Trust No One (46 page)

“What does it matter?” Hans asks.

“You’re insane.”

Hans shrugs. “Really? All those things you write about, and now with the Alzheimer’s messing with you, you’re calling me the insane one?”

“You’re not going to get away with this.”

Hans laughs. “Jesus, you really know how to pull out the clichés, even in the end.”

“I don’t understand,” Jerry says. “Why were you even helping me today?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Hans says. “I wanted to take you to the police.”

“But you changed your mind.”

“I had to, once you’d mentioned the journal. I couldn’t take the risk you’d written something in there that would come to bite me in the ass if it was ever found. And good thing too, because you had.”

Jerry thinks back to earlier this afternoon. They were only a few blocks from the police station when everything changed. That must have been when he told Hans about the journal. Everything since then has been in the pursuit of Jerry remembering where he’d hidden it.

“What about Eric? What was all that about? Did he really do those things?”

“Eric? Of course he did. He was one of your bad guys in the flesh, Jerry. A real whack job.”

Jerry looks at the gun. Then he thinks about the knife on the desk and has to make a conscious effort not to look in its direction. If he can just get to it . . .

And what? Outrun a bullet?

“So now what? You’re framing me for the bad things you’ve done too? Just like he did?”

“Hey, it was a good plan,” Hans says. “Seems a shame to waste it just because it didn’t work for him.”

“You shot Sandra.”

“I did.”

“Why can’t I remember that?”

“I drugged you,” he says. “I came over that day after you called me, and injected you when we were in the office. I had to. I knew eventually you’d figure it out. Hell, I should have known the blood on the shirt was a mistake. That’s where I messed up.”

Jerry tries to picture the moment, but there’s nothing. This man who was supposed to look out for him betrayed him. Just like Eric. “There’s no way you can get away with this,” Jerry says.

I think he’s doing just that
.

Why couldn’t Henry have warned him? Doesn’t he always connect the dots?

You’re not the only one the Alzheimer’s is affecting, buddy.
And I did try to warn you.

He did. But it was a little late.

“What are you going to do? Shoot me in here? Then what? The police are going to come here and they’ll figure it out.”

Hans smiles again. “All these years you kept coming to me for advice. You kept wanting to know how things work. You made shitloads of money off the help I gave you, and what did I get in return? Huh? A mention in the acknowledgments. But how about a fucking royalty check, huh? You owe me, Jerry. Think of this as me collecting, and think of this as you getting to live one of the scenarios you often gave your characters.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your characters. You’ve put them through hell. Absolute hell. Some of the decisions they’ve had to make . . . they’re impossible . . . even for me. And now you’re going to get a taste of that. You know what your problem is, buddy? You think about yourself too much. You must think the whole universe centers on you, that you pull all the strings. But you don’t seem to pay any mind to how your actions affect anyone. Your amazing wife, your talented and beautiful daughter, your loyal friend, always at your disposal. You’d think we were all created by you. That we only exist when you’re in the room.”

Jerry thinks for second, wonders if these words could possibly be true.

“What the hell does that even mean?”

“It means your life has been over since the diagnosis, Jerry, but I’ve still got a lot of living left to do. Good living. Let’s wrap things up on good terms, huh? Good terms is a win-win for us. I get to carry on with my life, and this shitty existence of yours gets to come to an end. We end things on good terms and I don’t have to hurt Eva. Or I shoot you right now and drive to her house.”

“You son of—”

“Don’t,” Hans says, when Jerry starts to get out of the chair. “Just don’t. Not until you’ve heard me out.”

Jerry stops moving. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Then don’t make me. You write a confession, you take the easy way out, and I don’t go and—”

“Don’t say it,” Jerry says, and the images are already there, Eva crying, Eva bleeding, Eva naked and begging for her life.

“I’ll make sure she knows you’re the reason I have to hurt her. But you can save her, Jerry. Right here, right now.”

“You won’t get away with it. The police will know you did it.”

“Maybe they’ll figure it out, maybe they won’t. What is certain is Eva will be dead. You have nothing left, Jerry. But you can do this for her. You can save her.”

Jerry begins to say something then realizes he doesn’t know what. His mouth is dry. His heart is hammering again, and soon it won’t be able to hammer anymore. “You want me to shoot myself,” he says.

“It’s as simple as it sounds,” Hans says.

“I—”

“You confess to a few things on my behalf,” Hans says, “and I promise I’ll never see Eva again. You have my word. You don’t do this, and I’m going to kill her, and I’m going to have myself some fun while doing it, just like I did with the florist.”

“Have I ever killed anybody?”

“You really are a chump, Jerry. No, you haven’t, but you will be killing Eva if you don’t do what I ask.”

It doesn’t require any thought. In fact, from the moment Hans mentioned Eva’s name he knew where this was going. There is no choice. It’s what any parent would do. Die to protect their child. It comes with the territory. “What do you want me to say?”

“You’re the writer, I’m sure you can come up with something. Think of it as your greatest work of fiction.”

Jerry starts to nod. “Okay,” he says. “First I need to know what happened. That day with Sandra. I need you to tell me.”

“Why? It won’t do you any good to hear it.”

“Please. I have to know.”

Hans shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “She figured it out,” he says, “and looking through those final few pages, you almost figured it out too. In fact I think you did. That’s what’s in those loose pages, isn’t it? They’re from the diary, aren’t they?”

“It’s a journal,” Jerry says, “and yes.”

“Why did you rip them out?” When Jerry doesn’t answer, Hans starts to smile. He carries on. “You don’t remember ripping them out, do you?”

“I think Henry tore them out.”

“What?”

Jerry doesn’t feel like explaining it. But he thinks Henry was tearing them out because Henry was just as crazy as Jerry, and when you’re the king of Mount Crazy, you do things that don’t make sense. Maybe Henry was trying to protect him somehow. Maybe Henry tore them out because he knew the journal would end up in the wrong hands. He had to save what he thought was important. Whatever the reason, Jerry thinks it doesn’t really matter. Not now. Not when there’s a loaded gun pointing at him.

Instead of answering Hans, he asks again what happened with Sandra.

“We were in your office,” Hans says. “The gun was still on your desk. You asked me again about the blood on the shirt. You told me Sandra had spoken to the nurse. You and Sandra were confused because the events didn’t line up. The nurse hadn’t seen blood on your shirt, and the time of death for the florist suggested you were innocent. You went to the office door to call to Sandra, and as soon as your back was to me I injected you in the neck. A few seconds later you were out cold. I laid you on the couch, then just waited until Sandra came in. She rushed over to you and I closed the door behind her. She looked up at me and I could tell she had figured it out. She had that same look on her face you had a few minutes ago.”

“You asked her what she knew?”

“There was no point. I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew that she knew. One shot to the chest, that’s all it took. Soundproofing really is a wonderful thing, Jerry.”

Jerry can feel himself coming apart at the seams. All of this started that night at the party when he said
this is my wife . . .
and couldn’t remember Sandra’s name. That image is as clear as it was the day it happened. It means that right now he’s having the worst good day he’s had since being diagnosed. The disease allowed him to forget Sandra’s name, it allowed Hans and Eric to take advantage of him. Sandra, dead because of an illness for which there is no cure. All of this because the Universe is punishing him. But what for? If not for killing, then for what? The answer comes to him quickly. It’s because he did the one thing he swore he would never do—he based a character on a real person. Suzan with a
z.
She was a real person with a real family and real feelings, and he betrayed that. He turned what happened to her into a story. He wrote about it for entertainment.

“You’re a monster,” Jerry says.

The knife. Go for the knife.

But if he goes for it, and fails, then Eva is the one who pays.

“Maybe,” Hans says. “But hey, we did have a good time today, right? We did get a killer off the street.”

“Is that why we hung him out the window? Because you wanted to kill him?”

“We had to, buddy. He’d seen my face. Despite everything, Jerry, I really was trying to help you there.”

“Why? Because you didn’t want somebody else framing me for their crimes? Was this some sort of twisted contest?”

“Partly,” he says. “Well, mostly. And before you ask about his wife, she’s not going to remember anything, clearly. But Nurse Mae, well, that’s one loose end I’m going to have to tie up.”

“You don’t have to hurt her.”

“We’ll see.”

“All that stuff about the police going easy on us, that was bullshit,” Jerry says.

“Just write the note, Jerry. And don’t mention Suzan. We don’t want to complicate the issue. Now hurry up before I change my mind and decide to go and pay Eva a visit. And make sure you sell it. You’re not writing to save your own life, you’re writing to save your daughter’s.”

My name is Jerry Grey. I’m a crime writer, I’m a killer, I’m a deeply flawed individual. This is my confession.

There are so many things I want to say. First and foremost, I want to apologize to my family. I wish I could tell Sandra how sorry I am, but what’s done is done, it was done by me, and there’s no going back. I shot you, Sandra, because you found out what kind of man I really am. If you’re somewhere now in the afterlife, I imagine I will be in a much different version.

The truth is, my entire life I have had needs I’ve been able to keep in check, only occasionally letting my true self out to play, hurting women on those occasions. But when the Alzheimer’s came along, it wiped my impulse control. Those women over the last few weeks, they didn’t die at my hands. Eric murdered them and there is enough evidence at his house to prove that. I killed him, and in a way I hope it helps balance the scales for the others.

Last year, on the night of Eva’s wedding, I snuck out of my house and I walked to Belinda Murray’s house. From the moment I first saw her I became infatuated. There was something about her. Something that made me feel alive. I walked to her house, and I picked the lock on her back door. Picking locks and covering up crime scenes, these are things I’ve learned from reading and research and writing. But I don’t want to cover up crime scenes anymore. I just want the world to know what happened because I’m tired of lying, and soon I won’t be able to lie anyway. I killed Belinda Murray because I wanted to, because I knew it would feel good, and it did.

I’ve come back to the place where it all started. I guess it’s here where Passenger A first climbed on board, just catching a lift until finally being promoted to captain. It’s here where I raised Eva, had a life with Sandra, it’s here where the books were written, where Sandra died, and where I will die. I’ve come back to look for my Madness Journal, but it isn’t here, and I remember now, I remember destroying it after I killed Sandra. I had confessed in there what I had done, so I tore out the pages and I tore them into shreds and I flushed them away. Back then I was confused.

Now I’m more clearheaded than I’ve been in a long time.

This isn’t just a confession. This is also my suicide note.

I’m not killing myself because I’m a bad man. I’m not killing myself because I’m a monster. I’m killing myself because I’m already forgetting the people I’ve hurt. The fantasy, thinking about Belinda, about shooting Sandra, that’s what gets me through the days. Without those thoughts, I have nothing. I would rather die than forget how it feels to kill.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

Jerry slides the pages across the desk. Hans grabs them and sits back on the couch. He reads through it, glancing up every few seconds to make sure Jerry isn’t making a break for it. When he’s done he moves back to the desk and hands the pages back.

“You can do better,” Hans says.

“It’s good enough,” Jerry says.

“You don’t even apologize to your family. You don’t tell them that you love them. Add that and sign it and maybe then we’re done.”