John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

“Of course, Professor.” Scott did not publish much, and this essay had been particularly helpful at influencing his own department not to cut back on the American history core courses.

“It was a fine piece, Scott,” Burris said slowly. “Evocative and provocative.”

“Thank you. But I fail to see what-”

“The work, ah, the writing, ah, did you have any, ah, outside assistance on formulating your themes and conclusions?”

“I’m not sure that I understand, Professor.”

“The work, the writing, it was all your own? And the research, as well?”

“Yes. I had a student assistant or two, mostly seniors, help with some of the citations. But the writing and the conclusions were my own. I don’t understand what you are driving at, Professor.”

“There has been a most unfortunate allegation made in regard to that piece.”

“An allegation?”

“Yes. A charge of academic dishonesty.”

“What?”

“Plagiarism, Scott. I’m most sorry to say.”

“But that’s absurd!”

“The allegation in front of us cites some troubling similarities between your piece and a paper written in a graduate seminar at another institution.”

Scott took a deep breath. Instantly dizziness circled around him, and he grasped the edge of his desk as if to steady himself.

“Who has made this complaint?”

“Therein lies a problem,” Burris replied. “It came to me electronically, and it was anonymous.”

“Anonymous!”

“But regardless of its authorship, it cannot be ignored. Not in the current academic climate. And certainly not in the public’s eye. The newspapers are voracious when it comes to misdeeds or missteps in the academy. Likely, I hesitate to say, to jump to many erroneous conclusions, in a most embarrassing and ultimately incredibly damaging fashion. So, it would seem to me that the best approach here is to nip this allegation in the bud. Assuming, of course, that you can find your notes and go over every line, chapter, and verse, so that the Journal is satisfied that the allegations are incorrect.”

“Of course, but…,” Scott sputtered. He was almost at a loss for words.

“We must, in this day of rampant second-guessing and dreadful microscopic analysis, seem purer than Lot’s wife, alas.”

“I know, but…,” Scott was stammering.

“I will send you by overnight courier the complaint and the actual verbiage. And then, I suspect, we should speak again.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“And, Scott”-the professor’s voice was even, suddenly cold and almost devoid of tone and energy-“I do hope that we can work all this out privately. But, please, do not underestimate the threat involved. I say this to you as a friend, and as a fellow historian. I’ve seen once promising careers destroyed for far less. Far, far less.” The emphasis in the final words was unnecessary, but undeniably true.

Scott nodded. Friend was not a word he would have used, because when word inevitably got out in academic circles about this charge, he was likely to have none left.

Sally was staring out of the window at the dropping light of the late afternoon. She was in that odd state where a great deal was on her mind, and yet she wasn’t specifically thinking about anything. There was a knock at her door and she spun about to see an office assistant standing sheepishly in the portal, a large white envelope in her hand.

“Sally,” the assistant said, “this just came by courier for you. I wonder if it isn’t something important…”

Sally could think of no pleading nor any other document that she was expecting to arrive in such urgent fashion, but she nodded. “Who is it from?”

“The state bar association.”

Sally took the envelope and looked at it oddly, turning it over in her hand. She could not recall when she had received something from the association, other than dues requests and invitations to dinners, seminars, and speeches that she never attended. None of these ever came by overnight mail, return receipt required.

She tore open the package and removed a single letter. Addressed to her, it came from the head of the state bar, a man she knew only by reputation, a prominent member of a big-time Boston law firm, active in Democratic Party circles with frequent appearances on television talk shows and in newspaper society pages. He was, Sally knew, way out of her league.

She read the short letter carefully. Each second that passed seemed to darken the room around her.

Dear Ms. Freeman-Richards:

This is to inform you of a complaint received by the State Bar Association regarding your handling of the client accounts in the pending matter of Johnson v. Johnson, currently before Judge V. Martinson in Superior Court, Family Division.

The complaint states that funds associated with this matter have been diverted into a private account in your name. This is a violation ofM.G.L. 302, Section 43, and is also a felony under U.S.S. 112, Section 11.

Please be advised that the Bar Association will need your sworn affidavit explaining this matter within the week, or it will be referred to the Hampshire County District Attorney’s Office and to the United States Attorney for the Western District of Massachusetts for prosecution.

Sally thought each word of the letter was caught in her throat, choking her like some wayward piece of meat. “Impossible,” she said out loud. “Absolutely fucking impossible.”

The obscenity clattered around in the room. Sally took a deep breath and spun to her computer. Typing rapidly, she brought up the divorce action cited in the letter from the bar association head. Johnson v. Johnson was not by any description one of her more complicated cases, although it was marred by real animosity between her client, the wife, and her estranged husband. He was a local eye surgeon, father of their two preteen children, a serial cheater, whom Sally had caught trying to move joint assets into an offshore, Bahamas bank account. He had done this particularly clumsily, taking out large cash amounts from their jointly held brokerage account, then charging plane tickets to the Bahamas on his Visa card, in order to get the extra mileage. Sally had successfully moved the court to seize assets and transfer them into her client account pending the final dissolution of the marriage, which was scheduled for sometime after Christmas. By her reckoning, the client account should have had somewhere in excess of $400,000 in it.

It did not.

She stared at the screen and saw that there was less than half that amount.

“That can’t be,” she said, again out loud.

As close to panic as she had ever been, Sally started to go over every transaction in that account. In the past few days more than a quarter million had been extracted through electronic means and transferred to nearly a dozen other accounts. She was unable to access these dozen through the computer, as they were in a series of different names, both of individuals whom she did not recognize and clearly questionable corporations. She also, to her growing anxiety, saw that the last transfer from her client account was made directly into her own checking account. It was for $15,000 and was dated barely twenty-four hours beforehand.

“That cannot be,” she repeated. “How…”

She stopped, right at that second, because the answer to that question was likely to be complicated, and she had no ready answer. All she knew, right at that moment, was that she was likely to be in a great deal of trouble.

“There’s something I just don’t quite get.”

“What’s that?” she asked patiently.

“The why for Michael O’Connell’s love. I mean, he kept saying he loved her, but what had he done in any way, shape, or form that came close to anything that anyone would understand as love?”