Rage was like a drug; in moderation, it made him high. But every so often it was necessary to truly indulge; to get wasted with it. He looked down at his watch. A little after lunchtime. Sometimes Ashley liked to take a sandwich out onto the Common and eat beneath a tree with some of her art class friends. It was an easy place to keep an eye on her without being seen. He thought he might just wander over and check.

Michael O’Connell first met Ashley Freeman by happenstance, some six months earlier. He was working as a part-time auto mechanic at a gas station just off the Massachusetts Turnpike extension, taking computer technology courses in his free hours, making ends meet by tending bar on weekends in a student hangout near BU. She had been coming back from a weekend ski trip with her roommates when the right rear tire had shredded after hitting one of Boston’s ubiquitous potholes, a common enough winter-season occurrence. The roommate had nursed the car into the station, and O’Connell had replaced the flat. When the roommate’s Visa card, maxed out by the weekend’s excesses, had been rejected, O’Connell had used his own credit card to pay for the tire, an act of generosity and seemingly Good Samaritanism that hadn’t been lost on the four girls in the vehicle. They were unaware that the card he used was stolen and had readily handed over their addresses and phone numbers, promising to collect the cash for him by midweek if he would just swing by and pick it up. The new tire, and the labor to install it, had come to $221. None of the girls in the car had understood for an instant how ironically small a sum that truly was, to allow Michael O’Connell into their lives.

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.