Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

Chapter Nineteen

My first call was to my office.

To Lev Avital, one of the other surgeons in the practice, who’d been part of our group for the past eight years. I caught him at his desk during a consult. “Jay, what’s up? How is it out there?”

“Avi, I need a huge favor,” I said. “Can you handle an iliac stent for me in the morning tomorrow? The patient’s the daughter of a friend of mine from our club. I’d planned to be back, but I really need another day or two out here. I promise, it’s a layup, Avi.”

“Let me check.” He took a look through his schedule and came back to say he was free. He only had a couple of consults to juggle around. “You know we were all so sad to hear about your nephew, Jay.”

“Thanks. I owe you big-time, guy,” I said in relief. “I hope to be back next week.”

“I’ll remind you about this at Thanksgiving. I’m on call this year.”

I gave him some background on the case and how it was all pretty much totally routine. Just inserting a stent through the femoral artery and bypassing the aneurysm. Avi was an ex-Israeli tank commander. He’d seen action in Lebanon. He’d studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at Harvard, and could probably do an iliac bypass in his sleep. Probably even better than I could.

“You’ll be out by lunch,” I promised. I said I’d have my secretary e-mail over the MRIs with Stacey’s file. “Call me if you need to discuss. And, Avi…”

“Don’t even mention it,” he said. “I’m hoping things go well for you and your family out there.”

“No-I meant, call me as soon as you’re done and let me know how it went,” I said. “But thanks. Thanks a bunch .”

I told him I’d alert the family to the change.

My next call was to Kathy.

My stomach clenched a bit at the thought of having to explain this to her. It was eight fifteen in California. Eleven fifteen back home. I dialed her on her cell and she picked up, from one of the examining rooms.

“Hey,” she answered brightly, “I’m in with a very unhappy Lab named Sadie who’s got a big blister on her paw. I got your message last night. You at the airport yet?”

“Don’t be mad,” I said, sucking in a breath. “I can’t make it back today.”

“You can’t…? ” Her voice sank with disappointment. Maybe an edge of exasperation too.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking, but something’s come up. I just need another day or two, that’s all, to see something through. You trust me, don’t you?”

“See something through? I thought you had a procedure Friday, Jay. On Marv and Susie Gold’s daughter.”

“I just got Avi to cover it.”

“Avi? And we had the Hochmans coming tomorrow night. All right…” She sighed frostily, not even attempting to conceal her frustration. “Jay, I know better than anyone how much you want to do something for them, but-”

“Don’t even go there, Kath. It’s not even about Charlie and Gabby, or what you might think. I just have to see something through. Related to Evan. I’ll explain it all later. I promise.”

There was a pause, one of those moments when it’s pretty obvious no one wants to say what they’re really thinking.

“Look, I have to get back to my patient,” she said, exhaling. “She’s very impatient. She’s starting to growl at me. We can discuss this later, okay?”

“Okay.”

Then, almost as a good-bye: “And of course I trust you, Jay.”

Chapter Twenty

The county coroner’s office was located twenty minutes away near the sheriff’s department in San Luis Obispo. It was on a remote road a few minutes out of town, tucked dramatically at the base of one of those high, protruding mesas, not exactly your standard police setting.

A sign on the outside walkway read DETECTIVES UNIT.

It was strange, but I felt there was only one person I could trust.

I went up to the front desk. A pleasant-looking woman seated behind a computer asked if she could help me. I said, “Detective Sherwood, please.”

He was out of the office. The woman glanced at the clock on the wall and said it might be a couple of hours. There was a bench in the room outside. I told her I’d wait.

It took close to two and a half hours, and maybe a dozen calls from me, for the detective to finally return.

“Hey, Carol,” he said, waving to the woman I had spoken to, coming in through a rear entrance off the parking lot. “Calls for me?”

The secretary pointed to me and he saw me stand, his demeanor shifting. He glanced at his watch, as if he was late for something, then stepped up to me, clearly the last person he was looking to see. “Thought you were on your way home, doc. What brings you all the way out here?”

“I’m not sure Evan killed himself,” I said.

The detective blinked, as if he’d taken one to the face, and released a long, philosophical sigh. “Killed himself. Fell off a ledge while climbing-like I said, what does it really matter, Dr. Erlich? I have a death certificate to make out and it has to say something. You come up with any better ideas about what he might have been doing up there?”

I looked at him. “What if someone else was responsible for his death?”

“You mean as in maybe the medical staff at County. Or even the police?” His gaze didn’t have anything friendly in it. “How did you phrase it… That we were ‘ washing our hands of it ?’ ”

I remembered the news report on Evan and how that must have sounded. “No, not the medical staff at all. Someone else. Just hear me out.”

“Someone else now…? ” Sherwood nodded patronizingly. He glanced at his watch again, then forced a barely accommodating smile. “Well, you might as well come on back. You’ve driven all the way out here. Carol, hold any calls for a couple of minutes.”

I grabbed my blazer. “Thanks.”

He led me down a long hallway to his office, a small cubicle workstation separated by gray fabric dividers from the workstations of three other detectives, with a view of the rolling hills.

“Hey, Joe.” He nodded to one as he stepped in. He took off his sport coat and draped it over a divider. “Don’t get comfortable.” His desktop was cluttered and piled with bulging files. There was a credenza behind his chair, more files stacked on it.

Along with a couple of photos. An attractive, middle-aged woman, who I assumed had to be his wife. And a younger woman, in her twenties maybe. A daughter.

He sank into the chair and nodded for me to take a seat.

“You don’t mess around, doc, do you? A couple of days back, you’re stirring things up about how your nephew had been criminally neglected and that the county was responsible for his death. Then you rouse up the local press that there’s some kind of big conspiracy going on here. How we’re not doing our jobs. You go out to that halfway house in Morro Bay and suggest maybe you’ll bring a lawyer in. And now you’re saying what ?” He ran his thick hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “That the kid’s death may not have been suicide at all? Or even an accident? That leaves us exactly where, doc? Foul play? ”

My heart was pumping. “This retired detective who was killed last night in Santa Maria… I think his name was Zorn. You happen to see it on the news?”

“I saw it.” He snorted derisively. “You know, homicides are kind of a hobby with me, doc.” He leaned back, propping his foot up on an open desk drawer. “The floor’s all yours…”

“This detective, Zorn, apparently he was in touch with Evan. Twice in the past few weeks.” I told him how one of Evan’s friends had seen him asking around for Evan at the playgrounds. The last time less than two weeks before he had died. How Zorn had had some reason to contact him and had shown an interest in Evan.

“You’re suggesting what now…” Sherwood smiled, a bit deferentially. “That these cases are somehow related?”

“Two people end up dead, who just days before are seen talking. One of them clearly was murdered. The other, Evan, at the very least, there are some open questions…”

“The kid jumped off a cliff, doc! Who are you now, the Amazing Kreskin?” He put his palm on the top of the tall stack of files. “ See these? I’ve got four gang killings, a hit-and-run, and two likely drug ODs to process.” He pulled out a red one from on top. “See this one? The son of a prominent builder in town. Tight end on the high school football team. OxyContin OD. Everyone’s all over me… And these…” He wheeled around to the other stack of files sitting on the credenza. “These are all disposed of, awaiting my final sign-off. If I can get to them.” He picked one from near the top. “ Your nephew .”

“I know there’s some kind of connection between the two cases.”

“I’m sorry, doc, but I don’t work for you.”

It was clear that the comments on the news had cost me what little equity I had with him. It was also clear the hospital wasn’t exactly going to be an ally now, not that they ever were.

“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry about that interview. We were all a little frustrated the other day. My nephew died. No one was returning our calls. I was leaving town. I was just trying to do whatever I could to get them some attention.”

“Attention? What the hell have I been devoting to it, doc- spare time ?” He drilled a look of displeasure at me. Finally he let out a breath. “ Gimme a name. ”

“A name?”

“The name of your nephew’s friend,” he answered impatiently. “The one who conveniently spotted the two of them together.”

“Miguel,” I said. “Miguel Estrada. Apparently, he and Evan were basketball buddies. According to him, Zorn was asking around for Evan at the courts.”

“Asking around …” He twisted in his chair and punched Miguel’s name into his computer. He waited a few seconds, putting on thick black reading glasses, then sort of smiled cynically as he shifted the screen around to me. “You talking this Miguel Estrada?”

There was a photo of Miguel, shaved head, tattoos and all. A mug shot. Along with a police record that stretched down the entire page. I’ve had some setbacks…

My heart sank.

Sherwood ticked them off: “Sale of banned substances, sale of prescription drugs, failure to show up for court hearings. Falsifying doctor’s prescriptions. Shall I go on? We’re not kids here, doc. Before we jump to any conclusions, you think perhaps we ought to consider the source?”

“He told me this early last night,” I said. “Before the Zorn story even broke.”

“He gave you Zorn’s name? ” The detective’s eyes widened and I saw where he was heading. An ex-cop was dead. Maybe this Estrada kid was involved.

“He didn’t know the guy’s name,” I said, defending him. “He just described him to me. Fifty or sixty. White hair. From Santa Barbara. Slight limp. Birthmark on his cheek. This morning, as I was about to leave, I saw the news.”

“Well, you should’ve just kept on going!” The detective glared at me. “ Look ”-he pulled the monitor back around, shrugging-“even if this kid is somehow on the level and they did talk, so what? Why are you so sure there’s a connection?”

“Because two people who had contact with each other just a few days ago are dead. And one of them was clearly murdered; the other…” I didn’t say that maybe Evan’s death wasn’t quite as clear as everyone thought. “If this wasn’t about some welfare kid who was half off his rocker, you would look further-”

“Half? ” The detective held back a smile, a tiny crease of his lips. “No one’s even agreeing that they were in contact, doc.”

“Look, I’m sorry I made things difficult for you. Please, I’m just asking you to take a look. I know you’ll find something.”

He took off his reading glasses and folded them on his desk. Then he blew out a long breath, friendlier now. “Look, why not go back home, doc? You’re wasting your time trying to rake things up here. You’re a sensible guy… You deal in facts, right? And I know you can see how your nephew may have done your brother and his wife kind of a cockeyed favor. We both know-next month, next year-the next time he went unhinged, we’d be cleaning up a whole different level of mess here. You understanding what I’m saying, doc?”

“There are other police, you know. Homicide. Someone would be interested in this.”

“Oh, yeah.” Sherwood’s grin radiated with amusement. “And after yesterday, they’re all just dying to team up with you, doc. You be sure and give ’em my best.”

“I’m not leaving,” I said. I got up. “Not now. Not until I find out what Zorn may have wanted with Evan.”

Sherwood sighed. He picked up his phone, the friendliness melting into resignation. I watched him punch in a number, and I was about to say something I’d regret when he suddenly raised his eyes back up to me, as if to say, You’re still here?

“Did your brother know this detective? This guy who was killed?”

“He said no. He’d never heard of him before.”

The person Sherwood was calling came on the line, but he placed his hand over the mouthpiece, only the tiniest softening of his gaze, his irritation morphing into something that, if you knew him better, might have almost looked like a smile.

“Don’t wait by the phone.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Charlie sat at the kitchen table in his T-shirt and shorts, sipping his morning coffee.

He didn’t know how the detective who’d been killed might’ve figured in with Evan. Only that, with the sneaker he had found, it gave him the slightest spark of hope that what he knew in his heart was true: that his son hadn’t jumped off that rock on his own. He would never have hurt them in that way.

To him, this was just another rung on the long ladder of how he’d been screwed over in his life. Beginning with his father. To the doctors Charlie had seen, who never truly understood him. Who had put him on brain-numbing meds for thirty years. To the state-how they barely gave him and Gabby enough to squeeze by. How they had placed Evan with all his young promise in that crap hole of a school, filled with future meth heads and gang members. Who chewed his son up and spit him out, and started him on his decline.

“You see, Gabby, you see!” Charlie said, his pulse pounding. If it wasn’t clear to that stupid detective what had happened, it was clear to him. “He didn’t kill himself after all. I know the truth. Evan’s sneaker. They never even made an attempt to find it. You know what that means, don’t you? His sneaker, Gabby, I’m telling you, that’s the key.”

“You have to calm down, Charlie,” Gabby said. “You’re in a rant. Jay will handle it for us. Here…”

She doled out his pills-trazodone to calm him down, felodipine and Caduet for his blood pressure, Quapro for the kidneys, Klonopin to calm his shakes. Six or seven others. She laid them out in a long line on the counter. The blue one was lithium. He’d taken it for thirty years, and now his kidneys were starting to break down.

“Here, Charlie,” she said, shuffling up in her robe, putting them into a small dish, and giving him a glass of orange juice.

He swallowed them in one gulp.

“Good boy, my husband,” she said, petting him on his shoulder. Then she sat down in the chair next to him, strain etched in her face. And grief-grief no one should have to bear. Today was no different than it would be every day. Every day for the rest of their lives. He could see she was an inch from tears.

“Jay says they’ll have to reopen the investigation,” he said, upbeat, trying to make her happy. He squeezed her hand.

“I always thought my boy was crazy,” Gabby said. “Talking to that thing over there.” She looked at the furnace. “But now I don’t know. Maybe we didn’t do the right thing, Charlie. Did we kill our own son?”

He had to hold back tears himself. “I think we did, Gabby. I don’t know…”

He switched on the TV, the local news station, taking his coffee to the couch to hear the news. “Maybe there’ll be something further on Evan…”

Then he remembered they hadn’t picked up the mail. In days. Not that there was ever anything there. Only bills. And catalogs with merchandise they couldn’t afford.

Still, it gave him something to do besides drive himself crazy. He got up. Went to the door in his shorts. “I’ll be right back.”

He stepped out, if only to get some air, if only to get out of their cramped, tiny tomb of an apartment filled with so many painful memories.

This shit hole where they lived that filled him with disgust. That hadn’t been painted in years. That stank like piss. The grass in the courtyard hadn’t been cut in weeks. Look at where they forced him to bring up his son.

I’ve been talking to the police, the boy had said . They want me to take the test…

Yes, they did drive him away, Charlie realized . They killed their own son.

He shuffled out to the carport in front where the mailbox was. Several days of mail, stuffed in, tumbled into his hands. He flipped through the stack: California Power and Light, the pharmacy, the cable company. All he did was pass the bills along to Gabby.

At the bottom of the stack, one large envelope was addressed to him. In an unfamiliar handwritten scrawl. It didn’t appear to be junk mail or a bill. He didn’t get much personal mail these days.

He flipped it over. No return address. Trudging back to the apartment, he put the rest of the mail under his arm and opened this large one, slowly easing the contents out.

There were photos. Several of them. Black and white.

He stopped.

The photos were of a woman. Her eyes open; her face twisted in a horrible expression. Bloodied and cut up. Red marks disfiguring her.

What the hell was he looking at?

The woman wasn’t young, but she was naked on top. Her nipples were bloodied, the tips cut off. A dark red slit circled the bottom of her neck, and blood was pooled off to the side. She had other slash marks under her eyes that ran down to the top of her cheekbones like a trail of tears.

He cringed. Who would send these to him? Was it some kind of cruel joke? Someone who knew what had happened to them and wanted to hurt them further?

He stared in revulsion at the disfigured face, the eyes wide open, the victim’s mouth parted, the mole on her cheek …

Her braided long blond hair.

Suddenly Charlie’s stomach climbed up his throat.

He realized he knew her.

He felt stabbed in his chest, spun back in time, like in one of those low-budget sci-fi movies, hurtling back through the vortex of time.

They had been together for only a short while. Months, maybe. Years ago. They had traveled around for a time. Back in the day. Then gone their separate ways. Who had sent this? How would anyone even have known? Or even put them together?

It had only been a short time, but in it they had shared the biggest secret of their lives.

Sherry?

He brought her pretty face to mind. It had been more than thirty years.

The other envelopes fell out from under his arm, scattering on the walkway, as his legs grew weak and an even greater dread took hold of him, bringing with it a fear that reverberated through him like the first frost of fall.

Who even knew that he was there?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Truth was, Sherwood sighed, stepping out of his car, he didn’t buy a word of what the doc had told him.

He didn’t believe the murdered ex-detective and boy who jumped off that rock had even the slightest connection. He didn’t believe this Miguel Estrada kid was on the level. Or that he had ever even seen the two of them together.

Not for a second.

What he did believe was that it was far more likely Miguel had something to do with Walter Zorn’s death.

And since one of the cases he was handling happened to be from Santa Maria, fifteen miles down the freeway, he had a perfectly valid reason to stop in at the local police station there.

So after meeting with the grief-stricken family of the sixteen-year-old Pequillos member who’d been tossed in the woods behind the Grover Beach tracks, he made the drive and parked in the lot on Cook Street.

Larry Velez was one of the two homicide detectives stationed there.

“Keeping busy?” Sherwood knocked on the door. He and Larry had worked together at times over the years. Velez had started out as a detective in Pismo before moving down the freeway.

“Never the problem.” Velez sighed. Santa Maria was a town of only ten thousand, but the total lack of jobs there, the shit-ass education system, and the control of the local gangs gave it the highest rate of violent crime in the area.

“Don’t say I never gave you anything…” Sherwood dropped his findings on the Pequillos killing on the detective’s desk. “ Surprise- coroner’s ruling it a homicide. I passed it over to McWilliams.” Dave McWilliams was head of the homicide detail in Pismo Beach.

Velez put the file on top of three others. “Nice of you to bring it down.”

“So how’s it going on that retired detective?” Sherwood took a chair and asked. “What was his name, Zorn? Anything further?”

Velez shrugged. “Only prints we found were from him and a housekeeper who came once a week. A neighbor saw a dark van parked on the street that night and heard some noises inside. Word is, the guy kept a bunch of money in the house. We found a desk rifled through. A metal lockbox opened. We’re checking any day laborers in the area who didn’t show up for work today.”

Sherwood nodded. “I didn’t catch a COD on the news.” Cause of death.

“Not a coincidence,” the Santa Maria detective said. “The guy was strangled.”

“Strangled?”

“With an asterisk,” Larry Velez added.

Sherwood looked at him, a little confused, and pulled his chair closer. “Listen, Larry, I know this isn’t procedure, but you mind if I take a quick look?”

The homicide detective hesitated. He and Sherwood were friends and all, but they generally didn’t open their cases like that. His chief wouldn’t go for it. Velez scrunched his brow. “And what’s the reason, Don?”

“A case I’m working on. Kind of a long shot. There’s a chance this might tie in. You remember that jumper in Morro Bay?”

Velez chuckled. “I heard there was someone stirring things up on that. That they even got one of the TV stations involved. Perokis down your throat on this?”

Perokis was Sherwood’s boss.

Sherwood shook his head. “Just so I can cross it off my list. C’mon, Larry, what do you say you just go grab yourself a coffee, and I’ll just wait for you here?”

Velez seemed to ponder it a second and then stood up. He pulled a blue folder from his slotted file and dropped it in front of Sherwood. “Light or dark?”

“Dark,” Sherwood said with an appreciative smile. “Thanks, partner.”

“Be back in five…” Velez left, shutting the office door. Sherwood took out his reading glasses and picked up the blue file.

Walter Zorn. A series of crime scene photos. The white hair, the red blotchy birthmark the doc had mentioned.

The first document he found was the 10-05, the report filed by the responding officers at the scene.

There were signs of a struggle. The lamp cord wrapped around his neck. Body found at the couch in front of the TV. Apparently the old guy stuck mostly to himself. Before moving up, he’d spent twenty years on the Santa Barbara force. Worked a couple of high-profile cases back in the day. Retired with the rank of inspector, senior grade.

It was a small community and Sherwood had never seen him around at any of the bars or cafés where cops generally hung out.

What the hell would Zorn possibly have wanted with Evan?

Sherwood leafed through the crime scene photos. The victim’s eyes were bulging. He looked like he’d put up quite a fight. Just run out of strength. Zorn was a big guy and not one who would go down easy.

Robbery did seem likely.

Satisfied, Sherwood tapped the photos back into a pile. He’d done what he’d promised. He told the doc he’d take a look, and he had. He saw nothing that connected the old cop to Evan. This kid Miguel was probably just trying to make some hay. To be safe, he’d mention to Velez he ought to run Estrada’s prints anyway.

And that if Evan’s name ever happened to come up to let him know.

As he was putting the crime scene photos back in the file, another dropped out. It had been taken during Zorn’s autopsy.

Sherwood picked it up and looked at it, almost randomly. It was a close-up of what appeared to be cut marks on the victim.

Cut marks, Sherwood saw, staring closer, on what appeared to be the underside of the dead detective’s tongue.

An asterisk, Velez had mentioned.

It appeared to be kind of a circle with a red dot in the center of it, enclosed in two irregular curved lines.

Even a traffic cop knew no burglar left a mark like that.

Suddenly his heart came to a stop. He adjusted his glasses and looked closer.

No fucking way, Sherwood said to himself . Can’t be…

He blinked, bringing the photograph close to his eyes. Looking at it one way, it appeared to be nothing-simply random, unconnected cut marks.

But if you turned it another way, and he did-and stared at it from another angle-there it was, plain as fucking day. Staring right back at him.

An eye.

“Sonovafuckingbitch, ” Sherwood muttered, taking off his glasses.

An open eye.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The six o’clock news carried an update on the Zorn murder.

A pretty Asian reporter stood in front of an undistinguished, white ranch house, explaining that the retired Santa Barbara detective had been strangled in his home, in what the police were describing as an apparent robbery. She said how Zorn’s drawers and closets had been rifled through and a locked metal box in his desk was pried open and emptied.

I was on the bed in my hotel room, hoping that Sherwood might call me back, when the news report came on.

The reporter said Zorn had lived quietly in the area for almost ten years after he retired from the Santa Barbara force. For a while he had volunteered in local youth programs. Then he pretty much just kept to himself, battling some health issues.

In his hometown of Santa Barbara, the woman reported, Zorn had been a decorated policeman and a respected detective. He had even worked some high-profile homicide cases going all the way back to the 1960s. There was the Veronica Verklin murder, which had made national headlines, in which a celebrated porn star was believed to have been beaten to death by her convict ex-husband, but eventually it turned out to be her boyfriend/director.

And Zorn had also been involved in the investigation of the Houvnanian murders, in which a charismatic cult figure and four followers committed a series of drug-induced ritual killings of affluent residents in the Santa Barbara hills. This was back in 1973, and it had created national headlines.

The group lived in a commune on a ranch up near Big Sur once owned by Paul Riorden, one of the victims. The perpetrators were all convicted of several counts of murder and were serving life sentences.

The mention struck a chord with me. The Riorden Ranch. I was pretty sure Charlie had lived there for a while. Back in the early seventies. Well before the killings.

The reporter closed by saying the police were appealing to the local residents for any leads.

I sat there for a while, the idea of this vague connection knotting my stomach. Charlie had always distanced himself from the terrible things that had happened on the ranch, always shrugging it off by saying he left long before then and only hung around there “for the drugs and the girls.” It was all part of the lore that made his past so captivating.

I watched the news through the sports, then I decided to call him. He answered with a kind of a downtrodden tone. “Hi, Jay…” I’d spoken to him twice already that day, and both times, he sounded sullen and kind of medicated. “Did they find any connection between Evan and that cop?”

“No, not yet,” I said. “But tell me about Russell Houvnanian.”

He paused, the delay clearly letting me know I had taken him by surprise. “Why do you want to know about that?” he asked me.

I didn’t want to fully divulge why. Right now I didn’t have anything-only this vague, decades-old connection that probably wasn’t a connection at all. Plus, I knew how Charlie’s mind operated and didn’t want him to get all worked up over things that might lead nowhere.

“You lived there for a while,” I said. “Didn’t I always hear you knew him?”

Charlie’s past was always so vague, so clouded by his many retellings, not to mention the drugs, that it was hard to know what was actually the truth and what wasn’t.

“I was only there for a couple of months.” His tone was halting, as if he were still trying to figure out where I was headed. “I was long gone before anything took place. You know how stuff like that always gets built up. Dad always liked to tell it that way. Like when he was trying to bang some chick and needed to wow her with one of his stories.”

I kept on him. “But you were there.” Years before, he had told me about the Rasputin-like effect Houvnanian had on his followers. The cultlike mix of religion, music, sex, and drugs. “You met the guy, right?”

“Yeah, I met him,” Charlie said. He didn’t follow up for a moment, but when he did, it almost knocked the phone out of my hand.

“You met him too, Jay.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I drove right over and we sat on the lawn chairs in back. My brother recounted an episode that for years was buried in the most remote corner of my mind because I had never given it the slightest significance.

I was around fourteen, visiting my father in L.A. He had moved out there after selling his first business and had bought a sprawling ranch home high in the Hollywood Hills.

He wasn’t working at that time and his girlfriend then was a waitress at the Playboy Club. She and a couple of her equally mind-boggling friends were hanging out in the pool, which I remember had most of my attention. A buddy of my dad’s was there as well, a goateed so-called real estate entrepreneur named Phil Stella, who I later found out was an ex-con and whose main role then was pretty much as a supplier of hot chicks whom he referred to as his “wards,” but who I eventually realized were actually working for him.

That afternoon, Charlie and a couple of his friends dropped in. One was a blond surfer type in a Hawaiian shirt, whom Charlie introduced as a record producer or something, and the other a thin, dark-featured guy in an embroidered blue caftan with long black hair and these intense, deep-set eyes.

All I remembered was the three of them animatedly trying to pitch my dad-who clearly wanted nothing to do with it-on the idea of anteing up several thousand dollars to help Charlie produce a record.

After the thousands he had spent on hospitals and lawyers bailing Charlie out of jails, Lenny wasn’t biting.

“You remember what he did?” Charlie asked me, as if the scene had happened yesterday and was still vivid in his mind.

“You mean the guy you were with?” I asked, to get him to clarify.

“No. Dad,” Charlie said with an edge. “You remember the rest of the story?”

What I did remember was my dad and Phil looking at each other amusedly and Phil shrugging. “I don’t know, I’m a little intrigued. Why don’t you go out to my Jag in the driveway?” Phil said. “There’s an envelope in the glove compartment with a bunch of cash in it. Bring it in.”

Charlie and his Hawaiian-shirt pal got all excited, their legs spinning like in the cartoons as they dashed out to the driveway. A minute later they returned, empty-handed and humiliated, faces flush with anger. Phil was cackling like a bully who’d just tripped a naïve freshman in front of a group of girls. My father told Charlie and his loser friends to get the hell out. “ What are you, fucking crazy? ” he exclaimed. The surfer dude was seething. Charlie, veins popping, jabbed his finger at my dad-“ You’ve fucking shat on me for the last time! ”

The longhair in the blue caftan just stood up with this cryptic half smile. He told Charlie to let it go, that they’d find the money somewhere else. That it wasn’t right to treat your father with disrespect. He thanked Lenny for his time, casting a thin smile toward Phil, who sat there shaking his head as if they were the biggest rubes on the planet. The guy in the caftan said he was very sorry to bother them all. Then they all left. Afterward, my father and Phil just sat there laughing.

“That was Russell Houvnanian? ” I said to Charlie in shock. I looked at him and conjured the scene I’d buried in my mind for more than thirty years. I don’t think I even saw Charlie again for years after that. It was one of a thousand such moments. I’d never had another reason to bring it to mind.

“Yes.” Charlie nodded dully. “That was him.”

“And when did all the bad stuff happen?”

“The bad stuff…?” Charlie said with a smile. “The bad stuff always happened, Jay. But if it’s the Riorden murders you mean-six months, maybe a year later.

“Anyway,” Charlie said, “it’s all a little foggy to me too. It’s been thirty-five years, not to mention a couple of hundred hits of LSD…” He looked at me. “Why is all this so important now?”

I told him the murdered detective, Zorn, was one of the original detectives on the Houvnanian case.

“Oh.” I heard Charlie draw a breath and was expecting him to come back with, So what does this have to do with Evan and me?

Instead he said, “Listen, Jay, you’ve done what you can, maybe you oughta just head back home tomorrow…”

I already planned to pick up with Sherwood again in the morning. Maybe Zorn knew about Charlie’s past and wanted to contact him through Evan. Not that I had any idea why.

“Charlie, there’s a possibility this is somehow tied into Evan.”

His eyes lit softly and he grinned, his ground-down teeth showing through his beard. “Now you’re sounding a little crazy, Jay. Really, you’ve done all that you can, guy. Just go on home…”

“I will. Maybe in another day. But there could be something here, Charlie.”

He was about to say something else, then simply nodded, his eyes kind of runny and sullen and his energy trailing off.

I said I’d talk to him tomorrow. His urgency to find the truth about his son suddenly seemed to have dimmed. I thought it could be just another swing of his mood-the finality of what had taken place sinking in.

I went back and called room service and ordered an onion soup and a burger. I thought maybe I should call Kathy, but this Houvnanian thing was suddenly gnawing at me.

I was intrigued. I was pretty much just a kid back then, and I didn’t know much more about him than I’d read.

I took out my computer and went online.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Google came back with thousands of hits on the man and the horrifying events that happened on September 7, 1973. It was dizzying. I opened a link from Wikipedia.

Russell Houvnanian was thirty-four when his name became synonymous across the globe with senseless, gruesome murder.

He had been a drifter, the son of a Tennessee minister. He was kicked out of the army for psychological issues, then drifted across the country doing odd jobs, spent time in prison in Oregon for car theft and sexual battery. He moved down the coast to Northern California and took up on this commune at what became known as the Riorden Ranch, a wooded, undeveloped tract of sixty acres not far from Big Sur, which was owned by Sandy Riorden, the ex-wife of Santa Barbara real estate developer Paul Riorden.

The attached photo was the familiar one of Houvnanian being led away from the courthouse by a California marshal, leering and wild-eyed. He didn’t look radically different from the image I had carried in my mind. Houvnanian was mysterious and charismatic, and he had a mesmerizing effect on rootless youths, the article read, “who flocked to Big Sur back then, attracted by drugs, music, free love, and a sense of connection, contained in his chimerical vision of evangelical prophecy and influenced by hallucinogenic drugs and rock music.” He soon attracted a following. Paralleling himself with Jesus, he called his commune Gethsemane .

In Houvnanian’s brain, heaven was a false paradise and had been invaded by the devil, and the earthly battle to retake it was being played out in California. The true gospel was conveyed through rock bands like the Byrds, the Doors, and the Beatles. The name he gave his brand of prophecy and social revolution-End of Days-described the battle between the forces of Truth, represented by the spiritual young, his flock, who sought out love and beauty, and the temporal agents of corruption and the devil: wealthy property owners and their local proxies, the police, who were trying to push his followers out of their “heavenly garden.”

Houvnanian ultimately attracted a following of about sixty on the ranch, mostly runaway teens, musical wannabes, religious dreamers, all attracted to the environment he’d created of open sex, rock music, and LSD.

Eventually, this celebration of beauty and music gave way to a cult of fear and paranoia. In August 1973, he convinced his followers that a series of brushfires near the ranch were the work of Satan’s agents trying to force them out. Some of his threats of reprisal and a few minor acts of vandalism had attracted the attention of the local police, and the Riorden clan tried to force Sandy Riorden, herself a sometime follower, to shut down the commune.

On the night of September 7, 1973, Houvnanian and four “family” members broke into Paul Riorden’s Santa Barbara mountain estate, interrupting a dinner party, and ritualistically murdered him and five of his guests. They tied them up and forced them to watch as each was ultimately stabbed repeatedly or shot, the last victim, according to the police, being Cici Riorden, Paul’s new, young wife, and left cryptic symbols carved into their victims’ bodies.

Conjuring the image of the gaunt, chillingly reserved cohort Charlie had brought up to my father’s house that day sent a tremor down my spine.

That had been him!

The bloody murders, I went on to read, convinced Houvnanian’s followers that the final chapter of the conflict between good and evil had now begun. After sleeping in their van, they went to the home of George and Sally Forniciari, another wealthy Santa Barbara couple who had rebuffed Houvnanian in an earlier attempt to purchase the ranch, and murdered them in a similar fashion.

That night they had driven back to Big Sur and rounded up his clan to leave for Arizona when police surrounded the ranch, led by tips from Riorden’s sister, and arrested Houvnanian and several of his clan.

In all, Houvnanian and four of his followers, Telford Richards, Sarah Strasser, Nolan Pierce, and Carla Jean Blue, were convicted of nine counts of premeditated murder and sentenced to consecutive life sentences in California prisons.

Three others were convicted of aiding and abetting their actions and were currently serving thirty-five-year terms. One, John Redding, hung himself in his cell in 1978. Another, Alexandra Feuer, was released for medical reasons in 1998 and died shortly after from pancreatic cancer.

The third, Susan Jane Pollack, the daughter of a Wall Street executive, was set to be released in May 2010.

My eyes opened wide. That was four months ago.

Anticipation wound through me as I went back to Google and searched the links, finding the headline I was looking for:

SUSAN POLLACK, HOUVNANIAN ACCOMPLICE, RELEASED FROM PRISON.

It was from the San Francisco Examiner and was dated February 10 of this year.

I found a photo of a mousy-looking middle-aged woman being escorted from the California Women’s Institution in Frontera by her lawyer. Susan Pollack didn’t look like a threat to anyone these days. She looked more like a librarian or accountant, her hair cut unflatteringly short, her smile wan and resigned. She looked exhausted and her words sounded repentant. In a brief statement, she said she regretted the role she played in the horrible events of thirty-five years ago, that she renounced her past associations and was looking forward to her new chapter in life.

“I was a lost and highly impressionable young girl,” Pollack said, “and, though I take all responsibility for my actions, I was easily manipulated and was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. For more than thirty years I’ve regretted the unbearable pain I’ve caused. I fully renounce my past. I just want to live quietly and alone and go on to the next stage of my life.”

The article did not say where she was planning on living.

I closed my laptop and tried to think if there was any possibility, other than the remotest of coincidences, that Evan’s death could be linked to this killer. To Russell Houvnanian.

Charlie’s friend.

Could it somehow have been tied to Susan Pollack’s release from prison? Could Zorn have been trying to contact Evan? Maybe for information about her? Or to possibly warn him?

Or warn Charlie?

I heard my wife’s persistent complaint, how I always managed to get drawn in. This time I couldn’t even disagree with her.

My brain throbbed with the memory of how I’d once been in the same room with this gruesome murderer. Houvnanian.

I went over to the bed and closed my eyes-a fourteen-year-old’s distant recollection rushing back at me through the haze of time.

The blond dude in the Hawaiian shirt going on about how great Charlie was. He and Charlie, rushing out to Phil’s Jag. The anger and humiliation on their faces when they returned. My father and Phil laughing at them. The curses, the pointed fingers, accusations. Russell Houvnanian’s dark, laser-like eyes and, with what I now knew, that restrained yet foreboding grin. Thank you for your time…

I was being drawn in.

And I wasn’t even trying to stop it.

So many mysteries wound into my past: Charlie. My father. Evan. It was almost as if Charlie knew it and was trying to keep me away.

But I wasn’t going away.

I wrapped my arms around my chest against the chill. In a minute I was asleep.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I think I found something,” I said.

Sherwood’s look suggested I was becoming a nuisance fast. “You think you found something; what …?” he replied with an edge of irritation.

I took out the papers I had folded in my jacket. “I think I found the connection between Evan and Walter Zorn.”

I’d called him as soon as I had awakened the next morning. Grudgingly, he agreed to give me a couple of minutes. It came with the promise that if what I had didn’t go anywhere this would be the last time I’d bother him. Along with the looser commitment that if that happened, I’d be on a plane back to New York that afternoon.

He slumped back into his squeaky chair with a glance at his watch, then back at me, impatiently. “Your meeting, doc…”

I pushed the papers across his desk. “Yesterday I heard on the news that Zorn had worked a couple of high-profile cases back when he was on the force in Santa Barbara. One was the Veronica Verklin murder-”

“Don’t tell me your nephew Evan was a fan of sixties porn?” Sherwood clucked, rocking.

I let that pass. “The other was Russell Houvnanian.”

I let that name settle until he gave me an almost indecipherable nod, his noncommittal gray eyes seeming to say, Go on .

“My brother Charlie lived on the Riorden Ranch for a while.”

He furrowed his brow. “Your brother was a follower of Russell Houvnanian?”

“Not a follower. He only lived there for a while. It was the sixties … The early seventies, to be exact. He was rootless. A lot of people found their way there. He claims he was only there for the music and the drugs. Why, you think he prepped for his current status in life with a career at IBM?”

This time, Sherwood shot me a grin, the tiniest encouragement to go forward.

“He said he just hung out there for a couple of months. Long before anything bad happened. Charlie was a musician back then and Houvnanian was trying to raise money for a record.”

“And the kicker to this is what, doc?” The detective leaned back in his chair. “Knock me out.”

“The kicker is you were trying to find a connection between Evan and Zorn. I found one. I thought you might…”

“I might what, doc?” He rose back up, locking his meaty fingers together and dropping them on the desk. “Russell Houvnanian was attempting to arrange financing for your brother’s career and you thought I’d go, Oh, we should check this out! You following me at all on just how this is sounding? Anyway, we’re talking what here, thirty some-odd years ago?”

“Thirty-seven,” I said. I heard exactly how it sounded.

“And so you’re saying exactly what?” Sherwood said. “Zorn and your brother shared this six-degrees-of-separation thing, and now, half a lifetime later, the guy tries to contact his son?”

“I’m not sure what I’m saying,” I said, my tone rising. “Other than it’s a connection. Something. ”

“And this connection …” He picked up the articles I had slid over to him. “It’s to prove exactly what-that your nephew didn’t kill himself after all? That he-let me get this straight-had some other motivation to climb on up there? To go off his medications. After he’d threatened to kill himself. And excuse me if I appear completely pigheaded here, but… isn’t everyone who had an association with Houvnanian, uh… in jail ? Like for the rest of their natural fucking lives?”

“No,” I said. “They’re not.”

“They’re not?”

I pointed to the Examiner ’s article on Susan Pollack I had printed and pushed it across to him. He took out his reading glasses and scanned it, looking back up at me when he was done.

“You’re saying what now? That this follower of his, this Susan Pollack, has something to do with your nephew’s death? You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to deal in facts. Not fantasies. It was a suicide! The kid jumped off a cliff.”

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 years. 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.”

“I’m not sure either,” Sherwood said. He put the photo back in his pocket.

What he did know was that his jaw had begun to throb.

Chapter Thirty

I was in the motel’s breakfast room the next morning. I was getting edgy, not having heard from Sherwood in a day. Charlie had gone back to acting like Charlie. Maxie was back from lacrosse camp.

Kathy was pushing hard for me to come home.

Our conversation the day before had been one of the toughest of my life. We had never kept things from each other, and for the first time in our marriage, I felt like I was. I knew I was! And I had other patients I ought to have been back for.

Since I’d arrived, it seemed like someone had been telling me to go back home. I was wearing down and starting to feel like that was what I ought to be doing.

“This seat free?”

I looked up, recognizing the voice before I saw the face. Sherwood.

The burly detective pulled out a chair without waiting for me to reply.

I looked at him, upbeat. “Tell me this is just a coincidence and that you just happened to wander in.”

“Yeah, like all your weird coincidences, doc…” He spun the plastic chair around and sat, facing me. “I was just wondering what you had going on tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I know what I should be doing! Staff meeting at nine. Possible interview with a new surgical candidate at eleven. My high school senior’s pushing for a new computer, so I thought I’d take him to the Apple store…”

“Heading home?” He grinned amusedly. “So soon?”

“Yeah.” I sniffed back a wistful smile. “So soon…”

“Too bad,” Sherwood said. “I was hoping we might take a ride.”

“Since I met you, you’ve been telling me to get the hell away, Sherwood. Now you want to take me sightseeing. Where? ”

“Sonoma coast. Beautiful up there. Town of Jenner.”

“The Sonoma coast? It’s a nice offer. You want to have a picnic too?” I cut the sarcasm and pushed a corn muffin his way. “I’ve got a living to get back to. And a wife who thinks I’ve lost my mind…”

“I’m sorry about that, doc.”

“ ’Cause I’m out here, trying to connect these dots on my nephew’s death where there might not even be any frigging dots. So if you have something, Sherwood, tell me, and please, make it a good one, ’cause I’m really hanging by a thread right now, trying to do the right thing. Jenner, what’s there?”

“Susan Pollack.” The detective looked at me.

His answer hit me like a bludgeon. I waited for him to grin, like he was only screwing around. But he didn’t grin. He just kept staring at me with those heavy gray eyes.

Except now there was kind of a spark lit up in them. And it looked a lot like vindication.

“You found something, didn’t you?”

“Now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves… But instead of just ‘washing my hands of it,’ ” he said with a smirk, “I went back out to the rock-not that I was buying much of what you were selling, understand-and started asking around.” He picked up the muffin and started tearing it apart on the paper plate. “Someone saw Evan there-the day it happened. Around five thirty… Heading to the rock.”

My blood was revving, and I had the feeling he was holding something back. I waited while he made a shambles of the muffin. “And…?”

“And…” He looked back up at me. “It seems he wasn’t alone.”

Those words hit me like a bus slamming into a wall at a hundred miles an hour.

First it was the possibility that maybe I wasn’t so off the deep end after all-Zorn, Evan, Susan Pollack, the two sets of “eyes” leading back to Houvnanian.

Then I realized that that, in itself, couldn’t be why Sherwood, the last person who had a reason to buy into this, was there.

“It was a woman, right?” I stared at him, my blood surging. And then I knew! “ It was her . Susan Pollack. She was with him!”

“Look, we can’t be sure,” Sherwood said, finally jamming a crumbled piece of muffin in his mouth. “I don’t want us to be like ‘buds’ or anything, but a street vendor spotted them together, as Evan was heading toward the rock. I showed the guy a photo of her and he couldn’t be entirely sure. She was a ways away and was wearing sunglasses and a cap. Smoking.”

My mind immediately darted back to the person in the car outside Charlie’s apartment. She was in a drawn-down cap. Behind a car window.

Then she tossed out her butt at me.

“But you think it’s true.” My blood was hard to hold back. “You must, or else you wouldn’t be here.”

“What I think, doc-and trust me, it’s all I’m thinking-is that it’s worth checking out. Just too bad you had to be heading home today, after investing all this time. Would’ve been nice to have the company.”

My face edged into a grin, a surge of anticipation filling me up expansively. Sherwood never once changed his expression. He only twisted his face up at the half-stale muffin. “This is what you eat every day?”

“How did you find out where she is?” I asked.

“California Department of Corrections. I have made a few buddies washing my hands of things over the past twenty-five years. While technically she’s not on parole, the state requires a convicted felon to file a place of residency. Jenner’s just a dot on the map. A tiny fishing village. Maybe four, four and a half hours from here.”

“What are you telling your boss?” I asked him. I thought of the stack of unresolved cases on his desk.

“Less the better.” He smiled at me. “What are you telling yours?”

“That maybe she was right.” I smiled at him as well. “Maybe the sun out here has made me a little dizzy.”

“What sun?” Sherwood got up, dropped the rest of the muffin back on my tray with a twist of his mouth. “How about seven A.M. then? In front of the hotel. And in case there’s any doubt, I’ll bring breakfast.”

Chapter Thirty-One

I took the easy way out and left a message for Kathy, saying I needed one more day.

I told Charlie and Gabby optimistically that some things were up with Evan’s case. I canceled my appointments. My partners were probably starting to think I was crazy too.

I spent a lot of the rest of the day in my room, online.

I wanted to find out everything I possibly could about Russell Houvnanian. How he had gotten those people to commit the horrible acts they had. How Susan Pollack had fit in.

There was a ton of material online. Several books had been written on the case-one by an FBI investigator, Thomas Greenway, who had gone on to achieve some notoriety. Others by various journalists and criminologists, and even by a few of Houvnanian’s followers. I found articles going back to the 1970s. I devoured them like the medical background to a baffling case, fascinated by how Houvnanian had been able to lure a mix of educated and sometimes affluent young women and homeless drifters onto a collision course with crime and stir them to commit such a bloody act.

He had preyed on rootless young people in the hippie culture of the sixties and early seventies-women mostly, ones estranged from their families who had found their way to his ranch near Big Sur. Most came, like Charlie, for the lure of music, fun, and free drugs. It became a refuge from the materialistic world, a haven for local musical artists. They even put together a makeshift studio there. Houvnanian deftly crafted this twisted concoction-a Garden of Eden protecting cast-off children against the encroaching evil of the outside world. Drugs were a constant, as was sex, with interchangeable partners. Houvnanian himself was said to be the father of several children by women on the ranch.

They tried to get their recordings produced-always driving down to L.A., badgering known producers. I thought of Charlie at my father’s house. That was the way Houvnanian hoped to spread his message-his bizarre concept of the End of Days-to the popular culture. Houvnanian had a way of interpreting the songs of the Byrds and the Doors to back up his own apocalyptic gospel. He came to believe that the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” was written specifically for him. He looked at Jim Morrison’s tragic death as a sign pointing to him, like John the Baptist paving the way for Jesus, foretelling his impending martyrdom.

In the summer of 1973, the paranoia seemed to intensify, fueled by a mixture of drugs and religion and repeated attempts by Paul Riorden and the police to get Houvnanian and his followers off the property. Several of the followers either left or were expelled. The locals around the ranch grew alarmed. People were saying there were LSD-addled orgies and blood rituals and threats against society taking place. Riorden pushed to close down the commune.

According to Greenway, Susan Pollack had spent a year at Swarthmore. Her dad was a managing director of Bache and Co., then a major Wall Street brokerage house. Another follower, Sarah Strasser, had a father who was a successful car dealership mogul from Seattle. Others, like Tel Richards of Beaumont, Texas, were simply drifters who’d had criminal records since their early teens.

In July of 1973, Houvnanian and two cronies drove down to Santa Barbara to appeal to Riorden and get him to back off his threats to pressure his ex-wife to shut down the ranch. They also went to see George Forniciari, whom one of his followers knew, to seek his help in purchasing the property. Both of them refused. Paul Riorden even called his ex-wife Sandy, Houvnanian’s sometime benefactor, a “misguided slut.”

Houvnanian drove back home that night in a rage, and a new sense of finality took over the ranch: The “final stage” had begun. There were three days of nonstop revelry on LSD, fueling everyone’s fears that their world of “peace and harmony” was at an end. The words of the Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!” were twisted into some kind of end-of-the-world prophecy: “A time to kill, a time to cast away stones.” Houvnanian painted Riorden and his wealthy class as devils. He got his most ardent followers to believe that only an act of “pious bloodletting” would protect them against what was to come. They began to look at their commune as a place of impending betrayal-aptly named Gethsemane, where Judas had betrayed Jesus-and Paul Riorden and his family as the “devils,” like the Romans, who would one day come for them. If Judas had not handed over Jesus, Houvnanian preached, “Jesus would have ruled the earth for two thousand years.”

There were various accounts of exactly how many people set out in the commune’s 1967 VW van to head back down to Santa Barbara on September 7, 1973, but in the end, the horrific acts were not in dispute: nine people brutally murdered. Five were convicted on nine counts of first-degree murder. Three more, including Susan Pollack, were convicted of being accomplices and abetting these acts.

Houvnanian was still serving out multiple life sentences at the California state super-max penitentiary at Pelican Bay.

Head spinning, I shut the computer. I called the restaurant and ordered a meal. I set a wake-up call for six A.M. I didn’t know where anyone-Zorn, Evan, Charlie, Susan Pollack-was fitting in.

My dinner came and I turned on the TV. I found a ball game on ESPN. I realized I’d now been out there for six days. I felt like my whole life had shifted on its axis and altered in just a few days.

I was a little tired, and part of me knew I should make it an early night. But my blood was pumping and I sat back down at the desk, where my computer was. This had become the only place I could feel at home.

I logged back on and did a search on “Houvnanian,” feeling like I was close to something, scrolling to the third and fourth pages for additional links. I came upon a summary of the trial proceedings posted by a reporter with the Santa Barbara Clarion .

The trials were pretty much a slam dunk for the state. All the defendants were tried separately. The killers were amateurs and careless and had barely even made an attempt to hide their tracks. Fingerprints were left at the scenes. In blood. Articles of clothing. Most even helped convict themselves with their own rambling testimonies.

Susan Pollack pled guilty to helping to hide the murder weapons back on the ranch and washing down the inside of the van.

I’d had enough. I sat back and put my hands on the sides of my head and rubbed my temples. The lids of my eyes were so heavy. I didn’t know what was in store for us tomorrow.

But someone had been with Evan just before his death.

And I was sure Susan Pollack was involved.

I was about to turn the computer off when I happened to scroll down farther ahead and noticed something. I pulled it closer to me, forcing my eyes open.

It was the transcript of a speech given by Houvnanian at the time of his sentencing. In a rambling jeremiad, he blamed the rich for their victims’ deaths, their pawns the police, the lawyers who argued against him, the nonbelievers out there who doubted who he was. He ranted that it served no purpose to put him away, “no matter for how long, even for life.” The social turmoil and upheaval he foretold in End of Days would come to pass.

“You can put me in the strongest prison,” he declared, “in the smallest cell, let me rot for a hundred years,” but one day he’d be back, he said, just like Jesus had come back, “to finish what was begun.”

A moment ago I had been exhausted, but now I felt wired and breathless again.

“On that day of judgment, or even the hour,” Houvnanian said to the judge, “no one will know. Not those who think they hold the power; not their pawns who enforce their will. Not even the sleeping child will know…

“It’s like a man who goes away for a long time and puts his servants in charge of the house. He gives them tasks, duties, but they don’t know when he will return. Only the master will know. Watch,” the self-proclaimed messiah warned, “for no one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner. It might be in the morning, or at midnight, when everyone is asleep. Watch, ” he repeated-the lawyer’s account said he was grinning-“lest he come back suddenly and find you sleeping.”

Suddenly the eyes on Evan and Walter Zorn flashed into my mind.

I almost heard Houvnanian saying it himself-as I’d heard him nearly forty years ago at my father’s house.

“Watch!”

Chapter Thirty-Two

The night was so still, he recalled, even all these years later, the only sound he heard was the lapping of tiny waves against the sides of the pool.

They made their way through the ornate iron gate out front, snaking across the grounds in the dark to the sprawling house.

In back, there was the pool, kidney shaped, blue lit, a breeze blowing in from the sea. They heard laughter, the sounds of wineglasses clinking. Music playing. “ Bad, bad, Leroy Brown…”

Through the glass doors that opened to the back, the sight of a man and a woman dancing a bit drunkenly, two others at the long wooden table who seemed to be into themselves. Decades from now, he realized, when everything else about them was forgotten-who they were, what they did in their lives, the piles of money they had amassed-what would happen here tonight would be the one thing that would make everyone remember.

Pigs.

Grunting sounds came from nearby, from the fancy pool house off to the side. The group of them snaked around in the shadows and saw a man with long dark hair in a white cotton shirt, his jeans down at his ankles, fucking his blond cutie from behind, her palms supporting her against the pool table and her bare ass thrusting. With relish, the thought crossed his mind that he’d like to join in. Just drop the old trou and go, Surprise, kids-company! But instead he motioned to Carla and Squirrel to do what they had to do to them first and then to wait for their word.

That wasn’t who they’d come for.

He and Sarah Jane and Tel went around to the front, cutting through a row of yuccas and pines. The house was low, Spanish style, a sloping tiled roof and white stucco walls. He’d been there once before, trying to reason with the man, trying to make a proposition. Show them the way. But he wouldn’t listen. Now they were only doing what they had to do. The only course that was left to them, right?

The front door was of heavy wood with black iron hardware. Like a mission door, rounded on top. Sarah Jane wore a gauzy tie-dye top with a red bandana around her hair. Tel, his hair tied into a long ponytail, wore a dark poncho. They held at the door a few moments, the sounds of merriment dancing around them. He took out a blade. Tel tucked the gun into his pants. There was no sign of wavering in anyone’s eyes. He knew they loved him. They had ridden with him when it had just been fun and games, frolic and music.

And they were here with him now, when it was about to turn ugly and bad.

He always told them, nothing was evil if it came from love.

“Party time!” he said, and rang the bell.

Pig Number One came to the door-the man himself-in a floral shirt with a glass of wine, his grin evaporating as he saw who it was. “Russell?” He must’ve shit in his pants, knowing what they were there for and that his days were about to end. He looked so confused. “What are you doing here?”

“You told me, ‘ Drop in anytime, Russ.’ So, guess what, Paul, we’re here!”

They pushed past him into the house, Tel dragging Pauly-boy along. The sounds of merriment came to a stop.

Suddenly all eyes fixed on them. Riorden’s pretty wife stopped dancing. “Who are they, Paul?”

Tel took out the gunny-gun-gun.

Suddenly everyone realized, which, he recalled, sent his dick to the moon.

Maybe one of the gals screamed. Who could recall? There was a lot of screaming later on. A shot rang out from outside, from by the pool. A woman’s squeal, pitched in terror. “No, no, please, no, no…”

Then two more shots. Followed only by the most delicious silence.

Carla and Squirrel appeared at the back doors. Riorden’s wife began to whimper.

“C’mon, everyone”-he looked around the room-“why so glum?”

“What do you want from us, Russell?” Paul Riorden asked, reaching for some kind of last authority.

He grinned. “What do I want?”

He never gave him an answer. Even now, all these years later, he really wasn’t sure what he wanted that night. He put his hands behind his head and rested a leg over his knee, light from the guard’s station darting off his yellow jumpsuit.

Maybe just to pay someone back. At last.

Maybe to take a piece of what he always felt was his. The good life. He’d never know it.

Maybe it was just to let the evil out. It had been in him so long.

He nodded to Sarah Jane, who went over to the stereo and turned the volume way up high.

“It’s time, everyone.” Party time.

Time for the devil to sprout his horns.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“I think I found something last night,” I said to Sherwood, who was doing seventy on Highway 101 the next morning, heading up the coast.

“What?” He glanced over from behind the wheel.

“What all the eyes are about. The ones on Zorn and Evan.”

Sherwood flashed me that skeptical glower of his, taking a gulp of coffee from a paper cup. “It’s a long drive, doc. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

I told him what I had come upon last night in Houvnanian’s trial transcript. The killer’s psychotic rambling at his sentencing in front of the judge. I had written it down and read it out loud, pausing each time as the killer had uttered, “ Watch! ”

“That’s what the eyes mean . They’re warnings. They’re prophesying his return.”

Sherwood’s face scrunched, but he kept his gaze straight ahead. “You’re saying this is all about some kind of revenge? On Zorn and Evan. All these years later?”

“Zorn handled Houvnanian’s case. He helped put him away.”

“And your nephew ? ”

Evan-I admit I couldn’t quite answer that yet. Other than this growing suspicion that my brother was holding something back from me.

“Look,” I said, “I dug a little deeper after I read this. Zorn was only part of the police team in Santa Barbara that investigated Houvnanian. His boss on the case was someone named Joe Cooley, his lieutenant. I Googled him. Turns out he’s dead too. He was killed in a car accident in Marin County back in 1991.”

“That’s nineteen years ago,” Sherwood said.

I went on. “And one of the FBI investigators, this guy named Greenway. He even wrote a book on Houvnanian. It was sort of a bestseller back in the late seventies. Twenty-two years ago, his wife found him facedown in his pool. It went down as a suicide-by drowning.”

Sherwood eyed me a couple of beats, allowing himself the slightest smile. “And all this proves what, doc? Blow me away…”

“I’m simply saying if we looked into these other cases, what are the chances we might find something in the form of an open eye on those victims too?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “You’re watching too many detective shows, doc. You’re starting to make me wonder about you.”

“So then tell me,” I asked, meeting his stare, “why are we driving all this way up to see Susan Pollack?”

He shot me a look, then shifted his gaze back to the road and drove on for a while in silence.

The traffic was light that time of the morning, so the miles flew by as we sped up the coast. We passed through the wine country around Paso Robles, where I knew a lot of great zinfandels came from. The fog lifted and it became bright and sunny. I dozed, looking at the rolling vineyard-covered hills.

When I woke, an hour and a half in, I tried to change the subject to something personal. “Was that your wife and daughter I saw in your office?”

He looked back with a question in his gaze.

“The pictures,” I said, “on your credenza.”

He merely nodded at first, not offering a whole lot more. Then, after about a minute, he added: “Dorrie died a little over a year ago. Pancreatic cancer. Two months. Went like that! My daughter lives up in Washington State. She’s married to an air force flight instructor up there.”

“There’s just her?”

He nodded. Then after another pause he said, “We had a son, Kyle, who died when he was nine. Boating accident.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

“Years ago.” He shrugged, sloughing it off. “He’d be thirty now.”

“I meant about your wife too.”

My thoughts went to what he’d said about his liver. He’d received a transfer. He’d been handed a brand-new lease on life. But I wondered, for what?

“We had all these plans,” Sherwood suddenly volunteered, his eyes ahead, “for when I retired. We were gonna spend six months and go camping down in South America. Patagonia. Bottom of the world. Supposed to be incredible down there. Some of the best fly-fishing going. Ever been there?”

“No,” I said, “I haven’t.” Kathy and I had always talked about going to Machu Picchu. For her next significant birthday.

“Then I got sick…” His voice trailed off.

“Your liver?”

He eyed me, probably figuring I knew precisely what eroded a liver. And what were the signs of possible rejection, after some years.

He said, “I used to hit the bottle a bit. After Kyle died. Probably cost me a rank or two in my career. The damage was pretty far along. I was lucky to find a match. Some pastor keeled over in the middle of his sermon. Edward J. Knightly. My lucky day!”

“Funny how it works,” I said.

“Yeah, funny… Soon as I got back from the hospital, Dorrie starts to feel discomfort in her side. Can’t keep her food down. Always tired. Lotta good the damn thing’s done me.” He changed lanes. “Sort of a waste, if you ask me. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Ask me again when I get on that plane.”

Sherwood glanced at me, and for the first time, I think I actually saw him smile.

I asked, “Are you taking your immunosuppressants?” I had noticed some bruising on his arms. And his eyes were a trace yellow, icteric. Signs that things might not be going along as well as they could.

“Of course I’m taking them,” he replied, turning back to the road at my question.

In Gilroy, garlic capital of the world, we stopped to use the john and fill up the car. I grabbed an In-N-Out burger. It was only another hour or so to San Jose and the Bay Area. Another hour into San Francisco and then across the Bay Bridge into Marin.

“So do we have a plan?” I asked as we got back on the road.

“A plan? ” He looked at me with a furrowed brow.

“For how we’re going to handle Susan Pollack? What we’re going to say?”

He changed lanes and flicked the AC higher. “Yeah, I have a plan.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

In Marin, we reconnected back with 101 and took it to Santa Rosa. There we turned east, on 116, through the Russian River Valley and its rows of pinot noir, heading toward the coast.

Eventually we hit the ocean again and turned north on Route 1, hugging the coastline, for another eighteen miles. The scenery grew spectacular. Winding corkscrew turns dug into the edges of steep hills, and there were intermittent turnouts that overlooked the blue sea. I was unprepared for just how impressive it was. For a while, I even forgot just why we were there.

Finally a road sign announced, JENNER. 3 MILES.

An uneasiness began to build in me. I was a doctor, not a policeman. I was used to stressful situations, but I’d never done anything like this. I realized I was only a few minutes away from meeting someone who might have had a hand in my nephew’s death.

The little fishing town of Jenner was nestled in a crook along the coast. It seemed about as remote and isolated as anything could be in California. Offshore, two spectacular rock formations rose out of the ocean mist.

Sherwood’s directions prompted us to turn off the main highway in town, onto a road called Pine Canyon Drive, and we took it east, climbing above the coast into the surrounding mountains. Here, the landscape became steep and forested, hills thick with tall sequoias and evergreens. The homes became trailerlike and run-down. Weather-beaten mailboxes marked dirt roads, more than actual dwellings.

A few hundred feet up, we came across a sign marking Lost Hill Road, basically a dirt road with a fallow vineyard on one side, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

The signpost read 452.

Sherwood glanced at me and made the turn, his Gran Torino bouncing over the rutted terrain. About five hundred yards in, we came upon a red single-story farmhouse. There was a barn, separated from the main dwelling. A clothesline with some laundry draped across it. A collie came off the porch, barking.

We were there.

I took a deep breath, fought back some nerves. The place looked run-down and ramshackle and we were totally isolated.

Sherwood stopped the car. He turned to me. “The plan, doc, is you wait here until I nod that it’s okay.” He opened the glove compartment and took out a holstered gun. “And I do the talking, all right? We clear?”

I wasn’t about to argue. “Clear.”

As he strapped the holster around his chest he asked, “Did you happen to bring your cell?”

“I have it.” I nodded, reaching into my pants pocket, and pulled it out.

“Doubt it even works up here, but…” He opened the door, leaving the car keys in the ignition. “You hear the sound of something you don’t like-say, like gunfire-be my guest and get the fuck out. Then you can tell ’em.”

“Tell ’em what?” I asked, not sure I understood.

He stepped out of the car and winked. “That thing about the eyes… You can tell ’em you were right.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

The collie wagged its tail and went up to Sherwood. He gave the dog a friendly pat and followed it up to the house.

Sherwood looked back at me once, then knocked on the white frame door. “Susan Pollack?”

No one answered.

I noticed the rear of a car parked in the barnlike garage, the fresh wash draped on the clothesline. Not to mention the dog.

He knocked again, harder this time. “Anyone here…?” I saw his hand go near his holster. “Ms. Pollack? I’m Detective Sherwood. From the San Luis Obispo police.”

I felt a premonition that the next sound I was going to hear was that of a shotgun blast and Sherwood would be blown backward off the porch.

My heart kicked up a beat.

He was getting ready to knock a third time when someone came around from the side.

It was a woman. In a straw sun hat. Wearing coveralls and heavy gardening gloves. She had short dark hair; pinched, mouselike features; and a definite resemblance to the woman I’d seen in the newspaper photo. She stared at Sherwood with a hesitant reserve. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the detective said. He introduced himself again and held out his badge. “I’m with the coroner’s office in San Luis Obispo. We drove all the way up here… We’d just like a moment of your time.”

“A moment of my time about what ?” she asked, squinting.

“Related to an incident that took place down there. A suicide. We just have a few questions we’d like to ask you, if you can give us the time.”

“Ask me ?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sherwood nodded good-naturedly.

“Am I required?” She looked past him, and her gaze fell on me in the car.

“No,” Sherwood answered, “you’re not required at all. But it’s been a long drive, and it would save us coming all the way back here with something more official…”

Susan Pollack didn’t seem particularly nervous or relaxed. What she seemed was guarded, like someone who didn’t like strangers invading her world. Especially the police.

Finally she shrugged and wiped her arm across her brow. “San Luis Obispo’s a long way. All right, well, you might as well come on in then. I was just in the chicken coop. They’re pretty much my only friends these days. Them and Bo. Not much fun if you don’t like to get your hands dirty. What did you say your name was… Sherwood?”

Sherwood nodded.

She stepped up on the porch. “And you might as well tell your friend, or whoever he is in the car, to come on in too.”

Sherwood waved toward me, and I got out. I nodded hello and followed them in.

“This is Jay Erlich,” Sherwood said.

“You a detective too?” Susan Pollack asked. She had sort of a narrow, birdlike face and barely looked at me.

“No. He’s a doctor. A big-time surgeon, I hear. From New York.”

“I’m from New York,” Susan Pollack said. She wiped her hands. “I went to the Brayley School in the city and had a year at Swarthmore College.” She looked at me. “You haven’t driven up all this way to tell me that I’m sick or something, have you, Dr. Erlich?”

“No. I haven’t,” I said, but didn’t smile.

“Dr. Erlich’s nephew was killed last week in Morro Bay,” Sherwood explained. “He took a fall off the famous rock there in the bay. You ever been to Morro Bay, Ms. Pollack?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I haven’t. There’s lots of places I haven’t been to. You’ve found me here, so you obviously know who I am. I guess you could say I’ve had my travel privileges curtailed the past couple of years.”

She led us into the foyer. Sherwood asked, “Do you mind if we sit down?”

“Be my guest.” She motioned us to a wooden kitchen table. The kitchen had a pleasant, well-taken-care-of feel about it. A rack with lots of copper pots suspended from it hung over a wooden island. An old hand-painted olive basket hanging on the wall. She took off her hat, revealing her short-cropped hair. I tried to determine if this was the face I had seen staring at me that night from the car, but I couldn’t.

She nodded, and Sherwood and I pulled out chairs.

“I had a little money put aside from a trust my father had set up.” She shrugged. “When I got out, I didn’t really have anywhere to go. I couldn’t face going back home. And as you might imagine”-she smiled briefly-“privacy was a selling point of the place. I’d offer you some coffee, but this isn’t taking on the feel of a social visit, is it? Maybe you should just get right down to why you’re here.”

Sherwood nodded. “I asked Dr. Erlich to come along because, as I said, his nephew, Evan, was killed last week, and we’re looking into his death. At first blush it was ruled a suicide. I ruled it a suicide. The kid was in a troubled state mentally and had recently been remanded to Central Coast Medical Center, the psych ward there. A couple of days before his death, the hospital released him to a halfway facility in Morro Bay. A day later he took a walk from the house, and the next morning he was found at the bottom of the rock.”

“Sounds like a poor decision,” Susan Pollack said. “His or the hospital’s.” She turned to me. “How old was your nephew, Dr. Erlich?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Twenty-one…” She inhaled deeply and rubbed her hand across her brow. “And you say he was troubled?”

I nodded. “Bipolar.”

She nodded, almost sympathetically. “I know something about being twenty-one and troubled. I suppose we both had to pay for it, in our own ways. I’m sorry for your loss.”

I studied her reactions-a tick in her jaw, averting her eyes-trying to measure her sincerity. “Thanks.”

“Nonetheless…” She turned back to Sherwood. “I’d still like to know just what this has to do with me.”

“You say you’ve never been to Morro Bay?” he asked again.

“No, I haven’t. I haven’t left here very much at all since my release. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“A number of curious matters have come up,” Sherwood started in, “that might in some way connect Dr. Erlich’s nephew’s death to a period of your own life, Ms. Pollack. Your own past.”

She smiled, more of a soft twinkling in her eyes, as if to say, I’m not surprised . She took out a cigarette, lit it, and tossed the match in a coffee mug on the table. “Let me hear them, please.”

“Do you know the name Walter Zorn?” Sherwood asked.

She answered almost reflexively: “No.” Then, blinking, her eyes lighting up with recognition, she nodded. “ Yes… yes, I do.”

“He was a detective who was part of the police team back in Santa Barbara that handled the Houvnanian investigation,” Sherwood reminded her. “You should know the name.”

“I haven’t heard it in years. I was young and stoned mostly, and in a completely different world back then. And to my recollection, he didn’t handle any of my depositions. But I do recall the name.”

“You’ve not heard from him since?”

She shook her head. “Not in thirty-five years.”

“Or seen him?”

“Like I said, I’ve been a bit preoccupied, detective.” She flicked an ash in the coffee mug. “How is Detective Zorn?”

“Well, actually, he’s dead,” Sherwood told her.

“Hmmm .” She grunted with a slight smile. “Definitely seems to be in the water lately.”

“He was murdered. Three days ago. In his home. In Santa Maria. Thirty miles south of Morro Bay.” Sherwood stared at her. “Any chance that you’ve been there ?”

Susan Pollack met his stare and took a long drag on her cigarette. Her amiable expression shifted. “I’m not sure I like where this is going, Detective Sherwood. But I’m still interested in finding out what any of this has to do with me.”

“Zorn handled the Houvnanian murders. A week or two ago, before he was killed, he was observed in conversation with Dr. Erlich’s nephew, Evan. It seems the boy’s father, Dr. Erlich’s brother, had a connection to Houvnanian himself back then.”

“Now this is getting interesting. What kind of connection?”

“Apparently he resided on the Riorden Ranch for a time. I don’t suppose you might’ve overlapped or even remember him. Charlie Erlich…”

Susan’s Pollack’s birdlike eyes narrowed, like she was focusing back in time. “I may. Or may not, as you say. People were always moving in and out of the ranch. We may not have even been there at the same time. Anyway, we all went by different names back then. Mine was Maggie. Maggie Mae. For Magdalena, actually, not for the song.

“Anyway”-she looked back at me-“your brother’s son is dead, and he had some kind of random connection to this detective, Zorn. Now he’s dead…” She turned to Sherwood, the lightbulb going off. “And I’ve been recently released. I think I get it now.”

Sherwood nodded. “We’re trying to find out if Detective Zorn’s connection to Evan was, indeed, as random as you say.”

She rubbed a finger along the side of her face, knocked the ash off her cigarette. She came back with the faintest smile. “Just so you know, detective, I haven’t had any direct communication with Russell Houvnanian in more than thirty years. I’ve taken responsibility for what I’ve done. What I helped to do. I’ve expressed remorse. I’ve paid my debt. I was a deluded twenty-year-old who was in love. I didn’t kill anybody, Detective Sherwood. I didn’t get in that van.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am-”

“I’m fifty-seven now,” Susan Pollack said, cutting him off. “I’ve forfeited most of my life. I’d like to find some way I can make up for the pain I’ve caused. Counseling, animal rescue, I don’t know what form. The last thing I have on my mind is the ‘old days,’ detective. I think you can understand that. That’s the best answer I can give.”

She turned to me. “I’m sorry about your nephew, doctor. I’m sorry if it’s opened a bunch of wounds and old things that were better off kept closed. But I haven’t been to Morro Bay. Or Santa Maria. Or seen Detective Zorn. Or knew of your nephew. Now, I know you’ve had a long drive up here. Is that all?”

Sherwood looked at me with an air of disappointment. As if he was saying, Sorry, her cooperation is 100 percent voluntary at this point. He seemed ready to get up. “We won’t trouble you any longer…”

I fixed on her. “Both Evan and this detective Zorn had something strange on them at the times of their deaths. The image of an eye. An open eye, staring. Does that mean anything to you?”

Susan Pollack shrugged. I noticed the slightest tremor in her jaw. “No. Should it?”

Sherwood looked at me, eyes burning, but I continued on. “Do you mind if I read you something, Ms. Pollack?” I knew we were about to walk out the door with nothing and that would be the end of it. We had no proof, nothing to pin her to any of the scenes, no evidence to compel her to cooperate, and nothing on Houvnanian, who was in jail.

All we had were these unrelated pieces of the jigsaw I was trying to fit together. I needed to know for sure.

“Russell Houvnanian made a statement at the time of his sentencing. It was about him possibly coming back one day. To take revenge. Do you have any idea what this means?”

I pulled out the paper from my jacket and tried to judge her reactions as I read. “ ‘On that day of judgment, or even the hour, no one will know… Not even the sleeping child will know. Only the father. It’s like a man who goes away for a long time…’ ” I glanced up, watching her watching me, the slightest veiled smile in her eyes. “ ‘No one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner… Watch,’ ” I read, “ ‘lest he come back suddenly and find you sleeping. Watch…’ ”

“I think it’s time for you both to go now.” Susan Pollack rubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “I’m sorry you had to come up all the way here.”

Sherwood stood up with her. “We appreciate your time…”

“Did you know my brother?” I asked, my blood heating.

She didn’t answer. She just motioned us to the door. “I’m sorry for your loss, Dr. Erlich. For your brother’s loss.”

“Did you know him? His name was Charlie, Ms. Pollack. He had a beard and long black hair.”

She waited for us to step off the porch. I followed Sherwood down, sure I had struck a nerve, but one I’d never be able to follow up on.

Then she called back-not so much in answer to my question, but with what seemed a kind of taunt. “He was a musician, wasn’t he?”

Blood rocketed in my veins.

Then she smiled, putting back on her work gloves. “I hope you have a good trip back.”

Outside, we headed back to the car. I exchanged only the slightest glance with Sherwood. I was frustrated. I knew we had come away with nothing. Nothing to follow up on. Nothing to tie her to Evan’s death in any way.

He went to the driver’s side and eyed me, silently telling me to get in.

“Wait one second,” I said, suddenly remembering something.

I went over to the garage, Susan Pollack watching me. It was more like a dilapidated barn with a rolling wooden door on tracks. The door was open. I swung it to the side just a little and peered in.

I thought back to the night outside Charlie’s apartment. I brought to mind the person in the car. Flicking her cigarette. Staring at me.

A Kia wagon. Navy.

A car just like this.

I headed back over to Sherwood and got back in the car. I looked up at the house and saw Susan Pollack in the doorway, smiling at me, petting her dog.

Chapter Thirty-Six

“I know it was her.” I turned to Sherwood as soon as we got back on the main road.

He put on the brakes, veins popping on his neck. “What do you think you were doing in there?”

I knew I had crossed the line. “We had this one chance,” I said. “I was only trying to figure out what she knew.”

“Yeah, well, you leaked a confidential piece of evidence in the homicide investigation of an ex-police officer. The knife marks. Maybe in the ER, doc, you call the shots. But here you’re no more than a guy who’s come in off the street with no insurance. That wasn’t something she needed to know.”

“All right, I’m sorry,” I said, taking a breath. “But she’s part of it, Sherwood.”

“Yeah? What did she say that made up your mind?”

I told him about the car I’d seen three nights ago outside my brother’s apartment. The person in the cap watching me.

The same car I was sure I just saw in Susan Pollack’s garage.

“Someone staring at you? ” he said, his nostrils flaring. “Sort of like I am now.”

“I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. I don’t know how to describe it, but I know they were watching me. Or Charlie. As they drove away the window went down, and they flicked out a cigarette butt my way. It was like a warning, Sherwood. It gave me a chill.”

“Well, maybe you should have listened to it, doc…” Sherwood stared at me. “ What kind of car was it?”

“A compact. A Honda or a Kia or something. A wagon. Black or dark blue.”

“Black or dark blue? ” He rolled his eyes.

“It was night,” I said.

“I know. Exactly,” he replied unsympathetically. “You take note of the plates?”

“No. I didn’t get them. I was talking to my wife.”

“What about the car model? The year?”

“I don’t know!” I snapped back. “I’m a doctor. I don’t know fucking cars. I didn’t even suspect that anything was going on back then. It was just a sense.”

“And that’s what you want me to broaden an investigation on? Some car you can’t identify; a person you think you saw in the dark while you were on the phone. A sense! You think I can go to my boss with this and say, ‘Look, all this shit is going on, none of it adds up, but my guy’s got a medical degree, and he’s pretty sure someone was watching him. We think we found the car. It was in Susan Pollack’s garage. It was either a Honda or a Kia, either black or dark blue. It was nighttime… And oh, yeah, the thing that totally cinches it, Susan Pollack smokes…’ ”

“It was her!” I shouted. My gaze burned. “The eyes, the woman who was with Evan, the person in the car outside Charlie’s house. It all adds up. We just have to put it together, Sherwood. She knew my brother. You heard what she said. She was taunting me. She knows why Zorn had to find Evan…”

“I can’t keep this investigation open on taunts. I need something real! I’m a goddamn coroner’s detective, not homicide. You know the score here. I have maybe, what, a year before I’m pushed aside. Six months, if the county budget cuts come down. And then what? You know the long-term prospects for a transplant at my age. You can see the color in my eyes, same as me.”

I had noticed the yellowish hue. Along with the bruise marks on his arms. Transplants at his age were always dicey. If he wasn’t one of the lucky ones, two years, three years tops.

“I can’t afford to mortgage the rest of my career for you!”

He glared at me with his eyes burning, then sat back and put the car in gear. We drove back down the hill toward the coast.

For a while, neither of us said a word. I wanted to say I understood. I understood everything he was saying. I knew we didn’t have a single solid shred of evidence to build a case on. Other than these crazy puzzle pieces in my mind. Pieces Sherwood no longer seemed keen on putting together. We knew Zorn knew about Evan. We had the eyes on both bodies. There was a woman with Evan before he ended up dead.

We drove down to the coast and got back on the highway. The morning fog had lifted and it was now a bright and shining day.

Sherwood pulled to the side of the road. For a moment I thought he was going to tell me to get out and make my own way back to Pismo Beach.

Instead, he turned to me and shook his head. “I think you’re going at this the wrong way. There’s someone else you should be talking to,” he said. “Who knows a lot more than he’s letting on.”

I didn’t have to ask who he meant.

“You’re gonna lose me,” he said.

“I can’t.” I looked at him pleadingly.

“You want some answers…” He put the car back in gear and drove down the hill. “Quit protecting your brother and ask him.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

It was already after eight when Sherwood dropped me off in front of the motel. I didn’t feel like dealing with Charlie that night. I was exhausted and drained from the long ride. I went upstairs and ran the shower. I stood in front of the mirror and looked at my hollowed, haggard face.

I kept seeing Susan Pollack’s smile. Your brother was a musician.

She knew him! I knew she did. Which meant Charlie was keeping something from me about his time on the ranch.

It’s time for Charlie to come clean.

That’s when my cell phone rang. Kathy.

This was another conversation I wasn’t looking to have. How would I explain what was going on? Where I’d been today? Or why I needed more time here?

“Hey,” I answered, sucking in a breath.

“Hey. You sound tired.”

We tap-danced about the weather for a while, and then the kids. How Maxie had been messing around on Ryan Frantz’s guitar while at lacrosse camp and wanted to take lessons.

Then she said, “Jay, I think it’s time you brought me in on what the hell’s going on out there.”

She was right. It was time. I said, “Just promise me you won’t tell me I’m crazy until you hear the whole story, okay?”

“I’d like to be able to promise that, Jay…”

“All right, here goes…”

I started with Walter Zorn and the things that connected him to Evan. Looking for him at the basketball courts. And then the eyes. “We all thought he was delusional, Kathy, but this friend of his confirmed he had been speaking with the police.” I brought up Susan Pollack and the woman who had been spotted with Evan before he died.

Then I brought up Houvnanian. Charlie’s old connection to him. How I had once met him.

Still she didn’t say a word.

Finally I told her where I had been that day.

“Are you done?” Kathy finally asked.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. “Yeah, I’m done.”

“Jay , are you completely out of your mind?”

“I told you, you weren’t allowed to say that,” I said, hoping at least for a chuckle.

There was none.

She said, “You’re a doctor, Jay, not a policeman! What you’re saying sounds totally crazy. Evan. This murdered detective. These sets of eyes! Russell Houvnanian! ”

“Look, I know there’s no way for you to understand, Kathy. I know that I’m onto something here. I have to see it through.”

“Onto what, Jay? That your nephew wasn’t sick? A few days ago you were claiming the hospital was responsible for his death. You even brought in the press. Now you’re saying what ? That he was murdered ?”

I let out a breath. “I know how it sounds, Kathy, but yeah.”

“Russell Houvnanian? Don’t you see-you’re scaring me now, Jay! Look, I know how tough it must be with Charlie and Gabby now. I know how Evan’s death has upset them…”

“It has upset them, Kath, but that’s not it.”

“Then what is it, Jay? Tell me . What is it you’re trying to find out there?”

“I’m just trying to find out the truth. About what happened to him. That’s all.”

“No. This is all going far beyond Evan. You’re stepping into things you shouldn’t be. Things the police ought to be handling if something’s going on. You’re going to get yourself hurt, Jay. Don’t you see I’m worried about you? ”

I knew I had to say something to convince her I hadn’t lost my mind. “I just need you to trust me, Kathy, that’s all. Like how you trusted me when you went up in the plane with me that first time. Like how you trust me every day to take care of you and Maxie and Sophie. And I’ve never let you down, have I?”

“No, Jay, you’ve never let me down.”

I said, “I realized something the other day. I know this’ll sound a little crazy. But how lucky we are. All of us. I tried to say it, but I couldn’t. You wouldn’t have understood.”

“We are lucky, Jay. We are.”

“I don’t mean that way. What I mean is, Charlie and my father, they were the same. You know what I’m saying, right? That’s why Lenny was so volatile. He just was never diagnosed. He just played it out on a different stage.

“Being out here, and watching how Charlie and Gabby loved Evan, it’s made me think, maybe the only reason Charlie is where he is and I’m where I am is simply that I was lucky. That what they had didn’t get passed on down to me. Charlie got it, Kathy.”

“You’re wrong about that, Jay. You’ve earned whatever you have. I’ve watched you. You’ve earned it all. And you say you’re out there to find the truth… But the truth is never the truth, Jay, when it comes to your brother. You know that, don’t you?”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But I’m going to be there for them, Kathy. I’m in now. And all the way.”

It was the second time in two days we had hung up with distance between us. I promised her I’d be back soon. Maybe not tomorrow, but the day after. Or the day after that.

I sat up and looked in the mirror. And while the face that stared back at me was the same-the one who scrubbed in in the OR, who laughed at The Office or 30 Rock, who cheered on my son at his matches, and who drove my daughter down to college and hung her posters on the walls just right, and even cried in the car after I hugged her good-bye-I saw something different in the eyes that stared back at me.

Something had changed.

The phone sounded again.

I hurried to grab it, wanting to say, Kathy, I didn’t mean to scare you. I don’t know what’s taking hold of me. I need you too …

Then I realized it wasn’t my cell at all that was ringing. It was the room phone. I thought maybe Sherwood was calling me back, or more likely, the front desk-I was way, way past my original checkout date.

I reached it on the third ring. “Hello?”

“You know the one about the patient, doc, who waits too long to find out what’s wrong with him, ’cause he never wants to hear bad news?”

The voice was male, a slight southern inflection to it.

“Sorry?”

“And then it’s too late. He’s got cancer. And the doctor goes, ‘How would you feel if I told you it was all a joke, and you just have high blood pressure now?’ ”

“Who is this?”

He didn’t say. Instead he said, “You’re a smart man, doc. Smart people like you ought to know when they put their noses where they don’t belong. When they should just back off. Before they get themselves burned. Or even worse, maybe someone else, someone close to them.”

“Who the hell is this? ” I said, my blood instantly on fire.

“Don’t you worry your little medical degree about that, doc. You worry about what you’re gonna do. Comprende? I’m just trying to play the good citizen here and clue you in. Time to just pack up and head home, pal. Quit trying to make trouble here.”

“What do you mean,” I said, my temperature rising, “ someone close to me ?”

“Mine to know, doc, yours to worry about. The kid was sick, right? Why don’t we just leave it at that. And speaking of sick, let me ask. You smoke, doc?”

I was about to hang up but answered, seething, “No, I don’t smoke.”

“That’s funny then,” he said, “ ’cause I definitely smell something burning. Don’t you?”

The guy’s voice had this cozy, insinuating sort of tone to it, which actually scared me a little. “Don’t call me again, asshole.”

“ ’Cause it would be easy-you don’t know how easy-,” he went on, “to just burn that little nose of yours right off, any time we want. Remember, doc, you’re out west, not back in New York. Once a fire starts here, you never know how fast it might spread. Or to where.”

I put down the phone, my heart pounding, anger pouring out of me.

I definitely smell something burning. Don’t you?

I jumped up, a sudden alarm shooting through me. I ran to the door and pulled it open, stepping out into the corridor outside. I scanned in both directions, toward the lobby and the parking lot.

No one.

What the hell did he mean?

Then I looked down, my blood rushing to a stop. I saw what was on the mat.

Smell something burning?

It was a lit, half-smoked cigarette.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Thirty minutes later I handed the cigarette to Don Sherwood.

I had carefully picked it up-a Salem-put it out, and placed it in a bag from my Dopp kit. Then I called Sherwood, who alerted the Pismo Beach police, who arrived minutes later, lights flashing, along with a detective named Reyes.

“You wanted something real,” I said, handing it to Sherwood. “Here- this is real ! Go to town!”

The threatening call had come from an untraceable number. I had checked with the front desk before I’d even called Sherwood. The motel had security cameras, mostly on the stairwells, but the one on my outside corridor was on the fritz. It hadn’t even been turned on. The night manager said they hadn’t needed to look at them in years.

“How’re you doing?” Sherwood asked, taking me aside.

I was angry. Who wouldn’t be? And upset. “I’m not used to receiving these kinds of threats.”

“You want to file a complaint, Dr. Erlich, Detective Reyes will be happy to take it for you.”

“I don’t want to file a complaint!” I said. “What I want is for you to look into my nephew’s death. I told you what the guy said. He was warning me to back off. He referred to someone close to me who would be put in danger. You need a scorecard to figure who he meant by that? You need to put a car outside Charlie’s house. How much more ‘real’ does it have to get? Or maybe you just want to wait until he ends up like Evan. Or maybe next it’ll be me. ”

Sherwood just looked back and shrugged. “So maybe you oughta think on that advice,” he said. “There’s a lotta people around here you’ve already managed to piss off. Let’s start with the hospital. While we’re at it, why not toss in the local police? See what I mean? No telling who might’ve done this. I can’t just station a car. There wasn’t even a direct threat made against your brother. In the meantime”-he held up the bag-“Detective Reyes will take this back. Not that I’m particularly hopeful they’ll find anything.”

“How about Susan Pollack’s DNA?”

“I thought you said the caller was a man.”

“So someone else is involved.” I fixed on him. “You can’t keep ignoring this, Sherwood. Evan’s death wasn’t a suicide. You know it-I know it. Please, I’m begging you, station a car…”

He looked at me like his hands were tied.

“At least check Cooley and Greenway. You’ll find something. I know you will. Please, Sherwood, just do it. You’ll see.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The hotel switched my room to one closer to the lobby, with two police cars stationed below, and I slept with the door double-locked and the chain drawn-when I actually finally made it to sleep. I watched the clock strike two.

The next morning, I headed over to Charlie’s as soon as I showered.

Gabby opened the door. She was in a light green knitted tracksuit, stripes running down the sleeves. Her face seemed to have a new anxiety written all over it. “Come on in, Jay. Your brother’s not doing so well. Something happened last night. As if Evan is not enough…”

My alarm bells started sounding. “ What? ”

I went with her inside. Charlie was slouched over the kitchen table, his face in his hands, his hair straggly and unkempt. He barely even stirred when he saw me. “Hello, Jay…”

“Your brother is a wreck,” Gabby said, “and so am I. How could someone do something like this? How is it possible someone could want to hurt us in this way…?”

“What happened, Gabby?” I knew already I wasn’t the only one who had been warned.

She opened the back door to their tiny fenced-in yard. There was a large plastic garbage bag set on the ground. Gabby’s face was pinched and somber. “Look, look what we found this morning…”

I hesitated for a second and peeked inside the bag.

“She’d been missing. We couldn’t find her for two days. I thought she had finally run off. That she had enough of us for good. I opened the front door to get the mail yesterday afternoon and this is what I found…”

The harsh, acrid smell told me immediately what was in there. I peered in, wincing at the charred, black shape.

“Who could do something so cruel, Jay? She didn’t harm anyone. The people here are filth. Drug dealers and meth heads. I am ashamed to have to live around them. People just want to hurt, that’s all! What have we done to deserve this?”

“The people here didn’t do this, Gabby.”

I closed the bag, my chest filling with both sadness and rage. My warning last night was suddenly clear. The butt on my front door.

I turned to my brother, his eyes dull and glazed. “There’s stuff you’re not telling me, Charlie.”

“What do you want, Jay? What do you want me to say?”

Gabby stepped in. “Your brother is a mess,” she said. “He cannot tell you anything today. He’s been irrational all morning. The grief has done this to him. I tried to give him his medications to calm him down, but he won’t take them. Isn’t that right, Charlie? Tell him.”

He had a glint in his eye. “The people here are animals, Jay.”

“He says he wants to leave.” Gabby went over and sat next to Charlie. “He says he wants to go to Canada or someplace.” She laughed derisively. “He is really crazy today. He thinks the devil is loose here. In Pismo Beach. Have you ever heard anything so stupid in your life? I keep telling him, we can’t leave. We can’t go anywhere in this godforsaken world. We’re stuck in this miserable, empty hole for the rest of our lives…”

“Gabby, please…” I went and sat down across from Charlie. His wild gray hair and beard were stained from the tears on his face. “The people here didn’t do this, Charlie. I think you know that, and that’s what’s made you scared.”

“Scared? Who wouldn’t be scared, Jay? We’re all going to hell. And you know who’s the first person we’ll see there? Our own son- Evan !”

“He thinks our son is damned and going to go to hell,” Gabby said, “for killing himself. He can’t accept that.”

“Charlie, I got a call last night…” I leaned forward and put my hand on his wrist, and he tried to pull it away. “A threatening one. The caller told me to go back home. To get my nose out of where it didn’t belong. You know what he was talking about, right?”

“I know my son’s in hell and I’m gonna go there too…”

“Before he hung up, he asked me if I smoked. I couldn’t figure out what he meant, but now I know. I ran to the door, and there was a lit cigarette butt burning on the mat. Now this …”

“You ought to go back home, Jay.” His eyes were runny and confused. “You should listen to what they’re saying to you, little brother. I don’t want you here.”

“Who is Susan Pollack, Charlie? Think back. You knew her, didn’t you? She was with you, wasn’t she, on the ranch?”

“Why does everything have to relate to the ranch? The ranch is dead, Jay. It’s been dead for more than thirty years. I told you to go home too, didn’t I? Before it takes you too.”

“I’m not going home, Charlie. Not until you tell me. You knew Susan Pollack- Maggie -back then, didn’t you? I need you to focus on this. I need you to tell me what she wants with you now. What she might have wanted with Evan. She was with Evan, I think. The day he died. As was Zorn. I think it wasn’t about Evan, Charlie. I think by killing Evan, they were trying to hurt you.”

He looked at me. One second his eyes sparked alive, as if with recall and clarity; the next they were as dim and dull as a lunar eclipse. “What does it even matter now, Jay? What if Jesus went down to hell? What if he went there and looked around and said to the devil, ‘Hey, man, this ain’t so bad. I sort of like it here.’ What if this is hell, Jay? Look around. This hole. It sure looks like hell, doesn’t it?

“That big fucking rock-what if it’s all just a game, Jay, and everyone’s trying to make their way to heaven, thinking, This is the right way to salvation, but what if the devil is already there-he’s beaten them to it! And he’s laughing at everyone, going, ‘Come on in! This way, everyone…’ What hope is there then, Jay?”

I looked at my brother, the flickering patina in his eye. The way he was acting suddenly didn’t seem far from the crazed dropout ranting about Jesus and Lennon in my mother’s dining room forty years ago. It scared me.

“This is how he gets,” Gabby said, “when he doesn’t take his medications. Isn’t that right, Charlie? You know that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” my brother chortled dismissively. “See, Jay, this is how I get.”

“He’ll be better tomorrow,” Gabby said. “Right?”

“Charlie…” I pushed my chair close to him. “Zorn tried to contact Evan and warn him about something. Maybe it was to warn you. A woman was with Evan when he went up to that rock. I’m sure it was Susan Pollack. You might be right, Charlie-about what you first said. That maybe Evan didn’t jump off that rock. But I need to know what they think you know, Charlie. Or what you did back then.”

“What I did? What I did was send my only son straight to hell, Jay. So what does that make me?”

“This is for Evan, Charlie.” I squeezed his hand. “For him. What do these people want with you, Charlie? What did Walter Zorn know?”

“For Evan…? ” He turned to me. “Maybe Zorn was the devil, Jay. What do you think? That gimpy bastard, he surely walked like the devil. That’s what they say, you know, how you can tell it’s him-the limp.”

Gabby came over to me. “There’s nothing you can do when he gets like this.” She leaned over and draped her arm caringly around my brother’s neck. “He’s like his own son. You can talk to him all day-but he’s not here… He’s somewhere else.”

He took another sip of coffee and caught my eyes. “For Evan, Jay.”

I stood up and squeezed my brother softly on the shoulder as I went past him out to the narrow, fenced-in yard. I sank down in one of the cheap folding lawn chairs and looked up at the blue sky.

In my life, I’d never felt the fear of being in danger-or that I was putting others in danger. I knew the next time it might not be a warning. I thought about Evan, what he might have gotten involved in unwittingly, what might have happened up there, on the rock, and I knew I owed him something.

Two things drummed in my mind.

What if Jesus went to hell and said it ain’t so bad here and just stayed, my brother had said. What if heaven is hell?

I realized I’d read something like that before.

From Houvnanian’s ramblings. The other night, online. The End of Days.

But it was the second thing that really worried me. Not about Charlie but Zorn. The slight limp he carried.

Charlie had mentioned it. Miguel had mentioned it too.

What was worrying me was that in all the news reports and coverage, I was sure that had never come out before.

Chapter Forty

Sherwood sat at his desk, cradling the phone. He looked at the number he had scribbled on his pad, conflicted. It was the number of an out-of-state detective someone in the sheriff’s department had known. He leaned back and looked at the mountain outside his window, hesitating before he dialed.

He glanced at the photograph of his wife on the credenza.

Dorrie, you’d probably say I was crazy for doing this, wouldn’t you?

No. Sherwood chuckled to himself. She would not.

What she would say was, God’s given you a second chance, Don, so why not use it, right?

He had this job courtesy of a friend in the sheriff’s department. Mostly in recognition of what he’d put in for the past twenty-five years. And he was good at it. Usually, no one was down his back. He didn’t have to solve murders anymore, just figure out if they warranted solving. And pass it along. He didn’t have to beat the leather all around town-chase suspects, appear in court, buck up against the state authorities. Or put himself at risk…

The press didn’t get on his back, making life miserable.

It was a nice, stress-free existence, a way to end his career. And he was lucky it came his way. After he’d gotten sick, the position had opened up. Perokis, his lieutenant, always gave him a lot of space. He’d earned a certain respect. He did his work; cases got disposed of; the files went down. And like clockwork, others always came.

Then this one. He didn’t have to get deeper involved.

It was just that this nagging voice had been needling him over the past week-telling him that maybe he hadn’t done all he could. Maybe there was something there, these threads of doubt knitting together. Now the voice had turned into a jabbing presence in his mind.

Dorrie’s voice.

And what had happened to the doctor last night only intensified the voices even more.

He stared at the mountain.

What if Erlich was right? What if Zorn’s murder was connected? What if he had known something he was trying to share? Warn them. What if the “eyes” did mean something? What if Susan Pollack was the woman the street vendor had seen?

He rubbed his jaw-the joint felt like someone was sticking a needle in it. It was telling him to back off. He had already turned this case over. Let the solved cases be.

No, he knew, it wasn’t saying that at all.

He glanced at Dorrie. God gave me a second chance, huh?

It was saying, Use it.

He chuckled, cradling the phone against his shoulder, and punched in the number. So how come it feels like my last?

After a few seconds, someone picked up on the other end.

“Meachem,” the voice said. “Las Vegas Homicide.”

“Detective Meachem, my name is Don Sherwood. I’m a detective with the coroner’s office of San Luis Obispo County. In California.”

“San Luis Obispo? I’ve got a sister up there. She works at the college. What can I do for you, detective?”

“I need a favor, if you can. You had a floater a while back. Name of Greenway, Thomas. He was found facedown in his pool. Ruled a suicide. It does go back a ways.”

“Greenway?” Meachem seemed to be writing down the name. “How long?”

“Eighty-eight,” Sherwood said.

“I didn’t say how old. I meant how long ago.”

“Nineteen eighty-eight,” Sherwood said again, awaiting the response.

“You must be kidding,” the Las Vegas detective said after a long pause.

“No, I’m not kidding,” Sherwood said, turning away from his wife’s gaze. “I know it’s been a while, but I need to take a look at that file.”

Chapter Forty-One

Charlie’s ranting earlier didn’t help me with anything. I still had to find out whatever I could about how he and Zorn once fit together. When I got back to the motel, the front desk said there was a package waiting for me.

It was Greenway’s book on Houvnanian. I had ordered it two nights ago online. It was fittingly titled End of Days .

I took it out back to the bench along the promenade. It was a clear, bright day; the surf was high. Waves crashed onto the rocks below. Pelicans danced out of the spray, searching the surf for a meal.

I opened the book. The first chapter began with a retelling of that horrible night, September 7, 1973. “ The first sign that absolute hell had arrived at Paul Riorden’s doorstep was the site of three rattily clad visitors at his door…”

I dove into the next few pages-Houvnanian and his cohorts barging in, taking out knives and guns, tying up the four people at the dinner party, along with a servant in the kitchen; the victims’ outrage and anger shifting to premonitions of doom and fear as, one by one, they watched, whimpering, begging, as their friends were barbarously murdered, fighting against their own impending end.

I got the chills.

I flipped to the index and, on a lark, searched for my brother’s name. It didn’t surprise me nothing was there. He hadn’t been there then. I flipped to Walter Zorn, and fittingly, his name appeared on several pages. One by one I turned back to them.

“Walter Zorn had been a decorated Santa Barbara patrolman who, at the age of thirty-one, earned his coveted detective’s shield. ” He started out in Robbery. Violent crime in tony Santa Barbara was rare, homicide rarer still. It mentioned how Zorn had been hit by a car while chasing after a burglary suspect as a young cop, sustaining a broken femur that never properly healed, causing him to walk with a slight limp for the rest of his life.

I wondered if Charlie had ever read this.

There were dozens of photos. Long-haired hippie types, in the dress of the times, taken on the ranch. Gardening, climbing rocks, playing music, together. Head shots of the nine victims. The grounds where the crimes were committed. Lots of photos of Houvnanian and all the perpetrators. The grisly crime scenes. I found one of Walter Zorn and Joe Cooley, his lieutenant, outside the Santa Barbara courthouse. A younger version of Zorn, his facial mark clearly visible.

I also found a photo of a large group at the ranch in happier times. Singing. A couple of them were playing guitars. It was taken in April 1973. Five months before. On a whim, I studied the faces closely, looking for Charlie. It was sort of a relief when I didn’t see him there.

I began to flip around. Zorn had been recently promoted to detective and he happened to be on duty the morning following the murders when a gardener arrived at Riorden’s home and discovered the grisly scene. It took most of the next two days to even process what they had found-it was so chilling and bloody even for veteran investigators. Later, they were called to the Forniciari home in neighboring Montecito when their daughter went to visit and came upon the scene.

Although his lieutenant, Cooley, was in charge, Zorn seemed to play a pivotal role in the investigation. It was he who-upon talking to Riorden’s sister, Marci, about who might possibly have a motive to do this to them, and then later to his ex-wife, Sandy-first put together the possibility that people who lived on Sandy’s property up near Big Sur might have been involved.

Fingerprints and articles of clothing had been left behind-prints in blood smeared into words on the victims’ chests: “Judas,” “betrayer,” “whore”-but in the beginning they all led nowhere because they belonged to people who were not in the national criminal data bank. There was also a bandana, a black poncho, and a set of gardening gloves left at the Forniciari estate, which were ultimately matched to the perpetrators and ended up as key pieces of evidence in the case.

Suspicion quickly pointed to the Houvnanian “family,” who’d had a series of disagreements with Paul Riorden and had been rebuffed by Forniciari.

But determining who had actually committed the ritual-style killings took some sorting out.

Houvnanian was first taken in on minor illegal occupancy charges, because he and his group had repeatedly ignored legal notices to vacate the property. Several of his followers were also detained on drug possession charges. Ultimately, fingerprints began to match up; several witnesses had spotted the ranch’s white van not far from the Forniciari estate. The horrific picture began to be put together.

The trials were a slam dunk. The evidence was overwhelming. The state had fingerprints, clothing, in many cases the defendant’s own words and bizarre confessions. None of the juries’ deliberations lasted longer than four hours. The people wanted justice quickly-and they got it. Houvnanian was sentenced to nine consecutive life sentences. As were Carla Jean Blue, Sarah Strasser, Nolan Pierce, and Telford Richards.

Susan Pollack, and two others who abetted the murderers, received sentences of thirty-five years.

I put the book down.

“Hey, brother…”

I looked into the sunlight and saw the panhandler I had given the five to the other day. He was wearing the same torn flannel shirt and filthy work pants, and a Seattle Seahawks cap. He looked like he might have spent the night in a field somewhere. Still, he was smiling.

I said, “You already hit me up once, guy. That’s all you get.”

“Nah.” He grinned. “I don’t need anything from you, boss. Just going by and wondering how your stay was going. You know you’re sitting right dab in the middle of my office, bro.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize that.” I smiled back, feigning an apology.

He waved. “Ah, make yourself at home. You just let me know if I can do anything for you. I’ll take good care. Chili dog? There’s a stand over there where they treat me pretty good. Maybe some water…?”

“No.” I shrugged politely. “I’m good.”

“Well, you just let me know, okay? I like to take care of my friends…”

“You bet,” I said to him.

The guy waved, with a gap-toothed grin, and started back along the path. I opened the book again. But instead of delving in, I met his gaze. It had been almost a week now since I had talked to anyone beyond the reach of Evan’s death, and a couple of words with anyone felt therapeutic. Even with this guy.

“How’s business?” I asked him.

“Business? ” He chuckled with amusement. “Look around, dude. This town is bone-dry. You watch the news. People out of work, the state’s going belly-up. It’s the trickle-down effect-even to a bottom-fisher like me, just trying to find a buck.” He screwed up his eyes, trying to focus on my book. “What ya reading?”

I shrugged. “Just something I picked up.” I flashed him the cover.

“End of Days, huh?” He laughed. “Now there’s a book I can surely relate to. My life’s resembled the End of Days for years!”

This time, I chuckled. His weathered face did look like it had witnessed its share of reversals in its time. “Bet it has.”

“Well, can’t stay and chat all day…” He winked. “There’s fortunes to be made, right, man…”

“Take it slow.” I waved.

“Always, brother. Any other way?” He started down the path again, when suddenly an idea popped into my mind.

“Hey, ” I called to him, “what’s your name?”

“Dev.” The dude grinned. “But most people call me Memphis. From Tennessee.”

“Can I trust you, Dev?” I asked.

“Trust me? ” The vagrant’s haggard face lit up like a lamp. “Like a bank, dude. These days, probably better.”

“So how’d you like to earn a fifty from me?”

“Fifty bucks? ” The guy came back over and said under his breath, “Do I have to kill anyone? Can’t let down my partners with any time in jail.”

The idea seemed a little crazy- I mean, look at the guy, I thought-but if Sherwood wouldn’t give me a car to watch over Charlie’s, why the hell couldn’t I find a set of eyes on my own?

“No, you don’t have to kill anyone. All perfectly legit. Promise.”

I told him I was worried about someone who was badgering my brother and how the police wouldn’t help me out. I described Susan Pollack’s blue Kia and gave him my brother’s address. I told him I just wanted him to watch out for it.

“I guess I could do that.” He shrugged. He looked at me in a strange way, then nodded. “Fifty bucks, huh?”

“Here’s thirty now,” I said, “the rest when you report back.” I reached into my pocket and dug out a few bills, handed them to him, probably more than he saw in a good week. I shrugged. “It’s not a fortune, but maybe it’ll get you out of town.”

“Oh, I find my way out of town from time to time,” he said with kind of a smile. “Was out of town just last week.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, a little surprised. “Where was that?”

The guy stuffed the bills in his pocket and said, eyeing me, “Michigan.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Sherwood was making his way through an enchilada outside his favorite taqueria the next day when his cell phone rang. It was Carl Meachem, from the Las Vegas PD. “I located those records,” the detective said. “That suicide you were looking for. Greenway.”

Sherwood put his lunch down in its wrapper on the hood of his Torino and took out a pad. “You’re my hero. Shoot.”

“I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for…,” the Vegas detective said. “By the way, you knew he wrote a book on the Houvnanian murders back in the seventies, didn’t you?”

Sherwood purposely hadn’t shared what his interest was but answered, “I knew that, yeah.”

“Just making sure… Seems Greenway moved down here, North Las Vegas actually, in 1986. After his big book was published. I guess it did okay. They made it into a movie and he retired. We all should find a case like that, right? You remember, it had that guy who won an Oscar in it-”

“I was actually more interested in what happened the night of his death,” Sherwood said, cutting him off.

“Okay, yeah, right…” Sherwood heard the sound of pages being turned. “Let’s see, night of November 6, 1988… Seems Greenway’s wife was at a dinner for some women’s golf committee at their club. Says here she came home and found her husband facedown in the pool. Called 911. That was nine thirty-eight P.M. The EMTs arrive, looks like, around twelve minutes later… Nine fifty,” the detective said. “Not bad. Unable to revive him. They estimate the TOD as a couple of hours before. No sign of any foul play. The doors were all locked and the neighbors didn’t see or hear anything going on. Didn’t leave a note-but officers found a half-drained bottle of Absolut on the kitchen counter along with a bunch of assorted pills… Says here the victim had been depressed lately. His wife admitted they’d been having problems. Apparently, there’d been some financial setbacks as well…”

“Sounds pretty clear,” Sherwood said, acknowledging it with a twinge of disappointment.

“What the autopsy seemed to confirm… Victim died from deprivation of oxygen to the lungs. Four point one percent blood alcohol. Along with elevated levels of barbiturates and various muscle relaxers. Though, hmphff…” Meachem grunted.

“What?” Sherwood asked.

“It seems they still kept the case open for a while, nonetheless. As suspicious. Until they checked out a couple of other angles…”

“What kinds of angles?” Sherwood asked. He felt a tremor of hopefulness pick up.

Meachem flipped the page. “One was that Greenway’s wife apparently didn’t seem to think vodka was her husband’s drink of choice. She said he was always a scotch guy. ‘Johnnie Walker, all the way…’ ”

“And the other?” Sherwood pressed.

“The other, it says here”-Meachem turned the page-“was something the ME discovered. In the victim’s stomach. Must have been fairly recent to the time of death because it hadn’t degraded…”

“What did he eat?”

“Not eat,” the Vegas detective said, clarifying, “ swallowed . It was half of a dollar bill. There’s even a photo here…”

“A dollar bill? ” Sherwood dug into his wallet and pulled out one. “Which half…?”

But before the Vegas detective even replied, he knew.

“Which half?” Meachem replied curiously. “Let me see, the half with the pyramid on it; why? Anyway, it seems it never led anywhere. A couple of days later they called it death by suicide and let the matter drop.”

Sherwood couldn’t stop from grinning. He looked at his dollar. He almost felt light-headed. “ Sonovafuckingbitch! ”

The pyramid didn’t mean something, in itself. Except for what was directly above it. Something he’d seen a thousand times and never thought about twice. But now it meant everything.

An open eye .

Chapter Forty-Three

“Got a moment, Phil?” Sherwood knocked on the door of his lieutenant’s office.

Phil Perokis pushed back from his neatly ordered desk and waved Sherwood in. “Sure. Come on in.”

Sherwood shut the door behind him. He’d run it all around, from every possible angle. Slept on it. Nursed it over a Maker’s Mark. A couple of Maker’s Marks. He hadn’t had more than a goddamn beer since the operation, but last night he just said, What the hell! The damn thing was eating away at him now. There was a lot that still didn’t add up.

But he’d woken up this morning with the conclusion that enough of it did.

It damn well did .

“You remember that jumper I was working on? The Erlich kid. He did a back dive off the rock.”

“I know, the gift that keeps on giving…” The lieutenant chuckled. Sherwood had told Perokis how the victim’s uncle kept on pushing him to look at the case again, and everyone knew how a couple of days back, the KSLO reporter was buzzing around, trying to make some hay. “His uncle still in town?”

“He is.” Sherwood sat down in front of his boss, the file on his lap. “In fact, Phil, that’s kind of the thing…”

In a measured voice, he took his boss through the sequence of developments. Starting with Zorn-how the connection seemed to exist between him and Evan. The two, seemingly unrelated open eyes.

Then how the doc had brought his attention to this Susan Pollack character, how she might fit in. How he first felt someone watching him outside his brother’s apartment. Then how it came out Zorn had a past connection to her.

“Susan Pollack? ” Perokis furrowed his brow.

“She was just released from prison.” Sherwood nodded. “After serving thirty-five years as an accomplice in the Houvnanian murders-”

“Houvnanian?”

His boss’s once-agreeable eyes had now grown wider and a little less patient. Perokis liked things tidy, by the book. Work processed, passed on to the right agencies. “ Go on .”

Clearing his throat, Sherwood told him how that souvenir peddler in Morro Bay had seen Evan Erlich as he was headed to the rock. Along with someone else. “ A woman. ” Sherwood looked at his lieutenant.

“Susan Pollack? ” Perokis wasn’t smiling anymore. His look expressed his disappointment at where Sherwood seemed to be heading.

“Phil, I know what you’re thinking. I was thinking the same thing too. But two nights ago, someone called Erlich at his motel, threatening him to back off.”

“Back off what ?”

“What he’s been sticking his nose into. The caller mentioned something about him getting burned if he didn’t. When Erlich went to the door he found a lit cigarette sitting on the mat outside.”

“Could be anyone.” The lieutenant chuckled. “You admit he hasn’t made a whole lot of friends since coming to town.”

“The next day his sister-in-law found the family cat that had been missing- toasted. I’m not talking about harassment, Phil. Two people are dead. Then this …”

He opened the file that was on his lap-the one on Thomas Greenway that had come in that very morning. The FBI investigator who had written a book on the Houvnanian case, he explained, whose pool drowning in Las Vegas may not have been a suicide after all.

“The doc was pushing me to look into it. He was sure it was connected somehow. What’s interesting is what came up-in the autopsy.” He took out the photo. “The victim swallowed something. Or, more likely, something was stuffed down his mouth.”

“What?”

From his own pocket, Sherwood took out a dollar bill, folded it in half, and placed it in front of his boss. He pointed to the eye above the pyramid.

“This. ” Then he pushed forward the Vegas ME’s snapshot from the police file-a reluctant understanding slowly forming in his lieutenant’s widening eyes.

“You’re trying to say this is some kind of series of murders? Zorn. The kid from Grover Beach. This guy, Greenway. Going back what ?” He squinted. “ More than twenty years? ”

“Maybe longer,” Sherwood said. He massaged his jaw joint with his thumb. “Trust me, Phil, a couple of days back I was sitting there rolling my eyes the same as you.”

“And now?”

“Now I guess they’re no longer rolling.”

Perokis picked up the file. He stared almost dumbly at the Vegas ME’s photo of the dollar bill, then paged quickly through the rest. “You have a motive?”

“I don’t know the motive. Just that something’s going on. And whatever it is, it somehow connects to this Erlich kid’s father-who isn’t exactly textbook when it comes to lucidity and isn’t doing a whole lot of talking to be sure. And who insists he wasn’t even there with Susan Pollack or Houvnanian at the time of the murders.”

Perokis folded his fingers in front of his face. Sherwood knew he didn’t like this. He was lucky Phil had made a place for him after the transplant. Otherwise he wouldn’t even have had this job. Otherwise, he’d have been on disability. Watching soaps during the day.

“So what do you want to do?” the lieutenant asked. “You want to find out if everyone else is crazy in this mess-or just you?”

Sherwood gave him a halfhearted smile. “Maybe that pastor’s liver is getting to me more than I know.

“Let me see it through, Phil. I know what my job is here. I know I’ve got, what, maybe a year left before the hatchet falls my way. Call it a good-bye gift. I’ve earned that, haven’t I? I need this.”

The lieutenant’s phone rang. He picked up and asked Carol out front to take a message. Sherwood knew no one in homicide would touch this thing any more than they would a pile of dog turd on the street.

This was his dog turd.

“You got three days,” Perokis said. “And don’t even think of putting in for mileage on this. And if it doesn’t pan out by then, I don’t want to hear of it ever again. Understood? ”

“Completely.” Sherwood closed the file and got up.

“So what’s the next step?”

“The next step?” Sherwood headed to the door. “The next step is I want to see Houvnanian.”

“Houvnanian? You must be joking, Don. You’ll need a judge’s order to get in to see him. If he’ll even see you. And where the hell is he these days anyway?”

“Pelican Bay.”

“Pelican Bay? ” The lieutenant rolled his eyes. The California super-max. About as hard to get into, even for a law enforcement officer, as it was to leave.

“I think he’ll see me…,” Sherwood said. “A wolf likes to eye his prey before he kills it. That’s why I’m bringing the doc.”

Chapter Forty-Four

I spent the rest of the afternoon reading through Greenway’s book, searching for any kind of connection between my brother, who wasn’t anywhere in the narrative, and Zorn.

I called in to my office. Even consulted on one of my cases. Finally I went back to my room and dozed a little in the afternoon.

I had a dream-my unconscious restlessly connecting images and dots.

I saw Paul Riorden’s estate in Santa Barbara. The ugly, awful crime scenes, blood on the walls. And I was at the dinner table-not Riorden-and my wife, Kathy, next to me. I had a fear that something truly terrible was about to take place. I kept saying to Kathy that we had to get out. Before it happened. Then there was a knock at the door. I went to open it and Russell Houvnanian stood in front of me at the door-the same chiseled face and probing eyes I had seen those years ago.

Except my brother Charlie was at his side.

And suddenly I heard my father, laughing-that same mocking tone with which he had humiliated Charlie with Phil. And I tried to warn him. “ Dad, ” I said, “ please, stop! ”

I screamed out loud: “ Stop! ”

But this time Houvnanian took out a blade.

And plunged it into my father’s gut. The laughing stopped. Lenny’s eyes bulged. He looked down. Blood ran into his hands.

And then Charlie was stabbing him too.

“Stop, stop! ” I cried. Over and over. “ Stop! ”

My father looked at me. Helpless. Like, Do something, Jay …

“Stop!”

I woke up, and I was sweating. Blinking and disoriented.

My cell phone was ringing.

I found it on the night table and looked. Sherwood was on the line. My heart beat like a metronome on speed. It took a second for me to regain my composure. To realize in relief that it had all been just a dream.

I put the phone to my ear and answered. “Yeah, Sherwood, it’s me.”

He didn’t even say hello. “You got a dollar on you, doc?”

“A dollar? You woke me up to ask me that?” I rolled over and dug into my khakis. “Is this a joke? Yeah, I have one here. Why? Things hurting that bad?”

“Flip it over,” the detective said without responding. “To the back.”

“Flip it over…?” I said, still a little fuzzy. I stared at the familiar words, In God We Trust. The bold, large “ONE,” spelled out. “Okay.”

“Now fold it in half. What do you see?”

“What do I see? An eagle. The seal of the United States. What am I supposed to see?”

“No,” he said, serious now. “The other half.”

Testily I blew out a breath and did what he asked me. “I’m really not into games like this. A pyramid,” I said. “A bunch of Latin…”

Then I saw it. What I was staring at. The metronome came to a stop. My whole body did.

“I see an eye!”

“That’s what the Vegas ME pulled out of Thomas Greenway’s stomach during his autopsy in 1988. A crumpled dollar bill. Or half a dollar. Like the one you’re looking at now.”

“Oh my God…”

“You were right, doc. All along. So what do you do when everything seems to point in one direction and you want to know how it all connects?”

“I don’t know. You’re playing games with me again, Sherwood. Go to the source?”

“Yeah, doc, let’s go to the source. Where it all connects. You’re not heading home on me again, are you?”

“No.” I sat up, my blood surging. “Of course not.”

“Good. You wanted your case reopened… I don’t know how the hell it happened or where in God’s name it’s going to lead, but consider it reopened. I’m in now, doc. I’m all in!”

I felt alive with validation.

“And the source is where ?” I asked, the hair rising on my arms. But I already thought I knew.

“The source? And I figured you for a smart guy, doc. The source is Russell Houvnanian. I thought maybe after all these years you’d like to renew your acquaintance with him.”