“Were you concerned he might harm himself? That he might take his own life? Could he have received one of these so-called messages telling him to kill himself, to walk out into the sound?”
“I just...”
“And I understand you were recently out there? Two nights ago? He’d had an episode?”
“Oh, God, what have I done,” Anna said and began to curl in on herself. “What did I fail to do?”
As the tears came, she grabbed for more tissues. “I suggested to him that he go to the hospital, that he be admitted for a short period so that he could be observed. But he wouldn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
Anna shook her head. “His friend talked him out of it.”
“What friend?”
“Bill. I don’t know his last name, but I think he works with Charlotte. She’s a real estate agent.”
Arnwright flipped to an earlier page in his notebook. “Bill Myers?”
“Possibly. Charlotte phoned him when I was there. Bill asked to talk to Paul, and after that Paul said he didn’t want to go to the hospital. He might have come to that decision on his own, though. Paul did not believe there was anything wrong with him mentally, although toward the end, he seemed more open to considering the idea that maybe he was responsible.”
“Responsible?”
“For the strange things that were going on.”
“Do you agree with the wife? He was writing them?”
Anna looked at the detective with red eyes. “Yes.”
Arnwright nodded and closed his notebook. “So it appears what happened is, Mr. Davis was in a very distressed state of mind, walked out into Long Island Sound with the intention of killing himself, and was successful. Is there anything you can tell me, as a professional who was treating Mr. Davis, that would run contrary to that finding?”
Anna struggled. To say no was an admission that she had not done her job, that she had failed him. To say no was to admit responsibility.
To say yes would be to lie.
“No,” she whispered. “No, I can’t think of anything that would contradict that finding.”
Arnwright offered a slow, sympathetic nod. “For what it’s worth, Dr. White, we have all been there. We’re all just trying to do the best we can.”
“I didn’t,” Anna White said. “Not even close.”
Forty-Seven
“I killed him,” Bill Myers said. “I killed Paul.”
“I’m sorry?” Detective Arnwright said. “What do you mean?” They were meeting at The Corner Restaurant on River Street, a cup of coffee in front of each of them. Arnwright had suggested Paul’s friend order something to eat, but he’d declined, saying he didn’t have much of an appetite. That was when he made what had sounded to the detective like a confession.
“Mr. Myers, I should tell you, that if you’re about to admit something here, I’m obliged to inform you that—”
“It’s nothing like that,” Bill said, waving his hand in the air. “I didn’t drag him out into the sound and hold his head underwater, for God’s sake, but I might as well have.”
He made two fists, opened his hands, then made them again.
“I just... I can’t believe he did that. I can’t. He wasn’t crazy.” He leaned in closer to Arnwright. “He was going through some shit, he really was, but I never, never thought he would do anything like that. Otherwise, I would have told him to take his therapist’s advice, to check into the hospital. But no, I had to talk him out of that.” He grimaced. “I have to live with that for the rest of my life. That’s what I mean when I say I killed him. I talked him out of getting the help he so clearly needed.”
“It’s hard to know what’s going through people’s heads,” Arnwright said. “When did you last see Mr. Davis?”
“We met up for a squash game the other day but didn’t really play that hard. You know he had a head injury, and I didn’t even think he should be playing, but he was sick of treating himself with kid gloves. But after a few minutes, he came to his senses, and we cut our session short.”
“How did he seem to you?”
“Upset. You know about the nightmares? The typewriter thing?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Were you close friends, you and Paul?”
Bill hesitated. “Friends, for sure. Maybe not super close. We knew each other in university, UConn, and we sort of kept in touch. We both ended up in Milford, and he knew what I did for a living, and when Charlotte was getting into real estate, he asked if there was any way I could help her out. We found a spot for her at the agency.”
“So all three of you were friends.”
“I guess. Sure.”
“Are you married, Mr. Myers?”
“I have been, but not now.” He appeared to be considering whether to tell Arnwright something. “Let me tell you a story.”
“Okay.”
“I had a cousin, she lived in Cleveland. And around the time she was turning twenty, she started believing that she was being pursued by Margaret Thatcher.”
“The British prime minister?”
Bill nodded. “She said she was getting messages from her, telepathically. And here’s the thing. Her parents, they wanted to believe that it was really happening. That somehow, for reasons they could not explain, the prime minister of England was out to get their daughter. You know why?”
“I think so.”
“Because the alternative was even more horrible to imagine. That their daughter was seriously mentally ill. They were in denial about that. But eventually, of course, they had to accept the fact that my cousin Michele was delusional. A delusion became the only rational explanation.”
“And that’s how you feel about Paul and his obsession about that typewriter.”
Bill shrugged.
“What happened to Michele?” Arnwright asked.
“She jumped off the Hope Memorial Bridge into the Cuyahoga River at the age of twenty-four.”
Detective Arnwright had to wait nearly a minute for his knock to be answered at Gavin Hitchens’s house.
When the door finally opened, Arnwright’s eyebrows went up a notch. He knew Hitchens had been seriously injured by Paul Davis, that he’d suffered a blow to the head, that his elbow had been sprained, that one of his knees had been hurt. So the sling, the bandage on his head, and the wrapped knee were to be expected. Arnwright was just expecting Hitchens to be wearing more than a pair of boxers.
“Yeah?” he said.
Arnwright introduced himself. Hitchens nodded knowingly and smiled.
“Let me guess,” he said. “That son of a bitch wants to charge me with harassment or something.” Hitchens grinned maliciously. “Fucker puts me in the hospital, and I’m supposed to be the dangerous one.”
“You’re talking about Mr. Davis,” Arnwright said cautiously.
“Is that what he did? File a complaint about me? Because if he’s saying I did something, I didn’t do anything.”
“What do you think he might have said?”
“Look, okay, I was on his street. I was looking at his house. But that’s all. I was getting an ice cream.”
“And when was this?”
Hitchens blinked. “Hang on. Is that why you’re here or not?”
“If you think I’m here about Paul Davis, yeah, you’re right about that. So when was this?”
“Yesterday, kind of midday.”
“You had words?”
Hitchens shrugged. “He told me to move on, and I did. End of story.”
“But there’s a lot of bad blood between you.”
“Wow,” said Hitchens. “I can see why you’re a detective.”