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I blinked. This was news to me. “When?”
“In the afternoon. There was a van there. A pest control guy. When he left I went to the door and knocked. Wanted to talk to Brie, to tell her again how sorry I was about what we’d allowed to happen. It was such a stupid thing.”
“You spoke to her?”
“For half a minute. She said she didn’t need any more apologies, that there was nothing more to say, and she sent me away. And that was it.” At this point, he bit into his lower lip briefly. “But I can’t help but think, if I’d hung around, maybe I would have seen … maybe I could have done something. But Isabel and I were driving up to Boston later that day, and I … I’ve always wondered if I could have done more …”
I could understand why he might want to beat himself up, but what had happened to Brie occurred hours after he’d come to the house. I’d spoken to her that evening. Matt, before he died, had as much as said he had come in the middle of the night.
I said, “You saved my life, Norman, showing up when you did, so I think you’ve paid your debt, if there’s even a debt to pay.”
“Yeah, well.”
“There’s one thing you can do for me now,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“I need a phone. Matt, that guy, smashed mine pretty good. I got a few calls I need to make.”
Norman got his out of his pocket, but he seemed reluctant to hand it over. “Just a second,” he said, and did a few taps with his thumb. I had a feeling he was deleting something he didn’t want me to see.
Finally, he handed it over. “Get it back to me soon as you can?”
“I will. Is there a code?”
“Twenty nineteen,” he said. “My thumbprint will open it, too, but I’d kind of like to hang on to that.”
His joke made me think of that severed hand in the woods.
The phone was already active when he handed it to me, so I didn’t need to enter the security code. “Thanks for this,” I said, then powered up the window and hit the gas.
My contacts weren’t going to be in Norman’s phone, so I had to actually recall Jayne’s cell phone number and enter it digit by digit. I put the phone to my ear as I aimed the car in the direction of home.
The phone rang twice.
“Hello?’
I would imagine she was puzzled when she saw Norman’s name or number pop up on her screen.
“It’s me,” I said. “It’s Andrew.”
“Oh my God, I’ve been trying to get you for hours!”
I couldn’t recall ever hearing that level of panic in Jayne’s voice before. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Where have you been? Why are you using Norman’s phone? Are you okay?”
There’d be plenty of time later to bring Jayne up to speed on what had happened to me in the last several hours. What I needed to know now was why she’d been so anxious to reach me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Where are you?”
“Heading into town.”
“Come straight to police headquarters. I’m talking to Detective Hardy right now.”
That was not where I wanted to be. I had something else on my mind. “What’s going on there?”
