The Wrong Man

by John Katzenbach

  She threw her jacket and backpack on the bed and went straight to the telephone. Within seconds, she had dialed Michael O’Connell’s number.

  His voice sounded sleepy, disconnected, when he answered the phone.

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “You know goddamn well who it is,” Ashley said in a voice that was on the edge of a shout, filled with bitterness.

  “Ashley! I knew you’d call.”

  “You bastard! You’ve screwed up my work at school. Now you’ve cost me my job. What sort of creep are you?”

  He was silent.

  “Leave me alone! Why can’t you leave me alone?”

  He remained silent.

  She picked up momentum. “I hate you! God damn you, Michael! I told you it was over, and it is! I never want to see you again. I can’t believe you would do this to me. And you say you love me? You’re a sick and evil person, Michael, and I want you out of my life. Forever! Do you understand that?”

  He still didn’t reply.

  “Do you hear me, Michael? It’s over! Ended. Finished. Completed. However you want to understand it, but it’s all over. No more. Got it?”

  She waited for a response and got none. Silence slithered around her, enveloping her like a vine.

  “Michael?” She suddenly thought he wasn’t there, that he’d disconnected and her words were simply disappearing into some immense electronic void. “Do you get it? It’s over.”

  Again, all she heard at first was silence.

  She thought she could hear his breathing.

  “Please, Michael. It’s got to be over.”

  When he did finally speak, it took her by surprise.

  “Ashley,” he replied almost brightly, a little laughter in his tone, as if he were speaking a different language, one that was utterly foreign to her. “It’s just wonderful to hear your voice. I’m counting the days until we can get back together again.”

  He paused, then added, “Forever.”

  And then he hung up.

  “But something happened?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Something, actually many things, happened.”

  I watched her face and saw that she was struggling with the details of what she wanted to say. She wore reluctance in much the same way that someone puts on a warm sweater in the winter, in anticipation of some wind and cold and a shift in the weather for the worse.

  “Well,” I said, a little exasperated by her oblique manner, “what’s the context here? You got me into this story by saying that I was supposed to make sense of it all. So far, I’m not sure what I’ve really gathered. I can see the games that Michael O’Connell was working. But to what end? I can see the crime taking shape—but what crime are we thinking about?”

  She held up her hand. “You want things to be simple, don’t you? But crime isn’t so simple. When you examine it, there are many forces at work. Do you wonder, sometimes, whether we help create the psychological or maybe emotional atmosphere in which bad things, terrible things, take root, flourish, and then flower? We’re like a hothouse for evil, all in ourselves. Seems that way sometimes, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t answer this. Instead, I watched her as she stared down into her cup of coffee, as if it could tell her something.

  “Doesn’t it seem to you that we live these incredibly diffuse, disjointed lives? Once upon a happier time, you grew up and stayed where you were. Probably bought the house down the street from your folks. Helped run the family business. So we all remained linked, in the same orbit. Naïve times. The Honeymooners and Father Knows Best on television. What a quaint idea: Father knows best. Now, we get educated and we depart.”

  She paused, then asked, “So, what would you do then, when it became clear to you that someone had decided to ruin your life?”

  She added, “And don’t you see? From our perspective, looking at the story from our safe spot in this world, it’s easy to see that there is this person out there trying to ruin their lives. But they couldn’t see that.”

  “Why not?” I blurted out.

  “Because it’s not reasonable. Because it made no sense. I mean, why? Why would he want to do this to them?”

  “Okay, why?”

  “Not yet. You need to find that out for yourself. But some things are clear: Michael O’Connell, with half their education, half their resources, half their prestige, had all the power. He had twice their smarts because they were like everyone else and he wasn’t. There they were, caught up and entwined in the midst of all his evil, and yet, they couldn’t see it. Not for what it was. What would you do? Isn’t that the question? Awful things have happened, but what is the real threat?”

  I didn’t directly answer. Instead, I repeated myself, trying to get an answer, “But something changed?”

  “Yes. A moment of lucidity.”

  “How so?”

  She smiled. “A lucky phrase. In what was fast becoming a most unlucky situation.”

  19

  A Change of Approach

  At first, Ashley was overwhelmed by rage.

  Seconds after Michael O’Connell’s voice disappeared from the cell phone, she threw it across the room, where it exploded against a wall like a gunshot. She bent over at the waist, her fists clenched, her face contorted, flushed, teeth grinding. She picked up a textbook and threw it in the same direction, where it slammed on the plaster and thudded to the floor. She paced into her bedroom, seized a small throw pillow from the bed, then pummeled it, like a boxer in the last round, throwing rights and lefts recklessly. Seizing the pillow and sinking her hands into the fabric, she pulled it apart. Bits and pieces of synthetic stuffing flew into the air around her, landing in her hair and on her clothing. Her eyes were filling with tears, and she finally let out a wail of despair, sliding into a complete black depression.

  Ashley threw herself down on the bed, curled into the fetal position, and cried piteously, giving in to everything that was flowing in torrents within her. Her body racked with frustration, she heaved and gasped, as if her frustration had stretched into every fiber of her body, like some errant infection.

  When she had no more tears, she rolled over, staring up at the ceiling, clutching pillow shreds to her chest. She breathed in deeply. She understood that tears didn’t solve any problem, but she felt a little better nevertheless.

  When she could feel her heartbeat returning to normal, Ashley sat up.

  “All right,” she said out loud. “Let’s get your shit together, girl.”

  She glanced over at the shattered cell phone and decided that her burst of anger was a blessing. She would have to get a new phone, and with it, a new number. One, she promised herself, that Michael O’Connell wouldn’t have. She looked over at the desk, with the landline phone. “Cancel that.”

  Next to the telephone was her laptop computer. “All right,” she said, again speaking to herself in the same way she would to a young child, “Change your Web service. Change your e-mail account. Cancel all bill-paying services. Start over.”

  Then she looked around the apartment. “If you have to move, you have to move.”

  She sighed deeply. She could go into the graduate-school registrar’s office in the morning and get her transcripts corrected. She knew this would be a major hassle, but she had paper copies of her grades somewhere, and whatever mischief Michael O’Connell had managed, she could sort her way through it. The current courses—and the nonexistent absences—might be impossible. But it was only one class, and although it was a setback, it wasn’t fatal.

  Getting fired was a bigger problem. She had no confidence that the assistant director wouldn’t prove to be an obstacle in the future. He was a rigid dilettante and a closet sexist, and she would hate to have to deal with him again. She decided that the best course of action would be to try to get one of her undergraduate professors to write the assistant director a letter, simply telling him he’d been mistaken in his assumptions about her, and that her employment record should reflect this.
She was pretty sure that she could get someone to do this when she explained the circumstances. It might not correct her firing—but it might at least neutralize the damage done.

  After all, she told herself briskly, it wasn’t as if the job at the museum was the only job she could get. There had to be others, filled with color and art, that would speak to who she was and who she hoped to be.

  The more Ashley planned, the better she felt. The more she decided on, the more she felt in control, the more she felt like herself, the stronger and more determined she believed herself to be. After a moment or two, she got up, shook herself from head to toe, and walked into the bathroom.

  She stared at herself in the mirror, shaking her head at her swollen and red-rimmed eyes. “All right,” she said as she filled the sink with steaming-hot water and started to wash her face, “no more damn tears over this son of a bitch.”

  No more getting scared. No more anxiety. No more gnashing teeth and nervous frustration. She was going to get on with her life, Michael O’Connell be damned.

  She was suddenly hungry, and after washing away as much of her sadness as she could, she went to the kitchen, found a single pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream in the freezer, and scooped out a large helping, letting the sweet tastes improve her mood, before she went to her remaining telephone to call her father. As she crossed her apartment, eating the ice cream out of the container, she hesitated by the window, glancing out into the night with a twinge of uncertainty. No more staring into shadows. Ashley turned away, seized her landline phone, and began dialing, unaware what pair of eyes were searching the wan light of her home for a glimpse of her form, both satisfied and yet dissatisfied with just the merest suggestions of her presence, completely at ease with the darkness, excited by how close he felt to her at that very moment. It was something that she would never understand, he thought to himself. How every step she took to try to separate herself only made him more excited and filled him with more passion. He turned the collar up on his coat and dropped back farther into a dark shadow. He could be warm right there all night if need be.

  Hope was surprised to find Sally waiting for her when she arrived home that evening. They had fallen into the stiffest of patterns, marked by long silences.

  She looked across at her partner of so many years and suddenly felt a surge of exhaustion and dismay cascade through her. This is it, she thought to herself. This is where we put words to an ending. A shapeless sadness filled her as she nervously looked over to Sally.

  “You’re back a little early tonight,” she said as blandly as possible. “Hungry? I can put something together quickly, but it won’t be real interesting.”

  Sally barely moved. Her hand was wrapped around another Scotch. “I’m not hungry,” she said a little sloppily. “But we need to talk. We have a problem.”

  “Yes,” Hope replied, slowly removing her jacket and setting down her backpack. “I would say so.”

  “More than one.”

  “Yes. More than one. Maybe I should get a drink, too.” Hope went into the kitchen.

  While Hope poured herself a large glass of white wine, Sally tried to sort through precisely where she was going to begin, and which of the multitude of troubles she would bring forth first. Some odd conflation was in her mind, joining the assault on her client account and the threat to her career with the unsettled coolness she felt toward Hope. Who am I? Sally asked herself.

  She felt as she did in the days before she and Scott had separated. A sort of black, gray gloom coloring her thoughts. It took an immense force of will for her to remain seated. She wanted to rise up and run away. For a lawyer, accustomed to the world of solving sticky issues, she felt abruptly incompetent.

  When she looked up, Hope was standing in the entrance.

  “I need to tell you what has happened,” Sally said.

  “You’ve fallen in love with someone else?”

  “No, no…”

  “A man?”

  “No.”

  “Then another woman?”

  “No.”

  “You just don’t love me anymore?” Hope continued.

  “I don’t know what I love. I feel as if I’m, I don’t know, but fading, like an old photo.”

  Hope thought this an indulgent and overromantic statement. It made her angry, and it was all she could do, given all the tension she’d been under, to keep from bursting forth. “You know, Sally,” she said with a coldness that surprised her, “I don’t really want to discuss all the ins and outs of your emotional state. So things aren’t perfect. What is it you want to do? I hate living in this minefield of a household. It seems to me that either we split up, or, I don’t know, what? What would you suggest? But I sure as hell hate this psychological roller coaster.”

  Sally shook her head. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “Like hell you haven’t.” Hope felt a little guilty about how good it felt to be angry.

  Sally started to say something, then stopped. “There’s another problem,” she said. “One that impacts both of us, and how we live.”

  Sally quickly filled Hope in on the complaint from the state bar association and with the harsh financial reality that a good chunk of their savings had—at least for the time being—been wiped out, and that it would likely take some time for her to track down the money and file the necessary documents to get it returned.

  Hope listened, aghast. “You are kidding, right?”

  “I wish.”

  “But that wasn’t your money, it was our money. You should have consulted me beforehand.”

  “I had to move with speed to avoid a real inquiry by the bar association.”

  “That’s an excuse. But not one that explains why you didn’t pick up the goddamn phone and tell me what was going on.”

  Sally did not reply.

  “So, we’re not only on the verge of divorce, but we’re suddenly broke?”

  Sally nodded. “Well, not completely, but until we get things sorted out…”

  “Well, that’s great. Just dandy. Just fucking terrific. What the hell are we supposed to do now?” Hope stood up and paced back and forth across the room. She was so angry with her partner that it seemed as if the room lights had dimmed and then brightened, like a power surge in the electricity.

  Before Sally could reply, I don’t know, the telephone rang.

  Hope pivoted about, stared at the phone as if it were somehow to blame for misfortune, and stomped across the room to answer it. She was muttering obscenities to herself with every step, and the words managed to mark her pace.

  “Yes?” she said rudely. “Who is it?”

  From her spot in the armchair, and more or less miserable from the mess her life seemed to be in, Sally saw Hope’s face abruptly freeze. “What is it?” Sally asked. “Is something wrong?”

  Hope hesitated, obviously listening to the person on the other end of the line. After a moment, she nodded and said, “Jesus effing Christ. Hang on, I’ll get her for you.”

  Then she turned to Sally.

  “Yes. No. Here. You take it. It’s Scott. The creep is back in Ashley’s life. Big-time.”

  Scott arrived at their house about an hour later. He rang the doorbell, heard Nameless bark, and looked up to see Hope opening the door. They had their usual second or two of awkward silence, then she gestured for him to enter. “Hey, Scott,” she said. “Come on in.” He was surprised that Hope looked as if she’d been crying, because he had always assumed she was the tough one in the relationship with Sally. One thing he did know for certain: his ex-wife was the moody half of any relationship.

  He dispensed with any greetings when he reached the living room. “Did you speak with Ashley?”

  Sally nodded. “While you were driving over. She filled me in on what she told you. Now she’s stuck with no job and a mess at school.” Sally sighed. “I guess we underestimated just how persistent Michael O’Connell might be.”

  Scott lifted his eyebrows. “
That would seem to be an understatement. It was a mistake we probably couldn’t have avoided. But now we’ve got to help Ashley extricate herself.”

  “I thought that was what you went to Boston to do,” Sally said coldly, looking at her ex-husband with arched eyebrows. “Along with five thousand reasons in cash.”

  “Yes,” Scott replied equally coolly, “I guess our bribe offer didn’t work. So, what’s the next step?”

  They were all quiet for a moment, until Hope blurted, “Ashley’s in a bad situation. She clearly needs assistance, but how? And what? What is it we can do?”

  “There must be laws,” Scott said.

  “There are, but how do we apply them?” Hope continued. “And, so far, what law do we think this guy has broken? He hasn’t assaulted her. Hasn’t hit her. Hasn’t threatened her. He’s told her he loves her. And he’s followed her. And then what he’s done is screwed up her life with the computer. Mischief, mostly.”

  “There are laws against that,” Sally said, then stopped.

  “Computer mischief,” he said. “That hardly describes it.”

  “Anonymous,” Sally said.

  All three were thinking hard about what to say next. Then Scott leaned back and said, “I had a really sticky problem of my own the last week or so, generated anonymously by computer. I think it’s solved, but…”

  Nobody spoke for a second, before Hope added, “So have I.”

  Sally looked up, surprised at what she’d heard.

  But before she could say anything, Hope pointed directly at her. “And so has she.”

  Hope stood up. “I think everyone is going to need a drink.” She headed off in search of another bottle of wine. “Maybe more than one drink,” she threw back over her shoulder to where Scott and Sally were staring at each other in doubt.

  The Massachusetts State Police detective seated across from me seemed at first like an oddly pleasant fellow, with little of the hard-bitten, world-weary appearance of a character in a police novel. He was of modest height and build, wore a blue blazer and inexpensive khaki pants, and had close-cropped sandy-colored hair with a disarming bushy mustache on his upper lip. If it weren’t for the ice-black, nine-millimeter Glock pistol riding under his arm in a shoulder holster, he would have seemed more like an insurance salesman, or a high school teacher.