Trust No One

by Paul Cleave

  “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 Confession

  By Jerry Grey

  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.”

  Jerry picks up the pen. Everybody is a critic, he thinks, but then realizes Hans has a point. He can remember writing similar letters in the past. One to Sandra, one to Eva, letters he wrote from the heart when he thought he was a killer and he thought saying good-bye was doing them a favor. But he can’t capture that mood now. At the bottom he writes

  I wish I could turn back the clock. Despite all my actions, I love my family. I love my wife, I love my daughter, and I would do anything to have them back. Anything. Eva, I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I wish there was some way to ask for your forgiveness.

  He wishes there was something else he could write, some kind of code to let the police know he’s innocent, but there’s nothing. Jerry signs the confession and slides it back across the desk. While making the addition, Hans has set fire to the short story Henry wrote. The ashes are still drifting onto the carpet. Hans picks it up and reads it. Jerry glances at the knife then looks away. Even if he can get to it, a knife against a gun isn’t much of a battle. He now has the ultimate role as a parent, and that’s to protect his daughter.

  “There’s no emotion in here,” Hans says.

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  Hans nods. He puts down the note. “Here’s what I want you to do for me. I want you to focus, really focus on what I’m going to do to Eva if you try anything other than what we’ve spoken about. You understand me?”

  “I understand you.”

  “Put your palms flat on the desk,” Hans says.

  Jerry does as he’s asked. He knows where this is going. He is, after all, the master of connecting the dots. In twenty seconds he’ll be dead. By tomorrow he will be a confessed killer, and Eva will live with that shame, but at least she will get to live. The Alzheimer’s has taken his life, and Sandra’s, and the women that Eric killed, but he won’t let it take Eva’s.

  Hans moves around behind him, coming to a stop behind the chair.

  “Keep your left hand on the desk,” he says, “and bring your right hand up to your head. Pretend your fingers are a gun and you’re going to shoot yourself.”

  Jerry does as he’s asked. He brings his right hand up, turns his fingers into a barrel and points them against his skull. His hands are shaking. He’s thinking he should have gone for the knife. Should have done something. With everything he’s lost, all those times he thought about killing himself, he’s surprised at how afraid he is to die. Perhaps, if the circumstances were different—

  But they’re not different, Henry says.

  And final words of advic
e?

  You’re on your own here, buddy.

  “You try messing with me and this will go very badly for both you and Eva.”

  “I know.”

  Hans puts the gun into Jerry’s hand, and at the same time jams the barrel into the side of Jerry’s head. He has both hands wrapped around Jerry’s hand, forcing him to maintain the aim. He closes his eyes. He can feel his finger being forced into the trigger guard. He’s doing the right thing. For Eva. But before he can do anything else, the wireless doorbell starts ringing.

  “Somebody is here,” Jerry says, searching again for a way out of this. “If there are others inside sleeping they’re going to wake up. You can’t get away with it.”

  “Shut up,” Hans says, and he takes the gun out of Jerry’s hand but keeps it pointing at him.

  The doorbell keeps ringing.

  “It’s probably the police,” Jerry says. “Somebody saw us break in. Maybe the owners heard us.”

  The ringing stops. There is silence for ten seconds. Then there is tapping at the office window.

  “You shoot me now,” Jerry says, “and it only makes things worse for you.”

  “Shut up,” Hans says, then he moves over to the curtain. There is more tapping, which is then followed by more silence. Hans peers around the corner of the curtain, careful to keep the gun pointing in Jerry’s direction. “It’s your nosy neighbor,” he says. “She’s got a flashlight and that bloody hockey stick she had earlier. Okay, she’s leaving. Wait . . . she’s moving to the back of the house.”

  “She’s going to come inside, and I bet she’s called the police. You should go.”

  “She won’t be coming inside.”

  “I left the key in the back door. She might.”

  Hans moves back behind the chair. He points the gun at the door. They wait.

  “Don’t shoot her,” Jerry says.

  “What do you care? You hated her anyway.”

  “Please.”

  “Don’t worry, as soon as I’m done you can add a PS, I just shot the neighbor to the bottom of your confession.”

  The handle on the office door starts to turn. The door opens, and there she is. Mrs. Smith, standing in the doorway wielding the hockey stick. She takes two steps forward, and Jerry has no idea what kind of scenario she was expecting to walk in on, but it certainly couldn’t have been this one. To her credit, it only takes her a second to sum up the situation.

  “Oh,” she says, and she must really like the sound of it because she says it again. Any other person would be caught between fleeing and running, Jerry thinks, but not Mrs. Smith, the woman whose garden he vandalized, whose house he graffitied. Mrs. Smith who has been a constant pain in his ass since the day he moved in. Where others might flee, or be paralyzed by shock, she comes forward, perhaps thinking she can cover the distance quick enough, perhaps thinking the man with the tattoos won’t really open fire on a woman older than the sun, perhaps thinking the very idea of a wrongdoing is so offensive she must challenge it.

  Hans pulls the trigger.

  The gunshot is instant. It’s loud, a booming in the room that makes Jerry’s ears ring so painfully that instinct takes over and he puts both palms over his ears. Mrs. Smith doesn’t do that. Instead she takes two steps forward as if refusing to believe she’s been shot before coming to a stop. She looks down at her body where there is no sign at all of any damage, as if the bullet has gone through without harming her, or perhaps it completely missed. But then blood appears just below her chest. She drops to her knees, her face scrunches up into a tight ball, and she uses the hockey stick to prop herself up. She tries to get back onto her feet.

  “How dare you,” she says.

  Hans pulls the trigger again.

  And the gun goes click.

  “What the fuck?” Hans says, and Jerry knows exactly what’s happened, that when he kept spinning the chamber all those months ago as he sat next to Sandra, the bullets got out of sequence. Right now the firing pin has landed on the empty shell, the one that used to contain the bullet that killed his wife. Hans turns the gun to the side so he can look at it, as if the problem will be visible, and as he does this Henry speaks up. Now, he screams, the word inside Jerry’s head almost as loud as the gunshot, so loud, in fact, that Jerry knows he too is shouting out the word.

  He throws his elbow back into Hans, getting him in the base of his stomach, just as Hans pulls the trigger. The shot is wide and hits the wall. Jerry turns in the chair and now the fight is on, and this is the way it should be done, he thinks, a fighting chance, and isn’t that the best way to end things? A good old-fashioned fistfight to the death? It would be, except for the fact fighting is a Hans thing to do, and therefore he knows how to do it. Then there’s the slight fact that Hans still has the gun. A gun he now turns towards Jerry. There is another explosion of sound, and suddenly there’s a burning in his stomach and he feels like his kidneys are on fire. The room darkens as his legs weaken. He’s able to get his hands onto Hans’s hand and push the gun so it’s pointing away. One bullet for his wife a year ago, one into Mrs. Smith, one into the wall, one into his stomach. That leaves two.

  The knife, Henry says. Do it. For the love of God, stop stalling! It’s on the desk. He can see it, but he can’t reach it. Hans is turning the gun back towards him. It’s happening in slow motion. It’s pointing at the wall, at the chair, at Jerry’s shoulder, then at his chest, and as the gun gets into position the expression on Hans’s face changes too, first one of anger, then frustration, then he smiles. A big Fuck you smile. An I win smile. “Eva is next,” Hans says.

  The hockey stick, one end still being held tightly by Mrs. Smith, swings through the air and hits Hans in the forearm, not enough power to break bone, Jerry thinks, but enough to make the gun hit the floor. Hans reaches for it, and Jerry goes for the knife. He has a vision of knocking it off the desk, of it skidding over the floor, but no, his hand wraps tight around the handle. He doesn’t hesitate. He swings it towards the man who killed his wife. He swings it as hard as he can, swings it for Sandra, for the florist, he swings it for Suzan with a z, he swings it for Eva, for everybody this man has hurt, for all of those that have had their lives ruined by their own Captain A. Most of all he swings it for himself. He conjures up all the anger he has and swings it as hard as he can.

  It finds Hans’s neck.

  It goes in the side, the entire blade, slicing in on an angle so the tip comes out the front. Jerry puts all his strength into it, pulling forward, trying to cut all the way through to the front, but it won’t move any further. Not that it matters. Hans stops going for the gun and puts his hand to his neck, blood shooting out like a fountain, a gurgling sound coming from deep inside his throat. He straightens up, both hands on the wound now, trying to stem the flow, but it’s no good. Already the light starts to fade from his eyes. He stumbles and leans against the wall, the knife still buried all the way into his neck. Jerry reaches down for the gun. He points it at Hans.

  “This is for Sandra,” he says, but before he can pull the trigger, the hockey stick comes back into view. It comes swinging into his field of vision, held by a woman too stubborn to die. It hits Jerry in the forehead and all the lights in the world switch off.

  DEAR DIARY

  Dear Diary, dear Future Jerry, dear Anybody Else who is reading this, my name is Jerry Grey and I have a story. I am a father, a husband, a crime writer, a gunshot survivor, I have Alzheimer’s, and I am a convicted killer. I murdered my wife. I don’t remember killing her, and I don’t know whether to be grateful for Captain A hiding that from me or not. I live in a psychiatric facility with bars on the windows and locks on the doors and gray walls in every direction. Sometimes I have questions, and sometimes the doctors answer them, and sometimes I don’t believe what I’m hearing, and sometimes to prove their point they’ll show me a copy of the confession note I wrote. Other times they’ll show me the newspaper articles too. On days when they don’t have time to answer my questions, the
y just medicate me. It’s easier that way. For them, and for me.

  They tell me I’ve been here a year now.

  This is day one of keeping a diary, which I’m doing in an attempt to keep my sanity, of which there is very little left. Though, really, I think it’s more of an attempt to preserve some of the man I used to be. It wasn’t my idea, but the idea of one of the doctors. He thinks it may help.

  Sadly, the man I used to be is a monster. I killed a lot of people. I killed my wife. I killed a florist who worked on my daughter’s wedding. I killed my best friend, Hans, I killed a woman who used to be my neighbor, and I also killed an orderly at the nursing home where I used to live. There are diaries, I’ve been told, that I’ve kept in the past, but the police have them now. Some days I think those diaries might tell me I’m innocent, other days I think they just confirm what I wrote in the confession. It means all the things I don’t want to be true are, indeed, true. Yet the only person I can remember killing is Suzan. Suzan with a z.

  When I try to think of these people, their names and faces all fade into a murky past, but not hers. I remember quite clearly standing in the backyard of her house, the moon bright and full, I remember embracing the night and feeling the blood pulse through my body as the need took me over. I had wanted Suzan from the moment I first saw her. I wanted to know how she felt.

  So, Diary, I’m going to tell you all about it. But first . . . I don’t really like the name Diary. I’ve been thinking of Madness Diary, but that doesn’t quite fit. I’ll think about it and see what else I can come up with.