She wondered how long it might take for Will-the-first-date to call her and become Will-the-second-date.
Will Goodwin lingered in the darkness for a moment after Ashley had vanished inside the second door. He felt a rush of enthusiasm, a devil-may-care kind of excitement about the evening past and the evening to come.
He was a bit overwhelmed. The girlfriend of a friend, who had passed on Ashley’s number, had informed him that she was beautiful and bright, if a bit mysterious, but she had exceeded even his fantasies in each regard. He thought he’d just managed to avoid the “boring” tag by the narrowest of margins.
Hunched over against a quickening breeze, Will stuck his hands deep into his parka and started walking. The air had an antique quality to it, as if each shiver it delivered were no different, passed down exactly the same with the same October chill that had sliced through generations who had traveled the Boston streets. He could feel his cheeks starting to redden from the night’s determination, and he hustled toward the subway stop. He covered ground quickly, long legs now eating up the city sidewalk. She was tall, too, he thought. Almost five ten, he guessed, with a model’s lithe look that even jeans and a baggy cotton sweater hadn’t been able to conceal. He was a little astonished, as he dashed between traffic, crossing the street midblock, that she wasn’t inundated with guys, which, he supposed, probably had something to do with an unhappy relationship or some other bad experience. He decided not to speculate, but to simply thank whatever lucky star had put him in contact with Ashley. In his studies, he thought, everything was about probability and prediction. He wasn’t sure that the statistics he assigned to clinical work with lab rats could necessarily apply to meeting someone like Ashley.
Will grinned to himself and went bounding down the steps to the T.
The Boston subway, like that of most cities, has an otherworldly feel to it, when one passes through the turnstiles and descends into the underground world of transit. Lights glisten off white-tiled walls; shadows find space between steel pillars. There is a constancy of noise, as trains come, go, and rumble through the distance. The outside world is shut away, replaced with a kind of disjointed universe where wind, rain, snow, or even bright warm sunshine all seem a part of some other place and time.
His train arrived, making a high-pitched, screeching sound, and Will boarded quickly, along with a dozen others. The lights in the train gave everyone a pasty, sickly look. For a moment, he speculated about the other passengers, all either wrapped up in a newspaper, buried in some book, or staring out blankly. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes for an instant, letting the speed and sway of the train rock him a little like a child in his mother’s arms. He would call tomorrow, he told himself. Ask her out and try to engage her on the phone a bit. He sorted through subjects and tried to imagine one that would be unexpected. He wondered where to take her. Dinner and a movie? Predictable. He had the sensation that Ashley was the sort of woman who wanted to see something special. A play perhaps? A comedy club? Followed by a late-night dinner at some place better than the usual burgers-and-beer hangout. But not too snobbish, he imagined. And quiet. So, laughter and then something romantic. Maybe not the greatest plan, he thought, but reasonable.
His stop arrived, and he bounded up and out, moving quickly, but a little haphazardly, as he rose through the station, out to the street. The Porter Square lights sliced through the darkness, creating a sense of activity where there was little. He hunched over against a blast of cold wind and worked his way out of the square, down a side street. His own place was four blocks distant, and he worked his memory, trying to decide on the right restaurant to take her to.
He slowed when he heard a dog bark, suddenly alarmed. In the distance, an ambulance siren broke through the night. A few of the duplexes and apartments on the block had the glow of television screens lighting up windows, but most were dark.
To his right, in an alleyway between two apartment buildings, Will thought he heard a scraping sound, and he turned in that direction. Suddenly he saw a black shape rushing toward him. He took a step back in surprise and held up his arm to try to protect himself and thought that he should cry out for help, but things were moving far too quickly, and he had only a single moment filled with shock and fear, and the vaguest of terrors because he knew something was coming at him fast. It was a lead pipe, and it swung through the air with a swordlike hiss, bearing inexorably down on his forehead.
It took me nearly seven hours over one long, eye-straining day, to find Will Goodwin’s name in The Boston Globe. Except that it was a different name, under the headline POLICE SEEK MUGGER OF GRAD STUDENT, and ran in the local section, near the bottom of the page. The story was only four paragraphs and had precious little information, beyond that the injuries suffered by the twenty-four-year-old student were serious and he was in critical condition at Mass. General Hospital after being discovered by a passing early-morning pedestrian who spotted his bloody figure abandoned behind some aluminum garbage cans in an alleyway. Police were requesting assistance from anyone in the Somerville neighborhood who might have seen or heard anything suspicious.
That was all.
No follow-up either the next day or in the subsequent weeks. Just a small moment of urban violence, duly noted, registered and then, just as quickly, forgotten, swallowed up by the steady buildup of news.
It took me two more days working the telephones to get an address for Will. The Boston College Alumni Office said that he had never finished the program he was enrolled in and came up with a home address out in the Boston suburb of Concord. The phone number was unlisted.
Concord is a lovely place, filled with stately homes that breathe of the past. It has a green swath of town common with an impressive public library, a prep school, and a quaint downtown filled with trendy shops. When I was younger, I took my own children to walk the nearby battle sites and recite Longfellow’s famous poem. The town has, like so many in Massachusetts, unfortunately let history take a backseat to development. But the house where the young man that I had come to know as Will Goodwin was 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.”