The Wrong Man (47 page)

Michael O’Connell, he believed, was simply a moment in his own history. And how he acted in the next few days, Scott thought to himself, would define him forever.

Sally struggled with anger.

It seemed to her that everything they had tried had failed. They had tried to be reasonable, polite. They had tried to be forceful. They had tried to bribe their way out. They had tried intimidation. They had tried deception. They had tried flight. And for all the various schemes they had come up with, they had gained nothing but failure. Their own lives had been roiled and thrust into turmoil, their own careers threatened, their privacy invaded, their lives upset and truly pushed into some other realm.

A world of fear, she thought. That was what awaited them.

She was seated in the living room, alone. She found herself grimacing, shaking her head, waving her hands in the air, pointing angrily, gesticulating, frowning, as if she were in the midst of some furious conversation, but no one else was in the room to hear the words that she was forming in her head. Upstairs, Ashley was still asleep, but Sally intended to awaken her soon. Hope and Catherine had gone outside for a walk to pick up some sort of takeout for dinner. In all likelihood they were discussing what had descended upon them. She had been left behind, on guard.

Sally could feel her pulse racing. They were at some crossroads moment, but she was as yet unsure what paths were available.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

I have screwed everything up, she thought to herself. I have made a mess of everything.

She sighed and went across the room to a desk where they kept scrapbooks and old photos, memorabilia too valuable to throw out, not significant enough to frame. She opened a large drawer and pawed through the piles until she found what she was looking for: a picture of her mother and father. They both had died far too young, one in a car accident, the other from a heart condition. Sally wasn’t sure why she needed to look at them, but she was almost overcome with the need to see their eyes, looking toward her, as if to reassure her. They had left her alone, and she had seized upon Scott—with all her misgivings about who she was and what she was going to become—because she had told herself that he would be
consistent.
It was probably the same sense that had driven her to law school, filled with a determination to make sure that she was never a victim of events again. She shook her head at this thought and reminded herself how foolish this was. Anyone can be victimized. At any time.

As this rancid thought coursed around inside her, she heard Ashley stirring upstairs.

She took a deep breath. There is one truth, she thought: a mother will do anything to protect her child.

“Ashley! Is that you? Are you up?”

There was a momentary pause, then a reply, preceded by a long, drawn-out groan. “Yeah. Hi, Mom. I’ll be down right after I brush my teeth.”

She was about to respond when the telephone rang.

The sound chilled her.

She checked the caller identification, but it merely said
private caller.

Sally reached out, bit down on her lip, and picked up the receiver.

“Yes, who is it, please?” she said with as much lawyer frost as she could manage.

There was no reply.

“Who is it!” she demanded sharply.

The line remained quiet. She couldn’t even hear breathing.

“God damn it, leave us alone!” she whispered. Her words drove like nails into the silence and she slammed down the phone.

“Mom? Who was it?” Ashley called out from upstairs. Sally could hear a momentary tremble in her daughter’s voice.

“Nothing,” she called back. “Just a damn telephone solicitor, pitching magazine subscriptions.” As quickly as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered why she had failed to tell the truth. “You coming down?”

“Be right there.” Sally heard the bedroom door close. She picked up the receiver and dialed *69. In a moment, a recorded voice came on the line. “The number 413-555-0987 is a pay telephone in Greenfield, Massachusetts.”

Close, she thought. Less than an hour’s drive away.

When Michael O’Connell hung up the pay phone, his first instinct was to head south, where he knew Ashley was waiting for him, and try to take advantage of the moment. Every word he’d heard from Sally had told him how weak she was. He leaned back, closing his eyes, envisioning Ashley. He could feel blood racing through his body, almost as if every vein and artery had become electric. He breathed in slow, shallow breaths, like a swimmer hyperventilating before taking a plunge, and told himself that following her to her own home would be precisely what
they
would expect.

They
will be preparing, he thought. Inventing some scheme to prevent him from getting close to her. Designing a defense, building walls. They cannot beat me.

This was the simplest, most obvious, nonnegotiable fact.

Again he breathed in.
They
will think that I’m on my way there.

But then, what’s the rush?

Let them worry. Let them lose some sleep. Let them startle at every night noise.

And, he thought, when their defenses were thin from exhaustion and tension and doubt, he would arrive. When they least expected it.

O’Connell tapped his foot against the sidewalk, like a dancer finding the rhythm.

I am there, at their side, even when I’m not there, he told himself.

Michael O’Connell decided that on this day, he wasn’t in any hurry. The love he felt for Ashley could also be exceedingly patient.

This time she told me to meet her at midnight outside the emergency room of a hospital in Springfield. When I asked her why midnight, she informed me that she did volunteer work at the hospital two nights a week, and that the witching hour was when she customarily took her break.

“What sort of volunteer work?” I asked.

“Counseling. Battered wives. Beaten children. Neglected elderly. They all show up at the hospital, and someone has to be on hand to steer them into the right channels for the state to help out.” Her voice had seemed coldly patient, despite the images that she suggested. “What I do is find the proper paperwork to accompany broken teeth, black eyes, razor slashes, and fractured ribs.”

She was waiting for me, smoking a cigarette, taking deep drags, down to the filter. I pointed at the cigarette as I walked through the parking-lot shadows toward her.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t.” She took another long pull. “Except here. Two nights a week. One cigarette at the midnight break. No more. When I return home, I throw the rest of the pack away. Buy a new pack each week.”

She smiled, her face partially hidden by shadow. “Smoking seems like a modest sin, compared with what I see here. A child, perhaps, with his fingers systematically fractured by a cracked-out stepfather. Or a mother in her eighth month, beaten with a metal coat hanger. That sort of thing. Very routine. Very ordinary. Very cruel. Just the usual sort of ugliness that passes for life. Remarkable, isn’t it, how cruel we can be to one another?”

“Yes.”

“So, what more do you need to know?” she asked.

“Scott and Sally and Hope weren’t willing to risk uncertainty, were they?”

She shook her head. A high-pitched, caterwauling ambulance siren cut through the night. Urgency arrives with many different sounds.

32

The First and Only Plan

W
hen they gathered, later that evening, a sense of helplessness was in the air. Ashley, in particular, seemed crippled by events. She huddled beneath a blanket in an armchair, her feet tucked up under her, clutching an ancient stuffed brown bear whose ear had been partially shredded by Nameless.

Ashley looked around the room and realized that she had created the mess she was in, but then, she couldn’t exactly see what she had done to have it reach this point. Long forgotten was the single, slightly drunken night that had landed her in bed with Michael O’Connell. Even more distant was the conversation when she’d agreed to go out with him that one time, thinking then that O’Connell was different from all the college boys that she had come to know.

Now, she only thought herself naïve and stupid. And she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do. When she looked up and let her eyes fasten on Catherine and Hope and her mother and father, one after the other, she realized that she had endangered all of them; in different ways, certainly, but still, they were all in jeopardy. She wanted to apologize, and so, that was where she started.

“This is all my fault. I’m to blame.”

Sally responded quickly, “No you’re not. And punishing yourself won’t do any of us any good.”

“Well, if I hadn’t—”

Scott stepped in. “You made a mistake. We’ve been all over this before, and we should leave that mistake behind. We all managed to compound that mistake by thinking we were dealing with someone reasonable. So, perhaps you were wrong once, Ashley, but O’Connell managed to get all of us involved pretty quickly, and we’re all guilty of underestimating what he is capable of. Recriminations and blame are really stupid avenues to pursue now. Your mother is right; the only issue in front of us is, what do we do next?”

“I think,” Hope said slowly, “that’s not really it, Scott.”

He turned toward her. “How so?”

“The issue is, how far are we willing to go?”

This quieted the room.

“Because,” Hope continued, her voice even, but her words reverberating with authority, “we have only the vaguest idea of what Michael O’Connell is willing to do. There are plenty of indications. We know he is capable of just about anything and everything. But what are his limits? Does he even have any? Where will he draw the line? I think it would be unwise for any of us to think that he has any restraints.”

“I wish I’d—” Catherine started, then stopped. “Well,” she said with customary briskness, “Scott knows what I wish I’d done.”

“I suppose,” Sally said, “that now it is time for us to engage the authorities.”

Catherine coldly added, “Well, that’s what the local policeman told me outside my house, after my little get-together with Mr. O’Connell.”

“You don’t sound like you think much of that idea,” Hope said.

“I don’t.” Beneath her breath, Catherine added, “When the hell have ‘the authorities’ ever helped anyone?”

Scott turned to Sally. “Sally, you’re the lawyer. I’m sure that in your professional life, you’ve run into these sorts of problems. What would be involved in the process? What could we expect?”

Sally paused, running through details in her head before speaking.

“Ashley would have to go before a judge. I suppose I could handle the legal work, but it’s always wiser to hire outside counsel. She would have to testify that she was being stalked, that she was in fear for her well-being. She might be required to prove that there was some systematic behavior on O’Connell’s part, but most judges are pretty understanding, and they would be likely to accept what Ashley said without requiring much outside corroboration. They would issue a restraining order that would allow the police to arrest O’Connell if he came within some specified distance—usually it’s one hundred feet to one hundred yards. The judge would also, in all likelihood, order O’Connell to not have any contact with her, either by telephone or by computer. These orders are generally pretty complete and would effectively remove him from Ashley’s life, given one rather large
if.
”

“What’s that?” Ashley asked.

“
If
he complies with the order.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Well, then the police can get involved. Technically, he could be arrested and held in violation of the order. That would put him away for some time. The standard sentence is up to six months. But that’s assuming the judge gives him the maximum. In reality, there’s more give-and-take. Judges are reluctant to put people in jail for what they often imagine is merely a dispute between a couple.”

Sally took a deep breath. “That’s the way it is all supposed to work. The real world is never quite as clear-cut as all that.”