The Wrong Man

36

Ashley was still angry, and sulking about being excluded from the most crucial decision she would ever have to make. Catherine was a little less stymied by Hope, Scott, and Sally’s unreasonable exclusions. She spent an hour on the telephone, dialing numbers, speaking in low tones, before collecting Ashley and saying, “There’s something you and I need to do.”

Ashley was standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, staring over at the corner where Nameless’s bowl-now empty-remained. No one had had the heart to move it. She felt knotted, tied to a mast while around her things were happening that she was intimately involved in, but she could not see.

“What?”

“Well,” Catherine said softly, “I don’t exactly like being on the outside looking in.”

“Neither do I.”

“I think we should take a few steps. Steps I’m not sure anyone in this family has ever considered before.” Catherine held up her car keys. “Let’s get going,” she said briskly.

“Where are we headed?”

“Going to meet a man,” Catherine replied breezily. “A most unsavory character, I suspect.”

Ashley must have looked slightly surprised, because the older woman smiled. “That is what we need. Someone distasteful.” She turned and, with Ashley in tow, headed out to her car. “We won’t be telling your parents or Hope about this trip,” she said as she pulled out onto the street. Ashley remained quiet as Catherine accelerated the car, checking the rearview mirror repeatedly, to make sure they were not being followed. “We need some help from someone from a different world. With different values. Luckily,” she sighed, “I know a few folks up near my home who knew someone who filled that particular bill.”

Ashley had several more questions but sat back, assuming she would find out what she needed to know soon enough. She lifted her eyebrows when Catherine steered the car out of the side streets onto a main boulevard, then turned toward the entrance ramp to the interstate, heading back in the direction they had fled from only a few days earlier.

“Where are we going?”

“A little spot just about forty-five minutes north of here,” Catherine said breezily. “Perhaps two hundred yards from the line separating the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from the great state of Vermont.”

“And what will we find there?”

Catherine smiled. “A man, like I said. The sort of man I doubt either of us has ever met before.” Her smile faded, and she spoke a little more harshly. “And perhaps some security.”

She did not explain this, nor did Ashley ask her to, although the younger woman doubted security was so easily found, even just over the border in Vermont.

Scott left the town library hurriedly.

What he had heard was an unsettling story-a small-town-America story that mixed rumor, innuendo, jealousy, and exaggeration together with some truths, some facts, and some possibilities. Stories such as the one he’d just heard have a certain radioactivity. They may not be clear to the naked eye, but they generate infectious power.

“The thing you need to know,” the librarian had told him, “was just how messy the death of Michael O’Connell’s mother truly was.”

Messy, in Scott’s mind, hardly captured the situation.

Some relationships are volatile from the start and should never form, but for some curious and hellish reason, take root and create a deadly ballet. That was the home life that Michael O’Connell was born into: a father who was abusive, more often than not drunk, who maintained a household riveted together by bolts of anger; and a mother who had once been a high school valedictorian, who had tossed away her promise on the man who’d seduced her in her first year at community college. His Elvis good looks, dark hair, muscled body, good job in the shipyards, fast car, and ready laugh had all hidden his harsher side.

The police visits at the O’Connell household had been a regular Saturday-night event. A broken arm, teeth knocked out, bruises, social workers, trips to the emergency room, had been her wedding gifts. In turn he’d received a broken nose that spoiled his handsome face when it was set improperly and more than once had to stare down his wife when she waved a kitchen knife in his direction. It was a steady and all-too-familiar pattern of abuse, violence, and forgiveness that would have continued forever, except for two events: the father fell, and the mother grew sick.

The senior O’Connell slipped from a work spot thirty feet in the air, slamming into a steel girder when he tumbled. He should have died, but instead spent six months in the hospital, recovering from a pair of fractured vertebrae, managing to gain an addiction to painkillers and a substantial insurance and disability settlement, the majority of which he wasted buying rounds of drinks at the local VFW hall and falling prey to a couple of get-rich-quick schemers. Meanwhile, O’Connell’s mother had a bout with uterine cancer. Surgery and her own dependence upon painkillers led to a life filled with greater uncertainty.

O’Connell was thirteen on the night his mother died. One day past his birthday.

What Scott had learned from the librarian and a quick search of the local newspaper’s files was both troubling and confusing. Both parents had been drinking and fighting; it had been going on for some time, according to some neighbors, but it was not all that unusual and was not a 911 level of violence. But in the early evening, just after dark, there had been a sudden eruption of loud noises, followed by two gunshots.

The gunshots were the questionable part of the story. Some of the neighbors distinctly remembered a significant space of time-thirty seconds, perhaps as much as a minute or a minute and a half-between the shots.

O’Connell’s father himself had called the police.

They arrived to find the mother dead on the floor, a close-contact gunshot wound to her chest, a second bullet in the ceiling, the barely teenage boy huddled in the corner, and the father, face covered with red scratch marks, holding a snub-nosed.38 pistol in his hand. This was the senior O’Connell’s story: They’d been drinking and then they’d fought, as usual, only this time she had pulled out the revolver that he kept locked in his bureau drawer. He didn’t know how she’d managed to find the key. She threatened to kill him. Said he’d punched her once too often, and that he should get ready to die. Instead he’d charged across the kitchen like an enraged bull, screaming at her, daring her to fire. He’d seized her hand. They’d grappled. The first discharge went into the roof. The second went into her chest.

A fight. Too much alcohol. An accident.

That was his story, or so the librarian told Scott, shaking her head as she did.

Of course, Scott understood, the police immediately wondered whether it had been O’Connell’s father who had brandished the weapon, and the mother who had been the one fighting for her life. More than one detective looked at the crime-scene photos and thought it was just as likely that she’d refused his drunken advances and had grabbed the gun barrel in a fatal attempt to prevent him from shooting her. The shot in the ceiling was an afterthought, conveniently provided to make his version of events seem truthful.

And in that confusion-where two stories of equal possibility had presented themselves, the one of self-defense, the other of the cheapest sort of drunken murder-the only answer could be provided by the teenager.

He could tell one truth-and send his father to prison and himself to a foster-care home. Or he could tell another, and the life he knew-the only life he knew-would more or less continue, absent his mother.

Scott thought that this was perhaps the only moment that he would feel any sympathy for O’Connell. And it was a retroactive sympathy, because it stretched back almost fifteen years.

For an instant, he wondered what he would have done. And then he understood that a terrible choice is no choice. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.

So the young O’Connell had backed up his father’s history.

Scott wondered, Did he see his mother being shot in his nightmares? Did he see her fighting for her life? Did every morning when he awoke and saw the way his father eyed him with distrust brand some terrible lie into him?

Scott drove across town and pulled his car up in front of the O’Connell house. It’s all right there. All the ingredients necessary to become a killer.

Scott did not know much about psychology-although like any historian he understood that sometimes great events turned on emotions. But he knew enough to know that even the most armchair Freudian could see how his past made O’Connell’s future dangerous. And, as Scott found himself breathing in rapidly, he knew the one thing standing square in O’Connell’s life was Ashley.

Will he kill Ashley just as easily as his father killed his mother?

Scott lifted his head and once again focused on the house where O’Connell grew up. As he watched, he was unaware of the shape that emerged from the shadow of a nearby tree, so that when a set of knuckles knocked suddenly against his window, he turned in surprise, feeling his heart abruptly quicken.

“Get out of the car!”

This was a demand without compromise.

Scott, confused, looked up and saw the face of a dark-haired man with a crooked nose nearly pressed up against the window. In one hand, the man held an ax handle.

“Get out!” he repeated.

Scott’s panicky first instinct was to put the car in gear and then to punch the gas, but he did not, just as he saw the man pull the ax handle back like a batter eyeing a hanging curve. Instead, he took a deep breath, undid his safety belt slowly, and pushed open the door.

The man eyed him dangerously, still brandishing the ax handle as a weapon.

“You the one asking all the questions?” he demanded. “Just who the hell are you? And why don’t you tell me why you’re so goddamn interested in me before I knock your head clean off?”

Sally turned to her computer and realized that what she had been about to do was potentially incriminating. She reached into her desk drawer and removed an old yellow legal pad. Opening a computer file with the details of an as-yet-unspecified crime would be a mistake. She reminded herself to think backward-more or less the same way a detective does. A piece of paper can be destroyed. It was a little like walking across a beach; footprints above the high-tide mark could last forever. Below, they were quickly erased by the never-ending waves.

She bit down on her lip and seized a pencil.

At the top of the page she wrote, Motive.

This was followed by a second category: Means.

And, by necessity, the third: Opportunity.

Sally stared at the words. They formed the holy trinity of police work. Fill in those blanks, and nine times out of ten you will know who to arrest and charge. And just as often, who can be convicted in a court of law. As a criminal defense attorney, the job was simple: attack and disrupt one of those elements. Like a three-legged stool, if one side was cut, the entirety would tumble. Now she was planning a crime of her own and trying to anticipate how the undetermined crime would be investigated. She kept using euphemisms in her mind. Crime or incident or event. She shied away from the word murder.

She added a fourth category to her sheet: Forensics.

This she could work on, she thought. Sally started to list the various ways that they could be tripped up. DNA samples-that meant hair, skin, blood-all had to be avoided. Ballistics-if they needed to use a gun, they had to find one that wasn’t traceable to them. Or else, they would have to dispose of it in a way that it could never be found, and short of dropping it into the ocean, that was hard to accomplish. And then there were other issues. Fiber from clothes, telltale fingerprints left behind, shoe prints in soft earth, tire prints from car tracks. Witnesses who might see someone coming or going. Security cameras. And she couldn’t even be sure that seated in a stiff chair under some harsh overhead light, across from a pair of detectives-one inevitably playing the good cop, the other, the bad-that Scott or Ashley or Hope or Catherine wouldn’t say something. They might try to tell some story or, worse, simply lie-the cops always caught the lies-and they would all be sunk.

Of course, if any of them was seated in that chair in an interrogation room, everything that they had ever hoped for was already lost.

They had to do whatever they were going to do completely anonymously. It had to appear, even to someone looking hard at it, that it stemmed from something other than Ashley.

The more Sally considered it, the harder it seemed. And the more impossible the task, the more desperate she felt. She could sense things unraveling around her; not just her job, which she’d neglected, but her relationship and ultimately her entire life. It was as if the uncertainty over Ashley’s safety made everything else impossible.

Sally shook her head. She looked down at the paper in front of her. She was abruptly reminded of taking tests in law school. In a way, this was the same. The only difference was this time failure wasn’t about a grade. It was about their future.

She made a note: Purchase multiple sets of surgical gloves.

That would at least limit their DNA and fingerprint exposure, whenever they figured out what they were going to do.

She made a second note: Go to the Salvation Army store and purchase clothing. Don’t forget shoes.

Sally nodded to herself. You can do this, she told herself. Whatever it is.

The distasteful man that Catherine and Ashley were going to meet was standing by the door of his battered Chevy sport utility vehicle, puffing on a cigarette and pawing the gravel of the parking lot with his right foot, like an impatient horse. Catherine immediately spotted his red-and-black hunting jacket, and the NRA stickers adorning the back of the SUV. He was short, with a receding hairline and a barrel chest, a beer-and-a-shot sort of guy, Catherine thought. He once worked in a mill or a manufacturing plant, but had discovered a far more consistent source of income.

She pulled her car across from his and told Ashley, “Stay here. Keep your head down. If I need you, I’ll give a wave.”

Ashley, for her part, wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. She nodded and pivoted about, so that she could keep her eyes on Catherine.

Catherine got out of the car. “Mr. Johnson, I’m guessing?”

“That’s right. You must be Mrs. Frazier?”

“Indeed.”

“I don’t usually like coming out like this. I prefer to do my business at regular shows.”

Catherine nodded. She doubted that this statement was true, but it was part of the charade.

“I appreciate your taking the time,” she said. “I wouldn’t have called if the situation weren’t pressing.”

“Personal use? Personal protection?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“You see, I’m a collector, not a dealer. And usually I merely trade and sell at authorized gun shows. Otherwise, I’d have to have a federal permit, you understand.”

She nodded. She recognized that the man was speaking in a sort of code, to skirt the law.

“Again, I’m appreciative,” she said.

“You see, a regular gun dealer has to fill out all sorts of paperwork for the Feds. And then there is the three-day waiting period. But a gun collector can swap and trade without those requirements. Of course, I’ve got to ask: You are not planning anything illegal with this weapon?”

“Of course not. It’s for protection. You can’t be safe enough these days. So, what do you have for me?”

The gun dealer moved to the back of his truck and opened the hatch. Inside there was a steel-sided suitcase with a combination lock, which he rapidly opened. On a bed of black Styrofoam there was an array of handguns. She stared down at them with little comprehension. “I’m not much of a gun person.”

Mr. Johnson nodded. “The forty-five and the nine-mill are probably way more than you need. It’s these two that you want to consider: the twenty-five automatic and the thirty-two revolver. The thirty-two short barrel is probably what you’re searching for. It’s more, ah, feminine-sized. Six shots in the cylinder. Just point and shoot. Very dependable, reliable, small, not heavy, anyone can handle it. Fits in a purse. A real popular gun with the ladies. Drawback is it doesn’t pack the biggest punch, you know? Bigger gun. Bigger payload. That’s not to say that a shot from a thirty-two won’t kill you. It will. But you see what I’m saying?”

“Of course. I think I’ll take the thirty-two.”

Mr. Johnson smiled. “Good selection. Now, I’m required by law to ask you whether you plan to take this gun out of state.”

“Of course not,” Catherine lied.

“Or transfer it to another person.”

Catherine didn’t even glance toward Ashley waiting in the car. “Absolutely not.”

“Nor do you intend to use the weapon for any illegal purpose?”

“Again, negative.”

He nodded. “Sure.” He stared at Catherine, then over at her car. “I already have your contact information. And I’ve got the serial numbers. If someone, like an ATF agent, were to come asking questions, you know they would find answers with me. I wouldn’t be pleased to provide them, but I would. Otherwise it would be me looking at doing some time. You understand what I’m saying? You got a husband you want to shoot, well, that’s your business. I’m just saying that-”

Catherine held up her hand. “My husband passed away some years ago. Please, Mr. Johnson, be reassured. This is merely protection for an older woman who lives alone in the countryside.”

He smiled. “Four hundred dollars. Cash. And I’ll throw in a box of extra shells. Find some place to practice. It can make all the difference in the world.”

He took the weapon and placed it in a cheap leather case. “That’s free,” he said and handed the gun to Catherine as she handed over the money.

“One other thing you might want to keep in mind. When you decide to pull that trigger,” he said slowly, lifting his own hands into a shooter’s position, “make sure you use both hands to steady yourself, assume a comfortable stance, take a deep breath, and then one more thing…”

“Yes?”

“Empty it. All six. You decide to shoot something, or someone, Mrs. Frazier, well, there’s no such thing as going halfway, you know. It’s only in Hollywood that the good guy can shoot a gun out of some bad dude’s hand, or wing ’em in the shoulder. Not in real life. You make that choice, aim dead center in the chest and then make sure you don’t leave any questions behind. You want to shoot something? Then you kill it.”

Catherine nodded. “Words to live by.”

The assistant dean of the Art History Department only had a few moments, she told me. It was her regularly scheduled office hours, and there was usually a backlog of students outside her door. She grinned as she outlined the panoply of student excuses, complaints, inquiries, and criticisms that awaited her that day.

“So,” she said, leaning back in her chair, “what is it that has brought an actual adult to my door this day?”

I explained, in the vaguest terms I thought would manage to keep her talking, what I was interested in.

“Ashley?” she said. “Yes. I do remember her. A few years ago, no? A most curious case, that one.”

“How so?”

“Excellent undergraduate grades, a real artistic streak, a hard worker-she had an excellent part-time position at the museum-and then it all seemed to fall apart for her in a most dramatic fashion. I always suspected some sort of boy trouble. Usually that’s the case when promising young women suddenly go into a tailspin. In most cases, these sorts of problems can be solved with copious amounts of tissue for the tears, and several cups of hot tea. In her case, however, there was all sorts of talk, rumors mostly, throughout the department, about how she got fired from that job, and the integrity of her academic work. But I’m not comfortable speaking about these things without her authorization. In writing. You don’t by any chance have a document such as that with you, do you?”

“No.”

The dean shrugged, a small, wry smile on her lips. “I am limited then in what I can tell you.”

“Of course.” I got up to leave. “Still, thanks for your time.”

“Say,” the dean asked, “maybe you can tell me what happened to her? She seems to have dropped off our radar completely.”

I hesitated, not exactly sure how to answer her question. The pause caused the dean to look up in concern.

“Did something happen to her?” she asked, suddenly all jocularity vanishing from her tones. “I would hate to hear that.”

“Yes, I suppose you could say something did happen to her.”