Trust No One

by Paul Cleave

  “But I’m innocent.”

  “Is that really what you think?” Hans asks. “You think somebody set you up? That somebody framed you?”

  “It’s possible,” Jerry says.

  “Yeah? Is that Henry Cutter or Jerry Grey saying that?”

  “Both.”

  “Look, Jerry, you could have taken a flight to Mars last week and you wouldn’t even know it. And if somebody set you up, how? They give you Alzheimer’s too?”

  “I didn’t do this,” Jerry says.

  “I know you didn’t. It was Captain A.”

  Jerry shakes his head. “This wasn’t the disease. It wasn’t me. Somebody is doing this to me.”

  “Like in one of your books.”

  “Exactly!”

  “You don’t think it’s more likely you snuck out of the nursing home and made your way to this woman’s house?” Hans asks.

  Jerry feels like screaming. He feels like punching a hole in the world. Why won’t his friend listen to him? “Please, you have to trust me.”

  “Trust you? Tell me about Suzan with a z,” Hans says.

  Jerry doesn’t answer him.

  “Tell me about her.”

  “She was different,” Jerry says.

  “Different how?”

  “Because her I remember killing. I’m sorry, and I wish—”

  Hans puts up his hand to stop him. “She’s different, Jerry, because she doesn’t exist. She never existed.”

  Jerry doesn’t answer him, not right away, but then the brain chemistry does that little trick it sometimes does, it washes over and clears another memory, and he wonders at what expense, at what other fact or person he’s just forgotten. “She’s from the books, isn’t she.”

  “Yes. So don’t you think it’s possible that if you can remember killing a woman who never existed that you may not be able to remember killing one who does?”

  It makes sense. Perfect sense.

  “We need to find the journal,” Jerry says.

  “What journal?”

  “The one I couldn’t find yesterday.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know?” Jerry asks.

  “Know what?” Hans asks.

  “About my Madness Journal?”

  “What in the hell are you talking about, Jerry?”

  “I’ve been keeping a journal since the day I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I was calling it a Madness Journal. I thought you knew.”

  A few seconds of silence. Jerry can see his friend’s mind racing.

  “What was in it?” Hans asks.

  “Everything,” Jerry says. “Everything I could remember back then that I can’t remember now. I wasn’t writing in it every day, but I wrote in it plenty. It was a way of reminding my future self of who I was. That future self is me, I guess, but without it I can’t remember what I wrote.”

  “Did you write in it when Sandra died?”

  “I don’t know, but I imagine I would have.”

  “How do you know the police didn’t find it?”

  Jerry shakes his head. “They didn’t. Nobody knows where it is,” Jerry says. “There’s a hiding place in my house—”

  “It’s no longer your house, Jerry.”

  “I know that, Christ, I know that, okay?” Jerry says, throwing his hands into the air. “I remember thinking last night I needed to find the journal, and that I had to find a way to escape so I could go and find it.”

  Hans runs both his hands over the top of his head. “Ah, geez, Jerry . . . really?”

  “That journal might prove I’m innocent.”

  “Or it might prove the opposite.”

  “Then at least I’d know, right? But there’s a problem.”

  “Because there’s a new owner,” Hans says.

  “We went there yesterday—”

  “We?”

  “Me and Nurse Hamilton. Gary let us—”

  “Gary?”

  “The new owner. He let us inside and I found the hiding spot, but there was nothing there, only I think it was there and Gary found it and is hiding it, the journal and the gun.”

  Hans frowns. “The gun?”

  “Yeah,” he says, getting frustrated at all the interruptions. “The police never found that either, but maybe it’s not there because I didn’t shoot Sandra?”

  “Is that also what your nurse thought? That the new owner was hiding the journal?”

  “I don’t know,” Jerry says. “I remember thinking they were all in on it.”

  “All?”

  The way Hans asks that, it makes Jerry realize how crazy he’s sounding. They’re all in on it. That’s also right from the Henry Cutter playbook. “There was an orderly there too. They had to sedate me. But the journal has to be there, right? Maybe that’s—”

  “They had to sedate you?”

  “Jesus, will you just let me finish?”

  “There are too many blanks, Jerry.”

  “They had to sedate me because the shirt made them think the worst, and they wouldn’t believe me about the journal, and the journal is the key to all of this. That’s why—”

  “What shirt?”

  “There was a shirt under the floor,” Jerry says, wishing his friend could keep up.

  “Was it blue? Was it covered in blood?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the shirt you wore to the wedding. You were wearing it that night when I picked you up.”

  “Don’t you see?” Jerry asks. For the first time he feels like he’s on track. “We have to go back there and convince Gary to give the journal to us. That has to be why I left the nursing home. That must be where I was trying to go. If I can find the journal and prove I didn’t do any of this, then Eva will want to be in my life again. She’ll call me Dad. She’ll come to visit. You have no idea how it feels to have a child who wants nothing to do with you.”

  “You’re sure it exists, this journal of yours.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay,” Hans says. “So let’s say it does. What’s your plan? We go and make Gary tell us where it is? We don’t even know he took it and, I hate to burst your bubble here, Jerry, but to me it sounds like he didn’t take it at all. Either somebody else found it, or you hid it elsewhere. Where else could you have hidden it?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that I need your help. Please. Will you help me?”

  Hans says nothing for a while. He just stares at Jerry, and Jerry can see Hans’s mind unlocking the problem, the way he always has.

  “Okay,” Hans says. “Let’s head back to my house and work on a plan.”

  “Why don’t we go straight to my old house?”

  “Because we have to think about it, Jerry. It’s foolish to rush into something without a plan.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me. Going in without one is a surefire way of failure. I wish you’d chosen the stripper option,” he adds, and he checks for traffic and then does a U-turn. “It sure would have been a hell of a lot more fun.”

  WMD

  It’s now one a.m., which makes this Sunday, which actually means this is no longer the day of the WMD. Time to start over.

  WMD PLUS ONE HOUR

  The online video has now had more than twelve thousand hits. If only your books could sell as quickly. There are also over a hundred comments. The Internet gives everybody a voice, and it seems those who can’t spell are the first to take advantage of that.

  Ha funny.

  Guys a genious. Bet his wife really is a whore.

  Guys a hack. His books r shit.

  Guy’s a fag. FAG! No wonder his wive screws round.

  God loves everybody—but even he thinks this shmuck is an asswhole.

  These kinds of comments have always made you fearful of where the world is going. You worry one day people will have the courage to say in the real world what they can now only say anonymously through social media.

  Since writing those c
omments down in the Madness Journal (no cutting and pasting here, Jerry), the hit count has gone up another thousand. At this rate every single living person in the world will have seen it by Christmas, unless some celebrity kills somebody or flashes their junk to the media. Hard to know whether it’s crashing what’s left of my career or helping it. What’s that old chestnut? All publicity is good publicity? This will put that to the test.

  Sandra came into the study earlier. It really has been a day for good ol’ chestnuts, because she pulled out the words that follow, and here’s how it all began. . . .

  We need to talk, she said.

  I’m really sorry, Sandra. I feel so ashamed and—

  How could you, Jerry? And I don’t just mean how could you say those things, but how could you think them?

  She was crying. Tears are what Henry used to think of as emotional blackmail. Many of his female characters used them to get their way (you really are a chauvinistic pig, Henry), and all you could do was tell her how sorry you were, over and over, but being sorry wasn’t going to fix it. You were forming a plan—Henry can tell you.

  Jerry was going to get his gun. Jerry was going to shoot the son of a bitch who put that video up online. Then Jerry was going to shoot himself too.

  Thanks, Henry.

  Do you really think those things? Sandra asked.

  You wanted to say no. The word even formed in your mind, this little word so big and powerful, too big it got stuck, too big it was crushed under its own weight. Yes, you said. And I don’t blame you, I really don’t.

  You did nothing to avoid the slap you knew was coming. It echoed around the room. If this had been a book or a movie Sandra would have realized what she had done and gasped and apologized, and in the end you’d have made up. It would have been the ultimate rom-com: you being put through the wringer, your relationship being pulled apart from every direction near the end of the second act, but all would have been saved late in the third. If only.

  She slapped you again, this time much harder. Act three was going to be tough work to come back from this, and you realized this is why rom-com writers don’t throw a hilarious dose of Alzheimer’s into the rom-com mix.

  You think I’m a whore.

  No, it’s not that—

  Then what? she asked.

  I know you’ve been sleeping with the baker.

  What?

  And the guys who put in the alarms. You’re always disappearing for wedding stuff, and I know, you said, and tapped the side of your head because that’s where the proof was baby, pure and simple, you’ve been sneaking off to be with other men. Including Hans.

  Anybody else I’m screwing? she asked.

  The cops who came to the door after the car got set on fire. And probably even a few people from the wedding, you said, because honesty is the best policy, isn’t it?

  You must really hate me to think that way, she said. Have you always thought these things?

  Only since you started sleeping around, you said.

  It’s this . . . this . . . disease, she said, spitting out the words. It gives you carte blanche, doesn’t it? You can say what you want and you don’t have to own it because it’s not Jerry, it’s his bloody Alzheimer’s, but you have to own this one because half the world has already seen it. You became a laughingstock tonight, Jerry, you embarrassed yourself and you humiliated me and you ruined Eva’s wedding. I know you’re sick, I know things aren’t the same, but how am I supposed to forgive you for this?

  That’s when you went ahead and made things even worse. It’s your fault.

  Now she was the one who looked like she had been slapped. My fault?

  If you hadn’t been cheating on me none of this would have happened.

  She burst into tears and ran out of the room.

  Good news—there is none.

  Bad news—you’re probably in your final few days at home now. Your wife can’t handle the truth (what movie is that from?), and the hit count of you ruining Eva’s wedding just topped thirty thousand.

  Good news. You have two unopened bottles of gin with your name on them.

  Hans’s house is twenty years old, a single-story brick home with a neat and tidy yard on a neat and tidy street, a pleasant-looking area in which Jerry can’t imagine Hans fitting in too well. His tattoos alone must make him stand out. But then again he’s never been one for company. Hans has had a few girlfriends come into his life, girls with sultry smiles and big tattoos. But just as easily they’d drift away and move on to bigger or lesser things, drugs or booze or a different bad boy on the path to aging fast. Hans has always been one to move on as well, literally moving to a different house every two or three years.

  Hans pulls the car into the garage and uses the remote to close the door behind them, putting them into darkness. The garage windows have been covered with pieces of cardboard taped into place.

  “Nosy neighbors,” Hans says.

  “The rest of the place the same way?”

  “Not all of it, no,” Hans says, opening the car door. The interior light comes on.

  “Have I been here before?”

  “Not here, no. I only moved in six months ago.”

  They get out of the car. Jerry grabs his plastic bag and Hans flicks on the garage light so Jerry can follow without walking into a lawn mower or shelf. They head into the house. It’s neat and tidy and there isn’t a lot in the way of furniture.

  “You’ve been here six months and you don’t have a dining table?” Jerry asks.

  “You want to discuss the way I live, or what we’re going to do about your situation?”

  “Fair point,” Jerry says.

  They head into the lounge. There’s a TV and a couch and nothing else, no coffee table, no bookcase, no pictures on the walls. He imagines Hans sitting in here watching TV while his dinner plate rests on his legs. No wonder he hasn’t had a girlfriend stick around longer than two months. Jerry sits on the couch and Hans disappears then comes back thirty seconds later carrying a wooden stool. He places it opposite Jerry and sits down. Jerry starts to work on the sandwich. He can’t remember the last time he ate. It’s chicken and ham with tomato. He picks out the tomato and offers it to Hans who shakes his head. He dumps it back into the bag. Hans switches on the TV to a news channel and puts it on mute.

  “When the police come knocking on my door,” Hans says, “and they will, I’m going to—”

  “I thought you said they wouldn’t be able to make out the license plate of the car?”

  “They’re going to cross-reference people you know with vehicles they own, but this address isn’t the same address my car is registered to. So that gives us time. My guess is we have a couple of hours then we have to hit the road. You have two hours to figure out where this journal of yours is.”

  “I already know where it is,” Jerry says, and he’s been thinking about it the entire drive here. “The new owner has it. He found it under the floor and for some reason he wants to keep it.”

  “And what reason would that be?” Hans asks.

  “I haven’t figured that bit out yet.”

  “Okay, so let’s keep that as a possibility. But I want you to consider something else. I want you to think about where else you could have hidden it. If we go in there and it turns out this guy really doesn’t have it, then where do we look? That’s what you need to figure out now, Jerry. Where else can we look?”

  “Okay,” Jerry says.

  “And once we find it, we read it, and we go to the police no matter what it says, okay?”

  “Gary has it.”

  “Okay, Jerry?”

  “Yes, fine, okay.”

  “Think about where else you could have hidden it.”

  Jerry takes another bite from the sandwich. “Fine, I’ll think about that, but we also need to figure out who would want to frame me,” he says, talking with a mouth half full.

  Hans shakes his head. Then he sighs. Then he looks at his watch and then he shifts a little on
the stool. Then he says, “Fine. Then let’s think about that. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Jerry puts the last bit of sandwich into his mouth. He hits a piece of tomato he’d missed on his earlier pass through. He perseveres and chews on, and he thinks about who would want to frame him, and then he lets Henry Cutter think about it too. In fact he lets Henry do all the thinking because Henry’s got the better mind for it and, sure enough, Henry comes up with an answer.

  It’s the guy, Henry says. Gary is the one framing you.

  “It’s Gary,” Jerry says.

  “What?”

  “He found the journal, and I’ve obviously written enough in there for him to realize I can’t remember things, so now he’s killing women and leaving me at the scene. The shirt under the floorboards was probably one of his.”

  “Jesus, Jerry, can you even hear how ridiculous that sounds?”

  Yeah, my bad, Jerry. That was a bit of a stretch.

  “Forgetting about the fact that I dropped you off at home that night, and I saw you wearing that bloody shirt, how does he do it?” Hans asks, carrying on. “He waits outside the nursing home every night in a van hoping you’re going to escape? Then, the times you do, he picks you up, kills somebody in front of you, you take a nap and wake up and forget where you are? Then conveniently forget everything leading up to it?”

  Jerry doesn’t answer him.

  “Do you have any idea how that sounds?” Hans asks.

  Again Jerry doesn’t answer him.

  “Okay, so let’s say some version of that is true, then why?”

  “Because he can’t fake it,” Jerry says.

  “What?”

  “He’s trying to be a writer. He wants to be like me. Only so far all he has is a room full of rejection slips.”

  “You’re still not making any sense.”

  Jerry looks at the TV. There’s footage of bags of tightly wrapped cannabis and a bunch of police officers talking to people, footage of officers searching a house, of people being put into cuffs. The cops have put a dent in the nightlife of partygoers across the city, forcing the teenagers heading into town to damage their livers on alcohol now that all that weed has been confiscated. He remembers he once wrote a book about a gang who sold meth to high school kids. It didn’t end well for any of the characters. Is that where he’s heading now? To one of Henry Cutter’s bad endings?