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.
He wishes there was something else he could write, some kind of code to let the police know he’s innocent, but there’s nothing. Jerry signs the confession and slides it back across the desk. While making the addition, Hans has set fire to the short story Henry wrote. The ashes are still drifting onto the carpet. Hans picks it up and reads it. Jerry glances at the knife then looks away. Even if he can get to it, a knife against a gun isn’t much of a battle. He now has the ultimate role as a parent, and that’s to protect his daughter.
“There’s no emotion in here,” Hans says.
“It’s the best I can do.”
Hans nods. He puts down the note. “Here’s what I want you to do for me. I want you to focus, really focus on what I’m going to do to Eva if you try anything other than what we’ve spoken about. You understand me?”
“I understand you.”
“Put your palms flat on the desk,” Hans says.
Jerry does as he’s asked. He knows where this is going. He is, after all, the master of connecting the dots. In twenty seconds he’ll be dead. By tomorrow he will be a confessed killer, and Eva will live with that shame, but at least she will get to live. The Alzheimer’s has taken his life, and Sandra’s, and the women that Eric killed, but he won’t let it take Eva’s.
Hans moves around behind him, coming to a stop behind the chair.
“Keep your left hand on the desk,” he says, “and bring your right hand up to your head. Pretend your fingers are a gun and you’re going to shoot yourself.”
Jerry does as he’s asked. He brings his right hand up, turns his fingers into a barrel and points them against his skull. His hands are shaking. He’s thinking he should have gone for the knife. Should have done something. With everything he’s lost, all those times he thought about killing himself, he’s surprised at how afraid he is to die. Perhaps, if the circumstances were different—
But they’re not different, Henry says.
And final words of advice?
You’re on your own here, buddy.
“You try messing with me and this will go very badly for both you and Eva.”
“I know.”
Hans puts the gun into Jerry’s hand, and at the same time jams the barrel into the side of Jerry’s head. He has both hands wrapped around Jerry’s hand, forcing him to maintain the aim. He closes his eyes. He can feel his finger being forced into the trigger guard. He’s doing the right thing. For Eva. But before he can do anything else, the wireless doorbell starts ringing.
“Somebody is here,” Jerry says, searching again for a way out of this. “If there are others inside sleeping they’re going to wake up. You can’t get away with it.”
“Shut up,” Hans says, and he takes the gun out of Jerry’s hand but keeps it pointing at him.
The doorbell keeps ringing.
“It’s probably the police,” Jerry says. “Somebody saw us break in. Maybe the owners heard us.”
The ringing stops. There is silence for ten seconds. Then there is tapping at the office window.
“You shoot me now,” Jerry says, “and it only makes things worse for you.”
“Shut up,” Hans says, then he moves over to the curtain. There is more tapping, which is then followed by more silence. Hans peers around the corner of the curtain, careful to keep the gun pointing in Jerry’s direction. “It’s your nosy neighbor,” he says. “She’s got a flashlight and that bloody hockey stick she had earlier. Okay, she’s leaving. Wait . . . she’s moving to the back of the house.”
“She’s going to come inside, and I bet she’s called the police. You should go.”
“She won’t be coming inside.”
“I left the key in the back door. She might.”
Hans moves back behind the chair. He points the gun at the door. They wait.
“Don’t shoot her,” Jerry says.
“What do you care? You hated her anyway.”
“Please.”
“Don’t worry, as soon as I’m done you can add a PS, I just shot the neighbor to the bottom of your confession.”
The handle on the office door starts to turn. The door opens, and there she is. Mrs. Smith, standing in the doorway wielding the hockey stick. She takes two steps forward, and Jerry has no idea what kind of scenario she was expecting to walk in on, but it certainly couldn’t have been this one. To her credit, it only takes her a second to sum up the situation.
“Oh,” she says, and she must really like the sound of it because she says it again. Any other person would be caught between fleeing and running, Jerry thinks, but not Mrs. Smith, the woman whose garden he vandalized, whose house he graffitied. Mrs. Smith who has been a constant pain in his ass since the day he moved in. Where others might flee, or be paralyzed by shock, she comes forward, perhaps thinking she can cover the distance quick enough, perhaps thinking the man with the tattoos won’t really open fire on a woman older than the sun, perhaps thinking the very idea of a wrongdoing is so offensive she must challenge it.
Hans pulls the trigger.
The gunshot is instant. It’s loud, a booming in the room that makes Jerry’s ears ring so painfully that instinct takes over and he puts both palms over his ears. Mrs. Smith doesn’t do that. Instead she takes two steps forward as if refusing to believe she’s been shot before coming to a stop. She looks down at her body where there is no sign at all of any damage, as if the bullet has gone through without harming her, or perhaps it completely missed. But then blood appears just below her chest. She drops to her knees, her face scrunches up into a tight ball, and she uses the hockey stick to prop herself up. She tries to get back onto her feet.
“How dare you,” she says.
Hans pulls the trigger again.
And the gun goes click.
“What the fuck?” Hans says, and Jerry knows exactly what’s happened, that when he kept spinning the chamber all those months ago as he sat next to Sandra, the bullets got out of sequence. Right now the firing pin has landed on the empty shell, the one that used to contain the bullet that killed his wife. Hans turns the gun to the side so he can look at it, as if the problem will be visible, and as he does this Henry speaks up. Now, he screams, the word inside Jerry’s head almost as loud as the gunshot, so loud, in fact, that Jerry knows he too is shouting out the word.