The Wrong Man, Page 2

  Vicki shook her head. Some of the players had gathered around, and Hope dismissed them back to their positions. “Do you think you can stand up?”

  Vicki nodded again, and Hope took her by the arm and steadied her as she rose. “Let’s sit on the bench for a bit,” she said calmly. Vicki started to shake her head, but Hope gripped her arm more tightly.

  On the nearby sideline, the one parent had raised his voice further and was now verbally assaulting the other coach. No obscenities had spilled as yet, but Hope knew they couldn’t be far behind. She turned to the sideline.

  “Let’s stay calm,” she told him. “You know the rules about taunting.”

  The father shifted his glance to her. She saw his mouth open, as if to say something, then stop. For a second, he seemed about to release his anger. Then the barest restraint showed on his face, and he glared at Hope, before turning away. The other coach shrugged, and Hope heard him mutter, “Idiot” under his breath. She steered Vicki away and slowly began to escort her across the field. Vicki was still a little wobbly, but she managed to say, “My dad gets crazy.” The words were spoken with such simplicity and so much hurt that Hope understood, in that second, there was far more to that moment than a collision on the field.

  “Maybe you should come talk to me about it after practice this week. Or come into the guidance office when you have a free period.”

  Vicki shook her head. “Sorry, Coach. Can’t. He won’t let me.”

  And there it was.

  Hope squeezed the teenager’s arm. “We’ll figure it out some other time.”

  This, she hoped was true. As she seated Vicki on the bench and substituted a new player into the game, she thought to herself that nothing was fair, nothing was equal, nothing was right. She glanced across the field, to where Vicki’s father stood, a little ways apart from the other parents, his arms crossed, glaring, as if counting the seconds that his daughter remained out of the game. Hope understood, in that moment, that she was stronger, faster, probably better educated, certainly far more experienced at the game. She had acquired every coaching license, attended advanced training seminars, and with a ball at her own feet, she could have embarrassed the lumbering father, dizzying him with sleight of foot and change of pace. She could have displayed her own skills, alongside championship trophies and her NCAA All-American certificate, but absolutely none of it would have made an iota of difference. Hope felt a streak of frustrated anger, which she bottled, alongside all the other, similar moments, in her heart. As she thought these things, one of her players broke free down the right and in a fast, almost imperceptible bit of skill, thundered the ball past the keeper. Hope understood, as the team jumped up and cheered at the goal, all smiles, laughter, and high fives, that winning was the one thing, and perhaps the only thing, that kept her safe.

  Sally Freeman-Richards remained in her office, waiting in the October half-light, after her secretary and both her law partners had waved their good-byes and set off in the evening traffic for their homes. At certain times of the year, especially in the fall, the setting sun aggressively dropped behind the white spires of the Episcopal church on the close edge of the college campus and would flood through the windows of the adjacent offices with a blinding glare. It was an unsettled time of the year. The glare had an unwitting, dangerous quality to it; on several occasions students hurrying back from late-day classes had been hit crossing the streets by drivers whose vision had been eradicated by windshield-filling light. Over the years, she had observed this phenomenon from both sides, once defending an unlucky driver, in another instance suing an insurance company on behalf of a student with two broken legs.

  Sally watched the sunlight stream through the office, carving out shadows, sending odd, unidentifiable figures across the walls. She appreciated the moment. Odd, she thought, that the light that seemed so benign could harbor such danger. It was all in where you were located, at just the wrong moment.

  She sighed and thought that her observation, at least in a small way, defined much of the law. She glanced over toward her desktop and grimaced at the stack of manila envelopes and legal files that weighed down one corner. At least a half dozen were piled up, none of which were much more than legal busywork. A house closing. A workplace compensation case. A small lawsuit between neighbors over a disputed piece of land. In another corner, in a separate file cabinet, she kept the cases that intrigued her more, and which really were the underpinnings of her practice. These involved other gay women throughout the valley. There were all sorts of pleadings, ranging from adoptions to marriage dissolutions. There was even a negligent-homicide defense that she was taking second chair on. She handled her caseload with expertise, charging reasonable rates, holding many hands, and thought of herself at her best as the lawyer of wayward, misplaced emotions. That some sense of payback, or debt, was involved, she knew, but she didn’t like to be nearly as introspective about her own life as she was frequently forced to be about others’.

  She seized a pencil and opened one of the boring files, then just as quickly pushed it aside. She dropped the pencil back into a jar labeled WORLD’S BEST MOM. She doubted the accuracy of this sentiment.

  Sally rose, thought that there was nothing really pressing that required her to work late, and was wondering idly whether Hope was home yet, and what Hope might concoct for dinner, when the phone rang.

  “Sally Freeman-Richards.”

  “Hello, Sally, it’s Scott.”

  She was mildly surprised to hear her ex-husband’s voice.

  “Hello, Scott. I was just on my way out the door…”

  He pictured her office. It was probably organized and neat, he thought, unlike the chaotic clutter of his own. He licked his lips for an instant, thinking how much he hated that she had kept his last name—her argument had been that it would be easier on Ashley as she grew up—but hyphenated in her own maiden name.

  “Do you have a moment?”

  “You sound concerned.”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps I should be. Perhaps not.”

  “What is the problem?”

  “Ashley.”

  Sally Freeman-Richards caught her breath. When she did converse with her ex-husband, it was generally terse, to-the-point conversations, over some minor point left over from the detritus of their divorce. As the years had passed since their breakup, Ashley had been the only thing that truly kept them linked, and so their connections had been mostly the stuff of transportation between houses, of paying for school bills and car insurance. They had managed a kind of détente, over the years, where these matters were dealt with in a perfunctory, efficient manner. Little was ever shared about whom they had each become or why; it was, she thought, as if in the memories and perceptions of each, their lives had been frozen at the moment of divorce.

  “What’s the matter?”

  Scott Freeman hesitated. He wasn’t precisely sure how to put what was troubling him into words.

  “I found a disturbing letter among her things,” he said.

  Sally also hesitated. “Why were you going through her things?”

  “That’s really irrelevant. The point is, I found it.”

  “I’m not sure it is irrelevant. You should respect her privacy.”

  Scott was instantly angered, but decided not to show it. “She left some socks and underwear behind. I was putting them in her drawer. I saw the letter. I read it. It troubled me. I shouldn’t have read the letter, I guess, but I did. What does that make me, Sally?”

  Sally didn’t answer this question, although several replies jumped to her mind. Instead, she asked, “What sort of letter was it?”

  Scott cleared his throat, a classroom maneuver to gain himself a little time, then simply said, “Listen.” He read the letter to her.

  When he stopped, they both let silence surround them.

  “It doesn’t sound all that bad,” Sally finally said. “It sounds like she has a secret admirer.”

  “A secret admirer. That has
a quaint, Victorian sound to it.”

  She ignored his sarcasm and remained quiet.

  Scott waited for a moment, then asked, “In your experience, all the cases you handle, wouldn’t you think this letter had overtones of obsession? Maybe compulsion? What sort of person writes a letter like that?”

  Sally took a deep breath and silently wondered the same thing.

  “Has she mentioned anything to you? About anything like this?” Scott persisted.

  “No.”

  “You’re her mother. Wouldn’t she come to you if she was having some sort of man trouble?”

  The phrase man trouble hung in the space in front of her, glowing with electric anger between them. She didn’t want to respond.

  “Yes. I presume so. But she hasn’t.”

  “Well, when she was here visiting, did she say anything? Did you notice anything in her behavior?”

  “No and no. What about you? She spent a couple of days at your place…”

  “No. I hardly saw her. She was off visiting friends from high school. You know, off at dinner, back at two a.m., sleep to noon, and then paddle around the house until she started all over again.”

  Sally Freeman-Richards took a deep breath. “Well, Scott,” she said slowly, “I’m not sure that it’s something to get all that bent out of shape about. If she’s having some sort of a problem, sooner or later she’s going to bring it up with one of us. Maybe we should give Ashley her space until then. And I don’t know that it makes much sense to assume there’s a problem before we hear that there is one directly from her. I think you’re reading too much into it.”

  What a reasonable response, Scott thought. Very enlightened. Very liberal. Very much in keeping with who they were and where they lived. And, he thought, utterly wrong.

  She stood up and wandered over to an antique cabinet in a corner of the living room, taking a second to adjust a Chinese plate displayed on a stand. A frown crossed her face as she stepped away and examined it. In the distance, I could hear some children playing loudly. But in the room where our conversation continued, there was nothing other than a ticktock of tension.

  “How, precisely, did Scott know something was wrong?” she asked, repeating my question back to me.

  “Correct. The letter, as you quote it, could have been almost anything. His ex-wife was wise not to jump to conclusions.”

  “A very lawyerly approach?” she demanded.

  “If you mean cautious, yes.”

  “And wise, you think?” she questioned. She waved her hand in the air, as if dismissing my concerns. “He knew because he knew because he knew. I suppose you might call it instinct, but that seems simplistic. It’s a little bit of that leftover animal sense that lurks somewhere within all of us, you know, when you get the feeling that something is not right.”

  “That seems a little far-fetched.”

  “Really? Have you ever seen one of those documentaries about animals on the Serengeti Plain in Africa? How often the camera catches a gazelle lifting its head, suddenly apprehensive? It can’t see the predator lurking close by, but…”

  “All right. I’ll go along with you for a moment. I still don’t see how—”

  “Well,” she interrupted, “perhaps if you knew the man in question.”

  “Yes. I suppose that might help. After all, wasn’t that the same problem facing Scott?”

  “It was. He, of course, at first truly knew nothing. He had no name, no address, no age, description, driver’s license, Social Security card, job information. Nothing. All he had was a sentiment on a page and a deep-seated sensation of worry.”

  “Fear.”

  “Yes. Fear. And not a completely reasonable one, as you point out. He was alone with his fear. Isn’t that the hardest sort of anxiety? Danger undefined, and unknown. He was in a difficult situation, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Most people would do nothing.”

  “Scott, it would seem, wasn’t like most people.”

  I remained quiet, and she took a deep breath before continuing.

  “But, had he known, right then, right at the beginning, who he was up against, he might have been…” She paused.

  “What?”

  “Lost.”

  2

  A Man of Unusual Anger

  The tattoo artist’s needle buzzed with an urgency that reminded him of a hornet flying around his head. The man with the needle hovering over him was a thickset, heavily muscled man, with multihued, entwined decorations creeping like vines up both arms, past his shoulders, and swirling around his neck, ending in a serpent’s bared fangs beneath his left ear. He bent down, like a man considering a prayer, the needle in hand. He stooped to the task, then hesitated, looking up and asking, “You sure about this, man?”

  “I’m sure,” Michael O’Connell replied.

  “I never put a tat like this on anybody.”

  “Time for a first, then,” O’Connell said stiffly.

  “Man, I hope you know what you’re doing. Gonna hurt for a couple of days.”

  “I always know what I’m doing,” O’Connell answered. He gritted his teeth a little against the pain and leaned back in the tattoo parlor chair. He stared down and watched as the burly man began to work over the design. Michael O’Connell had chosen a scarlet heart with a black arrow driven through it, dripping blood tears. In the center of the pierced heart, the tattoo would have the initials AF. What was unusual about the tattoo was the location. He watched the artist struggle a little. It was more awkward for him to put the heart and initials on the ball of the sole of O’Connell’s right foot than it was for O’Connell to keep his leg lifted and steady. As the needle pierced the skin, O’Connell waited. It is a sensitive location. Where one might tickle a child or caress a lover. Or step on a bug. It was the location best suited for the multiplicity of his feelings, he thought.

  Michael O’Connell was a man with few outward connections, but thick ropes, razor wires, and dead-bolt locks constricted him within. He was a half inch under six feet in height and had a thick, curly head of dark hair. He was broad through the shoulders, the result of many hours lifting weights as a high school wrestler, and trim through the waist. He knew that he was good-looking, had a magnetism in the lift of his eyebrows and the way he sauntered into any situation. He affected a kind of carelessness about his clothing that made him seem familiar and friendly; he favored fleece over leather so that he would fit in with the student population better and avoided wearing anything reminiscent of where he had grown up, such as too tight jeans or T-shirts with tightly rolled sleeves. He walked down Boylston Street toward Fenway, letting the midmorning breeze wrap itself around him. It had a suggestion of November in its breath, swirling some fallen leaves and debris off the street into a small whirlwind of trash. He could taste a little of New Hampshire in the air, a crispness that reminded him of his youth.

  His foot hurt him, but it was a pleasant pain.

  The tattoo artist had given him a couple of Tylenol and placed a sterile pad over the design, but he had warned O’Connell that the pressure of walking on the tattoo might be hard. That was all right, regardless how crippled he might be for a few days.

  He wasn’t far from the Boston University campus, and he knew a bar that opened early. He limped along, making his way down a side street, hunched over a little, trying with each step to measure the shafts of electric hurt that radiated upward from his foot. It was a little like playing a game, he thought to himself. This step, I’ll feel pain all the way to my ankle. This step, all the way to my calf. Will I feel it all the way to my knee, or beyond? He pushed open the door to the bar and stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, smoky interior.

  A couple of older men were at the bar, seated with bent shoulders as they nursed their liquor. Regulars, he thought. Men with needs defined by a dollar and a shot glass.

  O’Connell moved to the bar, slapped a couple of bucks down on the counter, and motioned to the bartender.

  �
�Beer and a shot,” O’Connell said.

  The bartender grunted, expertly drew a small glass of beer with a quarter inch of foam at the top, and poured off a shot glass with amber Scotch. O’Connell tossed back the shot, which burned his throat harshly, and followed it with a gulp from the beer. He gestured at the glass.

  “Again,” he said.

  “Let’s see the money,” the bartender replied.

  O’Connell pointed. “Again.”

  The bartender didn’t reply. He’d already made his statement.

  O’Connell considered a half dozen things he might say, all of which might lead to a fight. He could feel adrenaline starting to pump in his ears. It was one of those moments where it didn’t really matter if he won or if he lost, it was just the relief he would feel in throwing punches. Something in the sensation of his fist and another man’s flesh was far more intoxicating than even the liquor; he knew it would erase the throbbing in his foot and energize him for hours to come. He stared at the bartender. He was significantly older than O’Connell, pale, with a pronounced gut around his waist. It wouldn’t be much of a fight, O’Connell thought, feeling his own taut muscles contracting with energy, begging to be released. The bartender watched him warily; years spent on that side of the bar had given him an understanding of the way a man’s face suggested what he was about to do.

  “You don’t think I’ve got the money?” O’Connell asked.

  “Need to see it,” the bartender replied. He had stepped back, and O’Connell noticed that the other men at the bar had shrunk away, their eyes lifted up to the dark ceiling. They, too, were veterans of this particular conflict.

  He looked at the bartender again. The man was too old and too experienced in the world defined by the gloomy corners of the decrepit bar to be taken unawares. And, in that second, O’Connell realized that the bartender would have some ready source of man-made equality. An aluminum baseball bat, or maybe a short-handled wooden fish billy. Maybe something more substantial, like a chrome-plated nine millimeter or a twelve gauge. No, he thought, not the nine millimeter. Too hard to chamber a round. Something older, more antique, like a .38 police special, safety disengaged, loaded with wadcutters, so to maximize the damage to flesh, minimize the damage to the property. It would be located out of sight, in easy reach. He did not think he could jackknife across the bar fast enough to reach the bartender before the man grabbed the weapon.