The Wrong Man

43

Scott’s survey of the neighborhood several days earlier had told him where to wait.

He knew he had to be inconspicuous; if anyone saw him and made the connection between the figure dressed in dark clothes watching the O’Connell house from the shadows, and the man in the suit and tie who had been asking so many questions, it would create a significant problem. But he needed to be able to see the front of the house, in particular the dirt driveway. He needed to do this without raising the interest of any neighborhood dogs or residents. The spot where he chose to wait was perhaps a little distant, but it accommodated his needs. The battered onetime barn with half its roof caved in was now nothing more than an eyesore. From the corner, where he crouched, he could just see the entranceway to the O’Connell home. He was counting on Michael O’Connell to be driving fast, maybe even squealing the tires as he came around the last corner, spitting gravel and dirt when he turned into the place that was once his home. Make noise, Scott whispered to himself, as if he could encourage O’Connell’s recklessness. Make sure someone sees your arrival.

Lights were on in the adjacent houses. Scott breathed in the cold air. He could see an occasional form flit by a window and the ubiquitous glow of television screens.

He lifted his hand and held it in front of his face, to see if it quivered. Maybe a little, he imagined. But not enough to make a difference.

Lots of answers this night, he told himself. Any lingering questions he might have had about who he was, or who Sally was, or even who Hope was, were destined for responses.

He thought about Hope for an instant. He felt a surge of near panic.

I don’t know her, he thought. I have only the barest grasp of who she is.

But everything in his life suddenly pivoted on her capabilities.

Scott breathed in hard, tried to imagine what made him think even for the barest of moments that the three of them could pull off something that was so alien to their lives. In that brief second of doubt, he heard the sound of a car rapidly approaching.

By this time, Sally had returned to the Boston area. She headed to a particularly fancy shopping area in the Brookline area. Her first stop was at an ATM machine right outside the collection of stores, where she used her card to obtain $100 in cash. She made certain, right after the machine spat out her money, to lift her head so that the security camera clearly recorded her face. She made a point of placing her time-stamped receipt in her pocket.

Then she walked into the mall and made her way to a fancy lingerie store.

For a second, she hesitated amid the racks of silk and lace, until she spotted one of the younger saleswomen. The girl was probably no older than Ashley.

Sally approached her. “I wonder if you might help me with something.”

“Of course,” said the young woman. “What are you looking for?”

“Well, I wanted to get something for my daughter, she’s about your height and size. Something special, because she’s had a rocky time the last couple of weeks. Broke up with a boyfriend, you know how it is, and I wanted to get her something that would make her feel sexy and beautiful, when some jerk boy has made her feel just the opposite. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah. Do I ever,” the salesgirl said, nodding. “You’re being thoughtful.”

“Well, what’s a mother to do? And, you know, I’d like to get something nice as a gift for a special friend, as well. Someone I haven’t been, well, very nice to lately. Maybe some silk pajamas?”

“I can help with that, too. Do you know the size?”

“Oh, yes. These would be for a very special friend. We share a lot together, out in western Massachusetts, where we live. And things have been very up and down of late, and I’d like to try to make up for that. Flowers are always nice, but when you have a special relationship, sometimes it’s better to come up with something that will last longer, don’t you think?”

The salesgirl smiled. “Absolutely.”

Sally thought the mention of western Massachusetts-with its reputation across the state for accommodating women with partners-would underscore what she needed to get through to the young woman. She followed her toward the racks of expensive undergarments, thinking that she had already said enough so that the young lady would remember her. Sally reminded herself to use a credit card as well, because that would also put her in the location. She thought she might also make a point of speaking to the store manager before she left, just to compliment her on her choice of employees. That was the sort of conversation that was always recalled, if necessary, at a later point.

Sally thought she was on a stage, reciting lines invented by necessity.

“These are some of our nicest things,” the salesgirl said.

Sally smiled, as if what she was doing were the most natural thing in the world. “Oh, yes. Indeed.”

At more or less the same moment, Catherine and Ashley were in a Whole Foods supermarket less than a mile from Hope and Sally’s home, wheeling a cart that they filled with a variety of fancy, organic foodstuffs. The two of them had been silent throughout the shopping expedition.

When they turned down an aisle near the front of the store, Ashley spotted a large display of fresh pumpkins built into a tower, decorated with dried cornstalks. It was a Thanksgiving-oriented theme, with a row of walnuts and cranberries and a paper turkey in the center. She nudged Catherine and gestured toward the display.

Catherine nodded.

The two of them pushed the cart close to the display. Just as they swung next to the edge of the table that served as the foundation, Catherine loudly said, “Oh, damn, we forgot the bean dip.”

As she said this, they swung the cart so that the front wheel caught the table leg. The entire display teetered for an instant, and Ashley let out a small yelp and bent forward, as if she were trying to keep it from tumbling, when, in actuality, she grabbed at one of the largest foundation pumpkins.

Within seconds, the entirety had tumbled in a loud crash, dried gourds, Indian corn, scooting across the floor, while yellow pumpkins and squash started rolling about haphazardly.

Catherine gasped. “Oh my goodness!” she shouted loudly.

Within a few seconds, several stock boys and the store manager had descended upon the mess. The stock boys set to repairing the display, while Catherine and Ashley profusely apologized and insisted upon paying for any damage. They were turned down by the manager, but Catherine reached into her pocketbook and withdrew $50, which she thrust toward the manager. “Well, then at least make sure that these nice young men who have cleaned up the mess Ashley and I have made are properly rewarded for their assistance.”

“No, no,” the manager said. “Really, ma’am, that’s not necessary.”

“I insist.”

“Me, too,” said Ashley.

The manager, shaking his head, took the money, to the great relief of the stock boys.

Then Ashley pushed their cart into the checkout line, while Catherine pulled out a bank card to pay for the items. Both women made sure that they, too, turned directly toward the store’s security cameras. There was little doubt in their minds that they would be remembered that particular night. That had been Sally’s final message to the two of them: Make certain that you do something public that establishes your presence at home.

This they had accomplished. They did not know what was happening in some other part of New England at the same time, but they imagined it was something truly dangerous.

Michael O’Connell’s car headlights cut across the dim front of his onetime home. The lights reflected off the polished side of his father’s truck. A car door slammed loudly and Scott saw O’Connell striding toward the entrance to the kitchen. The urgency in Michael O’Connell’s pace seemed to light through the darkness.

O’Connell’s anger was critical, Scott thought. Angry people don’t notice the small things that could later be important.

He watched as O’Connell grabbed at the side door and disappeared inside. He hadn’t been in Scott’s sight line for more than a few seconds. But every motion that Scott had seen told him that whatever Ashley had said to him, it had driven him single-mindedly right to the house.

Taking a deep breath, Scott hunched over and ran across the roadway, trying to keep to the shadows. He sprinted as quickly as he could up the drive to where O’Connell had left his car. He ducked down and reached inside the backpack, first removing a pair of surgical gloves, which he slipped on. Then he pulled out a hard-rubber-headed mallet and a box of galvanized roofing nails. He took a single glance toward the back of the house, breathed in sharply, then drove one of the nails into the sidewall of Michael O’Connell’s rear tire. He bent down and heard a slow hiss of escaping air.

He then took another couple of the nails and tossed them haphazardly around the driveway.

Moving as stealthily as he could, Scott made his way to the back of the elder O’Connell’s truck. He left the rest of the box of nails open in the back. He also left the mallet nearby, just another one of the many tools that cluttered the back of the truck and the carport.

His first task completed, Scott turned and walked steadily back to his hiding spot. As he crossed the street, he heard the first raised voice, electric with anger, coming from inside the house. He wanted to wait, to make out the precise words, but understood he could not.

When he reached the decrepit barn, he pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial.

It rang twice before Hope picked it up.

“Are you close?” he asked.

“Less than ten minutes.”

“It’s happening now. Call me when you stop.”

Hope disconnected without a reply. She pushed down on the gas, picking up her pace. They had figured on at least a twenty-minute lag time between Michael O’Connell’s arrival and her own. They were pretty close to schedule, she thought. This did not necessarily reassure her.

Inside the house, Michael O’Connell and his father stood a few feet apart, in the bedraggled living room.

“Where is she?” the son shouted, his fists clenched. “Where is she?”

“Where is who?” his father replied.

“Ashley, God damn it! Ashley!” He looked around wildly.

The father laughed mockingly. “Well, this is a hell of a thing. A hell of a thing.”

Michael O’Connell pivoted back in the older man’s direction. “Is she hiding? Where did you put her?”

The older O’Connell shook his head. “I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And who the hell is Ashley? Some girl you knew back in high school?”

“No. You know who I’m talking about. She called you. She was supposed to be here. She said she was on her way. Stop screwing with me, or so help me God, I’ll…”

Michael O’Connell raised his fist in his father’s direction.

“Or you’ll do what?” the father asked, a sneer filling his voice.

The older man remained calm. He took his time sipping at a bottle of beer, staring across the room at his son, eyes narrowed. Then he deliberately walked over to his lounge chair, slumped into it, took another long pull on the beer bottle, and shrugged. “I just don’t know what you’re getting at, kid. I don’t know anything about this Ashley. You suddenly call me up after being out of touch for years, start screaming about some piece of tail like you’re some punk in junior high school, and asking all sorts of questions I got absolutely no idea what the hell it is you’re talking about, then you all of a sudden show up like the whole world’s on fire, demanding this and that, and I still don’t have no clue what’s going on. Why don’t you pop a beer and calm down and stop acting like a baby.”

As he spoke, he gestured toward the kitchen and the refrigerator.

“I don’t want a drink. I don’t want anything from you. I never have. I just want to know where Ashley is.”

The father shrugged again and held his arms wide. “I have absolutely no goddamn idea what and who you’re talking about. You ain’t making any sense.”

Michael O’Connell, steaming, pointed at his father. “You just sit there, old man. Just sit there and don’t move. I need to look around.”

“I ain’t going nowhere. You want to take a look around? Go ahead. Ain’t changed much since you moved out.”

The son shook his head. “Yeah, it has,” he said bitterly as he pushed across the small living room, kicking some newspapers out of the way. “You’ve gotten a whole lot older and probably drunker, too, and this place is more of a mess.”

The father eyed his son as Michael O’Connell swept past him. He didn’t move from his seat as the younger man entered the back rooms.

He went first into the room that had been his. His old twin bed was still jammed into a corner, and some of his old AC/DC and Slayer posters were still where he’d tacked them up. A couple of cheap sports trophies, an old football jersey nailed to the wall, some books from high school, and a bright red painting of a Chevrolet Corvette filled the remaining space. He paced across the room and flung the closet door open, half-expecting to see Ashley hiding in the back. But it was empty, except for an old jacket or two that smelled of dust and mildew, and some boxes of out-of-date video games. He kicked at the box, strewing its contents across the floor.

Everything in the room reminded him of something he hated: what he was, and where he came from. He saw that his father had simply thrust many of his mother’s old things onto the bed-dresses, pantsuits, overcoats, boots, several painted boxes filled with cheap jewelry, and a photo triptych of the three of them on one of their rare vacations at a camping ground up in Maine. The picture stirred up nothing but terrible memories: too much drinking and arguing and a silent ride home. It was a little as if his father had simply dumped everything that reminded him of his dead wife and his estranged son into the room, kicking it away, where it collected dust and the smells of age.

“Ashley!” he cried out. “Where the hell are you?”

From his seat in the living room, his father shouted, “You ain’t going to find nothing and nobody. But you keep on looking, if that’s gonna make you feel better.” Then he laughed, a false, phony laugh, provoking even more rage.

Michael O’Connell gritted his teeth and threw open the bathroom door. He pulled aside a shower curtain that was grimy with mildew and mold. A vial of pills perched on the sink corner suddenly tumbled to the floor, spreading tablets across the tile. He bent down and picked up the plastic bottle, saw that it was heart medication, and laughed.

“So, the old ticker giving you some troubles, huh?” he said loudly.

“You leave my things alone,” the father shouted in reply.

“Screw you,” Michael O’Connell whispered to himself. “I hope whatever is wrong hurts like hell before it kills you.”

He tossed the vial back down on the floor, crushed it and all the scattered pills beneath his foot, and left the bathroom. He walked into the other bedroom.

The queen-size bed was unmade, its sheets filthy. The room smelled of cigarettes, beer, and soiled clothing. A plastic laundry basket in one corner was overflowing with sweatshirts and underwear. The bedside table was cluttered with more pill canisters, half-filled liquor bottles, and a broken alarm clock. He emptied all the pills into his hand and stuffed them into his pocket, tossing the canisters back on the bed. That will be a surprise when you need them, he thought.

Michael O’Connell walked to the closet and jerked open the double doors. Half the closet-the half that had once held his mother’s things-was empty. The rest was occupied by his father’s clothing-all the slacks and dress shirts and sports coats and ties that he never wore.

He left the doors open and went to the sliding glass door that led out to the backyard. He pulled on it, but it was locked. He pressed his face up against the glass, peering into the darkness. He unlocked the door and stepped outside, ignoring the cry from his father behind him: “What the hell you doing now?”

Michael O’Connell peered right and left. No place back there to hide, he thought.

He turned and went back inside. “I’m going to look in the basement,” he shouted. “You want to save me some trouble, tell me where she is, old man? Or maybe I’m going to have to ask you the hard way.”

“Go ahead. Check the basement. And you know what? You don’t scare me much now. You never did.”

We’ll see about that, Michael O’Connell said to himself.

He went over to the single hallway door that led to the basement. It was a dark, closed-in place, filled with spiderwebs and dust. Once, when he was nine, his father had forced him down there and locked the door. His mother had been out and he’d done something to anger the old man. After whacking him on the side of the head, he’d thrust the child down the stairs and left him in the dark for an hour. Michael O’Connell stood at the top of the stairs and thought that what he’d hated the most about his father and his mother was that no matter how many times they had shouted and screamed and traded punches, it only seemed to link them more tightly. Everything that should have driven them apart had actually cemented their relationship.

“Ashley!” he shouted. “You down there?”

A single overhead bulb threw a little light in the corners. He peered through each shadow, searching for her.

The room was empty.

He could feel anger building in his chest, like heat racing down his arms into clenched fists. He turned and went back to the small living room, where his father waited for him.

“She was here, wasn’t she?” Michael O’Connell asked. “Earlier. To talk to you. I just didn’t get here in time, and then she told you to lie to me, right?”

The older man shrugged. “You still not making any sense.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“If you don’t tell me what happened, what she told you when she got here, where she went, I will hurt you, old man. I am not joking about this. I can do it and I will do it, and trust me, I will deliver a world of pain, and I won’t give a damn about you any more than I ever have. So, tell me, when she called on you, what did you tell her?”

“You’re either crazier than I remember or stupider. Right now, I can’t tell which.” The old man lifted his bottle to his lips and leaned back in his seat.

Michael O’Connell stepped forward and in a single violent swipe knocked the beer bottle from his father’s hand. It slammed against the wall, breaking into pieces. The father barely reacted, although his eyes lingered on the broken bottle, before he turned back and stared at his son.

“It was always a question, wasn’t it? Which one of us was gonna grow up meaner?”

“Screw you, old man. Tell me what I want to know.”

“Get me another beer first.”

Michael O’Connell reached down and grasped his father by the shirt, half-pulling him out of his seat. In the same moment, the father’s right hand shot out and seized the son around the collar, twisting his sweater so that it choked him. Their faces were only inches apart, their eyes locked together. Then O’Connell thrust his father back, and the old man released his son.

Michael O’Connell walked over to the television set. He stared at it for an instant.

“This how you spend your nights? Getting drunk and watching the tube?”

The father didn’t answer.

“Too much of the old idiot box is bad for you. Didn’t you know that?”

Michael O’Connell waited for a second, so that the mocking words would settle in, then he drew back his foot and delivered a karate-style kick to the television, sending it crashing down, the screen shattering.

“Bastard. You’re gonna pay for that.”

“Am I? What else do I have to break to get you to tell me what happened when she called you? How long was she here? What did she promise you? What did you tell her you would do?”

Before his father could reply, he walked over to a bookcase and swept a shelf of knickknacks and photographs to the floor.

“That was just some of your mother’s leftovers. Don’t mean nothing to me.”

“You want me to look around until I find something that does? What did she tell you?”

“Kid,” the old man said through tightly pursed lips, “whatever it is this bit of tail is to you, I don’t know. And what she’s got you into, I don’t know either. You in some kind of trouble? Money trouble?”

Michael O’Connell looked at his father. “What are you talking about?”

“Who’s looking for you, kid? Because I think they’re gonna find you just about any minute, and when they do, they aren’t gonna be nice about it. But maybe you know that already.”

“All right,” Michael O’Connell said slowly. “Last chance before I come over there and start to pay you back for all the times you beat me when I was a kid. Did a girl named Ashley call you today? Did she say she wanted your help in breaking up with me? Did she say she was on her way to talk to you?”

The older man continued to eye his son through narrow, rage-filled eyes. But through the sheet of fury that seemed to be just a second or two away from breaking free, he managed to clench his lips and spit out, “No. No, God damn it. No Ashley. No girl. No nothing like what you just said. And that’s the goddamn truth, whether you want to believe it or not.”

“You’re lying. You old bastard, you’re lying.”

The old man shook his head and laughed, which infuriated Michael O’Connell even more. He felt as if he were on a ledge, trying to keep his balance. What he wanted, more than anything else, was to feel his fists smashing against the old man’s face. But he took a deep breath and told himself that he still needed to know what was happening, because there was some reason he’d been called here. He just couldn’t see what it was.

“She said…”

“I don’t know what she said. But Miss whoever-the-hell-she-is hasn’t called here or shown up at the side door.”

Michael O’Connell took a step back. “I don’t…” His mind was rapidly churning. He could not see why Ashley would send him on a trip to his home unless she had something in mind. What she expected to gain seemed just beyond his reach.

“Who you in trouble with?” the old man asked again.

“Nobody. What do you mean?” Michael spat back, angry at having the train of his thoughts interrupted.

“What is it? Drugs? You pull some kind of low-rent robbery with some guys and then stiff them on the cut? What are you doing that would have guys with money looking for you? You steal something from them?”

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” He was confused by the smug look on his father’s face. He realized, in that second, that the old man should be a lot angrier about the shattered television set. The reason he’s not angry is because he knows a new one is heading his way, Michael O’Connell thought.

“Who’ve you been fucking around with, kid? Because there’s someone real pissed with you.”

“Who told you that?”

The older man shrugged. “I ain’t saying. I just know.”

Michael O’Connell straightened up. Nothing makes sense, he thought. Or maybe it does.

“Old man, I will hurt you. You should understand that. You are old and weak and I will cause you great pain. Now tell me what you’re talking about!” he shouted across the room. He took two quick strides, so that he was again looming over his father, who remained in his chair, grinning, wondering whether he’d managed to keep his son in the house long enough for the mysterious Mr. Smith to make the correct arrangements, whatever they might be.

Less than a half mile away from the O’Connell house, on an adjacent street, Hope spotted several beaten old cars and pickup trucks sporting Harley-Davidson wings on stickers, all pulled to the side of the roadway, parked haphazardly. She could see some lights coming from a worn and battered ranch-style home set back from the street and could hear loud voices and hard-rock music. She realized someone was having some sort of get-together. Beer and pizza, she guessed, with a methamphetamine dessert. She stopped her rental car a few feet behind one of the parked cars, so she appeared to be just another visitor.

As quickly as she could, she pulled on the black coveralls that Sally had purchased. She jammed a navy blue balaclava-style face mask and hat into her pocket. Then she slipped on surgical gloves, and a pair of leather gloves over those. She wrapped several strands of black electrician’s tape around her wrists and her ankles, so that no flesh was exposed between the coveralls and her gloves and shoes.

She threw the backpack with the gun over her shoulder and started to jog in the direction of the O’Connell house, her outfit helping her to blend into the night. She had the cell phone in her hand, and she dialed Scott.

“Okay. I’m here. A couple of hundred yards away. What am I looking for?”

“The boy drives a five-year-old red Toyota, with Massachusetts plates,” Scott said. “The father has a black pickup truck, which is parked halfway beneath a carport. The only exterior light is by the side door. That is your entry point.”

“Are they still-”

“Yes. I could hear some things breaking inside.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Where should I-”

“By the carport. On the right side. It’s cluttered with all sorts of tools and engine parts. You will be able to see them, but not be seen.”

“Okay,” Hope said. “Keep an eye out. I’ll talk to you afterwards.”

Scott hung up. He leaned against the side of the old, ramshackle barn and watched. There was very little light, he thought. No streetlamps in this rural section of the world. As long as Hope clung to the shadows, she would be fine.

Then he stopped, because the notion that she would be fine made absolutely no sense whatsoever. None of them were going to be fine, he realized. Except maybe Ashley, and she was the whole reason they were doing what they were doing.

Scott wondered, if he was so crippled and scared by the night that was unfolding, how did Hope, who was the actual performer on the stage the three of them had created, manage to control her doubts?

Running crouched over at the waist, more like some feral animal than the athlete she had once been, Hope cut across the side yard and slid herself up against the back wall of the carport. She pivoted about, lowered herself to the ground, and took a moment to get her bearings. The closest houses were all at least thirty or forty yards away, across the street.

She rolled her head back against the wall of the carport and shut her eyes.

Hope tried to do some sort of odd inventory of her emotions, as if she might be able to find the one that would power her through the next few minutes. She pictured Nameless lying dead in her arms and then, in her mind’s eye, substituted Ashley for her dog.

This toughened her.

She managed to find a little more iron in the thought that O’Connell would come after Catherine, as well. She knew her mother would fight hard, but that wasn’t a fight she thought the older woman could win.

She added up all the threats to their lives and did the equation. She tried to subtract doubt and uncertainty from the sum. Everything that had seemed so clear-cut and obvious when the three of them were sitting in their comfortable living room now seemed perverse, wrong, and wildly impossible. She was sweating hard, and she knew her hands were shaking.

Who am I? she suddenly asked herself.

There was a moment, she remembered, shortly after her father had died, that she had truly been scared. It wasn’t so much the fear of being left behind; it was instead a fear of not being able to live up to what he’d wanted her to be. She tried to imagine that her dead father would have wanted her to be precisely in the position she was, with her head up against a wall, the night surrounding her, the damp ground seeping through her coveralls. He would understand taking a chance to protect others. He always wanted her to take charge, whether it was for good or for bad. You’re the captain, she could hear his voice in the darkness.

Hope thought that in that moment she was truly on the verge of madness.

Clear your mind, she told herself.

She pulled the balaclava down over her head, so that her face was obscured.

She reached inside the backpack and removed the gun from its plastic bag.

She slid her finger around the trigger. It was the first time in her entire life that she’d actually held a handgun. She wished she had more experience with weapons, but was surprised to feel a certain electricity flowing from the steel handle into her hand, an unfamiliar, almost intoxicating power.

Hope scrambled to the edge of the carport and listened to angry voices coming from inside the home as she waited for the right moment to arrive.

“I need to know what’s going on,” Michael O’Connell burst out. Every word he spoke was laden with years of hatred for the man smugly rocking in his lounge chair across from him, and with all the weight of his love for Ashley. He could feel his heart racing; it nearly made him dizzy with rage.

“What’s going on? You’re here, shouting about some girl, when you ought to be a whole lot more worried about whoever it is that you’ve made into an enemy,” his father said, waving his hand in the air.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t burnt anyone.”

The old man shrugged infuriatingly. Michael O’Connell took a step forward, fists clenched, and the older man finally pushed himself out of the chair, squaring his shoulders to his son. “You think you’ve gotten old enough and strong enough to take me on?”

“I don’t think you want to ask that question, old man. You’re looking a little paunchy and out of shape. That fake back injury of yours might start acting up for real. What you were good at was beating up on women and kids, and that was a real long time ago. I’m not a kid anymore. You might think hard about that.”

The chill in his voice caused the older man to stop. He puffed out his chest and shook his head.

“I never had any trouble handling you back then. You may think you’re all grown up, but I’m still a whole lot more trouble than you want to try to take on. I can still crush you.”

“You were a weakling then, you’re a weakling now. Mom used to hold her own against you. In fact, if she wasn’t drunk, you couldn’t even have beaten her. That’s how it really happened, isn’t it? The night she died? She was too drunk to fight back, and you saw your opportunity and that’s when you killed her.”

The older man snarled.

“I should never have lied for you. I should have told the cops the truth all along,” Michael O’Connell said bitterly.

“Don’t be pushing things,” the father replied coldly. “Don’t be going places where you got no right to go.”

As their words dropped in volume and increased in hatred, the two men had closed to within a few feet of each other, like dogs in that instant before growls turn into a fight.

“You think you could kill me and get away with it, like you did her? I don’t think so, old man.”

The father suddenly jerked forward and slapped his son hard across the face. The sound of the blow echoed in the small room.

Michael O’Connell grinned savagely. He shot out his right arm and seized his father by the throat. Closing his hand around the old man’s windpipe was instantly satisfying. As he could feel muscles contract, and tendons start to crush beneath his grip, he felt a passion that almost overwhelmed him. Panicked, the older man grabbed at his son’s wrist, digging his fingernails into the flesh, trying to pull free, while he felt the breath quickly choke out of him. As his father’s face turned a deeper red, Michael O’Connell suddenly pushed him back, releasing him. The older man slammed against a coffee table, spilling its contents. He grabbed at the arm of the lounge chair as he fell to the ground, pulling it over, and lay back, gasping on the floor, his eyes wide with surprise. His son laughed and spat at the older man.

“Stay there, old man. Stay there forever. But hear me on this: if you ever get a call from Ashley, or anyone connected to Ashley, and you promise them you will help them in any way, I will come back here and kill you. First I will hurt you, so that you will be begging for me to stop. And then I will kill you. Do you understand that? I’d like to kill everything in my past. It would make me feel a whole lot better. And the place I’d like the most to start with is you.”

The father remained on the floor, frozen. The son saw fear spread throughout the old man’s eyes and, for the first time that night, thought that the drive north had been worthwhile.

“You need to hope that you never see me again, you pathetic old man. Because the next time, you will end up in a box in a hole in the ground, which is where you belong. Where you’ve belonged for years.”

Michael O’Connell turned and, without a single glance back, went out the side door.

The cool night air hit him like another bad memory, but all he could think of was what game Ashley had invented, and why she had thought that his father could help her. Someone had been lying.

He slid behind the wheel of his car, fired up the engine, and decided he needed the answer to those questions immediately.

Hope had listened to the argument, then the clatter of a short fight. She gripped the automatic in her hand tightly, holding her breath when she saw Michael O’Connell lurch through the door and stride to his car only a few feet away from where she was hidden. She waited for him to back down out of the driveway, then accelerate rapidly into the night.

The next moment, she knew, was critical.

Sally had told her, Do not delay. Not for one second. As soon as he exits, you must enter.

She rose up.

Hope could hear Sally’s voice in her ear.

Do not hesitate. Do not wait. Go straight inside. Don’t say a word. Just pull the trigger. Don’t look back. Leave.

Hope took a single deep breath and emerged from behind the carport. She rapidly crossed through the small arc of light to the side door. She looked down and saw her left hand close on the door handle and thrust herself into the house.

Hope was in the kitchen, but she could see through the entryway into the living room, just as Scott had described. She stood there, nearly frozen, and watched Michael O’Connell’s father begin to pick himself up off the floor.

He turned toward her. He did not look surprised.

“Mr. Jones send you?” he asked as he straightened himself up, dusting himself off. “You missed the punk by less than a minute. That was his car peeling out of here.”

Hope lifted the weapon and assumed a firing stance.

The older O’Connell looked confused.

“Hey,” he said sharply. “It’s the goddamn kid you want, not me.”

Everything in the world was suddenly exaggerated. Every color was brighter, every sound louder, every smell more pungent. Hope’s breathing seemed to echo in her ears, a cascade of rushing noise. She tried not to think about what she was doing.

Aiming directly at the old man’s chest, she pulled the trigger.

And nothing happened.

The detective carried a large box with a broken red-tape seal over to his desk. He dropped it in the middle with a thudding sound, then leaned forward with a small grin and asked me, “You know how kids are on Christmas morning? When they stare at all those packages wrapped up underneath a tree?”

“Sure. But what…”

“Collecting evidence is a little like all those presents. The kids always think that the biggest present will be the best, but often it isn’t. It’s the less-significant, less-flashy box that really holds the most valuable gift. In a sense, that’s what happens with us. It might be the smallest thing that becomes the biggest, when you finally get to trial. So, when you arrive at a crime scene and pick up this or that, or when you execute a search warrant, you need to consider all the pieces.”

“And in this case?”

The detective grinned. He pulled out a handgun, encased in a plastic bag, with another red evidence seal closing it. He handed me the weapon, and I peered at it through the transparent shield. I could see the residue of fingerprint dust on the handle and the barrel.

“Be careful,” he said. “I don’t think that sucker’s loaded, but the clip is in the handle, so I can’t be sure.” He smiled. “You’d be surprised how many near-fatal accidents occur in property rooms when people start waving around guns that are supposed to be unloaded.”

I held the weapon cautiously. “Doesn’t look like much.”

The detective nodded. “Piece-of-shit weapon,” he said with a small shake of his head. “About as cheap as you can find. Manufactured by some company in Ohio that machine-stamps out each part of the weapon and then screws it together, sticks it in a box, and ships it off to some disreputable dealer. A good gun shop would never carry crap like this. And no real professional would ever use it.”

“Still, it works.”

“Sort of. Twenty-five automatic. Small caliber. Lightweight. Professional killers-and we don’t get a whole lot of those around here as you might imagine-like twenty-two- and twenty-five-caliber weapons, because they’re easy to fit a homemade silencer to and, when loaded with a magnum bullet, do the job clean and nice. But they’d never use a throwaway gun like this. Too unreliable. It’s not easy to handle, the safety and the action both jam, and unless it’s fired at extremely close range, it’s not very accurate. And it doesn’t pack much punch, either. Wouldn’t stop a moderately sized pit bull or rapist, unless you managed to get ’em in the ticker or some other fatal spot with the first shot.”

He smiled again as I turned the weapon over in my hands.

“Or you fired it real, and I mean real, close. Like lover close.”

Again he grinned.

“And, generally speaking, it isn’t wise to get that near the person you’re trying to kill.”

I nodded, and the detective plumped back down in his seat.

“See, learn something new every day.”

I held the weapon up again, holding it to the light, as if it could tell me something.

“Of course,” the detective said, “now that I’ve told you how damn bad that weapon is, on the other hand, it seemed to do the trick. Sort of.”