The Wrong Man (64 page)

She told herself, The gun will be there.

There was no backup plan if it wasn’t. Only an agreement that they would abort the entire scheme, go back to western Massachusetts, and try to invent something new. She thought it possible that O’Connell might take the gun with him to visit his father. His sudden rage was one variable that she hadn’t been able to anticipate. In a way, she hoped he would take the gun with him. Perhaps he would use it in the way they had hoped to; that he would make the mistake that would solve all their problems.

Or, he might take the gun and use it on them.

Or, he might take the gun and use it on Ashley.

There was no plan except flight and panic if this one blew up.

Sally followed the same route that Hope had traveled a few days earlier. Within seconds, she found herself standing outside the apartment. She was alone, key in hand.

No neighbors. The only eyes that watched her belonged to the clutch of cats mewling in the hallway. Did he kill one of your number today? she wondered. She slipped the key into the lock and let herself in as quietly as she could.

Sally told herself not to look around. Not to examine the world where Michael O’Connell lived, because she knew it would only fuel her own terrors. And speed was critical to everything that she’d mapped out. Get the gun, she repeated to herself. Get it now.

She found the closet. She found the corner. She found the boot, with the dirty sock stuffed in the top.

Be there, she whispered to herself.

She lifted the sock, taking note as to how it was placed. Then she leaned in and reached inside the boot.

When her gloved fingers touched the steel of the barrel, she gasped out loud.

Gingerly she pulled the weapon free.

For a second, she hesitated. This is it, she thought. Go forward or go back.

She could see no option other than fear. Taking the gun terrified her. Leaving the gun terrified her.

Feeling as if someone else were guiding her hand, she carefully slipped the gun into a large plastic bag inside her backpack. She left the sock on the floor.

One more thing to do. She walked quickly into the small living room and stared at the battered desk where Michael O’Connell kept his laptop computer plugged in. He’d created a great deal of trouble for all of them while he was seated at that desk, she thought. And now it was time for her to do the same for him. As scared as she was, this next step gave her a nasty sense of satisfaction. She removed the similar-model computer from her backpack, then quickly replaced his computer with the one she had prepared for him. She didn’t know whether he would immediately see the difference, but he would, sooner or later. She was pleased with this. She had spent some hours in the past day downloading a variety of pornographic materials, and from extreme right-wing antigovernment websites, filling the computer’s memory with as much rage-filled, satanic-inspired, heavy-metal rock music as she could find. When she was persuaded that the computer was laden with enough incriminating items, she had used one of the word files to start writing an angry letter, one that started,
Dear Dad, you son of a bitch,
claiming that O’Connell now knew that he should never have lied on his father’s behalf years ago, and that he was now prepared to rectify that one big mistake in his life. He was the only person on this earth capable of dealing out the appropriate kind of justice to pay back his mother’s murder. Scott’s research of the O’Connell family history had helped her immensely.

Sally had done two other things to the computer. She had unscrewed the back panel, giving her access to the innards of the machine, and had carefully loosened the connection where the main power cord entered the machine, so that it wouldn’t start up. Then she had replaced the back entry with one additional detail: she had taken two drops of Super Glue and made sure that one of the screws that held it all together was completely locked in place. O’Connell might know how to fix the machine, she thought, but he wouldn’t be able to get into it. A police forensic technician would.

She quickly double-checked its position. It seemed to be just the way he’d left it.

Sally stuffed O’Connell’s computer into the backpack, next to the gun.

She looked down at her stopwatch. She was at eleven minutes.

Too slow, too slow, she told herself as she threw the backpack over her shoulder. She could feel the weight of the gun bouncing against her back. She took a deep breath. She would be back, before too long.

The cell phone on the car seat rang urgently. Scott had not been certain that he would get this call, but thought it highly possible, so he was fully prepared when he heard the voice on the other end.

“Hey, this Mr. Jones?”

O’Connell’s father sounded rushed, a little unsteady, but excited.

“Smith, here,” Scott replied.

“Yeah, right. Mr. Smith. Right. Hey, this is—”

“I know who it is, Mr. O’Connell.”

“Well, damned if you weren’t right. I just got a call from my kid, like you said I would. He’s on his way over here now.”

“Now?”

“Yeah. It’s about a ninety-minute drive from Boston, except he’s gonna be moving fast, so maybe a little less.”

“I will make arrangements. Thank you.”

“The kid was yelling something about some girl. Sounded real upset. Crazy almost. This got something to do with a girl, Mr. Jones?”

“No. It’s about money. And a debt he owes.”

“Well, that isn’t what
he
thinks.”

“What he thinks is irrelevant to our business, Mr. O’Connell, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I suppose so. So what should I do?”

Scott didn’t hesitate. He’d expected this question. “Just wait there for him. Hear him out. No matter what he says.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“We will be taking some steps, Mr. O’Connell. And you will be earning your true reward.”

“What do I do when he decides to leave?”

Scott felt his throat go dry. He could feel a spasm in his chest.

“Step aside and let him go.”

Hope sipped a cup of coffee while she waited for Sally. The bitter taste burned her tongue.

She was parked in a strip-mall lot, perhaps a hundred yards from the entrance to a large grocery store. There was plenty of traffic, but she was a little farther away from the entrance than she needed to be, having left perhaps two dozen parking spaces between her and the next car.

When she spotted Sally in her own nondescript rental, moving slowly through the aisles of the mall lot, she stiffened. She placed the coffee in a cup holder and quickly rolled down the window, giving Sally a small wave to get her attention. She waited for Sally to park two aisles away, then walk in her direction. She could see that Sally was looking around nervously, and she seemed pale.

Sally was already shaking her head. “I can’t let you do this. It should be my job—”

“We’ve been over that,” Hope said. “And things are in motion now. Making a change might throw it all off.”

“I just can’t.”

Hope inhaled. This was her chance, she thought. She could back out. Refuse. Step back and ask, What the hell are we thinking?

“You can. And you will,” Hope replied. “Any chance Ashley has rests with us. Probably any chance we have lies in each of us doing what it is we’re capable of. It’s as simple as that.”

“Are you scared?”

“No,” Hope lied.

“We should stop, right now. I think we’re out of our minds.”

Yes, we probably are, Hope thought.

“If we do not go through with this, and then the worst happens to Ashley, we will never, not for one instant of one day for however many years any of us has left, forgive ourselves for letting it happen. I think I can forgive myself for what I’m about to do. But for standing aside and letting something terrible happen to Ashley, that would be something we would carry to our graves.”

Hope took a deep breath. “If we fail to act, and
he
does, we will never rest again.”

“I know,” Sally said, shaking her head.

“Now the weapon. It’s in the backpack?”

“Yes.”

“There’s not much time, is there?”

Sally looked down at her stopwatch. “I think you’re about fifteen minutes behind him. Scott should be moving into position now, as well.”

Hope smiled, but shook her head. “You know, when I was growing up, I played so many games against a clock. Time is always a crucial factor. This isn’t any different. I have to go. Now. You know it. If we’re going to play this game, then failing because we weren’t quick enough would be a terrible thing. Just leave, Sally. Do what you’re supposed to do. And I will do the same, and maybe, at the end of the day, everything will be okay.”

Sally had many things she could say, right at that moment, but she chose none of them. She reached out and squeezed Hope’s hand hard and tried to fight back tears. Hope smiled and said, “Get going. There’s no time. Not anymore. No more talk. Time to act.”

Sally nodded, left the backpack on the floor of the car, stood a few feet back while Hope started up the car, and gave a small wave as she exited the parking lot. It was only a quarter mile to the interstate highway entrance, and Hope knew that she needed to move rapidly, to close the difference in time between her and Michael O’Connell. She made a point of not looking in the rearview mirror until she was well away from the rendezvous location, because she did not want to see Sally standing forlornly behind.

Scott pulled the battered truck into the student parking lot at a large community college some six or seven miles away from the house where Michael O’Connell had grown up. The truck was instantly absorbed into the general mix of vehicles.

After looking around carefully to make sure no one was nearby, he slid out of his clothes and rapidly pulled on an old pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, beaten blue parka, and running shoes. He jammed a navy watch cap over his head and ears, and although the sun was setting, he slid on sunglasses. He grabbed a backpack, made sure his cell phone was in his jacket pocket, and stepped from the truck.

His stopwatch told him that Michael O’Connell had been traveling just shy of seventy minutes. He would be speeding, Scott reminded himself, and wouldn’t stop for any reason whatsoever, unless he was pulled over by a policeman, which would only help the situation.

Scott hunched up his shoulders and headed across the parking area. He knew that a bus route was near the entrance to the school. It would take him to within a mile or so of O’Connell’s house. He had memorized the schedule, and he had the necessary change for a one-way trip in his right pocket, and the return trip in his left.

A half-dozen students of various ages were waiting underneath the canopy of the bus stop. He fit in; at a community college, you could be a student at nineteen or fifty-nine. He made sure that he didn’t make eye contact with any of the waiting people. He told himself to think anonymous thoughts, and perhaps that would make him seem invisible.

When the bus came, he found a seat near the back, alone. He turned and peered out the window at the brown, beaten landscape of the countryside as the bus wheezed along.

Scott was the only person to get off at his stop.

For a second he remained still, alone on the side of the road, as he watched the bus disappear into the evening gloom. Then he set off along the side of the road, walking quickly, wondering precisely what he was hurrying toward, but knowing that time was of the essence.

Crime-scene photographs have an otherworldly quality to them. It’s a little like trying to watch a movie frame by frame, instead of in continuous action. Eight-by-ten, glossy, full color, they are pieces of a large puzzle.

I tried to absorb each shot, staring at them as I might the pages of a book.

The detective sat across from me, watching my face.

“I’m trying to visualize the scene,” I said, “so I can better understand what happened.”

“Think of the pictures like lines on a map,” he said. “All crime scenes make sense eventually. Although, I got to admit, this one wasn’t a picnic.”

He reached down and pawed through some of the photographs.

“Look here.” He pointed at furniture in disarray, blackened and charred. “Sometimes, it’s just a matter of experience. You learn to look beyond the mess, and it tells you something.”

I stared down, trying to see with his eyes.

“Exactly what?” I asked.

“There was a hell of a fight. Just one hell of a fight.”