The Wrong Man

by John Katzenbach

  She took a step back, a little shocked at herself for even asking Hope to stand aside when Scott arrived. What am I doing?

  “No—” she started to reply, but was interrupted by the sound of Scott’s car coming up the slight rise to their house. “There they are.”

  “Well,” Hope said stiffly, “I guess I’ll be here, then.”

  Nameless bounced up, recognizing the sound of the car. They all went to the front door, and the dog shoved his way past their legs just as Scott slid the Porsche into the driveway. Ashley was out of the car almost as quickly as the dog exited, and she immediately bent down and stuck her face into his muzzle, then let him cover her with wet dog affection. Scott, too, stepped out of the car, a little unsure what the drill was going to be. He half-waved at Sally and nodded toward Hope.

  “Safe and sound,” he said.

  Sally crossed the lawn to the drive, pausing only to embrace Ashley. “Don’t you think you should come in, and we can figure out some sort of plan?” she said to Scott.

  Ashley lifted her head toward her father and mother, waiting for a second. She was aware in that second how rarely they were ever within arm’s length of each other. A well-defined distance always marked their meetings.

  “It’s up to Ashley,” Scott said. “She might not want to just dive into the whole thing right now. Maybe she needs some lunch and a moment or two to decompress.”

  They both looked at Ashley, and she nodded, although she sensed that she was doing something cowardly.

  “All right,” Sally said with her take-charge lawyer’s voice. “This afternoon, then. Say around four or four thirty?”

  Scott nodded. Then he gestured toward the house. “Here?”

  “Why not?” Sally said.

  Scott could think of a dozen good reasons why not, but he managed to stifle them all. “Well, four thirty it is, then. We can have tea. That would be very civilized.”

  Sally did not respond to the sarcasm. She turned to Ashley. “Is that all you’ve brought with you?” she said, pointing at the overnight bag.

  “That’s it,” Ashley said.

  Hope, standing aside, watching and listening, thought that Ashley had in truth brought much more. It just wasn’t quite as obvious.

  Ashley gingerly hip-hopped around the edge of the muddy field and took up a spot where she could see Hope coaching. Nameless was leashed to the end of the bench, but he thumped his tail when he spotted Ashley, then put his head back down. Lions, she thought as she looked over at him. They often sleep as much as twenty hours in an African day. Nameless looked to be closing in on that standard, although he wasn’t very lionish in his attitude. Sometimes she wondered whether any of them would have survived if not for him. She was always disappointed that her mother didn’t fully recognize Nameless’s importance. Rescue dog, she thought. Seeing Eye dog. Guard dog. Nameless had metaphorically managed every role, and now he was old, nearly retired, but still almost a brother.

  She let her eyes scan across the distant range of hills. The locals called the Holyoke Range a group of mountains, but she understood that that was exaggerating their significance more than a little. The Rockies are mountains, she thought. The local hills were given some undeserved grandeur, although on a fine fall afternoon they made up for their lack of elevation with generous streaks of red, brown, and russet.

  She turned back to watch the game. It wasn’t hard to imagine the time some five years earlier when she would have been out there in blue and white, running up and down the left side. She had always been a good player, although not like Hope. Hope always played with a kind of reckless freedom, but something had always made Ashley hold herself back.

  She felt a curious thrill when the girl playing her old position scored the winning goal. She waited through the cheers and handshakes, then saw Hope unleash Nameless and roll a ball out toward the center of the field. Just one, Ashley realized, and not thrown nearly as far as he was once capable of retrieving. She watched as he gathered up the ball and gleefully pushed it back to Hope with his nose and forelegs, filled with dog joy. As Hope scooped up the ball and tossed it into a mesh bag, she saw Ashley standing to the side.

  “Hey, Killer, you made it over. What did you think?”

  Hearing the nickname that Hope had given her in her first varsity year made Ashley smile. Hope had come up with the name because Ashley had been too reticent on the field, too shy around the older players. So Hope had taken her aside and told her that when she was playing, she was to stop being the Ashley who worried about people’s feelings and transform herself into Killer, who would always play hard, give no quarter and not expect any, and do whatever it took to walk off the field at the end knowing that she had left everything she had out on the pitch. The two of them had kept this secondary persona between themselves, not sharing it with either Sally or Scott or, indeed, any of the rest of the team. And Ashley had at first thought it silly, but had then come to appreciate it.

  “They look good. Strong.”

  Hope looked past her. “Sally didn’t come with you?”

  Ashley shook her head.

  “We’re too young. Not enough experience,” Hope replied, but she couldn’t hide her disappointment behind her words. “But if we don’t get intimidated, we might just do okay.”

  Ashley nodded. She wondered if the same could be said for her situation.

  Scott sat a little uncomfortably in the center of the living room couch flanked by empty spaces on either side. Each of the three women was in a chair by herself, across from him. It had an odd formality to it, and he imagined that it was a little like sitting in a grand jury hearing room.

  “Well,” he said briskly, “I guess the first thing is, what do we really know about this fellow who seems to be bothering Ashley? I mean, what sort of guy is he? Where does he come from? The basics.”

  He looked over at Ashley, who looked as if she were sitting on a sharp edge.

  “I’ve already told you what I know,” she said. “Which isn’t really that much.”

  She was coldly waiting for one of the other three to add something along the lines of Well, you knew enough to let him into your place for a one-night stand, but no one said this.

  “I guess what I’m getting at, really,” Scott said quickly, filling up a small silence, “is that we don’t know if this guy O’Connell will just respond to a simple talking-to. He might. He might not. But a modest show of determination…”

  “I tried to do that,” Ashley said.

  “Yes, I know. You did the right thing, really. But now I’m suggesting a little more forcefulness. Like me,” Scott said. “Don’t you think the first step here is not to assume the problem is greater than it is? Maybe all that’s required is a bit of a showing. Dad muscle.”

  Sally nodded. “Maybe we can make it two-pronged. Scott, you go say to this guy, ‘Leave her alone,’ and at the same time we sweeten the approach by offering some cash. Something substantial, like five grand or so. That has to be a significant amount of money to someone working in gas stations and trying to get a degree in computer sciences on the side.”

  “A bribe to leave Ashley alone?” Scott asked. “Does that sort of thing work?”

  “In many of the family disputes, divorces, child-custody cases, that sort of thing, my experience has been that a monetary settlement goes a long way.”

  “I’ll take your word for that.” Scott didn’t believe her. He also had his doubts that talking to O’Connell would make any difference. But he knew the simplest path had to be tried first. “But suppose—”

  Sally held up her hand, cutting off his question. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The guy has behaved creepily. But as best as I can see, he hasn’t really broken any laws yet. I mean, down the line we could talk about private eyes, calling the police, getting a restraining order—”

  “Those sure work,” Scott said sarcastically. Sally ignored him.

  “—or examining other legal means. We could even have Ash
ley move out of Boston. It would be a setback, sure, but it’s always a possibility. But I think we should try the easiest first.”

  “Okay,” Scott said, glad that Sally was thinking more or less along the same lines he was. “What’s the drill?”

  “Ashley calls the guy. Sets up another meeting. Take cash and your father. Do it in public. A little no-nonsense, forceful conversation. Hopefully, end of story.”

  Scott started to shake his head, but stopped. It made some sense to him. At least, enough sense to pursue it. He decided that he would follow Sally’s plan, with a wrinkle or variation of his own.

  Hope had remained silent throughout the conversation. Sally turned to her. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s an appropriate approach,” Hope said, although she did not believe any of it.

  Scott was abruptly angry that Hope had been given any opportunity to speak. He wanted to say that she had no standing in the room, shouldn’t even be here. Be reasonable, he told himself. Even if it’s irritating. “Well, that’s the plan, then. At least for starters, and until we know it won’t work.”

  Sally nodded. “So, Scott, did you really want tea, or was that one of your jokes earlier?”

  “I just have trouble believing…,” I started, then I stopped and decided to try a different tack. “I mean, they had to have some idea…”

  “What they were up against?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “They didn’t know about the assault on the erstwhile boyfriend. They didn’t know about the, ah, accident Ashley’s friend had after their dinner. They didn’t know anything about Michael O’Connell’s reputation, nor the impressions he’d made on coworkers, teachers, you name it. The critical information that might have led them in a different direction. All they knew was—what was the word Ashley kept using? He was a creep. What an innocent word.”

  “Still, talking to him? Or offering money? Why would they think for a minute that this approach might work?”

  “Why wouldn’t it work? Isn’t that what people do?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You second-guess instantly. People always believe that they would have answers when the truth is, they wouldn’t. What alternatives did they have, right then?”

  “Well, they might have been more aggressive.”

  “They didn’t know!” Her voice suddenly picked up in pitch and passion. She leaned toward me and I could see her eyes narrow and flash in frustration and anger. “Why is it so hard for people to understand how powerful the forces of denial are within each and every one of us? We don’t want to believe the worst!”

  She stopped, taking a deep breath. I started to speak, then she held up her hand.

  “Don’t you make an excuse,” she said. “Don’t you imagine that you wouldn’t want to believe the safest thing, when in reality the most dangerous thing was lurking right there in front of you.”

  She took another deep breath. “Except for Hope. She saw it. Or, at least, she had some inkling…the vaguest of notions. But for one reason or another, and all of them goddamn wrong and foolish, she couldn’t say anything. Not then.”

  14

  Foolishness

  Scott shifted about uncomfortably at the bar, nursing his bottle of beer, trying to keep one eye on the doorway to the restaurant and the other on Ashley sitting alone in a quiet booth. She kept looking up, playing with the silverware on the table, drumming her fingers nervously against the wood, while she waited.

  He had coached her on what to say when she had called Michael O’Connell and on what she was to do when he arrived. Scott had an envelope with $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills stuck in his jacket pocket. The envelope was stuffed to overflow, and it would make for an impressive wad of cash when tossed down on a tabletop; he was counting on it having an impact greater than the actual sum. As he thought about the money, he could feel sweat sticking unpleasantly beneath his arms. But he guessed that he was far better off than his daughter. She was all knotted up inside. Still, he believed her theatrical abilities would carry her through the meeting. Scott cleared his throat and took another long sip of beer. He flexed his muscles beneath his sports coat and reminded himself for the tenth time that day that a person willing to bully a woman was likely to cower when confronted with someone his own size and strength who was older and more resourceful. He’d spent much of his adult life dealing with students not much different from Michael O’Connell, and he’d intimidated more than a few of them. He signaled to the bartender to bring him another beer.

  Ashley, for her part, felt nothing but cold ice and hot tension within.

  When she had managed to reach O’Connell on his cell phone, she had been cautious, following a modest script that she and Scott had worked out on the drive back to Boston. Nonconfrontational, but not suggestive, either. The point, she had kept reminding herself, was to get him face-to-face, so that if it was necessary, her father could intervene.

  “Michael, it’s Ashley.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “I had some out-of-town business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “The kind we should talk about. Why didn’t you meet me at the museum the other day?”

  “I didn’t like the setup. And I didn’t want to hear what you were going to say. Ashley, I really believe we’ve got a good thing going here.”

  “If you believe that, then meet me for dinner tonight. Same place we went for our first and only date. Okay?”

  “Only,” he had said. “But only if you promise it’s not going to be the big kiss-off. I need you, Ashley. And you need me. I know it.”

  He had sounded small. Almost childlike. It had thrown her into some confusion.

  She’d hesitated. “Okay, I promise. Eight tonight, okay?”

  “That would be great. We’ve got lots to talk about. Like, the future.”

  “Great,” she had breezily lied. She had hung up, and without saying a word about how scared she’d been when he’d followed her through the rain to the T. Not a word about dead flowers. Not a word about anything that truly chilled her.

  Now, she made a conscious effort to keep her eyes off her father at the bar, watching the doorway, aware that it was nearly eight, and hoping that there wouldn’t be a replay of the other day. The plan she had worked out with her father was simple: Get to the restaurant early, sit in a booth, so that when O’Connell came in, he would be trapped in his seat by Scott’s sudden appearance, unable to walk out before they’d had a chance to speak to him. The two of them would be like a tag team, forcing him to agree to leave her alone. Strength in numbers. Strength in the public place. Psychologically, her father had insisted, they were more than a match for him, and they were going to control the situation from start to finish. Just be strong. Be firm. Be explicit. Leave no room for doubt. Scott had been decisive as he’d described what would happen. Remember: There are two of us. We’re smarter. We’re better educated. We have greater financial resources. End of story. She reached out and took a sip of water from the glass in front of her. Her lips were dry and parched. She suddenly felt as if she were adrift on a life raft.

  As she placed the glass down, she saw O’Connell come through the door. She half-lifted herself up in her seat and waved to him. She saw him quickly sweep his eyes across the room, but she wasn’t sure whether he’d seen Scott at the bar. She stole a quick look in her father’s direction and saw that he had visibly stiffened.

  She took a deep breath and whispered to herself, “Okay, Ashley. Up curtain. Cue music. Showtime.”

  O’Connell moved rapidly across the room and quickly slid into the seat across from her in the booth.

  “Hey, Ashley,” he said briskly. “Boy, it’s great to see you.”

  She was unable to control herself. “Why didn’t you come to lunch like we agreed? And then, when you tailed me…”

  “Did it scare you?” he responded, as if he were listening to her tell a small joke.

  “Yes. If you say you lo
ve me, why would you do something like that?”

  He merely smiled, and it occurred to Ashley that she might not want to know the answer to that question. Michael O’Connell tossed his head back a little way, then bent forward. He tried to reach across the table and take her hand, but she swiftly put them under the table on her lap. She didn’t want him to touch her. He half-snorted, half-laughed, and leaned back.

  “So, I guess this really isn’t a nice romantic dinner for two, is it?”

  “No.”

  “And I guess you were lying to me when you said this wasn’t going to be the big kiss-off, weren’t you?”

  “Michael, I—”

  “I don’t like it when people I love don’t tell me the truth. Makes me angry.”

  “I’ve been trying to—”

  “I don’t think you fully understand me, Ashley,” he said calmly. No raised voice. No indication that they were speaking of anything more complex than the weather. “Don’t you think I have feelings, too?”

  He said this in a flat, almost matter-of-fact voice. No, I don’t, flashed through her head, but instead, she said, “Look, Michael, why does this have to be harder than it already is?”

  He smiled again. “I don’t think it is hard at all. Because it’s not going to happen. I love you, Ashley. And you love me. You just don’t know it yet. But you will, soon enough.”

  “No, I don’t, Michael.” As soon as she spoke, she knew it was the wrong thing to say. She was being concrete, and at the same time talking about the wrong thing, which was love, when she needed to be saying something far different.

  “Don’t you believe in love at first sight?” he asked almost playfully.

  “Michael, please. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  He hesitated and she saw a small smile flit across his face, and she had the horrible thought, He’s enjoying this.

  “It seems to me that I’m going to have to prove my love to you,” he said. Still smiling, almost grinning.

  “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”