The Wrong Man

3

Two tables away from where Ashley Freeman sat with a trio of friends, a half dozen members of the Northeastern University varsity baseball team were hotly arguing the relative virtues of either the Yankees or the Red Sox, engaged in a loud, frequently foulmouthed assessment of each team. Ashley might have been perturbed by the over-the-top noise, except that having spent many hours in student-oriented bars over her four academic years in Boston, she had heard the debate a multitude of times. Occasionally it ended in some pushing or maybe a quick exchange of blows, but more often just gave way to cascading torrents of obscenities. Often there were fairly creative suppositions about the bizarre off-hours sexual practices of the players on either the Yankees or the Red Sox. Barnyard animals figured fairly prominently in these sexual inventions.

Across from her, her friends were in a passionate discussion of their own. The issue was a show over at Harvard of Goya’s famous sketches of the horrors of war. A group of them had taken the T across town to the exhibit, and then wandered, unsettled, through the black-and-white drawings of dismemberment, torture, assassination, and agony. It had struck Ashley that while one can always tell the citizens from the soldiers in the drawings, there was no anonymity in either role. And no safety, either. Death, she thought, has a way of evening things out. It crushes spirit without regard to politics. It is unrelenting.

She shifted about in her seat, a little uncomfortable. Images, especially violent images, creased her deeply and had done so since she was a child. They lingered unwelcome in her memory, whether they were Salome admiring the head of John the Baptist in a gruesome Renaissance rendition, or Bambi’s mother trying to flee the hunters who pursued her. Even the campy killings of Tarantino’s Kill Bill unsettled her.

Her de facto date for the evening was a lanky, long-haired BC psychology graduate student named Will, who was leaning across the table, making a point, while trying to narrow the distance between his shoulder and her arm. Small touches were important in courting, she thought. The slightest of shared sensations might lead to something more intense. She was unsure what she thought of him. He was clearly bright and seemed thoughtful. He’d shown up at her apartment earlier with a half dozen roses, which, he said, was the psychological equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card; it meant he could say or do something offensive or stupid and she would likely forgive him at least once. A dozen roses, he said, would have been too many; she would likely see through the artifice of it all, whereas half that number at least held out some promise as well as some mystery. She had thought this was funny, and probably accurate as well, and so she was inclined to like him initially, though it wasn’t long before she started to sense that he was perhaps just a meager bit too full of himself, and less likely to listen than he was to pronounce, which put her off.

Ashley pushed her hair back from her face and tried to listen.

“Goya meant to shock. He meant to thrust all the reality of war into the faces of the politicians and aristocrats who romanticize it. Make it undeniable-”

The last words of this statement were lost, overcome by a burst from the nearby table: “I’ll tell you what Derek Jeter’s good at. He’s good at bending over and…”

She had to smile to herself. It was a little like being trapped in a uniquely Bostonian version of the twilight zone, caught between the pretentious and the plebeian.

She continued to shift about in her seat, maintaining a neutral distance that neither discouraged nor encouraged Will, and thought about how she had always been wildly unlucky in love. She wondered whether this was merely something that would pass, like so many moments growing up, or was, instead, a predictable vision of her future. She sensed that she was on the edge of something, but of what, she was unsure.

“Yes, but the dilemma with shocking and showing the true nature of war through art is that it never stops the war, but gets celebrated as art. We flock to see Guernica and we revel in the depth of its vision, but do we really feel anything for the peasants who were bombed? They were real one day. Their deaths were real. But their truth is subordinated by art.”

This was Will-the-date speaking. Ashley thought it a wise observation, but, at the same time, one that a million politically correct college kids would have made. Ashley glanced over at the loud baseball players. Even alcohol-fueled, their argument was exuberant. She felt a twinge of doubt. She liked sitting at Fenway with a beer. She loved wandering through the Museum of Fine Art. For one long second she wondered which of the two arguments she really belonged in.

Ashley stole a sideways glance at Will, who she guessed was thinking that the fastest way to seduce her was with all sorts of pompous intellectualisms. This was standard graduate-student thinking. She decided to confuse matters for him.

Ashley shoved her seat back abruptly and stood up. “Hey!” she shouted. “You guys, where you from? BC? BU? Northeastern?”

The table of baseball players quieted immediately. Young men being shouted at by a beautiful girl, Ashley thought, always gets their attention.

“Northeastern,” one replied, half-standing, making a small bow in her direction, with a Far Eastern sense of courtesy, a decorum mostly lost in the rowdy bar.

“Well, rooting for the Yankees is just like rooting for General Motors or IBM or the Republican Party. Being a Red Sox fan is all about poetry. At some crucial point, everybody makes their choice in life. Enough said.”

The boys at the table exploded with laughter and mock outrage.

Will leaned back, grinning. “That,” he said, “was succinct.”

Ashley smiled and wondered if he wasn’t all that bad after all.

When she was young, she thought it would be better to be plain. Plain girls, she knew, can hide.

Right at the start of her teenage years, she had gone through a dramatic phase of opposition to just about everything: loud, stamped-foot disagreeing with her mother, her father, her teachers, her friends, wearing baggy, sacklike, earth-colored clothing, putting a streak of vibrant red next to a streak of ink black in her hair, listening to grunge rock, drinking harsh black coffee, trying cigarettes, and longing for tattoos and body piercings. This phase had lasted for only a couple of months, just long enough for it to come into conflict with just about everything she did in school, both in the classroom and on the athletic field. It cost her some friends, as well, and it made those who did remain with her a little wary.

To Ashley’s surprise, the only adult who she’d been able to speak with in any modestly civil fashion during this portion of her life had been her mother’s partner, Hope. This had surprised her, because a large portion of her inwardly blamed Hope for the breakup of her parents, and she had often told friends that she hated Hope because of it. This untruth had bothered her, in part because she believed it was more what her friends wanted to hear from her, and she was unsettled by the idea that she might comply with their perceptions for that flimsiest of reasons. After grunge and Goth, she had gone through a khaki-and-plaid preppy stage, followed by a jock stage, then a couple of weeks as a vegan eating tofu and veggie burgers. She had dabbled in acting, delivering a passable Marian the Librarian in The Music Man, written reams of heartfelt diary entries, fashioned herself at various times into Emily Dickinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Carry Nation, with a touch of Gloria Steinem and Mia Hamm. She had worked building a house for Habitat for Humanity and had once gone along with the biggest drug dealer in her high school on a frightening visit to a nearby city to pick up a quantity of rock cocaine, an event that had turned up on a police surveillance camera and prompted a call from some detectives to her mother. Sally Freeman-Richards had been furious, grounded her for weeks, shouted at her that she’d been extraordinarily lucky not to be arrested, and that it would be hard to regain her mother’s trust. Separately, Hope and her father had reached more benign conclusions, talking more about adolescent rebellion, with him remembering some pretty stupid things that he had done while growing up, which had created some laughter, but had mostly reassured her. She didn’t think she was consciously setting out to do dangerous things in her life, but Ashley knew that on occasion she engaged in a risk or two, and that she was fairly charmed to have avoided true consequences up to that point. Ashley often thought she was like clay on a potter’s wheel, constantly turning, being shaped, waiting for the heat blast from some furnace to finish her.

She felt adrift. She did not particularly enjoy her part-time job at the museum, helping to catalog exhibits. It was a stuck-in-a-back-room, stare-at-a-computer-screen sort of job. She was unsure about the art history graduate program she was waiting to hear from and thought sometimes that she had fallen into these fields only because she was adept with pen, ink, and paintbrush. This troubled her deeply because, like so many young people, she believed that she should only do what she loved, and, as yet, she was unsure what that might be.

They had left the bar, and Ashley pulled her coat a little tighter against the evening chill. She realized that she should probably have been paying attention to Will. He was good-looking, attentive, and might just have a sense of humor. He had an odd, loping stride at her side that was disarming and, probably, on balance, was someone she might consider more carefully. But, she recognized, as well, that they’d been walking for nearly two blocks and only had fifty yards to go before they reached the door to her apartment, and he had yet to actually ask her a question.

She decided to play a small game. If he asked her something she thought interesting, then she’d give him a second date. If he only asked whether he could come upstairs with her, then he was going to get dropped.

“So you think,” he said suddenly, “that when guys in a bar argue about baseball, they do so because they love the game, or because they love the argument? I mean, ultimately, there are no right answers, there is only team-based loyalty. And blind loyalty doesn’t really lend itself to debate, does it?”

Ashley smiled. There was his second date.

“Of course,” he added, “Red Sox love probably belongs in my advanced abnormal-psychology seminar.”

She laughed. Definitely another date.

“This is my place,” she said. “I’ve had fun tonight.”

Will looked at her. “Maybe we could try a slightly quieter evening? It might be easier to get to know each other when we’re not competing with raised voices and wild-eyed speculation about Derek Jeter’s predilections for leather whips and outsized sex toys and the orifices where they might be imaginatively employed. Or deployed.”

“I’d like that,” Ashley said. “Will you call me?”

“I will indeed.”

She took a single stride up onto the first step to her apartment, realized that she was still holding his hand, and turned back and gave him a long kiss. A partially chaste kiss, with only the smallest sensation of her tongue passing over his lips. A kiss of promise, but one that implied more for days to come, although not an invitation for that night. He seemed to get this, which heartened her, for he stepped a half pace back, bowed elaborately, and, like an eighteenth-century courtier, kissed the back of her hand.

“Good night,” she said. “I really did have a nice time.”

Ashley turned and headed into the apartment building. Between the two glass doors, she turned and glanced back. A small cone of light stretched from a bulb above the outer door, and Will stood just on the back side of the wan yellow circle, which faded quickly in the encroaching rich black of the New England night. A shadow creased his face, like an arrow of darkness that sought him out. But she thought nothing of this, gave him a small wave, and headed up to her place feeling the natural high of possibility, pleased with herself for not even considering a one-night stand, the hookup that was so popular in the college circles that she was just on the verge of emerging from. She shook her head. The last time she had given in to that particular temptation had been truly awful. She had been reminded of it earlier when her father had called out of the blue. But, just as quickly, as she hunted for the key to her apartment, she dismissed all thoughts of bad nights past and let the modest glow of this night fill her.

She wondered how long it might take for Will-the-first-date to call her and become Will-the-second-date.

Will Goodwin lingered in the darkness for a moment after Ashley had vanished inside the second door. He felt a rush of enthusiasm, a devil-may-care kind of excitement about the evening past and the evening to come.

He was a bit overwhelmed. The girlfriend of a friend, who had passed on Ashley’s number, had informed him that she was beautiful and bright, if a bit mysterious, but she had exceeded even his fantasies in each regard. He thought he’d just managed to avoid the “boring” tag by the narrowest of margins.

Hunched over against a quickening breeze, Will stuck his hands deep into his parka and started walking. The air had an antique quality to it, as if each shiver it delivered were no different, passed down exactly the same with the same October chill that had sliced through generations who had traveled the Boston streets. He could feel his cheeks starting to redden from the night’s determination, and he hustled toward the subway stop. He covered ground quickly, long legs now eating up the city sidewalk. She was tall, too, he thought. Almost five ten, he guessed, with a model’s lithe look that even jeans and a baggy cotton sweater hadn’t been able to conceal. He was a little astonished, as he dashed between traffic, crossing the street midblock, that she wasn’t inundated with guys, which, he supposed, probably had something to do with an unhappy relationship or some other bad experience. He decided not to speculate, but to simply thank whatever lucky star had put him in contact with Ashley. In his studies, he thought, everything was about probability and prediction. He wasn’t sure that the statistics he assigned to clinical work with lab rats could necessarily apply to meeting someone like Ashley.

Will grinned to himself and went bounding down the steps to the T.

The Boston subway, like that of most cities, has an otherworldly feel to it, when one passes through the turnstiles and descends into the underground world of transit. Lights glisten off white-tiled walls; shadows find space between steel pillars. There is a constancy of noise, as trains come, go, and rumble through the distance. The outside world is shut away, replaced with a kind of disjointed universe where wind, rain, snow, or even bright warm sunshine all seem a part of some other place and time.

His train arrived, making a high-pitched, screeching sound, and Will boarded quickly, along with a dozen others. The lights in the train gave everyone a pasty, sickly look. For a moment, he speculated about the other passengers, all either wrapped up in a newspaper, buried in some book, or staring out blankly. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes for an instant, letting the speed and sway of the train rock him a little like a child in his mother’s arms. He would call tomorrow, he told himself. Ask her out and try to engage her on the phone a bit. He sorted through subjects and tried to imagine one that would be unexpected. He wondered where to take her. Dinner and a movie? Predictable. He had the sensation that Ashley was the sort of woman who wanted to see something special. A play perhaps? A comedy club? Followed by a late-night dinner at some place better than the usual burgers-and-beer hangout. But not too snobbish, he imagined. And quiet. So, laughter and then something romantic. Maybe not the greatest plan, he thought, but reasonable.

His stop arrived, and he bounded up and out, moving quickly, but a little haphazardly, as he rose through the station, out to the street. The Porter Square lights sliced through the darkness, creating a sense of activity where there was little. He hunched over against a blast of cold wind and worked his way out of the square, down a side street. His own place was four blocks distant, and he worked his memory, trying to decide on the right restaurant to take her to.

He slowed when he heard a dog bark, suddenly alarmed. In the distance, an ambulance siren broke through the night. A few of the duplexes and apartments on the block had the glow of television screens lighting up windows, but most were dark.

To his right, in an alleyway between two apartment buildings, Will thought he heard a scraping sound, and he turned in that direction. Suddenly he saw a black shape rushing toward him. He took a step back in surprise and held up his arm to try to protect himself and thought that he should cry out for help, but things were moving far too quickly, and he had only a single moment filled with shock and fear, and the vaguest of terrors because he knew something was coming at him fast. It was a lead pipe, and it swung through the air with a swordlike hiss, bearing inexorably down on his forehead.

It took me nearly seven hours over one long, eye-straining day, to find Will Goodwin’s name in The Boston Globe. Except that it was a different name, under the headline POLICE SEEK MUGGER OF GRAD STUDENT, and ran in the local section, near the bottom of the page. The story was only four paragraphs and had precious little information, beyond that the injuries suffered by the twenty-four-year-old student were serious and he was in critical condition at Mass. General Hospital after being discovered by a passing early-morning pedestrian who spotted his bloody figure abandoned behind some aluminum garbage cans in an alleyway. Police were requesting assistance from anyone in the Somerville neighborhood who might have seen or heard anything suspicious.

That was all.

No follow-up either the next day or in the subsequent weeks. Just a small moment of urban violence, duly noted, registered and then, just as quickly, forgotten, swallowed up by the steady buildup of news.

It took me two more days working the telephones to get an address for Will. The Boston College Alumni Office said that he had never finished the program he was enrolled in and came up with a home address out in the Boston suburb of Concord. The phone number was unlisted.

Concord is a lovely place, filled with stately homes that breathe of the past. It has a green swath of town common with an impressive public library, a prep school, and a quaint downtown filled with trendy shops. When I was younger, I took my own children to walk the nearby battle sites and recite Longfellow’s famous poem. The town has, like so many in Massachusetts, unfortunately let history take a backseat to development. But the house where the young man that I had come to know as Will Goodwin was an older place, early-colonial farmhouse in nature, less ostentatious than the newer homes, set back from a side road, some fifty yards down a gravel drive. In the front, someone had clearly spent time planting flowers in the garden. I saw a small plaque, with the date 1789, on the glistening white exterior wall. There was a side door that had a wooden wheelchair ramp built up to it. I went to the front, where I could smell the nearby hibiscus blossoms, and knocked gingerly.

A slender woman, gray-haired, but not yet grandmotherly, opened the door.

“Yes, may I help you?” she asked.

I introduced myself, apologized for showing up unannounced, but said that I was unable to call ahead because of the unlisted number. I told her I was a writer and was inquiring about some crimes that had taken place a few years back in the Cambridge, Newton, and Somerville areas and wondered if I might ask a few questions about Will or, better yet, speak with him directly.

She was taken aback, but did not immediately close the door in my face.

“I don’t know that we can help you,” she said politely.

“I’m sorry if I’ve taken you by surprise,” I replied. “I just have a few questions.”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t…,” she started, then stopped, looking out at me. I could see her lower lip start to quiver, and just the touch of tears glistening in her eyes. “It has been…,” she tried, but then she was interrupted by a voice from behind.

“Mother? Who is it?”

She hesitated, as if uncertain precisely what to say. I looked behind her and saw a young man in a wheelchair emerging from a side room. His skin had a bleached, pale look, and his brown hair was a tangled, unkempt mass, stringy, long, and falling toward his shoulders. A Z-shaped, dull red scar on the upper right side of his forehead reached almost to the eyebrow. His arms seemed wiry, muscled, but his chest was sunken, almost emaciated. He had large hands, with elegant, long fingers, and I thought, as I looked at him, that I could see hints and whispers of whom he once was. He rolled himself forward.

The mother looked at me. “It has been very hard,” she said softly, with surprising intimacy.

The rubber wheels on the chair squealed when he stopped. “Hello,” he said, not unpleasantly.

I gave him my name and quickly explained that I was interested in the crime that had crippled him.

“My crime?” he asked, but clearly didn’t really expect an answer, because he rapidly gave one himself. “I don’t think it was all that special. A routine mugging. Anyway, I can’t tell you all that much about it. Two months in a coma. Then this…” He waved at the chair.

“Did the police ever make an arrest?”

“No. By the time I woke up, I’m afraid I wasn’t too much help. I can’t remember anything from that night. Not a damn thing. It’s a little like hitting the backspace key on your keyboard and watching all the letters of some piece of work disappear. You know it’s probably somewhere in the computer, but you can’t find it. It’s just been deleted.”

“You were coming home after a date?”

“Yes. We never connected again after that. Not that surprising. I was a mess. Still am.” He laughed a little and smiled wryly.

I nodded. “The cops never came up with much, huh?”

He shook his head. “Well, a couple of curious things.”

“What?” I asked.

“They found some kids in Roxbury trying to use my Visa credit card. They thought for a couple of days that they might have been the ones that mugged me, but it turned out they weren’t. The kids apparently just found the card near a Dumpster.”

“Okay, but why…”

“Because someone else found my wallet with all my ID-you know, driver’s license, BC meal card, Social Security, health care, all that stuff, intact in Dorchester. Miles away from the Dumpster where the kids found the credit card. It was as if whatever was taken from me was scattered all over Boston.” He smiled. “A little like my brains.”

“What are you doing now?” I asked.

“Now?” Will looked over at his mother. “Now, I’m just waiting.”

“Waiting? For what?”

“I don’t know. Rehab sessions at the Head Trauma Center. The day I can get out of this chair. Not much else I can do.”

I stepped back and his mother started to close the door.

“Hey!” Will said. “You think they’ll ever find the guy that did this to me?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But if I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a name and an address,” he said quietly. “I think I would like to take care of some matters myself.”