The Wrong Man (69 page)

He went back to the driver’s side. Hope had put the key into the ignition, and he could see her face contort with pain as she stripped the tape from her ankles and pulled the tape and the two sets of gloves from her hands. She handed these and her balaclava to Scott. He stood by helplessly as she pulled the knife blade out of her body.

“Jesus!” she gasped. Her head lolled back, and she nearly passed out. But as quickly as this wave came, another arrived. The pain kept her alert. She breathed in sharply.

“I’ve got to get you to a hospital.”

“I’ll get there myself. You’ve got too much to do.” She gestured at the knife. “I’ll keep that.” She dropped it to the floor of the car and pushed it out of sight.

“I could get rid of it,” Scott said.

It was hard for Hope to think completely straight, but she shook her head. “Get rid of that stuff, and the plates, somewhere where they won’t be connected to this car.” She was trying hard to remember everything, trying hard to be organized, but the pain prevented true calm, reasoned thinking. She wished Sally were here. Sally would see most of the angles, all of the details. It was what she was good at, Hope thought. Instead she turned to Scott and tried to look at him as if he were somehow a part of Sally, which, she imagined, he once was.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re back following the plan. I’m okay to drive. You do what you’re supposed to.” She gestured toward the backpack with the gun.

“I can’t leave you. Sally would never forgive me.”

“She won’t have a chance to forgive you if you don’t. We’re way behind schedule. What you have to do now is crucial.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Hope said, although she knew this was a lie. She wasn’t sure about anything. “Go. Go now.”

“What should I tell Sally?”

Hope paused. A dozen thoughts went through her head, but she said only, “Just tell her I’ll be okay. I’ll speak to her later.”

“Are you sure?” He glanced down to where the knife handle had protruded from her side. He could see where the black mechanic’s jumpsuit was stained with blood.

“It’s not nearly as bad as it looks,” Hope lied again. “Just go, before we lose our opportunity.”

The idea that, after everything she’d done, they might fail almost crushed her. She waved her hand toward Scott.

“Go.”

“Okay,” he replied, standing up, stepping back.

“Oh, Scott.”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for coming to help.”

He nodded. “You did all the hard work.” He closed the driver’s-side door and watched as Hope bent to the wheel and started the car. He stepped back, and she pulled away steadily. He continued to watch as she drove down the road, standing alone in the darkness until the red rear lights disappeared in the ink that enveloped him. Then he flung the backpack over his back and started to jog toward the bus route. He was late, he knew, and it might be disastrous, but he still had to play out the hand as Sally had dealt it. He was unsure what Hope was going to accomplish the remainder of that night, but most of their luck needed to ride with her. Then he realized that that might be wrong. Much luck was still needed in other locations that night.

Sally was parked on the edge of a strip-mall lot, waiting for Scott. She glanced down at her watch, then checked the stopwatch, picked up the cell phone, and thought hard about calling, but decided against it. She was perhaps forty-five minutes out of Boston, close to the interstate, a place selected for the same reasons she had selected the spot where she had met with Hope to transfer the gun, but different, in that it would provide Scott easy access to the route back to western Massachusetts.

She leaned her head back against the seat headrest and closed her eyes. She would not allow herself the fear of going through all the possible disasters that might have taken place that night. They were amateurs at the art of killing, she thought. They might each have had some expertise that made the planning, organization, and conceptualizing of death seem manageable and feasible, but when it came down to the actual execution of the plan, they were the rankest of novices. In a way, when she had designed the machinations of that night, she had thought that their inexperience would be their strongest suit. Experts would not have done what they did. The plan was too erratic, too haphazard, and far too dependent on each person managing certain tasks efficiently. That was the strength of the whole idea, she thought.

Educated people would not be doing what they were doing. Drug addicts or violent people might work their way up the ladder of criminality to murder. That was logical.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Perhaps the idea that they could function in a landscape of murder was a fantasy all along. She immediately envisioned Scott and Hope in handcuffs, surrounded by policemen. O’Connell’s father would be giving a statement, and she would be next, as soon as either Scott or Hope broke down under questioning.

And Ashley, even with Catherine at her side, would be facing a future of Michael O’Connell alone.

She opened her eyes and surveyed the green-tinged light of the parking lot.

No sign of Scott.

Hope should be on her way home.

Michael O’Connell should be on the side of the road either trying to repair his flat or waiting for a tow truck. He should be angry and cursing and wondering what the hell was going on. The one thing he wouldn’t be expecting was that he was caught up in a performance in which he was a critical player. Sally smiled. She thought that the part that was most likely to have been performed without dropping a line, or taking a misstep, had been his, and he did not even know it. He was being choked and he wasn’t even aware that he was being neutralized, removed from Ashley’s life right at that moment.

She clenched her fist and imagined, We’ve got you, you bastard.

She breathed out slowly. Maybe.

Scott should be pulling in. Any second.

She pounded on her steering wheel in frustration and despair.

“Where the hell are you?” she whispered fervently, sweeping the area with her eyes again. “Come on, Scott. Get here!”

She reached for the cell phone again, then put it down. Waiting, she understood, was the second-hardest thing. The hardest thing was trusting someone she had once told herself she loved, had left behind, cheated on, and then divorced. In truth, the only thing that maintained any kind of civility between her and her ex-husband was Ashley. That, she guessed, would be enough to get them through the night.

Then her thoughts turned to Hope. She shook her head and felt tears in her eyes. She knew she could trust her completely, though she had done precious little over the past months to deserve that trust. She felt as if she were floating in the air of uncertainty.

“Come on!” she whispered again, as if words alone could make things happen.

A large green Dumpster was located in a far corner of the parking lot where Scott had left his truck. To his immense relief, it was nearly full, not only with plastic bags jammed with debris, but also stray bottles and cans, and uncollected trash. He seized one of the bags that seemed only partway filled, undid the fastener at the top, and thrust the stolen plates and the rest of the leftovers of tape and gloves deep inside. Then he carefully retied the top so that it wouldn’t break free and replaced the bag in the midst of the pile of waste. He guessed that the container would be emptied soon, probably the next day.

He walked back to his truck rapidly and waited until no other cars were leaving before starting the engine.

After placing the backpack on the floor, Scott changed back into a suit and tie. He knew he had to hurry, but more important, he knew he had to avoid attention. He wished that he could speed, but dutifully stayed within the posted limits. Even up on the interstate, he diligently remained in the center lane as he headed to his meeting with Sally.

He did not know what he would say when he saw her.

Trying to formulate words, to fill her in on what had taken place that night, seemed impossible. If he told her nothing, she would hate him. If he told her everything, she would be terrified and hate him. She would want to go to Hope’s side immediately and not do what was next in line on the plan.

It could all fall apart.

He drove through the night knowing that he was going to lie. Perhaps not much, but enough. It made him angry and it made him sad, but mostly it made him feel incompetent and deeply dishonest.

When he pulled into the parking lot from the highway ramp, he spotted Sally. It did not take him long to accelerate into the space next to her. Scott grabbed the backpack with the gun and the dish towel covered with gas and blood and stepped from the car.

Sally remained behind the seat, but she turned on the engine.

“You’re late,” she said. “I don’t know if I have enough time left. Did it go as planned?”

“Not exactly,” Scott said. “It wasn’t as simple as we thought.”

“What do you mean?” Sally asked in her brisk lawyer’s tones.

“There was a bit of a struggle. Hope succeeded, she did what she volunteered to do.” He hesitated. “But she might have gotten hurt a little bit in the confrontation. She’s in the car now, heading home. And I was worried there might be something left behind that indicated she had been there, so I set a small fire.”

“Jesus!” Sally exclaimed. “That wasn’t in the plan!”

“I just was worried about the scene, you know. I thought that would be the best way to compromise what some cop might think had taken place. Isn’t that exactly the sort of thing you told us about?”

Sally nodded. “Yes, yes. Okay. I don’t think it’s a problem.”

“There’s a towel in with the item in the backpack. It will transfer some of the gas to the gun barrel. Get rid of it afterwards.”

Sally nodded again. “That was smart. But Hope, what were you saying about Hope?”

Scott wondered whether he wore the lie on his face. “She’s on schedule now. Do what you have to do and speak with her later.”

“What exactly happened to Hope?” Sally demanded sharply.

“You have to leave. You have to get back to Boston. Time is critical. There’s no way to tell what O’Connell will do.”

“What happened to Hope?” Sally repeated, bitter anger in her voice.

“I told you, she was in a fight. She got cut with a knife. When I left her, she said to tell you she was okay. Got it? That’s exactly what she said.
Tell Sally I’m
okay.
You need to finish the job tonight. We all do. Hope did her part. I did mine. Now do yours. It’s the last thing, and…” He didn’t finish.

Sally hesitated. “Cut with a knife? What do you mean
cut with a knife
? Tell me the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth,” Scott answered her stiffly. “She was cut. That’s it. Now go.”

Sally imagined a hundred different responses to her ex-husband right at that second, but stopped. As angry as she was, she knew that once, years earlier, she had lied to him, and that right then he was lying to her, and that there was absolutely nothing she could do about any of it. She nodded, not trusting her voice anymore, took the backpack, and drove off into the night. Once again, Scott was left behind, staring at car lights disappearing in the darkness.

“And so,” the detective said as he pointed to the crime-scene photographs, “the fire really messed everything up. And, even more than the fire, it’s the damn water that gets poured over everything by the fire department. Of course, you can’t really ask them not to do that,” he said with a wry laugh. “We were just really lucky the whole house didn’t go up in flames. The blaze was pretty much contained to the kitchen area. See the back wall there, all scorched? The arson guy said whoever it was that set the damn thing didn’t know what they were doing, so that instead of spreading across the room, the fire went up the wall and into the ceiling, which was how it got spotted by the neighbor across the way. So all in all, we were fortunate to be able to piece things together.”

“Have you worked many homicides before?” I asked.

“Here? We’re not like Boston or New York. We’re a pretty modest-size department. But the state bureau of forensics is pretty good, and the medical examiner’s office isn’t filled with slouches, so when a killing does come along, we generally get a pretty good handle on it. Most of the homicides we see are like domestic disputes that got out of hand, or else drug deals that turned sour. Most of the time the bad guy is standing there, or at least his buddy is, so someone tells us who we’re looking for.”

“That wasn’t the case this time, was it?”

“Nah. There were some questions made us scratch our heads at first. And there was a whole lot of folks who weren’t going to shed a tear over O’Connell buying the farm. He was a nasty husband, a nasty father, a nasty neighbor, and as dishonest a son of a bitch as the day is long. Hell, if he’d owned a dog, he probably would have starved the beast and kicked it twice a day just on principle, you follow? Anyway, there was just enough left in the house and in the crime scene for us to go on.”

I nodded my head. “But what put you in the right direction?”