The Wrong Man Read online

  O’Connell’s ear throbbed and his cheek stung. He figured that one or more of his teeth might be loose because he could taste blood in his mouth. He was a little stiff when he rose from the floor, but he went directly to the window and just managed to catch a glimpse of the ex-detective as he turned the corner of the block. Michael O’Connell wiped his hand across his face and thought, Now that wasn’t so damn hard, was it? He understood that the easiest way to make a policeman believe him was always to take the beating. It was sometimes painful, sometimes embarrassing, especially when it was some old guy, whom he knew he could easily have handled anytime except the time when the guy had a gun and he did not. Then he smiled, licking his lips and letting the salty taste fill him. He had learned a great deal that night, just as Matthew Murphy had told him. But mostly what he had learned was that Ashley wasn’t in some foreign country in some graduate program. If she were in Italy, thousands of miles away, why would her family send some big-talking ex-cop around to try to intimidate him? That made no sense at all, unless she was close by. Far closer than he’d imagined. Within reach? He believed so. O’Connell inhaled sharply through his nose. He did not know where she was, but he would find out soon enough, because time no longer meant anything to him. Only Ashley did.

  The News-Republican building was on a desultory tract of downtown land, adjacent to the train station, with a depressing view of the interstate highway, parking lots, and vacant spaces filled with trash. It was one of those spots that aren’t exactly blighted. Instead, it seemed simply ignored, or perhaps exhausted. Lots of chain-link fences, swirling debris caught by wayward gusts of wind, and highway underpasses decorated with graffiti. The newspaper office was a rectangular, four-story edifice, a cinder-block-and-brick square. It seemed more like an armory or even a fortress than a newspaper office. Inside, what was once quaintly called the morgue was now a small room with computers.

  Once a helpful young woman had shown me how to access the files, it did not take me long to find the record of Matthew Murphy’s last day. Or, perhaps, last moments might be more accurate.

  The front-page headline read EX–STATE POLICE DETECTIVE SLAIN.

  There were two subheads: BODY FOUND IN CITY ALLEY and POLICE CALL KILLING “EXECUTION-STYLE.”

  I filled several pages in my notebook with details from the spate of stories that day, and several follow-up pieces that appeared in the next few days. There was, it seemed, no end to possible suspects. Murphy had been involved in many high-profile cases during his time on the force and, in retirement, had continued to make enemies with a daunting regularity as he worked as a private investigator. There was little doubt in my mind that his murder had been given top priority by the Springfield detectives working the case, and by the state police homicide unit that had undoubtedly taken over. There would have been significant pressure on the local district attorney, cop killings being the sort of make-or-break cases that define careers. Everyone in law enforcement would want to be involved. Killing one of their own slices a small part from each of them.

  Except as I went through the stories, they seemed too thin, and what should have happened did not.

  Details began to be repetitious. No arrest was made. No grand jury indictment announced to great fanfare. No criminal trial scheduled.

  It was a story where the big dramatic ending evaporated into nothing.

  I pushed myself away from the computer, staring at a blinking no further entries found to my final electronic request.

  That wasn’t right, I thought. Someone had brutally killed Murphy. And it had to connect to Ashley.

  Somehow. Some way.

  I just couldn’t see it.

  25

  Security

  The office secretary knocked on Sally’s open door, an overnight envelope in her hand. “This just came for you. I’m not sure who it’s from. Do you want me to handle it?”

  “No. I’ll take it. I know what it is.” Sally thanked her assistant, grasped the envelope, and closed the door. She smiled. Murphy was an overly cautious man. She guessed that he kept a number of post office boxes handy for mail of a more sensitive nature. Prominent letterheads and return addresses were often inconvenient for people in his line of work.

  He had called her from the road, coming back from Boston several nights earlier. “I think your problem will pretty much disappear from now on, Ms. Freeman-Richards.”

  She had been at her home, sitting across from Hope. Both of them had been reading, Hope immersed in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, while she had been glancing through leftover sections of the Sunday New York Times.

  “That’s good news, Mr. Murphy. I’m delighted to hear that. But tell me, how precisely did you reach that conclusion?” She easily slipped into her practiced, reasonable attorney tones.

  “Well, I don’t know how precise you want me to be. But our mutual friend”—he laughed at the use of the word—“well, he and I had a talk. A good talk. A lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of his, shall we say, behavior. And after this conversation completed its predictable course, Mr. O’Connell allowed as to how it might indeed be a significant problem to continue pursuing Ashley. He was helped to see the light of reason and stated unequivocally that he would remove himself from her life from that point further.”

  “You believed him?”

  “I had every reason to believe him, Ms. Freeman-Richards. His sincerity was evident.”

  Sally had paused, trying to read between Murphy’s words. “No one was hurt?”

  “Not permanently. Unless, perhaps, Mr. O’Connell now has a broken heart, but I kinda doubt that. He was, however, deeply impressed with the recklessness of continuing his course of action, and he reached an enlightened conclusion, after I explained certain realities to him. Forcefully. I’m not sure that you really want much more detail, Ms. Freeman-Richards. It might make you uncomfortable.”

  Sally thought their conversation had an odd gentility, as if she were somehow incapable of hearing certain things. It had a Victorian sensibility, as if she might get pale and faint with a case of the vapors.

  “I wouldn’t want that.”

  “I didn’t think so. I will send you a disposition report in the next day or so. And should you have any reason to suspect anything or see something suspicious, please call, night or day, and I will see it taken care of. I mean, there’s always the slim chance that Mr. O’Connell might have a change of heart once again. But I doubt that. He seems like a weak person, Ms. Freeman-Richards. A very small man, and I don’t mean how tall he is. But I believe he’s now out of your lives one hundred percent. And, so, if you have any investigatory needs in the future, I hope you will keep me in mind.”

  Sally was a little surprised at Murphy’s description of O’Connell. It didn’t exactly jibe with her conclusions to that point. But it was reassuring to hear, and so she shunted away any contradictions she might have felt.

  “Of course, Mr. Murphy. It seems like you took care of things exactly as I’d hoped. And I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear this.”

  “It was my pleasure, ma’am.”

  She hung up the phone, then turned to Hope. “Well, that’s that.”

  “What’s what?”

  “I sent a private detective I know over to explain the facts of life to the creep. Like you’d think, when confronted by someone substantially stronger and significantly tougher and more experienced, he folded up like a cheap card table. Guys like him, they’re cowards from the get-go. Just let them know that you can’t be bullied, and they tuck their tails between their legs and disappear.”

  “You think so?” Hope replied. “I don’t know. My impression is that the creep is a little more determined than that, although I sure as hell don’t know why. And a little more capable than you’re giving him credit for. Look what a mess he made for all of us with a little computer access.”

  “Look, Hope, we tried to negotiate fairly with him. We tried to give him a chance to walk away, didn’t we? We ev
en paid him a substantial sum of money. How could we have been more fair? How could we have been more direct?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “We were totally straightforward, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And he didn’t get it, did he? He didn’t want to make things easy for everyone, did he? So now he’s gotten a little lesson in how tough we can be. And just like that, it’s all over.”

  Hope didn’t shake her head outwardly. But she had her doubts. Sally had seen this in her eyes, had opened her mouth to say something, then stopped and allowed the two of them to return to silence.

  “Well, that’s that,” she had said with a touch of finality, a little irritated with Hope for not being more supportive.

  Sally took the envelope from Murphy and sat down at her desk, replaying the conversation with Hope. She had the curious thought that things were oddly reversed: it should have been Hope, who was younger and often more headstrong, who should have been satisfied, and not Sally.

  Sally tore open the flap and dropped the contents onto her desktop.

  There was a cover letter, a sheaf of papers stapled together, several photographs, and a set of computer discs.

  The pictures were of Michael O’Connell, taken outside his apartment. The sheaf of papers contained his modest police record and what work and school history Murphy had unearthed, along with some family information, including the names and address of his mother and father. A notation said the mother was deceased. A yellow note pasted to the computer discs said, These have been encrypted. An expert can probably unravel them, no problem. They probably contain info about your daughter. Maybe pictures. I took them from OC’s apartment, but I’d guess he has copies hidden somewhere. I did not know if you wanted to spend extra $ to have them professionally examined. The computer that he was using was accidentally destroyed during our session, so any info on the hard drive is likely ruined.

  Murphy’s cover letter briefly described meeting O’Connell outside his apartment, but gave no real details about their “conversation.” At the bottom was a bill for services, which included a courtesy discount.

  Sally immediately grabbed a checkbook and wrote out a draft to Murphy. She sealed this in a plain envelope, along with a note that said merely, Thank you for your help. We will call you if there is any follow-up necessary.

  She pushed all the material, including the computer discs, into a manila envelope, wrote Ashley’s Creep in large letters on it, and with a sense of relief walked over to her large file cabinet and slid it into the back of the bottom drawer, where she thought it would happily remain untouched for years to come.

  There is a clarity to late-afternoon light at the edge of the Green Mountains, as if things become sharper, more defined, as the day fades into night in the last weeks before winter. Catherine was poised by the window above her kitchen sink, looking westward, her eyes on Ashley. The younger woman was out back, bundled up in a bright yellow fleece, seated at the edge of a flagstone patio. Beyond her was a grassy field, which led up to the edge of the forest. They had gone into Brattleboro the day before and purchased sheets of paper, an easel, and brushes and watercolors, and Ashley was now immersed in a painting of her own, trying to capture the last streaks of day as they moved across the ridges and lingered in the pine branches. Catherine tried to read Ashley’s body language; it seemed to contain both frustration and excitement simultaneously. She was relaxed, enjoying her moment with the brush in her hand and the colors unfolding in front of her. Catherine was struck by the thought that the young woman and the painting were much the same; in the process of design.

  They had spent much of the night Ashley had arrived on the bus drinking tea and talking about what had happened. Catherine had listened with both astonishment and a growing sense of unease.

  She looked out her window and saw Ashley commit a long, pale blue stroke of watercolor sky to the paper in front of her. “It isn’t right,” she said out loud.

  She feared that Ashley would somehow be—she wasn’t sure exactly—but infected by Michael O’Connell. It was as if, in that moment, she was afraid that Ashley would turn against all men because of the actions of one man.

  She gripped the edge of the sink to steady herself. She was not quite able to articulate within herself the dark edge of her thoughts. She didn’t want to think, I don’t want Ashley to become like Hope. And when some clouds of this fear worked into her heart, she grew upset with herself, for she loved her daughter. Hope was smart. Hope was beautiful. Hope was graceful. Hope inspired others. Hope brought out the best in the kids she worked with and the kids she coached. Hope was everything that a mother could possibly want in a daughter, except one thing, and that was the mountain that Catherine didn’t seem able to scale. And as she stared out the window watching her—what? Niece? Adopted grandchild?—she was trapped between fears. The problem was—although Catherine didn’t recognize this right at that moment—they were the wrong set of fears altogether.

  “How did Murphy die?” I demanded.

  “How? Surely you can figure out the how. Bullet. Knife. Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick. Whatever,” she replied.

  “No. Correct…”

  “It’s the why that concerns us. Tell me,” she continued suddenly, “did they ever arrest someone for Murphy’s murder?”

  “No. Not that I can tell.”

  “Well, it seems to me that in your hunt for answers, you’re looking in the wrong places. No one was arrested. That tells you something, doesn’t it? You want me—or some detective or prosecutor somewhere—to say ‘Well, Murphy was killed by…but we didn’t have enough evidence to make an arrest.’ Because that would be nice and neat and tidy.” She hesitated. “But I never said this was a simple story.”

  What she said was true.

  “Can you think as creatively as Scott and Sally and Hope and Ashley?”

  “Yes,” I replied far too quickly.

  “Good.” She huffed the word out. “Easy to say. Hard to do.”

  I didn’t respond to what she said. To answer might have been to insult myself.

  “But tell me, can you do the same for Michael O’Connell?”

  26

  The First Intrusion

  From the center of the Longfellow Bridge he could see up the Charles toward Cambridge. It was brisk in the early morning, but crews were rowing down the center of the river, their oars sweeping through the inky dark in unison, making small swirls in the placid surface. A sheen was on the water as the rising light scoured the liquid. He could hear the crews grunting in syncopation, their rhythm defined by the steady beat of the coxswain’s voice. He particularly liked the way the smallest man set the pace, how the slightest of the team ordered the larger, stronger men to his command. The least was the most important; he was the only one who could see where they were going, and he controlled the steering. O’Connell liked to think that even though he was strong enough to pull an oar, he was also smart enough to sit in the stern with the rudder.

  Michael O’Connell often went to the walkway across the bridge when he needed to think through a complicated problem. The traffic moved recklessly on the roadway. Pedestrians kept up their get-to-the-office pace across the sidewalk. Beneath him the water flowed seaward, and in the distance, T trains filled with commuters emerged from beneath the streets. It seemed to O’Connell that he was the only one standing still. A hundred things common to the city morning should have distracted him, but he found that where he stood, he could concentrate fully on whatever dilemma was in his life.

  He thought: I have two.

  Ashley.

  And the ex-cop Murphy.

  Clearly, the route to Ashley passed through either Scott or Sally. It was simply a matter of finding it, and he was confident he could do so. The obstacle, however, was the ex-cop, who posed a far more significant problem. He licked his lips, still tasting the blood in his mouth, feeling the swelling from where he’d been slapped. But the rednes
s and welts faded much faster than his memory. As soon as O’Connell surfaced close to the parents, they would sic the private eye on him. And he was uncertain just how dangerous the ex-cop would be. Somewhat less dire than his threats, O’Connell thought. He reminded himself of a simple, critical fact: In all his dealings with Ashley and her family, he needed to be the one capable of power. If there was to be violence, it had to be in his control. Murphy’s presence shifted that balance, and he didn’t like it.

  He reached out and gripped the ornate concrete barrier with both hands, to steady himself. Fury was like a drug, coming on him in waves, turning everything in his sight into a kaleidoscope of emotions. For an instant he stared down at the dark river passing beneath his feet and doubted that even its near-freezing temperatures could cool him down. He breathed out slowly, controlling his rage. Anger was his friend, but he couldn’t let it work against him. He told himself, Stay focused.

  The first order of business was to remove Murphy from the picture.

  He did not think this would be difficult. A little dicey, but not impossible. Not as easy as what he had done with a few computer strokes to Scott and Sally and Hope, just to let them know who they were dealing with. But not beyond him by any means.

  Michael O’Connell looked out across the water and saw one of the crews come to a rest. The shell sliced through the water, driven by momentum, while each rower slumped slightly over his oar, dragging the blades behind them. He liked the way the shell continued, driven by exertion, propelled by nothing more than the memory of muscle. It was like a razor slicing across the surface of the river, and he thought he was much the same.

  He spent much of the day and the first part of the evening keeping watch on the office building where Murphy had his practice. Michael O’Connell had been pleased from the first moment that he’d set eyes upon it; the building was shopworn and shabby and lacked many of the modern security devices that might have made what he had in mind more difficult. O’Connell smiled to himself; if this wasn’t his first rule, it should have been: Always use their weaknesses and make them into your strengths.