Want to take a guess as to what was under there?

Nothing. That’s right. Nothing.

You found the spray can later that night. It was where you hide the writing backups, next to the gin and the gun.

They drive to the hospital without any more barbecue conversation. Mayor sits cradling his hand and Jerry stares out the window, his mind tense, his anger hot, his pain deep. His face is wet with tears. Being told you’ve done something and having no memory is like being told black is white and up is down. They’ve told him Sandra is dead, but she can’t be dead because he’d know it. Even if he doesn’t remember killing her, he would at least sense her absence from the world. They have been married twenty-five years. He can clearly remember his conversation with Eva last week on the beach. She said Sandra had left him. Things had gotten too difficult. Sandra wasn’t dead—the weight of Jerry’s sickness had been too much for her, and she had left rather than let it crush her.

At the hospital Mayor gets out of the car and throws angry looks at Jerry as he makes his way inside, and Jerry guesses he can’t blame him. He walks with his hand held against his chest, protecting it as if it were a small bird. Then it’s just Jerry and Chris, and Jerry says nothing as they make the five-minute drive from the hospital to the police station parking lot. They take an elevator up to the fourth floor. It all looks vaguely familiar, and Jerry suspects he’s been here before, that at some point in his career he must have been curious enough about the police station to ask for a tour. Write what you know, and fake the rest. He wonders how many books he faked this place in, then he remembers he was here last week, that it’s from here Eva came and picked him up. He’s led to an interrogation room. Chris undoes the handcuffs and Jerry starts massaging his wrists.

“You want something to drink?” Chris asks.

“A gin and tonic would be great.”

“Sure thing, Jerry. I’ll bring you one right away. Would you like anything else? You want a small umbrella in it?”

Jerry thinks about it. “Sure, if you’ve got them.”

Chris places the photograph of Belinda Murray on the table, then leaves the room. Jerry knows what’s going on—he’s put enough fictional people into this situation before to know they’ll let him sweat in here for a while, before hitting him with a round of good cop, bad cop. Fifteen minutes later he’s still alone and sitting down. Maybe they’re waiting for Mayor to have his fingers set. Maybe they’re going to wait for the bone to knit back together and for Easter to roll around. His lawyer hasn’t arrived. His gin and tonic hasn’t arrived. He tries the door and finds that it’s locked. He paces the room a few times then sits back down and stares at the photograph of a woman he’s never seen before until today, and he wonders why it is they think he killed her, and if she was involved with his daughter’s wedding then of course he wouldn’t know her—all that stuff was taken care of by Sandra and Eva.

Then the door opens up and a man Jerry has never seen before comes in and sits opposite and says his name is Tim Anderson and that he’s his lawyer. They shake hands. Tim is in his midfifties with silver hair slicked back on the sides and flattened on top. He’s wearing glasses that make his eyes look smaller, like looking backwards though a pair of binoculars, and has a summer tan even though it’s spring, which means it’s either paid for or he’s just back from an overseas holiday. He has a nice suit and a nice watch, and Jerry figures that means he gets paid well, and that probably means he’s good at his job.

“What happened to your eye?” Tim asks.

“I was hoping for my usual lawyer.”

Tim has his briefcase open and is pulling out a pad when Jerry says that. He stops in midmovement and stares at him. He looks concerned. “I am your usual lawyer,” he says. “That answers my question as to whether you recognize me.”

Jerry shrugs. “Don’t take it personally.”

Tim puts the pad on the table. He puts a pen next to it. Then he puts the briefcase on the floor and interlocks his fingers and leans his elbows on the desk and his chin on his knuckles. “I’ve been your lawyer for fifteen years.”

“I’m sorry,” Jerry says, shaking his head a little. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

“That’s why I’m here, Jerry, to get things cleared up,” Tim says, and he shifts the pad a little closer and picks up the pen. “Tell me everything you remember, starting with that lump under your eye. Who hit you?”

Jerry tells him everything he can about the two policemen, how they think he killed the girl in the photograph. He tells him about the car ride, getting handcuffed and punched along the way. He tells him they’re trying to convince him Sandra is dead, and then stares silently at the lawyer, waiting for a confirmation he doesn’t want, and that confirmation comes in the way his lawyer drops his pen, sighs, and looks down at his hands for a few seconds.

“I’m afraid that it’s true, Jerry. Did they tell you how?”

This time the news isn’t as big a shock, but it is just as hard to hear. He opens his mouth only to find he can’t answer.

Tim carries on. “She was shot. You . . . you didn’t know what you were doing,” he says. “It’s why you’re in a nursing home and not in jail. You weren’t of sound mind enough to stand trial. It was an awful, awful thing, and nobody is to blame.”

Jerry thinks that’s a stupid thing to say. Nobody to blame? So what, the gun just magically appeared in the house, just magically pointed itself at Sandra and went off? He knows who is to blame. It was Captain A. These people have known about Sandra’s death for a year, but for him the news is fresh. For him she’s only been dead half an hour. He puts his hands over his face and cries into them. The world goes dark. He thinks about Sandra, the good times, and there are no bad times—there never were. All those smiles, all the times they’ve laughed, made love, held hands. His chest feels tight. The world without Sandra is a world he doesn’t want to be in. He doesn’t know how he can cope without her, even though he has for the last year, though that wasn’t coping. That was forgetting. He pushes away from the table and throws up on the floor, the vomit splashing and hitting his shoes. His lawyer stays where he is, probably figuring he can’t charge any more than he already is so there’s no point in patting Jerry on the back and telling him everything is going to be okay. No point in risking getting anything gooey on his suit. When Jerry’s done he wipes his arm over his mouth and straightens back up.

“The disease is to blame, not you,” Tim says. “I’m sorry about Sandra, I really am, and I’m sorry about what happened to you, but we have to talk about today. We have to talk about Belinda Murray. Go over again everything that happened today,” he says, and he picks the pen back up and positions it over the notepad.

Jerry shakes his head. The smell of vomit is strong. “First tell me about Sandra.”

“I’m not so sure that’s going to be helpful.”

“Please.”

Tim puts the pen back down and leans back. “We don’t know, not exactly. Do you remember the wedding?”

“No. I mean . . . yes,” he says, and the wedding he can remember, but not what happened to Sandra. He ruined the wedding. “Is that why I killed her? Because of that?”

“Nobody knows. The disease was progressing quickly by that point. By the time the alarms were installed all through the house, you—”

“What alarms?”

“Sometimes you would wander,” he says. “Sandra hid your car keys so at least you couldn’t drive, but you would sneak out of the house and you would disappear, so she had to get them in.”