The Wrong Man

by John Katzenbach

  The car, with a middle-aged man behind the wheel, rolled past them. The driver didn’t even turn; his eyes were checking addresses on the opposite side of the street.

  Ashley groaned. But Catherine kept her wits about her. “You should put that weapon away,” she said quietly. “Before some nice stay-at-home mother spots it in your hand.”

  “Where the hell is he?”

  Catherine didn’t answer.

  The two of them continued slowly. Ashley felt utterly calm, committed, ready to pull out her weapon and end it all with a rapid-fire answer to all his questions. Is this what it feels like to be ready to kill someone? But the real O’Connell, as opposed to the ghostlike O’Connell who had lurked just behind her every step for so long, was nowhere to be seen.

  When they’d patiently made it around the block and sauntered back to Sally and Hope’s home, Catherine muttered, “All right. We know one thing. He’s not here. He has to be somewhere. Are you ready for the next step?”

  Ashley doubted anyone could know the answer to that until they tried.

  Michael O’Connell was at his makeshift desk in a darkened room, bathed in the glow of the computer screen. He was working on a little surprise for Ashley’s family. Dressed only in his underwear, his hair slicked back after a shower, techno music pouring through the computer’s speakers, he tapped his fingers on the keyboard in rhythm with the electric chords. The songs he listened to were fast, almost out of control.

  O’Connell took delight in having used some of the cash that Ashley’s father had given him in the pathetic effort to buy him off to purchase the computer that replaced the one that Matthew Murphy had smashed. And now, he was hard at work on a series of electronic sorties that he believed would make for significant trouble in their lives.

  The first was to be an anonymous tip to the Internal Revenue Service suggesting that Sally was asking her clients to pay her fees half by check and half in cash. There is nothing, Michael O’Connell thought, that the tax people hate more than someone trying to hide big chunks of income. They would be skeptical when she denied it, and relentless as they pored over her accounts.

  This made him laugh out loud.

  The second was designed as an equally anonymous tip to the New England offices of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency alleging that Catherine was growing large quantities of marijuana on her farm in a greenhouse inside her barn. He hoped the tip would be enough to get a search warrant. And even if the search turned up nothing—as he knew it would—he suspected the heavy hand of the DEA would wreck all her precious antiques and memorabilia. He could picture her house strewn with her items.

  The third was a little surprise that he’d planned for Scott. Surfing around the Internet, using the log-on Histprof, he had discovered a Danish website that offered the most virulent pornography, prominently featuring children and underage teenagers in all sorts of provocative poses. The next step was to buy a phony credit card number and simply have a selection sent to Scott at his home. It would be a relatively simple matter to tip the local police to its arrival. In fact, he thought, he might not even have to do that. The local police would probably get a call from U.S. Customs, whom he knew monitored such imports into the States.

  He laughed a little to himself, imagining the explanations that Ashley’s family would try to come up with when they found themselves enmeshed in all sorts of bureaucratic red tape, or sitting across a table in a bright, windowless room from either a DEA agent, an IRS agent, or a police officer who had nothing but contempt for the sort of smug middle-class folks they were.

  They might try to blame him, but he doubted it. He just couldn’t be sure, which held him back. He knew that pressing the proper keys on his three entries would undoubtedly leave an electronic footprint that could be traced to his own computer. What he needed to do, he thought, was break into Scott’s house one morning while he was teaching and send the request to Denmark from Scott’s computer. It was also critical to create an untraceable electronic path for the other tips. He sighed. These would require him to travel to southern Vermont and western Massachusetts. Inventing screen personae wasn’t a problem, he thought. And he could send the tips from computers either in Internet cafés or local libraries.

  He leaned back in his chair and once again laughed out loud.

  Not for the first time, Michael O’Connell wondered why they thought they could compete against him.

  As he was grinning, working over each of these unpleasant surprises for Ashley’s parents and family in his head, the cell phone on his desk corner rang.

  It surprised him. He had no friends who would call. He’d quit his mechanic’s job, and no one at the school where he was occasionally taking classes had his number.

  For a second, he stared at the small window on the outside of the phone that gave the incoming identification. He saw only a single heart-stopping name: Ashley.

  Before giving me the detective’s name, she had made me promise to guard my words.

  “You won’t say anything,” she had said. “You won’t tell him anything that will set him on edge. You must promise me that, or else, forget it, I won’t give you his name.”

  “I will be cautious. I promise.”

  Now, in the waiting room of the police station, seated on a threadbare couch, I was less sure of my capabilities. To my right, a door opened and a man about my own age, with salt-and-pepper hair, a garishly pink tie around his neck, a substantial stomach, and an easygoing, slightly twisted smile on his lips, emerged. He stuck out his hand, and we introduced ourselves. He showed me back to his desk.

  “So, how can I help you?”

  I repeated the name I had given him in an earlier phone call. He nodded.

  “We don’t get too many homicides around here. And when we do, they’re usually boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife. This was a little different. But I don’t get your interest in the case.”

  “Some people I know suggested taking a look at it. Thought it might make a good story.”

  The detective shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. I will say this, it was a hell of a crime scene. A real mess. Sorting through it was quite a task. We’re not exactly Hollywood Homicide in here.” He gestured around the room. It was a modest place, where every bit of equipment, including the men and women who worked there, showed the fraying of age. “But even if people think we’re all dumb as logs, eventually we were able to figure it all out.”

  “I don’t think that,” I said. “The dumb as logs part.”

  “Well, you’re the exception, rather than the rule. Usually folks don’t get the big picture until they’re sitting across from one of us in handcuffs, we’ve got ’em nailed six ways to Sunday, and they’re looking at doing some serious prison time.”

  He paused, eyeing me carefully. “You’re not working for a defense attorney, huh? Someone who jumps into a case and tries to find some mistake that they can crow about in an appellate court?”

  “No. Just looking for a story, like I said.”

  He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he completely believed me.

  “Well,” the detective said slowly, “I don’t know about that at all. It might be a story. But it’s an old one. Okay. Here you go.”

  He reached down beneath his desk, brought up a large accordion-style file, and opened it on the desk in front of us. There were a stack of eight-by-ten color glossy photographs, which he spread out on top of all the paperwork. I leaned forward. I could see debris and ruin were strewn throughout the pictures. And a body.

  “A mess,” he said. “Like I told you.”

  42

  The Gun in the Shoe

  At about the same time that Catherine and Ashley were walking around the block wondering where Michael O’Connell was, Scott was parked in the far corner of a thickly wooded rest area off Route 2. The virtue of the rest area was that it was almost entirely blocked by trees and brush from the highway. That, in part, was why they had chosen Route 2 as the way to travel to Boston. It
wasn’t as quick as the turnpike, but it was less patrolled and less traveled. He was alone in his beaten old truck, having left the Porsche in his driveway.

  Scott could hear the shallowness of his breathing, and he told himself that he was being crazy. Whatever tension there was at this moment, it would undoubtedly get far worse by the end of the day. His patience was rewarded a few minutes later when he saw a late-model white Ford Taurus pull into the rest area. It came to a stop about twenty feet away. He recognized Hope behind the wheel.

  He reached down to the leg well beside him and pulled up a small, cheap red canvas gym bag. It rattled with a metallic sound when he picked it up. He got out of the truck and swiftly walked across the parking area.

  Hope rolled down the window.

  “Keep watch,” Scott said briskly. “You see anyone pulling in, let me know pronto.”

  She nodded. “Where did you—”

  “Last night. After midnight. I went down to long-term parking at the Hartford airport.”

  “Good thinking. But don’t they have security cameras in the parking garage?”

  “I went to the satellite lots. No pictures. This will only take a second. This a rental?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It made the most sense.”

  Scott opened the gym bag and went to the back of the car. It only took him a few minutes to exchange the Massachusetts license plates for the set from Rhode Island he’d taken off a car the night before. A small socket wrench and pliers were also in the bag. He placed the car’s actual plates in the duffel and handed it to Hope. “Don’t forget,” he said. “Got to change back before you return that vehicle.”

  Hope nodded. She already looked pale.

  “Look, call me if you have any hassle. I’ll be close enough, and—”

  “You think if there’s a problem, I’ll have time to make a phone call?”

  “No. Of course not. All right, I’ll just guide myself…” His voice trailed off. Too much to say. No words to say it with.

  Scott stepped back. “Sally should be on her way down the turnpike by now.”

  “Then I’ll go,” Hope said. She placed the gym bag on the seat beside her.

  “Keep to the speed limit. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  He thought he should say Good luck or Be careful or something bland and encouraging. But he did not. Instead, he watched as Hope quickly exited the parking area, and he glanced at his watch, trying to imagine where Sally would be. She was taking a parallel route east. It seemed like a small touch, changing license plates for the day, but he understood that when Sally had talked to both of them about paying attention to small, seemingly insignificant details, there was much truth in what she’d said. For the first time he’d come to understand that everything he’d learned in life up to that point had little relevance to what he was about to do.

  On the precipice of sudden cowardice, Scott returned to his truck and readied himself to head east into uncertainty.

  Hope drove toward the intersection where the interstate highway branched off to the northeast. She followed Sally’s directions as carefully as possible, keeping her speed within the limits so as not to attract any attention, heading to the spot that Sally had designated, where they would meet up later that day. She decided that it was best if she tried to compartmentalize everything. She thought of what she was about to do as mere items on a checklist, and that she was moving steadily from one to the next.

  She tried to think analytically and coldly about the last three entries on her list.

  Commit the crime.

  Get away. Meet Sally.

  Leave no trace of yourself behind.

  She wished that she were a mathematician who could see everything she was doing as nothing more than a series of numbers building into theories and probabilities, and who could imagine lives and futures with nothing more passionate than the statistics of an actuary.

  This was impossible. So, instead, she tried to work herself into some sort of righteous anger, fixating on Michael O’Connell and his family, insisting to herself that the course they were taking was the only one that he had left open to them, and the only one that he would not have anticipated. If she could make herself angry enough, perhaps rage alone would carry her forward far enough to do what she had volunteered to do.

  Someone has to die, she told herself. Before he kills Ashley. She repeated this, like some perverse mantra, over and over for several miles of highway.

  Hope remembered games when everything hung in the balance during the last minutes before the referee’s whistle. Reaching deep into that athlete’s dark reservoir for some bit of magic would free her for just the half second needed to decide the contest. As a coach, she had always urged her players to visualize that moment when success or defeat hung in the balance, so that when it inevitably arrived, they were psychologically prepared to do what was necessary, and to act without hesitation.

  She imagined that this experience would be the same.

  And so, biting down on her lip, she started to picture events as they were imagined by Sally, with the assistance of Scott’s description of the location. She imagined the run-down, decrepit house, the rusted-out car in the front yard, the garage filled with engine parts and debris. She thought she knew what would be inside: the clutter of newspaper, beer bottles, and take-out food, a stale aroma of uselessness. And he would be there. The man who’d created the man who’d created the threat to all of them. She knew that when she faced him, she had to picture Michael O’Connell.

  She saw herself waiting.

  She saw herself entering.

  She saw herself facing the man they had designated for death.

  Hope drove east, her mind cluttered, wishing that she could act as if this particular trip were nothing in the least bit out of the ordinary.

  By midafternoon, Sally had driven to Boston and parked on the street opposite Michael O’Connell’s apartment building, with a clear view of the entrance. In her hand, she clutched the key that Hope had given her.

  She was scrunched down behind the wheel of her car, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible, while all the time believing that everyone on the block had already seen her, memorized her face, and taken down her license plate number. She knew these fears were groundless, but they were there, right on the edge of her imagination, right at the point where fear threatens to start taking over emotions and actions, and it was all Sally could do to keep things in check.

  She wished she had O’Connell’s easy familiarity with darkness. It would help her—and Scott and Hope, as well—with what they were trying to do.

  Again, she shook her head. Her sole act of rebellion, of stepping outside the routine strictures of society, was her relationship with Hope. She wanted to laugh at herself. A middle-aged, middle-class woman, unsure about her relationship with her partner, didn’t really amount to much of an outlaw.

  And certainly didn’t amount to much of a killer.

  She picked up her sheet of yellow notepaper and tried to picture where all the others were. Hope would be waiting for her. Scott would be in position. Ashley would be at home with Catherine. And Michael O’Connell would be inside—she hoped.

  What made you think you could plan this and pull it off? she suddenly demanded of herself.

  It.

  She felt her throat go dry. It wasn’t a fair contraction. Call it what it is. A murder. Premeditated. First-degree murder. The sort of scheme that in some states would send you to the electric chair or gas chamber. Even with the extenuating circumstances, it would still buy twenty-five years to life.

  Not for Ashley, she thought. Ashley would remain safe.

  And then, just as abruptly, she realized what she was thinking. Everyone’s life would be ruined. Except O’Connell’s. His would remain on the same path as before, and there would be little in the way of his pursuit of Ashley, or, if he so chose, some other Ashley.

  There would be no one left to defend her.

  Make it work.
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  She looked up, saw shadows start to creep over the building rooftops, and, she told herself, It begins now.

  He clutched the cell phone in his hand and felt a thrill of excitement, but kept himself calm until he heard the familiar voice on the other end.

  “Michael? Is that you?”

  He inhaled sharply. “Hello, Ashley.”

  “Hello, Michael.”

  They were both quiet for a second. Ashley took a moment to stare down at the papers her mother had prepared for her. A script, with key sentences underlined three times. But the pages seemed blurry, indistinct. In the silence of Ashley’s hesitation, Michael O’Connell rocked forward in his seat. The phone call was wonderful and terrible at the same time. It told him he was winning. He could barely contain the grin that creased his face. His right leg started to twitch, like a drummer using his foot to control the thunder of the bass drum.

  “It’s wonderful to hear your voice,” he said. “It seems as if so many people are trying to keep us apart. You know that will never happen. I won’t let it.” He smiled, laughed a little, and added, “It does no good for them to try to hide you. You’ve seen that, haven’t you? There’s nowhere that I can’t find you.”

  Ashley closed her eyes for a moment. His words were like splinters in her skin.

  “Michael, I’ve asked you over and over to leave me alone. I’ve tried everything I could to help you understand that we are not going to be together. I don’t want you in my life. Not at all.” Everything she said, she knew she’d said before. To no effect. She didn’t expect anything different this time. The world she lived in was mad, and no amount of reason or rationale was going to change it.

  “I know you don’t mean that,” he said, an instant chill in his voice. “I know that you’ve been put up to say that. All these people who want you to be someone that you aren’t. I know that it’s other people who are dictating everything you say. That’s why I’m not paying any attention to it.”