The Wrong Man (36 page)

“She’s a class act, Mike-y boy. Unlike you, she’s got possibilities. She comes from fine folks, and she’s well educated and filled with all sorts of big-time potential. You, on the other hand, come from shit.” Murphy accentuated the last few words by smacking the younger man hard. “And you’re going to end up in shit. What? Prison? Or do you think you can manage to stay out?”

“I’m okay. I haven’t broken any laws.”

The repeated blows were taking effect. O’Connell’s voice cracked slightly, and Murphy thought he could hear a little quaver behind the words.

“Really? You want me looking at you any closer?”

Murphy had come full circle, and once again he tapped the gun barrel against the bridge of O’Connell’s nose, demanding a response.

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

He grabbed O’Connell’s chin and twisted it painfully. He could see some tears in the corners of the younger man’s eyes. “But, Mike-y, don’t you think you ought to be asking me a little more politely to stay out of your life?”

“Please stay out of my life,” O’Connell said slowly and quietly.

“Well, I’d like to. I’d genuinely like to. So, Mike-y boy, just looking at it all, objective-like, don’t you think it would be a really, really good thing for you to absolutely make sure that I’m not in your life anymore? That this little get-together, friendly as it might be, is the absolute last time you and I ever see each other? Right?”

“Right.” O’Connell wasn’t sure which question to answer, but he was sure that he didn’t want to be hit again. And while he didn’t think that the man in front of him would shoot him, he wasn’t totally sure.

“I need to be persuaded, don’t I?”

“Yes.”

Murphy smiled. Then he patted O’Connell on the head. “Just so we truly understand each other, what we’re doing here is negotiating our own private, special, one-on-one temporary restraining order. Just as if we’d gone to court. Except ours is fucking permanent, got it? I know you know what one of them means: stay away. No contact. But ours, because it is a special one, just between you and me, Mike-y boy, well, because ours isn’t any wimpy old sort of eminently forgettable piece of paper issued by some old-fart judge that you’re not gonna pay any attention to, ours comes with a real guarantee.”

With the final word, Murphy slammed his fist into O’Connell’s cheek, sending him sprawling on the floor. Murphy was over him, automatic in hand, before the younger man had a chance even to collect his thoughts.

“Maybe I should just stop fucking around and end this right now.” With an audible click, Murphy released the safety catch on the pistol with his thumb. He held up his left hand as if to shield himself from the blowback of brains and blood.

“Give me a reason. One way or the other, Mike-y boy. But give me a reason to make a decision.”

O’Connell tried to twist away from the gun barrel, but the ex-detective’s weight pinned him to the floor. “Please,” he suddenly pleaded, “please, I’ll stay away, I promise. I’ll leave her alone.”

“Good start, asshole. Keep going.”

“I’ll never have any contact whatsoever. She’s out of my life. I’ll stay away. What do you want me to say?”

O’Connell was nearly sobbing. Each phrase seemed more pitiful than the last.

“Let me think about it, Mike-y boy.”

Murphy lowered his shielding hand and pulled his weapon back from O’Connell’s face.

“Don’t move. I just want to look around.”

He walked over to the cheap table where the computer rested. A handful of unmarked rewritable discs was spread about. Murphy grabbed them and slipped them into his coat pocket. Then he turned back toward the younger man, who remained on the floor. “This where you keep your Ashley file? This where you screw around with folks who are a whole lot better than you?”

O’Connell simply nodded and Murphy smiled. “I don’t think so,” he said briskly. “Not anymore.” Then he smashed the butt of the pistol down onto the keyboard. “Whoops,” he said as the plastic splintered. Two more blows to the screen and the mouse pad left the machine in pieces.

O’Connell simply watched, saying nothing. Using the barrel of the gun, Murphy poked at the shattered computer. “I think we’re just about finished, Mike-y boy.” He walked back across the room and stood above O’Connell. “I want you to remember something,” he said quickly.

“What?” O’Connell’s eyes were filled, as Murphy expected them to be.

“I can always find you. I can always run you to ground, no matter what nasty little rathole you crawl into.”

The younger man just nodded.

Murphy looked closely at him, staring hard, searching his face for signs of defiance, signs of anything other than compliance. When he was persuaded that there were none, he smiled.

“Good. You’ve learned a lot tonight, Mike-y boy. A real education. And it hasn’t been too bad, has it? I’ve pretty much enjoyed our little get-together. Almost fun, wouldn’t you say? No, probably you wouldn’t. But there’s just one last thing…”

He suddenly bent over and dropped to his knees, once again pinning O’Connell to the floor. In the same movement, he abruptly shoved the barrel of the automatic into O’Connell’s mouth, feeling it smash against his teeth. He could see terror in the younger man’s eyes, exactly what he was looking for.

“Bang,” he said quietly.

Then he slowly removed the weapon from O’Connell’s mouth, rose, gave him a grin, then pivoted abruptly and exited.

The cool night air hit Matthew Murphy in the face and he wanted to put his head back and laugh out loud. He replaced the .380 automatic in the shoulder holster, adjusted his coat so he would look presentable, and started off down the street, moving along rapidly, but not in any particular hurry, enjoying the darkness, the city, and the sensation of success. He was already calculating how long it would take him to drive back to Springfield and wondering whether he would get there in time to catch a late dinner. He took a few strides and started to hum to himself. He had been right. The opportunity to deal with a punk like O’Connell was worth the 10 percent discount he was going to give Sally Freeman-Richards. Now that wasn’t so damn hard, was it? he said to himself. He was delighted to remind himself that none of his old skills had dissipated, and he felt decidedly younger. First thing in the morning, he would do up a small report—leaving out the parts where the automatic had figured most prominently—and send it along to Sally, accompanied by his bill and his assessment that she would not have to worry about Michael O’Connell again. Murphy prided himself on knowing precisely what fear can do to the minds of weak people.

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

T
he 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.”