Trust No One (38 page)

There is no furniture in the house, nothing to try and avoid, no rug to trip on. They get to the stairs and it’s a tight squeeze and Jerry’s not sure what the difference is going to be upstairs compared to downstairs when it comes to questioning somebody, but there must be something significant to be going through all of this. He thought by now they’d have Eric strapped into a chair with a knife to his throat, but there are no chairs and no knives.

Upstairs smells like cat piss and the air is stale. Every wall he looks at he can imagine two men nailed to it. They dump Eric on the landing because they’re both too exhausted to drag him further. Jerry starts to wonder if this is one of those moments when he’s actually in the
off
position, Functioning Jerry who can’t seem to store any memories, Functioning Henry who is calling the shots.

“You okay, buddy?” Hans asks, puffing a little.

“No,” Jerry says. “None of this is okay. Now what?”

“Now we get him to talk.”

“And just how are we going to mange that?”

“We hang him out the window.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s the easiest way.”

“You’ve done it before?”

“I’ve seen it done,” Hans says.

“In real life?”

“In movies,” Hans says. “It always works.”

“But won’t he just tell us what we want to hear if we do that? It won’t count, right? I’d confess to anything if it’d stop me from getting dropped on my head.”

“Then we make him tell us something only the killer would know.”

“And what if he isn’t the killer? What if I really am?”

“Then if you’re a killer, you shouldn’t be feeling too bad about this, right?”

Jerry hates how that statement makes perfect sense.

“Look at where we are, Jerry. Look at the situation we’re in. You’re lucky the taxi driver earlier didn’t figure out who you were. You’re a wanted man who is running out of time, and if you’re to be believed, an innocent man. If you don’t want to do this, then fine, we take Eric back home and drop you off with the police and you won’t get to look for your journal and you’ll plead guilty and Eva will continue to never want to speak to you, and the police will blame you for every unsolved crime over the last thirty years. Or we trust your gut, and we question him.”

Jerry doesn’t know what to say.

“The clock is ticking,” Hans says. “Are we doing this or not?”

Jerry nods. The decision made.

They drag Eric into the nearest bedroom. Houses always look sad when they’re empty, Jerry thinks, and this house looks so sad he feels like they ought to put it out of its misery by torching it when they leave. There is wallpaper hanging from the walls and large stains in the carpets and funny-shaped circles of mold on the ceiling. He can’t imagine what a real estate agent would say as a selling point—unless they listed it as an
ideal home for the budding pyromaniac.
The bedroom is facing south, over the backyard, where there is very little in the way of light, but just enough to see the backyard has been paved in concrete too. Jerry guesses the previous owner hated gardening. Hans unlocks the window, then has to shoulder it upwards because it’s swollen in the damp air. Eric is still unconscious, and he’s still wearing his orderly clothes from the home. Seeing him here is so out of context but not enough to jar Jerry back into the world of rational thought, because surely he can’t be there now.

“We wake him up, and then we hang him outside,” Hans says, and he takes the tape off Eric’s eyes, but leaves the one over his mouth. “We let him get a good look around, and then we drag him back in. I’ll slap him around a little, and we don’t ask questions, what we do is we give him statements. We don’t say
Did you kill those girls?
What we say is
We know you killed those girls.
Got it?”

“I got it,” Jerry says, his stomach turning at the thought, but not turning as much as Eric’s will be.

“Don’t drop him,” Hans says.

“I won’t.”

“And I want you to keep thinking about where you hid your journal, okay?”

“I’m trying.”

“Then try harder.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Jerry says.

“You ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Hans wraps duct tape around Eric’s ankles, pinning his feet together. Then from his pocket he pulls out a small vial. “Smelling salts,” he says. “Trust me, Jerry, everything is going to be okay,” he says, and he opens the top and waves the vial under Eric’s nose.

You need to start trusting yourself. You are Jerry Grey, you are not a killer. Unless you killed your wife. And the florist. And, now that you think about it, just how did your cat die six years ago?

Today is the WMD plus something, and the day of Sandra’s death plus one. You spent last night not phoning the police. You spent last night sitting on the floor in Sandra’s blood, holding her hand as she got colder and colder. Your clothes soaked up her blood, and you had to shower and change earlier because you couldn’t stand it any longer, and when you came back she was exactly where you had left her. You were hoping—well, it’s obvious what you were hoping for.

Spending all night watching over Sandra, you thought mostly of how your actions had tainted all the good times you’d had. Your amazing life together, the passion with which you loved her. You poisoned all of that by taking away her future. You wondered what the future without her would be. The answer was simple—it would be empty. And Eva? The news will destroy her. Days after tying the knot, she has to go to her own mother’s funeral. She will never talk to you again. You hope her anger towards you doesn’t cloud the way she sees the world, that it doesn’t darken her music.

And of course you wondered about Hans. About Nurse Mae. The discrepancy between what they told Sandra. There are answers you need, but how can you look for them when you don’t even know the right questions?

You need to call the police but not yet. Aside from holding Sandra’s hand, you’ve also been reading the journal. There are things in here you simply can’t remember. Not just things when you were in the
off
position, like showing up at the old house or at the florist’s, but other things too—like forgetting you had lost the gun, forgetting about asking Doctor Goodstory what else we could do.

Before Sandra died, she asked if you had spoken to Hans, and you said no, but you had spoken to him. You’d called him the day after the wedding. He’d said
There’s no point in worrying about something you can’t know about.

Worry if you learn more, but until then, just try to act normal.

You had even forgotten about Counselor Beverly, who spoke to you about the stages of grief.

You haven’t forgotten the wedding speech.

You still have no memory of the night after you snuck out your window, but the things that didn’t make sense a few entries ago still don’t make any sense now.

Where did the knife come from?

Did you have blood on your shirt and Nurse Mae missed it, or was Hans mistaken about that? It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing anybody, let alone Hans, would overlook. Either something happened between you walking out the door of Nurse Mae’s house and climbing into Hans’s car, or . . .

Now there are more questions. Why shoot Sandra? You don’t remember shooting her, is it possible you didn’t? But you don’t remember spray-painting
the
bad word across Mrs. Smith’s house, and you obviously did that, so there’s no denying the fact you do things and then forget. It’s all part of the Alzheimer’s package.

The phone rang before and you let the machine get it. It was Eva.
Hi Mom, hope you’re doing okay, just checking in before we leave for Tahiti tomorrow. We’ll try and head
over in the morning to say bye.

She sounded so happy, like her life was just beginning. She and Rick are going away on their honeymoon tomorrow and you can’t let them know what’s happened. Not yet. Let them enjoy their week.

It means not calling the police.

You can do that. For Eva.

You’ll call her back tonight and say you’re busy tomorrow, that Sandra is taking you to check out a couple of nursing homes, and to make sure they call when they get to where they’re going.

Good news—it’s doubtful there will ever be good news again.

Bad news—Sandra is dead. You can’t fix that in the rewrite.

The smelling salts work. Eric opens his eyes and there’s a muted sound of coughing that can’t quite make it past the duct tape. He looks confused. He squints against the light and twists his head away from the light of the cell phone. He starts to fight the duct tape holding his hands behind his body. He starts squirming on the ground.

Hans punches him in the stomach. Hard. There’s a sharp intake of air through Eric’s nose. Jerry always thought his friend would be capable of something like this, but seeing it happen makes his own stomach clench.

“Calm down,” Hans says, then gives Eric a small slap. “Calm down.”

Eric can’t calm down, but he manages to stop coughing and he manages to stare at his two captors without struggling. He doesn’t manage to hide the fear in his face.

“You know what we want,” Hans says. “First there’s something we ought to show you.”

They get Eric to his feet. The orderly tries to struggle, but the duct tape is keeping the fight to a minimum. They stand him against the window so he can face out, then Jerry realizes Eric probably can’t see much at all. He takes the orderly’s glasses out of his pocket and puts them on Eric’s face.

“You’re obviously a bright guy,” Hans says. “You’ve proven that by getting away with murder. Since you’re bright, you must be able to figure out what’s going to happen if we throw you out the window, which we’re willing to do, unless you tell us about the women. First some facts. We’re two stories high, and if you survive landing on your head from that height you’re going to wish you hadn’t. Second, when we take the tape off your mouth, you’re going to have the urge to scream. I would advise against that. We’re in the kind of neighborhood where people are used to hearing screams. Maybe one of them will call the cops, maybe not. What’s doubtful is somebody rushing over to help you. What’s doubtful are the cops getting here in the time it takes for you to travel from the window to the patio. Do you understand what you’re being told?”

Eric nods. They turn him so his back is to the window. The whole time his eyes are wide,
bugging out of his head
is perhaps how Henry would describe it if Henry was in one of his less original moods, Jerry thinks. Or
as big as saucers
if Henry was being a lazy prick.

“We know you killed the girls,” Hans says, and Eric looks confused, or at least is trying to look confused. Jerry studies his face, his features, looking for recognition and understanding, but all he sees is fear and uncertainty.

“We know you injected my friend here,” Hans says, and flashes the cell phone light in Jerry’s direction for a second. Now Eric looks even more confused. Hans carries on. “We know you snuck him out of the nursing home. Now, I’m going to take the tape off your mouth and you’re going to answer me—if you don’t tell us what we want to know, we’re going to drop you. Okay?”

Eric, who is shaking his head through the last bit of Hans’s speech, now starts nodding. Hans removes the tape, and the moment he does Eric draws in a deep breath and starts to cough. A few seconds later he gets himself under control.

“I don’t,” he says, and then coughs a little bit more. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you sure?” Hans asks.

“I’m positive.”

“I mean are you sure that’s the way you want to play it? We know you set up Jerry here.”

“You injected me,” Jerry says.

“Of course I injected you! You were getting out of control. We had to calm you down!”

“You’ve injected me more than once,” Jerry says.

“We often have to inject you.”

“Then how does he escape if he’s been sedated?” Hans asks.

“I don’t know,” Eric says, his voice breaking a little. “Nobody knows. But the days he escapes he’s not sedated, and last night, well, it must have worn off.”

“You hear that?” Hans asks.

“Hear what?” both Eric and Jerry say at the same time.

“A reason to toss you out the window,” Hans says. He spins Eric around so he’s facing the view outside again.

“But—”

Eric doesn’t get to finish the sentence, because right then Hans punches him in the side of the face, a fast, hard jab that rocks Eric’s head sideways and knocks his glasses off, the hit echoing through the room, bringing an extra layer of reality to a day that has been unbelievable and way too real for Jerry all at the same time. Blood flows from Eric’s nose. Jerry wants to say something, but isn’t sure what. He wants his friend to dial it back, but this is the way things get done. This is how you get the facts from bad people, and those who don’t stay committed only get lies and half-truths. He crouches down and grabs Eric’s glasses and puts them back on for him.

Hans puts the duct tape back over Eric’s mouth then pushes his head through the open window. Eric struggles at first, then relaxes as more of his body is pushed through, a struggle at this point only doing him more harm than good. His face bangs against the building as they lower him, his body dragging over the windowsill, bumping and slowing as different body parts grip against it. Then he’s all the way out, Eric holding one leg, Jerry the other, both of them straining at the effort required.