Trust No One (14 page)

“Calm down? How can I be calm when all of you are making these things up about me.”

“You have been here for a year, Jerry,” she says, quite forcefully too.

“But—”

You’re Jerry Grey, the man with Alzheimer’s as his sidekick, how can you argue this? How can you argue with Nurse Hamilton? Her word is law.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “And in the eleven months you’ve been here, you’ve confessed to a lot of crimes.”

“The first time you did it, buddy, it was quite a shock,” Eric says. “Nurse Hamilton here was getting ready to call the police, but there was something about what you were saying that was familiar. I’m a big fan of your books, and I quickly figured out you were describing a scene from one of them.”

“Since your time with us, you’ve confessed to a lot of make-believe crimes that you remember doing,” Nurse Hamilton says.

“They seem so real to you,” Eric says.

“Two days ago we were in the garden and you told me a story,” Nurse Hamilton says, and she glances at the photo, and Jerry knows what she’s about to say—the same way he always used to be able to predict how TV shows and movies would end one quarter of the way through. Is that where they are now? One quarter of the way through his madness? And the Madness Journal? Just where in the hell is it?

“You told me about a girl you had killed. You said you knew her, but you didn’t say how. Do you remember this?”

He doesn’t remember that at all, and he tries to remember. Hard. He knows that’s a thing people probably tell him, to try and think harder or try and remember better, as if he can tighten his brain muscles and put in the extra effort. But it is what it is, and in this case what it is is a whole lot of nothing. “I remember the garden,” he says. “And . . . there was a rabbit. Wally.”

“You stabbed her,” Mayor says.

“The rabbit?”

“Belinda Murray. You murdered her in cold blood.”

Nurse Hamilton puts a hand on Jerry’s knee when he goes to stand. “Wait, Jerry, please. Despite the fact Detective Mayor here is behaving in extremely poor taste, it’s what you told me. You said you knocked on her door in the middle of the night, and when she answered it you . . . you struck her. Then you . . .” she says, and she looks away from him, and he knows what it is she doesn’t want to say, and he wonders how she is going to say it, and she says, “had your way with her. Then you stabbed her. You told me all about it.”

“But if I’ve been here for the last year then—”

“It was just before you were sentenced here,” Mayor says. “A few days before the shooting.”

“What shooting?”

“That’s enough, Detective,” Nurse Hamilton says, then she looks back at Jerry. “Think about the girl, Jerry.”

But he doesn’t want to think about the girl because there is no girl. This Belinda Murray is only as real as the other characters he’s written about. “What shooting?”

“There was no shooting, Jerry,” Nurse Hamilton says, and she sounds calm. “The girl. Do you remember her? Belinda. Do you remember seeing her before you came here? It was a year ago. Look at the photograph again.”

He doesn’t look at the photograph. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” he says, the statement directed at everybody in the room.

“Please, Jerry, answer the questions so these two men can be on their way.”

He looks at the photograph again. The blond girl. The attractive girl. The dead girl. The stranger. And yet . . . “When I think of Suzan, it’s like I know her, but this girl . . .” He lets the sentence peter out. “The thing is she does look familiar. Doesn’t
feel
familiar, but I do recognize her. And the name—I’ve heard the name before. When did I hear it?”

The cops are staring at him. He thinks about what he just said and wishes he hadn’t said any of it. He wishes Sandra were here. She’d be on his side.

“We think he should come with us,” Mayor says to Nurse Hamilton.

“Is that really necessary?” she asks.

“At this point I’m afraid it’s the next step,” Mayor says, but Jerry doesn’t think he sounds afraid.

They all stand up then. “Am I going to be put into handcuffs?” Jerry asks.

“That won’t be necessary,” Mayor says.

“Can I play with the siren?”

“No,” Mayor says.

They start to walk out of the room. “Are you coming with me?” he asks Nurse Hamilton.

“I’ll meet you there,” she says, “and I’ll call your lawyer along the way.”

He thinks about that for a few seconds. “Can you ask the detectives if I can play with the siren?”

“Don’t make us put you in handcuffs,” Mayor says.

“Detective—” Nurse Hamilton says.

Mayor shrugs. “I’m just kidding. Come on, let’s get out of here—this place gives me the creeps.”

This entry isn’t going to start with good news or bad news, but with weird news. Two pages have been torn out from this journal, the two pages after the last entry. You didn’t do it, and you didn’t write in them either because you me us we are still sane. Two blank pages gone. However, it’s possible Sandra tore them out for one of two possibilities. She wants you to think you wrote an entry and can’t remember it, for which there seems no motive. Or she found the journal, was reading it, and spilled something on those pages and had to tear them out. It means being more careful now about leaving the journal out.

Eva took you to lunch yesterday. It was just the two of you, which is something you hardly ever get to do. She took you to a restaurant that has a view of the Avon river out one side, and the hills out the other. Her friend is a chef there, and she prepared a special lunch that wasn’t on the menu, one she was working on to add within the coming weeks. She’d come over and asked what you thought, never taking up too much of your time, so many smiles and so much happiness that even if you and Eva hadn’t liked the meal, neither of you would have been able to say anything. You didn’t talk much about the future with Eva, or about the wedding, instead you chatted about her music, she told you some more stories of her big trip overseas, she told you that one of her friends from school was having a baby, and that having a family is something she and Rick have been talking about. You asked if she was pregnant, and she laughed, and said no, not yet, but maybe in a couple of years. She told you that before she started writing song lyrics, she had been thinking of trying to write fiction. Just short stories. Not the kind of stuff that Henry Cutter comes up with, but stories based on slice-of-life moments she had seen when traveling, moments that eventually got turned into music. She asked if you would look over some of her work. She said she’d love some feedback, and you know she’s doing this for you, not for her, but to be asked was such a thrill.

Then she asked what you were planning for Sandra’s birthday. Sandra’s birthday, of course, is something you had forgotten about, had remembered again a few days ago, and ultimately had landed on the side of forgetting. You’re not sure whether Eva would have decided that was an Alzheimer’s thing, or a Jerry thing, but it’s a moot point because you have been thinking about it, but at that stage you hadn’t decided on either the perfect gift, or the how to spend the day.

“How about a surprise party?” Eva suggested.

You agreed it was a fantastic idea, but what you didn’t say was she should have arranged a surprise party without your knowledge. You see one of two things happening—either forgetting about the party, or forgetting that it’s meant to be a secret. When Eva drove you back home, she handed you a folder from the backseat with a dozen songs in it. You sat out on the deck in the sun reading the lyrics, putting them to the music in your head, so excited for her, for her future, for the people who will one day get to hear them.

Your own writing, by the way, is going well. You sent the revised edition of
The Man Goes Burning
to your editor this morning. It was, it turned out, a lot of work. The book is about a firefighter who is also an arsonist who falls in love with a fellow firefighter, and burns down buildings just so he can work with her, with the ultimate goal of being able to save her life. You ended up introducing a new character, which has really helped—a guy by the name of Nicholas, and Nicholas brings a whole new element to the story, some heart and depth that was lacking before. Nicholas is a punk teenager accused of an armed robbery, and while in a holding cell at the police station he is severely beaten and raped and almost dies, and of course Nicholas never committed the robbery at all. He uses what little money he is given in compensation to put himself through law school—so all of that is in the past, and now your main character, the arsonist, uses a lawyer when he becomes a suspect after the woman he loves disappears. Nicholas is the kind of lawyer willing to go to the end of the world for a client he truly believes in.

The book isn’t the only thing going well. The wedding preparations are racing along, all the pieces of the big day falling into place. It’s
wedding
this and
wedding
that,
Let’s talk about flowers, Let’s talk about place settings, Do you like the dress, Do you like the cake, You’re the writer, Jerry, so tell us what font do you think looks best on these dinner menus? That one?
Are you sure? How sure?

Thank God you’ve had all this work to do because really you’ve just been able to stay out of the way, which is probably the best gift you can give your family. The wedding is less than five weeks away and you can’t wait until it’s in the rearview mirror. In five weeks you’ll have shaken off the dementia too, and maybe you can get a good chunk of book fourteen written before going on tour with book thirteen. You’re enough of a realist to know that even though you’re dodging the dementia bullet now, that doesn’t mean it still hasn’t got your name on it. It could be twenty years away, or it could be ten. You need to keep writing for you, for your fans, for your family.

Getting caught up in the rewrite has been a lot of work as well as a lot of fun, but it has kept you away from this journal. In saying that, there is definitely less of a need to keep writing here—why would anybody clearly not mad need to keep a Madness Journal? You barely read from it anymore anyway.

Before signing off for the day, here’s a little something from a few mornings ago, a weird incident that’s hardly worth mentioning, but here goes . . .

Sandra was at work, and your neighbor, Mrs. Smith, comes over. She comes over and she is pissed off. Somebody tore all of her flowers up, and Mrs. Smith wants to know if you know anything about it. You don’t know—of course you don’t—but then she says one of the neighbors said they
saw
you doing it—or at least somebody who looked like you. You tell her no, it wasn’t you, you’re a forty-nine-year-old crime writer who has been inside writing crime all week and who, you assure her, has far better things to do than wipe out rows and rows of her roses.

I just find it strange that Mrs. Blatch says she was sure it was you, and that she thought you were doing some gardening.

Now, Mrs. Blatch, to put things into perspective, Future Jerry, is of an age that can only be prefaced by a seven again if she reaches seven hundred. She wears glasses so heavy her eventual cause of death will be from a broken neck.

Then Mrs. Blatch is wrong, which can’t be much of a surprise, can it? She is almost two hundred years old.

Be that as it may, Jerry, she is sure it was you and, well, there’s no real delicate way of putting this, but after our conversation the other day, it seems like you’re paying me back.

What conversation?

I asked you to tidy up your yard. Your garden is a disgrace.

I’m working on it, and it wasn’t me that dug up your roses.

How can you be so sure it wasn’t? A man in your condition—really, how can you be so sure?

If you’re going to accuse me of having a grudge against your garden, then next time try to have a witness who wasn’t
around when fire was invented.

You wished her
good day
—you actually used those very words, straight out of a Victorian drama, then closed the door on her.

Good news—Nicholas is going to save your manuscript. You’re sure of it, and the book will be out next year. Good news—Replacement Jerry is no longer knocking on the door. You’re beating this thing.

Bad news—last night you took a leak in one of the bedrooms. You were halfway through when you suddenly realized you were pissing in the corner of the guest bedroom rather than the bathroom. You did manage to stop midflow (good news), and you did manage to clean it up without Sandra knowing (also good news).

So this is it, Future Jerry. No real time to stay in touch now and not much point either. You’re going to dedicate your time to the wedding and to the next book. You actually have an idea for a new novel—about a crime writer who has dementia. Not quite based on you, because this guy actually has the Big A.
Write what you know,
remember?
And fake the rest.