John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

He took a deep breath. Try following that, he said to himself.

Scott figured it would take less than ten minutes for him to come up behind Catherine and Ashley, checking every car before he reached their tail. Then he would escort them the rest of the way home.

He pursed his lips together tightly.

I’ve got a few tricks left, he thought. He could feel the car engine throbbing with speed and, for the first time that night, felt some control over the situation.

He was smart enough, however, to remind himself that this sensation was not likely to last long.

The need for sleep, after so much tension, prevented them all from gathering together until much later that day. Ashley, in particular, had dissolved into sobs upon hearing all the details of Nameless’s death and had cried bitterly in bed, before finally tumbling into a deep but dire sleep, her dreams marred by black images of death. On more than one occasion, she cried out, bringing either Sally or Hope to her door to check on her as if she were still a little girl.

Scott had gone back to the college. He had stolen some ninety minutes of sleep in his chair in his office before waking, feeling that the entire day was somehow misshapen. In the men’s room, washing up, he spent a few seconds staring at himself in the mirror. History, he thought, is the study of men and women who rise to extraordinary events. It is, over and over, an examination of one person’s bravery, another’s cowardice, a third’s prescience, and a fourth’s failures. It is emotion and psychology, played out on a field of action. He felt a kind of cold sickness inside, wondering whether he had spent all his adult life studying what others did without learning how to do something himself.

Michael O’Connell, he believed, was simply a moment in his own history. And how he acted in the next few days, Scott thought to himself, would define him forever.

Sally struggled with anger.

It seemed to her that everything they had tried had failed. They had tried to be reasonable, polite. They had tried to be forceful. They had tried to bribe their way out. They had tried intimidation. They had tried deception. They had tried flight. And for all the various schemes they had come up with, they had gained nothing but failure. Their own lives had been roiled and thrust into turmoil, their own careers threatened, their privacy invaded, their lives upset and truly pushed into some other realm.

A world of fear, she thought. That was what awaited them.

She was seated in the living room, alone. She found herself grimacing, shaking her head, waving her hands in the air, pointing angrily, gesticulating, frowning, as if she were in the midst of some furious conversation, but no one else was in the room to hear the words that she was forming in her head. Upstairs, Ashley was still asleep, but Sally intended to awaken her soon. Hope and Catherine had gone outside for a walk to pick up some sort of takeout for dinner. In all likelihood they were discussing what had descended upon them. She had been left behind, on guard.

Sally could feel her pulse racing. They were at some crossroads moment, but she was as yet unsure what paths were available.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

I have screwed everything up, she thought to herself. I have made a mess of everything.

She sighed and went across the room to a desk where they kept scrapbooks and old photos, memorabilia too valuable to throw out, not significant enough to frame. She opened a large drawer and pawed through the piles until she found what she was looking for: a picture of her mother and father. They both had died far too young, one in a car accident, the other from a heart condition. Sally wasn’t sure why she needed to look at them, but she was almost overcome with the need to see their eyes, looking toward her, as if to reassure her. They had left her alone, and she had seized upon Scott-with all her misgivings about who she was and what she was going to become-because she had told herself that he would be consistent. It was probably the same sense that had driven her to law school, filled with a determination to make sure that she was never a victim of events again. She shook her head at this thought and reminded herself how foolish this was. Anyone can be victimized. At any time.

As this rancid thought coursed around inside her, she heard Ashley stirring upstairs.

She took a deep breath. There is one truth, she thought: a mother will do anything to protect her child.

“Ashley! Is that you? Are you up?”

There was a momentary pause, then a reply, preceded by a long, drawn-out groan. “Yeah. Hi, Mom. I’ll be down right after I brush my teeth.”

She was about to respond when the telephone rang.

The sound chilled her.

She checked the caller identification, but it merely said private caller.

Sally reached out, bit down on her lip, and picked up the receiver.

“Yes, who is it, please?” she said with as much lawyer frost as she could manage.

There was no reply.

“Who is it!” she demanded sharply.

The line remained quiet. She couldn’t even hear breathing.

“God damn it, leave us alone!” she whispered. Her words drove like nails into the silence and she slammed down the phone.

“Mom? Who was it?” Ashley called out from upstairs. Sally could hear a momentary tremble in her daughter’s voice.

“Nothing,” she called back. “Just a damn telephone solicitor, pitching magazine subscriptions.” As quickly as the words were out of her mouth, she wondered why she had failed to tell the truth. “You coming down?”

“Be right there.” Sally heard the bedroom door close. She picked up the receiver and dialed*69. In a moment, a recorded voice came on the line. “The number 413-555-0987 is a pay telephone in Greenfield, Massachusetts.”

Close, she thought. Less than an hour’s drive away.

When Michael O’Connell hung up the pay phone, his first instinct was to head south, where he knew Ashley was waiting for him, and try to take advantage of the moment. Every word he’d heard from Sally had told him how weak she was. He leaned back, closing his eyes, envisioning Ashley. He could feel blood racing through his body, almost as if every vein and artery had become electric. He breathed in slow, shallow breaths, like a swimmer hyperventilating before taking a plunge, and told himself that following her to her own home would be precisely what they would expect.

They will be preparing, he thought. Inventing some scheme to prevent him from getting close to her. Designing a defense, building walls. They cannot beat me.

This was the simplest, most obvious, nonnegotiable fact.

Again he breathed in. They will think that I’m on my way there.

But then, what’s the rush?

Let them worry. Let them lose some sleep. Let them startle at every night noise.

And, he thought, when their defenses were thin from exhaustion and tension and doubt, he would arrive. When they least expected it.

O’Connell tapped his foot against the sidewalk, like a dancer finding the rhythm.

I am there, at their side, even when I’m not there, he told himself.

Michael O’Connell decided that on this day, he wasn’t in any hurry. The love he felt for Ashley could also be exceedingly patient.

This time she told me to meet her at midnight outside the emergency room of a hospital in Springfield. When I asked her why midnight, she informed me that she did volunteer work at the hospital two nights a week, and that the witching hour was when she customarily took her break.

“What sort of volunteer work?” I asked.

“Counseling. Battered wives. Beaten children. Neglected elderly. They all show up at the hospital, and someone has to be on hand to steer them into the right channels for the state to help out.” Her voice had seemed coldly patient, despite the images that she suggested. “What I do is find the proper paperwork to accompany broken teeth, black eyes, razor slashes, and fractured ribs.”