Trust No One (20 page)

“Can I—” the man says, but that’s all he says, because then he stops and stares at Jerry. “You’re Henry Cutter,” he says, and gives a huge smile before thrusting his hand out so fast Jerry almost jumps back. His nose sounds blocked. “Oh my god, Henry Cutter! Or I suppose I should call you Jerry Grey, right?”

“Right,” Jerry tells him.

“I’m a huge fan,” the man says, pumping Jerry’s hand up and down. His grip is sweaty. At the same time a cat appears in the doorway, a longhair tortoiseshell that pushes itself against Jerry’s legs before doing the same to Nurse Hamilton. “Your biggest fan even,” the man says, before turning away and sneezing into a handkerchief. “Sorry, hay fever,” he says. “Name’s Terrance Banks, but people call me Terry,” Terrance says, talking quickly to get through his sentence before sneezing again. When he’s done, he carries on. “I bought this place because it was yours and I thought it might help inspire me. Oh geez, I’m already blabbering! Jerry Grey—on my doorstep!”

“You’re a writer?” Jerry asks, wanting the common ground, knowing it will help with why they’re here.

“Trying to—” he says, then starts sneezing again, his body hunching over with the first, the second, the third sneeze. “Trying to be. I’ve got a room full of rejection slips, which I figure puts me halfway there, right? Next step is a room full of books.” He laughs then, a self-depreciating laugh that makes Jerry like him. “I guess it must seem kind of weird, right, me buying the place because it was yours, but it was also a great investment, you know? Property normally is.”

Jerry figures it is, easy to see the connection between murder, devaluation, time for people to move on, and profit.

“I’m Carol Hamilton,” Nurse Hamilton says, and reaches forward to shake Terrance’s hand, and Jerry wonders if it’s the first time he’s heard her first name. “We’re hoping you wouldn’t mind if Jerry took a look around the place.”

“Mind? No, no, of course not! Please, please, come in!”

They head inside and the cat follows. Terrance closes the door and sneezes a couple of more times. “Sorry,” he says. “Coffee? Tea?”

“We can’t stay long,” Nurse Hamilton says. “I’m sure you’re aware of Jerry’s circumstances?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. It’s awful, really awful,” he says, leading them deeper into the house. “It was just so horrible.” He shakes his head, looking distressed at the direction of the conversation. “You were right in the prime of your career. Such a voice, such a talent, just gone like that. If there’s anything I can do,” he says, and lets the sentence hang there as if there really is something he can do.

By now they’ve stopped walking, Jerry having pulled up outside what used to be his office. The door is closed.

“Actually there is,” Nurse Hamilton says, and Terrance’s face brightens. “Jerry left something here he was hoping he could have back.”

“You want something back? Sure, sure, happy to help. We sold most of the stuff off, but some we kept. It went with the house pretty good.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jerry says. “You had my stuff?”

“When we bought the house, it came with all the furniture.”

Jerry nods. He is Understanding Jerry. “It’s not furniture I’m after. It’s something hidden in the office.”

“We’re hoping you’ll let Jerry take a look to see if it’s still there,” Nurse Hamilton says.

“Of course! Of course,” Terrance says. “I hope it’s no bother, but . . . but since you’re here, would it be okay if you signed my books? It would be an honor, it really would be.”

“I’m not so sure we have that much time,” Nurse Hamilton says, reminding Jerry that the police have been called. Would there be any urgency? After all, what could Mrs. Smith have said other than he was sitting in a car parked on the street? It seems unlikely the Armed Offenders Squad will be showing up, but it does seem likely he’s breaking some violation by being here—he was committed to a nursing home, he shouldn’t be out and about. Best to get out of here as soon as they can, but one thing he’s never done is say
no
to a fan wanting their books signed, and he’s not going to start saying no now.

“I’m sure we can take the extra couple of minutes for Gary,” he says.

“It’s Terry,” Terrance says.

“Terry. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it.”

Terrance opens the office door. “This is where the magic happened. I’m hoping some of that will rub off on me,” he says, then laughs again in the same self-deprecating way from earlier before the laugh abruptly ends and becomes a sneeze.

Jerry steps into his office, and that’s what it is—his office. It’s his desk, and his couch, and his framed prints on the wall. It’s his office chair, his bookcase, his potted plant on the table, his stereo, his phone, his lamp. The house came with more than just pieces of furniture. The only thing that isn’t his is the computer. It feels like he’s stepped back in time. That he’s home. That Sandra will be somewhere in the house, or at work, or maybe out shopping.

“It’s almost just how you left it,” Terrance says.

“It’s my office,” Jerry says, somewhat disturbed Terry would have kept it the same way. Like a shrine. “This is my office.”

“Just like you left it,” Terrance says.

“My home,” Jerry says.

Nurse Hamilton puts a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t your home anymore,” she says, and she sounds unhappy with the development. “This isn’t your office. I think it might have been a mistake bringing you here. If I had known it still looked like this,” she says, but doesn’t finish the thought.

Jerry walks over to the bookshelf. All the books he owned, at least they’re gone, replaced by books that Terry has bought, including a whole shelf of Henry Cutter bestsellers, some titles he recognizes, some he doesn’t. Also on the shelves are trinkets from his life. When he used to travel, he always collected something from every country. There’s a miniature Eiffel Tower next to a bracelet he picked up in Turkey next to a small bobblehead Mozart he picked up in Austria.

“My wife thinks it’s stupid keeping the office this way,” Terrance says, as Jerry picks up a small, plushy King Kong he bought from the Empire State Building. He can remember standing in the queue, and the cold frigid wind eighty-six stories up, his shoulders hunched as he looked over the city with Sandra, a city more alive than any other he’s seen. He can remember that, but not what happened to her.

“But I’m such a big fan of the books,” Terrance adds, carrying on, “and you must have had so many good ideas in here and . . . and hey, I know it’s stupid, and maybe weird, but sometimes stupid works out, right?”

Jerry puts down the toy. He walks over to his desk and runs his fingers along the edge of it. The desk is backing onto the window so the view outside wouldn’t distract him. He looks at the couch.

“You once said in an interview the couch was the best thing you ever put into your office and also the worst,” Terrance says. “Some of the best ideas came to you on that couch, but you also lost a lot of hours on that thing.”

Jerry nods. He feels nostalgic. He feels like lying on the couch and soaking in the memories of this room. On the wall is the line from
Fahrenheit 451.
He walks over and touches the frame holding it. “It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I came along in two minutes and boom! It’s all over.”

“Is that what you wanted?” Terrance asks. “The Ray Bradbury quote?”

Jerry shakes his head. He can remember printing it out and framing it. He can remember the sorrow on Sandra’s face when he explained it to her.

“It’s about reviewers, right?” Terrance asks. “You pour your life and soul into a novel, and somebody can dissect it in all sorts of cruel ways in such a short time.”

“It’s not about reviewers,” Jerry says, and when he doesn’t offer any further explanation, Terrance repeats his offer of getting them a drink.

“We’re fine,” Nurse Hamilton says. “Where is the floorboard, Jerry?”

“There’s a loose floorboard?” Terrance asks.

“It’s here,” Jerry says, and turns and points to the bottom of the desk. “But we need to slide the desk back and we need something to pry it up. I used to use a screwdriver. There should be one in the desk.”

Terrance shakes his head. “The drawers were empty when we moved in, but I have a screwdriver in the kitchen. Wait, wait, is the gun under there?” he asks, pointing at the floor. “Is that what you’re looking for?”

Jerry shakes his head. “There’s a journal,” he says. He didn’t know the gun wasn’t recovered. Maybe it is under there too. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m happy for you to reach under for it,” he says, but then that doesn’t make
him
feel any better. He has the image of this guy finding the gun and holding them hostage while forcing Jerry to write the next book for him, then the gun goes back under the floorboards, hidden there along with Carol Hamilton, Nurse, and Jerry Grey, Crime Writer.

“Sure, sure, of course. How about I grab the screwdriver and you sign some books while I’m gone?” Terrance says, sounding hopeful.

“No problem.”

“And if there’s time, I was wondering, could I bounce some ideas off you? I’m working on—”

“Please, we really are in a hurry,” Nurse Hamilton says.

“Of course, of course,” Terrance says, looking like a ten-year-old boy just told off for talking loudly in class. “Here, the books are just here,” he says, and he strips them away from the top shelf of the bookcase and puts them on the desk, the thirteen of them forming two piles, thirteen plots and thirteen sets of characters Jerry can barely remember, the thirteenth of which he barely wrote. He picks it up. It’s called
Fire Time,
which is a title, Jerry remembers, he didn’t come up with but the ghostwriter. He can’t remember what he wanted to call it. He can remember it was about an arsonist, but has no idea what it’s about now. He hasn’t read it or, if he has, he can’t remember it.

“Just make them out to Terry,” Terry says, bringing Jerry back to the moment. “Just sign whatever you feel like signing.”

Terrance disappears. Jerry picks up a pen and wonders if it was one of his pens too. He sits behind the desk. He puts his hands on it and closes his eyes, hoping when he opens them he’ll be back in time, that coming here has been a doorway into his past not just in memory but in reality. It doesn’t work out that way. They can hear Terrance sneezing from the other end of the house. Jerry starts signing the books. Book signings are easy when you’re signing just one book per person, he thinks, but complicated when that one person owns many of the novels. He’s always felt like he needed to sign a different message in every book. He signs
To Gary, thanks for being a good sport
in the first one.
To Gary, thanks for being a fan. To Gary, I like what you’ve done with the place.

He’s up to the sixth book and struggling for more ideas when his biggest fan returns. He comes over and looks at the one Jerry’s signing and his smile disappears a little.

“What is it?” Jerry asks.

“It’s . . . umm . . . nothing, nothing at all. Thanks for signing these. Now let’s find that hiding space.”

They push the desk aside. Jerry crouches down and works at the floorboard with the screwdriver, digging it in just enough to lift the board and get his fingers under it. A cool draft comes out from under the house that sends Terrance into another sneezing fit.

“Just like in one of your books,” Terrance says, getting himself under control.

“Really?”

“
The Stranger Below.
”

“I don’t remember it,” Jerry tells him.

“Was one of your best, Jerry—but they’re all your best. You want me to take a feel around?”

“If you could.”

Terrance leans down and gets his arm all the way into the hole, but when he pulls it back out, it isn’t the journal he’s holding. Or the gun. It’s a light blue shirt. He looks at Jerry, then at Nurse Hamilton. The shirt is balled up, but Jerry can see a collar and a cuff and what looks like rust. Terrance hands it to Nurse Hamilton, who shakes it out. It’s a long-sleeved shirt, formal looking, except for the rust that isn’t rust but blood, of which there isn’t a lot, but a significant amount.

Nobody says anything. Jerry keeps staring at the shirt, trying to place it. Terrance looks nervous. He glances at the screwdriver in Jerry’s hand. He’s just met his idol and his idol is a psychopath who’s now armed. Jerry puts it down. Terrance reaches back under the floor. He rotates his body a little as he reaches in every direction, patting the ground first, then patting the underside of the floorboards in case the journal is taped to the back of them. He keeps his head twisted so he can keep his eye on Jerry the whole time.

“Nothing else,” he says. “Are you sure it’s here?”

“It has to be,” Jerry tells him.

“Let me get a flashlight.”

He disappears. Jerry picks up the pen. He carries on signing the books.

“Jerry,” Nurse Hamilton says. “This is your shirt.”

“We don’t know that,” he says, not wanting to look at her. “I’m a shorts and a T-shirt guy. I only wear them on formal occasions.”

“Like Eva’s wedding?”

He doesn’t answer. He signs
To Gary, best wishes
in the rest of the books simply because he’s run out of other things to say. Terrance comes back and uses the flashlight and a combination of angles to see what they can see beneath the house, which turns out to be nothing except dirt and dust and plenty of cobwebs.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Jerry asks.

“Jerry, we really must be going,” Nurse Hamilton says.

“Just a minute, that’s all.”

The front doorbell rings, both from the hallway and from the receiver in one of the desk drawers. Terrance disappears and Jerry reaches under the floor in all the same directions Terrance reached, and gets all the same results. “It’s not here,” he says, and he can hear the frustration in his voice. “It should be here, but it’s not. It doesn’t make sense! It should be here, but it’s not!”

“It’s okay,” Nurse Hamilton says, looking concerned. “It just means you’ve hidden it somewhere else.”