The Wrong Man by John Katzenbach Read Free Book Online

an older place, early-colonial farmhouse in nature, less ostentatious than the newer homes, set back from a side road, some fifty yards down a gravel drive. In the front, someone had clearly spent time planting flowers in the garden. I saw a small plaque, with the date 1789, on the glistening white exterior wall. There was a side door that had a wooden wheelchair ramp built up to it. I went to the front, where I could smell the nearby hibiscus blossoms, and knocked gingerly.
    A slender woman, gray-haired, but not yet grandmotherly, opened the door.
    “Yes, may I help you?” she asked.
    I introduced myself, apologized for showing up unannounced, but said that I was unable to call ahead because of the unlisted number. I told her I was a writer and was inquiring about some crimes that had taken place a few years back in the Cambridge, Newton, and Somerville areas and wondered if I might ask a few questions about Will or, better yet, speak with him directly.
    She was taken aback, but did not immediately close the door in my face.
    “I don’t know that we can help you,” she said politely.
    “I’m sorry if I’ve taken you by surprise,” I replied. “I just have a few questions.”
    She shook her head. “He doesn’t…,” she started, then stopped, looking out at me. I could see her lower lip start to quiver, and just the touch of tears glistening in her eyes. “It has been…,” she tried, but then she was interrupted by a voice from behind.
    “Mother? Who is it?”
    She hesitated, as if uncertain precisely what to say. I looked behind her and saw a young man in a wheelchair emerging from a side room. His skin had a bleached, pale look, and his brown hair was a tangled, unkempt mass, stringy, long, and falling toward his shoulders. A Z-shaped, dull red scar on the upper right side of his forehead reached almost to the eyebrow. His arms seemed wiry, muscled, but his chest was sunken, almost emaciated. He had large hands, with elegant, long fingers, and I thought, as I looked at him, that I could see hints and whispers of whom he once was. He rolled himself forward.
    The mother looked at me. “It has been very hard,” she said softly, with surprising intimacy.
    The rubber wheels on the chair squealed when he stopped. “Hello,” he said, not unpleasantly.
    I gave him my name and quickly explained that I was interested in the crime that had crippled him.
    “My crime?” he asked, but clearly didn’t really expect an answer, because he rapidly gave one himself. “I don’t think it was all that special. A routine mugging. Anyway, I can’t tell you all that much about it. Two months in a coma. Then this…” He waved at the chair.
    “Did the police ever make an arrest?”
    “No. By the time I woke up, I’m afraid I wasn’t too much help. I can’t remember anything from that night. Not a damn thing. It’s a little like hitting the backspace key on your keyboard and watching all the letters of some piece of work disappear. You know it’s probably somewhere in the computer, but you can’t find it. It’s just been deleted.”
    “You were coming home after a date?”
    “Yes. We never connected again after that. Not that surprising. I was a mess. Still am.” He laughed a little and smiled wryly.
    I nodded. “The cops never came up with much, huh?”
    He shook his head. “Well, a couple of curious things.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “They found some kids in Roxbury trying to use my Visa credit card. They thought for a couple of days that they might have been the ones that mugged me, but it turned out they weren’t. The kids apparently just found the card near a Dumpster.”
    “Okay, but why…”
    “Because someone else found my wallet with all my ID—you know, driver’s license, BC meal card, Social Security, health care, all that stuff, intact in Dorchester. Miles away from the Dumpster where the kids found the credit card. It was as if whatever was taken from me was scattered all over Boston.” He