The Wrong Man

35

Hope stood uncomfortably outside the door to Michael O’Connell’s apartment with the key in her hand. Behind her, Mrs. Abramowicz lurked in her own doorway, cats circling at her feet. She gestured eagerly for Hope to go ahead.

“I’ll keep watch. It will be all right. Just hurry,” Mrs. Abramowicz whispered.

Hope took a deep breath and slipped the key into the lock. She wasn’t sure about what she was doing or what she was looking for, nor did she know precisely what she hoped to learn. But she had the key in her hand, and as it turned the lock with only the quietest of clicks, she imagined O’Connell walking down the sidewalk, turning the corner to his street, closing in on her as the night fell. She could sense his breath behind her ear, imagined the hiss of his voice. She gritted her teeth and told herself that she would fight hard, if it came to that.

“Quick, dear,” Mrs. Abramowicz said, still urging her forward. “Find out what he’s doing to my cats.”

Hope pushed the door open and stepped inside.

She did not know whether to shut the door behind her or leave it ajar, so that-what? she thought. If he comes back, I’m trapped here. No back door. No fire escape. No way to flee. She took a deep breath and closed the door almost all the way. At least, she thought, she would be able to hear a warning from Mrs. Abramowicz, if the old lady was capable of issuing one.

Hope surveyed the apartment. It was dingy and neglected. Clearly, O’Connell didn’t care about his immediate surroundings. No colorful posters on the walls, no plants in the window, no multihued throw rug on the floor. No television or stereo. Only a few tattered computer-course textbooks stuffed into a far corner. The apartment was decrepit and austere; a monk’s hideout. This unsettled Hope, the recognition that all the passion in Michael O’Connell’s life rested in his imagination. He lived in a different world from the one where he put his head down and slept.

She moved swiftly into the apartment, took a deep breath, and in that instant invented a plan.

Memorize, she told herself. Remember everything.

She reached inside her jacket pocket and found a scrap of paper. On a small desk she spotted a cheap pen. She immediately sketched a rough floor plan, then turned back to the desk.

It was a cheap wooden tabletop stretched across two black metal filing cabinets. A single wooden, stiff-backed chair was drawn up in front of a laptop computer. The setup had a naked simplicity; she could imagine Michael O’Connell seated across from the screen, its metallic light bathing his face, as he concentrated on the images in front of him. The laptop appeared new. It was open, plugged in, and the power light was lit.

Hope took a deep breath, listened for any sounds from the hallway, then sat down in front of the computer. She wrote down the computer make and model on her scratch paper. Then she eyed the black screen. Like a workman reaching for an exposed wire, she touched the mouse pad in the center. The machine whirred, then flashed as the screen saver came up.

Hope felt her lips go dry and her throat constrict.

The screen saver was a picture of Ashley.

It was a little out of focus and had clearly been hurriedly taken from a few feet away. It caught her as if she were turning suddenly, surprised at some noise that had burst from behind her. Her face was creased with fear.

Hope stared at the picture and heard her breathing grow short and shallow. The picture O’Connell had chosen for his screen saver told her several things, none of them good. O’Connell worshipped that moment when Ashley had been caught unawares and was filled with terror.

It was love, she thought. The very worst kind.

Biting down on her lip, she moved the cursor over to the My Documents file and clicked on it. There were four different listings: Ashley Love. Ashley Hate. Ashley Family. Ashley Future.

She clicked on the first, only to see a box come up: Password Required.

She moved the cursor to Ashley Hate.

The machine blinked back Password Required.

Hope shook her head. She thought she might come up with the password if she sat and considered it, but she was already worrying about the amount of time she’d spent in the apartment. Still breathing fast, she closed everything down on the computer, returning it to its original state. Then she pulled open the file drawers, but discovered they were empty, other than for a couple of stray pencils and some printer paper.

When she stood up, she was a little dizzy. Hurry, she told herself. You’re pushing your luck.

She looked about. Check the bedroom, she thought.

The room smelled of sweat and neglect. She moved quickly to a battered chest of drawers and rifled through them as quickly as she could. A single mattress was on a frame, sheets and blanket tossed haphazardly on top. She dropped to her knees and checked under the bed. Nothing. She turned to the small closet. A few jackets and shirts hung inside. A single black blazer. Two ties. One button-down shirt and a pair of gray slacks. Nothing of any note. She was about to turn away when she saw, alone in the farthest corner of the closet, a single battered work boot, with a stiff gray athletic sock crusted with dirt stuffed in the top. It was partially obscured by a pile of sweat-streaked workout clothes.

A single boot didn’t make any sense to her.

She looked around for the companion, but couldn’t spot it anywhere.

This bothered her, and she froze in position, staring hard at the boot, as if it could tell her something. Then she reached into the back, and carefully moved aside the clothing, taking hold of the boot. It was heavy, and she thought instantly that something might be inside. Like a surgeon peeling back a flap of skin, she removed the sock and looked down.

She heard herself groan.

Inside the boot was a gun.

She started to reach for it, then told herself, Don’t touch it.

She did not know why.

A part of her wanted to seize it, steal it, just take it away from Michael O’Connell. Is this the gun he will use to kill Ashley?

Hope felt trapped, as if she were being held underwater. She knew if she took the gun, O’Connell would know that one of them had been here. And he would take action. Maybe it would trigger a violent response. Maybe he had another weapon stashed somewhere. Maybe, maybe. Questions and doubts warred within her. She wished there were some way she could render the gun harmless, like removing a firing pin. She had read about that once in a thriller novel, but she had no idea how to do it. And taking the bullets would be useless. He would know someone had been there and simply replace them.

She stared at the gun. She could see on the side of the barrel the brand and the caliber,.25.

The weapon’s ugliness almost overcame her.

Not sure that she was doing the right thing, she carefully replaced the boot in the corner of the closet and rearranged the clothes so that things looked exactly as before.

She wanted to run. How long had she been inside the apartment? Five minutes? Twenty? She thought she could hear footsteps, voices, and realized that she was hallucinating. Leave now! she told herself.

Hope rose and started to exit, walking past the bathroom, which she didn’t bother to check, and the small kitchen, which made her stop.

Cats, she thought to herself. Mrs. Abramowicz will want to know.

She peered into the tiny area. No table, just a refrigerator, a small four-burner stove, and a couple of shelves filled with canned soups and stews. No cans of cat food. No box of rat poison to mix into a lethal meal.

Hope went to the refrigerator and pulled the door open. Some sandwich fixings and a couple of cold beers were all that O’Connell kept inside. She closed the door, then, almost as an afterthought, opened up the freezer, expecting to see a couple of frozen pizzas.

What she saw was like a blow, and she was barely able to stifle a scream.

Staring back at her were the frozen bodies of at least a half dozen cats. One of them had its teeth exposed, gargoylelike, a terrifying ice grin of death.

Panic filled Hope, and she stepped back, hand over her mouth, her heart racing, nauseous, dizzy, feeling as if her temperature had spiked. She needed to scream, but nothing could choke past her tightened throat. Every fiber of her being told her to run, to flee, to get away and never look back. She tried to tell herself to remain calm, but it was a losing battle. When she reached out, to close the freezer door, her hand shook.

From the hallway, she suddenly heard a hiss. “Hurry, dear! Someone is at the elevator!”

Hope turned away, running for the front door.

“Hurry!” she heard Mrs. Abramowicz whisper. “Someone is coming!”

The old lady was still perched in her own entranceway when Hope burst out into the hallway. She could see the elevator counter starting to rise, and she closed the door to O’Connell’s apartment. She fumbled with the key, nearly dropping it, while she tried to slide it into the lock.

Mrs. Abramowicz shrank back, taking refuge in her own place. The cats by her feet were scurrying back and forth, as if they caught the sense of fear and panic in the old woman’s voice. “Hurry, hurry, we must get away!”

Hope saw that the old woman had nearly disappeared into her own flat, retreating from sight, leaving her door only open a crack. She felt the key drive the dead-bolt lock home and she stepped back, turning toward the elevator. She could see a light from inside the compartment when it reached the floor.

She froze, unable to move.

The elevator seemed to pause, then rose past the floor without stopping.

Her ears were ringing with adrenaline, and every sound seemed distant, like an echo across a wide canyon.

She assessed herself, conducting an inventory of her heart, her lungs, her mind, trying to see what still functioned, what had been shut down by fear.

Behind her, Mrs. Abramowicz cracked her door open a little wider and stuck her head out into the hallway.

“False alarm, dear. Did you find out what happened to my cats?”

Hope inhaled deeply, trying to calm her racing heart. When words came to her, they were cold. “No,” she lied. “No sign of them anywhere.”

She could see some disappointment in the old woman’s eyes.

“I think I should be leaving now,” she said stiffly. But she had the good sense to slide the key to Michael O’Connell’s apartment into her jacket pocket as she turned and headed rapidly for the emergency stairs. She knew that waiting for the elevator would require a patience she no longer owned.

Hope lurched down the stairs, moving as quickly as she could, the pit of her stomach still clenched with tension. She barreled ahead, shoulders hunched forward, needing desperately to get outside. When she looked up, she suddenly saw a form in the lobby doorway, looming in the darkness ahead of her. She nearly froze with crushing fear, until she saw that it was only two other tenants entering. One of them snorted, “Hey!” as she pushed past them, out into the night cold, welcoming the darkness that surrounded her. She nearly jumped down the last stairs to the sidewalk and, without a look back, cut across the small street toward her car, fumbling with her keys, before thrusting herself into the driver’s seat. Inwardly, she could hear a voice insisting, Escape! Get away now! She was about to pull out when she looked up and once again froze.

Michael O’Connell was sauntering down the sidewalk opposite her.

She tracked him with her eyes as he paused outside the building, dug in his pocket for his keys, and then, not even glancing in her direction, stepped up and disappeared inside. She waited and then, a few moments later, saw lights flash on in his apartment.

Hope feared that he would somehow know that she had been there. That she had disrupted something, left something out of place. She put her car in gear and pulled out of the parking spot. Without looking back, she drove to the corner, then turned and continued down a wide street for several blocks, until she saw another spot where she could pull to the side. She slid the car in and thought to herself, What was it? Three minutes? Four? Five? How many seconds existed between her break-in and his return?

Her stomach clenched, and the nausea of fear finally overcame her. Hope opened the door to her car and was quietly and privately sick, vomiting into the gutter all of Mrs. Abramowicz’s Earl Grey tea.

Scott got an early start the following morning, rising in his cheap motel room just before dawn and driving in the dreary gray November half-light to a spot just across from the house where Michael O’Connell had grown up. He shut down the car and sat, waiting, feeling the first hints of winter seep into the compartment. It was a sad street, a step above a trailer park, but not much of one. The houses were all low-slung, and all in need of repair. Paint peeled from eaves, gutters had pulled free from rooflines, broken toys, abandoned cars, and dismantled snowmobiles littered more than one front yard. Screen doors flapped in the wind. More than one window had been patched with a sheet of heavy-duty plastic. It seemed a place abandoned by options. It was a place for six-packs, lottery-ticket and motorcycle dreams, tattoos and Saturday-night drunks. The teenagers probably worried about pregnancy and hockey in equal doses, and the older folks were more likely consumed by whether their small pensions would keep them off food stamps. It was one of the least friendly spots Scott had ever seen.

As at the school the afternoon before, he knew he was completely out of place.

Scott watched the morning ebb and flow of children heading to school buses and men and women carrying lunch pails heading to work. When things quieted down, he stepped out of the car. He had a roll of $20 bills in his pocket and figured perhaps more than a few would be spent that morning.

Turning his back on O’Connell’s home, Scott headed to the nearest house, directly across the street.

He knocked loudly and ignored a dog’s frantic deep-throated barking. After a few seconds, a woman angrily shouted at the dog to quiet down, and the door opened.

“Yes?” A woman in her late thirties with a cigarette hanging from her lip, dressed in a pink coat with a grocery-store logo on it, answered the door. She struggled to hold a cup of coffee in one hand while grasping the dog’s collar with the other. “Sorry, he’s pretty friendly, really, but just scares the hell out of folks, jumping all over them. My husband keeps saying I need to train him better, but…” She shrugged.

“It’s okay,” Scott said, speaking through the screen of the exterior door.

“How can I help you?”

“I’m with the Massachusetts State probation department,” Scott lied. “We’re just doing a presentencing check on a first-time offender. A Michael O’Connell. Used to live across the street here. Did you know him?”

The woman nodded. “A little. Haven’t seen him in a couple of years. What did he do?”

Scott thought for a moment, then said, “It’s a robbery charge.”

“Stole something, huh?”

Yes, Scott thought. “Seems that way.”

The woman snorted. “And got his damn fool self busted, huh? I always figured him for something a little more clever.”

“Smart guy, right?”

“Acted smart. I’m not sure the two are the same.”

Scott smiled. “Anyway,” he said slowly, “what we’re really interested in is background. I’ve still got to interview his father, but, you know, sometimes the neighbors…” He didn’t need to finish because the woman nodded vigorously.

“Don’t know too much. We’ve only been here a couple of years. But the old man-well, he’s been here since the Ice Age. And he ain’t particularly popular around here.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s on disability. Used to work at one of the shipbuilders over in Portsmouth. Had some kind of accident. Said he hurt his back. Collects a check every month from the company, from the state, and from the Feds, too. But for a guy that says he’s hurt, he seems to get around okay. Moonlights as a roofer, which is kinda odd work for a guy who claims to be crippled. My husband says he gets paid in cash under the table. I always figured it would be some tax guy snooping around here, asking questions.”

“That doesn’t say why people don’t-”

“He’s just a mean-ass drunk. And when he gets drunk, he gets abusive. Makes a racket. You can hear him screaming all sorts of language in the middle of the night, except, odd thing is, there ain’t no one there for him to scream at. Sometimes he comes out and shoots off some old gun he keeps in that mess he calls home. There’s kids around, but he don’t care. Took a shot at one of the neighborhood dogs once, too. Not mine, luckily. Anyway, opened fire for no real reason at all, just because he could. Just a bad dude, all around.”

“And the son?”

“Like I said, I hardly knew him. But the apple, as they say, don’t fall far from the damn tree. At least, don’t sound like it.”

“What about the mother?”

“She died. I never knew her. It was an accident. Or so the story went. Some people think she took her own life. Others want to blame her old man. Police looked pretty hard at the whole thing. It was pretty suspicious. But then, it got dropped. Maybe something in the papers back then, I don’t know. It happened before I got here.”

The dog barked once more, and Scott stepped back.

“Thanks very much,” he said. “One thing. Please keep this confidential. It sort of screws up any questions we might ask if people start talking.”

“Ah, sure.” The woman pushed at the dog with her foot and took a drag from the cigarette. “Hey, can you folks down in Massachusetts put the old man in jail alongside the kid? It sure would make things quieter around here.”

Scott spent the rest of the morning working his way around the neighborhood, pretending to be a variety of investigators. Only once did he get asked for some identification, and he backed his way out of that conversation quickly. He didn’t learn much. The O’Connell family had predated most of the other folks in the neighborhood, and the impressions they had made limited their contact with their neighbors. Their lack of popularity helped Scott in one regard: folks were willing to talk. But what people said merely reinforced what Scott had already heard or presumed.

There had been no sign of the elder O’Connell emerging from the house, although Scott told himself that the man might have slipped away when he was talking with one person or another. Still, a small, black Dodge pickup truck hadn’t moved all day. Scott assumed this was the older O’Connell’s vehicle.

He knew he would have to knock on that door, but he was as yet unsure exactly who to pose as. He decided he would make one more effort, at the local library, to find out about the circumstances surrounding O’Connell’s mother’s death.

The town’s library, in contrast to the bedraggled buildings on side streets and former farmland, was a two-story, glass-and-brick building, adjacent to a new police department and town offices complex.

Scott approached the main desk, and a slight, thin woman, maybe a half dozen years older than Ashley, looked up as she was sliding library cards into the backs of books and asked him not unpleasantly, “May I help you?”

“Yes. Do you keep high school yearbooks on file? And could you direct me to where you would keep local newspapers on microfilm?”

“Sure. The microfilm room is over there.” She gestured with her hand toward a side room. “And the collection is pretty clearly marked. Do you need help with the machine?”

Scott shook his head. “Think I can manage. The yearbooks?”

“In the reference section. What year were you hunting down?”

“Lincoln High, class of 1995.”

The young woman made a small face of surprise, then grinned. “My class. Maybe I can help you?”

“Did you know a young man named Michael O’Connell?”

She froze. For a second she didn’t reply.

Scott watched the young woman’s face race through bad memories.

“What has he done?” she finally whispered.

Sally pored over an array of legal texts and law review articles, searching for something, but precisely what, she was unsure. The more she read, the more she assessed, the more she analyzed, the worse she felt. It was one thing, she thought harshly to herself, to be on the intellectual side of crime, where actions were seen in the abstract world of the courtroom, involving arguments and evidence, search and seizure, confessions, forensics-and then the system took over. The criminal justice system was designed to bleed the humanity out of actions. It neutered the reality of a crime, turning it into something theatrical. She was familiar and comfortable with the process. But what she was doing was a step in a far different direction.

Find a crime.

Figure out how to assign it to Michael O’Connell.

Put him in jail. Go on with their lives. It sounded simple. Scott’s enthusiasm had been encouraging, until she had actually sat down and tried to work her way through all the various possibilities.

The best she had come up with so far were fraud and extortion.

It would be tricky, she thought to herself, but they could probably take all of O’Connell’s actions up to that point and re-form them so they would look like some sort of scheme to blackmail her and Scott out of cash. She thought she could probably make it appear to a prosecutor that everything O’Connell had done-especially his harassment of Ashley-was an aggressive plot. The only thing they would have to manufacture was some sort of threat unless they paid some sum of money. Scott could claim under oath that when he’d handed over $5,000 to O’Connell in Boston, O’Connell had demanded more, and that he’d stepped up his pursuit when they had been reluctant. They could even explain away their failure to engage the police up to this point, saying that they were scared what he might do.

The problem-or, Sally thought ruefully, the first problem of what were likely to be many-was what she remembered Scott saying after he’d handed over the $5,000. He thought that O’Connell had been wearing a hidden microphone that had recorded the entirety of their conversation.

If that were true, suddenly they would be seen as the liars. O’Connell would skate free, they might face charges, and her practice and Scott’s job might be in jeopardy. They would be back at square one, they would be in trouble, and there would be nothing standing between O’Connell, his anger, and Ashley.

And, she realized, even if they were successful, there was no guarantee that O’Connell wouldn’t get some sort of reduced sentence. A couple of years? How long would it take with him behind bars to allow Ashley to reinvent herself, to get free of his obsession? Three? Five? Ten? Could she ever be 100 percent certain that he wasn’t going to arrive on her doorstep?

Sally rocked back in her seat.

Kill him, she thought.

She gasped out loud. She could not believe what her own voice was saying to her.

What is it about your life that is so great that it shouldn’t be sacrificed?

This made some sense to her. She didn’t really love her work, she was filled with doubts about her relationship with Hope. It had been weeks, maybe months, since she’d felt joy about who she was, and what she stood for. Meaning in life? She wanted to laugh, but couldn’t bring herself to do so. She was a middle-aged, small-town lawyer, growing old, watching the lines of worry take root in the skin of her face every day. She thought the only mark she’d ever made in life was Ashley. Her daughter might have been the result of a lie of love, but there was no denying that she was categorically the best thing that Sally and Scott had managed in their brief time together.

Her future is worth dying for. Yours isn’t.

Again Sally was shocked at what her imagination insisted. This is madness. But it was madness that made sense.

Kill him, she told herself.

And then she had another, even more bizarre thought.

Or find a way to make sure he kills you.

And then pays for it.

She leaned back and stared at the books and texts surrounding her.

Someone had to die. Of this she suddenly became completely convinced.

I had nightmares for the first time since I’d started in on the story.

They arrived unbidden and kept me spinning in my bed, sweat-drenched in sleep. I awakened once deep in the night, staggered into the bathroom for a drink of water, and stared at myself in the mirror. I slipped from the room, padding down the carpeted hallway and peering in on my children, reassuring myself that their sleep wasn’t as troubled as my own. When I returned, my wife muttered, “Everything okay?” but had dropped off again before I could answer. I dropped my head to the pillow and peered up into the endless edges of darkness.

The next day, I called her on the phone.

“I think I need to speak with some of the principals in this little drama now,” I said roughly. “I’ve been putting that off for far too long.”

“Yes. I’ve been expecting that eventually you would make that demand. I’m just not sure who would be willing to speak with you at this point.”

“They are willing to have their story told, but not willing to speak with me?” I asked incredulously.

When she spoke, I could sense some distant turmoil within her; some events in the story were turning more critical. I was getting closer.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

“Afraid of what?”

“So many things are in balance. A life balances a death. Chance balances against despair. So much is at stake.”

“I can find them,” I said abruptly. “I don’t have to play this cat-and-mouse game with you. I could hunt down faculty lists. Search legal databases. Go to student websites. Gay-women websites. Psychopath chat rooms. I don’t know. One of them will have enough information so that I’ll be able to assign real names, real places, and truths to what you’ve told me.”

“You don’t think I have been telling you the truth?”

“I do. I’m just saying that I know enough so that I could pursue all this on my own.”

“You could do that, but that would cause me to stop taking your calls. And perhaps you would never know what really happened. You might know some fact, or you might be able to piece together the details, so that you had the flesh of the story. But not the bones. Never the organs beneath the surface, telling you the why. Would you risk that?”

“No.” I said. “I would not.”

“I did not think so.”

“I will play by your rules. But not much longer. I’m reaching the end of my rope.”

“Yes. I can hear that in your voice.” But it did not sound as if this had the slightest impact on her. And with that, she hung up the phone.