The Wrong Man

26

From the center of the Longfellow Bridge he could see up the Charles toward Cambridge. It was brisk in the early morning, but crews were rowing down the center of the river, their oars sweeping through the inky dark in unison, making small swirls in the placid surface. A sheen was on the water as the rising light scoured the liquid. He could hear the crews grunting in syncopation, their rhythm defined by the steady beat of the coxswain’s voice. He particularly liked the way the smallest man set the pace, how the slightest of the team ordered the larger, stronger men to his command. The least was the most important; he was the only one who could see where they were going, and he controlled the steering. O’Connell liked to think that even though he was strong enough to pull an oar, he was also smart enough to sit in the stern with the rudder.

Michael O’Connell often went to the walkway across the bridge when he needed to think through a complicated problem. The traffic moved recklessly on the roadway. Pedestrians kept up their get-to-the-office pace across the sidewalk. Beneath him the water flowed seaward, and in the distance, T trains filled with commuters emerged from beneath the streets. It seemed to O’Connell that he was the only one standing still. A hundred things common to the city morning should have distracted him, but he found that where he stood, he could concentrate fully on whatever dilemma was in his life.

He thought: I have two.

Ashley.

And the ex-cop Murphy.

Clearly, the route to Ashley passed through either Scott or Sally. It was simply a matter of finding it, and he was confident he could do so. The obstacle, however, was the ex-cop, who posed a far more significant problem. He licked his lips, still tasting the blood in his mouth, feeling the swelling from where he’d been slapped. But the redness and welts faded much faster than his memory. As soon as O’Connell surfaced close to the parents, they would sic the private eye on him. And he was uncertain just how dangerous the ex-cop would be. Somewhat less dire than his threats, O’Connell thought. He reminded himself of a simple, critical fact: In all his dealings with Ashley and her family, he needed to be the one capable of power. If there was to be violence, it had to be in his control. Murphy’s presence shifted that balance, and he didn’t like it.

He reached out and gripped the ornate concrete barrier with both hands, to steady himself. Fury was like a drug, coming on him in waves, turning everything in his sight into a kaleidoscope of emotions. For an instant he stared down at the dark river passing beneath his feet and doubted that even its near-freezing temperatures could cool him down. He breathed out slowly, controlling his rage. Anger was his friend, but he couldn’t let it work against him. He told himself, Stay focused.

The first order of business was to remove Murphy from the picture.

He did not think this would be difficult. A little dicey, but not impossible. Not as easy as what he had done with a few computer strokes to Scott and Sally and Hope, just to let them know who they were dealing with. But not beyond him by any means.

Michael O’Connell looked out across the water and saw one of the crews come to a rest. The shell sliced through the water, driven by momentum, while each rower slumped slightly over his oar, dragging the blades behind them. He liked the way the shell continued, driven by exertion, propelled by nothing more than the memory of muscle. It was like a razor slicing across the surface of the river, and he thought he was much the same.

He spent much of the day and the first part of the evening keeping watch on the office building where Murphy had his practice. Michael O’Connell had been pleased from the first moment that he’d set eyes upon it; the building was shopworn and shabby and lacked many of the modern security devices that might have made what he had in mind more difficult. O’Connell smiled to himself; if this wasn’t his first rule, it should have been: Always use their weaknesses and make them into your strengths.

He had used three different locations for his surveillance. His car, parked midway down the block; a Spanish grocery store on the corner; and a Christian Science Reading Room almost directly across from the building. He’d had one bad moment when he had emerged from this last location and Murphy had stepped that moment out the front door of his office.

Like any detective, practiced in safety, he had instantly turned right and left, peered up and down the street and across the roadway. O’Connell had felt a single fear pierce him, a cold sensation that he would be recognized.

He had known, in that instant, if he turned away, if he ducked into a building, if he froze and tried to hide, Murphy would make him instantly.

So, instead, he forced himself to idly walk down the street, making no effort of any sort to conceal himself, heading toward the corner store, just hunching his shoulders up, turning his head a little to the side so that his profile wouldn’t be obvious, not looking back once, only lifting his right hand and adjusting his jacket collar, to obscure his face until he reached the bodega door. As soon as he was inside, however, he shoved himself to the side and peered out the window, to see what Murphy was doing.

Then he laughed softly. The detective was walking steadily away.

As if he didn’t have a care in the entire world, O’Connell thought, as he watched a seemingly unconcerned Murphy pace down the block and turn toward a parking lot. Or maybe he’s just walking along with all the arrogance of someone who knows he can’t be touched.

Recognition, O’Connell thought, is about context. When you expect to see someone, you will. When you don’t, you won’t. He or she becomes invisible.

Murphy would never imagine that O’Connell had rather easily tracked the detective to his workplace. Murphy would never imagine that in his pocket Michael O’Connell had the detective’s home address and telephone number. Murphy would never imagine that after delivering a beating that O’Connell would follow him out to western Massachusetts. All these things were beyond him, O’Connell thought. And that is why he couldn’t see me, even though I was standing barely twenty yards away from him.

He thought he was finished with me.

O’Connell went back to his car, where he waited and watched, taking time to note when the other few office workers emerged from the building for the evening. One of them was probably Murphy’s secretary. He watched this woman heading in the same direction as the detective had earlier, toward the parking lot. Not nice, O’Connell thought, making the wage slave do the locking up in the evening. Especially someone not really trained in the art of making doors truly secure. After a moment, he turned on the ignition of his car and carefully pulled out, timing his exit to match with hers.

Within forty-eight hours, Michael O’Connell felt he’d acquired enough information to take the next step, which he knew was going to bring him much closer to the freedom to pursue Ashley.

He now knew, within reason, when each of the other offices in Murphy’s building closed up for the night. He knew that the last person to leave each day was the office manager for the counseling center across from Murphy, who merely locked up the front door with a single key. The lawyer who occupied the ground floor had only one paralegal. O’Connell suspected the lawyer was cheating on his wife, because he and the paralegal left together arm in arm, wearing the unmistakable glow of a couple who’d engaged in something illicit. O’Connell liked to think that they were having sex down on the floor, writhing away on some dirty, threadbare carpet. Fantasizing about the locations, the positions, and even the passion helped him pass time.

He didn’t know much about Murphy’s secretary, but he’d acquired a few bits and pieces about her. She was in her early sixties and widowed. She lived alone, a dowdy woman in a dowdy life, accompanied only by two pugs, whom he’d learned were named Mister Big and Beauty. She was devoted to the dogs.

O’Connell had trailed the secretary into a Stop amp; Shop supermarket. It had been easy enough to engage her in a little conversation when she stopped in front of the dog food section.

“Excuse me, ma’am, I wonder if you might help me out… My girlfriend has just adopted a small dog, and I wanted to get some real gourmet pet food, but there are so many to choose from. Do you know much about dogs?”

He suspected that she walked away a few minutes later, thinking, What a nice, polite young man.

Michael O’Connell had parked two blocks away from Murphy’s building, in the opposite direction from the parking lot that all the people who worked there seemed to frequent. It was a quarter before five and he had everything he needed packed in a cheap duffel bag concealed in the trunk. He breathed in and out rapidly, a little like a swimmer preparing to mount the starting block, calming himself.

One tricky moment, he told himself. Then the rest should be easy.

O’Connell exited the car, double-checked to make sure that the meter he had parked at was filled to capacity, then quick-marched toward his target.

At the end of the block, he paused, letting the first shafts of darkness creep around him. The New England night drops abruptly in the first days of November, seeming to pass from day to midnight in a matter of moments. It is an unsettled hour of the day, the time when he was most comfortable.

It was just a matter of getting inside without being seen, especially by Murphy or his secretary. He took another deep breath, placed Ashley firmly in his mind, reminded himself that she would be much closer by the end of the night, and moved rapidly down the street. A lamp blinked on behind him. He considered himself invisible; no one knew, expected, or imagined that he would be there.

When he reached the front door, O’Connell saw the small hallway inside was empty. Within a second, he was inside.

He could hear a whooshing sound as the elevator descended toward him. He immediately walked across the hallway into the emergency stairwell, closing the door behind him just as the elevator arrived. He pushed himself against a wall, trying to imagine the people on the other side of the solid steel. He thought he could hear voices. As sweat ran down under his arms, he imagined Murphy’s unmistakable tones, then his secretary’s.

Need to feed those pugs, he said to himself. Time to get going.

He heard the front door close.

O’Connell looked down at his watch. Come on, he whispered. Day is done. Counseling-center office manager, it’s your turn.

He pushed himself back against the wall and waited. The stairwell wasn’t a particularly good place to hide. But he knew this night it would serve his purposes. Just another sign, he thought to himself, that he was destined to be with Ashley. It was as if she were helping him to find her. We were meant to be together. He moderated his rapid breathing and closed his eyes, letting the patience of obsession overwhelm him, his mind blank except for memories of Ashley.

In his life, Michael O’Connell had broken into a number of empty stores, an occasional house, more than a few factories, and other places of business. He was confident in his expertise as he sat on the cold stairs and waited. He had not even taken the trouble to prepare some sort of wild-eyed story should someone have found him there. He knew that he was safe. O’Connell understood that love was protecting him.

It was nearly seven when he heard the last creaking noise from the elevator. He paused, bending his head toward the sound, and suddenly the world around him descended into darkness. The office manager had hit the master light switches next to the elevator. He heard the front door open, close, then click as the single lock was fastened. He glanced down at his watch, the illuminated face glowing just bright enough to read.

He waited another fifteen minutes before pushing through the door to the stairwell and reentering the vestibule. He was almost surprised by how easy it was all turning out to be.

He peered carefully through the glass front door, up and down the empty street. Then he quickly turned the single dead-bolt lock and let himself out.

Moving quickly, he walked the two blocks to his car and opened the trunk, removing the duffel bag that he’d concealed there.

It took him only a few minutes to return to the office building.

First, he reached inside his bag and removed several pairs of surgical gloves. These he rapidly pulled on, one on top of the other, a double thickness of protection. He took out a spray bottle of ammonia-based disinfectant and generously sprayed the lock handle that he’d touched. As soon as he’d finished that, he once again locked the door. He then sprayed the door handle to the stairwell and any place else he might have put his hands. Next, he climbed the stairs to the second floor, removing a small flashlight on the way up. He had covered the lens with a piece of red tape, cutting the light in half, making it next to impossible to spot from outside, through a window. He took his time, searching the hallway for any signs of exterior security devices, but found none. Michael O’Connell shook his head. He would have imagined that Murphy would select a more secure location. But infrared cameras and video-monitoring systems cost cash. What the building offered was probably the lowest of rents, and therein lay its attraction.

He smiled to himself.

Plus, what was there to steal?

No cash. No jewelry. No art. No portable electronic items.

Any self-respecting crook would have found significantly easier and considerably more valuable pickings elsewhere. Hell, the corner bodega probably had more than a thousand bucks in a metal drop box, and a useful twelve gauge on the shelf beneath the register. It would be a far more inviting target.

But ripping off a corner store junkie-style wasn’t what he had in mind. O’Connell looked around. What did this building have that was valuable?

He grinned again. Information.

The key to his adventure that night was to make sure the information he was seeking wasn’t quite what anyone would expect.

O’Connell took his time picking the lock to Murphy’s office, and when he finally let himself in, he was alert to possible secondary security devices, such as a motion detector or a hidden camera. As the door swung open, he pulled a thin balaclava over his head. The high-tech garment, designed to keep someone warm on some windy ski slope, covered everything except his eyes. He gritted his teeth, half-expecting to hear an alarm.

When he was greeted with silence, he could barely contain his delight.

Maneuvering cautiously through the office, he took a moment to assess what was there. He wanted to laugh.

There was a threadbare waiting room, with a desk for the secretary and a cheap, lumpy couch and armchair and a single inner office, where Murphy did business. A more solid door guarded this, and more than one dead-bolt lock.

O’Connell hesitated, reaching out with his hand to the doorknob, then stopped. He thought to himself, The cheap bastard probably has whatever security system he thinks he needs right in there.

He turned away and looked over at the secretary’s desk. She had her own computer station.

Sitting himself down at her chair, he clicked on the computer. A welcome screen came up, followed by an access prompt, demanding a password.

He took another deep breath and typed in the name of each of her dogs. Then he tried a few combinations of the two, blending them unsuccessfully. He considered possibilities for an instant, then smiled as he punched the keys for Pug Lover.

The machine whirred and clicked and O’Connell found himself looking at what he presumed were almost all of Murphy’s case files. He scrolled down and found Ashley Freeman. He fought off the urge to open that one instantly. Holding himself back would increase the pleasure. Then he systematically began going through every other file on the secretary’s machine, lingering on more than one occasion on the provocative digital pictures stored alongside some of the cases. Carefully, he began to copy everything onto some new rewritable computer discs that he had purchased. He did not think that he was getting everything that the ex-detective had on his own computer. Surely, O’Connell thought, Murphy had to be smart enough to keep some material concealed where only he could access it. But for his purposes, he had more than enough.

It took him a couple of hours to finish. He was a little stiff, and he stepped away from the secretary’s desk and stretched. He dropped to the floor and quickly did a dozen push-ups, feeling his muscles loosen. He went over to the inner door to Murphy’s office. He reached inside his duffel bag and removed a small crowbar. He made a couple of desultory efforts, scratching the door’s surface, digging into the wood, before giving up. Then he went over to the secretary’s desk, pried open the drawers, and tossed about the contents, strewing paper, printer cartridges, and pencils around the floor. He found a framed portrait of the two pugs, which he dropped, shattering the glass. As soon as he felt that enough of a mess had been made, he left, locking the door behind him. As soon as the dead bolt slid into place, he once again took his crowbar and broke out the doorjamb, leaving splinters of wood throughout the area, and the door ajar.

Next he went over to the counseling office and broke in there, using the same bash-and-batter technique. Once inside, he ransacked drawers and file cabinets quickly, spreading as much debris around as he could in a few minutes.

He went back down the stairwell and did the same to the attorney’s space. He tossed open file cabinets and dashed papers around the floor. He jimmied open the attorney’s desk, finding several hundred dollars in cash, which he stuffed into his duffel bag. He was about to leave when he decided to take a single whack at the drawers on the paralegal’s desk. She would probably feel left out if he didn’t trash her space as well, he thought, laughing to himself. But he stopped when he saw what was resting in the bottom of the last drawer.

“Now what’s a good girl like you doing with one of these?” he whispered.

It was a.25-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Small, easily concealed, a favorite of hit men and assassins because it was already quiet when fired, and because it was easy to fit with a homemade silencer. When loaded with expanding-head bullets in the nine-shot clip, it was more than adequate for the tasks it was designed for. A lady’s gun, unless it was in the hands of an expert.

“I’ll just be taking you along,” he hissed. “Did you get a permit for this? Did you register it with the Springfield police? I’m guessing you didn’t, honey. A nice, illegal street gun. Right?”

Michael O’Connell slipped the weapon into his bag. A most profitable night, he thought, as he stood and looked at the mess he’d made.

In the morning, the office manager in the counseling center would call the police. A detective would come and take a statement. He would tell them to go through their things and determine what was stolen. And they would then conclude that some half-fried junkie had broken in, looking for an easy score, and, frustrated by how little there was to steal, had resorted to angrily throwing things around. Everyone would have to spend the day cleaning up, calling in a couple of workmen to repair the ripped doors, a locksmith to install new locks. It would all just be an inconvenience to everyone, including the attorney and his lover, who sure as hell wouldn’t report the loss of an illegal gun.

Everyone, except Matthew Murphy, who would determine that his extra locks and heavy door had saved his office. He would first congratulate himself, conclude nothing was taken, and probably wouldn’t even bother to call his insurance company.

All he would do would be to buy his secretary a new frame for her pictures of her dogs.

A cheap frame, at that, O’Connell thought, as he exited into the night.

The chief investigator for the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office was a slight man in his early forties, with tortoiseshell eyeglasses and sandy-colored, thin hair that he wore disarmingly long. He promptly placed his feet up on his desk and rocked back in a red leather desk chair as he looked intently across the room toward me. He had an off-putting style that seemed both friendly and edgy at the same moment.

“And so, it is Mr. Murphy’s death and our subsequent failure to bring the investigation to a respectable conclusion that has brought you here?”

“Yes,” I said. “I presume that a number of different agencies ultimately looked at the case, but if anyone had been close to an arrest, it would have been your job to steer that case through the system.”

“Correct. And we did not indict anyone.”

“But you had a suspect?”

He shook his head. “Suspects. That, in a nutshell, was the problem.”

“How so?”

“Too many enemies. Too many people who would not only be served by his death, but a significant number of folks who would genuinely be pleased. Murphy was killed, his body tossed into an alleyway like a piece of trash, and there was more than one glass around this state raised in celebration.”

“But surely you were able to narrow the field down?”

“Yes. To some extent. It is not as if the people we were entertaining as suspects were naturally inclined to assist the police. We still hope that someone, somewhere, maybe in a jailhouse, or a bar, will let something slip and we will be able to focus our attention on one or two individuals. But until that happy time arrives, the murder of ex-detective Murphy remains an open case.”

“But you must have some leads…”

The chief investigator sighed, removed his feet from the desktop, and swung about.

“Did you know Mr. Murphy?”

“No.”

“He was not a particularly likable fellow,” he said, shaking his head. “He was the sort of person that walked some pretty narrow lines. Legally speaking, that is. One cannot be sure on which side this killing fell until one actually knows something about the murder. Beyond, of course, what the body told us, which, alas, was not much.”

“But something?”

“The killing had all the earmarks of a professional.”

The chief investigator stood up, walked behind me, and placed his index finger to the back of my head. “Pop. Pop. Two shots in the head. A twenty-five, probably silenced. Both slugs were soft-tipped bullets and significantly deformed upon removal, making an eventual match impossible. Then the body was dragged into an alleyway, pushed behind some garbage cans, and remained undiscovered until a garbage truck arrived the following morning. The person who shot him was someone with the expertise to catch Murphy unawares. Very little in the way of workable forensics. Not even an ejected shell casing, which lends further credence to the notion that this was someone well trained in killing, because they stopped and retrieved those before leaving. It rained the night he was killed, pretty hard, which further compromised the crime scene. No witnesses. No immediate leads. A very difficult case from the start, without someone helpfully pointing us in the right direction.”

He circled around and this time perched on a corner of his desk. He smiled with a slight barracuda look.

“What was this murder? Revenge? Payback for something in his past? Maybe it was simply a robbery. His wallet was cleaned out. But the credit cards were left behind. Curious that, right?” He paused. “And your own interest in this case? It stems from precisely what?”

“Murphy was peripherally involved in a case that I’m looking into.” I guarded my words carefully.

“An investigator spoke to every client he had. Someone took a look at every case he was working. Every case he’d ever worked. Which interests you?”

“Ashley Freeman,” I said cautiously.

The chief investigator shook his head. “That is most interesting. I wouldn’t think there is much of a story there. That was one of his smaller jobs. A couple of days invested, no more. And resolved, I think, sometime before the murder. No, the person who killed Murphy was connected to either one of the drug rings he helped put away when he was a cop, or one of the organized-crime types he was looking at in his private business. Or maybe one of the police officers who were engaged in messy divorces. All those are better suspects.”

I nodded.

“But, you know, the one thing that really intrigues me about the case?”

“What is that?” I asked.

“When we started looking under rocks and pulling back curtains, it seemed like everyone we spoke with was expecting us.”

“Expecting you? But why would that be unusual?”

The chief investigator smiled again. “Murphy tried to keep things very confidential. That is, after all, the nature of the business. He kept everything close to the vest. He was secretive; didn’t share much. Didn’t let anyone in on his business. The only person who had even the vaguest idea what he was up to on a day-to-day basis was his secretary. She did all his typing, billing, and filing.”

“She was unable to help you?”

“Clueless. Utterly clueless. But that wasn’t the issue.” He paused, eyeing me closely. “So how is it that all those people knew he was looking at them? Now, certainly some of the subjects he was engaged with were bound to have figured out in some way or another that he was snooping around their lives. But that would be the smaller percentage. Yet, somehow, that wasn’t the situation. I repeat: People knew. Everyone. When we showed up at their doors, they were waiting, alibis and excuses all intact. That’s wrong. One hundred percent wrong. And there lies the real question, does it not?”

I stood up.

“You want a real mystery story, Mr. Writer?” the chief investigator said as he shook my hand and returned to his side of the desk. “Well, answer that question for me.”

I kept my mouth shut. But in that moment, I knew the answer.