John Katzenbach - The Wrong Man

“We must bring the father and son together. That would be crucial. They must face each other. Hopefully, they’ll fight. That needs to be something a detective can prove. That they came together and they fought. And into that anger, we have to find a way to inject ourselves. Secretly. Leaving absolutely no marks behind and completely unseen by anyone-except the man we kill.”

Sally stared across the room, but lifted her eyes toward the ceiling, no longer even facing Hope and Scott. Her voice took on a musing, almost speculative tone. “You see, it would make sense. They hate and distrust each other. There is a history of violence between the two. Unfinished business. What would make more sense than the son killing the father in a rage?”

“That’s true,” Scott said. “A Greek-tragedy sense of justice. But they haven’t spoken in years. How do we-”

Sally held up her hand. She spoke softly. “If he thought Ashley was there at the old man’s house…”

Scott burst out, “You mean to use her as bait?” He was shaking his head. “But that’s impossible.”

“What other bait do we have?” Sally asked coldly.

“I thought we agreed that Ashley was to be excluded from all this,” Hope said.

Sally shrugged. “Ashley could make a phone call without knowing why she was making it. We could give her a script.”

Hope leaned forward. “Assuming…but only just assuming, we can get them into the same room together. And then we show up…how do we kill him?” She was suddenly taken aback by the words she heard herself speak.

Sally paused, thinking. “We’re not strong enough…” Then her face froze. “You said Michael O’Connell has a gun?”

“Yes. Hidden in his apartment.”

Sally nodded. “We have to use that gun. Not even a gun like it. That precise gun. His gun. The one with his fingerprints on it and maybe carrying his DNA.”

“How do we get it?” Scott asked.

Hope, however, was reaching into her jeans pocket. She held up the key to O’Connell’s apartment.

The other two stared at her. And in that moment, although neither Scott nor Sally said anything, both thought the same thing: This is possible.

Sally remained alone while the others went in to begin the dinner that Catherine and Ashley had whipped up. She thought she should feel awful, but she did not. A large part of her was energized, almost gleefully excited by the prospect of murder.

She wanted to laugh out loud at the irony of it all. We will do something that will change us forever so that we don’t have to change forever. She overheard Hope’s voice coming from the kitchen and imagined that the only route back to wherever it was where they had once loved one another traveled through Michael O’Connell and his father. She asked herself, Can death create life? Surely, she imagined, the answer had to be yes. Soldiers, firemen, rescue workers, policemen-all know they might face that choice one day. Sacrifice so that others can survive. Were they doing anything different?

She reached over and took up a yellow legal pad and a cheap pen.

Sally started to sketch ideas on the pad of paper. She began a list of items that might be needed, and details that would create a compelling portrait for the police investigators who would inevitably arrive. As she wrote down things to consider, she realized that the actual act of pulling the trigger was less crucial than how it would be perceived afterward. She leaned forward, like an anxious student taking an exam who suddenly remembers the answers, as she began to work backward through the crime.

Invent a killing, she said to herself.

She held up her hand in front of her face. We are about to become everything we’ve always hated, she thought. She slowly clenched her hand into a fist, although it wasn’t a fist that she felt; it was as if she had suddenly wrapped her fingers around O’Connell’s neck, choking off the air from his windpipe, imagining that she could abruptly, unexpectedly, strangle him into oblivion.

It was late, and I hesitated in the doorway.

You hear something. Someone tells you a story. Words spoken in a low-voiced whisper. And it suddenly seems as if there are far many more questions than there are ever answers. She must have sensed this, because she said, “Do you begin to see now where their reluctance to speak with you comes from?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. They want to avoid prosecution. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

She snorted. “That’s obvious. That’s been obvious from the beginning. Try to look beyond that decidedly practical aspect of all this.”

“All right, because they are frightened of the betrayals involved in the story.”

She inhaled sharply, almost as if afraid of something. “And what, pray tell, were those betrayals, as you so elegantly put it?”

I thought for a moment. “Sally had been educated in the law, and she should have had more respect for its powers.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, nodding. “An officer of the court. She saw only the flaws in the law, not its strengths. Go on.”

“And Scott, well, a professor of history. Perhaps more than any of the others, he should have had an appreciation of the dangers in acting unilaterally. He was the one with the sense of social justice.”

“A man who disdained violence suddenly embracing it?” she asked.

“Yes. Even when he was young and went into the service, that was more a political act, or maybe, you might say, an act of conscience, than it was some sort of gung ho patriotism. That kept his hands if not exactly clean, at least not exactly dirty, either. But Hope…”

“What about Hope?” she asked abruptly.

“It seems that she was the least likely of them all to be, I don’t know, wrapped up in criminality. After all, her connection was the least profound.”

“Was it? Had she not risked the most of all of them? A woman who loved another woman, with all the societal baggage that carries, who took the biggest chance on love and who had, it would appear, given up on the desire to have her own family, to present a normal face to the world, and so had adopted Ashley as her own. And what did she see when she looked at Ashley? Did she see a part of herself? Did she see a life she might have chosen? Did she envy her, love her, feel some sort of immense internal connection that is different from what we ordinarily expect from a mother or father? And, as the athlete that she was, did she not prize a direct take-charge sort of approach?”

Her sudden volley of questions encapsulated me as swiftly as the dark of night.

“Yes,” I said. “I can see all that.”

“All of Hope’s life was about taking chances and following her instincts. It was what made her so beautiful.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“Do you not think Hope was, in some regards, the key to all this?”

I shook my head, but just slightly. “Yes and no.”

“How so?” she demanded.

“Ashley remained the key.”

Ashley pushed against the headboard of her bed, placing her feet against the wood, so that she was back to front, feeling the muscles in her legs tighten until they began to shake with exertion. It was what she had done when she was young, when her body seemed to outdistance itself, and she was afflicted with “growing pains,” feeling as if her bones no longer fit into her skin. Sports, running hard in the afternoons, while Hope watched, had helped, but many nights she had tossed and turned in her bed, waiting for her body to grow into whoever it was she was going to become.

It was early, and the house was still filled with the occasional sounds of sleep. Catherine in the next room snored loudly. There wasn’t any stirring from either Sally or Hope, although late the night before, she had heard them talking. The words had been too distant for her to make out, but she presumed they had something to do with her. She hadn’t heard any muffled, hidden noises of affection in some time, and this troubled her. She very much wanted her mother to stay with Hope, but Sally had grown so distant in the past years, she was unsure what would happen. Sometimes she didn’t believe she could handle the emotional briars of another divorce, even one that was gentle. From experience she knew the “amicable divorce” doesn’t really make the internal pain any less.