John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

And in that confusion-where two stories of equal possibility had presented themselves, the one of self-defense, the other of the cheapest sort of drunken murder-the only answer could be provided by the teenager.

He could tell one truth-and send his father to prison and himself to a foster-care home. Or he could tell another, and the life he knew-the only life he knew-would more or less continue, absent his mother.

Scott thought that this was perhaps the only moment that he would feel any sympathy for O’Connell. And it was a retroactive sympathy, because it stretched back almost fifteen years.

For an instant, he wondered what he would have done. And then he understood that a terrible choice is no choice. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.

So the young O’Connell had backed up his father’s history.

Scott wondered, Did he see his mother being shot in his nightmares? Did he see her fighting for her life? Did every morning when he awoke and saw the way his father eyed him with distrust brand some terrible lie into him?

Scott drove across town and pulled his car up in front of the O’Connell house. It’s all right there. All the ingredients necessary to become a killer.

Scott did not know much about psychology-although like any historian he understood that sometimes great events turned on emotions. But he knew enough to know that even the most armchair Freudian could see how his past made O’Connell’s future dangerous. And, as Scott found himself breathing in rapidly, he knew the one thing standing square in O’Connell’s life was Ashley.

Will he kill Ashley just as easily as his father killed his mother?

Scott lifted his head and once again focused on the house where O’Connell grew up. As he watched, he was unaware of the shape that emerged from the shadow of a nearby tree, so that when a set of knuckles knocked suddenly against his window, he turned in surprise, feeling his heart abruptly quicken.

“Get out of the car!”

This was a demand without compromise.

Scott, confused, looked up and saw the face of a dark-haired man with a crooked nose nearly pressed up against the window. In one hand, the man held an ax handle.

“Get out!” he repeated.

Scott’s panicky first instinct was to put the car in gear and then to punch the gas, but he did not, just as he saw the man pull the ax handle back like a batter eyeing a hanging curve. Instead, he took a deep breath, undid his safety belt slowly, and pushed open the door.

The man eyed him dangerously, still brandishing the ax handle as a weapon.

“You the one asking all the questions?” he demanded. “Just who the hell are you? And why don’t you tell me why you’re so goddamn interested in me before I knock your head clean off?”

Sally turned to her computer and realized that what she had been about to do was potentially incriminating. She reached into her desk drawer and removed an old yellow legal pad. Opening a computer file with the details of an as-yet-unspecified crime would be a mistake. She reminded herself to think backward-more or less the same way a detective does. A piece of paper can be destroyed. It was a little like walking across a beach; footprints above the high-tide mark could last forever. Below, they were quickly erased by the never-ending waves.

She bit down on her lip and seized a pencil.

At the top of the page she wrote, Motive.

This was followed by a second category: Means.

And, by necessity, the third: Opportunity.

Sally stared at the words. They formed the holy trinity of police work. Fill in those blanks, and nine times out of ten you will know who to arrest and charge. And just as often, who can be convicted in a court of law. As a criminal defense attorney, the job was simple: attack and disrupt one of those elements. Like a three-legged stool, if one side was cut, the entirety would tumble. Now she was planning a crime of her own and trying to anticipate how the undetermined crime would be investigated. She kept using euphemisms in her mind. Crime or incident or event. She shied away from the word murder.

She added a fourth category to her sheet: Forensics.

This she could work on, she thought. Sally started to list the various ways that they could be tripped up. DNA samples-that meant hair, skin, blood-all had to be avoided. Ballistics-if they needed to use a gun, they had to find one that wasn’t traceable to them. Or else, they would have to dispose of it in a way that it could never be found, and short of dropping it into the ocean, that was hard to accomplish. And then there were other issues. Fiber from clothes, telltale fingerprints left behind, shoe prints in soft earth, tire prints from car tracks. Witnesses who might see someone coming or going. Security cameras. And she couldn’t even be sure that seated in a stiff chair under some harsh overhead light, across from a pair of detectives-one inevitably playing the good cop, the other, the bad-that Scott or Ashley or Hope or Catherine wouldn’t say something. They might try to tell some story or, worse, simply lie-the cops always caught the lies-and they would all be sunk.

Of course, if any of them was seated in that chair in an interrogation room, everything that they had ever hoped for was already lost.

They had to do whatever they were going to do completely anonymously. It had to appear, even to someone looking hard at it, that it stemmed from something other than Ashley.

The more Sally considered it, the harder it seemed. And the more impossible the task, the more desperate she felt. She could sense things unraveling around her; not just her job, which she’d neglected, but her relationship and ultimately her entire life. It was as if the uncertainty over Ashley’s safety made everything else impossible.

Sally shook her head. She looked down at the paper in front of her. She was abruptly reminded of taking tests in law school. In a way, this was the same. The only difference was this time failure wasn’t about a grade. It was about their future.

She made a note: Purchase multiple sets of surgical gloves.

That would at least limit their DNA and fingerprint exposure, whenever they figured out what they were going to do.

She made a second note: Go to the Salvation Army store and purchase clothing. Don’t forget shoes.

Sally nodded to herself. You can do this, she told herself. Whatever it is.

The distasteful man that Catherine and Ashley were going to meet was standing by the door of his battered Chevy sport utility vehicle, puffing on a cigarette and pawing the gravel of the parking lot with his right foot, like an impatient horse. Catherine immediately spotted his red-and-black hunting jacket, and the NRA stickers adorning the back of the SUV. He was short, with a receding hairline and a barrel chest, a beer-and-a-shot sort of guy, Catherine thought. He once worked in a mill or a manufacturing plant, but had discovered a far more consistent source of income.

She pulled her car across from his and told Ashley, “Stay here. Keep your head down. If I need you, I’ll give a wave.”

Ashley, for her part, wasn’t sure what to make of the situation. She nodded and pivoted about, so that she could keep her eyes on Catherine.

Catherine got out of the car. “Mr. Johnson, I’m guessing?”

“That’s right. You must be Mrs. Frazier?”

“Indeed.”

“I don’t usually like coming out like this. I prefer to do my business at regular shows.”

Catherine nodded. She doubted that this statement was true, but it was part of the charade.

“I appreciate your taking the time,” she said. “I wouldn’t have called if the situation weren’t pressing.”

“Personal use? Personal protection?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”