John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

“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.”

Scott’s survey of the neighborhood several days earlier had told him where to wait.

He knew he had to be inconspicuous; if anyone saw him and made the connection between the figure dressed in dark clothes watching the O’Connell house from the shadows, and the man in the suit and tie who had been asking so many questions, it would create a significant problem. But he needed to be able to see the front of the house, in particular the dirt driveway. He needed to do this without raising the interest of any neighborhood dogs or residents. The spot where he chose to wait was perhaps a little distant, but it accommodated his needs. The battered onetime barn with half its roof caved in was now nothing more than an eyesore. From the corner, where he crouched, he could just see the entranceway to the O’Connell home. He was counting on Michael O’Connell to be driving fast, maybe even squealing the tires as he came around the last corner, spitting gravel and dirt when he turned into the place that was once his home. Make noise, Scott whispered to himself, as if he could encourage O’Connell’s recklessness. Make sure someone sees your arrival.