“We don’t get too many homicides around here. And when we do, they’re usually boyfriend-girlfriend, husband-wife. This was a little different. But I don’t get your interest in the case.”

“Some people I know suggested taking a look at it. Thought it might make a good story.”

The detective shrugged. “I wouldn’t know about that. I will say this, it was a hell of a crime scene. A real mess. Sorting through it was quite a task. We’re not exactly Hollywood Homicide in here.” He gestured around the room. It was a modest place, where every bit of equipment, including the men and women who worked there, showed the fraying of age. “But even if people think we’re all dumb as logs, eventually we were able to figure it all out.”

“I don’t think that,” I said. “The dumb as logs part.”

“Well, you’re the exception, rather than the rule. Usually folks don’t get the big picture until they’re sitting across from one of us in handcuffs, we’ve got ’em nailed six ways to Sunday, and they’re looking at doing some serious prison time.”

He paused, eyeing me carefully. “You’re not working for a defense attorney, huh? Someone who jumps into a case and tries to find some mistake that they can crow about in an appellate court?”

“No. Just looking for a story, like I said.”

He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he completely believed me.

“Well,” the detective said slowly, “I don’t know about that at all. It might be a story. But it’s an old one. Okay. Here you go.”

He reached down beneath his desk, brought up a large accordion-style file, and opened it on the desk in front of us. There were a stack of eight-by-ten color glossy photographs, which he spread out on top of all the paperwork. I leaned forward. I could see debris and ruin were strewn throughout the pictures. And a body.

“A mess,” he said. “Like I told you.”

42

At about the same time that Catherine and Ashley were walking around the block wondering where Michael O’Connell was, Scott was parked in the far corner of a thickly wooded rest area off Route 2. The virtue of the rest area was that it was almost entirely blocked by trees and brush from the highway. That, in part, was why they had chosen Route 2 as the way to travel to Boston. It wasn’t as quick as the turnpike, but it was less patrolled and less traveled. He was alone in his beaten old truck, having left the Porsche in his driveway.

Scott could hear the shallowness of his breathing, and he told himself that he was being crazy. Whatever tension there was at this moment, it would undoubtedly get far worse by the end of the day. His patience was rewarded a few minutes later when he saw a late-model white Ford Taurus pull into the rest area. It came to a stop about twenty feet away. He recognized Hope behind the wheel.

He reached down to the leg well beside him and pulled up a small, cheap red canvas gym bag. It rattled with a metallic sound when he picked it up. He got out of the truck and swiftly walked across the parking area.

Hope rolled down the window.

“Keep watch,” Scott said briskly. “You see anyone pulling in, let me know pronto.”

She nodded. “Where did you-”

“Last night. After midnight. I went down to long-term parking at the Hartford airport.”

“Good thinking. But don’t they have security cameras in the parking garage?”

“I went to the satellite lots. No pictures. This will only take a second. This a rental?”

“Yes,” she said. “It made the most sense.”

Scott opened the gym bag and went to the back of the car. It only took him a few minutes to exchange the Massachusetts license plates for the set from Rhode Island he’d taken off a car the night before. A small socket wrench and pliers were also in the bag. He placed the car’s actual plates in the duffel and handed it to Hope. “Don’t forget,” he said. “Got to change back before you return that vehicle.”

Hope nodded. She already looked pale.

“Look, call me if you have any hassle. I’ll be close enough, and-”

“You think if there’s a problem, I’ll have time to make a phone call?”

“No. Of course not. All right, I’ll just guide myself…” His voice trailed off. Too much to say. No words to say it with.

Scott stepped back. “Sally should be on her way down the turnpike by now.”

“Then I’ll go,” Hope said. She placed the gym bag on the seat beside her.

“Keep to the speed limit. I’ll see you in a bit.”

He thought he should say Good luck or Be careful or something bland and encouraging. But he did not. Instead, he watched as Hope quickly exited the parking area, and he glanced at his watch, trying to imagine where Sally would be. She was taking a parallel route east. It seemed like a small touch, changing license plates for the day, but he understood that when Sally had talked to both of them about paying attention to small, seemingly insignificant details, there was much truth in what she’d said. For the first time he’d come to understand that everything he’d learned in life up to that point had little relevance to what he was about to do.

On the precipice of sudden cowardice, Scott returned to his truck and readied himself to head east into uncertainty.

Hope drove toward the intersection where the interstate highway branched off to the northeast. She followed Sally’s directions as carefully as possible, keeping her speed within the limits so as not to attract any attention, heading to the spot that Sally had designated, where they would meet up later that day. She decided that it was best if she tried to compartmentalize everything. She thought of what she was about to do as mere items on a checklist, and that she was moving steadily from one to the next.

She tried to think analytically and coldly about the last three entries on her list.

Commit the crime.

Get away. Meet Sally.

Leave no trace of yourself behind.

She wished that she were a mathematician who could see everything she was doing as nothing more than a series of numbers building into theories and probabilities, and who could imagine lives and futures with nothing more passionate than the statistics of an actuary.

This was impossible. So, instead, she tried to work herself into some sort of righteous anger, fixating on Michael O’Connell and his family, insisting to herself that the course they were taking was the only one that he had left open to them, and the only one that he would not have anticipated. If she could make herself angry enough, perhaps rage alone would carry her forward far enough to do what she had volunteered to do.

Someone has to die, she told herself. Before he kills Ashley. She repeated this, like some perverse mantra, over and over for several miles of highway.

Hope remembered games when everything hung in the balance during the last minutes before the referee’s whistle. Reaching deep into that athlete’s dark reservoir for some bit of magic would free her for just the half second needed to decide the contest. As a coach, she had always urged her players to visualize that moment when success or defeat hung in the balance, so that when it inevitably arrived, they were psychologically prepared to do what was necessary, and to act without hesitation.

She imagined that this experience would be the same.

And so, biting down on her lip, she started to picture events as they were imagined by Sally, with the assistance of Scott’s description of the location. She imagined the run-down, decrepit house, the rusted-out car in the front yard, the garage filled with engine parts and debris. She thought she knew what would be inside: the clutter of newspaper, beer bottles, and take-out food, a stale aroma of uselessness. And he would be there. The man who’d created the man who’d created the threat to all of them. She knew that when she faced him, she had to picture Michael O’Connell.