Eyes Wide Open

by Andrew Gross

  I knew there was no one else here I could count on. What I’d said in that TV interview had surely taken care of that. Just people with zero interest in reversing their findings. On a case that had already been put to bed.

  And now I was implying the so-called suicide was tied into a horrific, decades-old crime.

  “You said you’d look into it,” I said, kind of desperate.

  “I said I might look into it. And for the record, I did.”

  “You did?” That took me by surprise. “And you didn’t find anything?”

  “Tying Walter Zorn to your nephew? No. At least, not anything rational,” he said, sinking back in his chair. “Nothing any sane person would respond to . . .”

  “So try me. What did you find?”

  Sherwood gave me another grudging smile. He rubbed his jaw. Not in discomfort; more in exasperation or dismay. “There were possible markings on the victim’s body that brought back something familiar . . .”

  “Familiar?”

  “To something related to your nephew. Something we found on him. If you chose to look at it that way.”

  “Now you’re kind of sounding like me,” I said, holding back a smile. “What kind of markings are we talking about? And familiar how?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. It’s one of the details not released to the public yet.”

  “For God’s sake, Sherwood, I’m a doctor. I think I understand about confidentiality. I’m not going to divulge anything.”

  “Just like you didn’t to that reporter?”

  “I know. I get it. I screwed up. Look, I’m sorry,” I said, imploring, “but this is about Evan, detective, not me . . .”

  He looked at me a long time. Then he said, as if against his better instincts, “There were knife wounds . . .”

  “Knife wounds? I thought the cause of death was strangulation?”

  “Think of this as a kind of asterisk. And if that gets out, I’ll boot your ass back to Westchester so fast you won’t need a plane.”

  “Knife wounds . . . ,” I said, nodding that I got the message. “You said they were familiar. Familiar how?”

  “You remember that plastic bag I handed back to your brother? With your nephew’s personal effects in it?”

  I nodded. I thought back to what was in it. A few dollars, some loose change, a key chain . . .

  Then it hit me. “That plastic hologram . . . ,” I said. Our gazes met. “An eye? The markings on Zorn resembled an eye!”

  Sherwood shrugged without a change in his expression. “If you wanted to see it that way.”

  “And how did you see it?” I stared back, suddenly feeling vindicated.

  In his gray, noncommittal eyes, I could see the slightest giving in.

  Sonovabitch . . . I felt a surge rush up in me. He’s beginning to have misgivings too!

  “Look,” he said, pushing back, “I’m a coroner’s detective, not homicide. I don’t solve crimes any longer. I just see if they warrant an investigation. And this one is about as flimsy as it gets. Beyond flimsy! This Miguel Estrada kid says Zorn and your nephew were talking. You find something in your brother’s past that connects him and Zorn. Three decades ago. There are knife marks on the victim that kind of resemble something we found on your nephew. They’d laugh me out of the squad room.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “Yeah.” He chuckled. “I know. That’s my problem.”

  “Can I see them?” I asked. “These knife marks.”

  “Not in the cards.”

  “I just thought it might help. To confirm what you thought you saw. So where were they?” I asked. “On the body?”

  Sherwood picked up and tapped his pencil. “On the underside of the victim’s tongue.”

  “Oh . . .” The feeling snaked through me that I had stepped in something bad. Houvnanian. His victims carved with symbols. Blood all over the walls. Zorn.

  Charlie.

  “You have to look into this, Sherwood.”

  He pushed the articles back to me. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, doc.”

  “Someone, maybe this woman, Susan Pollack, may have had something to do with Evan’s death.”

  “There’s nothing tying her into anything, doc. Your nephew still went up on the rock. He jumped off. Or damn well fell while attempting to.” He looked at me unwaveringly.

  “You told me no one would talk to me over at homicide. And maybe no one gives a shit about Evan,” I said, “but they damned well might give one about Zorn.”

  “Look . . .” He glanced at his watch. “I got things to do. And you, you’re supposed to be on a plane. Right?”

  I looked back at him unwaveringly. “You really think I’m going anywhere until this is resolved?”

  The detective stared at me a long time before he threw the pencil back on his desk and shook his head. “Anyone ever tell you, doc, you make it awfully hard for someone to like you?”

  I shrugged. “My wife says it all the time.”

  He stood up and grabbed his jacket. “Yeah, well your wife knows what she’s talking about on this one.”

  I said I’d call him the next day. And the day after that. Until he looked into the possibility of what those cuts meant.

  And until he checked out Susan Pollack.

  “I know, I know . . . ,” I said with a smile. “Don’t wait by the phone.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kathy called when I got in the car. I had just pushed off a procedure on the daughter of a friend. Now I was pushing for a few days more. Her patience was running thin. Mine might have been too, if the situation was reversed.

  “It’s time to come home, Jay.”

  I didn’t answer for a second. I wasn’t exactly sure how to. “I can’t, Kath. I just can’t.”

  “What the hell is going on out there, Jay? This is beginning to scare me a little now. I’m sorry about what happened to Evan. My heart goes out to Charlie and Gabby. It really does . . . But people need you here. It’s time to come back.”

  “I can’t, Kath.” I sucked in a sharp breath without explaining.

  “You can’t?” There was an edge to her tone.

  I pulled the car over to the side of the road. “I’ve just found out a few things. And it’s hard to explain. Especially right now.”

  “Well, try, Jay. Try! You’ve been there almost a week. So please, try . . .”

  There was about the toughest silence I’d ever felt pass between us. Maybe twenty seconds, but it felt like an eternity.

  I wanted to say, I love you, honey. You know that. I need you. Especially right now.

  But I just can’t tell you.

  Until I knew for sure.

  I saw something starting to open up. Something only I saw. Something only I could put together.

  I flashed to Russell Houvnanian. To the time he’d been up to my dad’s.

  And then to Evan. The flashing “eye” they had found in his pocket. The eerie knife marks on Walter Zorn’s tongue.

  And finally to something I’d held back, from Charlie, from Sherwood.

  And now, even from my wife.

  The image of someone staring at me from their car the other night outside Charlie’s apartment. Their face obscured by the darkened glass.

  I didn’t know for sure, but it all added up to me. Maybe only to me.

  I thought I’d seen Susan Pollack.

  And if I had, I knew what it meant.

  It meant my nephew Evan had been murdered.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Charlie didn’t know what to do with the photos of Sherry’s gruesome murder.

  He’d hidden them away—at the bottom of a drawer, with all his old music. And Evan’s sneaker.

  He didn’t show them to Gabriella. They would only make her more distraught.

  And he didn’t know what to make of them anyway. Or what they meant. Why would someone want to harm her? She was someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly. It was a message. After all these ye
ars. A message for him.

  But what troubled him most was how they had even known where to find him.

  His mind was jumbled, running wild with crazy thoughts and long-buried fears. Images he couldn’t put together or stop. The unsettling feeling that the walls of the past were closing in on him.

  He was tired of hiding all these years. Tired of the fears, the guilt, the shame. Of having to protect his family.

  From what?

  Zorn knew of Evan. The old detective had played a role in Charlie’s past, more than thirty years before.

  And Sherry—blond, sexy, free-as-a-butterfly Sherry—she was a part of that dark past too.

  He sat there on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, afraid of where it was all going. Poor Evan . . . How he wished he could have him back. What hope was left for them now? Charlie knew his part would catch up with him someday. But Evan . . . Evan had been innocent. His innocent little boy.

  Yet it had sucked him in too . . .

  Charlie had let it.

  And now the walls were closing in.

  He went downstairs. Gabby was calling for the cat, putting out her food. “Here, Juliet. Here, my baby . . .” She noticed Charlie. “The stupid cat is missing. I haven’t seen her all day. Maybe she misses Evan. Maybe she knows there’s nothing here for her anymore.”

  “Maybe it’s time we moved on,” Charlie said, out of the blue.

  “Move on?” His words surprised her.

  “Yes.” He was excited now. The thought of packing up and starting a new life seemed right. “Maybe we ought to get out of here . . . Go back to Miami. Or Vancouver. We know people there.”

  “Vancouver . . . ?” Gabby chortled derisively. “Are you crazy, Charlie? That was twenty years ago. We just lost our son. We live on what the state gives us. We have to be here, Charlie. That rock has killed us. There is nowhere to go. Go where?”

  He sat down and put his hands to his head, afraid to contemplate what might be happening. She was right. There was nowhere to go, only to wait. Wait for it to happen.

  Go where?

  “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The thing is . . . , Sherwood reflected as he parked his Gran Torino along the road in Morro Bay, in the shadow of the giant rock there:

  He didn’t really buy into any of this: not the thirty-year-old connection to that ritual killing case; not the meeting between Walter Zorn and Evan Erlich; not the markings on Zorn’s tongue, which could be anything; not Dr. Erlich’s far-fetched suspicions about the Houvnanian woman who had recently been released from jail.

  Yet he was here. Spending a day in the damp and wind when he could be working a case that actually needed his attention. Instead he was going over for the tenth time one he had already put to bed.

  Explain that.

  Since he’d gotten that stupid pastor’s liver he found himself doing a lot of things he didn’t fully understand.

  A year back, he would’ve told this persistent doctor from back east to take his endovascular scope for a hike.

  And hardly that nicely.

  But somewhere in the closed bins of his mind, Sherwood had to acknowledge, something the guy was saying must have been making the tiniest bit of sense to him. It was the old 1 percent axiom—a detective’s rule, hijacked by the previous vice president:

  If there was even a 1 percent chance he was wrong, that there was something there, something he was overlooking . . . then what the hell?

  He had never done much tire-kicking on Evan Erlich. Why would he? The kid was found at the base of the rock. His body signs showed he’d spent much of the night up there. Days before, he had wailed about killing himself. He had tried to buy a gun. He was off his meds.

  Jesus, this isn’t exactly rocket science here . . .

  Sherwood hadn’t even advised his boss what he was doing, wasting office time on a case he had already put to bed, when there was a pile on his credenza the size of the rock itself, and one of them a case with a family that could apply pressure.

  He was fifty-six; his wife was gone; he had come back from a four-month medical leave with a brand-new lease on life. And he knew he was lucky to have this job.

  Sherwood took out the police photo of Evan he had printed from his computer. He walked up to the ranger station at the entrance to the rock. A uniformed female ranger stuck her head out amiably. “Help you, sir?”

  Sherwood flashed his badge and asked her, “Any chance you happened to be on last Thursday?”

  “Every Thursday.” The female ranger nodded.

  “Any chance you happened to see this guy?” He showed her the photo. “He was the kid who jumped off the rock.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes lit up as she studied it closely. But she shook her head. “No. We close the station at five. Don’t know what time he might have come through. Didn’t it supposedly happen at night?”

  “It did.” Sherwood nodded. “Long shot . . .” He put the photo back in his jacket and smiled. “Thanks.”

  He waved and walked along the road toward the rock. Two fishermen were casting out lines in the bay along the shoals. This time of the afternoon was always a good time for rock crabs and halibut. He went up and flashed his badge. “Either of you out here last Thursday afternoon? Around the same time, maybe?”

  A black man with a scruffy white beard wearing an L.A. Angels baseball cap nodded. “I came here after my doctor’s appointment.” He smiled at his companion, a white guy with a sunburned face in a sleeveless tee. “Caught me a three-and-a-half-pounder too.”

  “You happen to see this guy go by?” Sherwood brought out Evan’s photo. “Maybe around six?”

  The black man took the photo and scratched his head. “No, sir, can’t say I did. Sorry.” His partner said the same. “But you’re welcome to hang around, detective.” He grinned to his buddy. “Always room for the county’s finest. Catch you some of those fancy Morro Bay oysters.”

  “Morro Bay oysters . . .” Sherwood smiled. What the locals called pelican shit. Not that there were any pelicans around here anymore. They were gone. And no one knew exactly why. “Next time.”

  He continued to show the photo to anyone he saw on the road, then went around the lot at the base of the rock and asked a bunch more there. Clammers. Cyclists. Joggers. Anyone who looked local. Some said they hadn’t been around that afternoon. Others said they were—and had heard what had happened, how terrible it was. Everyone looked, but no one said they’d actually seen Evan.

  It was getting late. Heading on six. The sun was low in the sky behind the rock, creating a beautiful orange crown. A Dodger game had started at four, and he’d like to catch the end of it with a beer.

  He’d given it his best. He promised himself this was the last effing time he would get caught up in this. Sometimes no matter how hard you believe in something, you just can’t make it the truth.

  He headed to his car. There was a long-haired souvenir peddler in a tie-dyed T-shirt packing up his stand. Cheap, bronze-plated re-creations of the rock. T-shirts with its image on the front. Pennants. Guidebooks.

  A tiny chunk of sandstone contained in a plastic dome, the inscription GUARANTEED PIECE OF THE MORRO BAY ROCK on the plastic base.

  Sherwood went up to him. “You out here on Thursday afternoons?”

  “Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays . . . Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays too,” the ponytailed peddler replied, loading a cardboard box into his SUV.

  “What happens Wednesdays?” Sherwood asked him.

  “Wednesdays, I’m there.” The guy grinned, pointing to the other side of the road.

  “Comedian.” Sherwood pulled out Evan’s photo. “Any chance you saw this kid?” The merchant continued to pack up his wares, glancing at the photo. “Last Thursday,” Sherwood said, clarifying. “Around this time. Would’ve been headed toward the rock.”

  “He the kid who took the dive?” the man asked.

  “Could be,” Sherwood said, showing displeasure at the guy�
�s choice of words.

  “I seen him.” The vendor nodded. He taped up a box and lugged it over to his van.

  “You’re sure?”

  “You a cop?”

  “Coroner’s office,” Sherwood answered. “San Luis Obispo.” He took out his badge.

  “No worries.” The man waved him off. “The dude came by here about five twenty-five or so. Headed up that way.” He sort of pointed with his chin. To the rock. “Guess the rest is history.”

  “You’re sure it was him?”

  “Sure I’m sure. He stopped here.”

  Sherwood felt a spark light in his chest, like a fire to kindling.

  “He took a look at one of my things. This . . .” He picked up the piece of the rock in the dome. “Seemed fascinated with it. Here, take it; guaranteed to change your luck—that jumper dude excluded, of course. One day I might just drop your name when someone asks to see my license.”

  “You say he was headed toward the rock?” Sherwood asked, stuffing the souvenir into his pocket. “Anything else?”

  “One thing . . .” The peddler put down his box. “The dude wasn’t alone.”

  Now the spark became a charge of electricity shooting through Sherwood. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone was with him, that’s what I mean. A woman. Older. I remembered thinking then it could be a kid and his mother, tourists. But given what took place, that doesn’t seem likely.”

  “You sure it was a woman?” Sherwood asked.

  “Damn sure.” He pointed to the road. “She was standing right over there.”

  The jolt in Sherwood’s chest had now become a jumping live wire. He reached into his jacket and came back out with the newspaper photo. The one of Susan Pollack leaving jail. “This her, by any chance? The woman you saw?”

  The vendor scratched his head, pressing his lips together, foggily. “Can’t be sure . . . She was in kind of a blue sweater and a cap. And she had on sunglasses. She put out a cigarette on the road.” He shrugged. “Could be. I was packing up. Sorry. I don’t know if that helps.”