“It sounded like an elderly man. But there are all sorts of voice changer apps out there. Did Mr. Hitchens ever threaten to do something like this to you? A crank call of this nature.”
“No. But it’s his style. My father’s suffering from dementia. Hitchens would just love to scare a confused, old man.”
“We need a little more than that,” Arnwright said.
Anna sighed. “I think he might have killed a dog, too.”
Arnwright, pen in hand, looked ready to take down details. “Go on.”
She bit her lip. “I can’t . . . I don’t have any proof of anything.”
Arnwright put the pen away and stood. “Again, I’m sorry about what happened here. I’ll let you know if there are any developments.”
Anna showed him to the door. She went into the kitchen to see how her father was, but he was not there.
“Dad?” she called out.
She went upstairs to his room, expecting to find him on his rowing machine. But he wasn’t there either.
She thought she heard a muted whack.
Anna went to her father’s bedroom window, which looked out onto the backyard. There he was, golf club in hand—it looked like a driver—swinging at half a dozen balls he had dropped onto the well-manicured lawn, except for those spots where he had done some serious divots.
It was him, she told herself. I know it was him.
Eighteen
Paul was ready to begin.
He’d typed up plenty of notes, copied and pasted paragraphs from online news accounts of the double murder, but now he was ready to take that leap. To write the first sentence of whatever it was he was going to write. Memoir? Novel? A true-crime story? Who knew?
What Paul did know was that however the story came together, one thing was certain: it was his story.
And so he typed his first sentence:
Kenneth Hoffman was my friend.
Paul looked at the five words on his laptop screen. He hit the ENTER key to bring the cursor down a line. And he wrote: Kenneth Hoffman tried to murder me.
That seemed as good a place to start as any. From that springboard, he jumped straight into the story of that night. How, while returning from a student theatrical presentation at West Haven, he’d spotted Hoffman’s Volvo station wagon driving erratically down the Post Road.
About a thousand words in, Paul started finding the process therapeutic. The words flowed from his fingertips as quickly as he could type them. At one point he glanced at the bulky Underwood beside the laptop and said, “Like to see you crank out this shit this fast.”
When he got to the part where he saw the two dead women in the back of Kenneth’s car, Paul paused only briefly, took a deep mental breath, and kept on writing. He took himself to the point where the shovel crashed into his skull.
And then he stopped.
He felt simultaneously drained and elated. He had done it. He had jumped into the deep end of the cold pool, gotten used to it, and kept on swimming.
When Charlotte got home that evening, he could not wait to tell her about his progress.
“That’s fantastic,” she said. “I’m proud of you. I really am.” She paused. “Can I read it?”
“Not yet. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be. When I feel it’s coming together, I’ll show it to you.”
She almost looked relieved. She’d had a long day that had finished with an evening showing, and all she wanted to do was go to bed. As she did most nights, she fell asleep moments after her head hit the pillow. She rarely snored—Paul knew he could not make the same claim—but he could tell when she was asleep by the deepness of her breathing.
He turned off the light at half past ten but lay awake, he was sure, for at least an hour, maybe two.
Paul felt wired.
For the first time since the attack, Paul felt . . . excited. If he’d ever doubted the wisdom of tackling this whole Hoffman thing head-on, he didn’t anymore. But would this change in attitude manifest itself in different ways? Would writing about Hoffman have an exorcising effect? Would the nightmares stop? Maybe not all at once, but at least gradually?
If the writing continued to go well—Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s only Day One— then maybe it would be fun to do it in another location. After all, he could take his laptop anywhere. And he was not thinking about the closest Starbucks. More like Cape Cod.
If Charlotte could get a few days off, they could drive up to Provincetown, or take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. He could even toss a few recent bestsellers into his suitcase, maybe find something worth adding to his popular fiction course.
He’d talk to Charlotte about it in the morning, although he feared her answer. Too much going on, she’d say. You can’t sell a house when you’re not here. You can’t work twenty-four/seven, he’d tell her. If he could talk her into taking the time, he could see if Josh wanted to come, too. He could call Hailey, see if she’d be okay with that.
No, maybe not. If he was to have a chance of talking Charlotte into the idea, it had to be just the two of them. It wasn’t that Charlotte didn’t like Josh. Paul was sure she liked him. But did she love him? Was it even fair to fault her for that if she didn’t? Josh was not her son, and had been in her life for only a few years.
It was about then, thinking about a Cape Cod getaway, whatever time it happened to be, that he fell asleep.
But it was 3:14 A.M. when he woke up. He didn’t wake up on his own.
He was awakened.
Chit chit. Chit chit chit.
_________________
HIS EYES OPENED ABRUPTLY. WAS IT A DREAM AGAIN? HAD HE EVEN been dreaming? Even if it was hard to recall the details of a dream upon waking, Paul could usually tell whether he’d actually been having one.
He did not think so.
And he was sure that he was, at this moment, awake.
He pinched his arm to be sure.
Yup.
He held his breath and listened for the typing sound to recur. There was nothing. For several seconds, all he heard was the pounding of his own heart.
Then, there it was.
Chit chit. Chit chit chit.
This was not a dream. This was the real deal.
What had Charlotte suggested he do the next time this happened? Wake her up. Get yourself a corroborating witness.
He sat up in bed, touched Charlotte gently on the shoulder.
“Charlotte,” he whispered. “Charlotte. Wake up. Charlotte.”
She stirred. Without opening her eyes, she said, “What?”
“It’s happening,” he said. “The sound.”
“What sound?”
“The typewriter.”
Her eyes opened wide. She withdrew her hand from under the pillow, sat up, blinked several times.
“Just listen,” he whispered.
“Okay, okay, I’m up.”
“Shh.”
“Okay!” she said.
“Be quiet and listen.”
Charlotte said nothing further. The two of them sat there in the bed, waiting. After about ten seconds, Charlotte said, “I don’t hear anything.”
Paul held up a silencing hand. “Wait.”
Another half a minute went past before Charlotte said, “You must have dreamed it.”
“No,” he whispered sharply. “Absolutely not. I’m going downstairs.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Be real quiet. It could start up again at any second.”
Together, they padded down the hall to the stairs and descended them slowly. Twice, Paul raised a hand and the two of them froze.
Nothing.
When they reached the kitchen, Paul reached over to a panel of four light switches and flipped them all up at once. Lights came on over the island and dining table, under the cupboards, and in the adjoining living area.
“We know you’re here!” Paul shouted.
Except no one was.
Paul bolted down the stairs that led to the front door, careful to grab the railing this time so he didn’t land on his butt.
“Paul!” Charlotte screamed.
The door was locked, the dead bolt thrown. He opened a second, inside door that led to the garage, disappeared into there for fifteen seconds, then reentered the house, shaking his head. He trudged back up the stairs to the kitchen.
“Paul?”
“I thought . . . I thought I could catch whoever it was.”