The Wrong Man

by John Katzenbach

  Some eight blocks from her house, a car sliced dangerously close by. She gasped, wanting to shout an obscenity, but kept running.

  Six blocks from her house, a loud voice called out a name as she ran past. She could not tell if it was hers, and she didn’t turn to look, but started to move faster.

  Four blocks from her house, someone nearby honked a car horn. The sound made her nearly jump out of her skin, and she started to sprint.

  Two blocks from her house, she suddenly heard tires squealing behind her. She gasped for breath and, again, didn’t turn to investigate, but leaped from the roadway to the uneven cement sidewalk, broken up by tree roots that had pushed the surface into a ripple of cracks and breaks, like the unsettled surface of the ocean before a storm. The pavement seemed to snap at her ankles, and her feet complained with the difficulty. She ran harder. She wanted to close her eyes and tried to shut out all sounds. This was impossible, so she began humming to herself. She religiously kept her eyes straight ahead, refusing to turn in either direction, like a racehorse with blinders on, sprinting as fast as she could manage toward her home. She jumped across a flower bed and dashed across the lawn, almost slamming into the front door, before she stopped and slowly turned around.

  She stared up, then down the street. She saw a man backing his car out of his driveway. Some laughing children overloaded with bulging backpacks heading toward a school bus stop. A woman with a long, bright green overcoat tossed over her nightgown, reaching down for the morning paper.

  No O’Connell. At least nowhere that she could see.

  She leaned her head back, gasping in drafts of cold air. Her eyes strayed across the morning normalcy and she gasped back a sob. In that moment, she realized that he no longer actually had to be present in order to be present.

  From a spot a short ways down the street, Michael O’Connell feasted his vision upon Ashley as she stood hesitantly on the front porch of her mother’s house. He was sipping from a large coffee cup, hunched down behind the wheel of his car. He believed that if she knew how to look, she might see him, but he made little other effort to conceal himself. He simply waited.

  He had considered, then dismissed, trying to stop her as she ran. The surprise might cause her to panic, and it would have been too easy for her to flee. She was far more familiar with the side streets and backyards of the neighborhood, and as quick as he was, he was unsure whether he could have caught her. But, more important, she might have screamed, gotten the attention of neighbors, and somebody might have called the police. If she had made a scene, he would have had to back down before he had a chance to speak with her. More than anything, what he did not want was to have to make some sort of explanation to some skeptical police officer as to what he was doing.

  He had to find the right moment. Not this one, on the street where she’d grown up. It resonated her past. He was her future.

  Easier, by far, he thought, to drink in her vision. He particularly liked watching her legs move. They were long and supple, and he wished that in their sole night together, he’d paid even more attention to them. Still, he was able to picture them, naked, glistening, and he shifted about in his seat as he felt the first heat of being aroused. He wished that Ashley would remove her knit cap, so that he could see her hair, and when he looked up and she did this, he smiled and wondered if he could send her all sorts of subliminal messages, directly from his thoughts to hers. It just reinforced in his mind how linked they were.

  Michael O’Connell laughed out loud.

  He could simply look at Ashley from afar and feel her warmth throughout his body. It was as if she energized him. He reached out, as if driven by passion, unable to sit still, and opened his door.

  A short ways away, Ashley turned at that same moment and, without seeing the movement, filled with despair, stepped back into the house.

  Michael O’Connell stood up, half in the car, one leg on the ground behind the door, staring at the spot where Ashley had disappeared. In his imagination, he could still see her.

  Steal her, he said to himself.

  It seemed so simple to him.

  He smiled. It was just a matter of getting her alone.

  Not exactly alone, he thought. But alone in his world. Not hers.

  I am invisible, he thought, as he slid back into the car and pulled away from the curb.

  He was wrong about this. From the window in her upstairs bedroom, Sally stood, watching. She gripped the window frame with white-knuckled fingers, close to breaking the wood, her nails digging into the paint. It was the first time she had seen Michael O’Connell in the flesh. When she’d first spotted the figure behind the wheel of the car, she had tried to tell herself that he wasn’t who she thought he was, but, in the same thought, knew she was deluding herself. It was him. It could be no one else. He was as close as he’d always been, right beyond their reach, shadowing Ashley’s every step. Even when she could not see him, he was there. She felt dizzy, enraged, and almost overcome by anxiety. Love is hate, she thought. Love is evil. Love is wrong.

  She watched the car disappear down the street.

  Love is death, she thought.

  Breathing hard, she turned away from the window. She decided against instantly telling everyone that she’d spotted O’Connell on their street, only yards away from the front door, spying on Ashley. The family would be enraged, she thought. Angry people behave rashly. We need to be calm. Intelligent. Organized. Get to work. Get to work. Get to work. She turned back and found the pad of paper where she was making her notes. Notes for a murder. When she picked up her pencil, though, she noticed that her hand was quivering just slightly.

  In the late afternoon, Sally went shopping for items she believed were integral to their task. It was not until early in the evening that she got back, checked once on Ashley, who appeared oddly bored, curled up on her bed reading, wondered where Hope was, as she listened to Catherine fiddle about in the kitchen, and then got around to calling Scott on the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “Scott? It’s Sally.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. We got through the day more or less without incident,” she said without mentioning that she had seen O’Connell lurking about their street that morning. “How much longer that will be the case, I have my doubts.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Good. I hope so. Because I think you should come over here now.”

  “All right…” He hesitated.

  “It’s time to act.” Sally laughed, but without humor, as if pricked by some deep cynicism. “It seems to me that we’ve agreed more in the past few weeks than we ever did when we were actually married.”

  Scott, too, smiled ruefully. “That is a strange way of looking at things. Maybe. But when we were together, well, there were times it wasn’t that bad.”

  “You weren’t living a lie like I was.”

  “Lie is a strong word.”

  “Look, Scott, I don’t want to fight over past fights again, if that makes sense.”

  For a moment they remained silent, then Sally added, “We’re getting sidetracked. This isn’t about where we were, it’s about where we can go or even who we are. And most important, it’s about Ashley.”

  “Okay,” Scott said, feeling that some huge swamp of emotions was between them that was never spoken of and never would be.

  “I have a plan,” Sally blurted.

  “Good,” he said after taking a deep breath. He wasn’t sure that he meant that.

  “I don’t know if it is a good one. I don’t know if it will work. I don’t know if we can pull it off.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “We shouldn’t be talking on the phone. At least not on these lines.”

  “Right. Of course not. That makes sense.” He wasn’t at all sure why this made sense, but he said it anyway. “I’ll be over straightaway.” He hung up the phone and thought that there was something awful in the routines of life. Teaching, living alone wit
h all the ghosts of statesmen, soldiers, and politicians that made up his courses, his existence was completely predictable. He guessed that that was going to change.

  Hope returned to the house before Scott arrived. She had been out walking, trying without much luck to sort through all that was happening. She found Sally in the living room, poring over some loose sheets of paper, pencil stuck in her mouth. She looked up when Hope entered.

  “I have a plan. I’m not sure it will work. But Scott’s coming over and we can go over it together.”

  “Where are my mother and Ashley?”

  “Upstairs. Not at all pleased with being banned from the conversation.”

  “My mother doesn’t appreciate being excluded from things, which is a curious position for someone who has spent much of her adult life living in the woods in Vermont, but there you have it. That’s the way she is.” Hope hesitated, and Sally looked up as if she heard a catch in Hope’s voice.

  “What is it?”

  Hope shook her head. “I don’t know exactly, but try to follow me on this. She’s doing what we ask her to, right? Well, that’s just not her style. Not in the slightest. She’s always been a lone-wolf type, the I don’t give a damn what other people think sort of person. And her seeming compliance…well, I’m not sure that we should rely on her ever doing exactly what we ask her to. She’s just a bit of a loose cannon. It’s what my dad always loved about her, and me, too, except, upon occasion, growing up, it made things, well, difficult, if you catch my drift.”

  Sally smiled. “Are you all that different?”

  Hope shrugged, but laughed in response. “I guess not.”

  “And don’t you think that I might have been attracted to those qualities, as well?”

  “I never thought of stubborn and unpredictable as my best sides.”

  “Well, just goes to show what you know.” Sally managed a small grin as she dipped her head to the paperwork spread out on her lap.

  The two women were both silent. Oddly, Hope thought, it was the first affectionate thing Sally had said in weeks.

  There was a knock on the door. “That will be Scott,” Sally said. She gathered her papers together as Hope went to let him in. In the second or two of solitude, she put her head back and took in a deep breath. Once you start this thing moving, there will be no going back.

  Catherine fumed inwardly. She looked across at the younger woman, until finally Ashley dashed her book to the floor after reading the same page for the third time and said, “I don’t know if I can stand this much longer. I’m being treated like a six-year-old. Being sent to my room. Told to keep myself occupied while my parents map out my future. God damn it, Catherine, I’m not a baby! I can fight for myself.”

  “I agree, dear,” Catherine said.

  “You know, I should take that damn pistol and just solve this problem once and for all.”

  “I believe, Ashley, dear, that’s in some ways what your parents are trying to avoid. And I didn’t get you that gun so that you could go off and use it willy-nilly, just because you’re pissed off. I got it so that you could protect yourself, if O’Connell came after you.”

  Ashley leaned her head back. “He has, you know.”

  “Has what, dear?”

  “He’s come after me. He’s probably outside right now. Just waiting.”

  “Waiting, dear?”

  “For the right moment. He’s crazy. Crazy in love. Crazy obsessed. Crazy I don’t know what. But he’s there. He has only one thing of any importance in his life, and it is me.”

  Catherine nodded. She suddenly leaned forward. “Can you do it?”

  Ashley opened her eyes and stared across the room, first fixing on Catherine, then on the shoulder bag that contained the pistol.

  “Can you do it?” Catherine repeated.

  “Yes,” Ashley answered stiffly. “I can. I can. I know it.”

  “I couldn’t. I should have. With the shotgun when he was right across from me. I should have. But I didn’t. Can you be stronger than I was, dear? Can you be more determined? Are you braver?”

  “I don’t know. But, yes. I think so.”

  “I need to know.”

  “How can anyone know, until they actually do it? I mean, I’m angry enough. Maybe scared enough. But can I pull the trigger? I think so.”

  “I imagine you could,” Catherine said. “At least maybe you could. The chances are, you could. It’s dark out. Are you convinced he’s out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you could end it all by putting the pistol in your jacket pocket and taking a walk with me around midnight. And when he tried to stop us, you act. He might say he just wants to talk with you, that’s what they always say. But instead of talking you just shoot him. Right there. Right then. The police will come and probably arrest you. And then we can have your mother hire the best attorney. Take your chances in a court of law. It’s not exactly as if this community, where your mother and Hope live, is particularly predisposed to giving men—and especially men who have been stalking a young woman—much leeway. Or, for that matter, the benefit of any doubt whatsoever.”

  “You think…”

  “I think you can do it if you’re willing to pay the price.”

  “Prison?”

  “Maybe. Notoriety. Being the poster child for every person with some other agenda, which will surely happen, just as your folks have predicted it would. But it might be worth it.”

  Ashley rocked her head back. “I can’t stand this for much longer. One minute I’m terrified. The next I’m furious. I feel safe one second. Then threatened the next.”

  “Why can’t we be violent before they are violent towards us?” Catherine said fiercely. “Why is that so goddamn unfair? Why do we have to wait to be a victim?”

  “I’m not going to.”

  “Good. I didn’t think so. So, let’s consider what we can do.”

  Ashley nodded her head in agreement.

  Scott looked at several small piles of items collected in the living room. “You’ve been shopping.”

  “Indeed,” Sally said.

  “You want to go over it for us?” Scott picked up and fiddled with a box of ammonia-based Handi Wipes. “Like these?”

  Sally was quiet, even-toned. “If one thought they had left a DNA sample in a compromising location, they could swipe it down with these, eradicating any trace evidence.”

  Scott blew out his cheeks. He was almost dizzy. Handi Wipes, he thought. Part of a murder weapon.

  Sally watched her ex-husband and could feel him wavering. She continued solidly, “As best as I can deduce, what we have agreed to do is bring O’Connell and his father together. We can do that. Scott more or less inadvertently has given us a way. And I think we can presume they will have words. We’ve been over that. Then we must find a way to steal O’Connell’s own weapon, use it, as he presumably would, on his father, and return it to O’Connell’s hideaway before he realizes it is missing.”

  “Why not just leave it at the, ah, crime scene?” Scott asked.

  “I thought of that,” Sally replied. “But it will be the crucial piece of evidence. The police and the prosecution just love finding the murder weapon. It’s what they will build their theory around. It will be the item that is incontrovertible in a court of law. To be sure, it, more than anything else, needs to be discovered in his control.”

  “What are these other things?” Hope asked.

  Sally looked over at the gathered items. There were several cell phones, a tube of Super Glue, a portable computer, a size-small men’s coverall, two boxes of surgical gloves, several pairs of surgical bootees that could be pulled over a pair of shoes, two black, tight-fitting balaclava face and head cover-ups, and a Swiss Army knife. “They are what we need, as best as I can tell. There are some other things that would be really useful, as well, like some hair from a comb in O’Connell’s apartment, maybe. I’m still fitting pieces together.”

  “What’s the computer for?�
�� Scott asked.

  Sally sighed. She turned to Hope. “That’s the same make and model that you saw in O’Connell’s apartment, right?”

  Hope examined the machine. “Yes. As best as I can tell. At least, that’s what I remember.”

  “Well,” Sally said, “you said that his computer contains encrypted material about Ashley. And about us. This one doesn’t.”

  Hope nodded. “I think I see.”

  “The police will seize his computer. I’d rather have it be one that we’d prepared for that circumstance.”

  “Switch them?”

  “Correct. It will just erase a link between us and him. He’s probably got backup somewhere, with all the stuff about Ashley and us, but still…Timing will be critical.”

  She handed each of them a sheet of yellow legal-pad paper. At the top she had drawn a timeline.

  Hope stared down at the paper. Sally had delineated tasks, events, actions, but had marked each with an A, B, or C. When she looked up, she saw that Sally was watching her.

  “You haven’t assigned roles,” Hope said. “You’ve got three people doing interrelated things, but you haven’t yet said who does what.”

  Sally leaned back in her chair, trying to remain composed. “I have tried to think of this from the position of a modern police officer,” she said. “You have to consider what they will find, and how they will interpret it. Crimes are always about a certain logic. One thing should lead them to the next. They have modern techniques, like DNA analysis and forensic weapons studies and all sorts of capabilities that we only know about peripherally. I’ve tried to think of as many of these as I could and remember what screws up investigations. Fire, for example, makes a mess of things—but it doesn’t necessarily destroy firearms forensics. Water compromises all sorts of wounds and DNA, ruins fingerprints. Our problem is that we want to commit a crime, a violent crime, but we want to leave a trail. Not a perfect trail, but enough of one that leads in the direction we want. The police will, if we’re careful, do the rest, even without a confession from O’Connell.”