The Wrong Man

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 begi

“What?”

“Lost.”

2

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’Co

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

“Time for a first, then,” O’Co

“Man, I hope you know what you’re doing. Go

“I always know what I’m doing,” O’Co

Michael O’Co

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’Co

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’Co

“Beer and a shot,” O’Co

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’Co

“Again,” he said.

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

O’Co

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

O’Co