Trust No One (18 page)

There’s a park three blocks from here, which you thought was far enough away to dump the spray can because the police, after all, weren’t looking for a murder weapon, and any radius they searched would probably be within twenty feet of the house. Now, looking back, the whole thing seems silly and there never was any real need to dump the can in the first place. The police were never going to get a search warrant—the crime hadn’t made the news and nobody had been hurt. It was, for all intents and purposes, not a big deal.

You left the house with your small gym bag that holds a towel and a water bottle and nothing else, but on that day (that day is still
this
day) it held nothing but the facts, ma’am, and they were facts you needed to dispose of. Across the road you could see Mrs. Smith’s house baking in the sun, the letters being burned deeper into the wood, the temporary undercoat to mask the letters thin enough for them to already be bleeding back through.

You reached the park. Often there’d be kids playing there, but not then because it was school hours. You sat on a bench (and do you remember that time you were meeting Sandra and Eva here years ago? It was ninety-something degrees and sweat was pouring off you, you had big sweat rings on your shirt and your forehead was gleaming, and you got here first and while you waited one of the mothers came up to you and asked you to leave, that your type could all rot in hell—and then you said,
What, struggling authors?
She said
No, kiddie fiddlers,
and before you could answer, Sandra showed up). You were feeling exhausted. You’d been awake most of the night, your mind racing with what you may or may not have done. There was a trash bin a few feet away, and you had come here thinking it was a good place to dump the spray can, you were a little sleepy, then you were thinking what if somebody found it, and then . . .

Then you weren’t thinking anything. At least not the Jerry Grey you me us we used to be. There had to have been some awareness, though, because you weren’t hit by any busses, you didn’t take all your clothes off, you still had your wallet and hadn’t tried to shoplift bags and bags of cat food, so you were still functioning, just at a different level, at a
Jerry isn
’t home at the moment so please leave a message
level. A sleepwalking level. Captain A steered you to your parents’ old house. You even went as far as trying to open the door before knocking on it. That’s what you were told by the woman who now lives there—a woman who wasn’t your mother.

You can’t remember the conversation, but Henry, the man whose name doesn’t appear on the phone bill but does on all the books, can take a pretty good stab at it. Henry?

Jerry was confused. Jerry fucked up. Jerry is as mad as a hatter.

Thanks, Henry.

So there you have it. Thankfully (and ain’t that going to be a word we’re going to look out for in the future?
Thankfully
it all worked out okay,
thankfully
you didn’t really have dementia) the woman who now rents that house you showed up at was a nurse at the Christchurch hospital, and she recognized that you were confused, you were scared, she could see who was really driving, and she took you inside and told you everything was going to be okay, she sat you down and made you a cup of tea. You asked why she was living in your house. She asked who you were, and you were . . . a little unsure, but you had your wallet, it had your driver’s license (Sandra in all her
Let’s control Jerry
wisdom at least didn’t take
that
off you), and once your name was out in the open you became Functioning Jerry, at least a little, and you told her where you lived. She asked if you had your cell phone, and it turned out you did. She called Sandra at work. Sandra said she was on her way. In that time you were plied with biscuits to go along with the tea and a story of the neighborhood, including a murder that happened there a long time ago. Did you remember that? No, what murder? It had happened twenty years ago, maybe even thirty, well before Mae (that was the nurse’s name—Nurse Mae) had moved onto the street. In fact Mae had only been living in that house for six months. She was around your age, and you envied how sharp she was.

It’s strange that’s the house you went to. It’s not where you grew up. You lived a few miles away in a similar looking house on a similar street, a different neighborhood, even a different school district. You lived there from the age of three (which you can’t remember) to the age of twenty-one (which you can remember), and your parents both lived out their lives in that house. But when you were nineteen a young permit driver was showing off his fast new car to his fast new-car buddy, lost control, and drove that thing through your front yard and into the side of your house. The guy driving the car broke his back, and his friend was on life support for a week before they turned off the machine. Your family was unharmed, but did have to find somewhere else to live while the insurance company searched for a loophole (the house wasn’t covered for automobile accidents) before admitting they had to pay, and then the builders . . . well, you know what builders are like. So your family rented this other house for three months that turned into six while the family house was rebuilt, and why you returned to that particular house and not where you grew up is a mystery, but Captain A deals in mysteries, doesn’t he?

When Sandra showed up, she thanked Nurse Mae for her time, including a hug, and for a moment you thought Sandra was going to clutch herself to Mae and tell her all that was wrong. Then she thanked God you had wandered into the house of a nurse and not some gang member tweaked on meth.

An hour later you were in your office using work emails to distract you from the fact you’d completely lost time when Sandra came in. She was holding your bag in one hand, which you had left in the car. In the other hand she was holding the can of spray-paint, which you had left in the bag.

You argued about it. Of course you did. You told her the truth, and the truth is you were throwing it out because you knew how it would look if you got found with it, even though it wasn’t the
actual
can used. She said you were throwing it out because you had done what Mrs. Smith had accused you of.

I knew it was you,
she said, and she walked over to you, crouched in front of you so she could look you in the eyes, and put her hands on your knees.
I didn’t want to believe it, and I tried not to believe it, but I knew it. Oh, Jerry, what are we going to do? Things are steadily progressing now.

I didn’t do it,
you said, concerned at her use of
steadily progressing.
Are you going to tell the police?

She shook her head.
Of course not. But we have to do something. We can’t let Mrs. Smith pay for all that damage when we know you did it.

I didn’t do it.

And we need to look at other options to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Like what?

She gave you a sad smile that told you there’s a lot of heartache and heartbreak on the way.
Let’s discuss it in the morning,
she said.

So there you go. Tomorrow you’ll get to hear what those options are.

Good news? There isn’t really any good news today.

Bad news? Your parents are dead. You’ve known this for a while, since they died, actually, but it’s probably a good thing for you to know. Dad drowned in the pool, and Mum got the Big C a few years later. That saying how you can never really go back home? It’s true, partner. Especially in your case.

They take a fresh sample of his DNA, as if the previous sample could have been corrupted, even though Jerry knows the chances of that are even slimmer than him getting his old life back. They wipe a cotton swab on the inside of his cheek and he feels like a character in one of his novels, the one where the innocent man is accused of murder and his protests just make him look guiltier. He’s not asked any more questions because his answers can’t be considered relevant. Nothing he says, according to his lawyer, is relevant. This is who he is now, he thinks. Irrelevant Jerry. Nurse Hamilton comes close to having to be restrained when she sees the mark on his face. The detective whose fingers he broke is nowhere to be seen.

Nurse Hamilton sits in the interrogation room with Jerry, the two of them alone while others outside discuss his future.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says, and she squeezes his hand and they stay that way, waiting to see what happens next.

What happens next is Jerry’s lawyer enters the room and tells them they’re free to go, and that tomorrow, under his supervision, Jerry will be interviewed by a specialist. The detective whose fingers he didn’t break escorts them downstairs without a word. Nurse Hamilton is parked a block away, and the detective walks with them to the car. Jerry climbs in and the detective and Nurse Hamilton chat for a few seconds and he wonders what they’re saying and figures it can’t be anything positive. At least the drive back will be nicer than the ride here.

When Nurse Hamilton gets into the car she tells Jerry once again that everything is going to be okay, then they’re on the road.

“Do you really think I hurt that woman?” he asks her a minute later. They’re at a set of lights that are green, but traffic is at a standstill thanks to a family of ducks up ahead crossing the road. Eva used to love seeing sights like that when she was a kid. She’d pin her face and hands to the window and talk to them as they wandered past.

“Honestly, Jerry? I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Then why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“Look at me, Jerry. Do I look like I’ve ever been afraid of anyone?”

The ducks clear the road, heading away from the direction of a park and towards a fish-and-chip shop, making Jerry picture a scenario where the ducks are ordering dinner, and a different scenario where they’re becoming dinner.

“I wish I could remember back then,” he says. “I used to keep a journal. Where is it?”

“Nobody knows what happened to it.”

“You mean it’s not at the home?”

“Nobody found it. Not even the police. You must have hidden it somewhere.”

“Maybe,” he says. The movement of the car, the day’s events, the silt is still clearing. Something is coming to him. “What happened to my house?”

“It was sold.”

“There are people living in there now?”

“I assume so. Why?”

“Because there was a place in my office where I used to hide things,” he says, nodding now, the image clear. “Maybe we can go there and look? The journal must be there.”

“I’m sure the hiding place was found by the new owners,” she says.

He shakes his head. “If the police couldn’t find it, the new owners wouldn’t have either.”

“The police probably didn’t know they were looking for it,” she says. “But you haven’t mentioned this before.”

He wonders why that could be. Perhaps he didn’t mention it before because he didn’t want to know. Perhaps enough of him remembered that it was best he forget. Only now he needs to know. “It was under the floor. If we find it, it might tell us what happened.”

“I don’t know, Jerry.”

“Please?”

“Even if it is there you might not like what you find. I don’t want this to sound mean, but perhaps it’s best you leave it alone. We should just call the police and let them handle it.”

“What if I didn’t shoot her?”

“Is that what you think?”

He throws his hands up. “There’s one big plot hole in all of this,” he says. “If I’m going to start confessing to crimes, why the fictional ones? Why not the real ones? I think it’d be the other way around.”

She doesn’t have an answer for that.

“What if the journal clears me? Please, when was the last time I was like this?”

“Like what?”

“So aware. So me. This Jerry right now, he wants to know what happened. He’s hopeful he’s not the monster you all think he is.”

“I don’t think you’re a monster,” she says. “And to answer your question, it’s been a while since you were this clearheaded. A few months at least.”

“My daughter thinks I’m a monster,” he says, and it’s all making sense now. The distance between them. “That’s why she never comes to visit. She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Nurse Hamilton says.

“She doesn’t even call me
Dad
anymore.”

“It’s hard for her.”

“I need the journal. I deserve those answers,” he says, and if he has remembered on previous good days not to mention the journal because it’s as bad as what everybody suspects, and can’t remember that now, then so be it. “If I can find it, I can apologize for it. It won’t mean much to anybody, but I have to start somewhere,” he says, and if he can apologize, if he can start down the road of being forgiven and being honest, then maybe the Universe will go about cutting him some slack.

She thinks about it quietly. He can see her going through the options. He wants to add more, but he’s frightened anything else may push her back from the decision he needs her to make.