John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

She grabbed a small overnight bag and made sure that her apartment was locked. She had already unplugged the answering machine and turned off her cell phone and computer.

No messages. No e-mails. No contact, she thought, as she bounded down the stairwell and through the front door.

“Hi, beautiful,” Scott said as she crossed the sidewalk.

“Hi, Dad.” Ashley smiled. “Gonna let me drive?”

“Ah,” Scott hesitated. “Maybe next time.”

This was a joke between them. Scott never let anyone else drive the Porsche. He said it was for insurance reasons, but Ashley knew better.

“That all you’re going to need?” Scott asked, eyeing the small bag.

“That’s it. I’ve got enough stuff out there anyway, either at your place or Mom’s.”

Scott shook his head and smiled as he embraced her. “There was a time,” he said with a fake, sonorous tone, “that I distinctly recall carrying trunks and suitcases and backpacks and huge, military-issue duffel bags, all crammed with completely unnecessary clothing, just to be sure that you would be able to change at least a half dozen times each day.”

She smiled and headed toward the passenger door.

“Let’s get out of here before some delivery truck comes along and decides to squash your midlife-crisis toy car,” she said, laughing.

She put her head back on the leather headrest and momentarily closed her eyes, feeling, for the first time in some hours, safe. She breathed out slowly, feeling herself relax.

“Thanks for coming, Dad.” A few words that said a great deal.

Their exchange distracted her as her father steered the small car out of her street. He, of course, wouldn’t have recognized the figure sliding into the shadow of a tree as they went past, but she would have if her eyes had been open and she had been more alert.

Michael O’Connell stared after them, taking note of the car and the driver, and memorizing the license plate number.

“Do you ever listen to love songs?” she asked me. The question seemed to come out of the blue, and I hesitated for a moment before replying.

“Love songs?”

“Exactly. Love songs. You know, ‘Yummy, yummy, yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy,’ or maybe, ‘Maria…I’ve just met a girl named Maria’…I could go on and on.”

“Not really,” I replied. “I mean, I suppose everyone does, to some degree. Isn’t about ninety-nine percent of pop, rock, country, whatever, even punk, often about some sort of love? Lost love. Unrequited love. Good love. Bad love. I’m not sure what this has to do with what we’re talking about.”

I was a little exasperated. What I wanted to do was find out what the next step had been for Ashley. And I certainly wanted to get a better handle on Michael O’Connell.

“Most love songs aren’t about love at all. They’re about many things. But mostly about frustration. Lust, maybe. Desire. Need. Disappointment. Rarely are they about what love really is, which is, when you strip away all these other aspects, a…well, mutual dependency. The problem is, so often it is too difficult to see that, because we get obsessed with another one of these items on the love list, mistaking that for the be-all and end-all of the emotion.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “And Michael O’Connell?”

“Love for him was anger. Rage.”

I remained quiet.

“And it was as essential to him as the very breath of life.”

The throaty hum of the sports car lulled Ashley into sleep almost instantly, and she didn’t stir for nearly an hour until she abruptly opened her eyes and sat up with a small gasp, disoriented. Scott saw her look about wildly and punch at the air in front of her for a second or two, before she slumped back again in the contoured seat of the car. She rubbed her hands across her face to clear the sleep from her eyes.

“Jesus,” she said. “Did I pass out?”

Scott didn’t answer the question. “Tired?”

“I guess. Maybe more like relaxed for the first time in hours. It just came over me. Feels kinda weird. Not bad weird, but not good weird, either. Just weird weird.”

“Should we talk about it now?”

Ashley seemed a little hesitant, as if with each mile that slid beneath the Porsche’s wheels, and Boston fading in the rearview mirror, whatever trouble she was in grew smaller and more distant. In that space of time, Scott asked a third question.

“Maybe you should just fill me in on what you told your mom and her partner,” he said quietly, aware that he had given a stilted formality to Sally and Hope’s relationship. “At least that way we’ll all be up-to-date on the same stuff. It would make sense if we could all put our heads together and come to some sort of reasonable plan for you to follow.” He wasn’t sure that making a plan was exactly what Ashley was coming home to do, but it was the sort of thing she would expect him to say, and that in itself was likely to be reassuring.

Ashley paused, shuddered, and then said, “Dead flowers. Dead flowers taped outside my door. And then he followed me instead of meeting me at a restaurant like we’d agreed, where I was going to get rid of him, and it was just like I was some animal, and he was a hunter, closing in on me.” She stared out the side window, as if organizing her thoughts in a way that would make some sense, then said with an immense sigh, “Let me start at the beginning, so you can understand it.”

Scott slowed the car down to the speed limit and moved into the right-hand lane, where the Porsche almost never traveled, and without saying a thing, listened.

By the time they reached the small college town where Scott lived, Ashley had pretty much filled him in on her relationship, if it could be dignified with that word, with Michael O’Connell. She had glossed over the initial connection as much as possible, not exactly being comfortable discussing alcohol use and her sex life with her father, using seemingly benign euphemisms such as hooked up and sloshed instead of words that were dangerously more explicit.

For his part, Scott knew exactly what she was talking about, but restrained himself from probing too aggressively. There were some details, he guessed, that he’d rather not know.

He shifted the car once or twice when they left the highway and started beating their way through country roads. Ashley had grown quiet again and was staring out the window. The day had risen brightly, a high, pale blue sky overhead.

“It’s nice,” she said. “To see home again. You forget about how well you know a place when you’re involved with so much other stuff. But there it is. Same old town common. Same old town hall. Restaurants. Coffee shops. Kids playing with a Frisbee on the lawn. Makes you think that hardly anything could be wrong anywhere.” She breathed out with a snort. “So, Dad, there you have it. What do you think?”

Scott tried to force a smile that would mask some of the turmoil he felt.

“I think we ought to be able to find a way to discourage Mr. O’Connell without too much trouble,” he replied, although he wasn’t sure about what he was saying. Still, he made certain that his tones were filled with confidence. “Perhaps all that is really needed is a talk with him. Or maybe some distance-this could cost you some time before your graduate program gets going. But that’s sort of the way life is. A little messy. But I’m sure that we can sort it out. He doesn’t really sound like as much of a challenge as I initially feared.”

Ashley seemed to breathe a little easier. “You think?”

“Yeah. I’ll bet your mom has pretty much the same take on it as I do. In her practice she’s seen some pretty tough guys, you know, in divorce cases or some of the low-rent crimes she handles. And she’s seen her share of abusive relationships-although that’s not exactly how I’d characterize this one-and so she’s pretty competent when it comes to getting all this sort of stuff straightened out.”