A Noise Downstairs(103)

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?

Arnwright: Yes.

Hoffman: Maybe Bill and Charlotte got what was coming to them.

Arnwright: If you’re looking for a silver lining, I guess there’s that.

Hoffman: What happens now? Do you think I’ll be exonerated? I mean, I didn’t really kill those two women. And what I did to Paul, that was a spur-of-the-moment thing. There was nothing premeditated about it.

Arnwright: Are you saying you’re an innocent man?

Hoffman: I guess I wouldn’t go that far.

Arnwright: Neither would I.





Sixty-Six

I like this place,” Frank White told Anna. “I do.”

They’d been given a private tour of the seniors’ residence. They’d seen the dining hall and the recreation center and the exercise room, and the last stop was what might end up being his room. It was spacious enough. There was a bed, and a big cushy chair, and a television.

“And I can put my rowing machine right there,” he said. “Look out the window. You can see the water.”

“I don’t know, Dad,” Anna said. She’d been trying hard not to limp throughout the tour. Leonard had nearly broken a bone when he’d kicked her. She was going for physical therapy twice a week.