Trust No One

by Paul Cleave

  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, pr
efaced 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 w
hile 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.”