“What was your impression?”
“He was charming,” Gwen said. “Positively charming.”
Paul had put the phone down for only a second when he thought to call back Charlotte.
“Why’d you cut me off before?” she asked.
“It was the ice cream truck.”
“You cut me off to get an ice cream?”
“You said you were going to ask around about some home security companies?”
“Yeah, it’s on my list,” she said with a hint of weariness. “That, and finding the former owners of that house. Why? Has something else happened?”
Did he want to tell her that he’d found another note? While he considered how to respond, Charlotte said, “Paul?”
“No, nothing’s happened,” he said. “I just wanted to remind you, that’s all.”
“I’ll ask around. Listen, there’s a call I have to take.”
“Go.”
He put the phone down on the counter and sat there, thinking.
And then it hit him.
“Fuck,” he said.
He got back onto the laptop, opened a browser, and went to Google. He entered several key words. Gavin and dead and pretend and son and father and Hitchcock.
Paul found the news story, even though he had the last name wrong. It was Hitchens, not Hitchcock. It was as Anna had described. The sick bastard tormented a man by pretending to be his son who had been killed in Iraq.
Paul remembered Gavin Hitchens bumping into him as he stormed out of Anna’s office. The brief tussle they’d had.
And then Paul couldn’t find his keys.
Twenty-Seven
It all made sense.
If this psycho had gotten into Anna White’s files, as she feared, then he knew all about Paul’s history. If Hitchens had googled Paul just as Paul had googled Hitchens, he’d know all about what had happened with Hoffman. He’d know Paul had nearly died. He’d know about the notes Hoffman had made the women write.
He’d know about the typewriter.
Hitchens would know more than enough to fuck with him.
Paul called up the online phone directory and entered Hitchens’s name. A phone number and a Milford address popped up. The guy lived on Constance Drive.
“You son of a bitch,” Paul said.
He felt rage growing within him like a high-grade fever. He wanted to do something about this bastard.
Right fucking now.
He got out his cell and phoned Anna White’s office. The first, logical course of action was to get in touch with her.
Voice mail.
“Shit,” he said, and ended the call.
He looked at the screen again, focusing on Gavin Hitchens’s address. He closed the computer, grabbed the extra set of keys he’d been using the last few days, and headed for the stairs to the front door.
But wait.
What about the shoe Paul had sometimes been leaving just inside the door? If Hitchens had been in the house, how had he left the shoe there on his way out?
Paul ran down to the front door. He picked up a shoe, opened the door, and stepped outside. He got down on his knees, and with the door open no more than four inches, he snaked his arm in, up to the elbow, then crooked it around and set it up against the back of the door.
It could be done, he thought. He had to admit he’d not checked exactly how close the shoe had been to the door. If it had been sitting out an inch or two, would he have noticed?
But wait.
How would Hitchens even know he needed to set that shoe back in that position? If he’d snuck into the house in the middle of the night, he might have heard the shoe move. The sole might have squeaked as it was pushed across the tile.
Minor details, Paul thought. Somehow, this Gavin asshole had figured it out.
While his rage continued to grow, Paul felt something else. There was relief. He’d come up with an answer to what had been going on, and it wasn’t that he was crazy.
That was good news.
But he was going to deliver some bad news to Gavin Hitchens.
Paul grinned. “I’m comin’ for ya, you motherfucker.”
The house was easy enough to find. It was a white, two-story house with a double garage. A blue Toyota Corolla sat in the driveway. Paul parked two houses down and started walking back.
He had no plan.
Well, he wanted his goddamn keys back. He had that much of a plan.
Paul was still one lot away when he saw him. Gavin Hitchens came out the front door, heading for the Corolla.
Paul picked up his pace. He cut across the lawn, the grass underfoot silencing his approach.
Hitchens reached the driver’s door and was about to open it when Paul came up behind him, grabbed the back of his head with his outstretched palm, quickly gripped Hitchens’s hair, and drove his skull forward into the roof of the car.
Hitchens let out a cry.
Paul pulled his head back, barely noticing that he’d put a small dent into the roof of the Corolla.
“You bastard!” Paul said, driving Hitchens’s head into the car a second time. But he wasn’t able to do it with as much force this time. Hitchens was resisting. He managed to do half a turn, wanting to see who his attacker was.
“Fucker!” Paul said, spittle flying off his lip. “You sick fuck!”
Hitchens twisted, freed himself from Paul’s grasp. He made a halfhearted attempt to take a swing at Paul, but the blow to the head had disoriented him, and he slid halfway down the side of the car.
Paul brought one leg back and kicked Hitchens in the knee. Hitchens screamed and slid the rest of the way to the driveway.
Paul stood over Hitchens, who was now bleeding profusely from the forehead. “I know it was you,” Paul said. “I know what you did, and I know how you did it.”
Hitchens moaned. He looked up blearily and said, “Police...”
“Good idea,” Paul said. “You can tell them about breaking into my house, trying to drive me out of my fucking mind. Where are my keys? I want my goddamn keys.”
Hitchens managed to sit upright, his back against the front tire. “You’re in such deep shit,” he said.
“Nothing compared to what you’re in,” Paul said.
His phone started to ring inside his jacket.
“Breaking and entering, that’s what they’ll get you for,” Paul said. “And if there’s a charge for trying to drive someone out of his fucking mind, they’ll add that to the list.”
He felt a pounding in his chest. He wondered if he might give himself a heart attack. The thing was, though, it felt good. Paul hadn’t felt this good, this empowered, in a very long time.
When he looked down at Hitchens, he saw Hoffman, too.
The phone in his jacket continued to ring.
Paul finally dug it out of his pocket and saw that it was Anna. He put the phone to his ear.
“Yeah?”
“Paul?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Anna. You called. But listen, I found them.”
Paul blinked. “What?”
“Your keys. They’d fallen behind a chair. I just found them. Drop by anytime to pick them up.”
Twenty-Eight
A neighbor saw the whole thing and called the police.
Paul didn’t see the point in running. He was hardly going to lead the cops on a high-speed chase throughout Fairfield County. He sat on the curb in front of Hitchens’s home and waited for them to arrive. They got there about a minute after the ambulance.
The neighbor, a woman in her seventies, knelt next to Gavin, trying to comfort him.
“What kind of monster are you?” she shrieked at Paul. She stayed with Hitchens until the paramedics assessed him. When the police arrived, she pointed to Paul.
“He did it!”
Paul sat, arms resting on his knees, doing his best impression of someone who did not present a threat.
The officers approached. “Sir, would you stand up please?”
Not long after that, he was cuffed, thrown into the back of the cruiser, and on his way to the station.