Trust No One (17 page)

Then the door opens up and a man Jerry has never seen before comes in and sits opposite and says his name is Tim Anderson and that he’s his lawyer. They shake hands. Tim is in his midfifties with silver hair slicked back on the sides and flattened on top. He’s wearing glasses that make his eyes look smaller, like looking backwards though a pair of binoculars, and has a summer tan even though it’s spring, which means it’s either paid for or he’s just back from an overseas holiday. He has a nice suit and a nice watch, and Jerry figures that means he gets paid well, and that probably means he’s good at his job.

“What happened to your eye?” Tim asks.

“I was hoping for my usual lawyer.”

Tim has his briefcase open and is pulling out a pad when Jerry says that. He stops in midmovement and stares at him. He looks concerned. “I am your usual lawyer,” he says. “That answers my question as to whether you recognize me.”

Jerry shrugs. “Don’t take it personally.”

Tim puts the pad on the table. He puts a pen next to it. Then he puts the briefcase on the floor and interlocks his fingers and leans his elbows on the desk and his chin on his knuckles. “I’ve been your lawyer for fifteen years.”

“I’m sorry,” Jerry says, shaking his head a little. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“That’s why I’m here, Jerry, to get things cleared up,” Tim says, and he shifts the pad a little closer and picks up the pen. “Tell me everything you remember, starting with that lump under your eye. Who hit you?”

Jerry tells him everything he can about the two policemen, how they think he killed the girl in the photograph. He tells him about the car ride, getting handcuffed and punched along the way. He tells him they’re trying to convince him Sandra is dead, and then stares silently at the lawyer, waiting for a confirmation he doesn’t want, and that confirmation comes in the way his lawyer drops his pen, sighs, and looks down at his hands for a few seconds.

“I’m afraid that it’s true, Jerry. Did they tell you how?”

This time the news isn’t as big a shock, but it is just as hard to hear. He opens his mouth only to find he can’t answer.

Tim carries on. “She was shot. You . . . you didn’t know what you were doing,” he says. “It’s why you’re in a nursing home and not in jail. You weren’t of sound mind enough to stand trial. It was an awful, awful thing, and nobody is to blame.”

Jerry thinks that’s a stupid thing to say. Nobody to blame? So what, the gun just magically appeared in the house, just magically pointed itself at Sandra and went off? He knows who is to blame. It was Captain A. These people have known about Sandra’s death for a year, but for him the news is fresh. For him she’s only been dead half an hour. He puts his hands over his face and cries into them. The world goes dark. He thinks about Sandra, the good times, and there are no bad times—there never were. All those smiles, all the times they’ve laughed, made love, held hands. His chest feels tight. The world without Sandra is a world he doesn’t want to be in. He doesn’t know how he can cope without her, even though he has for the last year, though that wasn’t coping. That was forgetting. He pushes away from the table and throws up on the floor, the vomit splashing and hitting his shoes. His lawyer stays where he is, probably figuring he can’t charge any more than he already is so there’s no point in patting Jerry on the back and telling him everything is going to be okay. No point in risking getting anything gooey on his suit. When Jerry’s done he wipes his arm over his mouth and straightens back up.

“The disease is to blame, not you,” Tim says. “I’m sorry about Sandra, I really am, and I’m sorry about what happened to you, but we have to talk about today. We have to talk about Belinda Murray. Go over again everything that happened today,” he says, and he picks the pen back up and positions it over the notepad.

Jerry shakes his head. The smell of vomit is strong. “First tell me about Sandra.”

“I’m not so sure that’s going to be helpful.”

“Please.”

Tim puts the pen back down and leans back. “We don’t know, not exactly. Do you remember the wedding?”

“No. I mean . . . yes,” he says, and the wedding he can remember, but not what happened to Sandra. He ruined the wedding. “Is that why I killed her? Because of that?”

“Nobody knows. The disease was progressing quickly by that point. By the time the alarms were installed all through the house, you—”

“What alarms?”

“Sometimes you would wander,” he says. “Sandra hid your car keys so at least you couldn’t drive, but you would sneak out of the house and you would disappear, so she had to get them in.”

“Really? I would sneak out?”

“The alarms were for your protection. If you tried to leave, she had a bracelet that would notify her. If Sandra went out, she would take you with her, or she would call somebody to come over. By then she was taking time off work to look after you. You didn’t like how it made you feel.”

“I would have felt babied,” Jerry says.

“The problem is you used to sneak out the window. Alarms were going to be put on those too after Sandra found out, but then . . . well, they were scheduled to go in the same day she died. The problem now, Jerry, is that it shows a pattern of escape. The police are going to think that you killed this woman, then killed Sandra because she figured it out.”

“I . . . I couldn’t have done it. Any of it.”

“The police don’t know exactly what happened. They didn’t even find the gun. You were tested for gunshot residue and none was found, but you showered several times over the days between her death and you calling the police.”

“How long?”

“Four days,” he says. “Because your office was soundproofed, nobody heard the gunshot. The other forensics were hazy. If there was blood splatter on your shirt, it was hidden by the fact you sat in your wife’s blood for considerable stretches of time, holding her. When you did call the police, you confessed. We don’t know why you shot Sandra, Jerry, we just know that you did.”

Jerry wonders how many times over the last year this news has been broken to him, then he thinks of Eva telling him that Sandra left and was filing for divorce, not wanting to tell him the truth, wanting to spare him unnecessary pain. It hits him then as to why his daughter calls him
Jerry,
and not
Dad.
Not because he messed up the wedding, but because he killed her mother. He imagines sitting on the floor of his office, a smoking gun in one hand, holding his dead wife in the other. He imagines it the same way he’s imagined dozens of other deaths over the years, deaths that have made it between the make-believe pages of his books. What he wouldn’t give to have Sandra’s death be make-believe.

“Why can’t I remember killing her?”

“The doctors believe you’ve repressed the memory because it’s too traumatic for you. Bits of your life are going to come and go, but they believe it’s unlikely that will be one of them. Your doctor thinks you just may never remember it. I’m sorry, Jerry, I really am, and I don’t want this to sound awful, but we really need to focus on why we’re here. Tell me what you told the police.”

Jerry buries his face in his arms as he thinks about Sandra, and if it’s true, if he did hurt her, then what does anything else matter? He should pick up the lawyer’s pen and, if the door is unlocked, run among the desks threatening to stab somebody until they put him down and end this nightmare.

“Jerry, come on, we need to work on this, okay? I’m sorry about Sandra, but now we need to concentrate on you. You need to work with me if we’re to get you out of here.”

“I don’t care if I get out,” Jerry says, talking into the table.

“Well you should, because if you didn’t kill this girl, and the police believe you did, then the real killer is going to get away with it. Is that what you want?”

Jerry looks back up at him. He hadn’t thought of that. The smell of vomit seems to be getting stronger. He shifts in his seat for a better angle, trying to block the smell somehow.

“Wait here a minute,” Tim says, and he steps out of the room. He’s back thirty seconds later with a janitor. The janitor brings in a mop and bucket and takes care of the mess, and a minute later Jerry is alone again with his lawyer and the room smells a little better. “Tell me everything,” Tim says.

“Okay, okay. Let me think,” Jerry says, and he takes a few deep breaths and he tries to push thoughts of Sandra aside and focus on today. He sniffs and wipes his eyes then runs through everything. He doesn’t think anything in his story changes, but how can he possibly know? He’s the man who can’t even trust himself. He starts talking. Tim takes notes along the way.

When Jerry’s done, Tim says, “I spoke to Nurse Hamilton before I came in. She says it’s common for you to get confused between reality and fiction. She says there are days where you think things in your books are real and you’ve done them. She says you sometimes confess to killing your neighbor when you were at university. She says you were so adamant about it that they looked through old news reports and they spoke to Eva about it, but it just didn’t happen.”

“I remember her,” Jerry says. “Suzan.”

“She doesn’t exist, Jerry.”

“I know. I mean I remember her in the books.”

“And Belinda Murray? Do you remember her too?”

Jerry takes another look at Belinda Murray, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t picture her in any context other than this photograph. She seems far less real than Suzan. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Do the police have any evidence I hurt her?” he asks. “Any DNA?”

Tim shakes his head. “Doubtful. They already have your prints and DNA after Sandra’s death. If there’d been a match in the system it would have come up eleven months ago. Could be your confession is the only lead they’ve had, that they weren’t able to get anything from the scene.”

Jerry thinks about that. He remembers Mayor asking him in the car if he thought he could outsmart the police, whether crime writers thought they could get away with murder. Is that the theory here? “I didn’t do it. That’s why they’re not finding any evidence of me at the scene.”

“Was there a history back then of you doing other things you don’t remember?”

“You mean other than killing Sandra?”

“There was a report last year of your neighbor having an obscenity spray-painted across the front of her house. Do you remember that?”

“What neighbor?”

“Mrs. Smith.”

Jerry shakes his head. He can remember the neighbor, but not what Tim is talking about. “I remember somebody pulled her flowers out.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Tim says, “but she believes you were the one who spray-painted her house.”

“Then she was wrong.”

“There’s another report from four days later. Mrs. Smith’s car was set on fire. You don’t remember that?”

He thinks back, but there’s nothing there—no neighbor, no car, no fire. “No.”

Tim taps the pen against the table. “Okay, here’s the way I see it. Do you watch the news?”

“Sometimes.”

“And read the newspapers?”

“Sometimes.”

“Good. We’re going to get the detectives back in here now and we’re going to tell them what we think is going on.”

“Which is?”

“Which is not only do you confuse your books with the real world, but also news reports too. You have an overactive imagination. You can’t switch it off. We’re going to tell the police you have confused the news story with your own reality the same way you confuse your fiction with your reality. We’re not going to answer any questions because you have no memory of the event and can’t help with any answers, and any questions they ask at this point may only end up having you confess to a reality that never happened. We get through this, then we can get you out of here and back home.”

“Back home or back to the nursing home?”

“To the nursing home.”

He taps the photograph. “I didn’t hurt her.”

Tim puts his pen and his pad back into his briefcase. “Wait here for me, Jerry, I’m going to go and talk to the detectives alone. I’ll be back shortly.”

“They were going to bring me a gin and tonic,” Jerry says.

“What?”

“The detective asked if I wanted a drink. He said he’d get me one right away.”

“Okay, Jerry. Wait here and let me see what I can do,” he says, and then he slips out the door and once again Jerry is left waiting in the interrogation room, thirsty and all alone.

Your name is Jerry Grey and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with you except for the fact you can’t remember spraying a word you shouldn’t mention across the house of your neighbor. Here’s the thing. The shake. The rub. The lowdown. Future Jerry, you don’t know for a fact you did what they think you did. Just because you hid a can of spray-paint in your office doesn’t mean you used a can of spray-paint on your neighbor’s house. After all, there are kitchen knives in the kitchen, does that mean anybody stabbed over the last twenty years was stabbed by you? The can is a holdover from days of Renovation Past, just as there are other paints stored in the garage. The plan after finding the spray-paint in the hiding spot had been to dump it. That much you remember. Toss it into a dumpster in town somewhere. The problem with that scenario is Sandra took the keys off you so you can’t drive anymore. She took them last night. She said you may not realize it, but sadly you’re starting to slip a little. She said she’s taking them off you for your own safety, and for the safety of others on the roads. It hurt. But you know the truth, you know why she’s really taking them. It’s to control you.
Don’t do this, Jerry. Don’t do that.
It’s all you hear these days.

The police never came back yesterday, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. You had to get rid of it, or face life without parole, spending your days breaking rocks in the sun. If you couldn’t drive, you could at least walk. Nothing illegal about that. Neighbors weren’t going to look out the window and go
Oh, there’s Jerry, off to dump incriminating evidence.

So that’s what you did.

At least started to do. Until Captain A became involved.