John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

She was waiting for me, smoking a cigarette, taking deep drags, down to the filter. I pointed at the cigarette as I walked through the parking-lot shadows toward her.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t.” She took another long pull. “Except here. Two nights a week. One cigarette at the midnight break. No more. When I return home, I throw the rest of the pack away. Buy a new pack each week.”

She smiled, her face partially hidden by shadow. “Smoking seems like a modest sin, compared with what I see here. A child, perhaps, with his fingers systematically fractured by a cracked-out stepfather. Or a mother in her eighth month, beaten with a metal coat hanger. That sort of thing. Very routine. Very ordinary. Very cruel. Just the usual sort of ugliness that passes for life. Remarkable, isn’t it, how cruel we can be to one another?”

“Yes.”

“So, what more do you need to know?” she asked.

“Scott and Sally and Hope weren’t willing to risk uncertainty, were they?”

She shook her head. A high-pitched, caterwauling ambulance siren cut through the night. Urgency arrives with many different sounds.

When they gathered, later that evening, a sense of helplessness was in the air. Ashley, in particular, seemed crippled by events. She huddled beneath a blanket in an armchair, her feet tucked up under her, clutching an ancient stuffed brown bear whose ear had been partially shredded by Nameless.

Ashley looked around the room and realized that she had created the mess she was in, but then, she couldn’t exactly see what she had done to have it reach this point. Long forgotten was the single, slightly drunken night that had landed her in bed with Michael O’Connell. Even more distant was the conversation when she’d agreed to go out with him that one time, thinking then that O’Connell was different from all the college boys that she had come to know.

Now, she only thought herself naïve and stupid. And she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do. When she looked up and let her eyes fasten on Catherine and Hope and her mother and father, one after the other, she realized that she had endangered all of them; in different ways, certainly, but still, they were all in jeopardy. She wanted to apologize, and so, that was where she started.

“This is all my fault. I’m to blame.”

Sally responded quickly, “No you’re not. And punishing yourself won’t do any of us any good.”

“Well, if I hadn’t-”

Scott stepped in. “You made a mistake. We’ve been all over this before, and we should leave that mistake behind. We all managed to compound that mistake by thinking we were dealing with someone reasonable. So, perhaps you were wrong once, Ashley, but O’Connell managed to get all of us involved pretty quickly, and we’re all guilty of underestimating what he is capable of. Recriminations and blame are really stupid avenues to pursue now. Your mother is right; the only issue in front of us is, what do we do next?”

“I think,” Hope said slowly, “that’s not really it, Scott.”

He turned toward her. “How so?”

“The issue is, how far are we willing to go?”

This quieted the room.

“Because,” Hope continued, her voice even, but her words reverberating with authority, “we have only the vaguest idea of what Michael O’Connell is willing to do. There are plenty of indications. We know he is capable of just about anything and everything. But what are his limits? Does he even have any? Where will he draw the line? I think it would be unwise for any of us to think that he has any restraints.”

“I wish I’d-” Catherine started, then stopped. “Well,” she said with customary briskness, “Scott knows what I wish I’d done.”

“I suppose,” Sally said, “that now it is time for us to engage the authorities.”

Catherine coldly added, “Well, that’s what the local policeman told me outside my house, after my little get-together with Mr. O’Connell.”

“You don’t sound like you think much of that idea,” Hope said.

“I don’t.” Beneath her breath, Catherine added, “When the hell have ‘the authorities’ ever helped anyone?”

Scott turned to Sally. “Sally, you’re the lawyer. I’m sure that in your professional life, you’ve run into these sorts of problems. What would be involved in the process? What could we expect?”

Sally paused, running through details in her head before speaking.

“Ashley would have to go before a judge. I suppose I could handle the legal work, but it’s always wiser to hire outside counsel. She would have to testify that she was being stalked, that she was in fear for her well-being. She might be required to prove that there was some systematic behavior on O’Connell’s part, but most judges are pretty understanding, and they would be likely to accept what Ashley said without requiring much outside corroboration. They would issue a restraining order that would allow the police to arrest O’Connell if he came within some specified distance-usually it’s one hundred feet to one hundred yards. The judge would also, in all likelihood, order O’Connell to not have any contact with her, either by telephone or by computer. These orders are generally pretty complete and would effectively remove him from Ashley’s life, given one rather large if. ”

“What’s that?” Ashley asked.

“If he complies with the order.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Well, then the police can get involved. Technically, he could be arrested and held in violation of the order. That would put him away for some time. The standard sentence is up to six months. But that’s assuming the judge gives him the maximum. In reality, there’s more give-and-take. Judges are reluctant to put people in jail for what they often imagine is merely a dispute between a couple.”

Sally took a deep breath. “That’s the way it is all supposed to work. The real world is never quite as clear-cut as all that.”

She looked around at the others in the living room. “Ashley makes a complaint and testifies. But what real proof do we have of anything? We don’t know that he cost her her job. We don’t know that he was the one who made all the trouble for us. We don’t know that he broke in here. We can’t prove that he killed Murphy, although maybe he did.”

Sally took a deep breath. The others remained absolutely quiet.

“I have been thinking about this,” she said, “and it’s not an obvious call, by any means. Not in the slightest. I bet Michael O’Connell has experience with restraining orders and has them figured out. In other words, I think O’Connell knows what he can and can’t get away with. But to get something beyond that simple restraining order, to actually get O’Connell accused of a crime, Ashley would be required to prove that he is behind everything that has happened. She would have to be persuasive in a court of law, and under cross-examination. It would also put her within arm’s reach of Michael O’Connell. When you accuse someone of a crime-even of stalking-it creates a secondary intimacy. You are connected to that person in a profound way, even if there is an order keeping him at a distance. She would have to confront him in court, which would, I guess, feed his obsession. He might even enjoy it. But one thing is certain: Ashley and O’Connell would be forever linked. And it also means that Ashley would be looking over her shoulder forever, unless she flees. Goes someplace new. Becomes someone different. And, still, that isn’t a sure thing. If he decided to devote his life to finding her…”

Sally was rolling now, picking up momentum. “But being frightened and proving there is a real foundation for that fear in a court of law are different things. And then, there is a secondary consideration entirely.”