“To be honest, I don’t know. I’m confused. Sometimes he’s wonderful to me, and then he’s awful, and then he’s loving to me again. He says I’m going crazy, and I’m not sure if I am or he is. He wakes me up at night and argues with me, and then the next day he tells me that’s not what happened. I don’t know,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on. He was the best thing that ever happened to me, and now I feel like I’m living in a nightmare, and I’m not even sure whose nightmare it is, his or mine.” What she described sounded terrifying to Mark, and he was deeply worried about her.

“I think this guy’s a lunatic, Hope. I’m really beginning to think so. I think his brother was right and he’s a sociopath. I think you have to get out of there, or maybe not even go back.”

“I don’t know. I need to think about it while I’m here. When he’s nice to me, I feel stupid for being upset about it. And then he starts all over again, and I feel panicked. He’s been asking for money.” Hearing that upset Mark even more.

“How much money?”

“He wants five million in his own account, as spending money.” Mark looked furious at that.

“He’s not crazy. He’s a shit. He’s after your money, Hope.” Mark was sure of that now.

“I think he’s after my mind,” she said softly. “I feel like he’s driving me insane.”

“That’s probably what he wants you to think. I don’t think you should go back there again. And if you do, I want you to call that lawyer in Dublin first, so you have someone to rely on close at hand.”

“I will,” she promised, “but I’m going to stay here for a few days.” She was still too upset about Paul to want to go back. And she felt better now in New York. Every day her mind got clearer, and the confusion Finn was spinning around her had less effect. He was calling her often, but a lot of the time, she wasn’t answering the phone. And then afterward he’d ask her where she’d been and with whom. She usually told him she’d been asleep. Sometimes she just left her cell phone in the apartment and went out.

Mark called her two days later and sounded grim. This time, he offered to come to the apartment to see her. She invited him to come down, and he showed up half an hour later with his briefcase. The investigator had just delivered his final report, and Mark had brought it to her. Mark handed it to her without a word, and waited while she read it. The report was long and detailed, and Hope was shocked by almost everything she read. Most of it was different from what she had heard from Finn. Some he had never mentioned at all.

The report started where the last one had left off, after his childhood and youth, early jobs, and went on to tell about his marriage to Michael’s mother. It said she was a model, with some moderate success, and had married Finn when she was twenty-one and he was twenty. It said that the couple had had a reputation for a heavy party life, with both drugs and drinking, that she had gotten pregnant, and they married five months before Michael was born. The report said that they had been separated several times, both had committed infidelities, but had gone back together, and that they had gotten into a severe accident on the highway, coming back from a party late one night on Long Island. Finn had been drinking heavily that night, and was at the wheel. Their car was hit by a truck at an intersection on the highway. It had been totaled, and his wife had been severely injured. The driver of the truck was killed. There had been no witnesses on the scene, and eventually a car driving by had called the state police from a pay phone just down the road, and asked for emergency assistance. When the highway patrol arrived, they had found Finn conscious and uninjured, inebriated but not extremely, and he had been unable to explain why he had not gone to the pay phone to call for help himself. To do him justice, the report said he was in shock and disoriented after a blow to the head, and he had said he hadn’t wanted to leave his injured wife to walk down the road to the phone. The accident had occurred half an hour before the other car drove by, and medical examiners had concluded that if help had been called sooner, Finn’s passenger, his wife, would have lived. He had made no effort whatsoever to save her life.

Investigations afterward had determined that their marriage was in trouble, and Finn had asked her for a divorce, which she had refused. There was some question as to whether he had caused the accident, but whether he had or not, he had let her die. Charges had been formally brought against Finn, he was given a five-year suspended sentence and five years probation and had his license revoked for manslaughter for the death of the truck driver. His late wife’s death was deemed an accident.

The investigator had contacted the family of Finn’s late wife, in California, who were still bitter about it and said that they believed Finn had intentionally killed their daughter, in the hope of inheriting some money. Her father was a wealthy stockbroker in San Francisco, and he and his wife had brought up their daughter’s child, who was seven at the time of his mother’s death. They said that Finn had flatly refused custody of the child. They had told the investigator that Finn had seen his son twice in the ensuing years before he left for college, and they believed he had seen him a few times since, but had no real role in their grandson’s life. They considered him a poor influence on the boy and a dangerous man. He had attempted to extort money from them after their daughter’s death, threatening to expose her use of alcohol and drugs and immoral, promiscuous lifestyle. They had reported his extortion attempts to the police, but never brought formal charges against him. They just wanted him out of their and their grandson’s life.

They were aware of his literary success in the years since their daughter’s death, but nonetheless considered him responsible for her death, and said he was a man without a conscience, who was after money and cared for no one but himself. They said he had claimed to love their daughter in the beginning, and was charming. And he had cried copiously at her funeral. A doctor’s report attached said that in his opinion, she would have died anyway, with or without help. Her injuries were too extreme, and she was brain dead.

It was chilling to read the report, and Hope looked up at Mark without comment. His wife’s death had in fact been an accident. But he had done nothing to help her. There were several more pages about women he had gone out with. There was also a separate sheet that documented that he had eventually gone after his wife’s estate, and sued her parents for support, although they were supporting his child. All his efforts to get money from them, legal and otherwise, for himself had failed. It was certainly wrong of him, but it didn’t make him a murderer either. Just a crook or a man desperate for money. He had also attempted to invade monies that had gone to the boy directly from his mother, and her parents were able to stop Finn’s attempts to get money from his son as well. Hope couldn’t help wondering if Michael knew about that. He knew his father was a liar. But Finn was infinitely worse. He was totally amoral.

Among the women Finn had gone out with were several wealthy women, some of whom he had lived with for a short time, and it was generally believed that they had given him money and gifts. His finances had always been shaky throughout the years, despite his literary success, and his appetite for money was apparently voracious. There was an additional page about his publisher’s current lawsuit against him, and a list of other lawsuits that had been filed against him, usually without success. There was one in particular, by a woman he had lived with, who had brought charges of mental cruelty, but she had lost the suit. All together it painted a picture of a man who exploited women, and all the subjects interviewed said he was a pathological liar. Two of them said he was a sociopath, and an unnamed source at his publisher said they considered him unreliable, untrustworthy, unethical, and incapable of following rules of any kind. All of the subjects, including his ex-parents-in-law, said he was charming, but many considered him an unscrupulous, dangerous man, entirely motivated by greed, and who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. There were no kind words about him in the report, except that he was charming, and was always loving and kind in the beginning, and heartless and cruel in the end. It was what Hope was discovering as well and hoped wasn’t true. The report made it hard to deny.

Hope sat back on the couch and looked at Mark after she read it. And added to it, but not in the report, was the girl who Finn had told her himself had committed suicide because of him. So indirectly, he had caused two deaths. And Hope suddenly remembered his question to her when she had found the photograph of Audra, when he asked her if she would ever commit suicide herself, almost as though it would have been a compliment to him. The question had a whole new meaning now. She was surprised to find that she was shaking as she thought about it all and tried to absorb what she’d just read. It was horrifying to think that all those frightening stories and details of his life had slipped through the cracks over the years and become obscured. The investigator had worked hard to unearth them.

“Not pretty, is it?” Mark commented, looking worried.

“No, it isn’t,” she said sadly. He was charming, as they said, and extremely loving in the beginning, but almost every one of them considered him a dangerous man. “Now what do I do?” she said almost to herself, staring out the window into space, thinking about Finn, wanting with all her heart for him to be who he had been at first.