, staring at the printed-out piles of paper transactions that littered her desktop, she felt nothing but despair. Whoever had done this, she thought, must truly hate me.

That posed a question that she was reluctant to ask, because no one manages to have a viable legal practice, especially handling the dissolutions of marriages, custody cases, and small-time criminal actions, without making some enemies. Most merely bluster and complain. Some take additional steps.

But who? she asked herself.

It had been many months since someone had angrily threatened her, at least in any sort of credible way. The thought that there might be someone out in the world with the patience and the ability to plan an attack against her made her bite down hard on her bottom lip.

Sally leaned back, swiveling about, and realized that she was going to have to tell Hope about what had happened. She was unsure about doing this. There had been so much tension between them, and now, suddenly, they were in significant financial stress.

It did occur to her to call the police, because, after all, a robbery had taken place.

But this went against the grain for her, as it would many attorneys. And until she knew more or had a better picture of who had done this and why this had happened, she really didn’t want a detective crawling all over a case file.

Sort it out, she told herself. Sort it out by yourself.

Sally grabbed her briefcase, stuffed as many papers into it as she could, and abruptly rose, moving rapidly out the door, grabbing her overcoat as she went. The offices had emptied out, and she locked up, then moved quickly through the stairwell and out to the street. For an instant, the cold air seemed to confuse her, and she lifted her hand to her forehead as if she were suddenly dizzy. In that second she could not even remember where she had parked her car. The world swirled around her, and she inhaled sharply once, almost as if she were having a panic attack. Her fists balled up and she felt a sudden jab of pain. Her heart was racing in her chest, her temples throbbing, and she seized a nearby wall to steady herself.

Sally told herself to be orderly, to be organized. Get control, she insisted.

Her car was where it always was, in the parking garage. She buttoned her coat and slowed her breathing to normal, feeling the pressure in her chest and in the pit of her stomach diminish. But as she regained control over all the sensations that had threatened to overcome her, she felt suddenly as if she were no longer alone. She spun about, but the sidewalk was empty, save for the few students crawling in and out of a nearby coffee shop. The traffic on the main street of town was moving along normally. A bus whooshed its air brakes as it settled into the stop across the street in front of an old theater. Everything she could see was as it should be. Everything was in place, settled and normal.

Only nothing was.

She took another deep breath and moved off steadily toward the garage. A part of her wanted to run, and it was all she could do to keep from breaking into a trot, as the evening darkness slid over her and wan light from streetlights and storefronts carved out small sanctuaries against the growing night.

“You know, even with this so-called release, and a signed one at that, I’m a little uncomfortable speaking of things told to me in confidence.”

“That’s your prerogative,” I said, filled with false generosity. “I completely understand your position.” In my words, I was trying to install the exact opposite suggestion.

“Do you?” he asked.

The psychologist was a small, impish sort, with curly hair streaked with gray that swirled haphazardly around his collar as if attached to odd and conflicted ideas hidden inside his scalp. He wore glasses that gave him a slightly buglike appearance, and he had a curious mannerism. He would finish speaking an idea, then wave his hand in the air to punctuate the words.

“After all,” he continued, “I’m not sure that the impact that Michael O’Connell had on these people has yet been fully realized.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

He sighed. “I think one way you can consider this is to think of him entering their lives in much the same way as an auto accident, perhaps one caused by a drunk driver. A moment of loss, a moment of fear, a moment of conflict, however you want to see it. But the residue lasts for years, perhaps even forever. Lives changed. Ashes and agony for a very long time. That’s what you’re looking at, in this case.”

“But-”

“I just don’t know if I can speak about it,” he said abruptly. “Some things said in this office need to be sacrosanct, even if I support your telling the story. Although I’m not sure that I do. Haven’t really thought it through. And I sure as hell would hate to say one thing or another and then suddenly get a subpoena from some authorities, or have to open my door to a couple of Columbo-type detectives in ill-fitting suits, and playing a whole helluva lot dumber than they really are. Sorry.”

I sighed, not really knowing whether to be frustrated or respectful. He gave a wide smile and shrugged.

“Well,” I said, “so that my trip here isn’t an entire waste, can you at least explain to me some of the ins and outs of O’Connell’s obsessive love with Ashley?”

The psychologist snorted, suddenly angry. “Love. Love! My God, what had it to do with that word? There is one thing you need to know about the psychological makeup of a Michael O’Connell. It is about possession. ”

“Yes,” I said, “I suppose I can see that. But what did he get? It wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about desire. It wasn’t passion. And yet, in a way, it seems, from what I know so far, that it was about all those things.”

He leaned back in his chair, then rocked forward abruptly.

“You’re being far too literal,” he said. “A bank robbery says something concrete. Perhaps even the drug deal, or shooting the late-night clerk at the convenience store. Serial killing and repetitive rapes. Those sorts of crimes are far more easily defined. This was not. Michael O’Connell’s proclaimed love was a crime about identity. And thus, became something far greater, far more profound. Far more devastating.”

I nodded. I was about to say something else, but he waved his hand in that way that I’d already seen, quieting me.

“Actually, another thing you need to always keep in mind,” he said hesitantly. “You must also understand that Michael O’Connell was…” he took a second to breathe in deeply “…relentless.”