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.
He was allowed to call Charlotte when he got there.
“Do you know any lawyers?” he asked.
“Tons,” she said. “I’m in real estate.”
“It’s not a real estate lawyer I need.”
When Charlotte recovered from his news, she said she would find someone and meet him at the station.
Paul was placed in a cell to wait, which gave him plenty of time to think about a great many things.
Anyone else in his predicament might have been thinking about what charge awaited him. Would it be assault? Would it be something more serious, like attempted murder? Would his afternoon behind bars turn into six months or a year? Or more?
But Paul wasn’t thinking about any of that.
He was thinking about the typewriter.
Gavin Hitchens had not taken his keys. Gavin Hitchens had not broken into his house. And Gavin Hitchens had definitely not typed that message.
Which presented what one might call a bit of a mind fuck.
Hoffman’s typewriter had not been found. It was within the realm of possibility that the machine Charlotte had picked up at that yard sale was that typewriter.
And if it was...
Paul examined the tiny cell. A bench to sit on, a toilet bolted to the wall. It seemed so... restful in here. Charlotte and whatever lawyer she could find could take their time as far as he was concerned.
It was nice to have a place to contemplate things, uninterrupted.
So, if it was the same typewriter, Paul had to decide whether to think the unthinkable.
Were Catherine Lamb and Jill Foster trying to communicate with him through that typewriter? If so, what were they trying to say? What was the message?
What did they want from him?
This is crazy. They’ ll lock me up, but it won’t be in a place like this. It’ ll be a psych ward.
Why contact him? Maybe they’d have reached out to anyone who possessed this typewriter. (Paul made a mental note: when Charlotte found the previous owners, he’d ask if they’d noticed anything spooky about the Underwood. Maybe that was why they’d sold it.) But making a connection with Paul, who was directly linked to the women through Kenneth Hoffman, had to mean something.
Sitting in the cell, Paul had something of an epiphany. He needed to talk to more people. He needed to talk to everyone connected to this case, or at least try.
The dead women’s spouses. Other women Hoffman had affairs with. His wife, Gabriella. The more he learned, the more he might understand why messages were appearing in that typewriter.
Charlotte showed up with a lawyer named Andrew Kilgore, who didn’t look as though he’d seen his twenty-fifth birthday yet.
“Mr. Davis, I’ve arranged for your release but you’re going to have to appear for a hearing—”
“Sure, whatever, that’s fine,” Paul said as the cell door was opened and he was led, along with the lawyer, toward the exit.
“Mr. Davis, I’m going to need to sit down with you to discuss our options. Your wife tells me you’ve been under considerable strain and that you suffered a head injury eight months ago, which could be very useful to us—”
“I want to get out of here,” he said.
He found Charlotte waiting out front of the station. She threw her arms around him. Her smeared eye makeup suggested she’d been crying.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” he said, breaking free of her and reaching for the car door. “Let’s go.”
Kilgore had more to say to him, but Paul wasn’t even listening. He had a plan now, and he just wanted to get to it.
Twenty-Nine
When Paul and Charlotte got home — they first had to go over to Constance Drive to fetch Paul’s car — she found the latest note sitting in the Underwood: Blood was everywhere. What makes someone do something so horrible?
“Paul?” she said. “What’s this? You didn’t tell me about this. What’s going on? Why did you attack that man?”
“I have to go out,” he said.
“Paul, we just got home. For Christ’s sake, tell me what’s going on?”
“I have things to do.”
“Is Harold Foster in?” Paul asked at the Milford Savings & Loan customer service desk.
“Do you have an appointment?” the woman behind the desk asked, flashing him a Polident smile.
“No,” he said.
“Um, would you like to make one?”
“If he’s here now, I would like to see him.”
The woman’s smile faded. “Let me check. What’s the name?”
“Paul Davis.”
“And what’s it concerning?”
“It’s a personal matter,” he said.
“Oh.” She picked up the phone and turned away so that Paul could not hear her discussion. After fifteen seconds, she replaced the receiver and said, “Have a seat and Mr. Foster will be with you shortly.”
Shortly turned out to be five minutes. Finally, a short, balding man in a dark blue suit appeared.
“Mr. Davis?” He wore a quizzical look.
Paul stood. “Yes.”
“Come on in.”
He led Paul down a carpeted hallway to an office about ten feet square. The wall that faced the hall was a sheet of glass. Foster went behind his desk and sat while Paul took a chair opposite him.
The man’s desk was stacked with file folders. “Excuse all the mess. So much paperwork.” He grinned. “Everything has to be in writing, I always say.”
“Of course.”
“How may I help you? You weren’t very forthcoming with our receptionist, but I understand financial matters are very personal. Whether you’ve got a million to invest, or you owe the same to the credit card companies” — he grinned — “these are all things that aren’t anyone else’s business.”
“It’s not that kind of thing,” Paul said.
“What could it be, then?”
“I teach at West Haven College. Well, not at the moment. But I’ll be going back in the fall.”
The three words prompted an almost instantly darker look from Foster. “Oh?” He studied Paul a moment longer. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Paul Davis.”
Foster leaned back in his chair. “My God, you were... you were there.”
Paul nodded. “I was.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“Yes.”
“If you hadn’t stopped... the police wouldn’t have found him.” He let out a long breath. “And then we might never have found out what happened to them. To Jill, and Catherine.”
“I’m very sorry about your wife. I knew Jill, of course. Not well, but I ran into her occasionally at West Haven. The one I knew much better, or at least thought that I knew, was Ken—”
Foster held up a hand. “Stop right there.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Don’t even say his name,” he said, his voice bordering on threatening. “Do not say that man’s name in my presence. Never.”
Paul nodded. “I understand.”
Foster calmed himself. “Well, what is it you want?”
“I... I hardly know how to begin this, but I want to ask you some questions, about Jill, and what happened.”