figured most prominently-and send it along to Sally, accompanied by his bill and his assessment that she would not have to worry about Michael O’Connell again. Murphy prided himself on knowing precisely what fear can do to the minds of weak people.
O’Connell’s ear throbbed and his cheek stung. He figured that one or more of his teeth might be loose because he could taste blood in his mouth. He was a little stiff when he rose from the floor, but he went directly to the window and just managed to catch a glimpse of the ex-detective as he turned the corner of the block. Michael O’Connell wiped his hand across his face and thought, Now that wasn’t so damn hard, was it? He understood that the easiest way to make a policeman believe him was always to take the beating. It was sometimes painful, sometimes embarrassing, especially when it was some old guy, whom he knew he could easily have handled anytime except the time when the guy had a gun and he did not. Then he smiled, licking his lips and letting the salty taste fill him. He had learned a great deal that night, just as Matthew Murphy had told him. But mostly what he had learned was that Ashley wasn’t in some foreign country in some graduate program. If she were in Italy, thousands of miles away, why would her family send some big-talking ex-cop around to try to intimidate him? That made no sense at all, unless she was close by. Far closer than he’d imagined. Within reach? He believed so. O’Connell inhaled sharply through his nose. He did not know where she was, but he would find out soon enough, because time no longer meant anything to him. Only Ashley did.
The News-Republican building was on a desultory tract of downtown land, adjacent to the train station, with a depressing view of the interstate highway, parking lots, and vacant spaces filled with trash. It was one of those spots that aren’t exactly blighted. Instead, it seemed simply ignored, or perhaps exhausted. Lots of chain-link fences, swirling debris caught by wayward gusts of wind, and highway underpasses decorated with graffiti. The newspaper office was a rectangular, four-story edifice, a cinder-block-and-brick square. It seemed more like an armory or even a fortress than a newspaper office. Inside, what was once quaintly called the morgue was now a small room with computers.
Once a helpful young woman had shown me how to access the files, it did not take me long to find the record of Matthew Murphy’s last day. Or, perhaps, last moments might be more accurate.
The front-page headline read EX – STATE POLICE DETECTIVE SLAIN.
There were two subheads: BODY FOUND IN CITY ALLEY and POLICE CALL KILLING “EXECUTION – STYLE.”
I filled several pages in my notebook with details from the spate of stories that day, and several follow-up pieces that appeared in the next few days. There was, it seemed, no end to possible suspects. Murphy had been involved in many high-profile cases during his time on the force and, in retirement, had continued to make enemies with a daunting regularity as he worked as a private investigator. There was little doubt in my mind that his murder had been given top priority by the Springfield detectives working the case, and by the state police homicide unit that had undoubtedly taken over. There would have been significant pressure on the local district attorney, cop killings being the sort of make-or-break cases that define careers. Everyone in law enforcement would want to be involved. Killing one of their own slices a small part from each of them.
Except as I went through the stories, they seemed too thin, and what should have happened did not.
Details began to be repetitious. No arrest was made. No grand jury indictment announced to great fanfare. No criminal trial scheduled.
It was a story where the big dramatic ending evaporated into nothing.
I pushed myself away from the computer, staring at a blinking no further entries found to my final electronic request.
That wasn’t right, I thought. Someone had brutally killed Murphy. And it had to connect to Ashley.
Somehow. Some way.
I just couldn’t see it.
25
The office secretary knocked on Sally’s open door, an overnight envelope in her hand. “This just came for you. I’m not sure who it’s from. Do you want me to handle it?”
“No. I’ll take it. I know what it is.” Sally thanked her assistant, grasped the envelope, and closed the door. She smiled. Murphy was an overly cautious man. She guessed that he kept a number of post office boxes handy for mail of a more sensitive nature. Prominent letterheads and return addresses were often inconvenient for people in his line of work.
He had called her from the road, coming back from Boston several nights earlier. “I think your problem will pretty much disappear from now on, Ms. Freeman-Richards.”
She had been at her home, sitting across from Hope. Both of them had been reading, Hope immersed in Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, while she had been glancing through leftover sections of the Sunday New York Times.
“That’s good news, Mr. Murphy. I’m delighted to hear that. But tell me, how precisely did you reach that conclusion?” She easily slipped into her practiced, reasonable attorney tones.
“Well, I don’t know how precise you want me to be. But our mutual friend ”-he laughed at the use of the word-“well, he and I had a talk. A good talk. A lengthy discussion of the pros and cons of his, shall we say, behavior. And after this conversation completed its predictable course, Mr. O’Connell allowed as to how it might indeed be a significant problem to continue pursuing Ashley. He was helped to see the light of reason and stated unequivocally that he would remove himself from her life from that point further.”
“You believed him?”
“I had every reason to believe him, Ms. Freeman-Richards. His sincerity was evident.”
Sally had paused, trying to read between Murphy’s words. “No one was hurt?”
“Not permanently. Unless, perhaps, Mr. O’Connell now has a broken heart, but I kinda doubt that. He was, however, deeply impressed with the recklessness of continuing his course of action, and he reached an enlightened conclusion, after I explained certain realities to him. Forcefully. I’m not sure that you really want much more detail, Ms. Freeman-Richards. It might make you uncomfortable.”
Sally thought their conversation had an odd gentility, as if she were somehow incapable of hearing certain things. It had a Victorian sensibility, as if she might get pale and faint with a case of the vapors.
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“I didn’t think so. I will send you a disposition report in the next day or so. And should you have any reason to suspect anything or see something suspicious, please call, night or day, and I will see it taken care of. I mean, there’s always the slim chance that Mr. O’Connell might have a change of heart once again. But I doubt that. He seems like a weak person, Ms. Freeman-Richards. A very small man, and I don’t mean how tall he is. But I believe he’s now out of your lives one hundred percent. And, so, if you have any investigatory needs in the future, I hope you will keep me in mind.”
Sally was a little surprised at Murphy’s description of O’Connell. It didn’t exactly jibe with her conclusions to that point. But it was reassuring to hear, and so she shunted away any contradictions she might have felt.
“Of course, Mr. Murphy. It seems like you took care of things exactly as I’d hoped. And I can’t tell you how pleased I am to hear this.”
“It was my pleasure, ma’am.”
She hung up the phone, then turned to Hope. “Well, that’s that.”
“What’s what?”
“I sent a private detective I know over to explain the facts of life to the creep. Like you’d think, when confronted by someone substantially stronger and significantly tougher and more experienced, he folded up
