The Wrong Man (22 page)

“That cannot be,” she repeated. “How…”

She stopped, right at that second, because the answer to that question was likely to be complicated, and she had no ready answer. All she knew, right at that moment, was that she was likely to be in a great deal of trouble.

“There’s something I just don’t quite get.”

“What’s that?” she asked patiently.

“The
why
for Michael O’Connell’s love. I mean, he kept saying he
loved
her, but what had he done in any way, shape, or form that came close to anything that anyone would understand as love?”

“Not too damn much, right?”

“Right. Makes me think that there was something far different on his mind.”

“You may be correct about that,” she replied, as distant, yet as seductive, as always.

She hesitated and, as she often did, seemed to pause to organize her thoughts cautiously. I sensed that she wanted to control the story, but in a way that I couldn’t quite see. This made me shift about uncomfortably. I felt I was being used for something.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that I should give you the name of a man who might help in this regard. A psychologist. He is an expert on obsessive love.” She hesitated again. “Of course, that’s what we call it, but in reality, it has little to do with love. We think of love as roses on Valentine’s Day or maybe greeting-card sentiments. Chocolates in red, heart-shaped boxes, cherubic cupids with wings and tiny bows and arrows, Hollywood romance. But I think it has little to do with any of those things. Love is really much closer to all sorts of dark things within us.”

“You sound cynical,” I said. “And callous.”

She smiled. “I suppose I sound that way. Coming to know someone like Michael O’Connell can, shall we say, give one a different perspective on what precisely constitutes happiness. As I’ve said, he redefined things for folks.”

She shook her head. She reached down to a table and opened a small drawer, rummaging around for an instant or two, before coming out with a small piece of paper and a pencil. “Here.” She wrote down a name. “Talk to this man. Tell him I sent you.”

She put her head back and laughed, although nothing was funny. “And tell him that I waive any conflict-of-interest or physician-client privilege. No, better yet”—she wrote something down swiftly on the piece of paper—“I’ll do that myself.”

16

A Series of Gordian Knots

A
shley moved away from the window cautiously, just as she had every day for more than two weeks.

She was unaware of what was taking place with the three people who constituted her family, focused instead on the near constant sensation that she was being watched. The problem was, every time the feeling threatened to overcome her, she could find no concrete evidence to support it. A quick and sudden turn while walking to a class or to her job at the museum turned up nothing except some surprised and inconvenienced pedestrians behind her. She had taken to darting onto the T just as the train doors were closing, then intensely eyeing all the other passengers as if the old lady reading the
Herald
or the workman in the battered Red Sox cap could be O’Connell in some elaborate disguise. At home, she edged to the corner of the window in her apartment and peered up and down her street. She listened at her door for some telltale noise before exiting. She started varying her route when she went out, even if only heading to the grocery store or pharmacy. She purchased a telephone with caller ID and added the same service to her cell phone. She spoke to her neighbors, asking them if any of them had noticed anything out of the ordinary or, in particular, if they had seen a man fitting Michael O’Connell’s description hanging around the entranceway or by the street corner or maybe in back. None were able to help, in that none could recall seeing anyone like him acting suspiciously.

But the more she tried to force herself to imagine that Michael O’Connell wasn’t anywhere near her, the closer he actually seemed to be.

She could not put her finger on something concrete and say out loud, “That’s him,” but dozens of small things, telltale signs, told her that he was neither out of her life nor really keeping much distance. She came home to her apartment one day and discovered that someone had scratched a large
X
in the paint on her door, probably using nothing more sophisticated than a penknife or even a spare key. On another occasion, her mailbox had been opened, and her paltry pile of bills, flyers, credit card offers, and catalogs had been strewn about the foyer.

At the museum where she worked, items on her desk kept being moved. One day the phone would be at her right hand, the next, shifted to her left. One day she came in and found the top drawer locked—something she never did, because she didn’t keep anything remotely valuable inside.

Both at work and at her home, her phone would often ring once or twice, then stop. When she picked it up, it buzzed with a dial tone. And when she checked the caller identification, it came up with either a “private party” notation or a number she didn’t recognize. She tried hitting *69 several times to redial the incoming call, but each time got a busy signal or electronic interference.

She was unsure what to do. In her daily phone calls with both Sally and Scott, she described some of these things, but not all, because some seemed simply too bizarre to mention. Others seemed to be the sort of ordinary mishaps that plague life—such as when the professor in one of her graduate courses was unable to access her undergraduate transcript electronically, and computer services at her college were unable to discover why a series of blocks were on her files. They removed these, but only after considerable effort.

When Ashley rocked in her chair alone in her apartment, watching the night close in outside, she thought that everything was O’Connell and nothing was O’Connell. With her uncertainty came frustration, followed by outright anger.

After all, she kept insisting to herself, he had given his word. She kept telling herself this, even if she didn’t really believe one word of it. And the more she thought about it, the less reassuring it was.

Scott spent a restless night waiting for the package from Professor Burris at Yale to arrive by courier. Few things are more dangerous to an academic career than a charge of plagiarism, and Scott knew that he had to move swiftly and efficiently. His first step had been to find the box in his basement at home where he had stored all his notes for the piece for
The Journal of American History.
Then he had sent e-mail messages to the two students whom he’d enlisted three years earlier to help with the citations and research. He was lucky to have a contact address for both. He did not specify exactly what he had been accused of when he wrote them. He merely said that a fellow historian had asked some questions about the piece he’d authored, and he might need to rely upon their recollections of their work. It was just an effort to put them on alert, as he waited for the material in dispute to arrive on his doorstep.

It was all he could do.

He was at his desk at the college when the overnight deliveryman arrived, carrying a large envelope for Scott. He signed for it quickly and was just tearing into the envelope when the phone rang.

“Professor Freeman?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This is Ted Morris over at the college newspaper.”

Scott hesitated. “Are you in one of my classes, Mr. Morris? If so…”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

“I’m quite busy. But what is it I can help you with?”

He could sense some reluctance in the momentary pause before the student replied.

“We have received a tip, an allegation really, and I’m just following it up.”

“A tip?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure that I follow,” Scott said, but this was a lie, because he knew exactly what was coming.

“There is an allegation, Professor, that you are engaged in a, well, for lack of a better phrase, an issue of academic integrity.” Ted Morris was being careful about what he said.

“Who told you that?”

“Ah, is that relevant, sir?”

“Well, it might be.”

“Apparently it came from a disgruntled graduate student at a Southern university. But that’s about all I can tell you.”

“I don’t know that I know any graduate students at any schools down South,” Scott said with a little false levity in his voice. “But ‘disgruntled’ is a description that unfortunately applies to just about every grad student at some point in their academic career. It pretty much goes with the territory, don’t you think, Ted?” He dropped the formal
Mr.
from the student’s name, just to underscore their respective roles. He had authority and power—or, at the very least, he wanted Ted Morris at the campus newspaper to think this.

Ted Morris paused and, to Scott’s immediate dismay, wouldn’t be distracted.

“But the question in front of us is simple. Have you been accused—”

“No one has accused me of anything. At least not that I know of,” Scott scrambled quickly. “Nothing that isn’t completely routine in academic circles—”

Scott took a long breath. He guessed that Ted Morris was writing down every word.

“I understand, Professor.
Routine.
But still, I think I should come speak with you in person.”

“I’m pretty busy. But I have office hours on Friday. Come by then.”

That would give him several days.

“We’re under some deadline pressure here, Professor.”

“I can’t help you on that. I’ve always discovered that rushed things are inevitably confused or, worse, erroneous.”

This was a bluff. But he needed to put off the student on the phone.

“Okay, Friday. And, Professor, one other thing.”

“What’s that, Ted?” he said with his most condescending voice.

“You should know that I string for the
Globe
and the
Times.
”

Scott swallowed hard. “Well,” he said, affecting as much phony enthusiasm as he could, “that’s excellent. There are many fine stories on this campus that those papers should be interested in. Well, see you on Friday, then,” Scott said, hoping that he had deflected and obscured enough so that the student would simply wait until Friday before calling the city desk at either paper and with a few short words explode Scott’s entire career.

He hung up the telephone thinking that he had never thought he would be scared, no, terrified, of the sound of a student’s voice. Then he quickly bent to the material from Professor Burris, anxiety filling him as he read every word.