A Noise Downstairs Read online

  “Stealing a magazine?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” he said, flashing the cover. “There was an article I wanted to read.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, frowning. “That might not have been the best one to put out there.”

  Paul managed a grin. “The headline did catch my eye. Otherwise, I might have tried a golf magazine. Even though I don’t play.”

  “Those are my father’s,” she said. “He’s eighty-three, and he still gets out on the course, occasionally, if I can go with him. And he loves the driving range. He can still whack a bucket of balls like nobody’s business. A lot less chance of getting lost when you don’t actually head out onto the course.” She extended a hand and Paul gave her the magazine. She took another glance at the headline as she tossed it onto a nearby coffee table.

  “How’s the head?” she asked.

  “Physically, or mentally?”

  “I was thinking, physically?” She smiled. “For now.”

  “Dr. Jones says I’m improving the way I should be, but with a head injury like I had, we have to watch for any effects for up to a year. And I’m still having some, no doubt about it.”

  “Such as?”

  “The headaches, of course. And I forget things now and then. Sometimes, I walk into a room, and I have no idea why I’m there. Not only that, but I might not even remember getting there. One minute, I’m in the bedroom, the next I’m down in the kitchen, and I’ve got no idea how it happened. And I haven’t gone back to squash. Can’t run the risk of getting hit in the head with a racket or running into the wall. I’m kind of itching to get back to it, though. Maybe soon. I’ll just take it easy.”

  Anna White nodded. “Okay.”

  “Sleeping is still, well, you know.”

  “We’ll get to that.”

  “My balance is getting pretty good again. And I can concentrate pretty well when reading. That took a while. It looks like I’ll be back to teaching in a couple of months, in September.”

  “Have you been to the campus at all since the incident?”

  Paul nodded. “A couple of times, kind of easing into it. Did one lecture for a summer class—one I’d given before so I didn’t have to write it from scratch. Had one tutorial with some kids, got a good discussion going. But that’s about it.”

  “The college has been very patient.”

  “Well, yes. I think they would have been anyway, but considering it was a member of their own faculty who tried to kill me . . . they’ve been accommodating, for sure.” He paused, ran his hand lightly over his left temple, where the shovel had hit him. “I always tell myself it could have been worse.”

  “Yes.”

  “I could have ended up in the Volvo with Jill and Catherine.”

  Anna nodded solemnly. “As bad as things are, they can always be worse.”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay, so we’ve dealt with the physical. Now let’s get to my area of expertise. How’s your mood been lately?”

  “Up and down.”

  “Are you still seeing him, Paul?”

  “Kenneth?”

  “Yes, Kenneth.”

  Paul shrugged. “In my dreams, of course.”

  “And?”

  Paul hesitated, as though embarrassed. “Sometimes . . . just around.”

  “Have you seen him since we spoke the other day?”

  “I was picking up a few things at Walgreens and I was sure I saw him in the checkout line. I could feel a kind of panic attack overwhelming me. So I just left, didn’t buy the things I had in my basket. Got in the car and drove the hell away fast as I could.”

  “Did you honestly believe it was him?”

  Slowly, Paul said, “No. I knew it couldn’t be.”

  “Because?” She leaned her head toward him.

  “Because Kenneth is in prison.”

  “For two counts of murder and one of attempted murder,” Anna said. “Would have been three if that policeman hadn’t come by when he did.”

  “I know.” Paul rubbed his hands together. It had been more than just luck that a cop came. The officer in that cruiser he and Kenneth had driven past had decided to go looking for that Volvo with a busted taillight.

  Anna leaned forward onto her knees. “In time, this will get better. I promise you.”

  “What about the nightmares?” he asked.

  “They’re persisting?”

  “Yes. I had one two nights ago. Charlotte had to wake me.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Paul swallowed. He needed a moment. “I was finding it hard to see. Everything was foggy, but then I realized I was all wrapped up in plastic sheeting. I tried to move it away but I couldn’t. And then I could see something through the plastic. A face.”

  “Kenneth Hoffman?”

  Paul shook his head. “You’d think so. He’s been in most of them. What I saw on the other side was myself, screaming at me to come out. It’s like I was simultaneously in the plastic and outside it, but mostly in, and feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I was trying to push my way out. It’s a new variation on my usual nightmare. Sometimes I think Charlotte’s one of the two women in the back of that car. I have this vague recollection, before I blacked out, of being terrified Kenneth had killed Charlotte.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  He shrugged. “She hadn’t come with me to the play. My mind just went there.”

  “Sure.”

  “Anyway, thank God Charlotte’s there when I have the nightmares, waking me up. The last one, my arms were flailing about in front of me as I tried to escape the plastic.”

  “Are you able to get back to sleep after?”

  “Sometimes, but I’m afraid to. I figure the nightmare’s just on pause.” He closed his eyes briefly, as though checking to see whether the images that had come to him in the night were still there. When he opened them, he said, “And I guess it was four nights ago, I dreamed I was sitting at the table with them.”

  “With?”

  “You know. Jill Foster and Catherine Lamb. At Kenneth’s house. We were all taking turns typing our apologies. The women, they had these ghoulish grins, blood draining from the slits in their throats, actually laughing at me because the typewriter was now in front of me and I don’t know what to write and they’re saying, ‘We’re all done! We’re all done!’ And you know how, in a dream, you can’t actually see words clearly? They’re all a-jumble?”

  “Yes,” Anna White said.

  “So that’s why it’s so frustrating. I know I have to type something or Kenneth, standing there at the end of the table, looking like fucking Nosferatu—excuse me—will kill me. But then, I know he’s going to kill me anyway.” Paul’s hands were starting to shake.

  Anna reached across and touched the back of one. “Let’s stop for a second.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “We’ll switch gears for a bit. How are things with Charlotte?”

  Paul shrugged. “I guess they’re okay.”

  “That doesn’t sound terribly positive.”

  “No, really, things are better. She’s been very supportive, although having to watch me go through all this has to get her down at times. You know, before all this happened, things weren’t exactly a hundred percent. I think Charlotte was going through something, almost a kind of reassessment of her life. You know, ten years ago, is this where she would have imagined herself being? Selling real estate in Milford? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know? I think her dreams were a little different when she was younger. But my nearly getting killed, maybe that had a way of refocusing things. They’re better now.”

  “And your son? Josh?”

  Paul frowned. “It hit him hard when it happened, of course. Thinking your dad might die, that’s not easy for a nine-year-old kid. But I wasn’t in the hospital long, and while I had some recovering to do—and still am—it was clear I wasn’t going to drop dead right away. And he splits his time between his mom and me. So he�
��s not necessarily around when I wake up screaming in the night.”

  Paul tried to laugh. Anna allowed herself a smile. They were both quiet a moment. Anna sensed that Paul was working up to something, so she waited.

  Finally, he said, “I wanted to bounce something off you.”

  “Sure.”

  “I talked about this with Charlotte, and she thinks maybe it’s a good idea, but she said I should get your input.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “It’s pretty obvious that I’m . . . what’s the word? Haunted? I guess I’m haunted by what Kenneth did.”

  “I might have used the word traumatized, but yes.”

  “I mean, not just because he nearly killed me. That’d be enough. But I knew him. He took me under his wing when I arrived at West Haven. He was my friend. We had drinks together, shared our thoughts, connected, you know? Fellow sci-fi nerds. How could I not have seen that under all that, he was a monster?”

  “Monsters can be very good at disguising themselves.”

  Paul shook his head. “Then again, there were many times when I wondered whether I knew him at all, even before this. Remember Walter Mitty?”

  “From the James Thurber story?”

  Paul nodded. “A boring, ordinary man who imagines himself in various heroic roles. Kenneth presented as a drab professor with some secret life as a ladies’ man. Except with him, the secret life wasn’t imaginary. It was for real. He had this underlying charm that women—well, some women—found hard to resist. But he didn’t advertise it to the rest of us. He didn’t brag about his latest sexual conquest.”

  “So he never told you about women he was seeing?”

  “No, but there was talk. We all knew. Whenever there was a faculty event, and he’d bring his wife, Gabriella, all you could think was, is she the only one in the room who doesn’t know?”

  “Did you know his son?”

  “Len,” Paul said, nodding. “Kenneth loved that boy. He was kind of—I don’t know the politically correct way to put this—but he was a bit slow. It’s not like he was somewhere on the spectrum or anything, but definitely not future college material. But Kenneth would bring him out on campus so he could hang out for hours in the library looking at art books. Kenneth’d gather a stack of books for Len so he could turn through them page by page. He liked looking at the pictures.”

  Paul gave Anna a look of bafflement. “How do I square that with what he did? Killing two women? And the way he did it. Making them apologize to him before slitting their . . . I can’t get my head around it.”

  “It’s hard, I know. So, you wanted to bounce something off me.”

  He paused. “Instead of trying to put all of this behind me, I want to confront it. I want to know more. I want to know everything. About what happened to me. About Kenneth. I want to talk to the people whose lives he touched. And not just in a bad way. The good, too. I want to understand all the different Kenneths. If it’s possible, I’d like to actually talk to him, if they’ll let me into the prison to see him. And if he’ll see me, of course. I guess what I’m searching for is the answer to a bigger question.”

  Anna tented her fingers. “Which is?”

  “Was Kenneth evil? Is Kenneth evil?”

  “I could just say yes and save you the trouble.” She took in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “I could go either way on this. Do you honestly think it will help?”

  Paul took a moment before answering.

  “If I can look into the eyes of evil in the real world, maybe I won’t have to run from it in my sleep.”

  Two

  Anna followed Paul Davis out the door. He continued up the driveway to his own car when Anna stopped to open the back door of her Lincoln SUV, careful not to let her father fall out.

  “Come on in, Dad.”

  “Oh, hi, Joanie. Must have nodded off.”

  “It’s Anna, Dad. Not Mom.”

  “Oh, right. We should get going. Joanie will be going to lunch soon.”

  “She’s not at Guildwood anymore, Dad,” she said gently. “I’m going to get you some coffee. There’s still half a pot.”

  “Coffee,” he said. “That sounds good.”

  He turned his legs out the door, then ever so carefully slid off the seat until his feet touched the ground, like some slow-motion parachutist.

  “Ta da,” he said. He looked down, saw that the laces on one of his shoes were loose. “For my next act, I will tie my shoelaces.”

  “When we get inside,” Anna said, closing the car door and walking with her father back into the house. Once inside, her father chose to sit in one of the two waiting room chairs so that he could deal with his shoe promptly.

  “I’ll go get you a coffee, then you can go upstairs and watch your shows,” she said.

  He gave her a small salute. “Righty-o.”

  Instead of going through the door into her office, Anna took the route that led back into the main house. She went to the kitchen, got a clean mug from the cupboard, and filled it from the coffeemaker.

  She heard, faintly, the side door open and close again. She hoped her father hadn’t decided to take up residence in the car again. Then it occurred to her that her next client might have arrived.

  “Shit,” she said under her breath. Anna did not want her father engaging in conversation with her clients, particularly the one who was now due. In her rush to return to her office, she fumbled looping her finger into the handle of the coffee cup and knocked it to the floor.

  “For fuck’s sake,” she said. Anna grabbed a roll of paper towels off the spindle, got to her knees, and mopped up the mess. Once she cleaned the floor and tossed the sodden towels, she poured another cup of coffee and went back to the office.

  She found her father chatting with a thin man in his late twenties who had settled into the other chair and was leaning forward, elbows on knees, listening intently to Anna’s dad. When Anna walked in, he smiled.

  “Hi,” he said nervously to Anna. “Just talking to your dad here.”

  Anna forced a smile. “That’s nice, Gavin. Why don’t you head in?”

  Gavin shook the old man’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Frank.”

  “You bet, Gavin.” Frank White tipped his head toward his daughter. “She’ll get you sorted out, don’t you worry.”

  “I hope so,” Gavin said.

  Gavin went into Anna’s office as she handed her father his coffee. She looked down at his feet.

  “You didn’t do up your shoelaces,” she said.

  Frank shrugged, standing. “I’ll be fine. He seems like a nice fella.”

  You have no idea, Anna thought.

  “Are you going to watch TV in your room?”

  “I think so. Maybe work on the machine a bit.”

  “Dad, you already did, like, an hour of rowing this morning.”

  “Oh, right.”

  She accompanied him as he went into the main part of the house and walked to the bottom of the stairs. She looked at the coffee he was holding, his untied shoelaces, and that flight of stairs, and could imagine the disaster that was waiting to happen.

  “Hang on, Dad,” she said.

  Anna knelt down and quickly tied his shoes. “You don’t have to do that,” he protested.

  “It’s no problem,” she said. “I don’t want you tripping on the stairs. Hand me your coffee.”

  “For Christ’s sake, I’m not an invalid,” he said angrily.

  Anna sighed. “Okay.”

  But she stood there and watched as he ascended the stairs, one hand still gripping the coffee mug, the other on the railing. When he’d reached the second floor he turned and looked down at her.

  “Ta da!” he said again.

  Anna gave him a sad smile, then went back through the house to her office. She found Gavin standing around the back of her desk where her closed laptop sat, admiring the books on her shelves, running his finger along the spines. Gavin wore a pair of faded jeans, sneakers, and a tight-fitt
ing black T-shirt. In addition to being thin, he was scruffy haired and no taller than five-six. From the back, he could have been mistaken for someone in his early to mid teens, not a man who’d soon turn thirty.

  “Mr. Hitchens,” she said formally. “Please take a seat.”

  He spun around innocently, then dropped into the same chair Paul Davis had been in moments earlier. “Your father’s nice,” he said. “He told me he used to work in animation. And he said”— Gavin grinned—“that it’s time you found yourself a man. But don’t worry, I don’t think he was looking at me as a prospect.”

  “Gavin, we need to talk about—”

  “But he called you Joanie. Is that your middle name?”

  “That was my mother’s name,” Anna White said reluctantly. She did not like revealing personal details to clients. And that was especially true of Gavin Hitchens.

  “Oh,” he said. “I see. Is your mother . . .”

  “She passed away several years ago. Gavin, there are certain ground rules here.” She grabbed a file sitting on her desk next to the computer. “You are here specifically to talk with me. Not my father, not any of my other clients. Just me. There need to be boundaries.”

  Gavin nodded solemnly, like a scolded dog. “Of course.”

  Anna glanced at some notes tucked into the file. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off last time.”

  “I don’t remember where that was,” Gavin said.

  “We were talking about empathy.”

  “Oh, right, yes.” He nodded agreeably. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I know you think I don’t feel it, but that’s not true.”

  “I’ve never said that,” Anna replied. “But your actions suggest a lack of it.”

  “I told you, I’ve never hurt anyone.”

  “But you have, Gavin. You can hurt people without physically harming them.”

  The young man shrugged and looked away.

  “Emotional distress can be scarring,” she said.

  Gavin said nothing.

  “And the truth is, someone could have been hurt by the things you did. There can be consequences you can’t predict. Like what you did with Mrs. Walker’s cat.”

  “Nothing happened. Not even to the cat.”