Текст книги "Trust No One: A Thriller"

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

DAY THIRTY-EIGHT

It’s day thirty-eight and you feel great. You taught Mrs. Busybody across the road a lesson today, Future Henry. She wandered over here in her pastel-colored outfit recently to tell you how you were ruining the whole neighborhood, and no doubt she’ll wander her way back within the next few hours to come and see you again after what you’ve done. The way I see it, you were presented with two options. Option one was to tidy up your garden and make her happy, to mow the lawns and pull the weeds and conform like everybody else on the street. Or there was option two. Which is what you went with. Option two was to go over to her house and make her garden look worse than yours. It’s funny how she got under your skin so much, but she did, and not only have you helped her with her own garden, but you’ve put her into book number thirteen. You wanted to give her a real Hansel and Gretel vibe, make her the crazy old witch that tries turning children into casseroles, but since you don’t write fairy tales you’ve given her a cameo instead as the local cat lady who chews her fingernails down to the nub as she stares out her kitchen window watching life pass her by before being raped by a clown. Cameos are things you give people who upset you. Somebody ducked into the parking space you were waiting for? Fuck you—you’re dead on page twenty-six. Somebody give you a bad review? Fuck you—you’re the local pedophile on page ten. Doctor Badstory told you you have dementia? Fuck you.

Writing about her wasn’t enough, which is why you went over and ripped out every single rose in her garden, roses she was so proud of. She was there every day checking on them, her husband ten years in the grave and all things considered, that made him one lucky bastard.

Another neighbor—some old tart who turned a hundred years old the same year the Titanic sank—saw you, and you thought . . . well . . . you thought why not do what Henry Cutter always does? And kill people off? But tearing out roses is a long way from tearing out throats, and killing people is only for the books—but you’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t admit there was a moment, albeit a very brief one, where you imagined her bleeding to death on the ground, her face riddled with confusion and pain. But that didn’t happen, and no doubt she’ll tell Mrs. Smith that she saw you, but the thing is you don’t really care. What’s the worst that can happen? You already have Alzheimer’s. Who cares if she calls the police and you have to pay a fine. It’ll be worth every penny.

When Mrs. Smith comes over later, just smile at her, and tell her how much fun you had ruining her pride and joy. Then laugh at her, because the one thing people hate in life is being laughed at.

So there you go, Madness Journal. Another bullshit day out of the way on this road to . . . hell, I don’t know.

Jerry places the journal entry down. His first thought is that he has no recollection of having ever written it, certainly not from Henry’s POV. His second is that Henry is a complete asshole. Was Henry more than just a pen name? Did he actually become Henry when he sat at the keyboard? Jerry begins to understand his critics a little better but is baffled by how he ended up becoming an internationally bestselling author. Not with this guy at the wheel.

He hopes Henry wasn’t actually at the wheel.

Surely not. Sandra would never have lived with him.

The same way she never would have married a killer?

Well, that’s what they are here to prove.

Or disprove. I don’t like that you think of me as an asshole, especially when all I’m doing is trying to help you.

Jerry looks back at the pages. Henry never existed, not in the beginning, but perhaps the Alzheimer’s gave birth to him. Perhaps Henry grew enough to occasionally take control. There’s no other way to explain the journal.

“Can I have the journal?” he asks Hans.

Hans doesn’t look up as he keeps on reading it. “I’m not done with it.”

“Just for a minute. I want to check something.”

Now Hans looks over. “About the day Sandra died?”

“Something in the beginning.”

Hans seems to think about it, and Jerry is suddenly sure his friend is about to say no, but then he relents and tosses it over. “Make it quick,” he says.

Jerry flicks through to day thirty-eight, but there is no day thirty-eight. There’s a day forty. Before day forty are the torn edges in the margin where pages have been removed. His concern about being Henry becomes concern for the other things he’s done, the ultimate concern being Henry is the one who killed Sandra. He flicks back to the first page. He can actually remember sitting at his desk writing some of this stuff. Day one. Your name is Jerry Grey, and you are scared. . . . You lost your phone yesterday, and last week you lost your car, and recently you forgot Sandra’s name. Day four. You won’t be able to hold Sandra’s hand and watch her smile. You won’t be able to chase Eva and pretend you’re a grizzly bear. Day twenty. People often think that crime writers know how to get away with murder, but you’ve always thought if anybody could, it’d be Hans. Day thirty. There’s a couch in the office. The Thinking Couch. You’ll lie there sometimes and come up with ideas for the books, work on solutions, lie there and listen to Springsteen cranked so loud the pens will roll off the desk. Then day forty, and here Past Jerry has no memory at all of what he’s done to Mrs. Smith’s roses, and that’s because it wasn’t Past Jerry who tore them out, but Past Henry. He used to think Sandra was tearing the pages out, but no, it was him. Or Henry. One of them was tearing them out to protect him, to keep the bad things he was doing a secret.

He scans through more pages. The truth is in there, other bad things, and suddenly he knows without a doubt that he didn’t kill Sandra. It was Henry. Henry Cutter, writer of words, destroyer of lives.

He tosses the journal back to Hans.

“What is it you’re reading there?” Hans asks.

“Just some notes,” Jerry says, and he goes back to the loose pages, of which there are another dozen or so. There are more things he has done here as Henry. The whole thing with the spray-paint—that was Henry. He wrote about it before doing it. He had the can of spray-paint on his desk when he was writing the entry. He was getting ready to walk out the door and sneak across the street, and oh how he was looking forward to it. He knew Mrs. Smith would suspect him, but he didn’t care. He would deny it. He would suggest she leave the neighborhood because somebody seemed to have it in for her.

That’s what Henry wrote.

And where the hell was Jerry then?

He carries on reading. Henry develops a crush on the florist. A few days before the wedding he decides to sneak out the window to go and see her. Jerry remembers that day. Not sneaking out the window, but he remembers being at the flower shop, the woman who helped him, who drove him home, the woman who died the night of the wedding.

It’s looking like Henry isn’t a dessert guy, but a rape and murder guy.

There are more pages. The truth is so powerful it hurts, his head feels tight, the horror and the anger at what he has done is swelling inside him, his brain feels like it’s going to pop. Here’s an entry titled WMD Plus a Bunch of Hours Plus Don’t Trust Hans Plus a Bunch of Other Shit. It starts with Henry waking up on the couch with blood all over his shirt. He checks his body for cuts, he counts his fingers and toes, and comes to the conclusion the blood isn’t his. He suspects it might have been from his neighbor, he says My first thought is the silly old trout from over the road, that she’s come over and asked me to trim back the hedges and instead I’ve trimmed back her arms and legs, sculpting her body back to a limbless blob.

He checks on Sandra. She’s fine. Then he hides the shirt under the floorboards where spiders and mice can eat it over the next hundred years. Henry can remember speaking to Nurse Mae earlier in the evening, but not what they spoke about. He says it’s like looking through fog.

Something is hinky, according to Henry. Out of whack. And not just Alzheimer’s hinky. Only Henry can’t figure it out.

The entry ends there. Jerry can’t help but be impressed. Henry Cutter has performed his most famous trick: he’s driven the story into the unknown. It’s been his job for years to make up scenarios, to string facts together in a weird and wonderful way. He is Henry Cutter, he is the master of making a coincidence work, of turning a cliché on it’s head, of disappointing a few bloggers and being a chauvinistic asshole.

He is Jerry Grey, he is Henry Cutter, and together they have always been able to connect the dots. What now?

Jerry looks across the room at his friend, who is back to reading the Madness Journal. He looks at the gun resting on the arm of the couch and then at the knife on the desk. He thinks about what he just saw when he flicked through the diary. Day twenty. People often think that crime writers know how to get away with murder, but you’ve always thought if anybody could, it’d be Hans. He looks down again at Henry’s loose pages and begins to read.

Don’t Trust Hans

A short story by Henry Cutter

Hans could feel his heart hammering in his chest. So hard it made his hands shake as he worked at the lock. Picking locks was one of his things. Shaky hands was not. He was excited, not nervous. You learn to pick a lock . . . well now, it’s like having a key to the world. He once told his friend Jerry that a long time ago. The problem is you don’t get the same feel when you’re wearing gloves—that millimeter of latex numbing the senses and making the tumblers feel half the size they really are. But he knew what he was doing, and it was only a matter of time. Less than two minutes later there was a soft click and something in the lock went slack, then tightened again. His key to the world had worked.

He breathed deep. Nobody could see him. It was a clear night and there was a half-moon hanging right above him, eliminating the need for a flashlight. He could see a million stars, and looking out at them made the night feel timeless, it made him feel tiny. He could taste the air. He opened the door, the interior a black hole the light from the moon couldn’t penetrate. Ever since he saw the girl at Jerry’s house a week ago he knew he had to have her. Knew he had to have some up close and personal time with her. Poor Jerry. He really messed up that wedding. Hans would rather die than go through what his friend was experiencing. Not that he will go through it. That said, there were two things he knew for certain in this world—the first was if you wore new sneakers, people always had to point it out. They can’t help themselves. The second was nobody thinks they’re going to get Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is for grandparents.

It was a modern home made of brick, the kind of home designed to keep out the wolves, but the smart wolves would always find a way in. That was nature. That was evolution. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him and embraced the darkness. He didn’t know the layout, but there were only so many options. He used the display on his cell phone to light the way. He had it on mute in case somebody rang, but who would ring in the middle of the night?

The kitchen was full of modern appliances paid for by love. He had never considered that florists earn the big bucks, but maybe they did. Maybe each Valentine’s Day paid for the next big thing, people getting second mortgages on their houses to be able to afford a dozen roses. There was a knife block on the bench. He had his choice. He could do plenty of damage with any of them. He knew bigger was better when it came to telling women what to do, but he also knew in the right hands it wasn’t the size that mattered. He chose a knife with a six-inch blade. Half the size of his cock, he wanted to say, but there was no one to listen.

Hans carried the knife into the hallway. He stood motionless. He’d always had the ability to tell if a house was empty, and if it wasn’t he could get a sense of where the occupants were. This occupant was in the bedroom. He made his way there. The door was open. The only light was coming from a digital alarm clock. He stood in the doorway and listened to her breathing. His hands were still shaking. He was the wolf.

The wolf did what he went there to do, all the close up and personal stuff that left the girl with her eyes lifelessly open and her body temperature dropping. When he was done, he made his way out of the house and into the backyard. He was smiling. The moment he had shared with the florist would be something he would never forget—not like his loser friend Jerry, who could have a hundred moments like this and not remember one of them. What a waste. He had felt his phone vibrate a few times over the last couple of hours, and he checked it now and hell, speak of the devil, he had a voice mail from Jerry waiting for him. Three messages, in fact. Jerry had done that wandering thing again where he gets confused and lost, and this time he had gone back to the house he used to live in thirty years ago. He needed help, and he wasn’t going to get that from his wife, not after what he had said about her at the wedding. He wanted Hans to come and get him.

Hans thought about it as he made his way back to the car. And the more he thought about it, the more he began to see an opportunity. He had been careful not to leave any evidence behind—he knew how to clean up a crime scene, but of course sometimes you just got unlucky. If the police had a solid suspect that wasn’t him . . . well now, wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing. He rang Jerry back.

Jerry was happy to hear from him. He told Jerry he would be there soon, and to meet him outside once he pulled up. The key was to be subtle. He had learned that from Jerry’s books. The key was to make Jerry come to the conclusion he himself was a killer. The key was to make Jerry try to hide the evidence, which would only serve to make him look guiltier. Hans still had the knife. It didn’t have his prints on it. The plan had been to dump it into a deep hole forever, but now the plan was changing. Evolving. It was survival of the fittest, and Jerry’s days were over. What did it matter if the world thought he was a killer?

He drove to the house where Jerry was waiting. Not much had changed in the thirty years since he was last here, or maybe it had and he just didn’t give a shit. He parked outside the old house and Jerry came walking down the pathway to the car with that stupid dopey look Jerry has these days. The I’m confused and don’t know what the hell is going on look. There was an overweight woman watching from the doorway and that was a loose end, but not one he felt needed taking care of immediately. He would see where things went.

Jerry climbed into the car, thanked him, and then . . . then nothing. His friend was switching off again, wasn’t he?

“Jerry? Hey, Jerry, are you with me?”

Jerry wasn’t with him. Jerry was walking the fields and shitting in the woods of Batshit County, population: Jerry.

He drove the rest of the way to Jerry’s house, but pulled up twenty yards short. He didn’t want to risk waking Sandra. He climbed out of the car and came around to Jerry’s side. His friend was in a state somewhere between consciousness and sleep. He allowed Hans to lead him to the house. Hans could feel Jerry switch into some kind of automatic mode. He climbed through the office window and sat on the couch. At that point Hans could do anything he wanted, so what he did was sit down and think things through. He went out to the car and brought in the murder weapon. Jerry was asleep. He wiped blood from the knife onto Jerry’s shirt, then dropped the knife into the pocket of Jerry’s jacket after putting Jerry’s prints all over it.

Then he left. He felt sure Sandra would be calling the police by the end of the day. She would see Jerry’s shirt covered in blood. She would find the knife. She would turn in her husband. Hell, maybe Jerry would kill his wife too, and that’d be the icing on the cake because the bitch never has liked Hans. It was about time Jerry was useful for something.

Useful Jerry. That’s who he is now. He flicks back through the story, a story he can’t remember writing, a story Henry went and penned all by himself. His heart is hammering again, it hammers hard then skips a few beats and then hammers some more. He feels light-headed.

It’s a story, he thinks. Just a story, prefaced with the words A short story. It doesn’t say A short essay. It doesn’t say A witness statement. It says short story, because it’s fiction, because it’s made up, because that’s what he and Henry do—they are makeup artists. And in this case, one of those makeup artists has gotten carried away with things, but that’s Henry’s thing, the same way Hans’s thing is picking locks (maybe) and killing women (maybe) and how Jerry is a dessert guy (definitely). But it’s also Henry’s thing to find the truth in a lie. It could have gone that way. Jerry could have woken, found himself wearing the shirt Hans had bloodied, then hidden it before going back to sleep. Or none of it happened. He killed the florist and he killed his wife and the Alzheimer’s is trying to protect him from the truth.

Don’t trust Hans. Should he?

“You okay, buddy?” Hans asks.

Jerry looks over at his friend. Hans is staring at him, a hardened look on his face. There’s a shift in mood in the room, a darker tone that makes him feel cold. He gets the sense Hans has been watching him for a while now.

Be careful.

“I’m fine,” he says, but he’s not fine. It’s all coming together now. Don’t trust Hans, because Hans is a psychopath.

“What are you reading?”

“Nothing much,” Jerry says, and he flicks his gaze to the arm of the couch where the gun he found earlier is resting. It’s the quickest of glances, but Hans must notice it too.

“Ah hell,” Hans says, and he picks up the gun. “Those pages, they fit into here, don’t they.” He points the gun at Jerry and shakes the journal with his other hand. “You were bound to figure it out sooner or later. Either way, it all ends here, buddy. I just needed the journal.”

“You killed Sandra,” Jerry says. “You killed the florist too.”

“You were close to figuring it out in here,” Hans says, still holding the journal, “but what I don’t understand is why you tore out those pages. What do they say?”

“You killed Sandra,” Jerry says, ignoring the question. He starts to get up from the desk. “Jesus, the girl from all those years ago! Suzan with a z. That was you as well?”

“She was the first. Don’t move any further, Jerry.”

Jerry shakes his head. He feels sick. This man has been his friend for thirty years. They’ve studied together, commiserated together, celebrated together, drunk and laughed and partied and talked all kinds of shit in all kinds of states together. His friend. His goddamn friend. “How many have there been?” he asks.

“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.”