He’s up to the sixth book and struggling for more ideas when his biggest fan returns. He comes over and looks at the one Jerry’s signing and his smile disappears a little.

“What is it?” Jerry asks.

“It’s . . . umm . . . nothing, nothing at all. Thanks for signing these. Now let’s find that hiding space.”

They push the desk aside. Jerry crouches down and works at the floorboard with the screwdriver, digging it in just enough to lift the board and get his fingers under it. A cool draft comes out from under the house that sends Terrance into another sneezing fit.

“Just like in one of your books,” Terrance says, getting himself under control.

“Really?”

“The Stranger Below.”

“I don’t remember it,” Jerry tells him.

“Was one of your best, Jerry—but they’re all your best. You want me to take a feel around?”

“If you could.”

Terrance leans down and gets his arm all the way into the hole, but when he pulls it back out, it isn’t the journal he’s holding. Or the gun. It’s a light blue shirt. He looks at Jerry, then at Nurse Hamilton. The shirt is balled up, but Jerry can see a collar and a cuff and what looks like rust. Terrance hands it to Nurse Hamilton, who shakes it out. It’s a long-sleeved shirt, formal looking, except for the rust that isn’t rust but blood, of which there isn’t a lot, but a significant amount.

Nobody says anything. Jerry keeps staring at the shirt, trying to place it. Terrance looks nervous. He glances at the screwdriver in Jerry’s hand. He’s just met his idol and his idol is a psychopath who’s now armed. Jerry puts it down. Terrance reaches back under the floor. He rotates his body a little as he reaches in every direction, patting the ground first, then patting the underside of the floorboards in case the journal is taped to the back of them. He keeps his head twisted so he can keep his eye on Jerry the whole time.

“Nothing else,” he says. “Are you sure it’s here?”

“It has to be,” Jerry tells him.

“Let me get a flashlight.”

He disappears. Jerry picks up the pen. He carries on signing the books.

“Jerry,” Nurse Hamilton says. “This is your shirt.”

“We don’t know that,” he says, not wanting to look at her. “I’m a shorts and a T-shirt guy. I only wear them on formal occasions.”

“Like Eva’s wedding?”

He doesn’t answer. He signs To Gary, best wishes in the rest of the books simply because he’s run out of other things to say. Terrance comes back and uses the flashlight and a combination of angles to see what they can see beneath the house, which turns out to be nothing except dirt and dust and plenty of cobwebs.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Jerry asks.

“Jerry, we really must be going,” Nurse Hamilton says.

“Just a minute, that’s all.”

The front doorbell rings, both from the hallway and from the receiver in one of the desk drawers. Terrance disappears and Jerry reaches under the floor in all the same directions Terrance reached, and gets all the same results. “It’s not here,” he says, and he can hear the frustration in his voice. “It should be here, but it’s not. It doesn’t make sense! It should be here, but it’s not!”

“It’s okay,” Nurse Hamilton says, looking concerned. “It just means you’ve hidden it somewhere else.”

“There is no somewhere else,” he says, and they can hear voices in the hallway coming back towards them. “She died in here,” he says. “Right there on the floor. He said my office was just how I left it, but it’s not, because when I left it Sandra was dead right there,” he says, pointing at the floor, “and when I look there hard enough I can see her. I can see all the blood,” he says, then looks at the shirt. Was shooting Sandra a formal occasion? Did he dress up for it? “I need the journal to know . . . to know I didn’t . . .” he says, then he tries to reach deeper into the hole, jamming his shoulder against the floor so hard that it hurts. “I need to know I didn’t do this.”

“It’s okay, Jerry,” Nurse Hamilton says, and she rests the shirt on the arm of the couch and walks towards him.

“It’s not okay,” he tells her, and he can remember sitting in this room writing up a storm, writing up a world of storms, all those words . . . why the hell can’t he remember the journal?

He pulls his arm out. He slumps against the desk. Terrance is back, and with him Eric. “How you getting on there, buddy?” Eric asks.

“We need to pull up the rest of the floor,” Jerry says, and gets to his feet. Pulling up the floor is exactly what they need to do. The journal will be under there, then he can find out who really killed his wife, because it couldn’t have been him. Couldn’t have been. Then he and Henry can figure out together what they’re going to do to that guy. “Gary, we need more screwdrivers and some pry bars,” he says, and when nobody reacts, he stars clapping his hands. “Come on, people, we need to get to work!”

“Umm . . .” Terrance says, and then looks to Nurse Hamilton.

“I used to rip apart houses and put them back together for a living,” Jerry says. “This will be a breeze,” he says, but nobody moves. What in the hell is wrong with them?

“We need to go,” Nurse Hamilton says. “Perhaps Terrance can look after we’re gone?”

“Who the hell is Terrance?” Jerry asks.

“I’m Terrance,” Terrance says. “Or Terry, for short.”

Jerry shakes his head. “You’re Gary. Unless . . .” Then it all makes sense. “He’s lying! If he’s lying about his name, then he’s lying about the journal!” he says, shouting now. “He found it already! He wants to be just like me! He found it when he reached under a minute ago and threw it out of range! He’s going to steal it!” He understands everything. He is Jerry Grey, a crime writer, a man who can see how things end one third of the way through, and yet he missed this one. “You killed Sandra so you could buy the house cheap!”

“Jerry . . .” Eric says, while Terrance stands still, looking stunned.

“He killed Sandra so he could steal my journal,” Jerry shouts, and then he picks up the screwdriver from the desk. He lunges with it towards Terrance, who jumps back. At the same time Eric reaches into his pocket for the gun, and Jerry realizes it’s not just Terrance that’s in on it, but all these people. They all know what happened here, they all played a part in Sandra’s death, and they’re trying to trick him into believing he did it. “You all killed her. You wanted my house and you wanted my ideas,” he says, and Eric brings his hand out of his pocket and it’s not a gun, but a syringe. They are going to poison him and make it look like a heart attack. He turns towards Eric—he has to take out the biggest threat first, and that’s when there’s a huge weight on his back as his arms are pinned to his side, and he realizes he messed up, that Eric isn’t the biggest threat at all. Nurse Hamilton has him in a bear hug. The woman who is afraid of nothing. He tries to shake her loose, but she’s too strong. Eric steps in and Jerry can see his reflection in the orderly’s glasses. A moment later the needle of the syringe punctures Jerry’s arm. Something warm floods his body, making him immediately tired. His body becomes heavy. He drops the screwdriver. It rolls across the floor and falls into the gap left by the missing floorboard.

“I didn’t see it coming,” he says, and he smiles as the world starts to disappear, and then laughs at the irony of it all. For the first time he couldn’t connect the dots. He closes his eyes and he thinks of his body on the autopsy table, the coroner saying there are no signs of poisoning, the world being led to believe that it was Captain A that took him away.

DAY FIFTY-FOUR

And wasn’t it exciting?

Here are some fun facts for the future. If somebody offers you a dessert, say yes. You are a dessert guy. There are plenty of guys you are not. You are not a car guy, you are not a dog guy, you are not a hip-hop guy, you’re not a sane guy but a dementia guy, and you ARE a dessert guy.