The Wrong Man

42

At about the same time that Catherine and Ashley were walking around the block wondering where Michael O’Connell was, Scott was parked in the far corner of a thickly wooded rest area off Route 2. The virtue of the rest area was that it was almost entirely blocked by trees and brush from the highway. That, in part, was why they had chosen Route 2 as the way to travel to Boston. It wasn’t as quick as the turnpike, but it was less patrolled and less traveled. He was alone in his beaten old truck, having left the Porsche in his driveway.

Scott could hear the shallowness of his breathing, and he told himself that he was being crazy. Whatever tension there was at this moment, it would undoubtedly get far worse by the end of the day. His patience was rewarded a few minutes later when he saw a late-model white Ford Taurus pull into the rest area. It came to a stop about twenty feet away. He recognized Hope behind the wheel.

He reached down to the leg well beside him and pulled up a small, cheap red canvas gym bag. It rattled with a metallic sound when he picked it up. He got out of the truck and swiftly walked across the parking area.

Hope rolled down the window.

“Keep watch,” Scott said briskly. “You see anyone pulling in, let me know pronto.”

She nodded. “Where did you-”

“Last night. After midnight. I went down to long-term parking at the Hartford airport.”

“Good thinking. But don’t they have security cameras in the parking garage?”

“I went to the satellite lots. No pictures. This will only take a second. This a rental?”

“Yes,” she said. “It made the most sense.”

Scott opened the gym bag and went to the back of the car. It only took him a few minutes to exchange the Massachusetts license plates for the set from Rhode Island he’d taken off a car the night before. A small socket wrench and pliers were also in the bag. He placed the car’s actual plates in the duffel and handed it to Hope. “Don’t forget,” he said. “Got to change back before you return that vehicle.”

Hope nodded. She already looked pale.

“Look, call me if you have any hassle. I’ll be close enough, and-”

“You think if there’s a problem, I’ll have time to make a phone call?”

“No. Of course not. All right, I’ll just guide myself…” His voice trailed off. Too much to say. No words to say it with.

Scott stepped back. “Sally should be on her way down the turnpike by now.”

“Then I’ll go,” Hope said. She placed the gym bag on the seat beside her.

“Keep to the speed limit. I’ll see you in a bit.”

He thought he should say Good luck or Be careful or something bland and encouraging. But he did not. Instead, he watched as Hope quickly exited the parking area, and he glanced at his watch, trying to imagine where Sally would be. She was taking a parallel route east. It seemed like a small touch, changing license plates for the day, but he understood that when Sally had talked to both of them about paying attention to small, seemingly insignificant details, there was much truth in what she’d said. For the first time he’d come to understand that everything he’d learned in life up to that point had little relevance to what he was about to do.

On the precipice of sudden cowardice, Scott returned to his truck and readied himself to head east into uncertainty.

Hope drove toward the intersection where the interstate highway branched off to the northeast. She followed Sally’s directions as carefully as possible, keeping her speed within the limits so as not to attract any attention, heading to the spot that Sally had designated, where they would meet up later that day. She decided that it was best if she tried to compartmentalize everything. She thought of what she was about to do as mere items on a checklist, and that she was moving steadily from one to the next.

She tried to think analytically and coldly about the last three entries on her list.

Commit the crime.

Get away. Meet Sally.

Leave no trace of yourself behind.

She wished that she were a mathematician who could see everything she was doing as nothing more than a series of numbers building into theories and probabilities, and who could imagine lives and futures with nothing more passionate than the statistics of an actuary.

This was impossible. So, instead, she tried to work herself into some sort of righteous anger, fixating on Michael O’Connell and his family, insisting to herself that the course they were taking was the only one that he had left open to them, and the only one that he would not have anticipated. If she could make herself angry enough, perhaps rage alone would carry her forward far enough to do what she had volunteered to do.

Someone has to die, she told herself. Before he kills Ashley. She repeated this, like some perverse mantra, over and over for several miles of highway.

Hope remembered games when everything hung in the balance during the last minutes before the referee’s whistle. Reaching deep into that athlete’s dark reservoir for some bit of magic would free her for just the half second needed to decide the contest. As a coach, she had always urged her players to visualize that moment when success or defeat hung in the balance, so that when it inevitably arrived, they were psychologically prepared to do what was necessary, and to act without hesitation.

She imagined that this experience would be the same.

And so, biting down on her lip, she started to picture events as they were imagined by Sally, with the assistance of Scott’s description of the location. She imagined the run-down, decrepit house, the rusted-out car in the front yard, the garage filled with engine parts and debris. She thought she knew what would be inside: the clutter of newspaper, beer bottles, and take-out food, a stale aroma of uselessness. And he would be there. The man who’d created the man who’d created the threat to all of them. She knew that when she faced him, she had to picture Michael O’Connell.

She saw herself waiting.

She saw herself entering.

She saw herself facing the man they had designated for death.

Hope drove east, her mind cluttered, wishing that she could act as if this particular trip were nothing in the least bit out of the ordinary.

By midafternoon, Sally had driven to Boston and parked on the street opposite Michael O’Connell’s apartment building, with a clear view of the entrance. In her hand, she clutched the key that Hope had given her.

She was scrunched down behind the wheel of her car, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible, while all the time believing that everyone on the block had already seen her, memorized her face, and taken down her license plate number. She knew these fears were groundless, but they were there, right on the edge of her imagination, right at the point where fear threatens to start taking over emotions and actions, and it was all Sally could do to keep things in check.

She wished she had O’Connell’s easy familiarity with darkness. It would help her-and Scott and Hope, as well-with what they were trying to do.

Again, she shook her head. Her sole act of rebellion, of stepping outside the routine strictures of society, was her relationship with Hope. She wanted to laugh at herself. A middle-aged, middle-class woman, unsure about her relationship with her partner, didn’t really amount to much of an outlaw.

And certainly didn’t amount to much of a killer.

She picked up her sheet of yellow notepaper and tried to picture where all the others were. Hope would be waiting for her. Scott would be in position. Ashley would be at home with Catherine. And Michael O’Connell would be inside-she hoped.

What made you think you could plan this and pull it off? she suddenly demanded of herself.

It.

She felt her throat go dry. It wasn’t a fair contraction. Call it what it is. A murder. Premeditated. First-degree murder. The sort of scheme that in some states would send you to the electric chair or gas chamber. Even with the extenuating circumstances, it would still buy twenty-five years to life.

Not for Ashley, she thought. Ashley would remain safe.

And then, just as abruptly, she realized what she was thinking. Everyone’s life would be ruined. Except O’Connell’s. His would remain on the same path as before, and there would be little in the way of his pursuit of Ashley, or, if he so chose, some other Ashley.

There would be no one left to defend her.

Make it work.

She looked up, saw shadows start to creep over the building rooftops, and, she told herself, It begins now.

He clutched the cell phone in his hand and felt a thrill of excitement, but kept himself calm until he heard the familiar voice on the other end.

“Michael? Is that you?”

He inhaled sharply. “Hello, Ashley.”

“Hello, Michael.”

They were both quiet for a second. Ashley took a moment to stare down at the papers her mother had prepared for her. A script, with key sentences underlined three times. But the pages seemed blurry, indistinct. In the silence of Ashley’s hesitation, Michael O’Connell rocked forward in his seat. The phone call was wonderful and terrible at the same time. It told him he was winning. He could barely contain the grin that creased his face. His right leg started to twitch, like a drummer using his foot to control the thunder of the bass drum.

“It’s wonderful to hear your voice,” he said. “It seems as if so many people are trying to keep us apart. You know that will never happen. I won’t let it.” He smiled, laughed a little, and added, “It does no good for them to try to hide you. You’ve seen that, haven’t you? There’s nowhere that I can’t find you.”

Ashley closed her eyes for a moment. His words were like splinters in her skin.

“Michael, I’ve asked you over and over to leave me alone. I’ve tried everything I could to help you understand that we are not going to be together. I don’t want you in my life. Not at all.” Everything she said, she knew she’d said before. To no effect. She didn’t expect anything different this time. The world she lived in was mad, and no amount of reason or rationale was going to change it.

“I know you don’t mean that,” he said, an instant chill in his voice. “I know that you’ve been put up to say that. All these people who want you to be someone that you aren’t. I know that it’s other people who are dictating everything you say. That’s why I’m not paying any attention to it.”

Ashley almost panicked at the word dictating as she glanced down at her script. What if he’d somehow seen everything, somehow managed to learn everything?

“No, Michael. No. A million times, no. You’ve got it wrong. You’ve gotten it wrong from the very start. We are not going to be together.”

“It’s destiny, Ashley. It was meant to be.”

“No. How can you think that?”

“You don’t understand love. True love. Complete love. Love never ends,” he continued coldly, letting every word echo across the line. “Love never stops. Love never leaves. It is always right inside. You should know that. You imagine yourself to be an artist, but you cannot understand the simplest thing. What’s wrong with you, Ashley?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said sharply.

“Yes, there is.” O’Connell rocked in his seat. “Sometimes I think you’re really sick, Ashley. Diseased. There’s got to be something wrong with someone who can’t understand the truth. Who refuses to listen to their heart. But you shouldn’t be worried, Ashley, because I can fix you. I’m going to be there for you. No matter what happens, no matter what bad things take place, you need to know, I will always be there for you.”

Ashley could feel tears welling up in her eyes. She felt utterly helpless.

“Please, Michael.”

“You don’t need to be afraid of anything.” His voice was filled with dark anger that lay right below the words he spoke. “I will protect you.”

Everything he said, she thought, was the exact opposite. Protect meant hurt. Don’t be afraid meant Be scared of everything.

The hopelessness of her situation nearly overcame her. She felt a wave of nausea, and a flood of heat on her forehead. She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall, as if she could stop the room from spinning around her. It will never end.

Ashley opened her eyes and looked wildly at Catherine.

Catherine could only hear one-half of the conversation, but she knew it was going poorly. She thrust her index finger down hard on the script, jabbing at the words as hard as she could. “Say it! Say it, Ashley!” she whispered frantically.

Ashley lifted her hand and wiped away the tears. She inhaled deeply. She did not know what she was setting in motion, but she knew it was something terrible.

“Michael,” she said slowly, “I’ve really, really tried. I’ve tried to say no to you in every way I could. I don’t know why you can’t understand it. Really, I don’t. There’s something inside of you I will never understand. So I’m going right now to speak with the only person I could think of who ever managed to get you to do what they tell you to. Someone who might be able to tell me what I need to say to you to make you understand. Someone who will know how I can get you out of my life. Someone I’m absolutely one hundred percent certain will help me get rid of you. Someone I can trust to help me.”

Everything she said, she knew, was designed to provoke every ounce of rage he held.

O’Connell didn’t reply, and Ashley thought perhaps for the first time that he might be listening to her.

“There’s only one person in the world I think you’re really scared of. So I’m going to see him tonight.”

“What are you saying?” O’Connell asked abruptly. “Who are you talking about? Someone who can help you? No one can help you, Ashley. No one except me.”

“You’re wrong about that. There is one man.”

“Who?” O’Connell’s shout leaped across the line.

“Do you know where I am, Michael?”

“No.”

“I’m a short ways from your home, Michael. Not the apartment where you live, but the home where you grew up. I’m on my way right now to see your father,” Ashley lied as coldly as she could, pausing slightly between each word. “He can help me.” And then she hung up. And when the phone started to ring within seconds, she ignored it.

Sally looked up from behind the wheel and felt a current of electricity surge through her entire body. Michael O’Connell, moving furiously quickly, had exited the apartment building. He was jamming his arms into his overcoat as he took the steps in a single leap, then hurried down the block, almost sprinting. Sally reached down and grasped a cheap stopwatch from the passenger-side car seat. She punched the ON button when she saw O’Connell lurch into his car and rapidly pull out, tires complaining loudly.

She picked up the cell phone and hit the speed dial.

When she heard Scott’s voice on the other end, she replied, “On his way right now,” before hanging up.

Scott would start his own stopwatch.

She could not hesitate. There was so little time. Sally grabbed a backpack that contained several critical items and immediately exited her car, rapidly crossing the street toward O’Connell’s apartment. She kept her head lowered and pulled a ski cap down as low as she could. She was dressed in Salvation Army clothes: jeans, worn sneakers, and a man’s peacoat. She wore leather gloves over a skintight set of latex surgical gloves.

She told herself, The gun will be there.

There was no backup plan if it wasn’t. Only an agreement that they would abort the entire scheme, go back to western Massachusetts, and try to invent something new. She thought it possible that O’Connell might take the gun with him to visit his father. His sudden rage was one variable that she hadn’t been able to anticipate. In a way, she hoped he would take the gun with him. Perhaps he would use it in the way they had hoped to; that he would make the mistake that would solve all their problems.

Or, he might take the gun and use it on them.

Or, he might take the gun and use it on Ashley.

There was no plan except flight and panic if this one blew up.

Sally followed the same route that Hope had traveled a few days earlier. Within seconds, she found herself standing outside the apartment. She was alone, key in hand.

No neighbors. The only eyes that watched her belonged to the clutch of cats mewling in the hallway. Did he kill one of your number today? she wondered. She slipped the key into the lock and let herself in as quietly as she could.

Sally told herself not to look around. Not to examine the world where Michael O’Connell lived, because she knew it would only fuel her own terrors. And speed was critical to everything that she’d mapped out. Get the gun, she repeated to herself. Get it now.

She found the closet. She found the corner. She found the boot, with the dirty sock stuffed in the top.

Be there, she whispered to herself.

She lifted the sock, taking note as to how it was placed. Then she leaned in and reached inside the boot.

When her gloved fingers touched the steel of the barrel, she gasped out loud.

Gingerly she pulled the weapon free.

For a second, she hesitated. This is it, she thought. Go forward or go back.

She could see no option other than fear. Taking the gun terrified her. Leaving the gun terrified her.

Feeling as if someone else were guiding her hand, she carefully slipped the gun into a large plastic bag inside her backpack. She left the sock on the floor.

One more thing to do. She walked quickly into the small living room and stared at the battered desk where Michael O’Connell kept his laptop computer plugged in. He’d created a great deal of trouble for all of them while he was seated at that desk, she thought. And now it was time for her to do the same for him. As scared as she was, this next step gave her a nasty sense of satisfaction. She removed the similar-model computer from her backpack, then quickly replaced his computer with the one she had prepared for him. She didn’t know whether he would immediately see the difference, but he would, sooner or later. She was pleased with this. She had spent some hours in the past day downloading a variety of pornographic materials, and from extreme right-wing antigovernment websites, filling the computer’s memory with as much rage-filled, satanic-inspired, heavy-metal rock music as she could find. When she was persuaded that the computer was laden with enough incriminating items, she had used one of the word files to start writing an angry letter, one that started, Dear Dad, you son of a bitch, claiming that O’Connell now knew that he should never have lied on his father’s behalf years ago, and that he was now prepared to rectify that one big mistake in his life. He was the only person on this earth capable of dealing out the appropriate kind of justice to pay back his mother’s murder. Scott’s research of the O’Connell family history had helped her immensely.

Sally had done two other things to the computer. She had unscrewed the back panel, giving her access to the innards of the machine, and had carefully loosened the connection where the main power cord entered the machine, so that it wouldn’t start up. Then she had replaced the back entry with one additional detail: she had taken two drops of Super Glue and made sure that one of the screws that held it all together was completely locked in place. O’Connell might know how to fix the machine, she thought, but he wouldn’t be able to get into it. A police forensic technician would.

She quickly double-checked its position. It seemed to be just the way he’d left it.

Sally stuffed O’Connell’s computer into the backpack, next to the gun.

She looked down at her stopwatch. She was at eleven minutes.

Too slow, too slow, she told herself as she threw the backpack over her shoulder. She could feel the weight of the gun bouncing against her back. She took a deep breath. She would be back, before too long.

The cell phone on the car seat rang urgently. Scott had not been certain that he would get this call, but thought it highly possible, so he was fully prepared when he heard the voice on the other end.

“Hey, this Mr. Jones?”

O’Connell’s father sounded rushed, a little unsteady, but excited.

“Smith, here,” Scott replied.

“Yeah, right. Mr. Smith. Right. Hey, this is-”

“I know who it is, Mr. O’Connell.”

“Well, damned if you weren’t right. I just got a call from my kid, like you said I would. He’s on his way over here now.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. It’s about a ninety-minute drive from Boston, except he’s gonna be moving fast, so maybe a little less.”

“I will make arrangements. Thank you.”

“The kid was yelling something about some girl. Sounded real upset. Crazy almost. This got something to do with a girl, Mr. Jones?”

“No. It’s about money. And a debt he owes.”

“Well, that isn’t what he thinks.”

“What he thinks is irrelevant to our business, Mr. O’Connell, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I suppose so. So what should I do?”

Scott didn’t hesitate. He’d expected this question. “Just wait there for him. Hear him out. No matter what he says.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“We will be taking some steps, Mr. O’Connell. And you will be earning your true reward.”

“What do I do when he decides to leave?”

Scott felt his throat go dry. He could feel a spasm in his chest.

“Step aside and let him go.”

Hope sipped a cup of coffee while she waited for Sally. The bitter taste burned her tongue.

She was parked in a strip-mall lot, perhaps a hundred yards from the entrance to a large grocery store. There was plenty of traffic, but she was a little farther away from the entrance than she needed to be, having left perhaps two dozen parking spaces between her and the next car.

When she spotted Sally in her own nondescript rental, moving slowly through the aisles of the mall lot, she stiffened. She placed the coffee in a cup holder and quickly rolled down the window, giving Sally a small wave to get her attention. She waited for Sally to park two aisles away, then walk in her direction. She could see that Sally was looking around nervously, and she seemed pale.

Sally was already shaking her head. “I can’t let you do this. It should be my job-”

“We’ve been over that,” Hope said. “And things are in motion now. Making a change might throw it all off.”

“I just can’t.”

Hope inhaled. This was her chance, she thought. She could back out. Refuse. Step back and ask, What the hell are we thinking?

“You can. And you will,” Hope replied. “Any chance Ashley has rests with us. Probably any chance we have lies in each of us doing what it is we’re capable of. It’s as simple as that.”

“Are you scared?”

“No,” Hope lied.

“We should stop, right now. I think we’re out of our minds.”

Yes, we probably are, Hope thought.

“If we do not go through with this, and then the worst happens to Ashley, we will never, not for one instant of one day for however many years any of us has left, forgive ourselves for letting it happen. I think I can forgive myself for what I’m about to do. But for standing aside and letting something terrible happen to Ashley, that would be something we would carry to our graves.”

Hope took a deep breath. “If we fail to act, and he does, we will never rest again.”

“I know,” Sally said, shaking her head.

“Now the weapon. It’s in the backpack?”

“Yes.”

“There’s not much time, is there?”

Sally looked down at her stopwatch. “I think you’re about fifteen minutes behind him. Scott should be moving into position now, as well.”

Hope smiled, but shook her head. “You know, when I was growing up, I played so many games against a clock. Time is always a crucial factor. This isn’t any different. I have to go. Now. You know it. If we’re going to play this game, then failing because we weren’t quick enough would be a terrible thing. Just leave, Sally. Do what you’re supposed to do. And I will do the same, and maybe, at the end of the day, everything will be okay.”

Sally had many things she could say, right at that moment, but she chose none of them. She reached out and squeezed Hope’s hand hard and tried to fight back tears. Hope smiled and said, “Get going. There’s no time. Not anymore. No more talk. Time to act.”

Sally nodded, left the backpack on the floor of the car, stood a few feet back while Hope started up the car, and gave a small wave as she exited the parking lot. It was only a quarter mile to the interstate highway entrance, and Hope knew that she needed to move rapidly, to close the difference in time between her and Michael O’Connell. She made a point of not looking in the rearview mirror until she was well away from the rendezvous location, because she did not want to see Sally standing forlornly behind.

Scott pulled the battered truck into the student parking lot at a large community college some six or seven miles away from the house where Michael O’Connell had grown up. The truck was instantly absorbed into the general mix of vehicles.

After looking around carefully to make sure no one was nearby, he slid out of his clothes and rapidly pulled on an old pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, beaten blue parka, and running shoes. He jammed a navy watch cap over his head and ears, and although the sun was setting, he slid on sunglasses. He grabbed a backpack, made sure his cell phone was in his jacket pocket, and stepped from the truck.

His stopwatch told him that Michael O’Connell had been traveling just shy of seventy minutes. He would be speeding, Scott reminded himself, and wouldn’t stop for any reason whatsoever, unless he was pulled over by a policeman, which would only help the situation.

Scott hunched up his shoulders and headed across the parking area. He knew that a bus route was near the entrance to the school. It would take him to within a mile or so of O’Connell’s house. He had memorized the schedule, and he had the necessary change for a one-way trip in his right pocket, and the return trip in his left.

A half-dozen students of various ages were waiting underneath the canopy of the bus stop. He fit in; at a community college, you could be a student at nineteen or fifty-nine. He made sure that he didn’t make eye contact with any of the waiting people. He told himself to think anonymous thoughts, and perhaps that would make him seem invisible.

When the bus came, he found a seat near the back, alone. He turned and peered out the window at the brown, beaten landscape of the countryside as the bus wheezed along.

Scott was the only person to get off at his stop.

For a second he remained still, alone on the side of the road, as he watched the bus disappear into the evening gloom. Then he set off along the side of the road, walking quickly, wondering precisely what he was hurrying toward, but knowing that time was of the essence.

Crime-scene photographs have an otherworldly quality to them. It’s a little like trying to watch a movie frame by frame, instead of in continuous action. Eight-by-ten, glossy, full color, they are pieces of a large puzzle.

I tried to absorb each shot, staring at them as I might the pages of a book.

The detective sat across from me, watching my face.

“I’m trying to visualize the scene,” I said, “so I can better understand what happened.”

“Think of the pictures like lines on a map,” he said. “All crime scenes make sense eventually. Although, I got to admit, this one wasn’t a picnic.”

He reached down and pawed through some of the photographs.

“Look here.” He pointed at furniture in disarray, blackened and charred. “Sometimes, it’s just a matter of experience. You learn to look beyond the mess, and it tells you something.”

I stared down, trying to see with his eyes.

“Exactly what?” I asked.

“There was a hell of a fight. Just one hell of a fight.”