He throws his elbow back into Hans, getting him in the base of his stomach, just as Hans pulls the trigger. The shot is wide and hits the wall. Jerry turns in the chair and now the fight is on, and this is the way it should be done, he thinks, a fighting chance, and isn’t that the best way to end things? A good old-fashioned fistfight to the death? It would be, except for the fact fighting is a Hans thing to do, and therefore he knows how to do it. Then there’s the slight fact that Hans still has the gun. A gun he now turns towards Jerry. There is another explosion of sound, and suddenly there’s a burning in his stomach and he feels like his kidneys are on fire. The room darkens as his legs weaken. He’s able to get his hands onto Hans’s hand and push the gun so it’s pointing away. One bullet for his wife a year ago, one into Mrs. Smith, one into the wall, one into his stomach. That leaves two.
The knife, Henry says. Do it. For the love of God, stop stalling! It’s on the desk. He can see it, but he can’t reach it. Hans is turning the gun back towards him. It’s happening in slow motion. It’s pointing at the wall, at the chair, at Jerry’s shoulder, then at his chest, and as the gun gets into position the expression on Hans’s face changes too, first one of anger, then frustration, then he smiles. A big Fuck you smile. An I win smile. “Eva is next,” Hans says.
The hockey stick, one end still being held tightly by Mrs. Smith, swings through the air and hits Hans in the forearm, not enough power to break bone, Jerry thinks, but enough to make the gun hit the floor. Hans reaches for it, and Jerry goes for the knife. He has a vision of knocking it off the desk, of it skidding over the floor, but no, his hand wraps tight around the handle. He doesn’t hesitate. He swings it towards the man who killed his wife. He swings it as hard as he can, swings it for Sandra, for the florist, he swings it for Suzan with a z, he swings it for Eva, for everybody this man has hurt, for all of those that have had their lives ruined by their own Captain A. Most of all he swings it for himself. He conjures up all the anger he has and swings it as hard as he can.
It finds Hans’s neck.
It goes in the side, the entire blade, slicing in on an angle so the tip comes out the front. Jerry puts all his strength into it, pulling forward, trying to cut all the way through to the front, but it won’t move any further. Not that it matters. Hans stops going for the gun and puts his hand to his neck, blood shooting out like a fountain, a gurgling sound coming from deep inside his throat. He straightens up, both hands on the wound now, trying to stem the flow, but it’s no good. Already the light starts to fade from his eyes. He stumbles and leans against the wall, the knife still buried all the way into his neck. Jerry reaches down for the gun. He points it at Hans.
“This is for Sandra,” he says, but before he can pull the trigger, the hockey stick comes back into view. It comes swinging into his field of vision, held by a woman too stubborn to die. It hits Jerry in the forehead and all the lights in the world switch off.
DEAR DIARY
Dear Diary, dear Future Jerry, dear Anybody Else who is reading this, my name is Jerry Grey and I have a story. I am a father, a husband, a crime writer, a gunshot survivor, I have Alzheimer’s, and I am a convicted killer. I murdered my wife. I don’t remember killing her, and I don’t know whether to be grateful for Captain A hiding that from me or not. I live in a psychiatric facility with bars on the windows and locks on the doors and gray walls in every direction. Sometimes I have questions, and sometimes the doctors answer them, and sometimes I don’t believe what I’m hearing, and sometimes to prove their point they’ll show me a copy of the confession note I wrote. Other times they’ll show me the newspaper articles too. On days when they don’t have time to answer my questions, they just medicate me. It’s easier that way. For them, and for me.
They tell me I’ve been here a year now.
This is day one of keeping a diary, which I’m doing in an attempt to keep my sanity, of which there is very little left. Though, really, I think it’s more of an attempt to preserve some of the man I used to be. It wasn’t my idea, but the idea of one of the doctors. He thinks it may help.
Sadly, the man I used to be is a monster. I killed a lot of people. I killed my wife. I killed a florist who worked on my daughter’s wedding. I killed my best friend, Hans, I killed a woman who used to be my neighbor, and I also killed an orderly at the nursing home where I used to live. There are diaries, I’ve been told, that I’ve kept in the past, but the police have them now. Some days I think those diaries might tell me I’m innocent, other days I think they just confirm what I wrote in the confession. It means all the things I don’t want to be true are, indeed, true. Yet the only person I can remember killing is Suzan. Suzan with a z.
When I try to think of these people, their names and faces all fade into a murky past, but not hers. I remember quite clearly standing in the backyard of her house, the moon bright and full, I remember embracing the night and feeling the blood pulse through my body as the need took me over. I had wanted Suzan from the moment I first saw her. I wanted to know how she felt.
So, Diary, I’m going to tell you all about it. But first . . . I don’t really like the name Diary. I’ve been thinking of Madness Diary, but that doesn’t quite fit. I’ll think about it and see what else I can come up with.
Future Jerry, let me tell you about Suzan.
Madness Diary, let me tell you how my life as a killer began. . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Out of the nine novels I’ve written so far, this one has been the most fun for me, and perhaps the most personal. In the book, Jerry keeps saying “write what you know,” and for the first time I’ve gotten to do that. There is plenty in Jerry’s life that is similar to my own—and of course there is plenty that isn’t. For a start, he’s older (though that’ll obviously change one day) and, Alzheimer’s aside, he’s in better shape than I am. He went to university, I didn’t. He has a wife and a daughter, I don’t. We are both closet trekkies, both drink G&Ts, and we have the same artwork hanging in our offices—the King Kong Escapes print hangs near my desk, and of course there’s the music. Each of the books I’ve written has a soundtrack—a very loud soundtrack that blasts throughout the house and half the neighborhood. Why so loud? Because I don’t want to hear myself sing. Nobody wants that. The Laughterhouse was written to The Doors, Cemetery Lake to Pink Floyd, Joe Victim to Bruce Springsteen. Others have had The Killers, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles . . . the line in the book about the music Jerry listens to being immortal—that’s truly what I believe. This book was actually written to the tunes of David Gray—he’s always been one of my favorites, and I’ve pretty much been binge listening to him for the last year or so. In fact, I started learning guitar recently, and it’s David Gray songs that I practice with.
The last few books were written in a variety of countries, but this one was all New Zealand. Half in the summer and half in the winter. Like I say, this one was a lot of fun for me. It feels like I’ve been living with Jerry for a long time now—and I get the feeling I’ll be living with him for some time yet.
Like all the books, Trust No One only exists because of the wonderful and dedicated team at Atria Books in New York. There’s my super fantastic editor, Sarah Branham, who always guides me in the right direction, pointing out what I can’t see until all the pieces fall into place. Judith Curr, David Brown, Hillary Tisman, Janice Fryer, Lisa Keim, Emily Bestler, Anne Badman, Isolde Sauer, Leora Bernstein, and all the others—thank you for giving my books a home. And of course thanks to Stephanie Glencross, my editor at Gregory & Company in the UK, who once again nailed things on the head, sending me down the necessary path of many rewrites.