The Wrong Man

38

Scott walked up the pathway to his ex-wife’s house filled with doubts and uncertainties, all warring within him. When he reached the entranceway, he lifted his hand to ring the doorbell, but hesitated. For an instant he turned back and stared into the edges of darkness that filled the street. He was much closer now to Michael O’Connell, yet he knew that O’Connell still hid from him. He wondered if he was being studied just as closely by their target. He did not know if it was possible to get ahead, to gain an edge. He doubted it. For all he knew, somewhere in that block, right then, right at that moment, O’Connell was standing, hidden by the completeness of the black, watching him. Scott felt a surge of rage within him; he wanted to scream out loud. He imagined that everything that he’d discovered on his research trip, that he’d thought was so unpredictable, was actually totally expected, totally foreseen, and totally anticipated. He could not shake the idea that somehow, as impossible as it would be, O’Connell had learned everything that Scott had done.

A short groan escaped his lips, and he could feel sweat beneath his arms. He took a sudden step away from the door, angry, trying to confront the man he believed was watching, and then he stopped.

Behind him the door opened. It was Sally.

She stared for a moment, out into the night, following the path of Scott’s eyes. In that second, she understood what he was searching for.

“Do you think he’s out there?” Her voice was flat and hard.

“Yes. And no.”

“Well, which is it?”

“I think he’s either right there, right in some shadow or another, watching every move we make. Or else he’s not. But we can’t tell the difference, and so we’re screwed, one way or the other.”

Sally reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. A small act of surprising tenderness, it felt strange to her, as she realized that she had not actually physically touched in years the man whose bed she’d once shared. “Come on in,” she said. “We’re just as screwed inside, but it’s warmer.”

Hope was drinking a beer, holding the cold bottle to her forehead, as if she were flushed with fever. Ashley and Catherine were dispatched to the kitchen, to put together some sort of meal-or, at least, that was Sally’s explanation, as transparent as it was, to get them out of the room where whatever planning was going to happen. Scott could feel some residue of tension, as if the sensation he’d had on the front steps, staring back into the night, had lingered with him. Sally, on the other hand, was organized. She turned to Scott and gestured toward Hope. “She’s barely said a word since she got back. But I believe she found out something.”

Before Scott could say anything, Hope set her beer down hard on the table.

“I think it’s worse than we imagined,” she said, breaking her silence.

“Worse? How the hell could anything be worse?” Sally asked.

Hope had a sudden image in her mind: the grinning death mask of a frozen cat.

“He’s a very sick, twisted guy. Likes to torture and kill small animals.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” Scott exclaimed sharply.

“A sadist?” Sally asked.

“Maybe in part. Sure seems that way. But that’s just a part of who he is. One other thing.” Hope’s voice was rigid, hard, granitelike. “He’s got a gun.”

“Did you see it, as well?” Scott demanded.

“Yes. I got into his apartment while he was out.”

“How did you manage that?”

“What difference does it make? I did. I made friends with a neighbor. The neighbor happened to have a key. And what I saw inside only persuaded me that things will get worse. Not better. He’s a really bad guy. How bad? I don’t know. Bad enough to kill Ashley? I didn’t see anything that might suggest that he wouldn’t. He’s got encrypted computer files all about her. One called Ashley Love and one called Ashley Hate. That right there probably tells you all you need to know. But it’s worse. He’s got some about us, too. I couldn’t tell what was in them. But obsession probably doesn’t begin to describe what we’re up against. So, you tell me. He’s sick. He’s determined. He’s obsessed. What does that add up to? Can we hide from that? Can anyone?”

“What are you saying, Hope?” Sally asked.

“I’m saying that nothing I saw suggested any outcome other than some inevitable tragedy. And you know what that means.” Hope had difficulty shaking the images from O’Connell’s apartment from her imagination. Frozen dead cats, a gun in a shoe, stark, monastic walls, a grimy, unkempt place devoted to a single purpose: Ashley. She slumped back in her chair, thinking how hard it was to convey the simplest idea: O’Connell had nothing in his life other than his one pursuit.

Sally turned to Scott. “What about your trip? Did you learn anything?”

“A lot. But nothing that would contradict anything Hope just said. I saw where he grew up. And I actually spoke with his father. A meaner, nastier, more depraved son of a bitch would be hard to find.”

They all considered this statement. There was a lot to say, but all three of them knew that it wouldn’t amount to anything they didn’t already know.

Sally broke the silence. “We have to…”

The more that was said, the colder she felt inside. She felt that if her heart were monitored, it would flatline. “Is he a killer?” she asked abruptly. “Are we sure?”

“What’s a killer? I mean, how can we tell? For certain,” Scott said. “Everything I learned told me the answer to your question is yes. But until he does something overt…”

“He might have killed Murphy.”

“He might have killed Jimmy Hoffa and JFK, too, for all we know,” Scott replied fiercely. “We need to focus on what we actually know for certain.”

“Yes, well, certainty is not something we have in absolute abundance,” Sally replied. “In fact, it’s about the absolute least thing we have. We don’t know anything, except that he’s evil, and he’s out there somewhere. And that he might or might not hurt Ashley. He might or might not pursue her forever. He might or might not do just about any damn thing.”

Again, they were all silent. Hope thought they were somehow trapped in a maze, and that no matter what path they took, there was no exit.

Sally finally spoke in a whisper, “Someone has to die.”

The word froze the room.

Scott spoke first, his voice raspy, as if sore. He looked at Sally. “The plan was to find a crime and assign it to O’Connell. That’s what you were supposed to research.”

“The only way to do that with any certainty-God damn it, I hate using that word-is to either create something complex, which we might not have the time to invent, or have Ashley lie. I mean, we could beat her up and then have her claim it was O’Connell. That would be an assault and would probably buy him some serious jail time. Of course, one of us would have to provide the bruises and knocked-out teeth and fractured ribs to make it into a real serious felony. How do you like that scenario? And, if it were to blow up when some detective started asking questions…”

“All right, but what-”

“We always have the old fallback alternative of going to the authorities and getting a restraining order. Does anyone think for one instant that that piece of paper will protect her?”

“No.”

“Based on what we now know about O’Connell, do we think he will make the mistake of violating the restraining order without harming Ashley, which would allow him to be prosecuted? Which, don’t forget, is a lengthy process, during which time he would be out on bond.”

“No, God damn it,” Scott muttered.

Sally looked over at Scott. “The man you met…the father…”

“A bastard. First-degree evil.”

Sally nodded. “And his relationship with his son?”

“He hates his child. His child hates him. They haven’t seen each other in years.”

“What do you know about that hatred?”

“He was abusive, both towards O’Connell’s mother and O’Connell. He was the sort of guy that drank too much and then used his fists liberally. No one in the entire neighborhood likes him. And he was probably hell for any kid, much less one like O’Connell.”

Sally inhaled sharply, trying to impress reason upon the words she was speaking when she knew they had a particular kind of insanity. “Would you say,” she spoke cautiously, “would you say that this man was in some regards the reason, psychologically speaking, of course, that Michael O’Connell is who he is?”

Scott nodded. “Of course. I mean, even the most simple armchair Freud amongst us knows that.”

“Violence breeds violence,” Sally said.

“Yes.”

“The reason Ashley is threatened is because this man years ago created in his own child an unhealthy, probably murderous and obsessive need to be loved, to possess someone else, I don’t know, to ruin or be ruined, however you want to put it.”

“That was my impression.” Scott’s own voice was gathering some momentum. “And there’s something else. The mother-who wasn’t any bouquet of flowers, either-died under questionable circumstances. He might have killed her. He just couldn’t be charged.”

“So, in addition to maybe creating a killer, maybe he is one, as well?” Sally asked.

“Yes. I guess you could say that.”

“If you step back, for just a second here,” Sally continued, weighting her language with desperation, “would you not agree that whatever danger Michael O’Connell threatens our Ashley with, it was established in his psyche by his father?”

“Yes.”

“So,” she said abruptly. “It’s simple then.”

“What’s simple?” Hope said.

Sally smiled, but there was absolutely no humor in anything she said. “Instead of killing Michael O’Connell ourselves, we kill the father. And find a way to blame the son for the murder.”

Silence again filled the room.

“It makes sense,” Sally said quickly. “The son hates the father. The father hates the son. So, if they were brought together, death is not an unlikely result, right?”

Scott nodded slowly.

“Aren’t the two of them, in a pretty clear way, the basis for the threat to Ashley?”

This time Sally turned to Hope, who also nodded.

“Can we be killers?” Sally asked. “Could we murder someone-even for the best of reasons-and then wake up the next day and start life up again just as if nothing of any great importance had taken place?”

Hope looked over at Scott. No easy answer from him right then, she thought.

Sally was harsh with every word. “Murder, you see, inevitably changes everything. But the point of killing is to restore Ashley’s life to its pre-Michael O’Connell status. We can probably manage that-if she is excluded from almost the entirety of the process. Which is a difficult enough aspect to manage. But the three of us, we’re the conspirators in this. It will change us, will it not? I think profoundly. Because right now, with this conversation right here, we’re taking a step. Up to this point, we’ve been the good guys, trying to protect our daughter from evil. But we take this step-even a small one-and we’re suddenly the bad guys. Because, no matter what Michael O’Connell might have done, or whatever Michael O’Connell might be planning to do, we are somewhere beyond him. He’s being driven by recognizable psychological forces; his evil stems from his upbringing, his background, whatever. He’s probably not to blame for the bad guy he’s become. He’s the unconscious product of deprivation and pain. So, whatever he’s done to us, and whatever he might do to Ashley, it at the very least has some sort of moral or emotional basis. Maybe it’s all wrong, but it has an explanation to it. Us, on the other hand, well, what I’m saying is that we’re going to have to be cold-blooded, selfish, and without any redeeming aspects. Save perhaps one.”

Both Hope and Scott had listened intently to Sally’s speech. She had writhed about in her chair, as if tortured by every word she spoke, until finally coming to a frozen halt.

“What’s that?” Hope asked cautiously.

“Ashley will be safe.”

Again they were all silent.

Sally caught her breath with a sharp gasping sound.

“This is assuming one critical detail,” she said almost in a whisper.

“What detail is that?” Scott demanded.

“That we can get away with it.”

Night had descended, and we sat in two wooden Adirondack chairs on her stone patio. Hard seats for hard thoughts. I was flush with questions, more insistent than ever about speaking with the principals, or, at the very least, one of them who could fill me in on the moment when they changed from victims to conspirators. But infuriatingly, she wasn’t willing to be bulldozed. Instead, she stared out into the humid summer darkness.

“Remarkable, isn’t it, what one will consider doing, when pushed to a limit?” she said.

“Well,” I replied cautiously, “when one’s back is up against the wall…”

She laughed, but humorlessly. “But that’s just it,” she said abruptly. “They thought their backs were up against that proverbial wall. How can you be certain?”

“They had legitimate fears. The threat O’Connell posed was obvious. They just didn’t know. And so given the choice between unknowns, they took charge of their own circumstances.”

She smiled again. “You make it sound so easy and so convincing. Why don’t you turn it around?”

“How?”

“Well, imagine looking at the problem from the law enforcement point of view. You have a young man who has fallen in love, pursuing the girl of his dreams. Happens all the time. You and I know that his pursuit is truly an obsession-but what could a police detective actually prove? Do you not think that Michael O’Connell effectively hid his computer sorties into all their lives so they couldn’t be traced? And what had they done in response? Tried to bribe him. Tried to threaten him. Had him beaten up. If you were a policeman, coming upon this situation, which do you think would be the easier case to prosecute? My guess is, Scott, Sally, and even Hope. They have already lied. They have already been duplicitous. Even Ashley has skirted the law, with the revolver she obtained. And now they were conspiring to commit murder. Of an innocent man. Perhaps he wasn’t innocent in some psychological or moral sense, but still…And they wanted to get away with it. What claim did they have for the ethical high ground?”

I didn’t answer this question.

My own imagination was churning: How did they manage?

“Do you remember who told them that saying and doing are different things altogether? Who pointed out how hard it actually is to pull a trigger?”

I smiled. “Yes. It was O’Connell.”

She laughed bitterly. “Yes. That was what he said to the toughest of them all, the one with the least to lose by firing that shotgun’s load into his chest, who had seen most of her life already pass by and would be risking the least by shooting. At that critical moment, she failed, didn’t she?”

She paused, staring up into the darkness. “But someone would have to be brave enough.”