The Wrong Man (73 page)

“Scott. Sally. But mainly Ashley. Did they send you, just to make sure I was still here, behind bars?”

“No. No one sent me. I sent myself. I’ve never spoken with any of those people.”

“Sure.” He snorted a laugh. “Sure you haven’t. How much are they paying you?”

“No one is paying me.”

“Right. You’re doing this for free. The fucking bastards. You’d think they’d leave me alone now.”

“You can believe what you want.”

He seemed to think hard for an instant, then leaned forward.

“Tell me,” he said slowly, “when you met with them, what did Ashley say?”

“I haven’t met with anyone.” This wasn’t true, and I knew he knew it.

“Describe her for me.” Again he was crouched forward, as if driven halfway across the table by the force of his questions, a sudden, profound eagerness in each word. “What was she wearing? Has she cut her hair? Tell me about her hands. She has long, delicate fingers. And her legs? Still as long and sexy? But I’d really like to hear about her hair. She hasn’t cut it, has she? Or colored it? I hope not.”

His breathing had increased, and for a moment I thought he might be aroused.

“I can’t tell you,” I said. “I’ve never seen her. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

He breathed out, a long, slow exhale of breath. “Why do you waste my time with lies?” Then he ignored his own question and said, “Well, when you do meet her, you will see exactly what I’m talking about. Exactly.”

“See what?”

“Why I won’t ever forget her.”

“Even in here. For years?”

He smiled. “Even in here. For years. I can still picture her from when we were together. It’s like she’s always with me. I can even feel her touch.”

I nodded. “And the other names you mentioned?”

Again he smiled, but this was a far different sort of smile. A hunter’s grin.

“I won’t be forgetting them, either.” A corner of his lip suddenly lifted in a half snarl. “They did it, you know. I’m not sure how, but they did it. They put me in here. You can count on it. Every day, I think about them. Every hour. Every minute. I will never forget what they managed to do.”

“But you pleaded guilty. In a court. You got up in front of a judge, swore an oath to tell the truth, and said you committed the crime.”

“That was a matter of convenience. I didn’t really have a chance. If convicted, in a trial, I would have gotten a mandatory twenty-five to life. By pleading, I shaved maybe seven years or more off the back end of prison and bought myself a parole board hearing. I can do the time. And then I’ll get out and put things right.”

He smiled again. “Not what you expected to hear?”

“I had no real expectations.”

“We are meant to be together. Ashley and I. Nothing has changed. Just because I’m in here for years, nothing is different. It’s just time that has to pass before the inevitable happens. Call it destiny, call it fate, but that’s the way it is. I can be patient. And then I’ll find her.”

I nodded. This I believed. He leaned back in his seat and looked up at the surveillance camera, stubbed out the butt of his cigarette, picked out a crumpled pack from his shirt pocket, and lit up another. “It’s an addiction,” he said, letting smoke dribble out between his lips. “Almost impossible to quit, or so they say. Worse than heroin or even crack cocaine.” He laughed. “I guess I’m something of a junkie.”

Then he stared across the table at me. “You ever been addicted to something? Or someone?”

I didn’t reply, letting silence be my answer.

“You want to know if I killed my father? Nah. I didn’t do it,” he said stiffly with a smirk on his lips. “They got the wrong man.”

Some information I needed to distribute.

That was what she had told me, I was sure of it. It didn’t take me long to figure out what she had meant.

I pulled my car into the driveway and stepped outside. The daytime heat had risen. I imagined that pushing the wheels of a wheelchair on a hot afternoon like this would be particularly hard.

I knocked on the door to Will Goodwin’s house, then stepped back and waited. The flower garden that I’d first seen weeks earlier had bloomed into colorful, orderly rows, like a military unit on parade. I heard the noise of the chair scraping against the wooden floor, then the door swung open.

“Mr. Goodwin? I don’t know if you remember, but I was here a few weeks back.”

He smiled. “Sure. The writer. Didn’t think I’d ever see you again. Got some more questions?”

Goodwin was grinning. I noticed there were some changes since I’d seen him earlier. His hair was shaggier, and the indentation in his forehead, where he’d been smashed by the pipe, seemed to have filled out slightly and was better obscured by the tangle of locks. He’d started a beard, as well, which framed his face so that his jaw had a sense of determination to it.

“How are you?” I asked.

He gave a small wave with his hand, toward the chair. “Actually, Mr. Writer, I’ve made some strides. More of my memory returns every day, thank you for asking. Not of the attack, of course. That’s lost, and I doubt it will ever return. But school, studies, books read, courses taken, you know, some of that creeps back every day. So, I’m at least modestly upbeat, if that’s possible. May be able to see something of a future one of these days.”

“That’s good. That’s real good.”

He smiled, spun back on the chair a bit, balancing himself, then leaned forward toward me. “But that’s not the reason you’re here, is it?”

“No.”

“You’ve learned something? About my mugging?”

I nodded. His jocular, outgoing manner changed immediately, and he pushed himself forward toward me, instantly insistent.

“What? Tell me! What have you found out?”

I hesitated. I knew what I
might
be doing. I wondered if this was what went through the judge’s mind when he heard the verdict from the jury box. Guilty. Time to pronounce sentence.

“I know who hurt you.” I watched his face for a reaction. It wasn’t long in coming. It was as if a shadow fell across his eyes, deepening in the space between us. Black darkness and stiff hatred. His hand quivered, and I saw his lips set tightly.

“You know who did this to me?”

“Yes. The problem is, what I found out isn’t something you could take to a detective, isn’t the sort of information that someone can make a case out of, and sure wouldn’t get you any closer to a courtroom.”

“But”—he was speaking with a high-pitched intensity—“you still know? You know and you’re sure?”

“Yes. I am absolutely, completely certain. Beyond a reasonable doubt. But, understand, not the sort of information that a cop would be able to use, like I said.”

“Tell me.” He was nearly whispering, but the demand in his voice was ancient, and awful. “Who did this to me?”

I reached into my briefcase and removed a copy of the mug shot photographs of Michael O’Connell and handed it to him.
Two reasons,
Catherine had said to me. And this was the second.

“This is him?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

I handed him another piece of paper. “He’s in prison. That’s his address, his prison identification number, a few of the particulars of the sentence he’s serving, and the tentative date of his first parole hearing. It’s many years away, but there it is, along with a phone number that one can call to get further information, if one decides they want it.”

“And you’re sure?” he asked again.

“Yes. One hundred percent.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought you had a right to know.”

“How do you know?”

“Please, don’t ask me that.”

He paused, then nodded. “Okay. I guess. Fair enough.”

Will Goodwin looked first at the picture, then at the sheet of paper. “This is a tough place, this prison, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Hard time.”

“Almost anything could happen to someone in there.”

“That’s correct. You could get killed for a pack of smokes. He told me that himself.”

He nodded. “Yes. I imagine that’s true.”

He looked past me for a second, then added, “That’s something to think about.”

I stepped back, ready to leave, but then hesitated. For a moment I felt dizzy, and the temperature seemed to spike. I wondered what it was that I had just done.

I saw that Will Goodwin was rigid, and that the muscles on his arms were taut with tension. “Thank you,” he said slowly, his words moving slowly, but each carrying the weight of the cruelty that had been done to him. “Thank you for remembering me. Thank you for giving me this.”

“I’ll be leaving then.” But what I was leaving behind would never depart.

“Hey, one more question,” he said suddenly.

“Sure. What is it?”

“Do you know why he did this to me?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

Again his face clouded, and his lower lip twitched.

“Well, why?” He could barely spit out the question.

“Because you kissed the wrong girl.”

He paused, breathing out hard, as if his wind had been ripped right from his lungs. I could see him absorbing what I had said. “Because I kissed…”

“Yes. Just once. A single kiss.”

He seemed to teeter, as if there were suddenly dozens of other questions he wanted to ask. But he did not. Instead, he merely shook his head slightly. But I saw that his hand on the wheel of the chair had tightened, his knuckles whitened, and that deep within him the coldest rage I’d ever imagined had taken root.

The piece of paper Catherine had given me directed me to a street outside a large art museum in a city that wasn’t Boston or New York. It was shortly after five in the afternoon, traffic filled the streets, and the sidewalks were jammed with people heading home. The sun was just beginning to descend beyond the rows of office buildings, and the opening bars of the evening symphony of urban life were just starting up. I could hear car horns, wheezing bus engines, and the hurrying hum of voices. I stood at the bottom of a wide set of stairs, and the flow of people carved around me, as if I were a rock in a stream, with water rushing past on either side. I kept my eyes locked ahead, staring up the expanse of stairs, not really believing that I would recognize her. When I saw her, I had no doubt. I’m not sure why. Many other young women were leaving the museum at that hour, and they all had that casual end-of-the-day look, with backpack or satchel slung over their shoulder. They were all striking, all compelling, magical. But Ashley seemed more of everything. She was surrounded by several other young people, all stepping out, their heads bent together, talking eagerly, all on the verge of some adventure that surely couldn’t be more than a day, maybe two, away. I watched her as she descended toward me. It seemed as if the fading light and the mild breeze caught her hair and lifted her laughter. As she floated past me, I wanted to whisper her name and ask her if what she saw ahead was worth what had gone past, but then, I knew that was the least fair question of all, because the answer was somewhere in the future.

So I said nothing and watched her pass. I don’t think she noticed me.

I tried to detect something in her voice, in her step, that might tell me what I needed to know. I thought that I might have seen it, but couldn’t be certain. And as I watched, Ashley was swallowed up by the press of the evening crowds, disappearing into her own life.

If it really was Ashley. It could have been Megan or Sue or Katie or Molly or Sarah. I wasn’t sure it made a difference.

About the Author

J
OHN
K
ATZENBACH
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of nine previous novels including the Edgar Award–nominated
In the Heat of the Summer,
which was adapted for the screen as
The Mean Season; The Traveler; Day of Reckoning; Just Cause
and
Hart’s War,
both of which were also major motion pictures;
The Analyst,
which received the prestigious award Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, in 2004; and
The Madman’s Tale.
Katzenbach has been a criminal court reporter for
The Miami Herald
and
Miami News,
and a featured writer for the
Herald
’s
Tropic
magazine. He lives in western Massachusetts.

A
LSO BY
J
OHN
K
ATZENBACH

FICTION

The Madman’s Tale

The Analyst

Hart’s War

State of Mind

The Shadow Man

Just Cause

Day of Reckoning

The Traveler

In the Heat of the Summer

NONFICTION
FICTION

The Madman’s Tale

The Analyst

Hart’s War

State of Mind

The Shadow Man

Just Cause

Day of Reckoning