Текст книги "Trust No One: A Thriller"

Автор книги: Paul Cleave

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

DAY FIFTEEN

A lot has been happening, and there’s a lot to catch up on, the most pressing of which is another fight with Sandra. You always feel sick to your stomach when you and Sandra have fought, and today is no different. Strike that—today you actually feel worse. It was a real doozy. Things are a little more stressful now that the wedding has been bumped up—that was something decided a few days ago, but first you need to be updated on today. This is, remember, a journal—it maps the journey. It’s not a diary—you’re not going to add something every day just because it’s another day. Otherwise it’d be Day fourteen, ate breakfast, went for a walk, and read the newspaper at the kitchen table. The long gap (would that make a good book title? The Long Gap? No, probably not) happened because you’ve been so busy, and because—now this is supposedly so, because Sandra read the journal. She asked for it, and you said sure, honey, knock yourself out. Or something along those lines. Here’s your memory of it. . . .

That’s right—that blank page and a half represent exactly what you remember, which is to say none of it. But Sandra says you had the conversation, and how can a man losing his mind and his memory argue with that? It turns out quite easily, because you’re adamant that the discussion just never happened. If somebody tells you two plus two equals five, you’re going to argue it’s not true because you know, you absolutely know the truth. That’s how this feels. If Sandra had asked to read the journal, you’d have said no. Absolutely. However, she says you said yes, and you love her and trust her, and the truth is, buddy, you’re going to have to start trusting her more than you can trust yourself. You can no doubt imagine what happened after you found out she was reading it, and don’t need it explained to you—but here to explain it to you is Henry Cutter, author of novels such as Dead Man Stalking and Dying Made Easy. But before Henry takes over the reins, here’s a little history on who exactly Henry is.

Henry Cutter is your pseudonym. Only it’s a little more intimate than that. Henry Cutter isn’t just the name you put on the cover of your books, he’s the person you try to become when you’re writing. All those things going on in your head, all those dark things, you try to keep those in Henry Cutter’s head and not yours. When you’re in your office and some guy is having his arms torn off by gangsters, that’s Henry Cutter’s world. When you’re having dinner with Sandra or watching a movie with Eva, that’s Jerry Grey’s world. You keep the two worlds separate. Don’t worry—you’re not suffering from any kind of delusion where you really think you’re a different person, and the distinction may be subtle, but when you switch your computer off at the end of the day, you also need to be able to switch yourself off too. It didn’t used to be that way. In fact, the reason you do it is for your family. Sandra would often say you were distant, that often you weren’t there because your mind was chasing down loose ends, and she was right. You were always trying to figure out how Character A was going to survive what Character B had planned, and that made it very easy to slip out of the real world to pursue what was happening in the imaginary, made it easy to tune out of a conversation you were having with Sandra to make some mental notes. When you got published, Sandra helped come up with the pseudonym, and it was shortly after that she said, I just wish Henry could live his life in your office and we could have Jerry the rest of the time. That was when she explained to you what you were like. You can still remember that day, that hug you gave her when you promised her you were going to try what she just suggested, and guess what, F.J.? It’s worked. Henry Cutter is who you become when you’re wearing your “author hat.” There aren’t many professions where you spend all day imagining you’re somebody else. And right now you’re going to put that hat on, and let Henry take over.

Over to you, Henry.

It was a Tuesday when Sandra borrowed the diary. A Tuesday like any other for most people, but not for Sandra—this was her second Tuesday since learning her husband was leaving her, and she was going to spend it reading his inner thoughts. He was scared, she was pretty sure of that—hell, she was scared. By the end of next year she would be alone, perhaps even by the end of this one. She couldn’t help it, but already she was thinking of what she would do—would she move on? Would there be a mourning period for a man who was still alive but in many ways so far gone? Would she meet somebody else and start a new life? She didn’t know. And what if she did start that new life, and in five years’ time there was a cure and Jerry became Jerry again?

Coffee and a muffin. That was breakfast—not the healthiest, but she never had been the healthiest when it came to eating, which is why she hit the gym three days a week before work—four, if there was time—and time, she thought, was something she wouldn’t have much of while Jerry was sick. She would have to take time off work, which would be tough, as there were some cases ready to go to trial, but she would do it. She would do anything for Jerry. She was already taking time off to help Eva plan the wedding. She carried the diary and her breakfast outside. She sat at the table on the deck and sipped her coffee and started to read. Day One, the opening words, and there was Jerry talking to himself, Jerry sounding just like . . . well, just like Jerry. The neighbor’s cat had jumped the fence and was sitting on the edge of the deck, pausing from cleaning itself every now and then to stare at her. The coffee was too hot, so she let it cool, and soon it was forgotten. She carried on reading. And as she read, she found herself feeling sad for Jerry. And then she saw something that made her storm into the house. Jerry was still asleep. These last few days he’d been sleeping in every morning.

“Just what the hell is this?” she asked, waking him up. She was angry. She shouldn’t have been, but she couldn’t help herself.

Jerry looked tired and confused. “What? What’s going on?” he asked.

“This,” she said, and she tossed the journal onto the bed next to him, and the eyes, the two puppet eyes glued to the cover rattled in their shells.

“You’re reading my journal?”

“You asked me to.”

“Like hell I did.”

She paused for a moment, looking for the deception, but no, he wasn’t lying, he had woken with no memory of it. Is this how it was going to be from now on? Lost conversations where Jerry argues everything she says? “You asked me last night,” she says, wanting to get to the real issue here. “But what’s more important is that we have a gun in the house. How could you! And you think that what, one day you may use it on yourself?”

“You had no right to read any of it!”

“I have every right because you’re my husband and I love you, and I hate that this thing is happening to you, but it is, and I need to know what’s going on in here so I can help you,” she said, and she tapped the side of her head, but really she should have been tapping the side of his. It made her look like the crazy one. He looked distraught. He looked like a cornered animal. She needed to back down. “I’m worried about you.”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” he said. “Sounds more like you’re spying on me.”

“I’m not, and you asked me to read it,” she said.

“I would have remembered something like that. You’re using the disease against me. Is this what you’re always going to do now to get your way? Lie to me and tell me I said something when I didn’t?”

“I would never—”

“Get out,” he yelled, and threw the journal at her. It missed and hit the wall behind her. She had never seen him like that, and it frightened her. It worried her. She knew even before Jerry was diagnosed that no matter what the problem was, she would stay by his side. For always. That journal hitting the wall next to her—in that moment there was a flicker of doubt. She picked it up and ran out of the room.

By the time she got out to the deck, she was crying. Twenty seconds later Jerry was behind her. She turned towards him, but it wasn’t the Jerry from the bedroom, it was the Jerry she fell in love with, the one she met in university, the one who was in the Star Trek closet, the one whose side she would never leave. Beverly, the grief counselor, had warned them he could get like this. It was all part of the Alzheimer’s package. It was going to take time to adapt, but adapt she would. For him. For herself. For Eva.

“Jesus, I’m so sorry,” he said, and he put his arms out, and the one percent of her that wanted to push him away was drowned out by the ninety-nine percent that opened her arms to receive him. The flicker of doubt that had already disappeared was now well buried. “I’m just so . . . so messed up,” he said.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, and they were words she’d heard herself using over the last few weeks, as if her saying them enough would make them come true.

“I want you to read the rest of the journal,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He disappeared inside to make breakfast while she stayed on the deck. When she finished she went back inside and found him in the kitchen eating a piece of toast and staring out the window.

“I want you to get rid of the gun,” she said, staying calm.

He turned towards her. “I’m not going to kill myself.”

“Jerry, please, I would feel better if it was out of the house.”

He nodded. He didn’t look like he was going to argue. “It’s under the desk in my office.”

“I know. You mentioned it in the diary.”

“It’s a journal. Not a diary.”

They walked together to the office, and she stood aside as he pushed the desk towards the window. He took a screwdriver out of his desk drawer and used it to pry up a loose floorboard. When he reached into the cavity he went right to his shoulder. Then he started to move it around, searching.

“It’s gone,” he said, and he sounded confused.

“What do you mean gone?”

He pulled his arm back out. There was nothing in his hand. “It was here, and it’s always here, but now it isn’t.” He looked rattled. “I don’t . . . I don’t know where it is,” he said. It looked like Jerry from the bedroom might be on his way back.

“Well it has to be somewhere,” she said.

“I know, goddamn it, I know!”

“Well, check again.”

He checked again and got the same result.

“Where else would you hide it?”

“Nowhere. This is the place.”

“If this is the place then it would still be there,” she said, still sounding calm. At least calmer than she felt. “When did you last see it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did you even have one?” she asked.

“For research. I wanted to know how it felt to fire one. I went to the range a few times.”

“Without telling me. Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

“No.”

“Then when was the last time you used it at the range?”

“It was . . . I . . . I can’t remember.”

“When was the last time you saw it?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you’re sure that’s where you keep it?” she asked.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“So where is it, then? Where in the hell is the gun?”

And . . . scene.

Thanks, Henry, for the recap.

Needless to say, you feel ashamed for yelling at Sandra, and embarrassed because you have no idea where the gun is. It’s possible you never even bought one. Actually, you know what? There’s a character in one of the books—he bought a gun and hid it beneath a loose floorboard in his office. He was planning a murder, he was the one who wanted to know how it felt, how it sounded. Is it possible that’s what you’ve been thinking of? Yes. Absolutely. You found the loose floorboard when you moved into the house, and at the time thought it’d be a good place to hide a gun, so gave that to the character you were writing about at the time. You thought it was you, but it wasn’t—it was just one of those people living in your head!

Sandra will be relieved when you tell her. But you—you’re terrified. To have made a mistake like that . . . what does that mean for your future?

All that stuff—that was today. There’s no time now to update you on the other night when Eva came over, as it’s date night tonight and you’re heading out soon with Sandra. You’re off to dinner, then off to see a movie that one of your author buddies wrote. The blanks will be filled in soon, but basically Eva and Rick have set an earlier date for the wedding to make sure you’re able to participate.

Good news—Sandra has forgiven you for the fight and will forgive you even more when you’re at dinner and you tell her there’s no gun in the house. You and me, buddy, we have a lot to make up for after our fight with her, and a lot to make up for for the days that are coming. Also, her birthday is coming up next month—she’s going to be joining you at forty-nine. You’ll get her something special.

Good news—if you can’t remember how your books go, you can read them as if they’re new. For the first time you can read them and not know about the twist that’s coming. It would be great if you could tap the dementia patient market—they buy your books, forget they’ve read them, and buy them again.

Bad news—one of the puppet eyes glued to the journal got crushed against the wall when you threw it. It looks foggy now, like a cataract.

It’s been a couple of days since Jerry’s doctor came to see him, days which he hasn’t gone wandering, days which, as far as he’s aware, he has been mostly in control. The daffodils that were in full force in the spring gardens are now limp and wilted. Some rhododendrons are blossoming, others already so heavy with flowers they’re breaking off and landing with a thud on the lawn. Trees are budding in every direction. Jerry knows it’s that time of the year when things happen quickly, that back at his house he’d have gone from mowing the lawns once every two months during winter to once a week during summer. At the moment he’s sitting among it, sitting on a bench under a silk tree whose branches are still mostly bare, the sun touching his face. He’s reading a newspaper, on the front page of which is a woman he recognizes. The woman’s name is Laura Hunt, and Laura was murdered inside her house. The article says her body was found Monday. Today, according to the paper, is Thursday. The article says her body was found in the afternoon. He remembers hearing that on the radio, and thinking that while he was at the beach enjoying the crisp air this woman was being murdered. He realizes now that he was wrong—her body was found in the afternoon, but the article says she was killed in the morning. There is the mention of a stolen necklace, of the woman being stabbed to death, and that means something to Jerry, and he closes his eyes and tries to figure it out, and—

“Are you okay, Jerry?”

He looks up. Nurse Hamilton is standing in front of him. She has a big smile that becomes a small smile then completely disappears. She sits down and puts her hands on his arm. “Jerry?”

He shakes his head. He’s not okay. He folds the newspaper in half so he can no longer see the woman’s picture. He is starting to remember.

“I killed somebody,” he says, and there—the words are in the open for Nurse Hamilton to do with them what she shall. Call the police would be his bet. He hopes she does. In fact, they might even execute him. The death penalty was abolished over fifty years ago, but with all the violence that’s been happening in New Zealand these past few years people have been asking for its return. There was even a referendum. The public voted to bring it back. He remembers it was close, but can’t remember when that was. Last year? Two years ago? He also isn’t sure if it’s been put into effect yet, but perhaps he can be the first. If so, he doesn’t want Sandra or Eva there when they hang him. He would like Nurse Hamilton there. He can imagine her sad smile might make things feel a little less scary as the rope gets tightened.

“I know,” Nurse Hamilton says, a painful expression on her face, and he wonders how she knows, then comes to the conclusion he must have told her already. She carries on. “And I’m sorry, Jerry. I really am, but you do know it wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it was my fault,” he says. “I chose Suzan because I had fallen in love with her. I snuck into her house and hurt her and later the police arrested the wrong man.”

Her sorrow melts away. Her concern turns to relief. He thinks maybe she didn’t like Suzan.

“It’s okay,” she says.

He shakes his head. It’s never going to be okay.

“Do you remember your name?” she asks.

“Of course I remember. It’s Henry Cutter,” he says, but that doesn’t feel quite right. Close but not close enough. Plus she called him Jerry.

“Henry is your pen name,” she says.

“Pen name?”

“Jerry Grey is your real name. You’re an author.”

He searches his memory, trying to form a connection. “I don’t think so.”

“You used to write crime novels,” she says. “Sometimes you get confused about what is real and what you made up. Do you know where you are?”

“A nursing home,” he tells her, and as he tells her he starts to look around the grounds, at the trees and flowers, and there are other people here too, people wandering around, some looking happy, some looking sad, some looking lost. He is, he remembers, and somewhat ironically too, he thinks, one of the lost. “I have dementia.”

“The dementia has an awful way of rewriting your past, Jerry. It’s making the stories from your novels feel like real life to you. Suzan doesn’t exist. She never existed.”

He thinks about that. Writing books . . . it does feel familiar. And of course his name is Jerry Grey. Not Henry Cutter. Henry Cutter is who he would become when he wrote, because that way he could be Henry for the bad times and Jerry for the good.

“So I didn’t kill anybody,” he says.

Nurse Hamilton gives him one of the saddest smiles he’s ever seen, the kind of smile that makes his chest tighten. This woman pities him. Even he pities him. “There was no Suzan,” she says. “She was just a figment of your imagination.”

“But she seems . . . seems so real.”

“I know. Come on, let’s get you inside. It’s almost dinnertime.”

She leads him inside and he tells her he wants to rest for a bit in his room. She walks him there, and tells him everything is going to be okay, then tells him not to be too long. It’s not until he’s in his room and alone and sitting by the window that he thinks back over the conversation and picks up on what he missed.

She said I know.

“So I didn’t kill anybody. That’s what I asked you,” he says, the words going into an empty room—empty except for Forgetful Jerry, and Forgetful Jerry doesn’t seem to mind him talking to himself. In fact he encourages it and, come to think of it, it actually feels familiar. When he talks again, he looks at the empty chair opposite as if Nurse Hamilton was there. “Then you said I didn’t kill Suzan. You didn’t say I didn’t kill anybody.”

He replays the conversation over again.

He didn’t kill Suzan.

You killed somebody. The words aren’t his, but he knows who they belong to. Henry Cutter, his pen name, wants to be heard. You killed somebody, and Nurse Hamilton knew.

But if it wasn’t Suzan, then just who in the hell was it?

DAY TWENTY

The days are racing past and you haven’t been able to write as much as you’d have liked. Life, just like it often does when you’re writing, gets in the way. There is still day eleven to catch up on, which is when Eva came around for dinner. Of course she’s been around a lot since then, and a lot has happened. First of all, let me tell you that Sandra has removed all the alcohol from the house. It’s a real shame because at night the G&Ts actually help. They calm you, and a guy in your condition deserves to be calm. Other people get sick, and other people die at much younger ages, but this is you me us we. You’re allowed to be upset for yourself—that’s your right, and you have to admit you’re a little angry at Sandra for getting rid of the one thing that can bring you comfort when nothing else can. She has also taken away your credit card after the whole cat food thing. You’ve lost count how many times she’s said over the last week You can’t do that, Jerry, or You should be doing that, Jerry.

The good news is that you called Hans. Hans has been a pretty big help to you over the years. He’s what you would call . . . source material. You met him in university. He was the first out of all your friends to start losing his hair, and he decided early to shave it completely off, which made him the only bald twenty-year-old on campus. He was taking a whole bunch of classes, including the same psychology class as you and Sandra, but for him it was more like he was trying to find the key to unlock not just the mind, but the world. He likes knowing how things tick. You used to go to his flat to study, and often the TV or the computer or the toaster would be in pieces, and once he figured out how all that stuff ticked, he moved on to bigger things, like the car. He’s a little like Rain Man when it comes to numbers too. He can’t look at a spilled jar of toothpicks on the floor and tell you how many there are, but he can perform all sorts of complex arithmetic in his head. He also has this trick where he can guess somebody’s age and weight, though he’d always deduct between twenty-five and thirty-five percent for women over twenty, more if he was attracted to them. Sometimes you’d take a break from studying and sit out on the back porch and he’d be smoking a joint and you’d be drinking a beer, and you’d have a Rubik’s Cube he was always fiddling with, using the layer method to solve it in a few minutes, trying to learn a way to solve it in under a minute, which he eventually did, before cutting it down to thirty seconds. He taught himself to speak three languages, and once he spent two weeks doing nothing but origami, making swans and roses and panda bears before moving on and trying to figure out how to make the perfect paper plane. When he was nineteen, he read a dozen books on how to fly a Cessna, then snuck onto an airstrip at night and stole one. He put everything he had learned to the test, flying a mile radius around the runway before returning safely. Once you were at his flat studying and he was practicing how to pick a lock, not because he needed to break into a house, but to see if he could, then he spent hours trying to teach you what he had learned, not for your benefit, but just to see if teaching was another one of his abilities.

The problem, with Hans, was the weed. He probably smoked it just to quiet his brain. Then he started growing it, just to see if he could. Then he started selling it. When he was twenty-one he did four months in jail, and when he came out he wasn’t the same Hans that went in—though by then something was changing inside him anyway, and prison just helped advance it, as it would when he served three more years for distribution when he was twenty-five. The friendship became tenuous after his first prison visit, but Christchurch being a small place meant you would always run into him every now and then, and your relationship was based on who he used to be. We all have friends like that, Future Jerry, where it’s hard to know whether you’d be friends with them now if you met for the first time (I have to be honest here and tell you I wonder this about you, about whether I’d like the person you are in the future, just as I have no idea whether you will like the person you used to be).

Hans got more heavily into drugs after that first prison stint. He started hitting the gym and he bulked up. He got tattoos. Yet whenever you ran into him, he was the warmest guy. When the first book came out, he came around to see you. He was so excited. The friendship started to grow again—though Sandra always makes herself scarce whenever he drops by, then after he leaves asks you what in the hell you’re doing spending time with a guy like that. You’ve never based any characters on him, but if you wanted to know how to smuggle a baby out of the country or buy a pound of cocaine, he’s the guy you’d ask. People often think that crime writers would know how to get away with murder, but you’ve always thought if anybody could, it’d be Hans. Some of the bad shit in your books, that’s all you, Jerry; but the way some of that bad shit unfolds, the little details, some of that is his. From how to create a stolen identity to putting the living fear of God into somebody, Hans is an all-sorts kind of guy in the sense that he can do all sorts of things. Bad things. You probably should know he scares you a little. In fact, he’s the guy you thought you bought the gun from.

On day seventeen you rang him and told him about the dementia. He said he would come over. You told him not to worry, but he did worry, and Sandra worried herself into work to catch up on some things that needed looking in on, just so she wouldn’t have to face him. You sat on the deck outside and drank one of the beers he brought over while he smoked his joint and you talked about how unfair the world was. He asked you to explain the Alzheimer’s to him, he wanted every detail, and he kept asking questions, as if it were a problem for which he could provide a solution. If he thought it would have helped, he probably would have taken you apart on that deck and tried to make right all the bits he thought were defective.

When you told him Sandra had gotten rid of all the gin, he got into his car and disappeared for twenty minutes, and when he returned he had five bottles, all of which you have hidden, and he told you to call him in a week when you’d run out. A week! You weren’t sure if he was kidding, but you told him it’d be more like a month. Maybe even two. You miss the way Hans used to be, but the old Hans wouldn’t have driven off and returned with all that Bombay Sapphire.

By the way, you have a hiding place in your office—no, not under the desk—and that’s not a hiding place anymore since Sandra knows about it, but there’s another one at the back of the cupboard. There’s a false wall in there. You used those renovation skills of yours to build one when you moved in—it’s where you hide your writing backups. Far easier than moving a desk out of the way every day. Some of the things you’ve written way back in the past, you’d die of embarrassment if anybody ever found them. You could only fit three bottles in there, and the other two you hid in the garage. Sandra didn’t object to the tonic staying in the house.

That’s day seventeen summed up. Let’s give you a good news and bad news summation. Bad news first. You ran out of alcohol. Good news next. You’re restocked with alcohol. More good news—Hans confirmed you never bought a gun. When asked, he said, So the dementia, that means you’re going to start saying all sorts of shit to people, right?

You told him that was so.

I never gave you a gun. I’ ve never given anybody a gun.

Now back to day eleven. Hard to believe that was over a week ago now. In fact, why don’t you go ahead and add that to your I can’t believe it list, F.J., a list that is getting pretty full if you must know. Things are moving quickly now. Not the Big A (though that time bomb is still tick, tick, ticking—actually, strike that, the Big A is a bomb that’s already gone off, and this is the fallout we’re dealing with). You had visited your lawyer during the week, and your accountant—all these preparations for the future—it’s like you’re taking a trip to the moon and never coming back. They each shook your hand at the appointments and said how sorry they were, but they weren’t really sorry. Why would they be? You’re dying and they’re buying new cars and boats and it’s billable hours, baby, billable all the way.

You cooked dinner on day eleven. Eva brought Rick over. You’re actually a pretty good cook. It’s one of your things—and you don’t have many things. You can write, you can play pool, you know some card tricks, you can catch Alzheimer’s like catching a cold, and you can cook. What you cooked that day has slipped your mind, but if you really need to know, then send a letter and address it Jerry Grey, care of the past, and I’ll get back to you.

They showed up, and they were all smiles, and Eva brought her guitar and you all sat in the lounge and she explained how she’s been writing music and, get this, she’s just sold her first song! She said she started writing during her three years in Europe. She traveled with a journal and she’d see things that would inspire her—people, sunsets, landscapes—and she’d write. She never said anything. She said it was something she wanted to do on her own, that if you knew you’d probably try to give her advice, or try to help with her lyrics. The singer who bought her song is planning on recording and releasing it soon. Eva played it, and it was beautiful, but it made the discussion that was coming up so much harder. You sat in the lounge with your arm around Sandra and listened to Eva sing, and Rick sat watching her and he was mesmerized, and you don’t think you’ve ever seen a guy as in love as good ol’ Rick.

The song is called “The Broken Man,” and is about a guy who breaks the hearts of every woman who falls in love with him, until one day his own heart is broken by the woman he can never have because she’s already married. You asked her to play it again, and she did, and Sandra asked for a third time and she said no, maybe later, and smiled as if she were a little embarrassed at how proud you and Sandra were. Sandra took a photograph of you sitting next to Eva with a big smile on your face. (She had the photograph printed the following day, and on the back she wrote Proudest dad in the world. The photo is now on the fridge door.)

Later in the evening came dinner. You and Sandra gave them the news as soon as dinner was over. Eva cried, and Rick put his arm around her and she asked the same question over and over, the How long do you have question that nobody can rightly put their finger on, and you kept thinking, you kept thinking, if Eva’s music is in the world, no matter what happens you’re going to be okay.