“Jerry . . . there’s something you need to know.”

He breaks out in a cold sweat and almost drops the phone. Nothing good ever comes after those words.

“The shirt found yesterday, it was—”

“I know,” he tells her. “I saw it on the news.”

“What wasn’t on the news is that the police have been searching your room at the nursing home.” Hans comes back into the garage. He’s carrying two bottles of gin and has a bottle of tonic tucked under his arm. He has a sad look on his face. He climbs into the car. “They found a small envelope with jewelry in it,” Eva says, carrying on.

“Your mother’s?” he asks, and it’s Henry that answers first, using his indoor voice.

Not Sandra’s, no. Remember what you had in your hand when you switched on earlier? He reaches into his pocket and the earrings are still there.

“No, not Mom’s,” Eva says. “But they seem to think . . . it’s . . .” she says, but then she starts crying.

“Eva—”

“I can’t do this. I love you, Jerry, but I can’t do this, I’m so sorry,” she says, and then she’s gone, the line is dead, and Jerry stares at the phone willing her to return, willing for things to be different. He climbs into the car and hands the phone to Hans, who slips it into his pocket.

“She hung up on me.”

“I’m sorry, buddy.”

“The police have been searching my room and they found something.”

“She told me,” Hans says. “The pieces belong to three women, all of whom were killed on days you were found wandering in town. I’m sorry, buddy, but it really . . . well . . . I’m not sure what to say.”

Jerry closes his eyes. How many have there been?

Hans uses the remote to open the garage door. He starts the car and they back down the driveway.

“There’s more,” Hans says.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“One of the orderlies says you told him last night you killed Laura Hunt. She was killed last week in her own home. He said he dismissed what you were saying, that he thought you’d probably seen it on the news and you got mixed up the way you’ve been doing lately. Now, of course, he sees it differently. As do the police. It was the day you were found in the library.”

If people had listened to his confession, they could have stopped the monster. But all they heard was Captain A making shit up.

“You promise you’ll stay with me till the end, right? You’ll make sure everything goes okay?”

“I promise,” Hans says.

Jerry thinks of his Eva, and the pain he is sparing her.

“The journal,” Hans says. “Are you sure about it? Are you absolutely sure you had one?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Where else could you have hidden it?”

Jerry closes his eyes. He pictures his office. He can see the floor, he can see himself prying up one of the boards with a screwdriver. “There was nowhere else.”

“If I were to sneak in there later tonight to look for it, where would I start?”

“You’d do that for me? You’d hide it if there are bad things in there?”

“I’d destroy it. But where would I look, Jerry?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s important,” Hans says.

“I know,” Jerry says, scratching at his arm harder now.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Hans asks.

Jerry looks down to see his nails dragging across his skin. He’s been doing that a lot lately. He rolls up the sleeve of his shirt, exposing the needle mark that looks raw and inflamed. “Everything is wrong with me,” he answers. “Come on, let’s go before we miss the sunset.”

“Show me your arm,” Hans says.

“Why?”

“Because I asked.”

Jerry shows him his arm.

“They’ve been injecting you?” he asks, and they’re still in the driveway.

“Just yesterday, when we went to look for the journal. They had to give me a shot to calm me down. I told you that already. I guess my skin is a little irritated.”

“You’ve got a few other marks there,” he says.

“I don’t remember the other time.”

“They look like they’re faded injection points. They make a habit of injecting the people at the nursing home?”

“I don’t think so. Like I said, they did it yesterday because we were at the house, and—”

Hans shakes his head before interrupting him. “Let me think a moment,” he says, his voice hardening.

“Why?”

“Just shut up. Let me think.”

Jerry shuts up. He lets his friend think. He starts drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. Over and over. Thirty seconds pass. A minute. He stops drumming his fingers. He looks at Jerry.

“There is something that has been bothering me about this all along,” he says. “The nursing home is a long way out of the city. It’s a good fifteen miles. Just how do you think you covered that distance? You didn’t drive, right?”

“I don’t know for sure. I think I walked.”

“It’s a long walk.”

“It’s the only explanation.”

“Do you remember walking?”

“No.”

“So let’s say you did walk. In which case you walked aimlessly all that way to the house of somebody you had never met,” he says. “With your neighbor when you were young, and with the florist, you knew them. Why would you kill people you don’t know? How did you choose them?”

“At random,” Jerry says, because it’s the only senseless answer that makes any kind of sense.

“If it was random, why somewhere close to town? Why not somewhere on the outskirts of town? If you walked, you would have passed through dozens and dozens of other streets. A thousand homes. Two thousand. Why walk fifteen miles to the edge of town, then another five miles to the victim’s house, especially when it’s somebody completely random?”

“I don’t make those decisions,” Jerry says. “That’s Captain A.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Hans says.

“Captain A seldom does.”

Hans starts drumming his fingers again. “All that walking, and then you go up to the door of a house you’ve never seen before, and a woman you don’t know lets you in. You choose the house of a woman who somehow you know is alone. That’s what we’re saying here, right?” Before Jerry can answer, Hans carries on. “Twenty miles between where that woman died and the nursing home, and you’ve got injection marks on your arms. You can remember everything after but nothing before.”

“What are you saying?”

Hans uses the remote control to open the garage door back up. They drive inside. He unclips his seat belt and looks over at Jerry. “I’m saying there’s a reason why it seems so convenient you can’t remember killing any of these women, or breaking into their houses. I’m saying maybe you didn’t do this after all.”

JERRY IS DEAD

Dear Future Jerry. It is now two days past the WMD. It’s hard to say exactly when to call your time of death, but the doctor wiped his forearm across his head, shook his head at the nurse, and walked out of the operating room sometime the night before last, knowing there was nothing more that could be done. That was the night you became a monster. The Jerry you used to be, the Jerry I used to be, he’s gone. All that’s left is this sick, twisted fuck who later today is going to blow his sick, twisted-fuck brains all over the wall. Damn you, Doctor Goodstory for not being able to fix me. Damn you, Past Jerry, for letting go, for giving up, for allowing yourself to become this way. It was your job! Your goddamn job to save us! Where was the fight? Past Jerry from day one and day four and five, you got yourself into this mess. You could have done it, you know. You could have done the world and that poor young girl a favor and put that gun into your mouth back when Doctor Goodstory gave you the news. But no, Past Jerry thought he knew best. For a guy who’s supposed to be able to see where things are going, you really made a mess of this.

People say suicide is a selfish act. They say it’s cowardly. People say these things because they don’t understand. It’s actually the opposite. It’s not cowardly, in fact it takes incredible courage. To stare Death in the face and tell him you’re ready . . . that’s a brave thing. A selfish act would be to hang on to life as you’re dragged through the media and the courts, your family dragged with you. Some will say escaping that is where the selfishness comes in, but that’s not true. Your death right now is like pulling off a Band-Aid—quick pain for your family that will fade. You owe them at least that. Journal. Suicide notes. Drink. Gun. That’s the schedule, partner.