You thought about telling her, but how could you? What could you say? You went and showered and put on some fresh clothes and came back downstairs. Sandra was in the office. There was a sandwich on your desk. She was tidying up, she was picking the jacket up, and while she was picking it up she was asking where your shirt was. Before you could lie and tell her you didn’t know, she hung the jacket over her arm. She paused. The weight told her something was in there.

Since you’re a Let’s guess what happens a third of the way through guy, then you already know it was the knife she found in there. It was loose in the pocket, blade pointing up, and she was lucky not to have cut herself. She pulled it out and held it away, the same way she does sometimes when she’s holding hair she just pulled out of the shower drain. You could both see it wasn’t one of your kitchen knives and you could both see the blood on it and you could both see the horror on each other’s face. This knife with a blade no longer than six inches, its dark wooden handle, its serrated edge, this little knife that was the biggest knife in the world.

What the hell is this, Jerry?

Seeing that knife told you that as bad as the WMD had been, you had managed to top it. It put the bloody shirt into a different context.

Jerry?

I don’t know.

You don’t know?

You were standing in the doorway with hair dripping wet even though you had gotten dressed, and then you realized all of you was dripping wet. At first you thought it was sweat, but then you realized you hadn’t dried yourself after the shower, that you had just put your clothes straight on. I don’t know.

Stop saying you don’t know. Please, Jerry, think. You need to think. Thishas blood on it, she said. It’s blood!

We don’t know that, you said, hoping it might be something else. Maybe sauce. Maybe paint. Whatever was on the knife was probably the same stuff you got on your shirt. Something that looked like blood but certainly wasn’t.

It’s blood, she said.

I don’t know, you said, and you said it a few times, over and over.

While you said it Sandra had her own words that she said over and over, and hers were, What have you done, Jerry, what have you done?

What have you done?

Sandra wants to call the police. You’ve begged her not to, after all, nothing was certain, everything was unknown. She called Eva instead and asked her how her lunch went, and asked if anybody else hadn’t shown up. Everybody was accounted for. Even Rick’s best man who had put the video online, and if you were going to stab anybody to death it would have been him.

It should have been him.

Sandra agreed she wouldn’t call the police. Not at that stage. But she would, if anything showed up on her radar.

You called Hans. You told him everything about the shirt, the knife, the blood. He said you probably just found the knife somewhere. It was actually a really simple explanation. He said the blood could be from anywhere, from a cow, a dog, or maybe it wasn’t even blood.

There’s no point in worrying about something you can’t know about, he said. Worry if you learn more, but until then, just try to act normal, he said, and you could picture him using his fingers to make quotation marks around the normal part, the same way people will be doing at your trial during their Jerry used to be normal cross-examinations.

I don’t remember any of it.

There’s nothing to remember, he said, or words to that effect. You don’t know whether he was being vague, or whether he feared the worst.

Is it possible you just found the knife somewhere, like he said?

Good news—really? You think there’s good news?

Bad news—the bloody shirt, the bloody knife, is it possible you’re more than just a dessert guy?

Jerry is getting off the couch when a photograph of him is shown on the TV, his name beneath it. The reporter says, “Jerry Grey, who became an Internet sensation last year with video of him giving a speech at his daughter’s wedding, has been linked to the crime scene by an anonymous source.” Then Internet Sensation Jerry Grey shows up on the TV calling his wife a whore, his daughter and her new husband looking shocked in the background of the slightly shaky footage, and the hit counter keeps ticking over.

Jerry Grey. Shot to fame.

Jerry Grey. Shot his wife.

Somebody will write a song or a TV movie about him.

He sits back down as the wedding footage ends and then it’s back to today’s crime scene, cops moving around in the background, somebody in a suit carrying a fat metal briefcase, somebody with a camera hanging around their neck while they reach into a bag for a different lens. Today’s field reporter has the look of a working-class man, sleeves rolled up and no tie, and that makes the news far more real, so jaw-droppingly urgent this man didn’t have time to put on a jacket or a tie or even shave. He looks into the camera and carries on talking.

“Details are sketchy, but what appears to be a murder weapon has been located, and evidence at this stage suggests a connection to the former crime writer, which in itself suggests that Grey may now be living inside one of the realities he used to create. Furthermore, a bloody shirt found yesterday at the last residence of Jerry Grey connects him to the homicide of Belinda Murray, a Christchurch florist who was murdered last year, two days before Grey went on to kill his wife. An anonymous source has stated—”

Hans switches off the TV.

Jerry gets to his feet. “Let’s go.”

“We can’t go to the police until we find your journal,” Hans says.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Jerry says.

“Of course it does. If there’s a chance—”

“Fine, then let’s not go to the police. Let’s go for option number three. I want a nice view, some good gin, and I want it to be painless. I just want to escape everything. Can we do that?”

Hans says nothing for a few seconds, then slowly nods. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I know exactly what I’m saying. Will you help me?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I want to talk to Eva first,” Jerry says.

“You can’t tell her.”

“I know. I just want to hear her voice. I want to tell her I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

Hans dials Eva’s number as they walk back through the house. Jerry remembers that Hans has always been good with numbers. If Hans ever gets his own Captain A, numbers will be the last thing to go. Eva answers the phone and Hans tells her that he’s with Jerry, and that Jerry is okay. Then he says yes and no a few times as she fires some questions at him, then he says nothing as she gives him an update of her own, by which point they’re leaning against the car in the garage.

“Okay,” Hans tells her, and then he hands Jerry the phone. He looks like he’s just heard some news that has made all of this even worse. He leaves Jerry by the car and disappears back into the house.

Jerry puts the phone up to his ear. “Eva?”

“Are you okay, Jerry?”

Despite everything, it’s good to hear her voice. “I’m sorry about your mom,” he tells her.

“I know you are,” she says, “and we can talk about that later. I’ll meet you at the police station with your lawyer, okay?”

“Sounds good,” he says, and he pictures her sitting there waiting, waiting, and he never shows up. The nice view, the sun on his face, pills and booze—that’s where he’ll be. There are worse ways to go.