The Wrong Man

The woman snorted. “And got his damn fool self busted, huh? I always figured him for something a little more clever.”

“Smart guy, right?”

“Acted smart. I’m not sure the two are the same.”

Scott smiled. “Anyway,” he said slowly, “what we’re really interested in is background. I’ve still got to interview his father, but, you know, sometimes the neighbors…” He didn’t need to finish because the woman nodded vigorously.

“Don’t know too much. We’ve only been here a couple of years. But the old man-well, he’s been here since the Ice Age. And he ain’t particularly popular around here.”

“Why is that?”

“He’s on disability. Used to work at one of the shipbuilders over in Portsmouth. Had some kind of accident. Said he hurt his back. Collects a check every month from the company, from the state, and from the Feds, too. But for a guy that says he’s hurt, he seems to get around okay. Moonlights as a roofer, which is kinda odd work for a guy who claims to be crippled. My husband says he gets paid in cash under the table. I always figured it would be some tax guy snooping around here, asking questions.”

“That doesn’t say why people don’t-”

“He’s just a mean-ass drunk. And when he gets drunk, he gets abusive. Makes a racket. You can hear him screaming all sorts of language in the middle of the night, except, odd thing is, there ain’t no one there for him to scream at. Sometimes he comes out and shoots off some old gun he keeps in that mess he calls home. There’s kids around, but he don’t care. Took a shot at one of the neighborhood dogs once, too. Not mine, luckily. Anyway, opened fire for no real reason at all, just because he could. Just a bad dude, all around.”

“And the son?”

“Like I said, I hardly knew him. But the apple, as they say, don’t fall far from the damn tree. At least, don’t sound like it.”

“What about the mother?”

“She died. I never knew her. It was an accident. Or so the story went. Some people think she took her own life. Others want to blame her old man. Police looked pretty hard at the whole thing. It was pretty suspicious. But then, it got dropped. Maybe something in the papers back then, I don’t know. It happened before I got here.”

The dog barked once more, and Scott stepped back.

“Thanks very much,” he said. “One thing. Please keep this confidential. It sort of screws up any questions we might ask if people start talking.”

“Ah, sure.” The woman pushed at the dog with her foot and took a drag from the cigarette. “Hey, can you folks down in Massachusetts put the old man in jail alongside the kid? It sure would make things quieter around here.”

Scott spent the rest of the morning working his way around the neighborhood, pretending to be a variety of investigators. Only once did he get asked for some identification, and he backed his way out of that conversation quickly. He didn’t learn much. The O’Co

There had been no sign of the elder O’Co

He knew he would have to knock on that door, but he was as yet unsure exactly who to pose as. He decided he would make one more effort, at the local library, to find out about the circumstances surrounding O’Co

The town’s library, in contrast to the bedraggled buildings on side streets and former farmland, was a two-story, glass-and-brick building, adjacent to a new police department and town offices complex.

Scott approached the main desk, and a slight, thin woman, maybe a half dozen years older than Ashley, looked up as she was sliding library cards into the backs of books and asked him not unpleasantly, “May I help you?”

“Yes. Do you keep high school yearbooks on file? And could you direct me to where you would keep local newspapers on microfilm?”

“Sure. The microfilm room is over there.” She gestured with her hand toward a side room. “And the collection is pretty clearly marked. Do you need help with the machine?”

Scott shook his head. “Think I can manage. The yearbooks?”

“In the reference section. What year were you hunting down?”

“Lincoln High, class of 1995.”

The young woman made a small face of surprise, then gri

“Did you know a young man named Michael O’Co

She froze. For a second she didn’t reply.

Scott watched the young woman’s face race through bad memories.

“What has he done?” she finally whispered.

Sally pored over an array of legal texts and law review articles, searching for something, but precisely what, she was unsure. The more she read, the more she assessed, the more she analyzed, the worse she felt. It was one thing, she thought harshly to herself, to be on the intellectual side of crime, where actions were seen in the abstract world of the courtroom, involving arguments and evidence, search and seizure, confessions, forensics-and then the system took over. The criminal justice system was designed to bleed the humanity out of actions. It neutered the reality of a crime, turning it into something theatrical. She was familiar and comfortable with the process. But what she was doing was a step in a far different direction.

Find a crime.

Figure out how to assign it to Michael O’Co

Put him in jail. Go on with their lives. It sounded simple. Scott’s enthusiasm had been encouraging, until she had actually sat down and tried to work her way through all the various possibilities.

The best she had come up with so far were fraud and extortion.

It would be tricky, she thought to herself, but they could probably take all of O’Co

The problem-or, Sally thought ruefully, the first problem of what were likely to be many-was what she remembered Scott saying after he’d handed over the $5,000. He thought that O’Co

If that were true, suddenly they would be seen as the liars. O’Co

And, she realized, even if they were successful, there was no guarantee that O’Co

Sally rocked back in her seat.

Kill him, she thought.

She gasped out loud. She could not believe what her own voice was saying to her.