The Wrong Man

Ashley didn’t answer. She was unsure.

They got their coats and walked out the front door together. Ashley and Catherine paused, standing on the front stoop, staring up and down the block. It was all family-neighborhood quiet. Ashley kept her fingers gripped around the pistol handle hidden deep in her parka pocket, her index finger rubbing against the trigger guard nervously. She was struck with the way her fear of Michael O’Co

She touched the gun barrel. Kill him, she told herself. Because he is killing you.

Still sca

“Keep walking,” Catherine said. “If he’s here, he will show.”

They sidled down the sidewalk, and from behind they heard a car start down the street. Ashley clutched the pistol and felt her heartbeat accelerate. She barely breathed in as the sound increased.

As the car drew abreast of them, she pivoted abruptly, swinging the weapon free and spreading her feet as she crouched into the shooting stance that she had practiced so diligently in her room. Her thumb slid over the safety switch, then to the hammer. She exhaled sharply, almost a grunt of effort, and then a whistle of tension.

The car, with a middle-aged man behind the wheel, rolled past them. The driver didn’t even turn; his eyes were checking addresses on the opposite side of the street.

Ashley groaned. But Catherine kept her wits about her. “You should put that weapon away,” she said quietly. “Before some nice stay-at-home mother spots it in your hand.”

“Where the hell is he?”

Catherine didn’t answer.

The two of them continued slowly. Ashley felt utterly calm, committed, ready to pull out her weapon and end it all with a rapid-fire answer to all his questions. Is this what it feels like to be ready to kill someone? But the real O’Co

When they’d patiently made it around the block and sauntered back to Sally and Hope’s home, Catherine muttered, “All right. We know one thing. He’s not here. He has to be somewhere. Are you ready for the next step?”

Ashley doubted anyone could know the answer to that until they tried.

Michael O’Co

O’Co

The first was to be an anonymous tip to the Internal Revenue Service suggesting that Sally was asking her clients to pay her fees half by check and half in cash. There is nothing, Michael O’Co

This made him laugh out loud.

The second was designed as an equally anonymous tip to the New England offices of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency alleging that Catherine was growing large quantities of marijuana on her farm in a greenhouse inside her barn. He hoped the tip would be enough to get a search warrant. And even if the search turned up nothing-as he knew it would-he suspected the heavy hand of the DEA would wreck all her precious antiques and memorabilia. He could picture her house strewn with her items.

The third was a little surprise that he’d pla

He laughed a little to himself, imagining the explanations that Ashley’s family would try to come up with when they found themselves enmeshed in all sorts of bureaucratic red tape, or sitting across a table in a bright, windowless room from either a DEA agent, an IRS agent, or a police officer who had nothing but contempt for the sort of smug middle-class folks they were.

They might try to blame him, but he doubted it. He just couldn’t be sure, which held him back. He knew that pressing the proper keys on his three entries would undoubtedly leave an electronic footprint that could be traced to his own computer. What he needed to do, he thought, was break into Scott’s house one morning while he was teaching and send the request to Denmark from Scott’s computer. It was also critical to create an untraceable electronic path for the other tips. He sighed. These would require him to travel to southern Vermont and western Massachusetts. Inventing screen personae wasn’t a problem, he thought. And he could send the tips from computers either in Internet cafés or local libraries.

He leaned back in his chair and once again laughed out loud.

Not for the first time, Michael O’Co

As he was gri

It surprised him. He had no friends who would call. He’d quit his mechanic’s job, and no one at the school where he was occasionally taking classes had his number.

For a second, he stared at the small window on the outside of the phone that gave the incoming identification. He saw only a single heart-stopping name: Ashley.

Before giving me the detective’s name, she had made me promise to guard my words.

“You won’t say anything,” she had said. “You won’t tell him anything that will set him on edge. You must promise me that, or else, forget it, I won’t give you his name.”

“I will be cautious. I promise.”

Now, in the waiting room of the police station, seated on a threadbare couch, I was less sure of my capabilities. To my right, a door opened and a man about my own age, with salt-and-pepper hair, a garishly pink tie around his neck, a substantial stomach, and an easygoing, slightly twisted smile on his lips, emerged. He stuck out his hand, and we introduced ourselves. He showed me back to his desk.

“So, how can I help you?”

I repeated the name I had given him in an earlier phone call. He nodded.