“Is he laying a guilt trip on you?”
“It’s not like that at all. He’s genuinely worried about me.” She let out a short laugh. “Wants me to get out there. You know what he called this trip of ours, to a prison? A fun outing.”
Paul laughed.
Anna was silent for a moment. Then, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I mean, eventually. We’re managing okay now, but in six months? Hard to say. That visit from the SWAT team shook him up badly.” She looked his way and smiled. “You would be amazed at how many therapists’ lives are a complete mess. We offer advice to others on how to get their shit together when our own is a total disaster.” She laughed self-deprecatingly. “We’re the evangelists who get caught with a prostitute while preaching morality to the masses.”
Paul smiled.
Anna continued, “We’re just people. We’re just people like anyone else, with a fancy piece of paper on the wall. At the end of the day, we have the same doubts as anyone else. Are we making any progress? Are we making a difference? Are we really any help to anyone at all?”
“You’ve helped me,” he said.
Her mouth formed a jagged smile. “I hope so. And yet here we are, driving off to meet with a murderer. For the life of me, I don’t know that this is going to do you an ounce of good.”
“It’s a journey into the unknown for us both.”
“Yeah, well, I wish this GPS could tell us if we’re doing the right thing.”
Paul looked at her hands gripping the steering wheel. He didn’t see any bandage.
“How’s the finger?” he asked.
She flashed him a smile. “It healed up nicely, thank you.”
A warm feeling washed over Paul. He wanted to touch Anna, rest his hand on her arm ever so slightly. Make a physical connection, no matter how small. He recalled holding her hand under the running water, their shoulders touching.
They barely said a word the next half an hour. Not until the GPS voice advised Anna to take the next exit off the highway. A few more miles, and a few more turns later, they spotted a facility in the distance surrounded by an unusually tall metal fence with thick coils of barbed wire strung along the top.
“Doesn’t look much like a day care center,” Anna said.
“No,” Paul said. He turned and looked at her as the car approached the gate. “All of a sudden, I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Anna said. “I can turn around and take us back.”
Paul pressed his lips tightly together. “We’re here,” he said. “Might as well check the place out. If they send me here for what I did to Hitchens, maybe Kenneth and I will end up as roommates.”
Thirty-Eight
Charlotte had not lied to Paul about going into Manhattan. She hadn’t even lied about going to visit her mother. She intended to do that, if she had time. And Paul was right when he had joked as he’d dropped her off at the Milford station that she would try to find time to visit Bloomingdale’s.
But she was not going into New York for either of those reasons.
When she got off the train and entered Grand Central Terminal, she exited through the market and flagged down a cab almost immediately on Lexington.
“Sixty-Third and Park,” she said as she closed the door.
The taxi moved south, the unshaven, overweight man behind the wheel steering over to the left lane to make a turn onto Forty-First Street. One long block later, he went north on Third while Charlotte struggled with muting the annoying mini — TV screen bolted to the partition in front of her.
“Nice day,” the driver said.
Charlotte was not interested in small talk.
Traffic, as always, was heavy, but fifteen minutes later the taxi was slowing on Sixty-Third with Park only half a block away. “Where ’bouts?” the driver asked.
“Anywhere here,” she said. “Just pull over.”
The cab aimed for the left side of the street. Charlotte slid a ten and two ones into the tray below the Plexiglas divider and got out. As she hit the sidewalk she glanced up to check the numbers. She had never actually been to this address before, but she knew, from checking Google Maps early that morning, that her destination had to be practically right in front of her.
Then she saw the sign.
It was a subtle bronze marker, not much bigger than a license plate, affixed to the side of a building at eye level, next to a set of revolving doors. Charlotte pushed through and found herself in a small, marble foyer. A security guard at the front desk looked up.
“Help you?”
“Here to see Hailey Benjamin,” she said, knowing there was probably no need to add the name of the firm.
“A moment,” he said, picking up a phone.
Charlotte had figured this would happen. She was waiting for the question.
“Name?” the guard asked, looking at her.
“Charlotte Davis.”
The guard repeated the name into the phone, hung up, and said, “Go on up. Sixteenth floor.”
Charlotte got onto the elevator, imagining what Hailey’s reaction must have been when she was told who was here to see her. She’d be so dumbfounded the wife of her ex-husband was in the building that she’d hardly refuse to see her just because she didn’t have an appointment.
As the elevator passed the fourth floor, Charlotte wondered whether Hailey would notify her husband, Walter, that she was here. Walter Benjamin was the president of Benjamin Marketing, and while his wife technically worked for him, it was, from everything Charlotte had heard, more of a partnership.
When the elevator doors parted on the sixteenth floor, Hailey was standing there in front of the wall with the firm’s name stretched out over twenty feet in big blue letters.
“Charlotte,” she said, saying the word as a half welcome, half question.
“Hailey,” she said.
“Taking a day off to see the city?” Hailey said, forcing a smile.
“Something like that. Is there someplace we could talk?”
“Uh, sure. What’s this about? Has something happened? Is everything okay?”
“Let’s get settled first.”
Hailey said something quietly to the man on the reception desk before leading Charlotte down a glass hallway to a door labeled CONFERENCE ROOM B.
Inside was a rectangular glass table big enough to sit a dozen people. Hailey pulled out a chrome-and-black-leather chair for Charlotte before sitting herself in the one next to her.
“Can I get you something? Sparkling water? A cappuccino?”
“No,” Charlotte said. “Hailey, I know you and I have not exactly been best friends over the years.”
Hailey said nothing, waited.
“But this isn’t about me. This is about Paul. I know there’s got to be some part of you that still cares about him, and—”
“Of course I care about Paul,” Hailey said. “Just because things didn’t work out between us doesn’t mean I have no feelings for him. We had a child together, for God’s sake. What’s going on? Is he okay? Is he sick? Is this about what happened?”
“Yes... and no. He’s not himself. He’s... he’s believing in things that don’t make any sense.”
“Like?”
“First of all, he’s hearing things.”
“What do you mean? Do you mean voices? Paul’s hearing voices?”
“Not exactly,” Charlotte said. “But—”
The door opened. A tall, gray-haired man in a dark blue suit, open-collared white shirt, and no tie stepped in.
“Charlotte?”
“Walter,” Charlotte said.