John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

“I don’t know that I know any graduate students at any schools down South,” Scott said with a little false levity in his voice. “But ‘disgruntled’ is a description that unfortunately applies to just about every grad student at some point in their academic career. It pretty much goes with the territory, don’t you think, Ted?” He dropped the formal Mr. from the student’s name, just to underscore their respective roles. He had authority and power-or, at the very least, he wanted Ted Morris at the campus newspaper to think this.

Ted Morris paused and, to Scott’s immediate dismay, wouldn’t be distracted.

“But the question in front of us is simple. Have you been accused-”

“No one has accused me of anything. At least not that I know of,” Scott scrambled quickly. “Nothing that isn’t completely routine in academic circles-”

Scott took a long breath. He guessed that Ted Morris was writing down every word.

“I understand, Professor. Routine. But still, I think I should come speak with you in person.”

“I’m pretty busy. But I have office hours on Friday. Come by then.”

That would give him several days.

“We’re under some deadline pressure here, Professor.”

“I can’t help you on that. I’ve always discovered that rushed things are inevitably confused or, worse, erroneous.”

This was a bluff. But he needed to put off the student on the phone.

“Okay, Friday. And, Professor, one other thing.”

“What’s that, Ted?” he said with his most condescending voice.

“You should know that I string for the Globe and the Times. ”

Scott swallowed hard. “Well,” he said, affecting as much phony enthusiasm as he could, “that’s excellent. There are many fine stories on this campus that those papers should be interested in. Well, see you on Friday, then,” Scott said, hoping that he had deflected and obscured enough so that the student would simply wait until Friday before calling the city desk at either paper and with a few short words explode Scott’s entire career.

He hung up the telephone thinking that he had never thought he would be scared, no, terrified, of the sound of a student’s voice. Then he quickly bent to the material from Professor Burris, anxiety filling him as he read every word.

Hope went into the ladies’ room adjacent to the Admissions Office, knowing it was likely to be the one place on campus where she could be alone for a few moments. As the door shut behind her, she gave in to the turmoil within her and burst out in a deep, unbridled sob of despair.

The accusation against her had arrived at the dean’s office via an anonymous e-mail, claiming that Hope had cornered a student in a steamy section of the women’s locker room, just outside the showers, when the student was alone after a sports practice. The e-mail described how Hope had fondled the young woman’s breasts and reached for her crotch, while all the time whispering to the fifteen-year-old about the many advantages of sex with a woman. When the teenager had resisted the advances, Hope had threatened to manipulate the student’s grades if she ever complained to any authorities or to her parents. The e-mail ended by urging the school administration to “take whatever appropriate means necessary” to avoid a lawsuit, and perhaps criminal prosecution. It used such words as predatory and statutory rape along with homosexual enlistment to describe Hope’s behavior.

Not one word of it was true. Not one moment described in such near pornographic detail had ever occurred.

Hope doubted the truth would help her in the slightest.

The ugly recitation of events played into all sorts of fears and wild, uninformed suppositions. It played to the worst in people, with coarse description and frightening images.

That it never happened, that she had no idea who the young woman was, that she made it a point never to enter the women’s locker room at the gym without another faculty member present for precisely this reason, that she always carried herself with nunlike integrity whenever anything even vaguely sexual in nature came up at the school, and that she was careful never to flaunt her relationship with Sally-all suddenly meant nothing.

That the complaint was anonymous also meant nothing. Rumor and innuendo would fly around the school, and people would spend their time trying to guess who it had happened to, not whether it had ever happened. In a high school or private school setting, nothing is as explosive as allegations of illicit sexual behavior. A reasoned, cautious assessment of the charges would never take place, Hope knew. And her denials, forcefully delivered to the dean, probably wouldn’t mean much. She worried, too, what the reaction would be in the community that she and Sally considered their home. Other women in partnerships like theirs would likely rally vocally and angrily to her cause. She could imagine rallies and speeches and newspaper articles and demonstrations outside the gates of her school, all ostensibly on her behalf. Many women like Hope hated being stigmatized and would want to stand up and refuse to be ignored. This was inevitable. And, she suspected, it would destroy any chance she had of quietly extricating herself from the situation.

She went over to the sink and splashed cold water on her face over and over, as if she could somehow wash away what might happen to her. She did not want to be anyone’s cause, and she didn’t want to lose the trust of the students that she had spent so many years building.

She had told the dean, “None of this happened. Nothing like this has ever taken place. How can I prove my innocence without names, dates, times, all that sort of information?”

He had agreed with her and had agreed, for the time being, to keep the allegation under wraps, although by necessity he was going to have to discuss it with the head of the school and maybe even inform the chairman of the board of trustees. Hope knew rumors were inevitable. She had started to say this, but then stopped, because she understood there was little she could do. The dean suggested she continue with ordinary school behavior until additional information became available. “Keep coaching, Hope,” Dean Mitchell had said. “Win the league championship. Keep all your scheduled counseling appointments with students, but…” Then he’d hesitated.

“But what?” Hope had asked.

“Keep the door open at all times.”

Staring at her red-rimmed eyes in the bathroom mirror, Hope had never in her life felt so vulnerable. She exited the bathroom, understanding that the world she had thought was safe had become incredibly dangerous.

Sally scrambled to make sense of the documents in front of her, all the time feeling as if the heat in the room had increased, sweat dripping from her, as if she were in the midst of an aggressive workout.

There was little doubt in her mind that someone had managed to acquire her electronic password and had subsequently wreaked havoc with her client account. She was furious with herself for not making the password more difficult to decipher. The case in question was a divorce, so she had come up with DIVLAW. By contacting security officers at the various banks that had received the deposits ripped from the supposedly sacrosanct client account, she was able to restore the greater part of the money, or at least put it in a freeze so that no one could access it. The banks had agreed to put electronic traps on some of the funds, so that anyone trying to withdraw any amount either through the computer or in person would be traced. But she was not completely successful at manipulating the money. Several transactions had been put through a dizzying series of deposits and withdrawals, ultimately disappearing into an offshore bank account that Sally could not penetrate, and when she called the banks, they were less sympathetic to her tale of identity theft than she would have hoped.