Trust No One (26 page)

Jerry turns the air-conditioning off. He suddenly feels cold. “I woke up in a house I’ve never been in before, and there was a woman there.” His words start to speed up. “She was naked and lying on the lounge floor. She’d been stabbed.”

“Oh thank God,” Hans says, and he smiles, and looks genuinely relieved, and that reaction is completely opposite to what Jerry was expecting. Is this all some kind of joke to him? “Trust me, everything is going to be okay.”

“I found her that way, but I didn’t do it. Somebody is trying to set me up, but I don’t know why.”

“Calm down,” Hans says, and he checks his mirror, he indicates, and then he turns the corner and parks on the side of a quieter street in the shade. He takes his seat belt off and twists in his seat so he can face Jerry. “You didn’t kill anybody. You know what you used to do for a living, right?”

“Of course I know, but that isn’t about this.”

“You wrote crime novels,” Hans says.

Jerry is shaking his head. “I know. But like I said, this—”

“Very good ones too,” Hans says, interrupting him. “People were always saying how real they felt. So if they felt real to other people, Jerry, how do you think they felt to you?”

“This isn’t like those other times.”

“You’ve been confessing to crimes that were in your books. These are all—”

“You’re not listening to me,” Jerry says, fighting the frustration.

“I am listening.”

“No you’re not,” he says, and he opens the jacket to reveal his bloody shirt. “I didn’t do it. I was there, but I didn’t do it.”

Hans says nothing. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he stares at the blood, and after a while he stares out the windshield. Jerry lets him think. He can’t remember this morning, but he can remember that Hans likes to really think things through. He takes another mouthful of water then puts the bottle back into the bag. Finally Hans looks at him. “Are you sure about this?”

“Very,” Jerry says. “Somebody is going to find her soon and the police are going to think it was me.”

Hans shakes his head. “Listen to me, trust me, this is all some plot out of one of your—”

Jerry shakes his head. “You’re still not listening. They already think I killed somebody, and I’m not talking about Sandra.”

“You know about Sandra?”

“That she’s dead? Yes. That I killed her? No. It wasn’t me, but that’s not who I’m talking about. Yesterday I had to go to the police station,” Jerry says, and of course he doesn’t really know it was yesterday—maybe it was last week. Or last month. “This other woman the police questioned me about, she was the florist for Eva’s wedding.”

“Oh shit,” Hans says.

“What?”

“They’re asking you about Belinda Murray,” Hans says, and here comes the concern Jerry expected from him two minutes ago.

“You know her? Wait, wait, did I know her?”

Hans doesn’t look just concerned but worried too. He starts drumming his fingers faster. He checks over his shoulder as if looking for somebody watching them. “You took . . . well, you took quite a liking to her. You wandered out of your house once and went to see her at work.”

Jerry shakes his head. “You’re making that up,” he says, trying to figure out a reason why Hans would, and coming to the conclusion he wouldn’t. “Even if you’re not, visiting her at work isn’t the same as killing her.”

“You’re right, it’s not the same,” Hans says, and he looks away. He stops drumming his fingers.

“What?” Jerry asks.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, there’s clearly something you’re not telling me.”

Hans turns back towards him. “It’s like you said, Jerry, it’s not the same.”

Jerry shakes his head. “Just tell me.”

Hans shrugs, then sighs, then runs his hand over his smooth head. “Well, the thing is, Jerry, you also visited her at home.”

“What do you mean I visited her at home?”

“I mean exactly how that sounds. It was when you went to see her at work. She gave you a lift back to your house, but she swung by her house too. So you knew where she lived.”

Jerry keeps shaking his head. It can’t be true. However, there are so many things happening that seem impossible, yet he knows they aren’t. Things like waking up this morning in the home of a dead woman, to finding a bloody shirt under the floorboards of his house.

“They never found her killer,” Hans says.

“You think I did it?”

“I’m not saying that,” Hans says.

“What are you saying?”

Hans looks out the windshield a moment. He does that Hans thing that Jerry has seen so many times before; he can almost see the gears turning inside his head. Finally his friend looks back at him.

“The night she was killed you rang me. You were lost and confused, and I picked you up on the street and you had blood all over your shirt. Just like now. I asked what had happened, and you said you didn’t know. I drove you home. I helped you back through your window. I sat with you on the couch and you remained quiet for some time, then you begged me not to call the police, and when I asked you what you had done that required the police to be called, you refused to answer. I . . . for some reason, for some stupid reason, I didn’t call them. Because you were my friend, and what was done was done, and I didn’t call them when I should have.”

For a few moments Jerry’s mind is blank. Absolutely blank. It’s sensory overload. Too much information all in one hit, and he and Henry and even Captain A are all switched off into darkness, but then one simple piece of information sneaks in and reboots his system: he is Jerry Grey and he is a monster.

“Jerry?”

“It’s Henry’s fault,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“Henry wrote those books and it made me crazy. I became one of the monsters he kept writing about. I really did it? I really hurt these people?”

“I can’t make the same mistake again, Jerry. I’m sorry, but I have to take you to the police. We have to let them figure out what’s going on, and most of all we have to make sure you can never hurt anybody else again.”

The rehearsal last night went well. You may be a sandwich short of a picnic in the upstairs department, as your grandfather was always keen to say (before it became
a picnic short of a barbecue,
then
a picnic short of the Pope shitting in the woods
—that was a red flag there), but everything went off without a hitch.

The church—boy, you’ve been there so many times this week you might need to start paying rent. Father Jacob is a priest hovering somewhere between sixty and old age, a down-to-earth guy who seems to have never laughed at anything in his life. He’s pretty okay for a priest, but you’ve never really been a priest guy. Add that to your list. You’re not a car guy, a priest guy, a jeans guy, or a religion guy. You’re a dessert guy. You’re a running-out-of-sandwiches guy. Every time you step into that church here comes Henry Cutter, the failed horror writer to darken your mood by playing the
Something bad is right around the corner
game, probably because right around the corner is the graveyard. Horror Hack Henry, would you like to take over?

“I do,” Eva said, and the crowd was smiling and some, like Eva’s mother, were weeping. Weddings had always made her weep.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Father Jacob said, then smiled and looked at Rick. “You may now kiss the bride.”

Rick kissed his bride and the crowd started to clap. Everything had gone off without a hitch—even Jerry had walked his daughter down the aisle perfectly, the right pacing, the right smile, the right amount of pressure on her arm as hers interlocked his. It was a long kiss between the new husband and bride, and people started to laugh, and then the happy couple turned towards the crowd and they smiled.

Soon the wedding party was moving down the aisle, people throwing confetti into the air, an usher waiting at the door, and that’s when it happened, the front doors busting open as the zombies piled in, the doors hitting the walls so hard that wood splintered everywhere. Dozens of zombies who had just clawed their way out from the graveyard behind were coming into the church.

“I do love a good wedding,” the first zombie said.

“Brains,” said the second one.

“Good point,” replied the first one. “Brains.” Then another said it too, and another, and the word was catching, because soon it was on the lips of all the dead people. The other things on their lips were the living as the zombies tore into them, and within seconds Eva and Rick were running for their lives. . . .

Thanks, Henry, that’s enough. Don’t give up your day job!

You don’t really think that’s what is waiting for everybody on Saturday, but you can’t shake the feeling
something bad
is going to happen because it’s been a year of bad feelings, hasn’t it? Both Sandra and Eva are being extremely encouraging, and seem to have a lot more confidence in you than you have. In the church Sandra keeps squeezing your hand and telling you everything is going to go great, and she seems so happy, which makes you happy. Being in the church with your hand in Sandra’s, and your arm around Eva, watching them smile, watching them laugh, it gives you a sense of completion. This is the way life is meant to be. Yes, things are going to change, but right now, right in this moment, your family is happy and that’s all that matters. In fact, this week’s episode of you sneaking out and getting confused is a good thing. If you think of the Big A as a pressure cooker, then letting out some steam to walk into town means it’s not going to blow anytime soon.

The rehearsal went well. More instructions.
Jer
ry, stand here. Dad, walk there. Jerry, hold Eva like this.
You will do nothing if not follow orders. As for the speech—you don’t get to give one. Of course not, because Pressure Cooker Jerry needs to be contained, and even though that makes you sad, you can understand it. It is, sadly, just the way things are now.

Oh, by the way, speaking of the way things are now, guess what happens on Monday? That’s right, alarms are being put on the windows. It’s official—soon you’re going to be a prisoner in your own home.

Good news—the alarms mean Sandra isn’t planning on putting you into a care facility right away.

Bad news—your world is getting smaller. You don’t really need the alarms now because you don’t even want to go outside. You just want to curl up on the couch and drink. You used to think the difference between being a good author and a great author was . . . ah, hell, you’ve said that already.

They pull out from the side of the road. Jerry plays with the radio until he finds a news channel. Hans makes the next left to take them towards the center of town. Jerry plays with the label on the water bottle. His legs are still jittering.

“It’s tough, you know? Thinking of myself that way,” Jerry says. “Thinking of myself as a killer. It doesn’t feel right. No matter how I try to see it, no matter what angle I come at it from, I can’t get the label to fit.”

“What happens in your books, Jerry, when people are hoping for the best?”

“They get the worst.”

“I’m sorry, buddy, but that’s what this is.”

Jerry nods. His friend couldn’t have summed it up any better. Still . . . “It’s not right. I know what you’re saying makes sense, that there’s a certain kind of logic to it, but it just feels too convenient that I can remember some things but not others. Why can’t I remember any of this morning?”

“The doctors say that you blocked out what happened with Sandra, that it’s too difficult for you to accept. Stands to reason you’d be doing the same thing now.”

“I’m not that guy, Hans. I’ve never been that guy. I shouldn’t have wiped down the knife. If I’d left it alone, then the real killer’s prints would have been found on it.”

“It sounds like you were trying to get away with it,” Hans says.

The words annoy him. “It’s not that. I just knew how things looked. That’s why I took the knife to the mall with me.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t going to dump it there. I just went there to get food and a SIM card. I was going to dump it later.”

“You should have called the police.”

“No,” Jerry says. “I called you because you can help. Because you’ve always been there for me. Because you’re the only person who will believe me. When I came out to meet you I realized I’d left the bag with the knife and towel behind in the bathroom.”

“Jesus, Jerry, are you kidding me? Or just yourself? You called me because you think I can help you get away with murder. Just like you did last time. Only this time I’m not helping you.”

Jerry shakes his head. “That’s not true. Somebody wants me to think I’m the Bag Man.”

“What?”

“The Bag Man. From the books.”

Hans shakes his head. “I know who the Bag Man is, Jerry, and you’re not him.”

“I didn’t say I was. I said somebody wants me to think I am.”

“Was the woman this morning killed the way the Bag Man kills?”

Jerry thinks about the woman on the lounge floor, the bruises and the blood. He thinks about her eyes open and staring at him. He tries to remember the Bag Man. He can’t remember the
who
or the
why,
but he can remember the
how.
The Bag Man stabbed his victims and when they were dead he tied a plastic garbage bag over their head. He was impersonalizing them. “She was stabbed in the chest. I even had a black garbage bag on me.”