Trust No One (29 page)

“They’re going to make the connection between the knife and the crime scene quickly,” Hans says. “My guess is that evidence is already on its way back to the station and in about fifteen minutes they’re going to be fingerprinting everything and about fifteen minutes after that they’re going to have your name. You agree so far?”

He nods. The crime writer inside of him agrees.

“Surveillance from the mall is going to find you going into the bathroom, and they’re going to run the footage in both directions and find out where you came from and where you went. They’re going to find you buying the hat and buying the SIM card, and that’s going to tell them they’re dealing with somebody who knows what they’re doing. It’s going to tell them that Jerry Grey committed a murder and had the sound mind to try and get away with it, which means when they come for you, they may be trigger-happy. If I take you in now, that can be avoided.”

“You said before there was another option,” Jerry says. “I want to know what it is.”

“Whether you did this or not,” Hans says, “you look guilty. Nobody is going to see it any differently. Even I don’t see it any differently. If they don’t shoot you when they find you, then there’ll be a trial, one that Eva will have to sit through and learn all the awful things you’ve done, and then they’re going to make a big show out of executing you, because that’s what they’re going to do, Jerry.”

“Execute? What the hell are you talking about?”

“The death penalty, Jerry. It got voted back in last year. There was a referendum.”

“What?”

“It was a big thing. The crime rate in this country, hell, you know it better than anybody. The people wanted to be heard. It was a big talking point in what was an election year, and the result of that is it’s been voted back in, and the government agreed to do the will of the people. It hasn’t been enforced yet, but you trying to get away with this today, people are going to think you’re of sound mind and, therefore, you’re going to be a pretty good candidate for the noose. The country will finally get to see the results of their voting put into action.”

“But I didn’t hurt anybody,” Jerry says.

“I love you like a brother, I really do, but that’s your future. So the way I see it you have three options.”

“We run,” Jerry says.

“That’s not one of them,” Hans says. “You can’t run. I won’t let you run. So option one is you let me take you into the police station right now and you avoid the possibility of getting put down in the street like a rabid dog. Option two is I take you to a strip joint and I can give you a thousand bucks to blow on strippers and drink and you can have the last, best, final day of freedom before I call the police.”

“And three?”

“Three is you go out on your own terms. We go and find a sunset somewhere, we have a few drinks, we reminisce about old times, and we both drink a little too much and you take some pills and you—”

“No.”

“You die with your dignity and with your best friend by your side.”

“Jesus, how can you—”

“Because you killed those girls, Jerry. You killed Belinda Murray and Laura Hunt and the woman this morning, and you killed Sandra. That’s how I can suggest it. And if you were thinking straight, you’d suggest the same damn thing.”

“But I’m innocent.”

“Is that really what you think?” Hans asks. “You think somebody set you up? That somebody framed you?”

“It’s possible,” Jerry says.

“Yeah? Is that Henry Cutter or Jerry Grey saying that?”

“Both.”

“Look, Jerry, you could have taken a flight to Mars last week and you wouldn’t even know it. And if somebody set you up, how? They give you Alzheimer’s too?”

“I didn’t do this,” Jerry says.

“I know you didn’t. It was Captain A.”

Jerry shakes his head. “This wasn’t the disease. It wasn’t me. Somebody is doing this to me.”

“Like in one of your books.”

“Exactly!”

“You don’t think it’s more likely you snuck out of the nursing home and made your way to this woman’s house?” Hans asks.

Jerry feels like screaming. He feels like punching a hole in the world. Why won’t his friend listen to him? “Please, you have to trust me.”

“Trust you? Tell me about Suzan with a
z,
” Hans says.

Jerry doesn’t answer him.

“Tell me about her.”

“She was different,” Jerry says.

“Different how?”

“Because her I remember killing. I’m sorry, and I wish—”

Hans puts up his hand to stop him. “She’s different, Jerry, because she doesn’t exist. She never existed.”

Jerry doesn’t answer him, not right away, but then the brain chemistry does that little trick it sometimes does, it washes over and clears another memory, and he wonders at what expense, at what other fact or person he’s just forgotten. “She’s from the books, isn’t she.”

“Yes. So don’t you think it’s possible that if you can remember killing a woman who never existed that you may not be able to remember killing one who does?”

It makes sense. Perfect sense.

“We need to find the journal,” Jerry says.

“What journal?”

“The one I couldn’t find yesterday.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know?” Jerry asks.

“Know what?” Hans asks.

“About my Madness Journal?”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Jerry?”

“I’ve been keeping a journal since the day I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I was calling it a Madness Journal. I thought you knew.”

A few seconds of silence. Jerry can see his friend’s mind racing.

“What was in it?” Hans asks.

“Everything,” Jerry says. “Everything I could remember back then that I can’t remember now. I wasn’t writing in it every day, but I wrote in it plenty. It was a way of reminding my future self of who I was. That future self is me, I guess, but without it I can’t remember what I wrote.”

“Did you write in it when Sandra died?”

“I don’t know, but I imagine I would have.”

“How do you know the police didn’t find it?”

Jerry shakes his head. “They didn’t. Nobody knows where it is,” Jerry says. “There’s a hiding place in my house—”

“It’s no longer your house, Jerry.”

“I know that, Christ, I know that, okay?” Jerry says, throwing his hands into the air. “I remember thinking last night I needed to find the journal, and that I had to find a way to escape so I could go and find it.”

Hans runs both his hands over the top of his head. “Ah, geez, Jerry . . . really?”

“That journal might prove I’m innocent.”

“Or it might prove the opposite.”

“Then at least I’d know, right? But there’s a problem.”

“Because there’s a new owner,” Hans says.

“We went there yesterday—”

“We?”

“Me and Nurse Hamilton. Gary let us—”

“Gary?”

“The new owner. He let us inside and I found the hiding spot, but there was nothing there, only I think it was there and Gary found it and is hiding it, the journal and the gun.”

Hans frowns. “The gun?”

“Yeah,” he says, getting frustrated at all the interruptions. “The police never found that either, but maybe it’s not there because I didn’t shoot Sandra?”

“Is that also what your nurse thought? That the new owner was hiding the journal?”

“I don’t know,” Jerry says. “I remember thinking they were all in on it.”

“All?”

The way Hans asks that, it makes Jerry realize how crazy he’s sounding.
They’re all in on it.
That’s also right from the Henry Cutter playbook. “There was an orderly there too. They had to sedate me. But the journal has to be there, right? Maybe that’s—”

“They had to sedate you?”

“Jesus, will you just let me finish?”

“There are too many blanks, Jerry.”

“They had to sedate me because the shirt made them think the worst, and they wouldn’t believe me about the journal, and the journal is the key to all of this. That’s why—”

“What shirt?”

“There was a shirt under the floor,” Jerry says, wishing his friend could keep up.

“Was it blue? Was it covered in blood?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the shirt you wore to the wedding. You were wearing it that night when I picked you up.”

“Don’t you see?” Jerry asks. For the first time he feels like he’s on track. “We have to go back there and convince Gary to give the journal to us. That has to be why I left the nursing home. That must be where I was trying to go. If I can find the journal and prove I didn’t do any of this, then Eva will want to be in my life again. She’ll call me
Dad.
She’ll come to visit. You have no idea how it feels to have a child who wants nothing to do with you.”

“You’re sure it exists, this journal of yours.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” Hans says. “So let’s say it does. What’s your plan? We go and make Gary tell us where it is? We don’t even know he took it and, I hate to burst your bubble here, Jerry, but to me it sounds like he didn’t take it at all. Either somebody else found it, or you hid it elsewhere. Where else could you have hidden it?”

“I don’t know. What I do know is that I need your help. Please. Will you help me?”

Hans says nothing for a while. He just stares at Jerry, and Jerry can see Hans’s mind unlocking the problem, the way he always has.

“Okay,” Hans says. “Let’s head back to my house and work on a plan.”

“Why don’t we go straight to my old house?”

“Because we have to think about it, Jerry. It’s foolish to rush into something without a plan.”

“But—”

“Trust me. Going in without one is a surefire way of failure. I wish you’d chosen the stripper option,” he adds, and he checks for traffic and then does a U-turn. “It sure would have been a hell of a lot more fun.”

It’s now one a.m., which makes this Sunday, which actually means this is no longer the day of the WMD. Time to start over.

The online video has now had more than twelve thousand hits. If only your books could sell as quickly. There are also over a hundred comments. The Internet gives everybody a voice, and it seems those who can’t spell are the first to take advantage of that.

Ha funny.

Guys a genious. Bet his wife really is a whore.

Guys a hack. His books r shit.

Guy’s a fag. FAG! No wonder his wive screws round.

God loves everybody—but even he thinks this shmuck
is an asswhole.

These kinds of comments have always made you fearful of where the world is going. You worry one day people will have the courage to say in the real world what they can now only say anonymously through social media.

Since writing those comments down in the Madness Journal (no cutting and pasting here, Jerry), the hit count has gone up another thousand. At this rate every single living person in the world will have seen it by Christmas, unless some celebrity kills somebody or flashes their junk to the media. Hard to know whether it’s crashing what’s left of my career or helping it. What’s that old chestnut?
All publicity is good publicity
? This will put that to the test.

Sandra came into the study earlier. It really has been a day for good ol’ chestnuts, because she pulled out the words that follow, and here’s how it all began. . . .

We need to talk,
she said.

I’m really sorry, Sandra. I feel so ashamed and—

How could you, Jerry? And I don’t just mean how could you say those things, but how could you think them?

She was crying. Tears are what Henry used to think of as emotional blackmail. Many of his female characters used them to get their way (you really are a chauvinistic pig, Henry), and all you could do was tell her how sorry you were, over and over, but being sorry wasn’t going to fix it. You were forming a plan—Henry can tell you.

Jerry was going to get his gun. Jerry was going to shoot the son of a bitch who put that video up online. Then Jerry was going to shoot himself too.

Thanks, Henry.

Do you really think those things?
Sandra asked.

You wanted to say
no
. The word even formed in your mind, this little word so big and powerful, too big it got stuck, too big it was crushed under its own weight.
Yes,
you said.
And I don’t blame you, I really don’
t.

You did nothing to avoid the slap you knew was coming. It echoed around the room. If this had been a book or a movie Sandra would have realized what she had done and gasped and apologized, and in the end you’d have made up. It would have been the ultimate rom-com: you being put through the wringer, your relationship being pulled apart from every direction near the end of the second act, but all would have been saved late in the third. If only.

She slapped you again, this time much harder. Act three was going to be tough work to come back from this, and you realized this is why rom-com writers don’t throw a hilarious dose of Alzheimer’s into the rom-com mix.

You think I’m a whore.

No, it’s not that—

Then what?
she asked.

I know you’ve been sleeping with the baker.

What?

And the guys who put in the alarms. You
’re always disappearing for wedding stuff, and I know,
you said, and tapped the side of your head because that’s where the proof was baby, pure and simple,
you’ve been sneaking off to be with other men. Including Hans.

Anybody else I’m screwing?
she asked.

The cops who came to the door after the car got set on fire. And probably even a few people from the wedding,
you said, because honesty is the best policy, isn’t it?

You must really hate me to think that way,
she said.
Have you always thought these things?

Only since you started sleeping around,
you said.

It’s this . . . this . . . disease,
she said, spitting out the words.
It gives you carte blanche, doesn’t it? You can say what you want and you don’t have to own it because it’s not Jerry, it’s his bloody Alzheimer’s, but you have to own this one because half the world has already seen it. You became a laughingstock tonight, Jerry, you embarrassed yourself and you humiliated me and you ruined
Eva’s wedding. I know you’re sick, I know things aren’t the same, but how am I supposed to forgive you for this?