The Wrong Man

by John Katzenbach

  “A scam artist?”

  The mechanic smiled. “That was it. But you’re just scratching the surface with O’Connell.”

  “Okay, what else?”

  “He took computer courses at night, and he was into every damn thing you could do with a laptop. The boy was a regular fountain of knowledge. Credit-card fraud. Identity theft. Double billing. Telephone cons, you name it, he had a handle on it. And in his spare time, he used to scan every damn website, newspaper, magazine, whatever, looking for new ways of stealing. He used to keep folders filled with clippings, just to keep himself up-to-date. You know what he used to say?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have to kill someone to kill them. But if you really want to, you can. And, if you really know what you’re doing, ain’t nobody going to catch up with you. Not ever.”

  I wrote that down.

  When the gas station owner saw my pencil scratching across the notepad, he smiled, and he reached out and took the money off the counter. I let him pocket the $100. “You know what the damn stupidest thing was?”

  “Okay, what?”

  “You’d think that a guy like this would be looking for some big score. Trying to find a way to get rich. But that wasn’t exactly it, with O’Connell.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “He wanted to be perfect. It was like he wanted to be great. But he wanted to be anonymous, too.”

  “Small-time?” I asked.

  “No, you’re wrong. He knew he was going to be big. Ambition. He was strung out on it, like it was some sort of drug. You know what it’s like to be around some guy who’s just like an addict, but it ain’t cocaine up the nose or heroin filling up his veins? He was drunk all the time with all sorts of plans. Always getting ready for the big deal. Like it was just waiting for him out there somewhere and he was closing in on it. Working here, whatever he did, it was just a way of passing time, filling in the blanks, all along the path. But it wasn’t exactly money or fame he was interested in. It was something else.”

  “You parted ways?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to end up getting used whenever the hell he figured out what he was going to do. But someday he was going to take down something. You know what they say, ‘The end justifies the means.’ Well, that was O’Connell. Like I say, the boy had big ideas.”

  “But you don’t know—”

  “Don’t know nothing about what happened to him. Saw enough, though, to keep me pretty scared.”

  I looked at the mechanic. Scared didn’t seem as if it would normally be a part of his vocabulary. “I don’t get it,” I said. “He scared you?”

  The garage owner took a long drag of his cigarette and let smoke curl up around his head. “You ever meet somebody that’s always doing something different from what he’s doing? I don’t know, maybe that don’t make sense, but that was O’Connell. And when you called him on it, when you called him on anything, he would look at you with this way where he just stared right like you weren’t there, and he was taking down something about you and putting it somewhere, because someday he was going to find a way to use it against you.”

  “Against you?”

  “One way or the other. He was just the sort of man, you just didn’t naturally want to get in his path. Stand to the side a bit, that would be okay. But get in his way, or get in the way of what he wanted…well, that would be something you’d want to avoid.”

  “He was violent?”

  “He was whatever he needed to be. Maybe that was what was so scary about him.”

  The man took another deep, deadly inhale of the smoke. I didn’t ask another question, but he added, “You know, Mr. Writer man, here’s a story. Once about ten years ago, I was working here real late, you know, two, three in the morning, two kids come in, next thing I know, I’ve got a big, shiny steel nine-millimeter stuck up in my face, and one kid is yelling ‘Motherfucker this’ and ‘Cocksucker that’ and a whole lot of ‘I’m gonna bust a cap in your face, old man’ type bullshit, and I thought, truly and honestly, that was going to be it, that he was going to do it, while his goddamn partner cleaned out the register, and I ain’t particularly religious, but I was muttering every Our Father and Hail Mary I could think of, ’cause this was the end, no doubt about it. Then the two kids took off, with hardly a word, left me laying on the floor behind the counter needing a change of underwear. You get the picture?”

  I nodded. “Not pleasant.”

  “No, sir. Not pleasant at all.” He smiled and shook his head.

  “But what did O’Connell have to do with that?”

  The man shook his head slowly and exhaled.

  “Nothing,” he said carefully. “Not a single damn thing. Except this: Every time I ever talked to Michael O’Connell and he didn’t say nothing back, just listened and looked right at me that way he had, it reminded me of looking into that black hole of that kid’s pistol. Same feeling exactly. There weren’t no time I talked with him that I didn’t wonder if what I was saying meant I was gonna die.”

  8

  A Beginning of Panic

  Ashley bent toward the computer screen, assessing each word that flickered up in front of her. She had been locked into position for more than an hour and her back was tightening up. She could feel the muscles in her calves quivering a little, as if she’d run farther on that day than was her usual jogger’s norm.

  The e-mail messages were a dizzying array of love notes, electronically generated hearts and balloons, bad poetry that O’Connell had written, much better poetry that he’d stolen from Shakespeare or Andrew Marvell and even Rod McKuen. It all seemed impossibly trite and childish and yet chilling.

  She tried writing down different combinations of words and phrases from the e-mails to deduce what the message was. There was nothing so obvious as a word italicized or placed in boldface that would have made her task simpler. As she closed in on her second hour of inspection, she finally tossed down her pencil, frustrated with her efforts. She felt stupid, as if there were something she was missing that would have been apparent to any crossword or acrostics puzzle fan. She hated games.

  “What is it?” she shouted loudly at the screen. “What are you trying to say? What are you trying to tell me?”

  She could hear her voice rise, stretching into unfamiliar pitches.

  She scrolled back, starting at the beginning, then blistering through each message, one after the other, so they flashed up on the computer screen and then disappeared.

  “What? What? What?” she yelled as each went past her eyes.

  And then, in that second, she saw it.

  The message from Michael O’Connell wasn’t contained in the e-mails that he’d sent.

  It was that he’d been able to send them at all.

  Each one had come from a different name on her address list. Each was from him. That they were grade-school-level testimonials of undying love was irrelevant. What was critical was that he had managed to insinuate himself into her own computer. And then, through a clever choice of words, managed to get her to read every message he’d sent. And, she understood, the likelihood was that by opening one, she had opened some sort of hidden electronic door. Michael O’Connell was like a virus, and now he was nearly as close to her as he would have been if he’d actually been seated next to her.

  With a small gasp, Ashley leaned back hard in her chair, almost losing her balance, feeling a sense of dizziness as if the room were spinning around her head. She grabbed the arms of the chair with her hands and steadied herself quickly, took several long, deep breaths to regain control over an accelerating heart.

  She turned slowly and began to let her vision creep over the small world of her apartment. Michael O’Connell had spent precisely one night here, and it had been a truncated night, at that. She had thought they were both a little drunk, and she’d invited him up, and she tried to replay what had taken place in her current, scared-sober imagination. She berated herself for being unable to recall ju
st exactly how much he’d had to drink. One drink? Five? Had he been holding back while she indulged? The answer to that question had been lost in her own nervous excesses. There had been a nasty looseness to the night, a mood of abandon that she was unfamiliar with and was out of character for her. They had clumsily fallen out of their clothes, then coupled frantically on her bed. It was rapid, edgy lovemaking, without much tenderness. It had been over in a few seconds. If there was any real affection in the act, she could not remember it. It had been an explosive, rebellious release for her, right at a time when she was vulnerable to poor choices. On the rebound from a noisy, unpleasant breakup with her junior-year boyfriend, who’d lingered into her final year despite some fights and general dissatisfaction. Graduation and career and school uncertainty dogging her every step. A sense of isolation from her parents, her friends. Everything in her life had seemed to her to be forced, to be a little misshapen, out of tune, and out of sync. And into that turmoil came a single bad night with O’Connell. He was handsome, seductive, different from all the students that she’d dated through college, and she had overlooked the singular way that he’d stared at her across the table, as if trying to memorize every inch of her skin and not in a romantic way.

  She shook her head.

  The two of them had slumped back on the bed in the aftermath. She had grabbed a pillow and, with the room swerving unsteadily and a sour taste in her mouth, plummeted into sleep. What had he done? she asked herself. He had lit a cigarette. In the morning, she had risen, not inviting him for a second tumble, making up some story about needing to be at an appointment, not offering any breakfast, or even a kiss, just disappearing into the shower and scrubbing herself under steaming water, sudsing every inch of her body, as if she’d been covered with some unusual smell. She had wanted him to leave, but he had not.

  Ashley tried to recall the brief morning-after conversation. It had been filled with falsehoods, as she had distanced herself, been cold and preoccupied, until finally he had stared at her in an uncomfortably long silence, then smiled, nodded, and exited without much further talk.

  And now, all he talks about is love, she thought. Where did that come from?

  She pictured him going through the door, a cold look on his face.

  That recollection made her shift about uncomfortably.

  The other men she had known, even if only briefly, would have exited either angry or optimistic or even with a little bravado after the one-night stand. But O’Connell had been different. He’d merely chilled her with silence, then removed himself. It was, she thought, as if he were leaving, but he’d known it wasn’t for long.

  She thought to herself, sleep. Shower. Plenty of time with her back turned. Had she left the computer on and running? What was strewn about her desktop? Her bank accounts? What numbers? What passwords? What did he have time to find and steal?

  What else had he taken?

  It was the obvious question, but one she didn’t really want to ask.

  For an instant, the room spun again, and then Ashley rose and, as quickly as she could, raced to the small bathroom, where she pitched forward, head over the glistening toilet bowl, and was violently, utterly sick.

  After she cleaned herself up, Ashley pulled a blanket around her shoulders and sat on the edge of her bed, considering what she should do. She felt like some shipwrecked refugee after rough days adrift at sea.

  But the longer she sat there, the angrier she got.

  As best as she could tell, Michael O’Connell had no claim on her. He had no right to be harassing her. His protests of undying love were more than a little silly.

  In general, Ashley was an understanding sort, one who disliked confrontation and avoided a fight at almost all costs. But this foolishness—she could think of no other word—with a one-night stand had really gone too far.

  She threw the blanket off and stood up.

  “God damn it,” she said. “This is ending. Today. Enough of this bullshit.”

  She walked over to her desk and picked up her cell phone. Without thinking about what she was going to say, Ashley dialed O’Connell’s number.

  He answered almost immediately.

  “Hello, lover,” he said almost gaily, certainly with a familiarity that infuriated her.

  “I’m not your lover.”

  He didn’t reply.

  “Look, Michael. This has got to stop.”

  Again, he didn’t answer.

  “Okay?”

  Again, silence.

  After a second, she wasn’t even sure he was still there. “Michael?”

  “I’m here,” he said coldly.

  “It’s over.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s finished.”

  There was another hesitation, then he said, “I don’t think so.”

  Ashley was about to try again, but then she realized he had hung up.

  She cursed, “You goddamn son of a bitch!” then redialed his number.

  “Want to try again?” he answered this time.

  She took a deep breath.

  “All right,” Ashley said stiffly, “if you won’t make this easy, I guess we can do it the tough way.”

  She heard him laugh, but he did not say anything.

  “Okay, meet me for lunch.”

  “Where?” he asked abruptly.

  For an instant she scrambled about, trying to think of the right place. It had to be someplace familiar, someplace public, someplace where she was known and he wasn’t, somewhere she was likely to be surrounded by allies. All this would give her the necessary gumption to turn him off once and forever, she thought.

  “The restaurant at the art museum,” she said. “One this afternoon. Okay?”

  She could sense him grinning on the other end of the line. It made her shiver, as if a cold breath of air had seeped through a crack in the window frame. The arrangements must have been acceptable, Ashley realized, because he had hung up.

  “So I suppose,” I said, “in a way this is all about recognition. Everyone needed to see what was happening.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Easy to say. Hard to do.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. You know we like to presume that we can recognize danger when it appears on the horizon. Anyone can avoid the danger that has bells, whistles, red lights, and sirens attached to it. It’s much harder when you don’t exactly know what you’re dealing with.”

  She thought for a moment, while I remained quiet. She was drinking iced tea and lifted the glass to her lips.

  “Ashley knew.”

  Again she shook her head. “No. She was scared, true. But just as much as she was frightened, she was annoyed, which truly hid the desperate nature of her situation. And, in reality, what did she know about Michael O’Connell? Not much. Not nearly as much as he knew about her. Curiously, although at a distance, Scott was closer to understanding the real nature of what they were up against, because he was operating far more out of instinct, especially at the beginning.”

  “And Sally? And her partner, Hope?”

  “They were still outside fear. Not for much longer, though.”

  “And O’Connell?”

  She hesitated. “They couldn’t see. Not yet, at least.”

  “See what?”

  “That he was beginning to truly enjoy himself.”

  9

  Two Different Meetings

  When Scott was unable to reach Ashley either on her landline or on her cell phone, he felt a sweaty sort of anxiety, but he immediately told himself it amounted to nothing. It was midday, she was undoubtedly out, and he knew his daughter had on more than one occasion left the cell phone charging back at her place.

  So, after he’d left brief “Just wondering how things are going” messages, he sat back and worried whether he should be worried. After a few moments feeling his pulse rate rise, he rose and paced back and forth across the small office. Then he sat down and maneuvered through some busywork, responding t
o student e-mails and printing out a couple of essays. He was trying to waste time at a moment when he wasn’t sure that he had time to waste.

  Before long he was rocking ever so slightly back and forth in his desk chair while his mind fastened on moments in Ashley’s growing up. Bad moments. Once, when she had been little more than a year old, she’d come down with severe bronchitis, and her temperature had spiked and she’d been unable to stop coughing. He’d held her throughout the night, trying to comfort her, trying with soothing words to calm the hacking cough and listening to her breathing grow increasingly shallow and difficult. At eight in the morning, he’d dialed the pediatrician’s office and been told to come straight in. The doctor had leaned over Ashley, listening to her chest, then swung about and coldly demanded to know why Scott and Sally had not taken her to the emergency room earlier. “What?” the doctor had questioned. “Did you think that by holding her all night she would get better?”

  Scott had not answered, but, yes, he’d thought that by holding her she would get better.

  Of course, antibiotics were a wiser choice.

  When Ashley started to split her time between her two parents’ homes, Scott would be up pacing in his bedroom, waiting for her to come home, unable to prevent himself from conjuring up all the worst cases: car accidents, assaults, drugs, alcohol, sex—all the nasty undercurrents to growing up. He knew that Sally was asleep in her bed those late nights that Ashley the teenager was out rebelling at Lord knows what. Sally always had trouble handling the exhaustion of worry. It was, Scott thought, as if by sleeping through the tension, it never actually happened.

  He hated that. He’d always felt alone, even before they were divorced.

  He grasped a pencil and twiddled it between his fingers, finally cracking it in half.

  He took a deep breath. “What? Did you think that by holding her all night she’d get better?”

  Scott told himself that worry was useless. He needed to do something, even if it was completely wrong.