John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

“Can you do this without making too much of an alarm?”

“Yes. I can simply say I can’t reach my mother and she’s elderly. They all know her, and it shouldn’t be a problem for them.”

“Okay. Do it,” Scott said. “And tell Sally I’m on my way up there. If you reach Catherine, tell her I’m going to show up there later tonight. But I’ll need directions.”

As Hope spoke, she saw that Sally was pale, her hands shaking. She had never seen Sally so scared, and this unsettled Hope almost as much as the shapeless night that engulfed them.

Catherine was the first to speak. “Are you okay, Ashley?”

And Ashley nodded, her lips dry and throat almost closed, not trusting her voice. She felt her racing heartbeat return to normal, and she said, “I’m fine. What about you?”

“A knock on the head. That’s it.”

“Should we go to the hospital?”

“No. I’m okay. Although I seem to have spilled my six-dollar cup of coffee all over myself.”

Catherine unfastened her safety belt and opened her door.

“I need a breath of air,” she said briskly.

Ashley reached over and shut off the engine. She, too, stepped out into the night. “What happened? I mean, what was that all about?”

Catherine was staring back down the road, then she turned and looked up in the direction they were traveling. “Did you see that bastard go by us?”

“No.”

“Well, I didn’t see what happened to him either. I wonder where the hell he went. I hope he spun out into the trees, or over some cliff.”

Ashley shook her head. “I was trying to keep control.”

“And a fine job you did,” Catherine said, her voice regaining a steadiness that reassured Ashley. “Indeed, NASCAR quality. Those guys have nothing on you, Ashley, if I may point out the obvious. Very dicey situation, handled expertly. We’re still here, and there’s not even a dent in my nice, almost new car.”

Ashley smiled, despite the anxiety that still echoed within her. “My father used to take me down to Lime Rock in Connecticut and book us time on the big track in his old Porsche. I learned a lot from him.”

“Well, not exactly the standard father-daughter outing, but one that has turned out to be valuable.”

Ashley took a deep breath. “Catherine, has something like that ever happened to you before?”

The older woman was standing by the side of the road, her eyes searching through the darkness. “No. I mean, sometimes when you putter around on these narrow, winding roads, some high school kid will get frustrated and zoom past on a blind turn. But that guy seemed to have something else in mind.”

They climbed back into the car and strapped themselves in. Ashley hesitated, then coughed out a few words.

“I wonder if, you know, the creep who was pursuing me…”

Catherine leaned back hard in the seat. “You think the young man that caused you to leave Boston…”

“I don’t know.”

Catherine snorted. “Ashley, dear, he doesn’t know you’re here, and he doesn’t know where I live, and it’s damn hard to find anyway out in the middle of nowhere. And it seems to me that if you go through life looking over your shoulder and assigning every bad thing that is out of the norm to this creep O’Connell, or whatever his name is, then you won’t have much of a life at all.”

Ashley nodded. She wanted to be persuaded, told herself to be persuaded, but agreement came slowly.

“Anyway, the young man professes to love you, Ashley, dear. Love. I fail to see what nearly driving us off the road has to do with love.”

Again, Ashley remained silent, although she thought she knew the answer to that question.

They drove the remainder of the trip in relative silence. There was a long gravel-and-dirt drive up to Catherine’s place. She hoarded her privacy within her four walls, while she blustered and badgered everyone in the community outside her home. Ashley stared at the dark house. It had once been a farm, dating back to the early 1800s, and Catherine liked to joke that she had updated the plumbing and the kitchen but not the ghosts. Ashley stared at the white clapboard and wished they’d remembered to leave some lights on inside.

Catherine, however, was accustomed to the dark welcome and launched herself from the car. “Damnation,” she said abruptly. “I hear the phone ringing.”

She grunted loudly and added, “Too damn late for phone calls.”

Ignoring the night, confident in her understanding of every dip and ridge on the walkway to her front door, Catherine left Ashley scrambling behind her. Catherine never locked her doors, so she burst inside, flicking on the lights as she made her way to an ancient rotary-dial phone in the living room.

“Yes? Who is it?”

“Mother?”

“Hope! How nice. But you’re calling late.”

“Mother, are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, why?”

“Is Ashley with you? Is she okay?”

“Of course, dear. She’s right here. What is the matter?”

“He knows! He may be on his way there.”

Catherine inhaled sharply, but kept her wits about her. “Slow down, dear. Let’s take this one step at a time.”

As she said this, she turned toward Ashley, who was standing frozen in the doorway. Hope started to speak, but Catherine heard little. For the first time, she could see abject fear in Ashley’s eyes.

Scott drove red-line hard.

The small car leapt with enthusiasm, easily pushing past one hundred miles per hour. He could hear the engine roaring behind him as the night swept past, a blur of shadows, stately pine trees, and black, distant mountains. What should have taken close to two hours from Scott’s house to Catherine’s he expected to do in half that time. He was unsure whether this would be fast enough. He was unsure what was happening. He was unsure what O’Connell was doing. And he was unsure what the night held. He knew only that some odd, misshapen danger was directly in front of him, and he was determined to throw himself between the threat and his daughter.

As he drove, hands gripping the wheel tightly, he was almost overcome with images from their past. All the memories of raising a child flooded him. He felt an utter cold, crippling chill within him, and as each mile slid behind him, he could hardly fight off the sensation that he was a mile per hour too slow, that whatever was about to happen, he was going to miss it by just seconds. And so, he jammed his right foot down on the accelerator, oblivious to anything except the need to move quickly, perhaps more quickly than he had ever moved before.

Catherine hung up the telephone and turned toward Ashley. She kept her voice low, steady, and extraordinarily calm. She selected her words carefully, giving them an antique formality. Concentrating on her words helped her fight her growing panic. She breathed in slowly and reminded herself that she came from a generation that had fought much bigger battles than those presented by this fellow O’Connell, and so she layered her words with a Roosevelt determination.

“Ashley, dear. It appears that this young man who seems most unhealthily attracted to you has actually learned that you are not in Europe, but here, visiting with me.”

Ashley nodded, unable to respond.

“I think that what might be wisest is if you were to go upstairs to your bedroom and lock the door. Keep the telephone handy. Hope informs me that your father is driving up here, even as we speak, and that she is also intending to summon the local police.”

Ashley took a step toward the stairs, then stopped.

“Catherine, what are you going to do? Maybe we should just get back in the car and get out of here.”

Catherine smiled. “Well, I doubt it makes sense to give this fellow another shot at us on the road. I imagine he already tried once tonight. No, this is my home. And your home, as well. If this fellow means you any harm, well, I think we’d be better off dealing with it here, where we are familiar with the territory.”