Текст книги "Trust No One: A Thriller"
Автор книги: Paul Cleave
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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)
DAY WHO KNOWS
Some days I know who I am, I wake up and I know where I am and what’s going on, and the nurses here call that a good day. The irony is the good days are full of bad memories. I think I prefer the bad days. When everybody is a stranger, when I forget my family, then I forget what brought me in here. I can forget what I have done.
Today I know. Today is a good day. My name is Jerry Grey and this is my journal. The nursing home, this disease, they are my penance.
There’s an orderly here by the name of Eric. He suggested a journal might help with my condition. I have Alzheimer’s and it’s been advancing quickly. They tell me when I first got here six months ago I would know who I was six days a week and on the seventh my mind would take a rest and all would be lost. Since then the ratios have been changing. They tell me I spend half the week not knowing anything at all now. I spend periods of being Jerry Knows Everything, and equal periods of being Jerry Knows Nothing. Sometimes I’ll have an entire good day, sometimes an entire bad day. Because of the Alzheimer’s, I can never be sure what is real.
Except there is one thing I am very sure of. I killed my wife. Of all the things to forget, that’s the one thing I pray that I can.
The diary came about because I’ve been writing things down on scrap bits of paper, I’ve been writing about my days and finally Eric had the idea of giving me a proper diary I could write in. It’s going to remind me of the man I used to be, and most of all it will remind me of my loss. Aside from those two things, it’s also going to document how crazy I’ve been and how much more crazy there is to go. I’m going to call it my Crazy Diary. I’m going to write in it when I remember to, which . . .
Wait. Not Crazy Diary. Madness Diary. I’ve done this before. I was keeping a diary back before . . .
Before I murdered Sandra.
Where that diary is now, who took it, I have no idea.
Eric says keeping the diary will be useful, and that I should put everything in here that I can think of, which is why I’m doing this. He says I should think of it as therapy. He said it might help me get back to where I was, but if the memory of my Sandra lying dead and bloody on my office floor is true, then I don’t want to get my life back. Then he said something that encouraged me, something hopeful, and in a place like this hope and encouragement are the only things to stop one from curling up in a corner and waiting to die. He said the way technology advances, it’s impossible to know what the future holds. If that’s true, if there is a chance of getting better, then I need to do what I can to make that happen. Eva must hate me. She must. And it will be a painful journey getting back to the man I used to be, painful to relive the bad things I’ve done, but I must do this if there is any chance of saving my relationship with her. Eric also thinks I should jot down other ideas I have for books. He said it’s a way of exercising the brain, that I need to keep my mind active. Medical technology might bring the old Jerry back, but it won’t bring back Sandra. I will do anything if it will help me reach out to Eva, anything to tell her how sorry I am.
The memory I have of Sandra is as strong as some of the memories I have of my characters. Sometimes the only proof I have she ever existed is the wedding ring on my finger and the photograph I have of her and Eva in my room. Sometimes I get confused between shooting her and having one of my bad guys shooting one of my good guys. I don’t remember it, but I have enough imaginative tools to be able to picture the scene. I do remember the blood, and holding her hand. I remember calling the police and asking them to come and help. I remember them arriving and a while later taking her away and me away—Sandra to the morgue, me to the police station. I know there were a number of days between my wife dying and me calling for help, days in which I wanted Eva to have some semblance of a honeymoon, but I don’t know how many. Two or three. Maybe four. I don’t think there was a trial, but I don’t know for sure. I think between the defense and the prosecution a deal was made. I was sick, nobody doubted that, sick and better off in a care facility than a prison.
As the Alzheimer’s continues to evolve, I will remember less and less of what happened. This illness is like having a hard drive full of photographs and videos and contacts being deleted. By the end of the year the ratio might be one good day to ten off days. With that in mind, let me get down what I remember and tell you who you were and what’s been happening.
Let’s start with the nursing home. It’s a good distance out of the city, making me feel like me and my fellow patients are all in the out of sight out of mind category. It’s a pretty big place, two stories and maybe thirty rooms or so, the staff all warm and caring and always wanting the best for everybody here. The grounds are pretty big too, lots of flowers and trees and some of the patients hang about outside pulling weeds or sitting in the sun, while others remain in one of the common areas, watching TV or reading books or chatting. There are a couple of people in cots, aware of nothing, just banging their heads all day long while they soil themselves. Some of us can feed ourselves, and in that small act we can at least take some enjoyment from our food, but others have to be fed, the nurses with barely enough time to feed one patient before moving on to the next, mealtime a chore, and it’s heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking, and whatever the staff are being paid here it isn’t enough.
I often think about escaping, about finding my way back to Eva and begging her to forgive me—two things I think are impossible. However, I have been stopped on the edge of the grounds a few times, getting ready to wander into the woods. I think that if I could make it back home to where I used to live I would do better there. Surely there I would be able to keep more of myself intact, rather than in this unfamiliar place where my memory is being split into smaller pieces every day, fragments being cast into the great beyond. Surely I could use my crime-writing money to buy my house back and for home care. But the courts . . . the law . . . they won’t allow it. That’s the man telling me what I can’t do. The man frowning on me because I shot Sandra. How much money does the man pump into war, and tourism, and sport, compared to Alzheimer’s research?
As far as first entries go, I think that covers it. There’s more to explain. If I can remember any of it, I’ll carry on later. I’m not sure how to finish a diary entry. My instinct is to finish it on a cliff-hanger, and I guess that’s the crime writer in me. Oh, by the way, there is a crime writer living inside me—his name is Henry Cutter. On a good day, Henry is nothing more than a pen name, but on a bad day I sometimes wonder if he’s the one who takes over. If so, then it must have been Henry that killed Sandra, because I have no memory of it.
Cliff-hanger time. I’m not so sure Sandra is the only person Henry has killed.
It’s a journal, not a diary Jerry thinks, as he puts the journal down after reading the first entry. He can remember it now—not what he wrote, but the act of writing. He can picture himself sitting in his room in the chair by the window and filling the pages. He can even remember the first entry, can remember Eric giving him the journal to write in, Eric’s advice about putting in plot ideas to keep his mind active. Of course it was all a lie. Eric was an ideas thief. A stealer of words. There never would be a pill to cure Alzheimer’s—not in Jerry’s lifetime.
He’s sitting in Eric’s chair behind Eric’s desk with Eric’s wife asleep a few rooms away. He and Hans picked her up to make her more comfortable. He’s getting used to hauling unconscious people around. Hans suggested laying her down in one of the bedrooms, but in the end they settled for a couch in the lounge, as Jerry didn’t want her waking and getting any ideas—such as the fact they killed her husband. She will be asleep for at least a few hours, Hans has assured him. Then she’ll wake up and her journey as a widow will begin, from pain and sorrow to disgust after she learns the kind of man her husband really was. A word thief. A killer. This woman would shoot Jerry now if given the chance, but within the week she will be thanking him.
Reading the first entry of this journal sparks his awareness of the original. He can remember sitting at his desk scribbling on the pages while Sandra’s body lay on the floor. It’s possible he wrote something that would help him understand all of this, which just confirms his theory that he needs to get hold of it, but it also suggests something else. It’s possible he wrote about that night in this second journal. The first entry he just read is almost identical to the one Eric pasted into his manuscript. He flicks to the end of the fledgling writer’s document, hoping there will be some answers, but there is no end. Eric must have been still working on it. Jerry remembers hitting that brick wall himself over the years, getting ninety percent of the way through and not knowing how to wrap things up, then realizing it was necessary to change that ninety percent in ninety different ways.
He rolls the chair over to the computer. Stuck to the monitor is a Post-it note, the words Write what you know and fake the rest have been written on it. He finds the novel on the desktop, along with five others. He double-clicks Crime Writer Working Title and then starts scrolling through it. Right away he can see it’s longer. In this version Gerald Black, the crime writer in question, has found a way to sneak in and out of the nursing home so he can carry on his killing spree. Gerald sneaks into the back of a laundry truck, as if he’s escaping a prison from a 1960s movie. Jerry wonders if that’s how he’s been sneaking out, but can’t recall any laundry trucks.
Gerald, it seems, is replicating the crimes from within his books, but nobody suspects him. The police believe an obsessed fan is responsible. Eddie, the orderly hero, believes Gerald may be responsible, and that Gerald has been faking his illness all along. To what end, Jerry can’t fathom. Living in a nursing home isn’t living the dream, and if you’re that good at faking an illness, then you may as well fake your innocence and find another way to not get caught. It’s something Eddie hasn’t been able to figure out either—or at least explain. Jerry’s diary entries are forced into the narrative, but they don’t quite work, because the entries are from a man who is genuinely losing his mind, not from a man making it all up. Seeing his words in these pages makes him feel even more violated and continues to blunt the edges of guilt he might have felt for dropping the orderly to his death.
Jerry picks his journal back up. He reads the second entry and sees that it starts to divert from the entry that Eric has written in his book. Maybe the ratio is going to change the same way it does between his good days and off days.
The third entry starts with the words Don’t trust Hans scrawled several times across the top of the page. His heart does that hammering thing it’s been doing lately, and he can sense Henry’s presence, his curiosity piqued. He looks up at the doorway to make sure his friend isn’t standing there watching him. He isn’t.
Jerry carries on reading.
don’t trust Hans, don’t trust Hans, don’t trust Hans, don’t
DAY ANOTHER SOMETHING
The words at the top of the page here aren’t mine. I mean, they are mine, because it’s my handwriting, but I didn’t write them. I mean, okay, I wrote them, but I don’t remember writing them. The words are big and black, written with a marker, like a point being forced, and I can only assume Henry wrote them, Henry who would wear the author’s hat, Henry who sometimes occupies my thoughts and takes control of my life. I don’t know when he wrote them, or why. I’ve spent all morning thinking about it, and this is what I’ve come up with—nothing.
Eric has been asking me questions about the diary, about my past. My life is like a jigsaw puzzle to him, and I’m not sure why he’s so interested, but he is. It turns out—and I don’t know if this is more sad or funny—that one of the reasons he asked me to keep a diary is because I confessed to a crime that never happened. I don’t even remember confessing—but he was telling me I’ve been getting a little mixed-up between what is real and what is make-believe. When he first told me, I thought it was the setup to some awful joke. The more he insisted, the madder I got at what felt like an accusation. Finally, another of the nurses confirmed it was true. I’ve been telling people—telling and really insisting—that I kept a woman locked in my basement for two weeks before killing her, which would be a really neat trick since I’ve never owned a house with a basement. Eric is trying to convince me to write in the diary every day, because he thinks it will help ground me to what is real. He’s asked to read it, but I won’t let him. I hide it in my drawer when I’m not writing in it. I used to have a couple of hiding places back in what I’m now calling Jerry’s Normal Life. I remember I had a floorboard under my desk that I could pry up, but I can’t remember where the second one is.
Today is a bad day. It’s bad because I can remember that Sandra (my wife) is dead, and that Eva (my daughter) never comes to see me. Looking back at the previous entries it seems I only write when I’m having a good day. I should start putting in the date, because I have no idea how long I’m going between entries.
Don’t trust Hans.
I don’t know why I would have written that. Why Henry would have.
And yet . . . with those words is some kind of recognition, a sense that I have written them before. If I had to guess, then I would say perhaps it was in the original Crazy Diary. This is Version II—Version I was written as Jerry’s Normal Life phase entered the Madness phase.
I miss Sandra. I know she’s dead, but I don’t know know, if that makes sense. It’s like having somebody come along and tell you the sky is green when it’s actually blue. That’s how it feels, and the memory of those few days with her lying on the floor are feeling more and more like they belong to somebody else, that they belong to one of the characters I’ve given life to.
Don’t trust Hans.
Really?
I’m off to breakfast now (good news? For some reason I have the urge to say that—but nothing really to say). Oh, and thinking about it, I think I should be calling this a Madness Diary, not a . . . wait, strike that. A Madness Journal. That has a better ring to it.
Once again, Jerry is able to recall writing these journal entries. But he can’t remember the actual events described. For all intents and purposes, this is the Madness Journal of a stranger.. The biggest takeaway from the entry is Past Jerry’s conviction of a second hiding place. It lines up with what Current Jerry thinks, because that will be where the original journal is hidden.
He reads the next entry and it’s more of the same, as is the following one, words that belong to him but are somehow associated with someone else. He puts the journal down. He moves to the doorway and listens for movement. Hans is no longer in the garage but definitely somewhere in the house. He can hear his friend opening and closing drawers.
Don’t trust Hans. The earlier entry was clear on that, but didn’t provide an explanation. It could have just as easily warned: don’t trust Henry. Or don’t trust Jerry, because he sure as hell can’t trust himself, can he?
If Hans isn’t to be trusted, if the author with the Alzheimer’s monkey on his back is to be believed, then standing in the doorway isn’t the way to go about finding an answer to all this. Nor is confronting his friend. He sits back down behind the desk and picks up the journal. He notices the structure of the entries begins to topple and the prose is too loose on occasion as Jerry starts to lose control of the plot. He suddenly realizes how he’s reading these entries, as if they’re part of a novel, a story about a fictional character. And in some ways they are, aren’t they?
He rolls up his sleeve and looks at the marks on his arm. An idea is coming to him. He looks back at the journal. Chunks of it have been stolen and inserted directly into Eric’s manuscript and portrayed as the journal entries of his protagonist. These entries come off as very realistic because they come from a genuine source. They are the ramblings of a madman. Mad, he thinks, because Eric made him that way. He looks back at the marks on his arm, and suddenly he knows. The same way he’s able to predict the ending to nearly every movie and TV show he’s seen, the same way he knows what’s waiting for him on the last page of any novel. He knows that Eric injected him not just on the days he was going out and hurting those women, but also on days he couldn’t push his story forward. Eric would inject him just for the purpose of making Jerry’s world more miserable than it is, just so Jerry would write about it.
He carries on with the journal. Here’s the first instance of being found wandering in town. Past Jerry has no memory of it, and nobody knows how he got there. He reads the entry slowly, looking for the details, but there are none except for a gold locket that Past Jerry finds in his pocket that evening when he’s back in the nursing home. He thinks he must have stolen it, so he hides it in the back of one of his drawers.
Current Jerry tilts his head back and closes his eyes and tries to think back to the phone call he had earlier today with Eva. She said the jewelry was found there, jewelry from the women who were killed. Eric must have given those pieces to him.
And if that theory is wrong? What if the next entry is Past Jerry detailing how he escapes, how much he enjoys a good, old-fashioned bloodletting? What if? Only he doesn’t think it will. He’s not that guy. Like he told Hans earlier, Sandra would never have married that guy.
And like Hans told you, buddy, the Alzheimer’s is a wild card.
Following entries find Past Jerry confessing to more crimes from his books: a couple of homicides, a bank robbery, a kidnapping, even to being a drug dealer. He wonders if this was a natural progression, or something Eric orchestrated for his research. Past Jerry is found once again wandering in town, and when he’s taken back to the nursing home he finds another piece of jewelry in his pocket, and he has no memory of how he left the home.
“Jerry?” Hans, calling from somewhere in the house. “Jerry, come down here a moment.”
Don’t trust Hans, Henry says.
But how can he not? After everything Hans has done for him?
He finds Hans in the master bedroom, the bed shoved to one side of the room, the contents of the drawers tipped out, clothes on the floor, jewelry forming a pile on the bed.
“You think some of that belongs to the girls?” Jerry asks, looking at the rings and necklaces and earrings.
“I don’t know. Probably his wife’s. But that’s not why I called you,” he says, and he holds up an eight-by-ten envelope. “Check it out,” he says, and he tips the envelope up.
Jerry is expecting more rings and necklaces to slide out. He’s expecting something that can explain what happened to the woman whose house he woke up in today.
And that’s exactly what he gets. Four small ziplocked plastic bags and four photographs that together tell a story. “I found it taped under the bottom drawer,” Hans says. “Bloody amateur.”
Jerry reaches out to pick up one of the bags.
“Don’t touch them,” Hans says. “Don’t get your prints on them.”
“Why not? The police are going to know I was here.”
“We don’t want them thinking you brought these things with you.”
“What are they?” Jerry asks, pulling his hands back.
“It’s hair.”
“What?”
“Hair,” Hans says, and Jerry can see it now, each of the four bags holding a little less hair than you’d find on a toy doll. “Four bags, four victims. He took jewelry to plant on you, and he took hair for himself. He probably found it more personal.”
“And the photographs?”
The photographs have all landed facedown. “Well that’s the best bit,” Hans says, and he flicks them over one at a time, like a blackjack dealer, each image worse than the other, not in terms of quality but quantity. Four photographs virtually the same, each showing four dead women. Except the last one shows Jerry Grey in the background, snoozing on the couch.
The horror at what these girls went through is too much for Jerry, and he finds he can’t speak. He moves to the edge of the bed and sits down just as his legs are beginning to give out. “Those poor girls,” he says, unable to keep the shock out of his voice.
“You didn’t do this,” Hans says.
“That doesn’t make what happened to them any less painful.”
“No, but it means you’re not responsible.”
“Not directly, no,” Jerry says.
“You want to explain that?”
“Eric killed them because I told him he had to write what he knows. He killed them because he knew he could get away with it by framing me. If I’d never gotten sick, if I were still at home and still had my old life, then I’d have never met Eric. Those girls would still be alive.”
“It doesn’t work that way. If it did, we’d all be responsible for everybody else’s actions all the time. Eric did this, not you. You didn’t hurt these girls, Eric did,” Hans says.
Together, Jerry thinks, they have just taken care of a serial killer.
“There is one small problem,” Hans adds, and any relief Jerry was starting to feel at not being a killer disappears, replaced by a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“What kind of problem?”
“The police are going to think you planted them here.”
Jerry doesn’t know what to say. Henry, on the other hand, knows. He’s absolutely right, but that doesn’t mean you should trust him. “But the photographs—”
“Could have been taken by you.”
“Not the last one.”
“Could have been taken with a self-timer.”
“The police will figure out when these photographs were printed, and where, and will see it was probably on Eric’s computer.”
“Which you’ve had access to,” Hans counters.
“Not for long, though.”
“They won’t know that. The police might think you’ve been here all day, after leaving the knife at the mall. Look, Jerry, in saying all of that, I think you’ll be okay. At the very least it will mean they’ll investigate him, right? They’re going to look into all the days those girls were killed, and they’re going to find a pattern. Maybe they’ll rip the place apart and find even more evidence. Maybe they’ll find some poor girl buried out in the garden. It could be the wife suspected something too, and she might talk. Could be this jewelry that belongs to the wife originally came from the girls.”
“But you believe me, right?”
“Of course I do, but I’m not the one who needs convincing. This guy has been exposed and taken care of because of you, not because of the police, and they’re not going to be too thrilled being made to look foolish by a crime writer dealing with Alzheimer’s. They’re going to look for any angle that could suggest your involvement. The flip side to that is you’ll be cleared, and once the media gets hold of the story, you’ll be a hero. The country won’t like a hero being convicted.”
“I’m not a monster,” Jerry says, and the relief is back . . . it’s back and it’s growing, it’s spreading its wings.
Hans is staring at him. He has that look he gets when he’s trying to figure something out.
“What?” Jerry asks.
“Let’s not forget the others,” Hans says.
“What others?”
“The others you’ve killed.”
Jerry thinks about Sandra, he remembers the florist, and Suzan with a z, whose real name is lost to him now. He looks down at the photographs, three of them representing women he has killed. Thoughts of his own innocence may have been premature.
“Is it possible I haven’t killed anybody?” Jerry asks.
“Two hours ago we dropped a man to his death,” Hans says.
“Other than him,” Jerry says.
“Possible? Anything is possible,” Hans says.
“Anything is possible,” Jerry says, letting the words hang in the air for a few seconds before chasing them with the reality. “But you think I did.”
“I’m sorry, buddy.”
“So now what?”
“Well I can keep looking around while you read the journal. Since he hid these,” Hans says, nodding towards the bags of hair and photographs, “then it stands to reason he might have hidden something else. It’s not uncommon for people to have more than one hiding space. Ultimately we—”
“That’s right! I haven’t told you yet, but I wrote in my journal that there is a second hiding place!” Jerry says.
Hans looks excited. “Where?”
“I didn’t say.”
“Well what did you say?”
“Just that there’s somewhere else. I think it’s where I used to hide my writing backups.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to remember, Jerry,” Hans says, sounding urgent. “And we need to head to your house and find it.”
“I need a drink.”
“Seriously?”
“Who knows when I’ll get another chance? Plus it might help me think.”
Hans slowly nods. “After all you’ve gone through today, you probably deserve one. Hell, I think we both do.”
They head out to the kitchen and Jerry leans against the bench while Hans goes through the cupboards. Hans finds a couple of glasses and sits them on the table, then starts going through the pantry. He finds what he’s looking for. Not quite what he’s looking for—there’s vodka, and no gin, but it will have to do. He grabs some ice from the freezer. There’s no tonic anywhere, so he ends up making a couple of vodka and orange drinks. They sit down at the table. All very social, Jerry thinks.
All very mad, Henry thinks.
“Why are you still wearing the gloves?” Jerry asks.
Don’t trust Hans.
“What do you mean?”
“With Eric being dead already, the police are going to figure out I’m involved.”
“That’s right.”
“And when they talk to me, they’re going to figure out you’re involved.”
“Not if you don’t tell them.”
“You don’t want them to know?”
“Of course not. I want to help you out, buddy, but I’d also really like to avoid jail too.”
“What if I forget that and tell them?”
“If you forget, you forget. But if you remember, and don’t drag me into it, then the police never need to know I was here. Look, Jerry, I know it’s not right of me to ask this, but I want you to take the fall for what happened to Eric. The police will go easy on you, and if they don’t . . .” Hans says, and doesn’t finish.
“If they don’t what?”
“You’re already a killer, mate. I’m just trying to help. I don’t want to be punished for trying to help you out.”
Jerry looks at his glass, then slowly sips from it. Not as good as a gin and tonic, but better than nothing. He sips a little more. It’s a fair point, he thinks, then tells Hans as such.
Hans starts sipping from his own drink. “You remember my dad’s funeral?” he asks.
Jerry looks up. He shakes his head. He wonders where Hans is going with this.
“The night before the funeral, you took me into town and we ended up at a bar that had run out of gin. You started bitching at the bartender, asking him what kind of bar it was, and he said the kind of bar where people who complain get their teeth kicked out. We ended up drinking these,” he says, taking a sip. “Only time I’ve ever had them. It’s not . . . I don’t know the word,” he says.
“Not masculine enough?”
Hans nods. “I knew you’d know. You’ve always been a gin-and-tonic guy, ever since we met.”
Jerry finishes his drink. He considers whether he wants a second. “I remember you brought bottles to me when I got sick.”
“Sandra wouldn’t let you drink, and she took your credit card off you so you couldn’t go and buy them. I would bring five of them to you at a time. I have no idea where you hid them, but maybe it’s the same place you hid the—”
“In the garage,” Jerry says, and he can remember it, can remember a tarpaulin beneath a bench, covering the gap behind the chain saw and the circular saw, and that was where he hid them, behind renovating tools that belonged to a much younger version of Past Jerry, back when Eva was a small girl and his books were still to be given life. He didn’t hide all of the bottles there, the rest were under the floor of his office. He can also remember a tarpaulin on his office floor, all laid out ready to catch the mess that a far more recent version of Past Jerry was going to make, one from last year.
“You got through them pretty quickly,” Hans says.
Only the bottles weren’t under the floor, were they, Jerry? Henry says. No, under the floor was reserved just for the gun that wasn’t there and the journal that also wasn’t there. The only thing under there was a shirt you can’t remember getting bloody.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” Hans says. “You got a bad rap. Not one of the worst I’ve ever seen, but pretty damn close.”
Jerry isn’t listening to Hans. Instead he’s listening to Henry. He’s thinking about the floorboards. About the original journal. How it wasn’t under there. The gin wasn’t under there either. Nor the gun. Because it’s just like he said in Madness Journal 2.0—there’s another hiding place.
“Maybe—”
“Stop talking,” Jerry says, and he puts his hand out. He’s thinking about what he wrote in the journal. He’s thinking about those bottles of gin.
“Jerry? Are you okay?”
The writing backups weren’t under the floor, but he kept them somewhere safe and secure. Somewhere close. They wouldn’t be in the garage, or the kitchen, or a bedroom. Wouldn’t be somewhere he’d have to go looking for.
You used to hide them. You were paranoid somebody would come into your house one day and steal your computer, steal everything you worked with, steal your next big idea.
“Were my writing backups found?”
“Backups? I have no idea.”
He thinks about his office. Remembers the layout. His mind is becoming warm, the vodka and juice flowing through all the neural pathways in his brain, quickly fogging his thoughts the way it will to somebody who hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol in nearly a year, but it’s clearing things in other areas as those thoughts link across time, the way alcohol can do that, linking images, dragging out the random, and he’s back in his study where he’s pouring himself a drink, and those bottles of gin . . . well now, they weren’t hidden under the floorboards, were they . . .
