A Noise Downstairs

by Linwood Barclay

  “Yes!” Charlotte said with sudden enthusiasm. “You don’t have to worry! And I don’t even understand why you are worried. What is it about the blood? Why were you concerned about that?”

  Gabriella glanced at Bill’s body, then gazed pityingly at Charlotte. “Every time you think you’re done, there’s always one more thing left to do.”

  Sixty-Three

  Anna White drove slowly down Point Beach Drive. She had her window open slightly, and she could smell the brisk salt air wafting in from the sound. The last time she’d had to find the Davis house it had been dark, and so it was that again she had to rely on artificial light to check house numbers.

  She did recall that the house was near the end of the street, although she couldn’t remember any particular characteristics.

  But then she spotted Charlotte Davis’s car in a driveway and, to Anna’s relief, the only other car in the driveway was Paul’s. She did not see Bill Myers’s car there. If she had passed it coming down the street, she had not noticed it.

  Luckily, there was a space on the street directly out front of the Davis house that she was able to pull straight into. She killed the engine, got out of the car, and closed the door softly. She wasn’t sure she wanted anyone to know she was here until she rang the bell.

  Her stomach was full of those proverbial butterflies. Was she doing the right thing? Was this a totally misguided course of action? Hadn’t she already been through all this interior debate before leaving her house?

  One thing she no longer believed she had to worry about was waking Charlotte Davis. A glance up to the second floor showed that plenty of lights were on in the kitchen area. Surely Charlotte wouldn’t have gone up to bed without switching off those lights.

  She walked up the driveway and stood at the front door.

  Just ring the bell. You’re not going to turn back now.

  She put her finger to the button, and pushed.

  Maybe the doorbell sounded, but Anna did not hear it. It was drowned out, at that very moment, by a much louder noise.

  A woman’s scream.

  A shrill, chilling scream that went through Anna like an icy wind, causing her to shudder.

  It would have made sense for Anna to run, to get back into her car as quickly as possible, lock the doors, and call for the police. But Anna would have been the first to understand that people did not always do what made sense in emergencies.

  Sometimes, they acted solely on instinct.

  And Anna’s instinct was to help. She had dedicated her life to helping.

  She immediately tried the door, in case it was unlocked.

  It was.

  Anna pushed the door open with such force that it went as far as it could on its hinges, hit the wall, and bounced back. She launched herself into the house and was about to fly up the stairs but had to stop.

  Someone was coming down.

  Now it was Anna’s turn to scream.

  Sixty-Four

  We can work this out,” Charlotte said pleadingly. “We can solve this. I know we can.”

  “I don’t see how,” Gabriella said. She glanced at her son, who took a step closer to Charlotte.

  “You can—Leonard here, he’s big and strong—can get Bill out of here. Dump him someplace far away! No one knows Bill came to see me tonight!”

  “Where’s his car?”

  “Up the street. You could take it! I’ll give you the keys. They’re upstairs, in his pants. You get rid of the car and him.” An idea struck her. “I could help! I can drive the car! Whatever you need, I can do it.”

  “And you’ll never tell a soul,” Gabriella said.

  Charlotte brightened. “Yes!”

  Gabriella motioned to the table where the typewriter sat. “Sit. Let’s talk.”

  Charlotte was eager to oblige. She pulled out a chair, sat down. Gabriella sat down at an angle to her.

  “Why would I tell anyone?” Charlotte said. “I did—I admit this—I did a bad thing. Very bad. If I ever told anyone about what happened here tonight, all that would come out. So I have to keep quiet. Not just to protect you, but to protect myself.”

  Gabriella nodded slowly. “I did a bad thing, too. When I slit the throats of those two women. But my motivation was pure. It was just. Those women had slept with my husband. They had mocked the sanctity of marriage. What I did was teach them a lesson. That was why I wanted those apologies. In writing. I had the law of morality on my side. Oh, I know not everyone would see it that way. You might argue that my husband was no better. But he was my husband. I’d taken a vow, as had he. For better or for worse. And he did redeem himself.”

  Charlotte said nothing.

  “And while both of us have done bad things, I think you and I are very different. What you did was so very selfish, so self-centered. You plotted to kill your husband so you could be with that man.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “Your bad deeds have been in the service of mocking the institution of marriage. Mine were in its defense.”

  Any hope one might have seen in Charlotte’s eyes was fading. “I know what you’re saying, I do. But—”

  Gabriella raised a silencing hand. “I don’t think you’re someone I can trust.”

  “I am! I—”

  “Where’s the bathroom?” Len said.

  Their eyes turned to Leonard, who was standing at one end of the kitchen island.

  He shrugged. “I have to go.”

  Charlotte sprang to her feet. “I can show you where it is,” she said with forced hospitality. She started across the room, pointing. Her path was taking her close to the top of the stairs that led to the front door.

  “No!” Gabriella said. The order was meant for both Charlotte and her son.

  As she neared the top of the staircase, Charlotte bolted.

  “Leonard!”

  Despite his size and lumbering nature, Leonard was quick. He turned on his heels and went after Charlotte.

  He reached out and managed to grab her by the hair, yanking her back like a puppet on a string. As she was snapped back, he used her momentum against her, propelling her into the wall where he’d first pinned her by the neck.

  Charlotte screamed.

  Gabriella cocked her head to one side. Was that the doorbell she heard? It was hard to tell with all the other racket. She pushed back her chair and moved toward the struggle.

  Leonard grabbed Charlotte by her right arm and flung her toward the steps like a bear flinging a rag doll. Charlotte sailed out into the stairwell, airborne. She didn’t land until seven steps down, her head connecting first with a wooden riser, making a sound like the crack of a bat hitting a ball.

  Leonard and his mother ran to the top of the stairs and watched Charlotte’s lifeless body tumble down the remaining steps.

  And the door at the bottom was flung open.

  Anna White took two swift steps into the house, froze momentarily as she saw the body hurtling toward her, then screamed.

  “Good God,” Gabriella said.

  Anna’s gaze went higher. Saw Leonard and Gabriella looming over her like two vindictive gods.

  She backed out of the house and ran.

  “Stop her!” Gabriella said to her son.

  Leonard ran down the stairs, leaping over the dead woman. Gabriella followed, but it took her longer to navigate around Charlotte. By the time she was outside and could take in what was happening, Anna had reached the end of the driveway, Leonard only a step behind her.

  Anna tripped on the curb and went down in the middle of the deserted street. Her purse fell off her shoulder and hit the pavement, spilling car keys and a cell phone. She tried to scramble to her feet, but Leonard was on her, viciously kicking her upper thigh. She shrieked with pain, fell back, and clutched at her leg.

  Now Gabriella was at her son’s side, struggling to catch her breath.

  “Who the hell is she?” she asked, shaking her head furiously with frustration.

  “I don’t know,” her son replied. �
��What should I do?”

  Gabriella took a quick look up and down the street and was relieved to see it was deserted.

  “Kill her,” she said.

  At which point there was a strange sound. A whoosh. Something cutting through the air at considerable speed.

  Behind them.

  And then a loud whomp.

  Leonard staggered, nearly stepping on Anna.

  Gabriella whirled around and said, “What the—”

  Another whoosh, followed by a whomp.

  Frank White swung the head of the club—a driver, more specifically, a one-wood—into Gabriella’s temple.

  The woman went down instantly, her legs crumpling beneath her.

  Leonard was clutching the back of his head as he stumbled a few more steps. Blood was seeping through his fingers. He managed to stop pitching forward, stood a moment to regain his balance, then turned to see what had hit him.

  Frank, standing there in his striped pajamas, could see that he didn’t have much time.

  He swung the club back over his shoulder, then came out with it a third time, putting everything he had into the swing. His arms, molded from hundreds of hours on his rowing machine, were pistons.

  Leonard went to raise an arm defensively, but he was too slow.

  The club caught him in his upper left cheek, just below the eye. That whole side of his face was instantly transformed into a bloody, pulpy mess.

  Leonard went down.

  Frank stood there, wild-eyed and frozen, panting, holding the driver like a bat, waiting to see whether he was going to need it again. When Gabriella and Leonard hadn’t moved for fifteen seconds, Frank knelt down next to Anna, dropped the club onto the street and reached out, tentatively, to stroke her hair.

  “Are you okay, Joanie?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Anna said, struggling to hold back tears. “I’m good.” She reached an arm up and cupped her father’s bristly, unshaven chin.

  “I’ve never been better.”

  Sixty-Five

  Detective Joe Arnwright: Are you okay now, Mr. Hoffman? Can we continue?

  Kenneth Hoffman: Yes, yes, I think so. I needed a minute.

  Arnwright: Of course. I’m very sorry.

  Hoffman: It’s all my fault. All of it. When you follow everything back to the beginning, it’s the decisions I made that set the wheels in motion. Did the doctors have anything more to say about Leonard?

  Arnwright: He’s still in a coma. He’s in the Milford Hospital.

  Hoffman: So he has no idea his mother is dead.

  Arnwright: No.

  Hoffman: That son of a bitch. He didn’t have to do that to them. I hope he spends whatever years he has left in jail.

  Arnwright: They were going to kill his daughter, Mr. Hoffman. He won’t be charged. Mr. White saved her life. And he’s an old man, to boot. He’d fallen asleep in the back of her SUV. Thought they were going to visit his late wife.

  Hoffman: God, this is so . . . Maybe it’d be better if Leonard never wakes up. He’ll face so much trouble if he does.

  Arnwright: I don’t know what to say to that, Mr. Hoffman.

  Hoffman: Gabriella never should have involved him. Not this time, and not that night. At heart, he’s a true innocent. All he ever wanted to do was make his mother happy.

  Arnwright: I understand, Mr. Hoffman, that while he didn’t kill those two women, he was culpable. He helped your wife put them in the chairs and tied them up after she’d drugged them. And he did kill Paul Davis. And he killed Bill Myers. And Charlotte Davis. I don’t know that I’d call someone like that innocent.

  Hoffman: He wouldn’t have done any of this without her telling him to do it. He loved his mother so much. He always wanted to please her. At heart, he’s a gentle boy. That was why they hired him for the ice cream job. It was the perfect thing for him. And he was a good driver. He never had so much as a fender bender. I know that it’s hard to believe, but before all this, I can’t think of any time that he ever hurt anyone. And God knows, he’d have been entitled. The way the other kids used to tease him when he was little. Always a little slower than the others. They mocked him, called him stupid, but he isn’t really. He’s not book smart, not school smart, but he’s smart enough. He manages. Well, up to now.

  Arnwright: You were close with your son?

  Hoffman: Yes, I mean, I loved him very much. I still do. It’s why I did what I did.

  Arnwright: Confessing.

  Hoffman: That’s right. Sure, I ended up protecting Gabriella. But it was never her I was concerned about. It was Leonard. He’d never have stood up to a police interrogation. I had to confess right away before it came to that. And my God, I certainly know now that the boy could never have survived prison. Can you imagine it? What they’d have done to him if he ever went inside? A boy like him? Sure, he’s big and strong, but he’d be a toy for every sadistic bastard in there. I couldn’t let that happen. It really would be for the best if he doesn’t wake up. Prison would be worse than death for him. You have no idea what it’s like in there.

  Arnwright: You’ve tried to take your own life since you began your sentence.

  Hoffman: I’ll probably keep trying till I get it right.

  Arnwright: Was there no way you could have blamed Gabriella and left your son out of it? She could have been the noble one. It didn’t have to be you.

  Hoffman: There was the blood, you see.

  Arnwright: Tell me about the blood.

  Hoffman: Jill bit him.

  Arnwright: Jill Foster bit your son.

  Hoffman: Gabriella thought Jill was unconscious. She’d kind of drifted off after she’d typed the note Gabriella demanded she write. Gabriella asked Leonard to double-check, and when he reached out, to touch her chin, Jill woke up. All of a sudden. She lunged out and grabbed Leonard’s hand with her teeth. Bit hard into the heel of his hand. He pulled back quickly, and his hand landed on the typewriter, and it really started to bleed.

  Arnwright: Why don’t you take us back to that night.

  Hoffman: I came home, saw what Gabriella, with Leonard’s help, had done. She’d figured out I’d been seeing both Catherine and Jill. She’d confronted me about it, earlier. I tried to deny things, but I knew she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t have imagined, not in a million years, what she would do. Inviting those women over, drugging them. Making them apologize to her in writing, actually making them type the words. Gabriella always had a strong belief in the written word, that oral contracts and promises were not worth much. And once they’d typed what she wanted, she killed them. But it was me she wanted to punish. She was doing this to me as much as she was doing it to those women. I got home right after she’d done it. Gabriella, she was almost in a state of catatonia. Leonard, if you can believe it, was eating a sandwich. After he’d bandaged his hand, of course. But Gabriella, she seemed to be in a dream. I don’t know how else to describe it. But pleased with herself, too. She was . . . she was a strange woman. Cold. I’m not making excuses for why I cheated, but she was a cold woman.

  Arnwright: Right.

  Hoffman: So I’d been looking for love elsewhere, for a long time. But I guess I’d always been that way. Not like Paul. He was a good man. A loyal man. I wish, looking back, I could have been more like him.

  Arnwright: And yet, look where it got him.

  Hoffman: True enough. Have you figured out what his wife actually did?

  Arnwright: We’re still putting it together. We found a phone, and one of the available ringtones on it was the sound of a typewriter. And we found more sample notes, written on that typewriter, at Bill Myers’s townhouse.

  Hoffman: Wow.

  Arnwright: Yeah. But back to that night.

  Hoffman: Yeah, anyway, I came home and saw what she had done. I told her I could fix it. I’d help her cover it up. I got the bodies into the car, the typewriter, too, because it had so much of Leonard’s blood on it. If they ever found that, and ran a DNA test, well, that would have been the end
of him, wouldn’t it? So I got everything into the car and told my wife I’d clean up the house when I got back.

  Arnwright: But you didn’t get back.

  Hoffman: No. I managed to get rid of the typewriter, but the police caught me with the bodies. And with Paul, of course. I’d really thought, if I could have gotten rid of Catherine and Jill, and Paul, too, that we could move on. Be a real family again. I’d change my ways. I’d be a good husband and father. But then I saw the flashing lights, the officer heading my way. I had seconds to call Gabriella on my phone. I said to her, I’ve been caught. I’m going to tell them it was me. Just me. Talk to Leonard. Tell them you were out driving all evening, helping Leonard practice for his new job.

  Arnwright: So you confessed.

  Hoffman: Yes. You see, when you look at the big picture, I was guilty. It was my behavior that set all these things into motion. I deserved prison.

  Arnwright: So you played the part of the murderer. All this time.

  Hoffman: Yes. I must be the first accused killer in history to be grateful not to have an alibi. I’d spent the evening alone in my office on campus. I’m in one of the older buildings. No surveillance cameras, regular keys instead of cards. No one had seen me, I’d talked to no one. No witnesses to come to my defense.

  Arnwright: What did you think when Paul Davis showed up at prison with those letters?

  Hoffman: Right. The letters . . . they were troubling, I admit. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but they gave me pause. They had to be bullshit. And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe, somehow, Paul had the actual typewriter. And if the police got hold of it, if they checked that blood, found out it was Leonard’s, mixed in with the blood of those women, then all of this would have been for nothing.

  Arnwright: You told Gabriella to get it back.

  Hoffman: Yes. I just . . . I didn’t know it would turn out the way it did. I know I tried to kill Paul that night, but all these months after . . . I never wanted Paul to die. I liked Paul. He was a good man. Bill Myers, I didn’t know him. Charlotte I had met once. But Paul . . . I feel badly about Paul. I was something of a mentor to him when he came to West Haven. Did you know that?