Sally smiled. “Are you all that different?”
Hope shrugged, but laughed in response. “I guess not.”
“And don’t you think that I might have been attracted to those qualities, as well?”
“I never thought of stubborn and unpredictable as my best sides.”
“Well, just goes to show what you know.” Sally managed a small grin as she dipped her head to the paperwork spread out on her lap.
The two women were both silent. Oddly, Hope thought, it was the first affectionate thing Sally had said in weeks.
There was a knock on the door. “That will be Scott,” Sally said. She gathered her papers together as Hope went to let him in. In the second or two of solitude, she put her head back and took in a deep breath. Once you start this thing moving, there will be no going back.
Catherine fumed inwardly. She looked across at the younger woman, until finally Ashley dashed her book to the floor after reading the same page for the third time and said, “I don’t know if I can stand this much longer. I’m being treated like a six-year-old. Being sent to my room. Told to keep myself occupied while my parents map out my future. God damn it, Catherine, I’m not a baby! I can fight for myself.”
“I agree, dear,” Catherine said.
“You know, I should take that damn pistol and just solve this problem once and for all.”
“I believe, Ashley, dear, that’s in some ways what your parents are trying to avoid. And I didn’t get you that gun so that you could go off and use it willy-nilly, just because you’re pissed off. I got it so that you could protect yourself, if O’Connell came after you.”
Ashley leaned her head back. “He has, you know.”
“Has what, dear?”
“He’s come after me. He’s probably outside right now. Just waiting.”
“Waiting, dear?”
“For the right moment. He’s crazy. Crazy in love. Crazy obsessed. Crazy I don’t know what. But he’s there. He has only one thing of any importance in his life, and it is me.”
Catherine nodded. She suddenly leaned forward. “Can you do it?”
Ashley opened her eyes and stared across the room, first fixing on Catherine, then on the shoulder bag that contained the pistol.
“Can you do it?” Catherine repeated.
“Yes,” Ashley answered stiffly. “I can. I can. I know it.”
“I couldn’t. I should have. With the shotgun when he was right across from me. I should have. But I didn’t. Can you be stronger than I was, dear? Can you be more determined? Are you braver?”
“I don’t know. But, yes. I think so.”
“I need to know.”
“How can anyone know, until they actually do it? I mean, I’m angry enough. Maybe scared enough. But can I pull the trigger? I think so.”
“I imagine you could,” Catherine said. “At least maybe you could. The chances are, you could. It’s dark out. Are you convinced he’s out there?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you could end it all by putting the pistol in your jacket pocket and taking a walk with me around midnight. And when he tried to stop us, you act. He might say he just wants to talk with you, that’s what they always say. But instead of talking you just shoot him. Right there. Right then. The police will come and probably arrest you. And then we can have your mother hire the best attorney. Take your chances in a court of law. It’s not exactly as if this community, where your mother and Hope live, is particularly predisposed to giving men-and especially men who have been stalking a young woman-much leeway. Or, for that matter, the benefit of any doubt whatsoever.”
“You think…”
“I think you can do it if you’re willing to pay the price.”
“Prison?”
“Maybe. Notoriety. Being the poster child for every person with some other agenda, which will surely happen, just as your folks have predicted it would. But it might be worth it.”
Ashley rocked her head back. “I can’t stand this for much longer. One minute I’m terrified. The next I’m furious. I feel safe one second. Then threatened the next.”
“Why can’t we be violent before they are violent towards us?” Catherine said fiercely. “Why is that so goddamn unfair? Why do we have to wait to be a victim?”
“I’m not going to.”
“Good. I didn’t think so. So, let’s consider what we can do.”
Ashley nodded her head in agreement.
Scott looked at several small piles of items collected in the living room. “You’ve been shopping.”
“Indeed,” Sally said.
“You want to go over it for us?” Scott picked up and fiddled with a box of ammonia-based Handi Wipes. “Like these?”
Sally was quiet, even-toned. “If one thought they had left a DNA sample in a compromising location, they could swipe it down with these, eradicating any trace evidence.”
Scott blew out his cheeks. He was almost dizzy. Handi Wipes, he thought. Part of a murder weapon.
Sally watched her ex-husband and could feel him wavering. She continued solidly, “As best as I can deduce, what we have agreed to do is bring O’Connell and his father together. We can do that. Scott more or less inadvertently has given us a way. And I think we can presume they will have words. We’ve been over that. Then we must find a way to steal O’Connell’s own weapon, use it, as he presumably would, on his father, and return it to O’Connell’s hideaway before he realizes it is missing.”
“Why not just leave it at the, ah, crime scene?” Scott asked.
“I thought of that,” Sally replied. “But it will be the crucial piece of evidence. The police and the prosecution just love finding the murder weapon. It’s what they will build their theory around. It will be the item that is incontrovertible in a court of law. To be sure, it, more than anything else, needs to be discovered in his control.”
“What are these other things?” Hope asked.
Sally looked over at the gathered items. There were several cell phones, a tube of Super Glue, a portable computer, a size-small men’s coverall, two boxes of surgical gloves, several pairs of surgical bootees that could be pulled over a pair of shoes, two black, tight-fitting balaclava face and head cover-ups, and a Swiss Army knife. “They are what we need, as best as I can tell. There are some other things that would be really useful, as well, like some hair from a comb in O’Connell’s apartment, maybe. I’m still fitting pieces together.”
“What’s the computer for?” Scott asked.
Sally sighed. She turned to Hope. “That’s the same make and model that you saw in O’Connell’s apartment, right?”
Hope examined the machine. “Yes. As best as I can tell. At least, that’s what I remember.”
“Well,” Sally said, “you said that his computer contains encrypted material about Ashley. And about us. This one doesn’t.”
Hope nodded. “I think I see.”
“The police will seize his computer. I’d rather have it be one that we’d prepared for that circumstance.”
“Switch them?”
“Correct. It will just erase a link between us and him. He’s probably got backup somewhere, with all the stuff about Ashley and us, but still…Timing will be critical.”
She handed each of them a sheet of yellow legal-pad paper. At the top she had drawn a timeline.
Hope stared down at the paper. Sally had delineated tasks, events, actions, but had marked each with an A, B, or C. When she looked up, she saw that Sally was watching her.
“You haven’t assigned roles,” Hope said. “You’ve got three people doing interrelated things, but you haven’t yet said who does what.”
Sally leaned back in her chair, trying to remain composed. “I have tried to think of this from the position of a modern police officer,” she said. “You have to consider what they will find, and how they will interpret it. Crimes are always about a certain logic. One thing should lead them to the next. They have modern techniques, like DNA analysis and forensic weapons studies and all sorts of capabilities that we only know about peripherally. I’ve tried to think of as many of these as I could and remember what screws up investigations. Fire, for example, makes a mess of things-but it doesn’t necessarily destroy firearms forensics. Water compromises all sorts of wounds and DNA, ruins fingerprints. Our problem is that we want to commit a crime, a violent crime, but we want to leave a trail. Not a perfect trail, but enough of one that leads in the direction we want. The police will, if we’re careful, do the rest, even without a confession from O’Connell.”