The Wrong Man (24 page)

I nodded. I was about to say something else, but he waved his hand in that way that I’d already seen, quieting me.

“Actually, another thing you need to always keep in mind,” he said hesitantly. “You must also understand that Michael O’Connell was…” he took a second to breathe in deeply
“…relentless.”

17

A World of Confusion

F
or the first time in her relatively short life, Ashley felt as if her world were not only incredibly small, but now defined by so few things that it lacked anywhere that she could hide, anywhere she could escape to take a small breath of air and gather herself.

The minor irritations and small signs that she was being trailed and observed kept up steadily. Her telephone had become a weapon, filled with silences or heavy breathing. She no longer trusted her computer. She refused to check her e-mail because she could no longer tell who was sending it.

She told her landlord that she had lost her apartment keys, and he sent a locksmith around to replace the locks on the front door, although she doubted it did much good. The locksmith told her that the new locks would keep out most people, but not anyone who actually knew what he was doing. It wasn’t hard for her to imagine that O’Connell would be in the category of people who knew what they were doing.

At her job at the museum some of her coworkers complained that they were getting odd anonymous phone calls and unsettling e-mails suggesting that Ashley was acting behind their backs on some project or bad-mouthing them to management. When Ashley tried to explain that this was all untrue, she thought she wasn’t believed.

Completely out of the blue, one morning a gay coworker angrily accused her of being a closet homophobe. The charge was so ridiculous that Ashley was completely nonplussed. She was incapable of responding. Then a day or so later, a black coworker eyed her suspiciously and refused to have lunch with her that day. When Ashley followed her, trying to see what was wrong, she haughtily announced, “We have absolutely nothing to talk about. Leave me alone.”

After her evening graduate course, Modern European Impressionist Artists, her professor called her into her office and told her that she was in danger of failing if she did not start attending classes.

Ashley was taken aback. Her mouth opened and she stared at the woman, who barely lifted her head from the stacks of papers, slides, and large, glossy art books that littered her desktop. Ashley tried to look around, find something to focus on, and stop the dizzy sensation that threatened to overtake her.

“But that’s impossible,” Ashley said. “I’ve been at every class. The sign-up sheets should have my signature right in the middle.”

“Please don’t lie to me,” the professor said stiffly.

“But I’m not.”

“One of the graduate assistants goes over these, then puts them into the department system,” the professor said coldly. “Of the weekly lectures and additional slide presentations, which we’ve had more than twenty of so far, we can only find your name on two separate occasions. And one of those would be tonight.”

“But I’ve been there every time,” Ashley pleaded. “I don’t understand. Let me show you my notes.”

“Anyone can get someone to take notes for them. Or get someone to let them copy theirs.”

“But I’ve been there. Really. I promise. Someone has made a mistake.”

“Sure. Someone. A mistake. Right. It’s all our fault,” the professor spoke sarcastically.

“Professor, I think someone is deliberately sabotaging my attendance record.”

The professor hesitated, then shook her head. “I’ve never heard of that. What purpose would anyone have…”

“An ex-boyfriend,” Ashley said.

“I repeat, Miss Freeman, what purpose would that have?”

“He wants to control me.”

The professor hesitated again. “Well,” she said slowly, “can you prove this allegation?”

Ashley breathed in slowly. “I don’t know how.”

“You understand I simply can’t take your word for this?”

Ashley started to respond, but the professor held up her hand, cutting Ashley off in midprotest. “I told everyone at the start, in the very first lecture, that attendance was required. I’m not heartless, Miss Freeman. If someone has to miss a single session, perhaps even two, I can see that. Conflicts arise. People get into trouble. But attending class and studying the material in the course is your responsibility. I do not think you will be able to pass this course. In fact, I’m not inclined—”

“Give me a test. A paper. Something that would let me demonstrate that I’ve grasped the elements of each lecture.”

“I don’t do special releases or give special treatment,” the professor said briskly. “If I did, then I would have to do the same for every lazy or less than fully dedicated student who sat where you are sitting, Miss Freeman, quite willing to lie to my face and with one excuse or another, including my dog ate the homework and my grandmother died. Again. Grandmothers seem to die in my classes with depressing frequency and considerable regularity, and often many more times than once. So, no deal, Miss Freeman. Start coming to class. Get a perfect grade on the final—if you can, and I doubt it, because no one ever has—and perhaps I can eke out a passing grade for you. That remains to be seen. Have you considered some other field? I mean, perhaps art and graduate studies aren’t what you should really be doing.”

“Art has always been—”

The professor held up her hand again, shutting off Ashley’s response.

“Really? Perhaps I am wrong. Regardless, good luck, Miss Freeman. You will need it.”

Luck, Ashley thought, has nothing to do with anything.

She exited the professor’s office into a corridor that echoed with emptiness. Somewhere in a stairwell, or rising from another floor, she could hear laughter, but it was disembodied, almost ghostly. She stood, almost frozen in the vacant space. He was there, watching her. She slowly pivoted, as if he were always just beyond her sight, like a shadow trailing her. She listened for a sound, breathing, a whisper, anything concrete that would inform her that he was really there, but she could hear nothing.

Tears began to well up in Ashley’s eyes. She had no doubt that O’Connell had somehow managed to erase her name from the class rolls. She slumped against a wall, breathing in hard. All the hours she had spent in the classes, all the attention she had paid, the notes taken, the information, the knowledge, the appreciation of all the colors, shapes, styles and beauty of the artists studied in the class were somehow, in that moment, rendered moot. It was as if all those moments existed in some different universe where the Ashley that she thought she was went about her life, well on her way to being the person that she hoped to be.

He
is making me disappear.

Anger filled her on a parallel course with despair. She pushed herself off the wall.
This has got to stop.

Scott remained at his desk, hamstrung by what he had read. He felt as if something inside him had frayed. The words on the pages in front of him wavered, like heat above a highway, and he could feel the earliest tightening of panic in his chest.

Professor Burris had sent him a copy of his own article published in the
Journal
and the computer printout of the doctoral thesis written by a Louis Smith at the University of South Carolina. The thesis had been submitted to that school’s history department some eight months prior to Scott’s article, and it had, at its core, an examination of much of the same material. Their similarities were inevitable, and both pieces had relied on some of the same source material.

But that wasn’t the dangerous part. There was simply no denying that a half dozen key paragraphs were
word for word
the same in both. Professor Burris had helpfully highlighted the offending sections in yellow.

In a lengthy scholarly paper for an esteemed journal and in a 160-page double-spaced doctoral thesis, the offending paragraphs constituted only a tiny percent. And the observations they made were hardly of earth-shattering academic importance. But Scott knew that both those aspects were entirely beside the point. They were identical and that was that.

He had a sudden memory of the Red Queen in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Execution first, then we’ll have the trial!

Scott had absolutely no doubt that he had written the sentences in front of him. Whatever hopes he’d had, that somehow one of his two student assistants had accidentally put the words in a note and that he’d used them without double-checking had disappeared. Their work was blameless.

His, on the other hand, apparently was not.

He reeled about in his seat, squirming in turmoil.

Professor Burris had not indicated what the source of the complaint was. Scott presumed it had come from the doctoral student, or from someone on the faculty at the University of South Carolina. Possibly some history buff—of which there were hundreds of thousands around the United States—had made the comparison, but he doubted he or she would have had the reach to enlist a historian as prominent as Burris.

It was almost midday before Scott, unshaven, bleary-eyed, and on his fourth cup of coffee, finally reached the acting chair of the USC History Department on the phone. To his surprise, the man was outgoing and helpful, and clearly unaware that any questions had been raised about Scott’s work. Instead, the acting chair immediately assumed that the fault ran in the other direction.

“Why, certainly I recall that thesis,” the acting chair said. “It received some very high marks from the entire panel. It was well researched and well written and, I believe, is in line for publication somewhere. And the young man, quite a fine student, and quite a fine fellow, I imagine has a terrific career ahead of him. But you say there is some question about the thesis? I find it hard to imagine—”

“I just want to examine some similarities. After all, we work in the same general area of expertise.”

“Of course,” the acting chair said. “Although I would hate to discover that a student here had engaged in any impropriety…”

Scott hesitated. He knew he had given the fellow historian the untrue impression that it was the onetime student who was potentially guilty of an academic felony. “You know, if I could speak with the young man, it might clear things up,” Scott said.

“Why, of course. Let me just check…”

Scott was placed on hold for several nerve-racking minutes. He sat immobile waiting to resume the conversation that might cost him everything that he’d spent years constructing.

“Well, Professor Freeman, sorry to have kept you waiting. It’s a little tricky for anyone to reach out and contact Louis. Young Mr. Smith took his newly minted doctorate and joined Teach For America. Sure as blazes isn’t what most of our students do. Anyway, the number and address we have for him is in some place north of Lander, Wyoming, on an Indian reservation. I’ll give you that now.”

Scott called out to Wyoming, discovered that Louis Smith was stuck in a class of eighth-graders for several hours, left his name and number, and explained that it was urgent. When the phone finally rang, he grabbed at it.

“Professor Freeman? This is Louis Smith.”

“Thanks for calling back,” Scott said.

The young man seemed enthused. “I’m really honored that you would call, Professor Freeman. I’ve read everything you’ve ever published, especially on the early days of the Revolutionary War. That’s my area, too, and I have to admit, I find it all fascinating, all the time. The military maneuvering, the political intrigues, the most improbable success. So many lessons for today. I mean, you can imagine on an Indian reservation how differently people view all those concepts of history that we take for granted.” The young man spoke rapidly, nonstop. But before Scott could interject something, Smith paused and took a breath and apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling. Please, Professor, to what do I owe the honor of this call?”

Scott hesitated. The boundless energy from the young teacher wasn’t what he’d expected. “I’ve read your doctoral thesis…”

“You have! Oh, that’s great, I mean, if you liked it? Did you think that I got it all right?”

“It’s excellent,” Scott said, a little taken aback. “And your insights are right on point.”

“Thank you, Professor. I can’t tell you how much that means. You know, you do all this work, and maybe it gets published by an academic press—I’m still hoping for that—but really hardly anyone except your board and maybe your girlfriend actually sees it. To find out that you’ve actually read it…”

“There is a question,” Scott said stiffly. “There are some similarities between your thesis and a piece I did some months later.”

“Yes. In
The Journal of American History.
I read it carefully, because we dealt with much the same material. But similarities? How do you mean?”

Scott took another deep breath. “I have been accused of plagiarizing some of the paragraphs you wrote. I did not, but I have been accused.”

He stopped and waited. It took Louis Smith a couple of seconds to gather himself.