Trust No One (36 page)

You finally reached out to her, placing one hand on her knee and the other on her arm.
But she did ring you, and you did make it home in time,
you said, and you felt relief, but you also felt scared because there was still the matter of the bloody knife and the shirt. Something had happened.

Let’s clean this up, then call Hans,
she said.

Cleaning up the room was everything in reverse, and it felt weird because hanging up the trash bags and laying out the tarpaulin, well, never during any of that did you think you’d be putting this stuff away. Sandra wasn’t able to get hold of Hans, but left a message. She sounded concerned, yet you know she’d have forgiven you if you had hurt him.

Then she went upstairs to freshen up. To get her emotions under control. To process everything that was going on. To change out of her sweaty clothes. That was when your phone rang. It was Hans.

I’m in trouble. I’ve humiliated my family and I’m the laughingstock of the world, and I’ve—

People will get over it,
Hans said.
You’re only one waterskiing cat away from being forgotten about.

It’s worse than that,
you told him, and then you poured yourself a drink. You asked him if it were true that he had picked you up. He said yes. You asked if the two of you had fought, if you had cut him, and he said no. You asked if there was blood on your shirt, and he said nothing then, as if he was the one who was having problems remembering. So you asked him again, and then he said yes, there was blood. He said he had asked you about it at the time, but you had no answer. You asked where the knife came from, but he hadn’t seen one.

It doesn’t line up with what Nurse Mae told Sandra, but somewhere between all that hearsay, and the gin and tonics, the details have gotten lost. But it will get sorted soon. Hans is on his way over.

Henry is trying to say something, but he can’t find the words, which is a shame because it feels important. Hopefully Hans and Henry can work together to help figure it out. You asked Hans to bring over another couple of bottles of gin too. Hans will know what to do. Solving problems—that’s such a Hans thing.

Jerry is sitting in a taxi handing money over to the driver when his phone rings.

“You okay, buddy?”

The driver looks concerned. He’s a big guy whose chest is hanging on his stomach, and whose arms are as thick as Jerry’s legs. He has skin tags tagging his neck and sunspots spotting his scalp. To Jerry he looks like a human baked potato.

“I’m . . . I’m okay.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

Jerry looks out the window. He’s outside his house. The phone is still ringing.

“This is where I live,” he says.

“Then good job I brought you here,” the taxi driver says. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.” The driver hands him his change. Jerry looks at his wrist, but he’s not wearing a watch. “What’s the time?”

“Just after six.”

He climbs out of the car. The day is darkening. It’s cool too. He looks down at the phone, but doesn’t recognize it. Where has he been? Shopping? Visiting friends? The taxi stays where it is while the driver fiddles with something on the dashboard.

Jerry answers the phone. “Hello?”

“I’m on my way.”

“Hans?”

“I’ve got him,” Hans says. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I got him.”

“Got who?”

A pause from Hans, and then, “Are you . . . are you okay?”

Jerry looks at his house. Yes, he’s okay. He must have wandered, but where he went he doesn’t know. What he does know is that lately he hasn’t been well. He’s been forgetting things. He pats down his pockets, but can’t find his keys. Sometimes he climbs out windows and goes where he shouldn’t, and if that’s what he’s just done, then perhaps he can climb back in. He moves up the pathway and around to his office.

“I’m fine,” he tells Hans.

“You’re still at the park, right?”

“What park?”

“The park where I told you to wait for me.”

“I don’t remember any park. I’m back home.”

“The nursing home?”

“What nursing home?” Jerry asks, though something about that
feels
familiar, but he can’t figure out why. He reaches his office. The window is shut and locked. He can see through the window and though everything looks the way it always looks, there is something a little different. The computer looks newer than he remembers, and things are in slightly different places, but for the most part it’s how it should be . . . except off a little. “No, I’m back at my house. What park are you talking about?”

“You’re back home? At your house?”

“Pretty much.”

“What does that mean?”

He makes his way to the front door. Maybe Sandra will be home from work. She’s going to give him a hard time, but if he’s lucky by the end of the day he will have forgotten. And if she isn’t home, there’s a spare key hidden in the backyard. Funny how he can remember where the key is, the day they wrapped it in a small plastic bag and hid it in the garden just under the edge of the deck, but he can’t remember the last thirty minutes.

Perhaps
funny
is the wrong word.

“Jerry?”

“It means I’m right outside, about to head inside.”

“You’ve remembered where the journal is?”

“You know about that?”

“Listen, Jerry, you need to listen to me very carefully. I want you to stop walking. I want you to stay on the sidewalk. I’m going to come and pick you up.”

He’s almost at the front door. He searches his pockets again in case the keys are hidden in there somewhere—how many times has he looked for his wallet or keys or phone in a pocket only to have found them there on the second or third time hunting through? He doesn’t see what the big deal is with Hans. He also doesn’t find the keys. He does find a pair of Sandra’s earrings, which seems a little odd.

“Jerry?”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you, but you’re not making any sense.”

“Concentrate, Jerry. What do you remember about today?”

He thinks back over the day. He actually can’t remember anything. That happens sometimes. His family is worried he’s going to mess up the wedding because of it. He knows they’re thinking of putting him into care.

“Jerry?”

“I don’t remember much,” he admits.

“You don’t live in that house anymore, Jerry.”

“Yeah, right,” he says, and then laughs, and then he starts knocking. Nothing funnier than playing a joke on somebody who is losing their mind.

“Are you knocking?” Hans asks.

“I don’t have my key.”

“Seriously, Jerry, you don’t live there anymore. You need to wait for me on the street.”

“But—”

“Are the police around? Do you see them?”

“What? Why would there be police here?”

“You live in a nursing home. You’ve wandered off. You rang me earlier and I came and picked you up from a shopping mall. You don’t remember any of this?”

“None of it,” Jerry says, annoyed at Hans for still pushing this silly joke.

“You have to—”

“I don’t get it,” Jerry says. “I’m missing the joke.”

“I’m not joking.”

“I can see all my stuff through the office window.”

“That’s not your stuff.”

“Ring me back later when you’re making sense,” he says, then hangs up.

He knocks again, but there’s no answer. Either Sandra isn’t home or she’s in the shower. The phone starts ringing again, but he ignores it. He makes his way to the side gate, noticing that the shrubs they planted last spring have all been torn up and replaced by different ones, a layer of bark put down, a family of garden gnomes guardians to it all. He reaches through and unlatches the side gate, and when it swings open he’s staring at a yard that feels slightly out of whack. It takes him a few moments to figure it out, and that’s when he notices the pool has gone. When the hell did that happen? He’s used to losing things by the pool, but never has he actually
lost
the pool. The garden is different too, but the deck is the same, as are the pavers surrounding it, and he digs his fingers under one and lifts it. The key is still there. He steps up on the deck and opens the bag and at the same time looks through the windows of the French doors into the house. The world tilts further. He doesn’t recognize any of the furniture, and there’s a large painting on the lounge wall of horses running along a beach that he doesn’t remember ever seeing.

Sandra has finally done it, she’s kicked him out and the baker has moved in, all the furniture has been replaced, and she didn’t even have the decency to let him know. Maybe this is what Hans meant when he said he doesn’t live here anymore. He gets the key out of the bag.

“What are you doing here?”

He turns towards the voice. Mrs. Smith has always reminded him of a generic grandmother he’d throw into one of the books for some bad guy to toss down a flight of stairs. “Look, I appreciate your concern,” he says, “but I’m fine. And as you can see we’ve taken care of the gardens. Thanks for stopping by.”

That’s when he notices there’s one thing about her that he’s overlooked. She’s holding a hockey stick. She has both hands tightly wrapped around the handle, with the heel pointing in his direction. Is this a mugging?

“I’ve called the police,” she says, so this isn’t a mugging, and the words trigger a memory, the same woman saying the same thing, and he was sitting in a car when she said it, he was in the passenger seat and they were parked right there on the road, and who was he sitting next to?

“They’re going to lock you away for what you’ve done, for ripping out my roses and setting fire to my car.” She adjusts her grip on the hockey stick. “And for spraying that word on my house.”

“What are you talking . . .” he says, then the images all come rushing, so many of them at one time it makes him dizzy, so many he can’t make any sense of them. He sits down on the doorstep with Mrs. Smith watching him, looking as though she wants to wind up her arms and let loose with that hockey stick.

“Nobody is buying the Alzheimer’s bullshit, Mr. Grey, so stop playing that card. You’re a no-good, rotten son of a bitch who murders women for fun, and if you—”

“What?”

“If you think that you can sneak back into your old house and—”

“What?”

“And kill the new owners, well, you take one more step and I’ll put this through the side of your head.” She changes the angle of the hockey stick to make it look more threatening to prove her point. “I made the national side back in my day, so don’t think I don’t know how to use it.”

The national side? At what? Hockey-stick fencing? “What are you talking about?”

“You’re rotten inside, Mr. Grey. Mean to the core.”

“There is something wrong with you,” he tells her. “What kind of person makes up this shit?” Then he realizes he’s the kind of person who makes up this shit. He does it for a living. He’s a professional liar. A makeup artist.

“You just stay where you are,” she says, and prods the hockey stick at him. “Your wife is dead because of you.”

“What?”

“You killed her.”

Hearing her say that . . . well now, she shouldn’t have said it. Shouldn’t. Have. Said it. He grabs the heal of the hockey stick in both hands and then it’s a tug-of-war between them as he gets to his feet and pushes forward. He’s heavier and stronger and younger and madder and he pushes her easily back down the pathway. Her foot goes into the garden off to the side, she stumbles, holding onto the hockey stick to try and keep her balance, and suddenly he realizes what’s about to happen. As annoying as she is, the last thing he wants is her falling over and cracking her head open. He tries to keep his grip on the hockey stick to stop her from falling, but she’s too heavy, and the stick comes out of his hands. She loses her balance then and topples over, her ass hitting the ground a second before her back, her head hitting a second later, and as he stands there staring at her, he realizes what she said is true—Sandra is dead.

Your name is Jerry Grey,
Henry tells him, and he’d forgotten all about Henry, camping out in the back of his brain, there to offer commentary along the way.
You’re a crime writer who doesn’t live here anymore, your Alzheimer’s tips the world upside down and shakes the hell out of it. The police are coming for you, they’re coming for you. Oh, also, you shot Sandra.

But it’s Hans that is coming for him, not the police, Hans coming around the side of the house, Hans coming to a stop where Mrs. Smith is making friends with the lawn. She isn’t moving.

“What the hell, Jerry?”

“It . . . it was an accident.”

“Is she . . . ?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Hans leans down and checks for a pulse. He has to move his fingers around for a few seconds and tuck them into a wrinkle that makes his fingers disappear to the first knuckle, but then he nods and he looks relieved. “She’s still alive. Help me get her up onto the deck.”

They get her upright, each holding one of her arms over their shoulders as they lift her onto the deck. The sun loungers there haven’t been cleaned after the winter, they’re covered in dead leaves and cobwebs and bird crap, but between them they get her laid down on one. “We can’t just leave her like this,” Jerry says. “It’s too cold.”