John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

It did not take Hope long to find the shredded doorjamb. She stood for a moment, simply staring at the shards of wood that littered the cement basement floor. “Sally, down here!”

There was only a single bare overhead bulb, which cast odd shapes into the musty corners of the old house’s basement. Hope remembered that when Ashley was young, she was always scared to come downstairs alone to do her laundry, as if the corners and cobwebs hid trolls or ghosts. Nameless had been her preferred companion on those occasions. Even as a teenager, when Ashley knew she was far too sophisticated to believe in such things, she would collect all her too-tight jeans and skimpy underwear she didn’t want her mother to know she was wearing, then grab a dog biscuit and hold the basement door open for Nameless. The dog would clatter eagerly down the stairs, making enough of a racket to scare away any lingering demon, and wait for Ashley, already sitting, his tail sweeping half-moons of enthusiasm on the floor.

Hope turned when Sally came down the stairs. “This is where he got in.”

Sally eyed the splinters and nodded. She stepped aside as Hope moved past her.

“Then he would have come up the stairs. He probably had one of those little miniflashlights. Then into the kitchen.”

“That’s where Nameless must have heard him. Or smelled him,” Sally said.

Hope took a breath. “Nameless liked to wait for us in the vestibule, so he would have reacted to the sound behind him and known right away it wasn’t you or me or even Ashley coming home.”

Hope glanced around the kitchen. “This is where he made his stand,” she said softly. Last stand, she thought to herself. She could see the old dog, the gray hairs on the back of the neck raised, worn teeth bared. His home, his family. No one was getting past him, even if his eyesight was weak and his hearing almost gone. Not without paying a price, this she knew. She coughed back some more tears and dropped down to the floor, inspecting the area carefully. “See,” she said after a few seconds. “Right here.”

Sally looked down. “What is it?”

“Blood. Got to be blood. And not Nameless’s either.”

“I think you’re right,” Sally said. Then softer: “Good dog.”

“But whoever it was that broke in, what was he looking for?”

This time it was Sally who inhaled sharply. “It was him,” she said quietly.

“Him? You mean…”

“The creep. O’Connell.”

“But I thought…you said he was out of our lives. The private eye told you…”

“The private eye, Murphy, was killed. Murdered. Yesterday.”

Hope’s eyes widened.

“I was going to tell you, right when we got home.” Sally didn’t need to continue.

“Murdered? How? Where?”

“On a street in Springfield. Execution-style, or so the paper said.”

“What the hell does ‘execution-style’ mean?” Hope asked, her voice rising.

“It means someone walked up behind him and put two small-caliber bullets into the back of his brain.” Sally’s voice was cold, mingling detail with fear.

“You think it was him? Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I can’t tell. A lot of people hated Murphy. Any one of them…”

“We’re not interested in anyone else. I mean, do you think…” Hope stared down at the splatters of blood on the floor. “So, it might have been anybody in Springfield. But you think this break-in was…”

“Who else?”

“Well, it could have been any burglar. It’s not like it’s unheard-of in this neighborhood.”

“It’s still pretty unusual. And even when there is a break-in, it’s usually just teenage kids, anyway. This doesn’t feel like that. Do you see anything stolen?”

“No.”

“Then who else?”

“If it was O’Connell, that means…”

“He’s back after Ashley. Obviously.”

“But why here?” Hope finally said.

Sally shuddered. “He was searching for information.”

“But I thought Scott had invented this story and sold it to the creep. You know, Italy. Studying Renaissance art. Long gone and out of reach.”

Sally shook her head. “We don’t know,” she said coldly. “We have no idea what O’Connell knows, or what he thinks, or what he’s learned. Or what he’s done. We know Murphy was killed and we know Nameless was killed. Are the two the same? We’re the ones in the dark.” She sighed, then clenched her fists and pushed one up against her head in frustration. “We don’t know anything for sure.”

Hope looked down at the floor and thought she saw another droplet or two of blood, by the door leading into the house. “Let’s look around for a minute, see if we can trace his steps.”

Sally closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall for a moment. She gave out a long, slow breath. “At least there’s nothing here that would tell him where she is. I was really careful about that.” Opening her eyes, she continued, “And Nameless, just fighting him, you know, the way he did, that was probably more than enough to chase the son of a bitch out of here.”

Hope nodded, but inwardly she was less sure. “Let’s just look around.”

Another splatter of blood was in the hallway leading into the small library and television room.

Hope let her eyes sweep about, searching for telltale signs that O’Connell had been in here. When her eyes fell on the telephone, she gasped and took a step forward. “Sally,” she said quietly, “look there.”

Several crimson blood drops were on the telephone.

“But it’s just the phone…,” Sally started. Then she realized that the red message light was blinking. She pushed the playback button.

Ashley’s cheerful voice filled the room.

“Hi, Mom, and, hi, Hope. I miss you. But I’m having a great time with Catherine. We’re heading out to dinner, and I was just wondering if I could sneak down there in the next couple of days. Catherine will let me borrow her car, you know, maybe pick up some warmer clothes? Vermont is beautiful during the daytime, but at night, it’s getting chilly, and I’m going to need a parka and maybe some boots. Anyway, that’s the idea. I’ll talk to you later. Love ya.”

“Oh my God,” Sally blurted. “Oh no.”

“He knows,” Hope said. “He knows. For sure.”

Sally rocked back and spun around, her face stricken, her heart frozen in fear.

“That’s not all,” Hope said softly. Sally followed her eyes to a bookcase. The second shelf was filled with family pictures-of Hope and Sally, of Nameless, and of all of them with Ashley. There was also an elegant shot of Ashley, caught in profile, hiking in the Green Mountains, just as the sun was setting, the luckiest of pictures. It was a favorite of theirs because it captured her right at that wondrous transition from child to adult, from braces and bony knees to grace and beauty.

The picture usually occupied the center of the shelf.

It was no longer there.

Sally choked and grabbed at the phone. She dialed Catherine’s number, then stood helplessly as it rang over and over, without answer.

Scott had chosen that night to drive over to one of the other nearby colleges and attend a speech by a constitutional rights scholar from Harvard Law School, who was giving a presentation as part of a lecture series. The topic had been the history and evolution of the rights to due process. The speech had been genuinely lively. He was energized, and when he stopped on his way home to pick up some chicken lo mein and beef and snow peas at a Chinese restaurant, Scott was looking forward to the remainder of the evening, alone with student papers.

He reminded himself to call Ashley at some point that evening, just to check in, see how she was, see if she needed some cash. He was a little uncomfortable that Catherine was footing the bill for Ashley’s stay. He thought he should find some equitable financial understanding, especially because he was a little unsure how long Ashley would have to be there. Not much longer, surely. But still, she was probably something of a burden. He didn’t really know whether Catherine was wealthy. They had only met once or twice, on blessedly brief, overly polite occasions. He did know that she was fond of Ashley, which made her basically okay in his book.