A Noise Downstairs

by Linwood Barclay

  “There’s ketchup there if you want it.”

  The doorbell rang. Frank’s entire body stiffened.

  “It’s okay. It’s someone from the police.” She did half an eye roll. “Someone I’m expecting from the police. Who can maybe answer a few questions for us. Would you be okay here on your own for a few minutes?”

  “Of course,” he said, a tiny bit of egg stuck to his lower lip. “I’m not a child.”

  Anna smiled and, considering what he had just said, resisted the temptation to pick up his napkin and wipe his mouth.

  Frank said, “I thought they were going to shoot me. I thought they were going to shoot you.”

  “I know. But it didn’t happen. You’re okay and I’m okay.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Neither of us has a scratch on us.” She gave him another smile, hoping she could coax one out of him. “Never a dull moment around here, right?”

  He nodded.

  “And there’s more coffee if you want it.”

  Finally, a smile from her father. “I could probably use something a bit stronger.”

  She got up and left the kitchen. She opened the front door and found a short, heavyset black man in his forties standing there. His bushy black mustache made up for the few strands of hair he had on his head. He wore a sport jacket, dark blue shirt and tie, and jeans. He was ready with a badge to display for Anna.

  “Hi,” he said. “Detective Joe Arnwright. Milford Police.”

  “Come in,” she said.

  “How are you today?” he asked, taking a seat in the living room. It wasn’t a polite greeting. He was clearly asking how she was compared to the day before.

  “My father’s still very upset. I’m still very upset.”

  Arnwright nodded sympathetically. “Of course.”

  “They stormed in here,” she said. “We were asleep.”

  “To be fair, they managed to open a window and came into the house very quietly in an effort—”

  “Don’t you people do something to confirm that what someone’s telling you is true?”

  “Dr. White, we’ve—”

  “My father gets up to take a pee and finds men with guns in the hallway. It’s a wonder you didn’t give him a heart attack, let alone shoot him.”

  Arnwright nodded patiently. “Their information, as you know, was that a man had already shot his wife and was going to shoot his daughter next. That’s what our officers believed they were coming into. They needed to assess the situation as quickly as possible to eliminate any threat. And that threat, they would have presumed, was against you. The daughter.”

  “You were conned,” Anna said.

  “I’m not disputing that.”

  “They made my father lie on the floor and pointed guns at his head!” Anna said through gritted teeth. She managed to convey her anger without raising her voice. She did not want her father to hear all this. “An old man! With dementia!”

  “I understand that you’re—”

  “You understand? That’s encouraging. My father and I came this close to getting killed.”

  “I don’t believe that’s the case. The members of that team are very professional.”

  Anna took a second to compose herself, to go in another direction. “Have you arrested him?”

  “Mr. Hitchens, you mean.”

  “Who else would I mean?”

  “We have interviewed him, yes.”

  Anna eyed him warily. “And?”

  “We’ve interviewed him and we are investigating,” he said. “We believe the 9-1-1 call was placed from a cell phone, a kind of throwaway one they call a burner that—”

  “I know what a burner is. I watch TV.”

  “We’re going to try and find out where that burner was purchased, then see if we can determine who the buyer was.”

  “He didn’t have the phone on him? Did you search him?”

  “As I said, we are investigating,” Arnwright said.

  “What did the caller sound like? The one who called 9-1-1?”

  “It sounded like an elderly man. But there are all sorts of voice changer apps out there. Did Mr. Hitchens ever threaten to do something like this to you? A crank call of this nature.”

  “No. But it’s his style. My father’s suffering from dementia. Hitchens would just love to scare a confused, old man.”

  “We need a little more than that,” Arnwright said.

  Anna sighed. “I think he might have killed a dog, too.”

  Arnwright, pen in hand, looked ready to take down details. “Go on.”

  She bit her lip. “I can’t . . . I don’t have any proof of anything.”

  Arnwright put the pen away and stood. “Again, I’m sorry about what happened here. I’ll let you know if there are any developments.”

  Anna showed him to the door. She went into the kitchen to see how her father was, but he was not there.

  “Dad?” she called out.

  She went upstairs to his room, expecting to find him on his rowing machine. But he wasn’t there either.

  She thought she heard a muted whack.

  Anna went to her father’s bedroom window, which looked out onto the backyard. There he was, golf club in hand—it looked like a driver—swinging at half a dozen balls he had dropped onto the well-manicured lawn, except for those spots where he had done some serious divots.

  It was him, she told herself. I know it was him.

  Eighteen

  Paul was ready to begin.

  He’d typed up plenty of notes, copied and pasted paragraphs from online news accounts of the double murder, but now he was ready to take that leap. To write the first sentence of whatever it was he was going to write. Memoir? Novel? A true-crime story? Who knew?

  What Paul did know was that however the story came together, one thing was certain: it was his story.

  And so he typed his first sentence:

  Kenneth Hoffman was my friend.

  Paul looked at the five words on his laptop screen. He hit the ENTER key to bring the cursor down a line. And he wrote: Kenneth Hoffman tried to murder me.

  That seemed as good a place to start as any. From that springboard, he jumped straight into the story of that night. How, while returning from a student theatrical presentation at West Haven, he’d spotted Hoffman’s Volvo station wagon driving erratically down the Post Road.

  About a thousand words in, Paul started finding the process therapeutic. The words flowed from his fingertips as quickly as he could type them. At one point he glanced at the bulky Underwood beside the laptop and said, “Like to see you crank out this shit this fast.”

  When he got to the part where he saw the two dead women in the back of Kenneth’s car, Paul paused only briefly, took a deep mental breath, and kept on writing. He took himself to the point where the shovel crashed into his skull.

  And then he stopped.

  He felt simultaneously drained and elated. He had done it. He had jumped into the deep end of the cold pool, gotten used to it, and kept on swimming.

  When Charlotte got home that evening, he could not wait to tell her about his progress.

  “That’s fantastic,” she said. “I’m proud of you. I really am.” She paused. “Can I read it?”

  “Not yet. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be. When I feel it’s coming together, I’ll show it to you.”

  She almost looked relieved. She’d had a long day that had finished with an evening showing, and all she wanted to do was go to bed. As she did most nights, she fell asleep moments after her head hit the pillow. She rarely snored—Paul knew he could not make the same claim—but he could tell when she was asleep by the deepness of her breathing.

  He turned off the light at half past ten but lay awake, he was sure, for at least an hour, maybe two.

  Paul felt wired.

  For the first time since the attack, Paul felt . . . excited. If he’d ever doubted the wisdom of tackling this whole Hoffman thing head-on, he d
idn’t anymore. But would this change in attitude manifest itself in different ways? Would writing about Hoffman have an exorcising effect? Would the nightmares stop? Maybe not all at once, but at least gradually?

  If the writing continued to go well—Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s only Day One— then maybe it would be fun to do it in another location. After all, he could take his laptop anywhere. And he was not thinking about the closest Starbucks. More like Cape Cod.

  If Charlotte could get a few days off, they could drive up to Provincetown, or take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. He could even toss a few recent bestsellers into his suitcase, maybe find something worth adding to his popular fiction course.

  He’d talk to Charlotte about it in the morning, although he feared her answer. Too much going on, she’d say. You can’t sell a house when you’re not here. You can’t work twenty-four/seven, he’d tell her. If he could talk her into taking the time, he could see if Josh wanted to come, too. He could call Hailey, see if she’d be okay with that.

  No, maybe not. If he was to have a chance of talking Charlotte into the idea, it had to be just the two of them. It wasn’t that Charlotte didn’t like Josh. Paul was sure she liked him. But did she love him? Was it even fair to fault her for that if she didn’t? Josh was not her son, and had been in her life for only a few years.

  It was about then, thinking about a Cape Cod getaway, whatever time it happened to be, that he fell asleep.

  But it was 3:14 A.M. when he woke up. He didn’t wake up on his own.

  He was awakened.

  Chit chit. Chit chit chit.

  _________________

  HIS EYES OPENED ABRUPTLY. WAS IT A DREAM AGAIN? HAD HE EVEN been dreaming? Even if it was hard to recall the details of a dream upon waking, Paul could usually tell whether he’d actually been having one.

  He did not think so.

  And he was sure that he was, at this moment, awake.

  He pinched his arm to be sure.

  Yup.

  He held his breath and listened for the typing sound to recur. There was nothing. For several seconds, all he heard was the pounding of his own heart.

  Then, there it was.

  Chit chit. Chit chit chit.

  This was not a dream. This was the real deal.

  What had Charlotte suggested he do the next time this happened? Wake her up. Get yourself a corroborating witness.

  He sat up in bed, touched Charlotte gently on the shoulder.

  “Charlotte,” he whispered. “Charlotte. Wake up. Charlotte.”

  She stirred. Without opening her eyes, she said, “What?”

  “It’s happening,” he said. “The sound.”

  “What sound?”

  “The typewriter.”

  Her eyes opened wide. She withdrew her hand from under the pillow, sat up, blinked several times.

  “Just listen,” he whispered.

  “Okay, okay, I’m up.”

  “Shh.”

  “Okay!” she said.

  “Be quiet and listen.”

  Charlotte said nothing further. The two of them sat there in the bed, waiting. After about ten seconds, Charlotte said, “I don’t hear anything.”

  Paul held up a silencing hand. “Wait.”

  Another half a minute went past before Charlotte said, “You must have dreamed it.”

  “No,” he whispered sharply. “Absolutely not. I’m going downstairs.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “Be real quiet. It could start up again at any second.”

  Together, they padded down the hall to the stairs and descended them slowly. Twice, Paul raised a hand and the two of them froze.

  Nothing.

  When they reached the kitchen, Paul reached over to a panel of four light switches and flipped them all up at once. Lights came on over the island and dining table, under the cupboards, and in the adjoining living area.

  “We know you’re here!” Paul shouted.

  Except no one was.

  Paul bolted down the stairs that led to the front door, careful to grab the railing this time so he didn’t land on his butt.

  “Paul!” Charlotte screamed.

  The door was locked, the dead bolt thrown. He opened a second, inside door that led to the garage, disappeared into there for fifteen seconds, then reentered the house, shaking his head. He trudged back up the stairs to the kitchen.

  “Paul?”

  “I thought . . . I thought I could catch whoever it was.”

  “No one was here,” Charlotte said softly.

  He headed for his think tank, flicked on the light, and stared at the Underwood. Charlotte slowly came up behind him, rested a hand on his shoulder. Neither of them spoke for several seconds, but finally, Paul broke the silence.

  “You think I’m crazy.”

  “I never said that.”

  “I know what I heard.” Paul bit his lower lip. His voice barely above a whisper, he said, “This is the third time. Three nights I’ve heard it.”

  Charlotte, her eyes misting, said, “Believe me, it’s the dreams. Go back to bed. In the morning, things may seem a lot clearer.”

  “I’m not losing my mind,” Paul insisted.

  “You’re tired and you’re stressed and you worked all day writing about—”

  “Enough!” he shouted, throwing down his arms and taking a step back from his wife. “I swear to God, if I hear the word stressed one more time, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do.”

  “Fine,” Charlotte said evenly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Bill said the same thing, that I must be dreaming it. But”—Paul was slow to say the words—“he did have an idea.”

  “You talked to Bill?”

  “We met up for a game and—”

  “Squash?”

  “It was a very gentle game. I didn’t want—”

  Charlotte was enraged. “Are you out of your mind? You’ve had a serious blow to the head and you set foot in a squash court? Have you any idea how stupid that is? You could bash your head—”

  “Would you just stop!” he shouted. “Fuck! Just shut up!”

  Charlotte took a step back. “I’m trying to help you.”

  Paul lowered his head and held it with both hands. “I feel like my fucking brain is going to explode.”

  Charlotte, softly, said, “It’s going to be okay.” She waited a beat. “You said Bill had an idea.”

  Paul sighed. “Yeah. I don’t know if he was joking, or humoring me, or what.”

  Charlotte waited.

  “He said I should roll some paper in.”

  Charlotte blinked. “He said what?”

  Paul pointed at the typewriter. “He said, if this thing’s making noises in the night, put some paper in and see what it’s saying.”

  Charlotte said nothing.

  “You think I should do that?” Paul asked.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said.

  Paul shrugged. “He mentioned the word ghost. Well, actually, he mentioned the Ghostbusters.”

  “Jesus. He can be such an asshole.” Charlotte rolled her eyes, threw up her hands, and said, “Go ahead.”

  “What?”

  “Do it. Roll in a sheet of paper. If you think you hear something again in the middle of the night, and there’s nothing on it, then you’ll know.”

  “Know what?”

  She touched her index finger to her temple. “That it really is a dream.”

  Paul’s jaw hardened. He met his wife’s eyes for several seconds before breaking away, stepping over to the printer, and taking out one sheet of paper from the tray. He set it into the typewriter carriage and rolled it in, bringing an inch of paper above where the keys would strike.

  “Great,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

  She turned and walked out.

  Paul stayed another moment and stared at the typewriter. He ran his fingers along the middle row of letters, depressing the occasional key just enough to see th
e metal arms bend toward the paper, as if with anticipation.

  Nineteen

  Later that week, Anna White was at her desk, adding a few notes to a patient’s file in her computer before Paul Davis arrived for his weekly session, when she thought she heard a noise from upstairs. The only one up there was her father.

  She worried he might have fallen.

  She bolted from her chair, ran from the office wing on her house to the living area, and up the stairs as quickly as she could. She rapped on her father’s closed bedroom door.

  “Dad?”

  There was no answer.

  She tried the door and was surprised to find she could open it only an inch. Through the crack she could see that a piece of furniture was blocking the door. It was her father’s dresser. That was what she had heard. Her father dragging his dresser across the room.

  “Dad!”

  Frank’s face appeared in the sliver. “Yes, honey?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Can’t be too careful.”

  “Dad, the police are not coming back. That’s not going to happen again.”

  “They’re not getting in here, that’s for damn sure.”

  Anna, her voice calm, said, “You can’t stay in there forever, Dad. What are you going to do when you have to go to the bathroom?”

  He disappeared, only to reappear five seconds later with a wastepaper basket in one hand, and a roll of toilet paper in the other. “Thought of everything,” he said.

  “Okay,” Anna said. “And when you get hungry?”

  “You can bring something up for me.”

  “And who do you think’s going to empty that pail for you? Because I can tell you, it’s not going to be me.”

  “Window,” he said.

  Jesus, she thought, picturing it. She had one last card to play, and knew she’d hate herself for it. “And what about when it’s time to go to the home to visit Joanie?”

  Frank stopped and puzzled over that. He clearly hadn’t thought through every eventuality.

  “Oh,” he said. “You’ve got me there.”

  “Why don’t you put the dresser back where it was, Dad? And put on the TV. Maybe they’re running some Bugs Bunny cartoons now.”

  She heard the dresser squeak as he pushed it back. Anna opened the door wide and watched him move it across the room. She didn’t offer to help him. All those hours he spent on the rowing machine, he could probably get a job with the Mayflower furniture movers.