“Boy, this is tough,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a folded sheaf of papers that contained his remarks. “If there were two words to describe Paul, they would have to be good guy. That’s what he was. He was a good guy. But he was more than that. He was a good husband, and he was a wonderful father to his son, Josh.”
Bill looked at Josh, sitting on the front row bench, dwarfed between his mother and stepfather, staring down into his lap. The mention of his name brought his head up briefly.
“And the fact that Josh is such a fine young man is a testament to what a good man Paul was. He was also a devoted educator. He cared about his students. I know that all the people here today from the college would say that about him, too.”
Bill cleared his throat, shuffled his papers. He seemed to have lost his place. He flipped the pages over, his handwritten scribbles briefly visible for the congregation to see.
“Here we are. Sorry,” he said. “I’m a little nervous. I first knew Paul back in our own college days, and we kind of drifted apart after that. Then we both turned out to be living in the same town, and we reconnected. I’m glad I got to know him again, even if it was only for a few years. These last few months were not easy for Paul. He suffered a trauma he clearly could not move past. I think for those of us close to Paul, the signs were right in front of us, but we blinded ourselves to them. We thought things would be okay. There’s a lesson here for us all. When we see friends in trouble, we have to be there for them. We have to do everything we can to make them get help. We can’t assume they’ll pull through.” Bill paused. “I failed Paul in that regard, and have to live with that the rest of my life.”
There were some murmurs in the church. Someone whispered, “He’s being too hard on himself.”
Bill shuffled his papers again, and sniffed. He appeared on the verge of tears.
“I got a lot more stuff written down here, but to be honest, I’d be saying the same thing over and over again. We’ll miss him.” He gazed toward the casket, which had been closed for the service. “We’ll miss you, man, we really will.”
He stepped down and returned to his spot next to Charlotte, head bowed. She patted his back twice.
When the service was over, Harold Foster got up abruptly and cut in front of other mourners to be among the first out of the church. Maybe he was one of those people, Anna mused, who left the baseball game at the top of the ninth. Wanted to beat the rush getting out of the parking lot.
Anna wanted to get out of there as quickly as she could, too, and scanned the church looking for a less crowded exit path. But before she could settle on one, she heard a voice behind her.
“Sad, huh?”
A chill ran the length of her spine. Anna knew the voice. She turned to find Gavin Hitchens standing there in jeans, a sport jacket that was frayed along the lapels, and a loosened plaid tie.
She’d not seen what Paul had done to him. His arm was in a sling, his forehead bandaged. Anna guessed he was favoring one leg, as he had one hand firmly gripped on the back of a church pew for support.
“Gavin,” she said.
“Some cop came by, asking weird questions about Paul, but he never said he was dead. But then I heard about the drowning.” He shook his head. “A real tragedy.”
“Stay away from me.”
She started to turn away when he said, “I’ve got some good news, though.”
Anna held her spot.
“The charges got dropped.” Gavin grinned. “They gave that dead soldier’s dad three voice recordings to listen to, and he couldn’t pick mine out. Plus, the coffee shop surveillance video’s time code is all fucked-up. They can’t tell for sure when I was actually there. So, there you have it.” A broad smile. “I’m an innocent man.”
“There’s a big difference between not guilty and innocent,” Anna said.
“But I was thinking, we could still have our sessions. I liked our little talks.”
Anna was about to turn away, unable to endure his smug expression another moment, when she saw Arnwright sidling up behind him. Gavin saw her looking beyond his shoulder and turned to see the detective.
Arnwright exchanged a nod with Anna, leading her to think he wanted to speak with her, but that wasn’t the case.
“Mr. Hitchens,” he said.
“What’s up?” Gavin said breezily.
Arnwright smiled. “Guess whose surveillance system’s time code is working just fine? And crystal clear, too?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“A house in Devon,” Arnwright said.
Gavin started to pale. “Uh, what?”
Arnwright appeared to be struggling to keep the smile from growing into a grin. “Yeah. Seems some folks lost their dog. Got the whole thing on video.” Arnwright looked Anna’s way. “Nice to see you, Dr. White. You have a nice day.”
She felt herself being dismissed, but she walked away with a sense of relief. Maybe Hitchens was finally going to get what was coming to him. Her encounter with him had delayed her enough that she was now among the last to file out of the church.
Anna found herself trailing behind Charlotte and Bill. They walked with heads lowered, shoulders touching. Soon, they’d be outside, where many were waiting to say a few words, if not to Charlotte, then to Hailey and her son.
She worked to push Gavin Hitchens out of her mind. If she had to, she thought, she’d get a restraining order. She’d talked to Arnwright about that.
Anna had already decided against offering any more words of comfort or regret to Charlotte. Her visit the day before had not gone well. Once Anna had cleared the church doors, she headed for her car. She had left her father in the care, once again, of her retired neighbor, but she didn’t like to take advantage.
As she trailed Paul’s friend and widow, Anna had her chin down, close to her chest. If she’d been holding her head high, she might have failed to notice Bill reaching out a hand to hunt for Charlotte’s.
He found it, and when he did, he did more than simply hold it. He laced his fingers in with hers in a gesture that struck Anna as more than comforting.
There was something almost intimate about it.
Well, it’s a difficult time, Anna thought.
Almost as quickly as he had found Charlotte’s hand, he let it go and thrust his own hand into his pants pocket.
But then he turned to Charlotte, leaned in closely to whisper something in her ear.
Two words.
Anna was close enough that she was able to make them out, although even as the words were whispered, she questioned whether she had heard correctly.
Yet they had been as clear as if Bill had whispered them into her own ear and not Charlotte’s.
“It worked,” Bill said.
Fifty
Yes, Charlotte thought. It did.
But just because they’d pulled it off didn’t mean they could start getting careless. What the fuck was Bill thinking, reaching for her hand like that, whispering in her ear, with people all around them. Sure, he’d be expected to console her, but he needed to dial it back a bit.
This was when they had to be the most on their guard.
Charlotte was already worried that she’d made a mistake, going out and getting all those empty boxes at the liquor store. The way Dr. White looked at them had made Charlotte nervous. She hoped she’d explained herself well. The truth was, she’d been itching to start packing up Paul’s stuff from the moment she and Bill had decided what they were going to do.