The Wrong Man (66 page)

“Ashley!” he cried out. “Where the hell are you?”

From his seat in the living room, his father shouted, “You ain’t going to find nothing and nobody. But you keep on looking, if that’s gonna make you feel better.” Then he laughed, a false, phony laugh, provoking even more rage.

Michael O’Connell gritted his teeth and threw open the bathroom door. He pulled aside a shower curtain that was grimy with mildew and mold. A vial of pills perched on the sink corner suddenly tumbled to the floor, spreading tablets across the tile. He bent down and picked up the plastic bottle, saw that it was heart medication, and laughed.

“So, the old ticker giving you some troubles, huh?” he said loudly.

“You leave my things alone,” the father shouted in reply.

“Screw you,” Michael O’Connell whispered to himself. “I hope whatever is wrong hurts like hell before it kills you.”

He tossed the vial back down on the floor, crushed it and all the scattered pills beneath his foot, and left the bathroom. He walked into the other bedroom.

The queen-size bed was unmade, its sheets filthy. The room smelled of cigarettes, beer, and soiled clothing. A plastic laundry basket in one corner was overflowing with sweatshirts and underwear. The bedside table was cluttered with more pill canisters, half-filled liquor bottles, and a broken alarm clock. He emptied all the pills into his hand and stuffed them into his pocket, tossing the canisters back on the bed. That will be a surprise when you need them, he thought.

Michael O’Connell walked to the closet and jerked open the double doors. Half the closet—the half that had once held his mother’s things—was empty. The rest was occupied by his father’s clothing—all the slacks and dress shirts and sports coats and ties that he never wore.

He left the doors open and went to the sliding glass door that led out to the backyard. He pulled on it, but it was locked. He pressed his face up against the glass, peering into the darkness. He unlocked the door and stepped outside, ignoring the cry from his father behind him: “What the hell you doing now?”

Michael O’Connell peered right and left. No place back there to hide, he thought.

He turned and went back inside. “I’m going to look in the basement,” he shouted. “You want to save me some trouble, tell me where she is, old man? Or maybe I’m going to have to ask you the hard way.”

“Go ahead. Check the basement. And you know what? You don’t scare me much now. You never did.”

We’ll see about that, Michael O’Connell said to himself.

He went over to the single hallway door that led to the basement. It was a dark, closed-in place, filled with spiderwebs and dust. Once, when he was nine, his father had forced him down there and locked the door. His mother had been out and he’d done something to anger the old man. After whacking him on the side of the head, he’d thrust the child down the stairs and left him in the dark for an hour. Michael O’Connell stood at the top of the stairs and thought that what he’d hated the most about his father and his mother was that no matter how many times they had shouted and screamed and traded punches, it only seemed to link them more tightly. Everything that should have driven them apart had actually cemented their relationship.

“Ashley!” he shouted. “You down there?”

A single overhead bulb threw a little light in the corners. He peered through each shadow, searching for her.

The room was empty.

He could feel anger building in his chest, like heat racing down his arms into clenched fists. He turned and went back to the small living room, where his father waited for him.

“She was here, wasn’t she?” Michael O’Connell asked. “Earlier. To talk to you. I just didn’t get here in time, and then she told you to lie to me, right?”

The older man shrugged. “You still not making any sense.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“If you don’t tell me what happened, what she told you when she got here, where she went, I will hurt you, old man. I am not joking about this. I can do it and I will do it, and trust me, I will deliver a world of pain, and I won’t give a damn about you any more than I ever have. So, tell me, when she called on you, what did you tell her?”

“You’re either crazier than I remember or stupider. Right now, I can’t tell which.” The old man lifted his bottle to his lips and leaned back in his seat.

Michael O’Connell stepped forward and in a single violent swipe knocked the beer bottle from his father’s hand. It slammed against the wall, breaking into pieces. The father barely reacted, although his eyes lingered on the broken bottle, before he turned back and stared at his son.

“It was always a question, wasn’t it? Which one of us was gonna grow up meaner?”

“Screw you, old man. Tell me what I want to know.”

“Get me another beer first.”

Michael O’Connell reached down and grasped his father by the shirt, half-pulling him out of his seat. In the same moment, the father’s right hand shot out and seized the son around the collar, twisting his sweater so that it choked him. Their faces were only inches apart, their eyes locked together. Then O’Connell thrust his father back, and the old man released his son.

Michael O’Connell walked over to the television set. He stared at it for an instant.

“This how you spend your nights? Getting drunk and watching the tube?”

The father didn’t answer.

“Too much of the old idiot box is bad for you. Didn’t you know that?”

Michael O’Connell waited for a second, so that the mocking words would settle in, then he drew back his foot and delivered a karate-style kick to the television, sending it crashing down, the screen shattering.

“Bastard. You’re gonna pay for that.”

“Am I? What else do I have to break to get you to tell me what happened when she called you? How long was she here? What did she promise you? What did you tell her you would do?”

Before his father could reply, he walked over to a bookcase and swept a shelf of knickknacks and photographs to the floor.

“That was just some of your mother’s leftovers. Don’t mean nothing to me.”

“You want me to look around until I find something that does? What did she tell you?”

“Kid,” the old man said through tightly pursed lips, “whatever it is this bit of tail is to you, I don’t know. And what she’s got you into, I don’t know either. You in some kind of trouble? Money trouble?”

Michael O’Connell looked at his father. “What are you talking about?”

“Who’s looking for you, kid? Because I think they’re gonna find you just about any minute, and when they do, they aren’t gonna be nice about it. But maybe you know that already.”

“All right,” Michael O’Connell said slowly. “Last chance before I come over there and start to pay you back for all the times you beat me when I was a kid. Did a girl named Ashley call you today? Did she say she wanted your help in breaking up with me? Did she say she was on her way to talk to you?”

The older man continued to eye his son through narrow, rage-filled eyes. But through the sheet of fury that seemed to be just a second or two away from breaking free, he managed to clench his lips and spit out, “No. No, God damn it. No Ashley. No girl. No nothing like what you just said. And that’s the goddamn truth, whether you want to believe it or not.”

“You’re lying. You old bastard, you’re lying.”

The old man shook his head and laughed, which infuriated Michael O’Connell even more. He felt as if he were on a ledge, trying to keep his balance. What he wanted, more than anything else, was to feel his fists smashing against the old man’s face. But he took a deep breath and told himself that he still needed to know what was happening, because there was some reason he’d been called here. He just couldn’t see what it was.

“She said…”

“I don’t know what she said. But Miss whoever-the-hell-she-is hasn’t called here or shown up at the side door.”

Michael O’Connell took a step back. “I don’t…” His mind was rapidly churning. He could not see why Ashley would send him on a trip to his home unless she had something in mind. What she expected to gain seemed just beyond his reach.

“Who you in trouble with?” the old man asked again.

“Nobody. What do you mean?” Michael spat back, angry at having the train of his thoughts interrupted.

“What is it? Drugs? You pull some kind of low-rent robbery with some guys and then stiff them on the cut? What are you doing that would have guys with money looking for you? You steal something from them?”

“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.” He was confused by the smug look on his father’s face. He realized, in that second, that the old man should be a lot angrier about the shattered television set. The reason he’s not angry is because he knows a new one is heading his way, Michael O’Connell thought.

“Who’ve you been fucking around with, kid? Because there’s someone real pissed with you.”

“Who told you that?”

The older man shrugged. “I ain’t saying. I just know.”

Michael O’Connell straightened up. Nothing makes sense, he thought. Or maybe it does.

“Old man, I will hurt you. You should understand that. You are old and weak and I will cause you great pain. Now tell me what you’re talking about!” he shouted across the room. He took two quick strides, so that he was again looming over his father, who remained in his chair, grinning, wondering whether he’d managed to keep his son in the house long enough for the mysterious Mr. Smith to make the correct arrangements, whatever they might be.

Less than a half mile away from the O’Connell house, on an adjacent street, Hope spotted several beaten old cars and pickup trucks sporting Harley-Davidson wings on stickers, all pulled to the side of the roadway, parked haphazardly. She could see some lights coming from a worn and battered ranch-style home set back from the street and could hear loud voices and hard-rock music. She realized someone was having some sort of get-together. Beer and pizza, she guessed, with a methamphetamine dessert. She stopped her rental car a few feet behind one of the parked cars, so she appeared to be just another visitor.

As quickly as she could, she pulled on the black coveralls that Sally had purchased. She jammed a navy blue balaclava-style face mask and hat into her pocket. Then she slipped on surgical gloves, and a pair of leather gloves over those. She wrapped several strands of black electrician’s tape around her wrists and her ankles, so that no flesh was exposed between the coveralls and her gloves and shoes.

She threw the backpack with the gun over her shoulder and started to jog in the direction of the O’Connell house, her outfit helping her to blend into the night. She had the cell phone in her hand, and she dialed Scott.

“Okay. I’m here. A couple of hundred yards away. What am I looking for?”

“The boy drives a five-year-old red Toyota, with Massachusetts plates,” Scott said. “The father has a black pickup truck, which is parked halfway beneath a carport. The only exterior light is by the side door. That is your entry point.”

“Are they still—”

“Yes. I could hear some things breaking inside.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Where should I—”

“By the carport. On the right side. It’s cluttered with all sorts of tools and engine parts. You will be able to see them, but not be seen.”

“Okay,” Hope said. “Keep an eye out. I’ll talk to you afterwards.”

Scott hung up. He leaned against the side of the old, ramshackle barn and watched. There was very little light, he thought. No streetlamps in this rural section of the world. As long as Hope clung to the shadows, she would be fine.

Then he stopped, because the notion that
she would be fine
made absolutely no sense whatsoever. None of them were going to be fine, he realized. Except maybe Ashley, and she was the whole reason they were doing what they were doing.

Scott wondered, if he was so crippled and scared by the night that was unfolding, how did Hope, who was the actual performer on the stage the three of them had created, manage to control her doubts?

Running crouched over at the waist, more like some feral animal than the athlete she had once been, Hope cut across the side yard and slid herself up against the back wall of the carport. She pivoted about, lowered herself to the ground, and took a moment to get her bearings. The closest houses were all at least thirty or forty yards away, across the street.

She rolled her head back against the wall of the carport and shut her eyes.

Hope tried to do some sort of odd inventory of her emotions, as if she might be able to find the one that would power her through the next few minutes. She pictured Nameless lying dead in her arms and then, in her mind’s eye, substituted Ashley for her dog.

This toughened her.

She managed to find a little more iron in the thought that O’Connell would come after Catherine, as well. She knew her mother would fight hard, but that wasn’t a fight she thought the older woman could win.

She added up all the threats to their lives and did the equation. She tried to subtract doubt and uncertainty from the sum. Everything that had seemed so clear-cut and obvious when the three of them were sitting in their comfortable living room now seemed perverse, wrong, and wildly impossible. She was sweating hard, and she knew her hands were shaking.