In addition to his good looks, O’Connell had been born with exceptionally sharp eyesight. It wasn’t hard for him to pick out Ashley’s outline from beyond a block’s distance, and he sidled up against an oak tree, maintaining a loose surveillance. He knew that no one would notice him; he was too far away, there were too many people walking by, too many cars passing, too much bright October sunlight. And he knew as well that he had been lucky to develop a chameleon-like ability to blend into his surroundings. He thought that he should really have become a movie star, because of his capacity to always seem to be someone else.
In a run-down dive of a bar, catering to alcoholics and fringe criminals, he could be a tough guy. Then, just as easily, in Boston’s massive student population, he could appear to be just another college kid. The backpack, filled to bursting with computer texts, helped form that impression. Michael O’Connell thought he maneuvered expertly from world to world, relying at all times on the inability of people to take more than a second to size him up.
Had they, he thought, they would have been scared.
He watched, easily picking out Ashley’s reddish blond hair from the group. A half dozen young people were sitting in a loose circle, eating lunch, laughing, telling stories. Had he been the seventh member of that group, he would have turned quiet. He was good at lying and making up believable fictions about who he was, where he’d come from, and what he’d done, but in a group, he always worried that he would go too far, say something loose and unlikely, and lose the credibility that was important to him. One-on-one, with someone like Ashley, he had no trouble being seductive, creating a need for sympathy.
Michael O’Connell watched, letting rage grow within him.
It was a familiar sensation, one that he both welcomed and hated. It was different from the anger he felt when he was readying for a fight, or when he got into an argument with a boss at any number of the occasional jobs he held, or with his landlord, or the old lady who lived next door to his tiny apartment and who bothered him with her cats and leery-eyed stares. He could have words with any number of people, even come to blows, and it was to him next to nothing. But his feelings about Ashley were far different.
He knew he loved her.
Watching her from a safe distance, unrecognized and unobserved, he stewed. He tried to relax, but could not. He turned away because watching was too painful, but then, just as quickly, he twisted back, because the pain of not looking was far worse. Every laugh she emitted, tossing her head back, her hair shaking seductively around her shoulders, every time she leaned forward, listening to someone else, was agony. Every time she reached out and, even in the most inadvertent of motions, let her hand brush up against another’s-all of these things were like ice picks driven deep into his chest.
Michael O’Connell watched and for nearly a minute believed he could not breathe.
She constricted his every thought.
He reached down into his pants pocket, where he kept a knife. It wasn’t the Swiss Army multiuse-type knife that could be found in hundreds of backpacks throughout Boston’s student universe. This was a four-inch folding knife, stolen from a camping goods store in Somerset. It had heft. He wrapped his hand around the knife and squeezed it tightly so that, although the blade was concealed within the handle, it still bit into his hand. A little bit of extra pain, he thought, helps to clear the head.
Michael O’Connell liked carrying the blade because it made him feel dangerous.
Sometimes he believed that he traveled in a world of about-to-bes. The students, like Ashley, were all in the process of turning themselves into something other than what they were. Law school for the soon-to-be-minted lawyers. Medical school for the ones who wanted to be doctors. Art school. Philosophy courses. Language studies. Film classes. Everyone was part of becoming something. On the verge of joining.
He wished, sometimes, that he’d enlisted in the army. He liked to think that his talents would have translated well into the military, if they could have seen past his difficulty taking orders. Perhaps he should have tried the CIA. He would have made an excellent spy. Or contract killer. He would have liked that. A James Bond type. He would have been a natural.
Instead, he realized, he was destined to be a criminal. What he liked to study was danger.
From a block away, he saw the group begin to stir. Almost in unison, they rose, brushing themselves off, unaware of anything other than their immediate halo of laughter and happy talk.
He moved forward, following slowly, not closing the distance, mingling with other people on the sidewalk, watching until Ashley and the others walked up some steps and into a building.
Her last class ended at four thirty, he knew. Then it would be over to the museum for two hours of part-time work. He wondered if she had plans for that night.
He did. He always did.
“But there’s something I don’t exactly get.”
“What’s that?” Her reply was patient, like that of a teacher with a slow child.
“If this fellow…”
“Michael. Michael O’Connell. Nice Irish name. Boston name. Must be a thousand of them from Brockton to Somerville and beyond. Makes one think of altar boys carrying incense, and choir practice, and firemen in kilts playing bagpipes on a brisk and cold Saint Paddy’s Day.”
“That’s not really his name, is it? This is a part of the puzzle, correct? If I were to follow up, I wouldn’t find a Michael O’Connell, would I?”
“You might. You might not.”
“You’re making this a little more difficult than it has to be.”
“Am I? Isn’t that for me to judge? I might be presuming that there will come a point when you’re going to stop asking me questions and head out on your own, because you’re going to want to know the truth. Already you know enough, at least to get started. You’ll start comparing what I’ve said against what you can find out. That’s the point of telling this. And making it a little difficult. You called it a puzzle. That would be apt.”
Her voice was direct. If she meant to be coy, it didn’t register in her words.
“All right,” I said, “let’s move forward. If this fellow Michael was really heading towards some sort of fringe life, working his way up the petty-crime ladder, where did Ashley fit in? I mean, she would have had a pretty good read on this guy in two seconds, right? She’d been well educated. She must have attended classes or gone to lectures about stalkers and that sort of man. Hell, there’s even a segment on them in the state’s high school health textbook. It’s alphabetical, so it comes right before STDs. So she would have picked him out rapidly. And then done whatever she could to extricate herself. You’re suggesting a sort of obsessive love. But this guy O’Connell, he sounds like a psychopath, and-”