Don’t Trust Hans

A short story by Henry Cutter

Hans could feel his heart hammering in his chest. So hard it made his hands shake as he worked at the lock. Picking locks was one of his things. Shaky hands was not. He was excited, not nervous. You learn to pick a lock . . . well now, it’s like having a key to the world. He once told his friend Jerry that a long time ago. The problem is you don’t get the same feel when you’re wearing gloves—that millimeter of latex numbing the senses and making the tumblers feel half the size they really are. But he knew what he was doing, and it was only a matter of time. Less than two minutes later there was a soft click and something in the lock went slack, then tightened again. His key to the world had worked.

He breathed deep. Nobody could see him. It was a clear night and there was a half-moon hanging right above him, eliminating the need for a flashlight. He could see a million stars, and looking out at them made the night feel timeless, it made him feel tiny. He could taste the air. He opened the door, the interior a black hole the light from the moon couldn’t penetrate. Ever since he saw the girl at Jerry’s house a week ago he knew he had to have her. Knew he had to have some up close and personal time with her. Poor Jerry. He really messed up that wedding. Hans would rather die than go through what his friend was experiencing. Not that he will go through it. That said, there were two things he knew for certain in this world—the first was if you wore new sneakers, people always had to point it out. They can’t help themselves. The second was nobody thinks they’re going to get Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is for grandparents.

It was a modern home made of brick, the kind of home designed to keep out the wolves, but the smart wolves would always find a way in. That was nature. That was evolution. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him and embraced the darkness. He didn’t know the layout, but there were only so many options. He used the display on his cell phone to light the way. He had it on mute in case somebody rang, but who would ring in the middle of the night?

The kitchen was full of modern appliances paid for by love. He had never considered that florists earn the big bucks, but maybe they did. Maybe each Valentine’s Day paid for the next big thing, people getting second mortgages on their houses to be able to afford a dozen roses. There was a knife block on the bench. He had his choice. He could do plenty of damage with any of them. He knew bigger was better when it came to telling women what to do, but he also knew in the right hands it wasn’t the size that mattered. He chose a knife with a six-inch blade. Half the size of his cock, he wanted to say, but there was no one to listen.

Hans carried the knife into the hallway. He stood motionless. He’d always had the ability to tell if a house was empty, and if it wasn’t he could get a sense of where the occupants were. This occupant was in the bedroom. He made his way there. The door was open. The only light was coming from a digital alarm clock. He stood in the doorway and listened to her breathing. His hands were still shaking. He was the wolf.

The wolf did what he went there to do, all the close up and personal stuff that left the girl with her eyes lifelessly open and her body temperature dropping. When he was done, he made his way out of the house and into the backyard. He was smiling. The moment he had shared with the florist would be something he would never forget—not like his loser friend Jerry, who could have a hundred moments like this and not remember one of them. What a waste. He had felt his phone vibrate a few times over the last couple of hours, and he checked it now and hell, speak of the devil, he had a voice mail from Jerry waiting for him. Three messages, in fact. Jerry had done that wandering thing again where he gets confused and lost, and this time he had gone back to the house he used to live in thirty years ago. He needed help, and he wasn’t going to get that from his wife, not after what he had said about her at the wedding. He wanted Hans to come and get him.

Hans thought about it as he made his way back to the car. And the more he thought about it, the more he began to see an opportunity. He had been careful not to leave any evidence behind—he knew how to clean up a crime scene, but of course sometimes you just got unlucky. If the police had a solid suspect that wasn’t him . . . well now, wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing. He rang Jerry back.

Jerry was happy to hear from him. He told Jerry he would be there soon, and to meet him outside once he pulled up. The key was to be subtle. He had learned that from Jerry’s books. The key was to make Jerry come to the conclusion he himself was a killer. The key was to make Jerry try to hide the evidence, which would only serve to make him look guiltier. Hans still had the knife. It didn’t have his prints on it. The plan had been to dump it into a deep hole forever, but now the plan was changing. Evolving. It was survival of the fittest, and Jerry’s days were over. What did it matter if the world thought he was a killer?

He drove to the house where Jerry was waiting. Not much had changed in the thirty years since he was last here, or maybe it had and he just didn’t give a shit. He parked outside the old house and Jerry came walking down the pathway to the car with that stupid dopey look Jerry has these days. The I’m confused and don’t know what the hell is going on look. There was an overweight woman watching from the doorway and that was a loose end, but not one he felt needed taking care of immediately. He would see where things went.

Jerry climbed into the car, thanked him, and then . . . then nothing. His friend was switching off again, wasn’t he?

“Jerry? Hey, Jerry, are you with me?”

Jerry wasn’t with him. Jerry was walking the fields and shitting in the woods of Batshit County, population: Jerry.

He drove the rest of the way to Jerry’s house, but pulled up twenty yards short. He didn’t want to risk waking Sandra. He climbed out of the car and came around to Jerry’s side. His friend was in a state somewhere between consciousness and sleep. He allowed Hans to lead him to the house. Hans could feel Jerry switch into some kind of automatic mode. He climbed through the office window and sat on the couch. At that point Hans could do anything he wanted, so what he did was sit down and think things through. He went out to the car and brought in the murder weapon. Jerry was asleep. He wiped blood from the knife onto Jerry’s shirt, then dropped the knife into the pocket of Jerry’s jacket after putting Jerry’s prints all over it.

Then he left. He felt sure Sandra would be calling the police by the end of the day. She would see Jerry’s shirt covered in blood. She would find the knife. She would turn in her husband. Hell, maybe Jerry would kill his wife too, and that’d be the icing on the cake because the bitch never has liked Hans. It was about time Jerry was useful for something.

Useful Jerry. That’s who he is now. He flicks back through the story, a story he can’t remember writing, a story Henry went and penned all by himself. His heart is hammering again, it hammers hard then skips a few beats and then hammers some more. He feels light-headed.

It’s a story, he thinks. Just a story, prefaced with the words A short story. It doesn’t say A short essay. It doesn’t say A witness statement. It says short story, because it’s fiction, because it’s made up, because that’s what he and Henry do—they are makeup artists. And in this case, one of those makeup artists has gotten carried away with things, but that’s Henry’s thing, the same way Hans’s thing is picking locks (maybe) and killing women (maybe) and how Jerry is a dessert guy (definitely). But it’s also Henry’s thing to find the truth in a lie. It could have gone that way. Jerry could have woken, found himself wearing the shirt Hans had bloodied, then hidden it before going back to sleep. Or none of it happened. He killed the florist and he killed his wife and the Alzheimer’s is trying to protect him from the truth.