“Kenneth,” Paul said. He was going to extend a hand, but they’d been cautioned about no physical contact.
“And you are?” Hoffman said, looking at a still-seated Anna.
“Dr. Anna White,” she said.
“A head doctor, I understand,” he said. He smiled, showing off teeth tinged with brown. “You’re not here to give me a rectal exam.”
“Sit down,” the guard said. As he slipped out the door, he said to Paul and Anna, “Need anything, just shout.”
Hoffman sat. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Anna since she’d introduced herself.
“It seems like the dumbest thing in the world to ask,” Paul said, “but all I can think of is, how are things?”
Kenneth smiled weakly. “Just lovely.”
“Thanks for seeing us,” Paul said.
“I don’t get a lot of visitors,” he said, and shrugged. “Nice to break the monotony. And you’re the first one from West Haven to see me.” Kenneth shook his head. “I would have thought you’d have been the absolute last. How are things there?”
“I haven’t gone back yet,” Paul said. “I’ve been on a leave.” He said it without a hint of irony.
“Oh, yes,” Kenneth said. “That.” He looked Paul straight in the eyes. “If you’ve come here looking for an apology, you can have one.”
Paul glanced at Anna. Her eyebrows went up a tenth of an inch. She knew Paul was not necessarily expecting one, and even if he had been, she figured he wouldn’t have been expecting it this quickly.
“I’m sorry you got dragged into my mess,” Kenneth said. “I mean, I did what I felt I had to do at the time, but I wish it hadn’t happened that way.” He paused. “If I was going to be caught anyway, I’m glad you lived.” He smiled wryly. “Getting rid of two bodies was going to be hard enough, but three? I’d have probably died from a heart attack digging a third grave.” He smiled, turned over his hands to show his palms. “If not that, the calluses would have been brutal.”
Paul sat with his hands clasped in front of him and smiled. “It’s nice to catch up.”
Anna had spotted something on the inside of Kenneth’s left wrist, what looked like a fresh scar.
“I was surprised to hear that Gabriella visits you,” Paul said.
“She’s a saint, she is.”
“I might have thought she’d want nothing to do with you.”
Kenneth shrugged. “Go figure.” He smiled sardonically. “It must be the hypnotic hold I have over women, even those I’ve wronged.” He looked at Anna. “What do you think?”
“Even Charles Manson had his admirers,” she said evenly.
“Ooh, that stings,” he said. He looked down at the envelope on the table, and then to Paul. “So why are you here?”
“Three reasons, I guess,” he said slowly, building up to it. “It’s been a rough eight months. There’s the physical recovery of course. That’s been hard enough. But there’s the mental one, too. You haunt me, Kenneth. You come to me more nights than not. I’ve been looking for ways to deal with that, and believed one way would be to meet with you. To sit down with you. To remind myself that you’re not some, I don’t know, all-powerful evil force, but just a man. Nothing more. And seeing you here has helped me already. You’re a shell of what you used to be. You don’t look like you’d be much of a threat to anyone.” Paul leaned forward. “You’re broken, Kenneth. You’re a sad, broken man who’s tried to take his own life. So tonight, when I go to sleep, that’s the image of you I’ll take with me. Not the man who tried to kill me, but a pitiful, beaten man.”
Kenneth held Paul’s gaze. “Glad to be able to help in that regard. Number two?”
“I wanted to ask why. Why did a man I thought I knew do something so utterly horrible? What happened?” Paul tapped his own temple. “What snapped in here to make you do what you did? Or do you even know?”
Kenneth appeared to take the question seriously. “You don’t think I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times since it happened? You know what I think? I think that inside of all of us — you, me, even you, Dr. White — is a devil just dying to break out. Most of us, we know how to keep him penned up. We lock him away in a personal jail with bars of morality. But sometimes, he’s able to pry those bars apart, just enough to slip out. And if he’s been in there a long time, when he does get out, he wants to make up for lost time.” He smiled. “Does that answer your question?”
“No,” Paul said. “But it’s probably as close as we’re going to get.”
Kenneth smiled. “And number three?”
Anna glanced over at Paul and the envelope under his palm.
Paul said, “Remember yard sales? Driving around the neighborhood, people putting out all their junk to sell.”
“Of course. I haven’t been in here forever.”
“Charlotte picked up something interesting the other day at a sale in Milford.”
“Okay.”
“An old typewriter. An Underwood.”
Kenneth blinked. “So?”
“It was an Underwood that you made Catherine and Jill type their apologies on, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Hoffman said. “It was.”
“I’m going to tell you a story you’re not going to believe, but I don’t care. You may laugh, but I don’t give a shit. The typewriter that’s sitting in my house is, I’m certain, the typewriter you made Catherine and Jill use before you killed them.”
Hoffman leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He looked dumbstruck for several seconds, then chuckled.
“That’s not possible,” he said. “It was never found.”
“Well, someone found it. Not the police, I grant you that. But someone found it.”
“Bullshit. I tossed it into a Dumpster. It would have been picked up the next day. It’s long gone. It’s buried in a landfill.”
“No,” Paul said.
He turned back the flap on the envelope and pulled out the pages. He set them out for display, one at a time, for Hoffman to read. He studied each sheet as it was placed before him.
“What the hell are these?”
“Messages. From the women you killed.”
Kenneth looked up from the pages into Paul’s eyes. “What?”
“They’ve been showing up in that typewriter. All by themselves.”
Kenneth tilted his head to the right, then the left, almost in the manner of a dog that can’t make sense of what it’s seeing.
“This is some kind of joke.”
“Not a joke.”
Kenneth laughed, but it sounded forced. “No, really. This” — he tapped his index finger on one of the pages — “is complete and total bullshit.”
Paul slowly shook his head. He noticed Anna had leaned back some from the table. This was his show.
“I wish it were a joke. I was skeptical at first, too. I heard the typing in the night, when the only ones in the house were Charlotte and me. I’ll admit, I had to consider alternative explanations for a while. One, that someone was breaking in and doing it. Two, that I was losing my mind and writing these myself without even realizing it. But I’ve discounted both those theories. And I believe Dr. White here is with me on that one, am I right?”
Paul looked at Anna, waiting for a reassuring nod that did not come.
“Anyway,” he continued, “I was left with only one possible explanation. That there are powers out there beyond our understanding, and that Catherine and Jill are reaching out. Looking for answers.”
“You haven’t forgotten what I taught, have you, Paul? Math, physics? I dealt in the world of the rational. And what you’re saying is nuts.”
“It would be nuts for messages like these to show up in a typewriter that was not the one you used.”