John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

She turned back to watch the game. It wasn’t hard to imagine the time some five years earlier when she would have been out there in blue and white, running up and down the left side. She had always been a good player, although not like Hope. Hope always played with a kind of reckless freedom, but something had always made Ashley hold herself back.

She felt a curious thrill when the girl playing her old position scored the winning goal. She waited through the cheers and handshakes, then saw Hope unleash Nameless and roll a ball out toward the center of the field. Just one, Ashley realized, and not thrown nearly as far as he was once capable of retrieving. She watched as he gathered up the ball and gleefully pushed it back to Hope with his nose and forelegs, filled with dog joy. As Hope scooped up the ball and tossed it into a mesh bag, she saw Ashley standing to the side.

“Hey, Killer, you made it over. What did you think?”

Hearing the nickname that Hope had given her in her first varsity year made Ashley smile. Hope had come up with the name because Ashley had been too reticent on the field, too shy around the older players. So Hope had taken her aside and told her that when she was playing, she was to stop being the Ashley who worried about people’s feelings and transform herself into Killer, who would always play hard, give no quarter and not expect any, and do whatever it took to walk off the field at the end knowing that she had left everything she had out on the pitch. The two of them had kept this secondary persona between themselves, not sharing it with either Sally or Scott or, indeed, any of the rest of the team. And Ashley had at first thought it silly, but had then come to appreciate it.

“They look good. Strong.”

Hope looked past her. “Sally didn’t come with you?”

Ashley shook her head.

“We’re too young. Not enough experience,” Hope replied, but she couldn’t hide her disappointment behind her words. “But if we don’t get intimidated, we might just do okay.”

Ashley nodded. She wondered if the same could be said for her situation.

Scott sat a little uncomfortably in the center of the living room couch flanked by empty spaces on either side. Each of the three women was in a chair by herself, across from him. It had an odd formality to it, and he imagined that it was a little like sitting in a grand jury hearing room.

“Well,” he said briskly, “I guess the first thing is, what do we really know about this fellow who seems to be bothering Ashley? I mean, what sort of guy is he? Where does he come from? The basics.”

He looked over at Ashley, who looked as if she were sitting on a sharp edge.

“I’ve already told you what I know,” she said. “Which isn’t really that much.”

She was coldly waiting for one of the other three to add something along the lines of Well, you knew enough to let him into your place for a one-night stand, but no one said this.

“I guess what I’m getting at, really,” Scott said quickly, filling up a small silence, “is that we don’t know if this guy O’Connell will just respond to a simple talking-to. He might. He might not. But a modest show of determination…”

“I tried to do that,” Ashley said.

“Yes, I know. You did the right thing, really. But now I’m suggesting a little more forcefulness. Like me,” Scott said. “Don’t you think the first step here is not to assume the problem is greater than it is? Maybe all that’s required is a bit of a showing. Dad muscle.”

Sally nodded. “Maybe we can make it two-pronged. Scott, you go say to this guy, ‘Leave her alone,’ and at the same time we sweeten the approach by offering some cash. Something substantial, like five grand or so. That has to be a significant amount of money to someone working in gas stations and trying to get a degree in computer sciences on the side.”

“A bribe to leave Ashley alone?” Scott asked. “Does that sort of thing work?”

“In many of the family disputes, divorces, child-custody cases, that sort of thing, my experience has been that a monetary settlement goes a long way.”

“I’ll take your word for that.” Scott didn’t believe her. He also had his doubts that talking to O’Connell would make any difference. But he knew the simplest path had to be tried first. “But suppose-”

Sally held up her hand, cutting off his question. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. The guy has behaved creepily. But as best as I can see, he hasn’t really broken any laws yet. I mean, down the line we could talk about private eyes, calling the police, getting a restraining order-”

“Those sure work,” Scott said sarcastically. Sally ignored him.

“-or examining other legal means. We could even have Ashley move out of Boston. It would be a setback, sure, but it’s always a possibility. But I think we should try the easiest first.”

“Okay,” Scott said, glad that Sally was thinking more or less along the same lines he was. “What’s the drill?”

“Ashley calls the guy. Sets up another meeting. Take cash and your father. Do it in public. A little no-nonsense, forceful conversation. Hopefully, end of story.”

Scott started to shake his head, but stopped. It made some sense to him. At least, enough sense to pursue it. He decided that he would follow Sally’s plan, with a wrinkle or variation of his own.

Hope had remained silent throughout the conversation. Sally turned to her. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s an appropriate approach,” Hope said, although she did not believe any of it.

Scott was abruptly angry that Hope had been given any opportunity to speak. He wanted to say that she had no standing in the room, shouldn’t even be here. Be reasonable, he told himself. Even if it’s irritating. “Well, that’s the plan, then. At least for starters, and until we know it won’t work.”

Sally nodded. “So, Scott, did you really want tea, or was that one of your jokes earlier?”

“I just have trouble believing…,” I started, then I stopped and decided to try a different tack. “I mean, they had to have some idea…”

“What they were up against?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “They didn’t know about the assault on the erstwhile boyfriend. They didn’t know about the, ah, accident Ashley’s friend had after their dinner. They didn’t know anything about Michael O’Connell’s reputation, nor the impressions he’d made on coworkers, teachers, you name it. The critical information that might have led them in a different direction. All they knew was-what was the word Ashley kept using? He was a creep. What an innocent word.”

“Still, talking to him? Or offering money? Why would they think for a minute that this approach might work?”

“Why wouldn’t it work? Isn’t that what people do?”

“Yes, but-”

“You second-guess instantly. People always believe that they would have answers when the truth is, they wouldn’t. What alternatives did they have, right then?”

“Well, they might have been more aggressive.”

“They didn’t know!” Her voice suddenly picked up in pitch and passion. She leaned toward me and I could see her eyes narrow and flash in frustration and anger. “Why is it so hard for people to understand how powerful the forces of denial are within each and every one of us? We don’t want to believe the worst!”

She stopped, taking a deep breath. I started to speak, then she held up her hand.

“Don’t you make an excuse,” she said. “Don’t you imagine that you wouldn’t want to believe the safest thing, when in reality the most dangerous thing was lurking right there in front of you.”

She took another deep breath. “Except for Hope. She saw it. Or, at least, she had some inkling…the vaguest of notions. But for one reason or another, and all of them goddamn wrong and foolish, she couldn’t say anything. Not then.”