Writing about her wasn’t enough, which is why you went over and ripped out every single rose in her garden, roses she was so proud of. She was there every day checking on them, her husband ten years in the grave and all things considered, that made him one lucky bastard.

Another neighbor—some old tart who turned a hundred years old the same year the Titanic sank—saw you, and you thought . . . well . . . you thought why not do what Henry Cutter always does? And kill people off? But tearing out roses is a long way from tearing out throats, and killing people is only for the books—but you’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t admit there was a moment, albeit a very brief one, where you imagined her bleeding to death on the ground, her face riddled with confusion and pain. But that didn’t happen, and no doubt she’ll tell Mrs. Smith that she saw you, but the thing is you don’t really care. What’s the worst that can happen? You already have Alzheimer’s. Who cares if she calls the police and you have to pay a fine. It’ll be worth every penny.

When Mrs. Smith comes over later, just smile at her, and tell her how much fun you had ruining her pride and joy. Then laugh at her, because the one thing people hate in life is being laughed at.

So there you go, Madness Journal. Another bullshit day out of the way on this road to . . . hell, I don’t know.

Jerry places the journal entry down. His first thought is that he has no recollection of having ever written it, certainly not from Henry’s POV. His second is that Henry is a complete asshole. Was Henry more than just a pen name? Did he actually become Henry when he sat at the keyboard? Jerry begins to understand his critics a little better but is baffled by how he ended up becoming an internationally bestselling author. Not with this guy at the wheel.

He hopes Henry wasn’t actually at the wheel.

Surely not. Sandra would never have lived with him.

The same way she never would have married a killer?

Well, that’s what they are here to prove.

Or disprove. I don’t like that you think of me as an asshole, especially when all I’m doing is trying to help you.

Jerry looks back at the pages. Henry never existed, not in the beginning, but perhaps the Alzheimer’s gave birth to him. Perhaps Henry grew enough to occasionally take control. There’s no other way to explain the journal.

“Can I have the journal?” he asks Hans.

Hans doesn’t look up as he keeps on reading it. “I’m not done with it.”

“Just for a minute. I want to check something.”

Now Hans looks over. “About the day Sandra died?”

“Something in the beginning.”

Hans seems to think about it, and Jerry is suddenly sure his friend is about to say no, but then he relents and tosses it over. “Make it quick,” he says.

Jerry flicks through to day thirty-eight, but there is no day thirty-eight. There’s a day forty. Before day forty are the torn edges in the margin where pages have been removed. His concern about being Henry becomes concern for the other things he’s done, the ultimate concern being Henry is the one who killed Sandra. He flicks back to the first page. He can actually remember sitting at his desk writing some of this stuff. Day one. Your name is Jerry Grey, and you are scared. . . . You lost your phone yesterday, and last week you lost your car, and recently you forgot Sandra’s name. Day four. You won’t be able to hold Sandra’s hand and watch her smile. You won’t be able to chase Eva and pretend you’re a grizzly bear. 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. Day thirty. There’s a couch in the office. The Thinking Couch. You’ll lie there sometimes and come up with ideas for the books, work on solutions, lie there and listen to Springsteen cranked so loud the pens will roll off the desk. Then day forty, and here Past Jerry has no memory at all of what he’s done to Mrs. Smith’s roses, and that’s because it wasn’t Past Jerry who tore them out, but Past Henry. He used to think Sandra was tearing the pages out, but no, it was him. Or Henry. One of them was tearing them out to protect him, to keep the bad things he was doing a secret.

He scans through more pages. The truth is in there, other bad things, and suddenly he knows without a doubt that he didn’t kill Sandra. It was Henry. Henry Cutter, writer of words, destroyer of lives.

He tosses the journal back to Hans.

“What is it you’re reading there?” Hans asks.

“Just some notes,” Jerry says, and he goes back to the loose pages, of which there are another dozen or so. There are more things he has done here as Henry. The whole thing with the spray-paint—that was Henry. He wrote about it before doing it. He had the can of spray-paint on his desk when he was writing the entry. He was getting ready to walk out the door and sneak across the street, and oh how he was looking forward to it. He knew Mrs. Smith would suspect him, but he didn’t care. He would deny it. He would suggest she leave the neighborhood because somebody seemed to have it in for her.

That’s what Henry wrote.

And where the hell was Jerry then?

He carries on reading. Henry develops a crush on the florist. A few days before the wedding he decides to sneak out the window to go and see her. Jerry remembers that day. Not sneaking out the window, but he remembers being at the flower shop, the woman who helped him, who drove him home, the woman who died the night of the wedding.

It’s looking like Henry isn’t a dessert guy, but a rape and murder guy.

There are more pages. The truth is so powerful it hurts, his head feels tight, the horror and the anger at what he has done is swelling inside him, his brain feels like it’s going to pop. Here’s an entry titled WMD Plus a Bunch of Hours Plus Don’t Trust Hans Plus a Bunch of Other Shit. It starts with Henry waking up on the couch with blood all over his shirt. He checks his body for cuts, he counts his fingers and toes, and comes to the conclusion the blood isn’t his. He suspects it might have been from his neighbor, he says My first thought is the silly old trout from over the road, that she’s come over and asked me to trim back the hedges and instead I’ve trimmed back her arms and legs, sculpting her body back to a limbless blob.

He checks on Sandra. She’s fine. Then he hides the shirt under the floorboards where spiders and mice can eat it over the next hundred years. Henry can remember speaking to Nurse Mae earlier in the evening, but not what they spoke about. He says it’s like looking through fog.

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.