The Wrong Man (19 page)

“What they were up against?” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “They didn’t know about the assault on the erstwhile boyfriend. They didn’t know about the, ah,
accident
Ashley’s friend had after their dinner. They didn’t know anything about Michael O’Connell’s reputation, nor the
impressions
he’d made on coworkers, teachers, you name it. The critical information that might have led them in a different direction. All they knew was—what was the word Ashley kept using? He was a
creep.
What an innocent word.”

“Still,
talking to him
? Or
offering money
? Why would they think for a minute that this approach might work?”

“Why wouldn’t it work? Isn’t that what people do?”

“Yes, but—”

“You second-guess instantly. People always believe that they would have answers when the truth is, they wouldn’t. What alternatives did they have, right then?”

“Well, they might have been more aggressive.”

“They didn’t know!” Her voice suddenly picked up in pitch and passion. She leaned toward me and I could see her eyes narrow and flash in frustration and anger. “Why is it so hard for people to understand how powerful the forces of denial are within each and every one of us? We don’t
want
to believe the worst!”

She stopped, taking a deep breath. I started to speak, then she held up her hand.

“Don’t you make an excuse,” she said. “Don’t you imagine that you wouldn’t want to believe the safest thing, when in reality the most dangerous thing was lurking right there in front of you.”

She took another deep breath. “Except for Hope. She saw it. Or, at least, she had some inkling…the vaguest of notions. But for one reason or another, and all of them goddamn wrong and foolish, she couldn’t say anything. Not then.”

14

Foolishness

S
cott shifted about uncomfortably at the bar, nursing his bottle of beer, trying to keep one eye on the doorway to the restaurant and the other on Ashley sitting alone in a quiet booth. She kept looking up, playing with the silverware on the table, drumming her fingers nervously against the wood, while she waited.

He had coached her on what to say when she had called Michael O’Connell and on what she was to do when he arrived. Scott had an envelope with $5,000 in hundred-dollar bills stuck in his jacket pocket. The envelope was stuffed to overflow, and it would make for an impressive wad of cash when tossed down on a tabletop; he was counting on it having an impact greater than the actual sum. As he thought about the money, he could feel sweat sticking unpleasantly beneath his arms. But he guessed that he was far better off than his daughter. She was all knotted up inside. Still, he believed her theatrical abilities would carry her through the meeting. Scott cleared his throat and took another long sip of beer. He flexed his muscles beneath his sports coat and reminded himself for the tenth time that day that a person willing to bully a woman was likely to cower when confronted with someone his own size and strength who was older and more resourceful. He’d spent much of his adult life dealing with students not much different from Michael O’Connell, and he’d intimidated more than a few of them. He signaled to the bartender to bring him another beer.

Ashley, for her part, felt nothing but cold ice and hot tension within.

When she had managed to reach O’Connell on his cell phone, she had been cautious, following a modest script that she and Scott had worked out on the drive back to Boston. Nonconfrontational, but not suggestive, either. The point, she had kept reminding herself, was to get him face-to-face, so that if it was necessary, her father could intervene.

“Michael, it’s Ashley.”

“Where have you been?”

“I had some out-of-town business.”

“What kind of business?”

“The kind we should talk about. Why didn’t you meet me at the museum the other day?”

“I didn’t like the setup. And I didn’t want to hear what you were going to say. Ashley, I really believe we’ve got a good thing going here.”

“If you believe that, then meet me for dinner tonight. Same place we went for our first and only date. Okay?”

“Only,”
he had said. “But only if you promise it’s not going to be the big kiss-off. I need you, Ashley. And you need me. I know it.”

He had sounded small. Almost childlike. It had thrown her into some confusion.

She’d hesitated. “Okay, I promise. Eight tonight, okay?”

“That would be great. We’ve got lots to talk about. Like, the future.”

“Great,” she had breezily lied. She had hung up, and without saying a word about how scared she’d been when he’d followed her through the rain to the T. Not a word about dead flowers. Not a word about anything that truly chilled her.

Now, she made a conscious effort to keep her eyes off her father at the bar, watching the doorway, aware that it was nearly eight, and hoping that there wouldn’t be a replay of the other day. The plan she had worked out with her father was simple: Get to the restaurant early, sit in a booth, so that when O’Connell came in, he would be trapped in his seat by Scott’s sudden appearance, unable to walk out before they’d had a chance to speak to him. The two of them would be like a tag team, forcing him to agree to leave her alone. Strength in numbers. Strength in the public place. Psychologically, her father had insisted, they were more than a match for him, and they were going to control the situation from start to finish.
Just be strong. Be firm. Be explicit. Leave no room for doubt.
Scott had been decisive as he’d described what would happen.
Remember: There are two of us. We’re smarter. We’re better educated. We have greater financial resources. End of story.
She reached out and took a sip of water from the glass in front of her. Her lips were dry and parched. She suddenly felt as if she were adrift on a life raft.

As she placed the glass down, she saw O’Connell come through the door. She half-lifted herself up in her seat and waved to him. She saw him quickly sweep his eyes across the room, but she wasn’t sure whether he’d seen Scott at the bar. She stole a quick look in her father’s direction and saw that he had visibly stiffened.

She took a deep breath and whispered to herself, “Okay, Ashley. Up curtain. Cue music. Showtime.”

O’Connell moved rapidly across the room and quickly slid into the seat across from her in the booth.

“Hey, Ashley,” he said briskly. “Boy, it’s great to see you.”

She was unable to control herself. “Why didn’t you come to lunch like we agreed? And then, when you tailed me…”

“Did it scare you?” he responded, as if he were listening to her tell a small joke.

“Yes. If you say you love me, why would you do something like that?”

He merely smiled, and it occurred to Ashley that she might not want to know the answer to that question. Michael O’Connell tossed his head back a little way, then bent forward. He tried to reach across the table and take her hand, but she swiftly put them under the table on her lap. She didn’t want him to touch her. He half-snorted, half-laughed, and leaned back.

“So, I guess this really isn’t a nice romantic dinner for two, is it?”

“No.”

“And I guess you were lying to me when you said this wasn’t going to be the big kiss-off, weren’t you?”

“Michael, I—”

“I don’t like it when people I love don’t tell me the truth. Makes me angry.”

“I’ve been trying to—”

“I don’t think you fully understand me, Ashley,” he said calmly. No raised voice. No indication that they were speaking of anything more complex than the weather. “Don’t you think I have feelings, too?”

He said this in a flat, almost matter-of-fact voice.
No, I don’t,
flashed through her head, but instead, she said, “Look, Michael, why does this have to be harder than it already is?”

He smiled again. “I don’t think it is hard at all. Because it’s not going to happen. I love you, Ashley. And you love me. You just don’t know it yet. But you will, soon enough.”

“No, I don’t, Michael.” As soon as she spoke, she knew it was the wrong thing to say. She was being concrete, and at the same time talking about the wrong thing, which was
love,
when she needed to be saying something far different.

“Don’t you believe in love at first sight?” he asked almost playfully.

“Michael, please. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

He hesitated and she saw a small smile flit across his face, and she had the horrible thought,
He’s enjoying this.

“It seems to me that I’m going to have to prove my love to you,” he said. Still smiling, almost grinning.

“You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

His voice sounded smug. “You’re wrong. Completely wrong. I might even say
dead
wrong, but I wouldn’t want to give you an inaccurate impression.”

Ashley took a sharp, deep breath and realized nothing was going the way she’d hoped it would, then lifted her right hand to her hair, pushing it back from her face twice. This was the signal for her father to inject himself. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him bolt from his seat at the bar and cross the small restaurant in three huge strides. As planned, he stood at the table, blocking O’Connell from rising from the booth.

“I don’t think you are listening to her,” Scott said. He spoke quietly, but with a cold forcefulness that he used on reluctant students.

O’Connell kept his eyes on Ashley.

“So, you thought you needed help?” he asked.

She nodded.

He slowly pivoted in his seat and looked up at Scott, as if measuring him.

“Hello, Professor,” he said calmly. “Won’t you have a seat?”

Hope quietly watched Sally as she worked on the
New York Times
crossword puzzle left over from the previous Sunday. She never worked in pencil, tapping her pen against her front teeth, before finally committing letters to blocks and slowly, steadily filling in the blank spaces. The silences that she had become accustomed to, Hope thought, were growing even more frequent. She looked over at Sally and wondered what was making her so unhappy.

“Sally, don’t you think we should talk about this guy that Ashley seems to have taken up with?”

Sally lifted her head when she heard Hope’s question. She had been about to write down the answer to 7 ACROSS, four letters, the clue being
Murderous Clown
and the word being
Gacy.
She hesitated. “I don’t know what there is to talk about. Scott should be able to handle this with Ashley. I’m hoping that he’ll call sometime this evening and say it’s all straightened out.
Finito.
Kaput. On with everything else. We’re just out our share of the five grand.”

“You’re not afraid that this guy might be worse than we think?”

Sally shrugged. “He sounds to me like a nasty guy, sure. But Scott is pretty capable at dealing with college students, so my guess is, he’s out of Ashley’s life any minute now.”

Hope framed her next question carefully. “In your experience, like in divorce cases and domestic disputes, are people bought off that easily?”

She knew that the answer was no and that on far more than a few occasions she had listened to Sally as she had vented at the dinner table, or even in bed later, over the pigheadedness of clients and their families.

“Well,” Sally said with a lack of urgency that infuriated Hope, “I think we should just wait and see. No use in preparing for a problem that we don’t know exists.”

Hope shook her head. She couldn’t help herself. “That’s the damn stupidest thing I’ve heard in some time,” she replied, her voice rising slightly. “We don’t know if a storm is going to hit, so why buy candles, batteries, and extra food? We don’t know that we’re going to get the flu, so why get a shot?”

Sally put down the crossword puzzle. “Okay,” she said, irritation creeping into her own words, “precisely what sort of batteries would you like to buy? What sort of inoculation is out there?”

Hope looked across at her partner of so many years and thought how little she really knew about Sally and about herself. They lived in a world where normal was defined differently, and Hope thought sometimes it was nothing but minefields.

“I can’t answer you, you know that,” she said slowly. “I just think we should be doing something, and instead, we’re sitting around waiting for Scott to call and tell us everything is back to the way it was, and I don’t imagine for an instant that we’re going to get that call. Or, indeed, whether we deserve that call.”

“Deserve?”

“Think about it while you finish your puzzle. I’m going to read for a bit.” Hope took a deep breath, thinking that there were some far greater puzzles that Sally could be working on.

Sally nodded, dropping her eyes to the puzzle page in front of her. She wanted to say something to Hope, something reassuring, something affectionate, something that would defuse some of the tension around their house, but instead, she looked down and saw that 3 DOWN was
What the Muse Sang,
and she remembered that the opening of Homer’s
Iliad
was “Sing, O muse, of the anger of Achilles.” There were four blank boxes, with the last letter needing to be
E,
and so it was not hard for her to come up with
rage.