A Noise Downstairs(90)

“I couldn’t force Paul into the hospital against his wishes, not if he didn’t present an immediate danger to himself, and I was not sure at that moment he did. But you’ve just told me that you saw indications that Paul might harm himself. That he might take his own life. And you’ve just told me you believed he was writing the messages himself, moving the typewriter around, himself. That one part of his mind was doing all this, while another part was unaware.”

“I don’t think I said that exactly.”

Anna smiled. “You’re right, I may have paraphrased slightly.”

“I don’t get where you’re going with all this, Dr. White.”

“Let me be clear, I’m not absolving myself of any blame,” she stated. “But I don’t understand why you talked your best friend out of getting more intensive psychiatric care when, from everything you’ve told me, you believed he was suicidal and carrying out actions his conscious mind was unaware of.”

“It’s not like the way you’re making it sound,” Bill said. “He was my friend. And a lot of it’s Monday morning quarterbacking, you know? You didn’t realize you were seeing the signs until it was too late.”

“Right,” she said. “I totally understand.”

There was a silence between them.

Bill broke it by saying, “I don’t know what else to say.” He stood, signaling it was time for Anna to go.

“What worked?” Anna asked, still seated, looking up.

“Huh?” he said.

“In the church, as we were walking out, you said to Charlotte, ‘It worked.’ I wondered what you were referring to. What was it that worked?”

He stared at her for two seconds and said, “I don’t remember saying that. You must have misheard me.” Bill smiled weakly as he moved toward the door. Then the lightbulb went off. “Oh, I remember. I did say that. I was referring to my little speech. I had it all written up at the office, did it on the computer there, and I couldn’t get it to print out. There wasn’t a soul there, because everyone else was on the way to the funeral, so I actually called Charlotte about it—like she had nothing more serious to worry about at a time like this—and she said the office printer had been acting up, that it was probably jammed, so I opened the printer up and sure enough she was right. So I cleared it, and then I was able to print out the eulogy. So that was the reference. To the printer. That I got it to work.”

Anna nodded. “That makes sense.”

He smiled as he opened the door. “You have a nice day.”

“You, too,” Anna said. She stood, left the house, and headed for her car.

Bill needed to know—right fucking now—what Anna White had said when she’d visited Charlotte. If Charlotte declined his call, he’d show up on her doorstep.

I hope we don’t have a problem.





Fifty-Four

Once Anna White was back behind the wheel of her car, and before she turned on the engine, she lightly drove the heel of her hand into her forehead.

“Idiot,” she said.

It was as simple as that. A printer that would not print.

And then, with advice from Charlotte, it became a printer that did print.

“It worked.”

There you had it.

How she’d let her imagination run away with her. She’d gone from zero to sixty in under three seconds. Two simple words and suddenly she had Bill Myers and Charlotte Davis plotting to drive Paul crazy.

Next thing, Anna thought, she’d be believing 9/11 was an inside job, that doctors had a cure for cancer but were keeping it hidden, that there really were aliens at Roswell.

Didn’t that kind of prejudging go against everything she’d learned in her professional life? You don’t size up your patients in three seconds. You listen to all the facts. You talk to them. You dig below the surface and look for clues that are not immediately evident. What she had done was reach her conclusion first, then look only for evidence that would support it.

“Stupid stupid stupid,” she said, and started the engine.

Realizing how seriously she had misjudged the situation made her feel more than just foolish. Ashamed, for sure. But not in any way relieved. If Bill and Charlotte had been in cahoots—boy, there was a word she hadn’t thought of in years—then some of the responsibility would have been lifted from her shoulders. Her failure to accurately predict Paul’s self-destructive behavior would be mitigated.

As she continued driving back toward her house, she thought that if she’d tipped her hand with Bill Myers, if she’d really let it slip that she suspected something monstrous of him, she’d have felt obliged to write him a letter of apology.

It would be the only decent thing to— Anna slammed on the brakes.

Behind her, a horn blared.

She swerved the car over to the side of the road. Her heart was racing as she threw the SUV into park.

Write him a letter of apology.

She thought back to the service when Bill Myers was making his remarks about his good friend Paul.

How when he got lost and had to search through his notes, how he’d turned the pages over.

From where she sat, Anna could clearly see pages covered with scribbling.

Handwriting.

He had not printed out his speech.