“It’s a journal,” Jerry says, “and yes.”

“Why did you rip them out?” When Jerry doesn’t answer, Hans starts to smile. He carries on. “You don’t remember ripping them out, do you?”

“I think Henry tore them out.”

“What?”

Jerry doesn’t feel like explaining it. But he thinks Henry was tearing them out because Henry was just as crazy as Jerry, and when you’re the king of Mount Crazy, you do things that don’t make sense. Maybe Henry was trying to protect him somehow. Maybe Henry tore them out because he knew the journal would end up in the wrong hands. He had to save what he thought was important. Whatever the reason, Jerry thinks it doesn’t really matter. Not now. Not when there’s a loaded gun pointing at him.

Instead of answering Hans, he asks again what happened with Sandra.

“We were in your office,” Hans says. “The gun was still on your desk. You asked me again about the blood on the shirt. You told me Sandra had spoken to the nurse. You and Sandra were confused because the events didn’t line up. The nurse hadn’t seen blood on your shirt, and the time of death for the florist suggested you were innocent. You went to the office door to call to Sandra, and as soon as your back was to me I injected you in the neck. A few seconds later you were out cold. I laid you on the couch, then just waited until Sandra came in. She rushed over to you and I closed the door behind her. She looked up at me and I could tell she had figured it out. She had that same look on her face you had a few minutes ago.”

“You asked her what she knew?”

“There was no point. I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew that she knew. One shot to the chest, that’s all it took. Soundproofing really is a wonderful thing, Jerry.”

Jerry can feel himself coming apart at the seams. All of this started that night at the party when he said this is my wife . . . and couldn’t remember Sandra’s name. That image is as clear as it was the day it happened. It means that right now he’s having the worst good day he’s had since being diagnosed. The disease allowed him to forget Sandra’s name, it allowed Hans and Eric to take advantage of him. Sandra, dead because of an illness for which there is no cure. All of this because the Universe is punishing him. But what for? If not for killing, then for what? The answer comes to him quickly. It’s because he did the one thing he swore he would never do—he based a character on a real person. Suzan with a z. She was a real person with a real family and real feelings, and he betrayed that. He turned what happened to her into a story. He wrote about it for entertainment.

“You’re a monster,” Jerry says.

The knife. Go for the knife.

But if he goes for it, and fails, then Eva is the one who pays.

“Maybe,” Hans says. “But hey, we did have a good time today, right? We did get a killer off the street.”

“Is that why we hung him out the window? Because you wanted to kill him?”

“We had to, buddy. He’d seen my face. Despite everything, Jerry, I really was trying to help you there.”

“Why? Because you didn’t want somebody else framing me for their crimes? Was this some sort of twisted contest?”

“Partly,” he says. “Well, mostly. And before you ask about his wife, she’s not going to remember anything, clearly. But Nurse Mae, well, that’s one loose end I’m going to have to tie up.”

“You don’t have to hurt her.”

“We’ll see.”

“All that stuff about the police going easy on us, that was bullshit,” Jerry says.

“Just write the note, Jerry. And don’t mention Suzan. We don’t want to complicate the issue. Now hurry up before I change my mind and decide to go and pay Eva a visit. And make sure you sell it. You’re not writing to save your own life, you’re writing to save your daughter’s.”

My Confession

By Jerry Grey

My name is Jerry Grey. I’m a crime writer, I’m a killer, I’m a deeply flawed individual. This is my confession.

There are so many things I want to say. First and foremost, I want to apologize to my family. I wish I could tell Sandra how sorry I am, but what’s done is done, it was done by me, and there’s no going back. I shot you, Sandra, because you found out what kind of man I really am. If you’re somewhere now in the afterlife, I imagine I will be in a much different version.

The truth is, my entire life I have had needs I’ve been able to keep in check, only occasionally letting my true self out to play, hurting women on those occasions. But when the Alzheimer’s came along, it wiped my impulse control. Those women over the last few weeks, they didn’t die at my hands. Eric murdered them and there is enough evidence at his house to prove that. I killed him, and in a way I hope it helps balance the scales for the others.

Last year, on the night of Eva’s wedding, I snuck out of my house and I walked to Belinda Murray’s house. From the moment I first saw her I became infatuated. There was something about her. Something that made me feel alive. I walked to her house, and I picked the lock on her back door. Picking locks and covering up crime scenes, these are things I’ve learned from reading and research and writing. But I don’t want to cover up crime scenes anymore. I just want the world to know what happened because I’m tired of lying, and soon I won’t be able to lie anyway. I killed Belinda Murray because I wanted to, because I knew it would feel good, and it did.

I’ve come back to the place where it all started. I guess it’s here where Passenger A first climbed on board, just catching a lift until finally being promoted to captain. It’s here where I raised Eva, had a life with Sandra, it’s here where the books were written, where Sandra died, and where I will die. I’ve come back to look for my Madness Journal, but it isn’t here, and I remember now, I remember destroying it after I killed Sandra. I had confessed in there what I had done, so I tore out the pages and I tore them into shreds and I flushed them away. Back then I was confused.

Now I’m more clearheaded than I’ve been in a long time.

This isn’t just a confession. This is also my suicide note.

I’m not killing myself because I’m a bad man. I’m not killing myself because I’m a monster. I’m killing myself because I’m already forgetting the people I’ve hurt. The fantasy, thinking about Belinda, about shooting Sandra, that’s what gets me through the days. Without those thoughts, I have nothing. I would rather die than forget how it feels to kill.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

Jerry slides the pages across the desk. Hans grabs them and sits back on the couch. He reads through it, glancing up every few seconds to make sure Jerry isn’t making a break for it. When he’s done he moves back to the desk and hands the pages back.

“You can do better,” Hans says.

“It’s good enough,” Jerry says.

“You don’t even apologize to your family. You don’t tell them that you love them. Add that and sign it and maybe then we’re done.”

Jerry picks up the pen. Everybody is a critic, he thinks, but then realizes Hans has a point. He can remember writing similar letters in the past. One to Sandra, one to Eva, letters he wrote from the heart when he thought he was a killer and he thought saying good-bye was doing them a favor. But he can’t capture that mood now. At the bottom he writes

I wish I could turn back the clock. Despite all my actions, I love my family. I love my wife, I love my daughter, and I would do anything to have them back. Anything. Eva, I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I wish there was some way to ask for your forgiveness.