A Noise Downstairs

by Linwood Barclay

THE HOUSE WAS EASY ENOUGH TO FIND. IT WAS A WHITE, TWO-STORY house with a double garage. A blue Toyota Corolla sat in the driveway. Paul parked two houses down and started walking back.

  He had no plan.

  Well, he wanted his goddamn keys back. He had that much of a plan.

  Paul was still one lot away when he saw him. Gavin Hitchens came out the front door, heading for the Corolla.

  Paul picked up his pace. He cut across the lawn, the grass underfoot silencing his approach.

  Hitchens reached the driver’s door and was about to open it when Paul came up behind him, grabbed the back of his head with his outstretched palm, quickly gripped Hitchens’s hair, and drove his skull forward into the roof of the car.

  Hitchens let out a cry.

  Paul pulled his head back, barely noticing that he’d put a small dent into the roof of the Corolla.

  “You bastard!” Paul said, driving Hitchens’s head into the car a second time. But he wasn’t able to do it with as much force this time. Hitchens was resisting. He managed to do half a turn, wanting to see who his attacker was.

  “Fucker!” Paul said, spittle flying off his lip. “You sick fuck!”

  Hitchens twisted, freed himself from Paul’s grasp. He made a halfhearted attempt to take a swing at Paul, but the blow to the head had disoriented him, and he slid halfway down the side of the car.

  Paul brought one leg back and kicked Hitchens in the knee. Hitchens screamed and slid the rest of the way to the driveway.

  Paul stood over Hitchens, who was now bleeding profusely from the forehead. “I know it was you,” Paul said. “I know what you did, and I know how you did it.”

  Hitchens moaned. He looked up blearily and said, “Police . . .”

  “Good idea,” Paul said. “You can tell them about breaking into my house, trying to drive me out of my fucking mind. Where are my keys? I want my goddamn keys.”

  Hitchens managed to sit upright, his back against the front tire. “You’re in such deep shit,” he said.

  “Nothing compared to what you’re in,” Paul said.

  His phone started to ring inside his jacket.

  “Breaking and entering, that’s what they’ll get you for,” Paul said. “And if there’s a charge for trying to drive someone out of his fucking mind, they’ll add that to the list.”

  He felt a pounding in his chest. He wondered if he might give himself a heart attack. The thing was, though, it felt good. Paul hadn’t felt this good, this empowered, in a very long time.

  When he looked down at Hitchens, he saw Hoffman, too.

  The phone in his jacket continued to ring.

  Paul finally dug it out of his pocket and saw that it was Anna. He put the phone to his ear.

  “Yeah?”

  “Paul?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Anna. You called. But listen, I found them.”

  Paul blinked. “What?”

  “Your keys. They’d fallen behind a chair. I just found them. Drop by anytime to pick them up.”

  Twenty-Eight

  A neighbor saw the whole thing and called the police.

  Paul didn’t see the point in running. He was hardly going to lead the cops on a high-speed chase throughout Fairfield County. He sat on the curb in front of Hitchens’s home and waited for them to arrive. They got there about a minute after the ambulance.

  The neighbor, a woman in her seventies, knelt next to Gavin, trying to comfort him.

  “What kind of monster are you?” she shrieked at Paul. She stayed with Hitchens until the paramedics assessed him. When the police arrived, she pointed to Paul.

  “He did it!”

  Paul sat, arms resting on his knees, doing his best impression of someone who did not present a threat.

  The officers approached. “Sir, would you stand up please?”

  Not long after that, he was cuffed, thrown into the back of the cruiser, and on his way to the station.

  _________________

  HE WAS ALLOWED TO CALL CHARLOTTE WHEN HE GOT THERE.

  “Do you know any lawyers?” he asked.

  “Tons,” she said. “I’m in real estate.”

  “It’s not a real estate lawyer I need.”

  When Charlotte recovered from his news, she said she would find someone and meet him at the station.

  Paul was placed in a cell to wait, which gave him plenty of time to think about a great many things.

  Anyone else in his predicament might have been thinking about what charge awaited him. Would it be assault? Would it be something more serious, like attempted murder? Would his afternoon behind bars turn into six months or a year? Or more?

  But Paul wasn’t thinking about any of that.

  He was thinking about the typewriter.

  Gavin Hitchens had not taken his keys. Gavin Hitchens had not broken into his house. And Gavin Hitchens had definitely not typed that message.

  Which presented what one might call a bit of a mind fuck.

  Hoffman’s typewriter had not been found. It was within the realm of possibility that the machine Charlotte had picked up at that yard sale was that typewriter.

  And if it was . . .

  Paul examined the tiny cell. A bench to sit on, a toilet bolted to the wall. It seemed so . . . restful in here. Charlotte and whatever lawyer she could find could take their time as far as he was concerned.

  It was nice to have a place to contemplate things, uninterrupted.

  So, if it was the same typewriter, Paul had to decide whether to think the unthinkable.

  Were Catherine Lamb and Jill Foster trying to communicate with him through that typewriter? If so, what were they trying to say? What was the message?

  What did they want from him?

  This is crazy. They’ ll lock me up, but it won’t be in a place like this. It’ ll be a psych ward.

  Why contact him? Maybe they’d have reached out to anyone who possessed this typewriter. (Paul made a mental note: when Charlotte found the previous owners, he’d ask if they’d noticed anything spooky about the Underwood. Maybe that was why they’d sold it.) But making a connection with Paul, who was directly linked to the women through Kenneth Hoffman, had to mean something.

  Sitting in the cell, Paul had something of an epiphany. He needed to talk to more people. He needed to talk to everyone connected to this case, or at least try.

  The dead women’s spouses. Other women Hoffman had affairs with. His wife, Gabriella. The more he learned, the more he might understand why messages were appearing in that typewriter.

  _________________

  CHARLOTTE SHOWED UP WITH A LAWYER NAMED ANDREW KILGORE, who didn’t look as though he’d seen his twenty-fifth birthday yet.

  “Mr. Davis, I’ve arranged for your release but you’re going to have to appear for a hearing—”

  “Sure, whatever, that’s fine,” Paul said as the cell door was opened and he was led, along with the lawyer, toward the exit.

  “Mr. Davis, I’m going to need to sit down with you to discuss our options. Your wife tells me you’ve been under considerable strain and that you suffered a head injury eight months ago, which could be very useful to us—”

  “I want to get out of here,” he said.

  He found Charlotte waiting out front of the station. She threw her arms around him. Her smeared eye makeup suggested she’d been crying.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Fine,” he said, breaking free of her and reaching for the car door. “Let’s go.”

  Kilgore had more to say to him, but Paul wasn’t even listening. He had a plan now, and he just wanted to get to it.

  Twenty-Nine

  When Paul and Charlotte got home—they first had to go over to Constance Drive to fetch Paul’s car—she found the latest note sitting in the Underwood: Blood was everywhere. What makes someone do something so horrible?

  “Paul?” she said. “What’s this? You didn’t tell me about this. What’s going on? Why did you attack that man?�
��

  “I have to go out,” he said.

  “Paul, we just got home. For Christ’s sake, tell me what’s going on?”

  “I have things to do.”

  _________________

  “IS HAROLD FOSTER IN?” PAUL ASKED AT THE MILFORD SAVINGS & LOAN customer service desk.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the woman behind the desk asked, flashing him a Polident smile.

  “No,” he said.

  “Um, would you like to make one?”

  “If he’s here now, I would like to see him.”

  The woman’s smile faded. “Let me check. What’s the name?”

  “Paul Davis.”

  “And what’s it concerning?”

  “It’s a personal matter,” he said.

  “Oh.” She picked up the phone and turned away so that Paul could not hear her discussion. After fifteen seconds, she replaced the receiver and said, “Have a seat and Mr. Foster will be with you shortly.”

  Shortly turned out to be five minutes. Finally, a short, balding man in a dark blue suit appeared.

  “Mr. Davis?” He wore a quizzical look.

  Paul stood. “Yes.”

  “Come on in.”

  He led Paul down a carpeted hallway to an office about ten feet square. The wall that faced the hall was a sheet of glass. Foster went behind his desk and sat while Paul took a chair opposite him.

  The man’s desk was stacked with file folders. “Excuse all the mess. So much paperwork.” He grinned. “Everything has to be in writing, I always say.”

  “Of course.”

  “How may I help you? You weren’t very forthcoming with our receptionist, but I understand financial matters are very personal. Whether you’ve got a million to invest, or you owe the same to the credit card companies”—he grinned—“these are all things that aren’t anyone else’s business.”

  “It’s not that kind of thing,” Paul said.

  “What could it be, then?”

  “I teach at West Haven College. Well, not at the moment. But I’ll be going back in the fall.”

  The three words prompted an almost instantly darker look from Foster. “Oh?” He studied Paul a moment longer. “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Paul Davis.”

  Foster leaned back in his chair. “My God, you were . . . you were there.”

  Paul nodded. “I was.”

  “He tried to kill you.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you hadn’t stopped . . . the police wouldn’t have found him.” He let out a long breath. “And then we might never have found out what happened to them. To Jill, and Catherine.”

  “I’m very sorry about your wife. I knew Jill, of course. Not well, but I ran into her occasionally at West Haven. The one I knew much better, or at least thought that I knew, was Ken—”

  Foster held up a hand. “Stop right there.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Don’t even say his name,” he said, his voice bordering on threatening. “Do not say that man’s name in my presence. Never.”

  Paul nodded. “I understand.”

  Foster calmed himself. “Well, what is it you want?”

  “I . . . I hardly know how to begin this, but I want to ask you some questions, about Jill, and what happened.”

  “Why?”

  He couldn’t bring up the typewriter, but he could tell this man about how he was attempting to deal with his post-traumatic stress.

  “I’m . . . writing something. I’m writing about what I went through, about my recovery.”

  “A book?”

  “I don’t even know yet. The immediate goal is to get it all out, to face what happened to me. Maybe, at some later date, it’ll be a book, or a magazine piece. I don’t know what shape it’s going to take.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, well, anyway, that’s why I’m here. To ask you—”

  The hand went up again. “Enough,” he said.

  “I just wanted to—”

  “Stop. I’m sorry for what happened to you, Mr. Davis. And I suppose I owe you some thanks. You probably, inadvertently of course, helped bring . . . that man to justice by coming upon him when you did. But I don’t want to talk about this. Not with you, not with anyone else. I’ve no doubt these last eight months have been hell for you. Well, they’ve been hell for me, too. And your way to deal with it may be to turn it into some creative writing exercise, but I have no interest in baring my soul to you or answering your prurient questions about my wife.”

  “Prurient? Who said anything—”

  Foster pointed to the door.

  “Get out or I’ll call security.”

  Paul nodded, stood, and left. Foster trailed him, a good five paces behind, until Paul had left the building.

  Thirty

  Anna White heard the doorbell ring.

  It was the front door this time, not her office door. It was after five, and her last appointment had just left. She met weekly with an obsessive-compulsive man who associated leftward movements with evil. When driving, he would go around a block, making three right turns, so as not to make a left. He tried to use his left hand so little that muscle tone in that arm had degenerated. If he meant to walk left, he would rotate his body three-quarters of a turn, then head off in the direction he had to go. It was all rooted in the Latin word sinister, which means “to the left” or “left-handed.” Not surprisingly, his politics were right-wing.

  Anna was making very little progress with him. She hoped that if Gavin Hitchens had actually managed to download many of her files, that he didn’t get hold of that one. A psychopath like Hitchens would have far too much fun with him.

  She was about to make some postsession notes when she heard the doorbell. She hurried through the house, wanting to get to the door before her father, should he choose to come downstairs to answer it. But a glance through a window revealed that he was outside, chipping away at the lawn with a nine-iron.

  Anna opened the door to a woman she did not recognize.

  “Hello?”

  “Paul’s gone over the edge,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m Charlotte. Charlotte Davis? Paul’s wife?”

  “Yes, okay. What’s happened?”

  “May I come in?”

  Anna opened the door wide to admit her.

  “They arrested him,” Charlotte said.

  “They what? Who? The police?”

  “He attacked some man.”

  “What man?”

  “Someone named Hitchens.”

  Anna’s face fell. “Oh my God no.”

  “What?”

  “I shouldn’t have—I wanted to warn him but I never thought—”

  “Warn Paul about what?”

  “Please, tell me what happened.”

  Charlotte told Anna what she’d been able to learn from Paul and the police. “He has this crazy idea this total stranger got into our house. Or at least, he did, until he got some call from you.”

  “I’d found Paul’s keys, in my office. He must have thought Hitchens had them.”

  Charlotte wiped a tear from her cheek. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take. Lately, Paul’s been so . . . I was going to try and make an appointment with you anyway, to talk about him. But then, when this happened . . .”

  “I can’t discuss my patients,” Anna explained. “Not even with their spouses.”

  Charlotte nodded quickly. “Of course, I understand that. But I have to tell you what’s been going on.”

  “I really don’t know that—”

  “Please. I thought Paul was getting better, but these last few days, he’s getting worse. He’s losing it.”

  Anna hesitated, then said, “Go on.”

  “He’s hearing things in the middle of the night. Things that I’m not hearing. Like someone tapping away on an old typewriter I bought him. And now he’s finding”—she put air quotes around the word—“messages in the
typewriter he thinks are coming from these two women Kenneth Hoffman murdered. And he’s already told you about the nightmares, right?”

  She replied with a cautious, “He has.”

  “I don’t know what to think. Messages from the dead?” She shook her head, reached into her purse for a tissue, and blotted up more tears from her cheeks, then her eyes. “Unless you believe in ghosts, which I don’t, the only possible explanation is that he’s writing these messages himself.”

  Charlotte’s chin quivered. “What should I do? I’m so worried about him. He’s had such a tough year. The nightmares, the physical recovery. I thought maybe his idea of diving right into what happened to him, writing about it, might help, but it’s having the opposite effect. I think writing about it is . . . it’s like he’s being dragged into some black hole.”

  “I’ll talk to him. I’ll bring him in for some extra sessions.”

  “I’m so worried that he—you don’t think there’s any chance he’d do anything, you know, to harm himself, do you?”

  Anna’s brow furrowed. “What have you observed?”

  Charlotte hesitated. “I don’t know. Nothing I can put my finger on exactly. But he’s been down so long, and now, he’s having . . . are they delusions? I don’t know what else to call them. What’s next? That message in the typewriter, it’s like a text version of hearing voices. What if the next message tells him to kill himself?”

  “If I see anything that leads me to think your husband would harm himself I’ll take the appropriate steps.”

  “I mean,” Charlotte continued, “they are delusions, right? I mean, are they delusions if he’s doing it deliberately?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “The noises he claims to be hearing, the typed message, at first I was thinking it was all in his head, that even if he’s writing the messages, he’s doing it unconsciously, he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But what if he does know? What am I dealing with then? Why would he put on an act like that? Is he trying to make me crazy?”

  “I can’t think of any reason why he would do that,” Anna said.

  “So then is it a hallucination?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Has he been prescribed something that would be messing with his head? Some kind of weird side effect?”