The Wrong Man

31

Catherine stood outside, staring up into the canopy of stars that filled the midnight sky above her house. It was cold enough to see her breath, but she was far more chilled by what had just occurred. The one place that she expected to be safe was in her own home, on land that she had occupied for better or for worse for so many years, where every tree, every shrub, every breeze that clattered through the eaves spoke to some memory. It was what was supposed to be solid about life. But this night, the safety of her home had thinned from the moment she had heard the words I will be back.

Catherine turned back toward the front door. It suddenly seemed to her that it was too cold to stand outside, trying to sort out what to do, which surprised her a little. She had often stood beneath the Vermont sky and considered many questions, in all seasons. But this night, the black sky didn’t provide clarity, just a quick chill that worked its way down her back, and she shivered. She had the terrible thought that Michael O’Connell wouldn’t feel the frost. His obsession would keep him warm.

She glanced over at the line of trees on the edge of her property, out past a flat area beside the house, where her husband had borrowed a tractor and smoothed out a section, then planted it with athletic turf grass and erected a set of goalposts, all as a birthday present when Hope turned eleven. Usually staring at the minifield recalled so many happy moments, it comforted Catherine. But this night, her eyes went past the faded white frame of the goal. She imagined that O’Connell was out there, just beyond her sight, watching them.

Catherine gritted her teeth and went back inside, but not before making a single obscene gesture to the shadowy line of trees. Just in case, she thought to herself. It was well past midnight, but there was still packing to do. Her own bag was ready, but Ashley, still shaken, was taking longer.

Scott sat in the kitchen, drinking black coffee, the old shotgun on the table in front of him. He ran a finger along the length of the barrel and thought to himself that they would be much better off if Catherine had just pulled the trigger. They could have spent the rest of the night dealing with the local police and a coroner, and hiring her an attorney, although he suspected that she wouldn’t even have been arrested. If she had just shot the bastard as O’Connell came through the front door, he thought, he would have arrived and then helped sort everything out. And life would have gone back to normal within days.

He heard Catherine come through the door and enter the kitchen.

“I think I will join you,” she said as she poured herself a cup.

“It’s going to be a long night,” Scott said.

“Already is.”

“Ashley about set?”

“She’ll be ready in a minute,” Catherine said. “She’s just pulling a few things together.”

“She’s still pretty shaky.”

Catherine nodded. “Don’t blame her. I’m still a little shaky, as well.”

“You hide it better.”

“More experience.”

“I wish…” he started, then stopped.

Catherine smiled out of the side of her mouth wryly. “I know what you wish.”

“I wish you’d blown him straight to hell.”

She nodded. “So do I. In retrospect.”

Neither said what both were thinking: having O’Connell standing at the wrong end of a shotgun had been an opportunity they doubted they would have again. As quickly as this thought came into Scott’s head, he tried to dismiss it. The educated, rational part of him insisted, violence is never the answer. Then, just as smoothly, the reply rose up: Why not?

Ashley entered, hovering in the doorway.

“All right,” she said. “I’m ready.”

She stared at her father and Catherine. “Are you sure leaving is the right thing?”

“We’re pretty isolated out here, Ashley, dear,” Catherine said cautiously. “And it seems very hard to predict what Mr. O’Connell will do next.”

“It’s not fair,” Ashley said. “Not fair to me, not fair to you, not fair to anybody.”

“Being fair, I think, is no longer much of an issue,” Scott said.

“Being safe is the first concern,” Catherine said, still speaking gently. “So let’s err on the side of caution.” Ashley clenched her fists together, battling tears.

“Let’s just go,” Scott said. “Look, at the very least it will make your mother feel a whole lot better when you’re home. Hope, too. And Catherine, she sure as hell doesn’t want to be up here alone, dealing with the son of a bitch after he figures out that we’ve moved Ashley out.”

“Next time,” Catherine said stiffly, “I don’t think I will bother with conversation.”

She gestured at the shotgun, which made Scott and Ashley both smile.

“Catherine,” Ashley said, wiping away at her eyes, “you would make a fine professional killer.”

Catherine smiled. “Thank you, dear. I will take that as a compliment.”

Scott rose from the table. “Does everyone understand how this is going to work tonight?”

Both Ashley and Catherine nodded. “Seems elaborate,” Catherine said.

“Better elaborate than sorry. It’s best to assume he’s watching the house, don’t you think? And that he might try to follow us. And we don’t know what he might try to pull. He’s already run you off the road once tonight.”

“If that was him,” Ashley said. “We never got a good look at the guy. Or his car. It doesn’t make sense. Why would he try to kill us one minute, then stand in the hallway and shout out he loves me?”

Scott shook his head. It didn’t make sense to him, either. “Anyway, we shall give him something to think about, if he is watching.”

He collected the bags and arranged them all by the front door. Behind him, Catherine was turning off every light in the house. Leaving the two women in the hallway, he walked out into the nighttime. He scanned the night shapes, flashing back to when he was Ashley’s age, in Vietnam, staring out through spyglasses into the jungle, the battery of howitzers behind him, silent for once, the damp, stale smell of closely packed sandbags close to his chest, wondering if they were being observed from the vines and tangled, thick undergrowth.

Scott slid behind the wheel of the Porsche, fired up the engine, and backed into a space next to Catherine’s small four-wheel-drive station wagon. He left his car running, stepping out after popping the hood. He reached in and started Catherine’s car. He went to the right-hand side of each vehicle, opened the door, and adjusted the passenger seat, so that they were lowered as far as they could go.

Scott went back inside, seized all the bags, and went out again into the night.

He placed Catherine’s bag in his car, and Ashley’s in Catherine’s, closing the trunks, but leaving all four car doors open.

He walked back swiftly to the front door. “Ready?”

Both women nodded.

“Then let’s go. Fast, now.”

All three of them moved together, in a single dark lump. Ashley slipped into the passenger seat in the Porsche, and Catherine behind the wheel of her own car. As she took her place, Ashley immediately dove down, so that she could not be seen. She had tucked her hair up under a dark navy watch cap.

Scott ran around, slamming all the car doors, before jumping into his own seat. He gave Catherine a thumbs-up signal, and she accelerated hard, her wheels spitting gravel. Scott pulled in, barely inches away. Fast now, he thought. But Catherine was already jamming her foot down on the gas, and the two of them headed quickly for the highway, in tandem.

Scott scanned the road behind him, on the lookout for headlights. But the twists in the highway made it difficult. He thought, There’s a full moon tonight. If I were chasing someone, I’d be driving without lights.

Beside him, Ashley remained scrunched down. He accelerated, keeping up with Catherine.

She was heading to a spot she knew, right before the entrance to the interstate highway. It was a drive-in bank that had a small parking lot in the rear. When she spotted the entrance, she waited until the last second to flick on her blinker and tugged the wheel sharply. She could hear the tires squeal briefly as she zipped between the dual drive-in windows, pulling into the rear, where there were no lights. She could hear the roar of the Porsche’s engine directly behind her. She stopped and breathed in.

Scott pulled in beside her, then leapt from his car and ran to the edge of the building.

A single car went past on the main road, then a second. He couldn’t make out the driver of either car.

But neither car slowed; instead they disappeared down the road, neither one turning for the interstate. Nor did they seem hesitant and suspicious. He waited for another car to go past, which took nearly a minute. Then he returned to where the two women were waiting.

“All right, switch time,” he said. “No sign of him.”

Wordlessly, Ashley slid from her seat in the Porsche and jammed herself into the passenger seat of the wagon, tucking an old plaid fleece blanket around herself. Catherine nodded, then put the car in gear and headed out toward the entrance ramp of the interstate heading south.

Scott pulled behind her, but instead of taking the ramp south, toward their destination, he stopped by the side of the road. He watched the small car’s taillights disappear. He waited, determined to get a look at any car that might be heading south behind Catherine, but none came along. There was no one else around that he could see. He paused again and, after counting to thirty, suddenly floored the Porsche and, with tires screeching, ducked the nose of the sports car onto the northbound ramp. By the time he was at the bottom of the ramp, he was already doing close to ninety. He saw a tractor-trailer in the right-hand lane, blocking his access, but instead of braking, he punched the gas and flew past the trucker in the breakdown lane. The truck’s air horn blasted the night behind him, and the driver flashed all his lights in irritation. Scott ignored him, looking hard for the illegal U-turn coming up on his left. He just hoped no trooper was hanging out in it. His high beams caught a FOR AUTHORIZED USE ONLY sign, and he slammed on the brakes. In the same motion, he cut all his lights.

The Porsche bumped on the dirt and bottomed out once as he went from the northbound side to the south. A quick glance told him the road was empty, and accelerating hard, he flung the Porsche back onto the highway, flicking on his headlights once again. He saw a pair of deer’s eyes lighting up red in the median.

He took a deep breath. Try following that, he said to himself.

Scott figured it would take less than ten minutes for him to come up behind Catherine and Ashley, checking every car before he reached their tail. Then he would escort them the rest of the way home.

He pursed his lips together tightly.

I’ve got a few tricks left, he thought. He could feel the car engine throbbing with speed and, for the first time that night, felt some control over the situation.

He was smart enough, however, to remind himself that this sensation was not likely to last long.

The need for sleep, after so much tension, prevented them all from gathering together until much later that day. Ashley, in particular, had dissolved into sobs upon hearing all the details of Nameless’s death and had cried bitterly in bed, before finally tumbling into a deep but dire sleep, her dreams marred by black images of death. On more than one occasion, she cried out, bringing either Sally or Hope to her door to check on her as if she were still a little girl.

Scott had gone back to the college. He had stolen some ninety minutes of sleep in his chair in his office before waking, feeling that the entire day was somehow misshapen. In the men’s room, washing up, he spent a few seconds staring at himself in the mirror. History, he thought, is the study of men and women who rise to extraordinary events. It is, over and over, an examination of one person’s bravery, another’s cowardice, a third’s prescience, and a fourth’s failures. It is emotion and psychology, played out on a field of action. He felt a kind of cold sickness inside, wondering whether he had spent all his adult life studying what others did without learning how to do something himself.

Michael O’Connell, he believed, was simply a moment in his own history. And how he acted in the next few days, Scott thought to himself, would define him forever.

Sally struggled with anger.

It seemed to her that everything they had tried had failed. They had tried to be reasonable, polite. They had tried to be forceful. They had tried to bribe their way out. They had tried intimidation. They had tried deception. They had tried flight. And for all the various schemes they had come up with, they had gained nothing but failure. Their own lives had been roiled and thrust into turmoil, their own careers threatened, their privacy invaded, their lives upset and truly pushed into some other realm.

A world of fear, she thought. That was what awaited them.

She was seated in the living room, alone. She found herself grimacing, shaking her head, waving her hands in the air, pointing angrily, gesticulating, frowning, as if she were in the midst of some furious conversation, but no one else was in the room to hear the words that she was forming in her head. Upstairs, Ashley was still asleep, but Sally intended to awaken her soon. Hope and Catherine had gone outside for a walk to pick up some sort of takeout for dinner. In all likelihood they were discussing what had descended upon them. She had been left behind, on guard.

Sally could feel her pulse racing. They were at some crossroads moment, but she was as yet unsure what paths were available.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

I have screwed everything up, she thought to herself. I have made a mess of everything.

She sighed and went across the room to a desk where they kept scrapbooks and old photos, memorabilia too valuable to throw out, not significant enough to frame. She opened a large drawer and pawed through the piles until she found what she was looking for: a picture of her mother and father. They both had died far too young, one in a car accident, the other from a heart condition. Sally wasn’t sure why she needed to look at them, but she was almost overcome with the need to see their eyes, looking toward her, as if to reassure her. They had left her alone, and she had seized upon Scott-with all her misgivings about who she was and what she was going to become-because she had told herself that he would be consistent. It was probably the same sense that had driven her to law school, filled with a determination to make sure that she was never a victim of events again. She shook her head at this thought and reminded herself how foolish this was. Anyone can be victimized. At any time.

As this rancid thought coursed around inside her, she heard Ashley stirring upstairs.

She took a deep breath. There is one truth, she thought: a mother will do anything to protect her child.

“Ashley! Is that you? Are you up?”

There was a momentary pause, then a reply, preceded by a long, drawn-out groan. “Yeah. Hi, Mom. I’ll be down right after I brush my teeth.”

She was about to respond when the telephone rang.

The sound chilled her.

She checked the caller identification, but it merely said private caller.

Sally reached out, bit down on her lip, and picked up the receiver.

“Yes, who is it, please?” she said with as much lawyer frost as she could manage.

There was no reply.

“Who is it!” she demanded sharply.

The line remained quiet. She couldn’t even hear breathing.

“God damn it, leave us alone!” she whispered. Her words drove like nails into the silence and she slammed down the phone.

“Mom? Who was it?” Ashley called out from upstairs. Sally could hear a momentary tremble in her daughter’s voice.

“Nothing,” she called back. “Just a damn telephone solicitor, pitching magazine subscriptions.” As quickly as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered why she had failed to tell the truth. “You coming down?”

“Be right there.” Sally heard the bedroom door close. She picked up the receiver and dialed*69. In a moment, a recorded voice came on the line. “The number 413-555-0987 is a pay telephone in Greenfield, Massachusetts.”

Close, she thought. Less than an hour’s drive away.

When Michael O’Connell hung up the pay phone, his first instinct was to head south, where he knew Ashley was waiting for him, and try to take advantage of the moment. Every word he’d heard from Sally had told him how weak she was. He leaned back, closing his eyes, envisioning Ashley. He could feel blood racing through his body, almost as if every vein and artery had become electric. He breathed in slow, shallow breaths, like a swimmer hyperventilating before taking a plunge, and told himself that following her to her own home would be precisely what they would expect.

They will be preparing, he thought. Inventing some scheme to prevent him from getting close to her. Designing a defense, building walls. They cannot beat me.

This was the simplest, most obvious, nonnegotiable fact.

Again he breathed in. They will think that I’m on my way there.

But then, what’s the rush?

Let them worry. Let them lose some sleep. Let them startle at every night noise.

And, he thought, when their defenses were thin from exhaustion and tension and doubt, he would arrive. When they least expected it.

O’Connell tapped his foot against the sidewalk, like a dancer finding the rhythm.

I am there, at their side, even when I’m not there, he told himself.

Michael O’Connell decided that on this day, he wasn’t in any hurry. The love he felt for Ashley could also be exceedingly patient.

This time she told me to meet her at midnight outside the emergency room of a hospital in Springfield. When I asked her why midnight, she informed me that she did volunteer work at the hospital two nights a week, and that the witching hour was when she customarily took her break.

“What sort of volunteer work?” I asked.

“Counseling. Battered wives. Beaten children. Neglected elderly. They all show up at the hospital, and someone has to be on hand to steer them into the right channels for the state to help out.” Her voice had seemed coldly patient, despite the images that she suggested. “What I do is find the proper paperwork to accompany broken teeth, black eyes, razor slashes, and fractured ribs.”

She was waiting for me, smoking a cigarette, taking deep drags, down to the filter. I pointed at the cigarette as I walked through the parking-lot shadows toward her.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t.” She took another long pull. “Except here. Two nights a week. One cigarette at the midnight break. No more. When I return home, I throw the rest of the pack away. Buy a new pack each week.”

She smiled, her face partially hidden by shadow. “Smoking seems like a modest sin, compared with what I see here. A child, perhaps, with his fingers systematically fractured by a cracked-out stepfather. Or a mother in her eighth month, beaten with a metal coat hanger. That sort of thing. Very routine. Very ordinary. Very cruel. Just the usual sort of ugliness that passes for life. Remarkable, isn’t it, how cruel we can be to one another?”

“Yes.”

“So, what more do you need to know?” she asked.

“Scott and Sally and Hope weren’t willing to risk uncertainty, were they?”

She shook her head. A high-pitched, caterwauling ambulance siren cut through the night. Urgency arrives with many different sounds.