What he needed to do now was find out more about the beginning.
Who was Kenneth Hoffman, really? A respected professor? A loving father? A philandering husband? A sadistic killer? Was it possible to be all these things? And if so, was the capacity to kill in all of us, waiting to break out? Was it possible that—
Shit.
Paul was home.
Sitting in his car, in the driveway, the engine running.
He had no memory of actually driving here.
He could recall getting into the car after he left Anna White’s office. He remembered putting the key in the Subaru’s ignition, starting the car. He could even recall seeing her next client arrive, a young guy, late twenties, heading in.
But after that, nothing. Nothing until he pulled into the driveway.
Do not panic. This is not a big deal.
Of course it wasn’t. He’d been deep in thought on his way home. He’d gone on autopilot. Hadn’t this sort of thing happened even before the attack? Hadn’t Charlotte teased him more than once about being the classic absentminded professor, his head somewhere else while she was talking to him? His first wife, Hailey, too. They’d both accused him of being off in his own world at times.
That’s all it was. No reason to think he was losing his marbles. He was unquestionably on the mend. The neurologist he was seeing was sure of that. The MRIs hadn’t turned up anything alarming. Sure, he’d still have the odd headache, suffer the occasional memory loss. But he was improving, no doubt about it.
Paul turned off the car and opened the door. He felt slightly light-headed as he got out, placing one hand on the roof of the car for a moment and closing his eyes, steadying himself.
When he opened them, he felt balanced. Felt—
“I’m sorry about this.”
Suddenly, his temple throbbed where Kenneth had struck him with the shovel. He relived the pain, reheard those last words from his would-be killer.
They’d sounded so real.
As if Kenneth were here with him right now, standing next to him in front of his home. Paul felt a chill run the length of his spine as he struggled to get Kenneth’s voice out of his head.
Not exactly a sign that my idea is a good one, Paul thought.
No, he told himself. This was exactly why he needed to know more. He needed a Kenneth exorcism. Grab him by the throat and get him the fuck out of his head.
Paul closed the car door and held on to the keys as he approached the front door. Charlotte’s car was not here, and this was not a week Josh was living with them, so he’d have the house to himself, at least for a while. Charlotte was rarely home in the late morning, although as a real estate agent her schedule was erratic. But if she wasn’t showing a place to a prospective buyer, or meeting with someone wanting to put their place on the market, she was getting caught up on the paperwork in the office she shared with half a dozen other agents. One of them was Bill Myers, whom Paul had known since before Charlotte joined the agency. Back when Charlotte was getting started, Paul had asked Bill to put in a word with his fellow agents about adding her to the team. He’d pulled some strings, and Charlotte was set.
And working at the real estate agency had given Charlotte the inside track when the house they were now living in came on the market. They were on Milford’s Point Beach Drive, which ran right along Long Island Sound. The back of the house looked out over a beautiful stretch of waterfront. They loved the fresh sea air and the never-ending music of the incoming waves.
The house was on three levels, the bottom mostly garage, laundry room, and storage. The middle level was made up of the kitchen and living room areas, and the bedrooms were on top. Both the living room and the master bedroom featured small balconies with views of the beach and beyond.
The property had suffered a lot of damage when Hurricane Sandy stormed ashore back in 2012. The owner had sunk a fortune into rebuilding the place before deciding he no longer wanted to live there. This had been shortly after Paul and Charlotte got married, and the timing was right to move from their small apartment into something nicer. So long as the polar ice caps didn’t melt too quickly, this would be a great spot for the foreseeable future.
Paul unlocked the front door and climbed the stairs with slow deliberation. Going up, or coming down, could sometimes make him woozy. Given that he’d felt a bit off getting out of the car, he took his time. But when he reached the top, and tossed his keys onto the kitchen island, he felt good.
Good enough for a cold one.
He opened the refrigerator, reached for a bottle of beer, and twisted off the cap. As he tilted his head back for a long draw he caught sight of the wall clock, which read 11:47 A.M. Okay, maybe a little early, but what the hell.
He had work to do.
At one end of the kitchen, on the street side of the house, was a small room the original owners had designed as an oversize pantry — it was no bigger than six by six feet — but which Paul had turned into, as he had often called it, “the world’s tiniest think tank.”
He’d cut twelve inches off a seven-foot door that had been left in the garage by the previous owner after the reno, mounted it on the far wall as a desk, added some supports underneath, and filled with books the shelves lining two of the other walls that had been intended for canned goods and cereal boxes. By removing a few shelves he’d managed to carve out enough space to hang a framed, original poster for the film Plan 9 from Outer Space. He’d found it in a movie memorabilia store in London years ago. As there was no window, he’d lined the wall at the back of the desk with cork, allowing him to hang articles and calendars and favorite New Yorker cartoons where he could see them.
Centered on the desk was his laptop. Also taking up space were a printer and several cardboard business boxes filled with lesson plans, lectures, bills, and other files.
Paul dropped himself into the wheeled office chair and set the beer next to the laptop. He tapped a key to bring the screen to life, entered his password.
He stared at the computer for the better part of five minutes. He thought back to when he was six years old and his parents started taking him to a community pool in the summer. It wasn’t heated, and Paul couldn’t deal with getting in at the shallow end and slowly walking toward the deeper part, the cold water working its way incrementally up his body. It was torture. He took the “ripping off the Band-Aid approach,” which was to stand at the edge and jump in, getting his entire body wet at once. The only problem was, the rest of his family could be ready to go home before he’d taken the plunge.
Paul was standing at the edge of the pool again.
He knew what he had to do.
He needed to understand what had happened to him. And where there were holes in the story, he’d attempt to fill them in with what might have happened. Weren’t there photo programs like that? Where the image was grainy or indistinct, the computer would figure out what was probably there and patch it?
What did Kenneth say to these women before he’d reached his decision to kill them? What were their intimate moments like? What lies did Kenneth come up with when questioned by his wife, Gabriella?
Even a partly imagined story would be better than no story at all.
Paul opened a browser.
Into the search field he entered the words “Kenneth Hoffman.”
“Okay, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Let’s get to know each other a little better.”
Paul hit ENTER.
Four