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’Connell’s actions up to that point and re-form them so they would look like some sort of scheme to blackmail her and Scott out of cash. She thought she could probably make it appear to a prosecutor that everything O’Connell had done- especially his harassment of Ashley-was an aggressive plot. The only thing they would have to manufacture was some sort of threat unless they paid some sum of money. Scott could claim under oath that when he’d handed over $5,000 to O’Connell in Boston, O’Connell had demanded more, and that he’d stepped up his pursuit when they had been reluctant. They could even explain away their failure to engage the police up to this point, saying that they were scared what he might do.
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’Connell had been wearing a hidden microphone that had recorded the entirety of their conversation.
If that were true, suddenly they would be seen as the liars. O’Connell would skate free, they might face charges, and her practice and Scott’s job might be in jeopardy. They would be back at square one, they would be in trouble, and there would be nothing standing between O’Connell, his anger, and Ashley.
And, she realized, even if they were successful, there was no guarantee that O’Connell wouldn’t get some sort of reduced sentence. A couple of years? How long would it take with him behind bars to allow Ashley to reinvent herself, to get free of his obsession? Three? Five? Ten? Could she ever be 100 percent certain that he wasn’t going to arrive on her doorstep?
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.
What is it about your life that is so great that it shouldn’t be sacrificed?
This made some sense to her. She didn’t really love her work, she was filled with doubts about her relationship with Hope. It had been weeks, maybe months, since she’d felt joy about who she was, and what she stood for. Meaning in life? She wanted to laugh, but couldn’t bring herself to do so. She was a middle- aged, small-town lawyer, growing old, watching the lines of worry take root in the skin of her face every day. She thought the only mark she’d ever made in life was Ashley. Her daughter might have been the result of a lie of love, but there was no denying that she was categorically the best thing that Sally and Scott had managed in their brief time together.
Her future is worth dying for. Yours isn’t.
Again Sally was shocked at what her imagination insisted. This is madness. But it was madness that made sense.
Kill him, she told herself.
And then she had another, even more bizarre thought.
Or find a way to make sure he kills you.
And then pays for it.
She leaned back and stared at the books and texts surrounding her.
Someone had to die. Of this she suddenly became completely convinced.
I had nightmares for the first time since I’d started in on the story.
They arrived unbidden and kept me spinning in my bed, sweat-drenched in sleep. I awakened once deep in the night, staggered into the bathroom for a drink of water, and stared at myself in the mirror. I slipped from the room, padding down the carpeted hallway and peering in on my children, reassuring myself that their sleep wasn’t as troubled as my own. When I returned, my wife muttered, “Everything okay?” but had dropped off again before I could answer. I dropped my head to the pillow and peered up into the endless edges of darkness.
The next day, I called her on the phone.
“I think I need to speak with some of the principals in this little drama now,” I said roughly. “I’ve been putting that off for far too long.”
“Yes. I’ve been expecting that eventually you would make that demand. I’m just not sure who would be willing to speak with you at this point.”
“They are willing to have their story told, but not willing to speak with me?” I asked incredulously.
When she spoke, I could sense some distant turmoil within her; some events in the story were turning more critical. I was getting closer.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“Afraid of what?”
“So many things are in balance. A life balances a death. Chance balances against despair. So much is at stake.”
“I can find them,” I said abruptly. “I don’t have to play this cat-and-mouse game with you. I could hunt down faculty lists. Search legal databases. Go to student websites. Gay-women websites. Psychopath chat rooms. I don’t know. One of them will have enough information so that I’ll be able to assign real names, real places, and truths to what you’ve told me.”
“You don’t think I have been telling you the truth?”
“I do. I’m just saying that I know enough so that I could pursue all this on my own.”
“You could do that, but that would cause me to stop taking your calls. And perhaps you would never know what really happened. You might know some fact, or you might be able to piece together the details, so that you had the flesh of the story. But not the bones. Never the organs beneath the surface, telling you the why. Would you risk that?”
“No.” I said. “I would not.”
“I did not think so.”
“I will play by your rules. But not much longer. I’m reaching the end of my rope.”
“Yes. I can hear that in your voice.” But it did not sound as if this had the slightest impact on her. And with that, she hung up the phone.
36
Ashley was still angry, and sulking about being excluded from the most crucial decision she would ever have to make. Catherine was a little less stymied by Hope, Scott, and Sally’s unreasonable exclusions. She spent an hour on the telephone, dialing numbers, speaking in low tones, before collecting Ashley and saying, “There’s something you and I need to do.”
Ashley was standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, staring over at the corner where Nameless’s bowl-now empty-remained. No one had had the heart to move it. She felt knotted, tied to a mast while around her things were happening that she was intimately involved in, but she could not see.
“What?”
“Well,” Catherine said softly, “I don’t exactly like being on the outside looking in.”
“Neither do I.”
“I think we should take a few steps. Steps I’m not sure anyone in this family has ever considered before.” Catherine held up her car keys. “Let’s get going,” she said briskly.
“Where are we headed?”
“Going to meet a man,” Catherine replied breezily. “A most unsavory character, I suspect.”
Ashley must have looked slightly surprised, because the older woman smiled. “That is what
