Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

Chapter Forty-Five

The loud thwhack-thwhack-thwhack of the helicopter drummed in my ears as the aircraft descended over the dense redwood forest near the California-Oregon border.

Sherwood pointed out the window.

Cut into the sea of green was a patch of cleared land, with a group of interconnected white buildings, almost like an X carved out of the remote forest.

Pelican Bay.

My heart tightened from the anticipation of soon being face-to-face with the psychotic killer who had been a part of my youth.

Pelican Bay was California’s most remote and secure prison, housing only Level Four offenders, the worst of the worst. To be sent there you had to either be convicted of a particularly violent crime or have earned your way through habitually violent behavior at the state’s other penal facilities.

The centerpiece of Pelican Bay was the pod of four intersecting two-story halls known as the SHU, the Security Housing Unit, the giant X that I spotted from the sky. Russell Houvnanian was the SHU’s most celebrated resident. It had essentially been built for him. He had been transferred there, to the isolation of the remote forest, in 1989, after spending his first fourteen years incarcerated at San Quentin.

The copter came down on a landing pad on the prison grounds. The propeller whirred loudly and came to a stop. The landing steps dropped down and we stepped out, squinting into the bright sun.

“Detective Sherwood,” someone yelled. A guard in a khaki uniform came up as we stepped onto the tarmac. “Sergeant Ray Tobin. I’m supposed to escort you over to the admin center. To Assistant Warden Hutchins.”

“Thanks.”

We stepped into a large golf cart-like vehicle, the guard hopping in at the wheel, and it was only a short drive over to the white, two-story administration building. We went in through the main entrance, where we were directed through a law-enforcement security checkpoint and put through a metal detector.

Sherwood checked his weapon with a clerk there.

“The AW is up here,” Sergeant Tobin said, leading us up a flight of stairs, past a grid of offices and the secretarial desks.

A nameplate that read ROBERT HUTCHINS, ASSISTANT WARDEN was affixed to the door.

His secretary asked us if we wanted anything; we both asked for some water. Then she took us in.

Bob Hutchins was a trim, pleasant-looking man with a long forehead and hair closely cropped around the sides. He stood up at his desk to greet us. He had a military bearing. In fact, the pictures on the wall of him with a bunch of brass confirmed that he had once been a sergeant major in the military police. He held out his hand. “Gentlemen…

“Good to see you again, Don,” he said to Sherwood. Years back, Sherwood had been the arresting detective of a couple of high-profile inmates who had ended up there, and the two had collaborated on the convicts’ parole hearings.

He introduced me.

“So you’re up here for a tête-à-tête with Russ,” Hutchins said. “He’s like royalty up here. Our longest-running inmate. And one who’s not likely to leave.”

Hutchins patted what appeared to be a prisoner file. “We’ve got him sequestered in a holding cell for you over in SHU A. Try to keep in mind, he may not resemble exactly what you might expect. Not many requests to see him these days, and he rarely accedes to the few that come. You ought to consider yourself lucky.”

Sherwood glanced my way. “I have a feeling the good doctor here should take the bow on that one. Apparently they’ve met.”

“I was just a kid,” I said. “He and my brother came up to my father’s house looking to raise money to cut a record. Apparently, my brother had been living on the Riorden Ranch. This was around 1972. A year before it all happened…”

The warden nodded, shaking his head, then glanced back at Sherwood. “You say this is related to a string of new killings? That they may have some connection to the original case?”

“A possibility…,” Sherwood said. “Almost two weeks ago, Dr. Erlich’s nephew was found dead at the bottom of the Morro Bay Rock, in what we first deemed to be a suicide, but are now looking into further. Last week, a retired police detective from Santa Barbara was murdered as well, who had played a role in the Houvnanian investigation.”

Hutchins pursed his lips judiciously. “Anything else linking them?”

“Both bodies were found with similar items on them at the time of death,” Sherwood said. “And we also found out they had recently been in touch.”

“I guess it could always be some kind of copycat crime.” The warden opened the file. “Houvnanian doesn’t have a lot of contact with the outside world these days. Any calls, and incoming or outgoing mail, are closely monitored. Have been since he first came here. And, like I said, he may not resemble what you may recall. He’s basically lived in a five-by-eight cell for the past thirty-seven years. He gets thirty minutes of exercise a day, which for him is just supervised pacing back and forth in the hall outside his cell. He’s rarely even seen the sun in years. His reasoning abilities, such as they ever were”-the warden smiled-“have deteriorated over the years. We have a name for it up here-‘cabin fever.’

“Mostly he just reads-the Bible, Greek philosophy, a bunch of stuff on physics, I’m told. Listens to music. He really doesn’t even belong here anymore, it’s just that…” Hutchins smiled. “Well, he’s Russell Houvnanian. No one’s about to transfer him out. He’ll be fully restrained when you meet with him-standard procedure. And if you would, please refrain from handing him anything without first passing it by the guards. Ready?”

Sherwood and I both nodded.

The secretary came in with our waters.

“I wish I had something stronger to offer you, gentlemen.” Hutchins stood up. “Take a breath. You’re about to enter Ground Zero for the human race.”

Chapter Forty-Six

We walked down two flights of stairs through a secure glass door leading to a long underground tunnel.

It was perhaps a two-hundred-yard walk to the prominent white X I had noticed from the air. The corridor forked at the end. Hutchins directed us to the left, through a door that read A BLOCK. THE SHU.

We climbed a flight of stairs and were buzzed in through another security door. This time it was manned by two khaki-clad guards, billy clubs attached to their belts along with firearms. My heart accelerated with the knowledge we had entered a very dangerous place.

“Every one of these inmates has a history of being a violent offender.” Assistant Warden Hutchins took us down the hall. “And in most cases, they’re already incarcerated for life, so there’s nothing for them to lose except privileges for being rowdy. I’ve had Houvnanian brought to a holding room on the block. Rudy…” Hutchins waved hello to an officer. “As I said, he’ll be fully restrained and there’ll be two guards with you at all times. You can ask him anything you want, but again, there can be no physical contact or exchange of materials.”

Sherwood nodded.

We turned down a sterile white hallway. It looked more like some futuristic genomic lab than a prison. The warden stopped at a secure door with a small glass window. Interview Room 1. A guard was stationed outside. “Warden.” We stood there for a second, waiting.

“In any case, gentlemen,” Hutchins said, opening the door for us, “I hope you find what it is you’re here to learn.”

Sherwood and I stepped in.

It was a tight, narrow room, no more than eight feet by eight. There was a cool, fluorescent light on the ceiling, nothing on the walls. Two guards stood off to the side, and neither nodded our way. I found myself transfixed by the slight man seated at a table in the center. A man whose iconic face rushed back to me, like a child’s nightmare reappearing in his adult years.

At least, a shadow of that man.

Houvnanian was older, grayer, his cheekbones narrow and wan, his hair shaved close to his head, boot-camp style. Sunken, sad-looking eyes. His skin was sort of a parchment gray-he was more ghost than man-and he was dressed in a yellow jumpsuit. He looked up at us only briefly, his shoulders slightly hunched, palms flat on the tabletop, his wrists bound with manacles. In a million years, I would never have recognized him as the long-haired, wild-eyed beast I recalled from photos and from my youth.

Until he spoke.

His voice was calm and controlled, with a kind of friendly drawl, exactly how I remembered. He looked up, eyes bright but unthreatening, and his mouth inched into a knowing grin. “Not what you might have been expecting, huh, gentlemen?”

Sherwood motioned for me to sit. We lowered ourselves into the metal chairs, directly across the table. The convict’s gaze shifted on us from side to side, almost as if he was trying to put us at ease.

Sherwood started in, “Thanks for seeing us, Mr. Houvnanian. My name is Don Sherwood and I’m a detective, senior grade, with the coroner’s office down in San Luis Obispo County.”

Houvnanian nodded back affably. “Detective…”

“This is Dr. Jay Erlich…”

Houvnanian fixed on me, bunching his thin lips, as if impressed. “Is the doctor with the coroner’s office as well?” His voice was controlled, slightly hoarse. I didn’t know what he remembered and what he didn’t.

“No. Dr. Erlich is from New York. But he’s the reason we’ve come to see you today. Nearly two weeks ago, his twenty-one-year-old nephew, Evan, was killed in Morro Bay. He either jumped or fell, but in any case was found dead at the base of the large rock in the bay there.”

“Morro Bay? I’ve seen that rock somewhere,” Houvnanian said, nodding. “I’m sorry to hear about that, doctor, but doesn’t the Bible tell us, ‘Go forth and stand upon the rock before the Lord, and behold a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke them into a thousand pieces’?”

He grinned. “It may surprise you, but I spend a lot of my time reading my Bible,” he said, shoulders hunched. “The trouble is, the verse goes on to say that the Lord wasn’t even in that wind that rose up or in the earthquake that ripped the rock to shreds. Which begs the question-one I’ve been trying to answer for years now… Just where do you think the Lord is?” He shrugged, let out kind of a mischievous hee-hee . “Or you, doctor?” He looked up at me. “You’re a smart man. Any ideas?”

I couldn’t tell if he remembered me or even my name. I just looked him in the eye, my skin crawling.

“Well,” the killer said, “I think that’s part of what you came to find out. Am I wrong? Because that’s what your nephew was probably looking for up there. I’ve found in my life that death is a strong motivator for self-enlightenment, though it’s cost me some for the gain.” He lifted his wrists for us and jangled his chains.

“Mr. Houvnanian, we’d like to show you a few pictures,” Sherwood said, redirecting him back to the topic, “and ask you some questions, if that’s okay.”

“By all means, gentlemen.” The convict nodded. “I’ve got nowhere to go.”

Sherwood opened his file and glanced up at one of the guards, who inspected the contents, nodding okay. Sherwood removed a photo of Walter Zorn. “Do you recognize this man, Mr. Houvnanian?”

The convict’s face edged into a thin smile. “Well, I may be the scourge of man and a lunatic, some say, but my memory’s still fine. The man had the mark of the devil on his face even back then. But he was only doing his job. Root out those who would betray us. Break us apart. Jesus knew what to look for, didn’t he, gentlemen? ‘If you see a false prophet before you, it’s only a reflection of your own sins…’ ”

“His name was Walter Zorn, correct?” Sherwood stared at him. “He was one of the detectives who prepared the case against you. And who aided in your conviction. Isn’t that right?”

“If you say so, I guess he is.” Houvnanian nodded uncontentiously. “And, please, call me Russ.”

Sherwood took out a second photograph and laid it on the table. This was the police photographer’s photo of Zorn’s body: eyes bulging, face twisted in horror, strangled.

Houvnanian barely reacted. He only lifted his gaze ever so slightly to meet Sherwood’s, just enough to show him a slight smile. “Well, I guess even Rome burned in the end, didn’t it, so there’s hope for us all. So how did the bastard die?”

“He was strangled. But the police found something very unusual on his body.” Sherwood put out the next photo, from the autopsy, of the knife marks on Zorn’s tongue. “I’m wondering if you can make out what that is, Mr. Houvnanian.”

“What what is, detective?” the amused convict asked.

“Those marks. Underneath the victim’s tongue. An odd place for a wound, wouldn’t you agree, sir? Especially for someone who was strangled.”

Houvnanian leaned forward and squinted at the photo. “Excuse me, gents, but my eyes just aren’t what they were. Glaucoma. The medical plan’s one of the real let-downs in here… But as to your question… they kind of look like knife marks to me, detective. Right? I have a familiarity with knife marks, you may remember,” he said, looking up and grinning.

“They do.” Sherwood kept his composure, but I was having a hard time keeping mine.

“And what would you think those knife marks resemble, Mr. Houvnanian, if you had to say?” Sherwood looked at him. “I mean, Russ ?”

The convicted killer hunched over the photo again. He looked up and shrugged.

“To me, it sort of resembles a human eye,” Sherwood said. “What do you think? One that’s wide open.”

I wasn’t sure who was playing with whom here. Houvnanian continued to stare at the photo a while. Then suddenly he nodded, his eyes widening. “You know, I think you’re right, detective. It does kind of look like an eye. If you see it in a certain way. And even the blindest man will see the truth”-he grinned-“when it’s the one truth. The real truth! Do you know that saying, Dr. Erlich? You know, I once knew someone named Erlich back in the day. As a man of science, what’s your view? To me, it’s why we’re all here. To see the truth. When it’s exposed to us. When it’s time.”

I balled my hands and gritted my teeth, and said back, “Yes, I guess I believe that too.”

“So then, Russ, what do you make of this ?” Sherwood said.

He took out a plastic bag containing the plastic hologram found on Evan’s body. “This was what we found on Dr. Erlich’s nephew’s body. At the bottom of the rock.” Sherwood jiggled it in front of the killer.

One way showing the eye closed; the other way, wide open.

“I’d say, the eyes have it !” Houvnanian stared back at him, cackling with amusement at his own joke.

“I’d say it was all just some sort of weird coincidence myself”-Sherwood shrugged-“ if I actually believed in coincidences. And if we hadn’t come upon this…”

He brought out the Las Vegas medical examiner’s photo of the dollar bill that had been crumpled up inside Thomas Greenway’s stomach at the time he was drowned. “No doubt you do remember Thomas Greenway, Mr. Houvnanian? Russ? He had something to do with you being here as well, no?”

Houvnanian lifted his hands, chains jangling. “The wind and the rain, detective, that’s what I keep asking. If it can cleave a mountain into pieces, it can surely rend the heart of an evil man. Except, God wasn’t in the wind, I’m reminded. Was he, doctor? I’m still trying to figure out where.”

I was sure he knew who I was.

I could feel it, the sweat beading up on my back from his mesmerizing stare. I could see he was enjoying my discomfort.

I stared at him, my blood starting to simmer inside. “I think the eyes refer to what you told the judge at your sentencing. How it was like the owner of the home who is called away. How no one will know when it’s time for him to come back. Or in what manner. How only the father knows, right, Mr. Houvnanian? You. How you told them all to watch . The people who had done you harm.” I kept my eyes drilling into him. “That’s what Evan’s death was about, wasn’t it? A way for you to say, watch !”

“I said a lot of crazy things back then…” Houvnanian stretched his face into a smile. He raised his manacled hands. “Yet here I remain.”

“Yes, here you remain,” Sherwood said. “But not Susan Pollack. You remember her, don’t you, Russ? She was one of three followers who served a thirty-five-year sentence for aiding you in the murders of Paul and Cici Riorden, their friends, and George and Sally Forniciari, right?”

“I never admitted to any murders, detective.” The orange-clad convict shrugged with a coy smile. “Only opening the gates for judgment against those who didn’t see as clearly.”

“You’re aware that Ms. Pollack was released from prison recently? This past May.”

“I don’t pay much attention to your system of time, detective. Doesn’t much matter in here.” He shrugged. “Anyway, she renounced me. I’m sure you know that. Like I was some blotch of ink she could just wash off. She did what she had to do.”

“You mind telling us the last time the two of you were in touch?”

“Well”-Houvnanian scratched his head pensively-“that all depends on what you might mean by being ‘in touch,’ detective. I can see her any time I want. You know only my body is in prison. The rest…” His eyes grew dazzling. “I can walk among your streets at my will. I can take your young any time I want…” Finally he winked, backing down. “I guess it’s been a while.”

“And how long is a while,” Sherwood asked, “if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Years. Who even remembers? I can’t even remember the last time I saw the sun, detective, never mind heard from that bitch. She wrote me a few years back. She told me she had moved away from what she had done. They stuffed her full of Xanax and mood stabilizers and they took the life right out of her. She did what she had to do. In my world here, the sun is the moon and the moon the sun. Everything meets, just not necessarily in the way you think.

“So what are you saying?” Houvnanian lit up, bright-eyed. “Ol’ Russ’s time has come again. Watch! I’ve barely stepped outside in the past thirty-seven years. Would probably blind me if I did. And you’re saying, what ? I’m plotting my revenge? It’s end of days time all over again! Look, my hair’s all gone. See any horns coming through? So here’s a news flash, gentlemen. Nothing’s changed. The devil, he’s never left. It’s still the same ol’ world I used to be in. So if God wants to accuse me, or any of us, for what we did back then-bring it on! Or if he wants to forgive us-that’s fine with me too, gentlemen.”

I leaned forward, unable to control myself any longer. “You knew my brother.”

He didn’t flinch. He just looked at me, a sparkle in his dark eyes.

I said, “He sang and played the guitar. You once tried to raise money for a record he was trying to make. Do you remember him, Mr. Houvnanian? His name was Charlie Erlich.”

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie…, ” the killer replied, singsong. “Sorry, all the Charlies seem to merge into one… I’m sorry, doc. I really am.”

“He lived on the ranch with you. Maybe not when everything was happening. But I know you know him. You want to know why I’m here, Mr. Houvnanian? I’m here because I know that what happened to my nephew was aimed directly at my brother. His son was a troubled, innocent kid who never really did much wrong in life, except, maybe, being his father’s son. I know he went up to the spot where he jumped with someone else- a woman, whom I’m pretty sure was Susan Pollack. Why? What did my brother do to you?”

“The wind and the rain, the wind and the rain…,” Houvnanian started repeating again.

My chest tightened.

“I keep telling you, the wind split the rock, but you’ve still not answered my question, doc. If God wasn’t in the wind, then where was he? Do you think”-his eyes bore into me-“maybe here ?”

I threw the photos aside and hurled myself across the table, his mocking smirk digging into me like a jagged knife. The guards went to restrain me. Sherwood latched on to my arm. He pulled me back in the chair. I put up my palms, as if to say, Okay, I know, I know… My pulse raced like an engine revved above the red zone.

I said, “ I know it’s you! ” my gaze direct and accusing. “I know you killed Evan.”

My heart rate accelerated again. I felt angry and out of control. And useless. He wasn’t giving us anything. He was enjoying it.

I sat back down.

Houvnanian’s surprised expression inched into a wiry grin, clearly having a ball. He winked, as if to say, Gotcha! then turned and nodded back to one of the guards, putting up his wrists, indicating that we were done now.

“I wish I could help you, doctor, I really do. But it’s been mighty fine visiting with you and hearing about old times.”

One of the guards stepped over and helped Houvnanian out of the chair. Sherwood and I stood. My heart was still racing and my blood was still hot. I knew when I walked out of this room I would still have nothing. It would be over. The bastard was simply toying with us, still pulling all the strings. I balled my fists and looked at Sherwood, who looked back at me, almost apologetically, sweeping up the photos into the file.

“So how’d that music career go anyway?” Houvnanian asked suddenly when he got to the door.

His gaze was trained directly at me, his eyes wolflike now, shiny like black lacquer. Now they had that same dark glow of malice I had seen in the photos a hundred times.

“Your brother?” He winked. “He ever hit the charts?”

He knew.

I knew he knew.

He gave me a last look and a final, mocking smile. Then the guards removed him through another door, his chains jangling like scornful laughter, following me out.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Warden Hutchins walked us back to his office.

I was so wired and frustrated at having to listen to that lunatic’s ramblings it was almost ripping me apart. I was certain he knew who Charlie was. And even more certain he was connected to Evan’s death.

I also knew I might’ve lost my final chance to prove it.

“I’m sorry that you had to come all the way up here,” the warden said. “I’ll notify the copter you’re ready to leave. Like I said, the man’s not a complete package anymore.”

“Bob, you said before you monitor his outside contacts?” Sherwood asked.

Hutchins nodded. “Part of life in the SHUs… All calls in and out must be cleared and everyone’s mail is sorted through and documented as to content and source.”

“Going back how far?”

“How far do you need? Houvnanian still gets his share of activity. There’s a million wackos, racists, and copycat killers out there who still regard him as some kind of god. That’s why we keep a close eye on him.”

I suddenly saw where Sherwood was heading. Maybe sort of a last-ditch fling, on fourth and a hundred. But we were in Hail Mary time now. He pulled up a seat across from Hutchins’s desk. “Could you tell me if he’s received any mail from the California Institution for Women in Frontera?”

Hutchins squinted.

Frontera was where Susan Pollack had been for the past thirty-five years.

“Guess I could.” The warden shrugged. “But I would also need a court order to share it with you. We keep it for security reasons only. The information is strictly confidential.”

“Bob, please, we’re talking about the possibility of multiple homicides here. Homicides potentially masterminded from your own prison.”

“Look, I can pretty well assure you nothing suspicious has taken place,” the warden said, leaning back, “or we would have picked it up. We’ve got gang leaders and organized crime bosses who try to continue to run their operations while in here…”

“Bob, ” Sherwood pleaded, “do this one favor for me. Just take a look. You don’t have to share what’s in it-or even reply. Just let me know if there’s been any correspondence from there. Even just a nod. I’ll take it from there.”

At first the warden looked back at Sherwood with disapproval; he was clearly a person who played things by the book. Then he gradually seemed to soften to an idea he really didn’t like. He sat for a moment, rubbing his finger against his cheek. I was sure he was just looking for some way to frame his refusal.

Sherwood pressed. “Just a look, Bob, please…”

Finally Hutchins blew out a blast of air, then picked up the intercom and waited until his secretary came on. He glanced down at a piece of paper. “Nancy, can you bring me Inmate B-30967’s Outside Communication file?”

My heart rose.

It took a minute or two for his secretary to bring it in. It was a thick accordion-style folder bound by a string. Houvnanian’s name and inmate number were plainly written on it in marker. Hutchins dropped the bulky folder on his desk. “I told you, it’s substantial… And this is only the past year.” He started to look through the photocopies of letters and monitoring forms, starting with the most recent. There appeared to be a master sheet of some kind. “What did you say, the women’s facility at Frontera…?”

“Or maybe Mule Creek in Ione,” Sherwood said. That’s where two of Houvnanian’s other followers were presently incarcerated. “You don’t have to even say it out loud. Just give me a look and I’ll know.”

Hutchins put on wire-rim reading glasses and scanned down the sheet. He flipped the page-twice-his expression registering nothing. Finally he looked back up. Not even a twitch. A blank stare. “Anything else?”

“Maybe something from Susan Pollack herself?” Sherwood said. “It would have been in the past couple of months. She was released in May.”

Hutchins edged into a dubious smile. “You know how many rules I’m breaking here?” He glanced back down at the sheets. Turned a page. When he finally looked up, his expression hadn’t shifted.

Strike two.

“What about a phone call?” Sherwood said. “You keep records of those as well…”

Hutchins suddenly grew testy. “This isn’t a customer service operation, Don. You can’t just dial up an inmate here. There has to be prior approval and documentation.” He tossed the master sheets on his desk. “I’m sorry…”

Sherwood looked at me, emitting a sigh. Deflated.

I looked at the warden. “Do you mind if I have a try?”

A thought had hit me; I recalled something Susan Pollack had mentioned while we were speaking to her. It was a long shot, but once we stepped back on that copter, I knew any chance of implicating Houvnanian was pretty much dead.

He frowned at me, his patience clearly thinning. I wasn’t even a law enforcement officer, just someone who had lost a family member.

But maybe he saw the desperation on my face, that this was our last resort, because he picked up the sheets again. “ What? ”

I asked, “Is there anything in the file from someone named Maggie?”

That was the name Susan Pollack was known by on the Riorden Ranch. Maggie Mae.

“Maggie. ” The warden sighed, clearing his throat, his expression slightly irritated.

“Yes. Or maybe even just the initial ‘M.’ ” I nodded.

Sherwood smiled at me.

“M…? ” Hutchins repeated. He reclined back in his chair. He took the sheets in his lap and reluctantly scanned. He turned the first page- nothing . He pursed his lips. I was already prepared for the disappointment. He flipped the second.

That’s when I saw the warden’s expression change.

At first it just seemed to bore in, intensifying through the sheet like a laser. Then he looked back up at me, as if startled. His jaw parted a bit, but there was only the slightest nod, and the word that accompanied it was like the true sound of vindication for me.

“Mags.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

“That’s how it was done,” I said to Sherwood in the copter. “That letter was a message. About Zorn. Evan. How they got back at people. It was how she let him know it was all going to begin.”

On the surface, the letter Hutchins had found seemed to be perfectly benign. “These kooks are always trying to contact him,” he explained. As a celebrity killer, Houvnanian always attracted his share of loonies and admirers. On his view of life. On how he had been misjudged. Or on music.

Hutchins wouldn’t let us as much as touch the letter. Or even take a copy. That would require a judge’s decree. But he laid it on the table for us to have a look.

It was written in a straightforward block print on lined notebook paper:

“I watched you on TV,” it began, possibly referring to a Dateline interview a year ago. “I know you like Guns n’ Roses. Axl Rose was a kind of apostle for me too. I know the song you mentioned-‘Estranged.’ There’s a line from that song that I sing to myself when I think I’m going out of my head: I knew the storm was getting closer…

“The storm is here! ” the letter finished. “ It never has to die! ”

“The storm has never died,” it ended.

It was signed, “Yours always, Mags . ”

The postmark on the envelope was from Richmond, California, just across the bay from San Francisco. Only an hour and a half from Jenner.

I was sure “Mags” was Susan Pollack.

“ ‘The storm is here. It never has to die.’ Don’t you see, Sherwood? Zorn. Greenway. He’s using his people to get back at the people who brought him down.”

“And Evan?” Sherwood asked, buckling himself in.

“Evan is somehow directed at my brother.” I didn’t have the answer yet, but there was no more hiding it. “Maybe there were fingerprints on it. Maybe we can match the handwriting. We prove that letter was from Susan Pollack…”

“We prove the letter was from Susan and what ?” The detective looked at me skeptically. “It’s just song lyrics. There’s nothing there. Besides, there’s not a judge in the country who would grant us a court order based on that note or what we have.

“Not to mention you’re forgetting one thing…” He kicked his briefcase under the seat. “If Greenway and Cooley were murdered, it all happened when Susan Pollack was behind bars. That surely wasn’t her.”

He was right there. I flashed to the person who had called me in the motel room. The voice was male.

“So what’s the next step?” I pushed him. The propellers started to whir. In a second we’d be heading back to Pismo. “Just let it go? The guy is orchestrating murder, Sherwood. He’s in jail, in chains, and he’s got the upper hand. You know as well as I do what’s going on here.”

“I can’t play this out forever, doc. I tried… The next step .” He sighed as the copter started to rise. “Other than getting the truth out of your brother…” He turned his head toward the window. “I don’t know.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Susan Pollack kneeled in the coop, in her floppy hat and overalls, spreading grain into her feed bin.

“Come here, my pets… My little ones.”

They were like family to her. Her only family now. Her one attachment of love. Except you, Bo. She smiled at her collie, snoozing on the porch.

“Yes, my darlings, over here…” They knew the nurturing rise in her tone. “It’s feeding time for you, it’s time…”

One by one, the chickens started to come over.

Tomorrow she would show him. That she had been loyal and true.

True to him.

All these years.

You never let me come along, did you? She smiled, conjuring up his delicate, chiseled face. Because you knew, didn’t you, that one day you would need me, my love. You told me, one day I would have to make sacrifices.

To earn your love completely.

And when the time came, I would.

That was why.

You said I had to be ready.

The excited birds made their way into the pen. She threw a line of seed in front of Desdemona, her favorite, with her smooth white breast and feathers. The proudest and the most vain.

The bird followed her, flapping her wings and pecking at the grain.

“You are my favorite,” Susan said softly, putting the feed bag down.

She grabbed the blade.

Nothing can truly be bad if it’s done from love, isn’t that right, Russell?

She picked the bird up and ran the knife slowly across its neck, muffling the bird’s startled squawk, blood running down its soft white feathers and through her hands.

Just as she wished she could have done all those years back then.

When you left me behind.

You said I had to sacrifice. To be ready.

For you to need me.

And I am ready .

She threw the dead bird down and looked at the others.

I will show you now.

Chapter Fifty

I stopped off at Charlie’s on my way back to the motel.

Gabby opened the door. They had just finished up dinner, and she was in the midst of doing the dishes.

My brother was at the kitchen table, picking on his guitar. He barely looked up, neither surprised nor particularly happy to see me. His graying beard and ground-down, toothless smile seemed beaten down.

“Hey, Jay…” He picked at a tune. “What’s up with you, little brother?”

Gabby asked me if I wanted something to eat, and I told her no, that I’d had something on the way.

I sat down next to him. “You wanted me to help you find out what happened to Evan, Charlie…”

“I know I did, Jay,” he said. “At first.” He strummed a familiar chord progression to a song I knew. “Let It Rain” by Eric Clapton.

“And I’m trying to, Charlie. I really am. And I’m getting close. But now it’s you who has to answer some questions for me. The truth, this time.”

“Let your love rain down on me… Hey, Jay…” His eyes lit up. “You remember this one?” He played a few chords, raising his guitar high in the air like an old rocker. Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold.” “ I’ve been to Hollywood, I’ve been to Redwood… ”

He banged on the strings. “And I’m getting old! I’m feeling that way, Jay.” He put the guitar on his lap. “You remember that trip we took? To Montreal?” His eyes grew alive again. “When I came to visit you up at college?”

I remembered. He had swung by Cornell on one of his final sojourns back east. I think he had just been released from a psychiatric hospital. At that time, I had never spent a lot of time with my brother, just random visits where he seemed mostly off the wall to me. A bunch of my friends at school and I sat around one night basically spellbound by his tales.

“You were a senior…,” he said.

“A junior, I think.”

“Your friends were all so smart. They must’ve thought I was whacked out of my mind. And you know what?” He laughed. “I probably was…”

“If I recall, they actually all thought you were pretty entertaining.” I smiled.

“Yeah…” He chuckled amusedly. “I bet they did. I’m sure they’d never met anyone quite like me.” He leaned the guitar against his chair. “You remember, we were walking around up there. On Sherbrooke Street. Near the college. I had my guitar with me. I was playing to a bunch of pretty little chicks there…”

“You were trying to pick them up, Charlie. They were college kids. And you probably would have if you hadn’t had to find one for me.”

“Always watching out for my younger brother!” Charlie laughed, edging into a wide grin. “You remember how that one dude came up to you? Trying to pick a fight or something…”

I didn’t know where he was going with this, but the truth was, the whole two days up there were like a fog. We’d had some beers. Charlie got me stoned. I spent the night on a narrow bed in a Marriott while he screwed some street gal across the room. Most of it had long slipped away in my mind. “I sort of remember you were the one picking the fight, Charlie, but who can recall?”

“This guy-he didn’t like how you were talking to someone. About hockey, right? It was during the Olympics or something. He wanted to beat the shit out of you. Right there on Sherbrooke Street. You were pretty zonked out.”

“I was with you, Charlie.” I couldn’t believe with all the brain cell loss he could even bring that to mind. I hadn’t since.

“You remember how I got right in his face for you? The guy outweighed me by a hundred pounds!”

I recalled now. “We had to make a dash for it in the snow. You were about to whale him with the guitar. Then you thought better of it.”

“Of course. It was the only thing I owned!”

I shook my head at him. “How do you even remember that, Charlie?”

“Because I never wanted to put you in any danger, Jay. Not from me. That was about all I could ever do for you; the rest you had all figured out on your own. And I still don’t want to. Put you in any danger. I wish we could’ve been friends, Jay. Not just brothers, but friends…”

Maybe I should’ve said that I wished that too. That we could have been friends. But instead I drew my chair in and leaned close to him.

“Why don’t you tell me about Russell Houvnanian, Charlie?”

Chapter Fifty-One

“Russell?” Charlie acted surprised. “What do you want to know?”

“About what happened back there on the ranch. About what connection it all has to you. I know you were part of it, Charlie.”

He scratched his gray-flecked beard and shrugged. “I’ve told you everything, Jay. I lived there for a while, that’s all. It kept me from having to sleep under a bridge somewhere… Russell tried to interest some record people in me.”

“Why did he want to push your music, Charlie? That day when you came up with him to Dad’s.”

“Who knows? That’s how he did stuff. Maybe he thought I had talent. He said he had connections. People trying to cut records were always coming in and out of the ranch.”

I looked at him. “I think that was how he was trying to push his message, Charlie.”

“His message?”

“The End of Days. This crazy philosophy of his. Up is down, heaven is hell. Through the music, right?”

My brother smiled, pushing back his hair. “I think you’re reading too much into this, Jay. All that was, was his way of bringing in the chicks.”

“No. I saw how you reacted. That day up at the house… You wanted to kill somebody, Charlie. Dad even.”

“I always wanted to kill someone back then. And I was mad at my shit-ass father for turning against me again. He knew why I was up there. Just once, I wanted something from him. Damn right I wanted to kill him, Jay.”

“No.” I looked at him closely. “There’s more. Why would Houvnanian want to get back at you, Charlie? Through Evan?”

Saying the name of his son was like thrusting a knife into his gut. He recoiled. The color changed in his face. I knew then there was a lot he wasn’t telling me. And that it wasn’t the haze of drugs or schizophrenia clouding it.

I said, “I saw him today.”

“Who?”

“Houvnanian. I went up there. With Detective Sherwood. We talked with him in prison.”

Charlie’s eyes grew agitated. “ You saw Russell? ” Alarm spread across his face. “What are you getting yourself involved in, Jay?”

“No, what are you hiding, Charlie? I’m trying to help you, but you’ve got to tell me everything. Evan’s dead. And I think you might be right, maybe he didn’t jump off that rock on his own after all. Maybe someone else had a hand in it. Wouldn’t you want to know that, Charlie? A few days back you wanted to. When you were using me.

“Why don’t you start with Susan Pollack, Charlie? You knew her. I know you did now. Zorn. Greenway. I know you’re tied to all of them somehow.” I reached out and put my hand on his arm. “What happened there, Charlie, please…?”

He pulled away from me and suddenly jumped up, his guitar rattling to the floor. He was never one to show fear when he felt cornered. He just got angry. Like my father. He lost control. Fought his way out.

And I could see he felt cornered now.

“I want you to leave now, Jay. Before I really lose it. You’re getting into things you have no business in.”

“For God’s sake, Charlie, they killed your son.” I stood up too and grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t you see? They killed Evan.”

It was like a switch suddenly triggered in him. He wrenched his arm away, and blood rushed into his face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jay!” Suddenly he lunged at me with a strength I never expected from his smallish frame.

He pushed me back into my chair, dinner plates and a vase clattering, and suddenly I swung at him-my anger coming from I don’t know where-and we crashed into a side table, toppling a lamp to the floor.

We both fell against the wall-his arms wrapped around my throat, me just trying to fend him off. “I told you to stop all this, Jay. I told you to go home!”

A canvas painted by his mother came crashing down.

“I didn’t kill my son.” He glared savagely into my eyes. His hands squeezed around my throat. “ I didn’t! ”

He reared his fist back at me, an animal intensity blazing in his eyes. I knew what was fueling it-that mixture of anger, grief, and guilt.

“I know you didn’t, Charlie.” I looked back at him. “ I know! ”

“Evan didn’t have anything to do with that. You hear? I want you to get out of here, Jay. I want you to go back home.”

“I saw him, Charlie!” A warm ooze trickled down my chin, blood from somewhere. “I know he’s behind what happened to Evan. He and Susan Pollack. I saw a letter she wrote to him in jail. It was her way of telling him it had begun. What’s begun, Charlie? Five people have died.” My eyes locked onto his. “ Evan died…”

My brother’s eyes filled up with tears and he cocked his fist again. I was certain he was about to let it go and hit me.

And I would have let him-if that’s what it took to bring to the surface what it was he needed to say.

Gabriella ran over-“ Charlie, Charlie …”-and grabbed his drawn-back arm. He fought against her for a second. “ It’s Jay, Charlie,” she screamed, “it’s your brother! He’s only trying to help us, Charlie. What are you doing?”

I recalled the image of Evan squeezing the life out of my son. I also saw our father’s own unforgivable temper massed too.

Charlie glared, his eyes filled with ire. Whoever it was aimed at, I knew it wasn’t me.

Gabby’s frantic protestations finally seemed to get to him, and he blinked himself back to consciousness and put down his arm. He took a series of shuddering breaths and bowed his head, and rolled off me onto his back.

We both lay next to each other for a few seconds, breathing heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he said. His eyes were glistening and his cheeks moist. “I’m so sorry, Jay…”

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” I lay next to him and reached over and put my hand on his chest.

“Look! ” Gabriella shouted, staring around the room. “Look at what you’ve done!”

She pointed to his guitar. It was completely broken. The neck separated from the body, the wood splintered.

He’d had it as long as I could remember. He rolled over and picked it up, the broken neck coming apart in his hands.

All that he had ever done in his life seemed to fade there.

Gabby cried too. “Look at what you’ve done!”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t really matter, Gabby.” Charlie turned to me, like an empty weight. “You have to go back home, Jay.” He dropped the broken shaft and it lay on the floor. “There’s nothing to do here anymore. Please. Just let us be.”

I sat up and we stared at each other on the floor. I shook my head. “I can’t, Charlie. It’s too late. Not now.”

Gabby and I cleaned up the mess. Afterward she brought me a damp rag, and I dabbed my mouth. There was blood all over it. Charlie was back at the kitchen table, his hair wild and covering his face. He had picked up one of his other instruments, an old blue Fender Stratocaster that hadn’t worked in years, strumming at the silent strings.

Just when you say your last good-bye

Just when you calm my fears…

“He loves you, Jay,” Gabby said to me. She took the rag and wiped my face, blotting the blood. “But for your brother the past is a locked place. Even I cannot be let in. What’s happened has happened, Jay. Nothing is going to bring Evan back. I have to salvage something here. Maybe he’s right. You tried to help. You always help us, Jay. Now go back to your wife and kids. They need you there. That’s where you belong.”

“What’s happened has happened,” I said in agreement, “but even if I go, Gabby, it’s not going away.”

Charlie continued on the guitar:

Just when the dawn is breaking,

There’s always one last thing…

“Then let happen whatever will.” Gabby’s blue eyes fixed on me. “That’s what he wants. You can see that now. Now that Evan is gone, what is there for us, anyway?”

I took her hand and squeezed it warmly. But I shook my head. “It’s not just about him anymore, Gabby.”

I listened to my brother’s distant voice. The lyrics to his one recorded song.

Oooh, girl, it’s always one last thing…

“I’ve got to go.” I picked up my jacket and gave Gabby a hug, heading toward the door.

I turned a final time to look at Charlie, playing. He didn’t even look up at me.

The wind and the rain knocking at my door,

Don’t you know, girl, the dawn will be here soon…

I stopped, the words to my brother’s song knocking me back.

The wind and the rain… That refrain. I suddenly realized I’d never heard the whole thing through before, only pieces:

The storm’s outside, but in here how do we tell,

The morning sun from the dying moon?

The hairs stood up on my arms.

Those were Houvnanian’s words: The wind and the rain… The moon is the sun and the sun the moon.

I’d assumed it was just all gibberish.

But it wasn’t gibberish.

Houvnanian knew.

I brought back his face, that last mocking grin as they led him away. And suddenly it dawned on me that he hadn’t even been talking to me at all in there.

But to Charlie through me.

He’d been pulling the strings all along.

The room suddenly turned cold, and I looked back at my brother as he silently strummed the guitar.

Houvnanian’s ramblings about where God was, it was all from the lyrics to Charlie’s song.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Now I knew. I knew for sure.

And it left me feeling like I had to vomit. Dread creeping up inside me.

Charlie was a target.

Houvnanian had simply been toying with Sherwood and me all along. Greenway. Zorn. Evan. Whatever my brother had done, whatever role he played in what took place more than thirty years ago, they were massing around him. Torturing him slowly.

Piece by piece, slowly cutting him up.

The wind and the rain were at his door.

Charlie was next.

As soon as I got back to my hotel room, I called Sherwood. “My brother’s in trouble,” I said, my heart pounding off my sides from what I’d just learned.

“Take it easy, doc,” the detective said, trying to calm me. The agitation in my voice was clear. “ How? ”

“Houvnanian. All that gibberish about ‘the wind and the rain’? That he didn’t even remember Charlie? Oh, he remembered him, Sherwood! Those were all lyrics. They were straight out of my brother’s song.”

“What lyrics?”

“From a song he recorded back then. I heard him playing it tonight. What we heard in that prison, it was all basically just a threat! He was warning him. Through me!”

“A threat of what?” The detective snorted skeptically.

“Please, Sherwood,” I begged him, “don’t play the skeptical cop shit with me. Not now. You know! I know you know. Maybe I can’t prove it. Maybe it all sounds crazy when you try and put it together. But Houvnanian made a vow at his sentencing to get back at the people who had harmed him. Who put him and his followers away. And now he’s doing it. One by one. He’s been doing it! Greenway. Cooley. Zorn. Evan . And now they’ve got my brother in their sights.”

“You’ve still never told me how your brother is involved. Why him? ”

“I don’t know why him! ” My brain throbbed. “He won’t come clean with me. I think he’s too scared to admit he had a hand in his son’s death. But that’s what Evan’s death was about. And their cat. And that cigarette butt left on my doorstep. They’re warnings. Warnings that were meant for him! Don’t you see, Sherwood? Charlie’s next!”

“Listen, doc,” the detective said, clearing his throat, “I’ve done everything short of ruining what’s left of my career trying to tie the strands together for you. But they’re just not tying. Because that’s just what they are, strands . There ain’t no bow. Now you’re talking about lyrics to your brother’s song. From more than three decades ago? It’s been a long day, doc. Just what is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to put someone on Susan Pollack. I want you to station a car outside my brother’s apartment. Unless you’re ready to wake up and find him dead too.”

“I told you, I can’t just take personnel off the street. I’m a coroner’s detective. There hasn’t even been a direct threat made against anybody. There’s not even a case open against anyone.”

“Then make one!” I realized if I’d lost Sherwood for good, I was completely alone out here and I couldn’t just walk away. Not now. Too much had happened. With Zorn. Susan Pollack. Evan. Sherwood was all I had.

In my life, there had been only a handful of moments when I felt like everything was at stake. One of them was rushing my son, gasping, to the ER. Whatever the outcome, good or bad, I always felt I had this cushion to protect me. A beautiful wife who loved me. Kids who were healthy and made me proud. A position in life that gave me stature and money. Even when things got bad and we had to negotiate a new deal with the hospital or when my father died, I knew I’d make it through.

This was one of those moments.

“Don, please … it’s time to risk it,” I said to him. “To pay it back.”

“Risk what, doc?” he replied a little testily.

“Whatever it was they gave you that new liver for.”

He remained silent for a while. I knew this was my last chance, and without him, I might as well just go back home and leave my brother to his fate. He and Gabby meant nothing to anyone there. Other than to Sherwood and me. And it all meant nothing if he sent me packing.

“All right,” he finally said, exhaling, “I’ll find you a car.”

“How?” I asked. I wanted to hear. Charlie’s life was in the balance.

“It doesn’t matter how.” His voice had a resigned quality to it. “So tell me,” he said with a laugh, “you ever gonna go back to practicing medicine again, doc, or are you just gonna move out here so you can become a permanent pain in my ass?”

“I sure hope so,” I said, and exhaled. “About going back.”

“Well, let me know, ’cause I want to be first in line to drive you to that plane.”

Chapter Fifty-Three

An hour later, darkness setting in, Sherwood drove his car down Grand Avenue, past the empty fast food storefronts and closed-up auto supply stores, toward Grover Beach.

The clock read eight forty-five. Only a few cars were on the road. The small beach town shut up like a cell block after dark. One or two of the Latino bars still had some life, field hands and out-of-work construction workers drunkenly staggering out.

In another lifetime, he might’ve stopped and checked them out as they headed for their cars.

He made a left on Fourth, and then Division, heading farther down the hill along the tracks. They used to find bodies dumped in the woods around there. He could still have told you every clearing in the brush where you could score weed or crack. The only time he’d ever fired his gun was on a bust down there back when his hair was still dark and he was still in a uniform.

You’ve got to risk it all, the doc had said.

Funny, he thought as he drove. He thought he had risked all he had twenty years before.

He thought of Kyle.

He drove his Torino up to the run-down apartment complex. He had been there twice before in the days after Evan had been killed. He stopped the car and put it in park in a dark spot out of the glare of the streetlamp, maybe thirty yards from the entrance. From there, he had a good view of the courtyard and the first-floor apartment. He saw a light glowing behind the drapes. He sank deeper into the car seat and made himself comfortable. He hadn’t done this sort of thing in more than a decade. In a way it felt good.

Dorrie would laugh, he thought. He turned off the ignition. No, she wouldn’t.

She would smile.

Erlich was wrong. He knew everything about risking it. About losing it all too.

It had been a family camping trip. On the Clackamas River, up in Oregon. He, Dorrie, and Merry, their twelve-year-old daughter.

And Kyle.

They went rafting. It was the week of the initial spring release. The rapids were mostly level threes and fours. They’d taken pictures. The whole family smiling. Having the time of their lives.

Later, they coasted downstream. The river grew wide and the current smooth. The group pulled over to the shore for a basket lunch, part of the outing. The guide broke out the single-person kayaks that the rafting company had towed there. Everyone took a shot at it. It was fun. The current was easy. Kyle was a little scared to get in, but some other kid not much older tried it and had a blast.

Maybe if he hadn’t pushed him, Sherwood always thought when the dark moments came.

Maybe if he hadn’t pushed Dorrie: “C’mon, he’s a big kid. He can handle it.”

He was nine.

Kyle was paddling a few yards behind the main raft when the current, more like a series of small eddies, intensified.

Still not enough to make anyone alarmed, only enough to keep an eye out. Kyle suddenly seemed to be having a little trouble steering. No one paid much attention. There was no danger. Sherwood had been telling his war stories to one of the other couples, a stockbroker and his wife from Seattle. The guide even broke out the cold drinks.

Then Kyle called out.

“Donny, ” Dorrie shouted, noticing the gulf between them had widened.

For the first time Sherwood saw that his son was afraid.

“Mom,” he called out, struggling. “Dad!”

“Right side, right side, ” one of the guides yelled out to him, doing his best to slow the main raft.

“Keep it steady, son!” Sherwood called.

If the boy had just been twelve, even a little larger, it would have been nothing. The current was barely more than a trickle.

But a hundred yards downstream, the river divided. There was a sliver of an island in the middle separating the two sides. No more than a couple of hundred yards long. Everyone watched with elevating concern as Kyle got himself caught in a midstream current and was drawn, against his increasing attempts to right himself, to the other side.

Dorrie became alarmed. “ Don! ”

That was when Sherwood took off his sneaks and went to jump in. But the guide held him back. They were too far along.

“He’ll be okay,” the guide said, trying to reassure him. “There’s nothing dangerous over there.” He signaled to the other raft. “We’ll meet up with him on the other side.”

Sherwood yelled out. “You’ll be okay! Just paddle, son!”

But his heart told him something entirely different.

Back outside Charlie’s apartment, Sherwood gazed out at the darkened courtyard. He turned on the radio. Something easy and soothing. Country. Annoyed at himself.

Why did he have to go through this now?

It was called a strainer-a thatch of branches just below the surface.

And the sound of that word still brought him anguish and pain, though it had been almost twenty years.

They steered the main raft to the far end of the island and waited for Kyle to make his way out.

Everyone was shouting, “ Kyle! Kyle! ” Even the other rafters.

He never did.

Sherwood finally jumped in. Panicked. Running ahead of the guide. Thrashing against the current upstream. The river was no more than thigh high and seemingly smooth, but after running hard a hundred yards Sherwood’s thighs began to tire and feel like concrete, a steady stream of water pushing against them. “ Kyle! Kyle! ” His heart suddenly accelerating in a way he had never felt on the job.

“Kyle!”

The second hundred yards lasted a lifetime. All the power in his legs simply gave way. They turned to fire and then to rubber, and he had to stop, the guide running past him.

Where are you, Kyle?

Up ahead, he saw the guide kneel in the water, freeing his boy from the brambles that had caught on his life jacket, under the surface. He gazed back with a look Sherwood would never forget, crying out, “ Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man…”

It’s time to risk it, Sherwood…

Really? He had already lost it all!

He snuggled in the car seat in a comfortable position and took out a burrito from a bag and settled in. He turned up the volume.

Thank you, the doc had said. And it made Sherwood smile.

Don’t thank me. Thank that damn pastor. Knightly.

Behind the shades in the apartment, the light had gone off.

Chapter Fifty-Four

That night, I fell asleep while paging through Greenway’s book.

I woke up a couple of hours later. The digital clock read 2:17 A.M. I climbed out of bed, poured myself a glass of water. I checked my e-mails, flicked on the TV. Criminal Minds was on.

My brain seemed to be repeating the same question over and over.

How is my brother involved?

I lay on the bed, suddenly hearing noises everywhere: a car passing by. Two late-night guests returning to their room. The low drone of the TV. I turned on the light again and picked up my book. Skimmed through a few pages at random, through the photos of the major participants, the ranch as it was back then, the police shots of the gruesome crime scene and evidence. I was hoping Greenway’s painstaking detail of the investigation would lull me back to sleep.

It didn’t take long after Riorden’s sister, Marci, was informed of her brother’s murder for attention to fall on his ex-wife, Sandy, and the “bunch of loonies” she was tied to.

Some of the threats Houvnanian had made against Riorden had found their way to the Santa Barbara police. A local gas station attendant remembered seeing “a van full of hippies” similar in appearance to Houvnanian and his group filling up at his station, only a couple of miles from the Riordens’ house earlier that day.

Houvnanian was brought in for questioning by local police. He was held on minor trespassing charges while police searched the premises. A few of his followers were brought in on misdemeanor narcotics possession, as small amounts of marijuana and hash were discovered.

While their leader was in custody, several other inhabitants of the ranch seemed eager to talk, and a picture began to emerge of the hallucinogenic frenzy that had stoked up their leader’s rage and paranoia.

My eyes began to feel heavy, but I pushed on.

Walter Zorn had handled a bunch of the early interviews with some of the ranch’s residents. I flipped ahead, ready to put the book down, as the clock neared three.

One of the people Zorn interviewed was a blond twenty-year-old runaway known as Katya. It wasn’t her real name.

Described as blond, pretty, with an affable, upbeat demeanor, it was Katya, Greenway claimed, who first gave up the names of the others who had abetted the perpetrators, among them Alex Fever and Susan Pollack, and she told the police that five others, Telford Richards, Sarah Strasser, Nolan Pierce, Carla Jean Blue, and Houvnanian “had gotten into the van early on the morning of the murders and didn’t come back until noon the next day.” She said, “It was clear to all of us something bad had happened.”

Another one who talked was Katya’s boyfriend, identified only as Chase, a nervous, long-haired musician who had dropped out of college back east.

Zorn suggested it was Chase who first led him and Joe Cooley to a marshy pond on the property where a bandana and a bloody poncho that were eventually tied to the killings were found.

And a day later, two knives with matching blood residue on them.

As the evidence tying Houvnanian, Richards, Blue, Pierce, and Strasser directly to the murder scene mounted, the identities of these early informants were withheld from the public records and their testimonies were never needed at trial.

A sudden tingling came over me.

Katya. Chase.

I sat up and read the pages over a second time, my blood picking up with adrenaline. Susan Pollack said they all had different names back then. I got up and opened the sliding door. Stepped out on the balcony. A cool breeze hit me off the ocean.

Could it be?

The breeze took my thoughts, and I pictured a man who owned a large home, who had been away on a journey for a long time. No one knew the moment when the owner might one day return.

Only the father will know…

Watch, Houvnanian had warned. I shivered.

For no one knows when the master will choose to come back. Or in what manner.

In my dream, the owner of the house was Russell Houvnanian. As I had remembered him from back then. Dark and intense and scary.

And the servant …

The servant who was waiting sent a chill down my spine.

He was my brother.

A sheen of sweat came over me. I saw it all, as if for the very first time.

Watch, Houvnanian had warned.

Chase , watch!

Chapter Fifty-Five

That morning I drove Gabby to the market to pick up a few groceries. She had asked me to dinner again that night and was making a Greek stew called stifado .

As we left, I noticed a white police car stationed along the tracks down from their apartment. I thanked Sherwood silently and felt better about leaving Charlie in the house alone.

While Gabby shopped, I got a cup of coffee and followed her around with the cart while she went to the meat department and bought inexpensive cuts on sale, and then went through produce, checking the onions for ripeness and examining the peppers for color and price.

I wanted to be alone with her, and after we went through checkout, with a small tussle over allowing me to pay, we rolled the cart over to the coffee bar and I bought a latte for her.

“Thank you for the coffee, Jay,” she said, “and for the groceries. This is a real treat for me.” She sipped her frothy latte with a smile. She wore a red knit shirt over a skirt, her blond hair in a ponytail. “Usually we bring our own cups here because they charge us fifty cents less.”

“I’m sorry for the way you have to live, Gabby…”

“This is our fate to bear, Jay, not yours. We are who we are. The way your brother is. You’re nice, but there’s nothing you can do.”

I shifted my stool around and looked at her. “I need you to help me, Gabby. I need you to tell Charlie to unlock the past. I need you to help me help you both.”

She smiled at me, a little fatalistically. “After Evan there is no life for us.”

“I know, but if someone conspired to kill your son, Gabby, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want that person brought to justice? Especially if it put the two of you in danger?”

“Danger? I’ve thought about that.” Gabby put down her cup. “Believe me, I have nothing but hate in my heart for that person if it is the case. But maybe the feeling I have most is, in the end, what does it matter? My son is dead, Jay, and if in some way Charlie was involved, with things from his past…” She looked at me. “I don’t want to lose my son and lose my husband too. That is the true danger. Can you understand that? I’ve never seen him quite like this, Jay. He’s losing his mind.”

“Gabby, whatever’s in his past is no longer buried. It’s here. It’s taken Evan, and it will take him too if you don’t help me. Get him to talk about his time on the ranch. Please . I need him to tell me what he did there. I already have some idea…”

She nodded, a little tentatively. Then she pushed a hair in place on top of her head and finished her coffee with a smile. “I will do my best, Jay. For you. Now, come on, we have to go to the bakery. Do you like sourdough bread?”

She waved good-bye to her friend behind the counter, and I wheeled the grocery cart outside through the sliding doors.

I had parked the Lincoln in an open area around the side. All the spaces around us had filled in. I got to the car and popped the trunk. Gabby went to load up the bags.

“Let me help you…,” I said, reaching for two of the heavier ones.

“No.” She laughed, her eyes blue and light. “I am old, but I am able to do this, Jay.”

“Okay, okay…” I hoisted a bulky bag containing milk and juice cartons into the trunk and went around and opened the driver’s-side door. I smelled the acrid scent of oil coming from somewhere. I looked but didn’t see anything. “I’ll take back the cart.”

I wheeled it toward the lineup of carts in the front, and a pretty Latino woman happily took it from me.

Heading back, I watched Gabby close up the trunk. Though she was probably sixty, she still looked trim and attractive. Her smile, however brief, always lit her face, and I thought to myself that this was a woman who would have really enjoyed her life if things had been different. I felt sorry for the look of anguish that had replaced her quick smile, and all the pain. She had tried hard to be a good mother to Evan, whatever the outcome. How loyal she had been to Charlie all these years.

She caught sight of me staring at her and briefly smiled.

The same moment I realized something was horribly wrong.

Walking toward her, I caught that smell again, and my gaze fixed on a slick black river of flame traveling toward us on the pavement, one car away.

No…

I ran to try to put it out, but it sped quickly under the blue Ford truck parked in the space adjacent to us, a dangerous stream of fire picking up speed.

That’s when I realized that the smell under my car wasn’t engine oil at all, but gasoline !

My eyes were now drawn to the widening black circle pooled underneath the Lincoln.

No!

I stopped, knowing I was too late, and turned back to my Lincoln in panic.

“Gabby, no…!”

She had climbed back in the car and shut the door. Still a picture of that same happy smile glancing my way.

My own gaze unraveling into horror.

I ran toward her, shouting out her name, a passerby turning, just as the stream of flame met the pool of gasoline underneath my car-suddenly engulfing it in a bright whoosh of scalding yellow heat.

“Gabby!”

I stared, helpless, as a burst of heat shot at me as if the car was an enormous gas grill overloaded with propane. Scalded, I turned away for a second, blinded. When I looked back Gabby had her arm covering her face, a twisted expression of horror on it, frantically tugging at the door, the vehicle erupting around her in flames.

“Gabby!”

I darted over, ripping off my jacket as I went for the already scalding door handle, swatting the flames away from my face.

All around me, people screamed.

The door was jammed. Gabby’s mask of helplessness and fear inside whipped the quickening drumbeat of my own exploding heart.

“I’ll get you out!” I screamed, tugging with my jacket over the fiery handle.

Goddamnit, open, please!

I pulled and pulled, but I couldn’t get my fingers around the handle. Smoke began to rise, starting to fill up the inside of the car. Gabby’s fear intensified and I realized that at any moment the whole thing might explode.

I flung down my jacket and squeezed, and finally the door mercifully released. I threw it open, grabbing on to Gabby’s arm, ripped her out of the seat, as onlookers rushed from the market, pointing and screaming all around.

I picked her up in my arms and carried her over my shoulder, twenty feet away, just as I heard this chilling, enveloping whoosh from behind me and my rented Lincoln erupted into an orange ball of flames.

“Jay! Jay! ” Gabby was screaming.

Then it blew.

The blast knocked me down, and we hit the pavement, hurled up against another parked car. Gabby clung to me, shaking, coughing smoke out of her lungs, unable to look back, guttural sobs coming out of her, from both relief and fear.

“Oh, Jay, oh, Jay, oh, Jay…”

I turned around. My car was engulfed in smoke and flame. A stomach-turning, fuel-like stench was all around. Shocked shoppers ran out of the stores, eyes stretched wide.

“It’s okay, Gabby, it’s okay.” I stroked her, my own heart slamming against the walls of my chest, as I squeezed her close. “ It’s okay…”

But no matter how many times I said it, I looked back at the smoking carcass of my car and knew it wasn’t okay.

The truth came over me. As inescapable as the wall of flames I now watched in disbelief.

This was my car.

I was supposed to be inside. If I hadn’t wheeled the cart back…

The blazing fireball, a bonfire of burning oil and smoke, melting metal and leather …

It was meant for me.

Chapter Fifty-Six

The police arrived. Two black and white sheriff’s cars and a white county vehicle, lights and sirens blaring. They pushed back the surging crowd, some of whom had helped us.

“I’m a doctor,” I said. “I’m okay.”

A minute later the EMTs came.

No matter how I stared at the melted, smoking chassis, I still couldn’t believe what had taken place.

I was okay. Just some slight burns on my fingers and a scrape on my arm from the tumble. Gabby had some first-degree burns on her face and legs. But she was completely in shock.

I muttered to one of the EMTs that I was a doctor.

They took her off to the ER in Arroyo Grande. I declined any treatment and stayed, taking the police officers through what had happened. I traced the black river of smoking fuel from beneath my own vehicle to a Dumpster around the back of the market where the fire, and whoever had set it, had originated.

Two local detectives came on the scene and took my story. The lead one was a young Latino with a shaved head. He asked if I knew anyone who might want to hurt me.

I didn’t even know where to begin.

I told him I had to speak with Sherwood.

“Detective Sherwood’s with the coroner’s office in San Luis Obispo,” the detective replied. “We’re here to help you. This isn’t his terrain.”

“Find Detective Sherwood,” I said, not backing down.

It took a few minutes to locate him.

“I just heard what happened,” he said when I finally got him on the phone. “Are you all right?”

“I know what it’s all about,” I said, my blood racing, ignoring his concern.

He didn’t answer. Maybe he thought I was raving. Or a little wacky, from the shock.

“Sherwood, I know what my brother did back then. Why they want to hurt him. You can meet me at Charlie’s later. I’ll get him to talk.” I exhaled a breath, grateful Gabby and I were both alive. “We’re going to bust this wide open now, Sherwood.”

Chapter Fifty-Seven

I called Kathy on the way to check out Gabby at the hospital.

I knew she would freak out over what had happened. I’d been keeping so much hidden from her: the phone warning I had received before. My visit with Russell Houvnanian.

I started by saying it was all just some random accident. My car blew up, some kind of crazy oil leak. That Gabby that been in the car, but we were all right. Just a little shaken.

That was all I could say.

“Oh, my God, Jay! ” Her first reaction was one of shock, horror. She’d clearly figured out it was bigger than what I’d made it sound. “How did it happen? I’m just so glad you’re alive!”

I felt like I was cheating on her, concealing the truth.

I didn’t know if she even believed me, but it didn’t matter. I just needed to hear her voice. “I’m okay,” I told her over and over. “I promise. I am.”

But something must have made her think I wasn’t being entirely truthful. Maybe my shakiness.

“You say Gabby was in the car?” she asked after a protracted pause.

“She’s going to be okay too. Look, everything’s finally all out in the open now anyway. I’ll be back soon.”

“What’s in the open, Jay?” Worry turned to frustration. “This wasn’t an accident, was it?”

I didn’t answer.

“Jay, I don’t even know if I know you anymore. What happened out there? What have you been keeping from me?”

“I’ll tell you soon, Kathy. I promise. I know I’ve been acting crazy to you.” I didn’t know how to explain it now. I felt like a fool hanging up.

I felt a lot of things slipping away right then and didn’t do much to stop it. One of them was Kathy’s trust.

One of the sheriff’s cars drove me to the hospital. Inside the ER, Gabby was behind a partition receiving oxygen.

I introduced myself to the attending physician, a red-haired guy named Paulson, and he briefed me on how she was. Smoke inhalation. First-degree burns along her arms and neck. Lucky it was nothing more. Shock.

Charlie was already there. He was basically sobbing, resting his head on the gurney.

I said, “They’re going to keep her overnight, just to be sure.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “They’ve given her something for the shock.”

He nodded, wiping his tears on the sheet. Pretty much all I saw was the back of his long gray hair.

I leaned down and brushed my hand against Gabby’s cheek. “How’re you doing?”

She blinked at me, her eyes a little glazed. “I was really scared, Jay. Really scared. I said my prayers. I thought this was it.”

“You ought to sleep,” I told her. “They’re going to admit you and get you in a room, just for observation.”

“Thank you, Jay.” She reached out and took hold of my hand. Her dull eyes brightened. “Thank you for saving my life.”

I winked, smiling at her. “ No problema, señora. ”

Gabby smiled back, but weakly. She petted her husband’s head. “Charlie, you go home. You have to talk to your brother now. You have to tell him. Everything. Do you understand? Everything you have not told me. Our son, Charlie… our son’s soul will never rest. He has to sleep in peace.”

Charlie nodded, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, and lifted his head.

“You go home with Jay. You tell him. I don’t blame you for anything, my husband. Not one thing.”

Charlie pushed himself up. “I’ll come and get you tomorrow,” he said.

“Good,” she said, her voice a little hazy from the medication. “Now I’ll get some sleep.”

I drove Charlie’s clunky Taurus. We didn’t say a word for most of the trip. He pretty much just sat there staring straight ahead. Something he had bottled up inside him for decades was slowly rising to the surface. We turned off Fourth down the less traveled road that led to the tracks. I knew I didn’t have to say anything-Gabriella already had.

On Division, I slowed before turning into his carport.

“Stop here, Jay,” Charlie told me.

I pulled up on the side of the street.

He was silent a moment, puffing out his cheeks. Worry etched into his eyes. “I can’t live knowing I hurt her.” He turned to me. “She’s all I have left. It’s hard enough to bear to think of Evan …”

Tears streamed down into his beard. He mashed his palms up against his face.

And then it came. Like a flood. Everything I’d been waiting for.

“I had nothing to do with it, Jay-the murders. Nothing.” His eyes were swollen and contrite. “I swear. I was a lost soul back then. You know that. I was crazy. I felt at home there. All I ever wanted was to make music. It’s all I ever did well. I felt I had a chance there …”

“Why did they want to make your record, Charlie?”

“Because it was Russell’s way.” He avoided my eyes. “It was his crazy way of getting everything out. Russell had his own songs. He felt if he could get a record made, the world had to listen. It was his way of reaching people. His stupid fucking message. The guy was insane, Jay. We were all insane…”

“When did you really leave there, Charlie?”

He pressed his hands on the top of his forehead and pushed, like he was forcing the demons out. “After it all took place. Everything started to get crazy there, Jay. Russell was ratcheting up all this fear. Tightening the screws he had on people. Everyone was freaked out on the fear that the storm troopers were coming to raid the ranch. The drugs didn’t help. They only fed the paranoia. The music was going to die forever. The music was love, Jay. I know you don’t see it that way, but it was. But I was never part of what took place. Not for a second. That was all his people. His inner circle. The ones closest to him.”

“Why would Houvnanian want to hurt you, Charlie?”

He just kept staring straight ahead and put his hands over his face.

I reached across and touched his shoulder. “You’re Chase, aren’t you?”

He didn’t answer. He only turned. A kind of light flickered in his eyes, as if he was relieved to finally hear me. “How did you know about that?”

“You turned them in,” I said. “Russell, Susan, all the rest. To Zorn and Cooley. You led the police to their bloody clothes in the marsh. And then the weapons… They think you betrayed them.”

He didn’t have to say a thing. The answer was etched on his tearstained face. He smiled. As if a lifelong weight was finally lifted from him.

“I’ve hid out for more than thirty years… More than half my life, Jay. Thirty-seven years of telling myself I didn’t matter anymore. Afraid that one day they would find me. Or Gabby or Evan. I was afraid to even let Evan play ball. To let him have a life. To ever leave this shit hole. I knew one day they would find me. Russell promised they would and they did. That’s what Zorn told Evan. That they knew we were here… That’s what my son came and told me.”

He put his arm across his face and started to sob.

I drew him to me. “It’s okay, Charlie.” I knew he felt responsible for Evan. “You couldn’t have known.”

“No.” He turned and looked at me. “It’s not okay, Jay. There’s more…”

His eyes grew sunken and shadowed, like a moon crossing the sun in an eclipse. “You wanted in, Jay, now there’s no turning back. Park the car. There’s something I need to show you inside, little brother. Come on in.”

Chapter Fifty-Eight

I parked the Taurus underneath the carport and followed Charlie in.

He went into the living room and knelt beside the chest that contained his old keepsakes. The old pictures of his family back in Miami. His medical diagnoses, kept like grade school report cards. The Billboard Top 40 sheet he had shown me.

He pulled out a thick folder and leafed through dog-eared sheets of music and lyrics until he came upon a manila envelope. He took it out and handed it to me, barely looking me in the eye.

“I got this about a week ago,” he said, shrugging. “A couple of days after Evan died… I can’t remember exactly when. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I hid it. I didn’t even tell Gabby. I was scared. I knew they had found me. I didn’t want to believe they had anything to do with my son.”

The envelope was addressed to Charlie. No return address.

“You have to believe me, Jay, if I knew this could have ever hurt anyone… Evan, Gabby…” Tears glistened in Charlie’s slate-gray eyes. “ You . I would never have kept it to myself…”

The envelope was torn open at the top. I slid out the contents and stared in shock at what I was now looking at, reacting as if I’d been punched and recoiling.

There were photos of a dead woman.

Not just dead, it became clear to me, mutilated. My mouth went dry. She was naked, her face and torso cut up. Red slits and bloody lacerations disfiguring her all over.

The woman was blond, kind of pretty in a way, I could still detect. Her hair was strewn to the side in long braids. Maybe in her fifties. I leafed through the shots one by one, my stomach clenching. Only someone who wanted to cause terrible suffering to someone could have done something this cold-blooded.

They’d tortured her.

“Who is she? ” I asked, but something made me think I knew.

“Her name was Sherry.” Charlie let out a deep, pained exhale. “I hadn’t seen her in over thirty years. I knew her back then-on the ranch… She’s-”

“I know who she was.” I looked up at him. “It’s Katya.”

He just stood there staring at me, his eyes wide. Then he sank onto the couch and ran his hand through his ponytailed hair. “ Katya…” He smiled fondly and gave me a slight nod of confirmation. “She didn’t deserve something like this, Jay.”

“Both of you pointed the finger at Houvnanian. And the ones who went with him down to Santa Barbara. You helped the police in their investigation?”

Again, he gave me the slightest nod. Then he looked up, befuddled. “How do you possibly know all about this?”

“It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is what we do about it now. You’re who they want, Charlie. Greenway. Zorn. Evan. Sherry… This has all been leading up to you. For what you did. They’re torturing you, just like they did to this woman. By killing off the things you love.”

Charlie rubbed his brow in anguish. He leaned forward and picked up the photos, leafed through them again, pressing his lips in sadness and a held-in anger. “She was a beautiful person, Jay. She wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Look at her. The kind of people who could do this…”

“You already know the kind of people, Charlie. We were with one the other day. But now you have to step back. Out of the prison you’ve been in. You have to help me bring them down.”

Charlie nodded, exhaling a breath that might have been in him thirty years. “There’s something else…”

He went over to the chest and dug around in the back of a drawer. He came back with something wrapped in a blue towel and handed it to me.

“How long have you known?” I asked as I took away the towel and stared at what was inside.

“That first week. After you came to dinner. It was in the trash.”

“You could have told me,” I said, and Charlie simply nodded, sorry.

I was staring at a black Nike sneaker.

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Susan Pollack watched from the woods, smoking. Her car was hidden safely around the block from the apartment house.

At around one P.M., she saw Charlie and his brother pull up.

Chase.

The two of them stayed in the car and talked for a while before going in. Though far away, something in Chase’s hanging head and tormented expression gave her a feeling of delight. It was too bad that his nosy brother and his whore of a wife had escaped the little present at the market earlier.

It had made her giddy, watching the two of them fighting for their lives in the flaming car. As it was, just hearing the bitch’s screams, seeing the shell-shocked looks of panic and fear on their terrified faces, had almost been enough. She knew there would be other times for them. And soon.

Soon, my darling. Mags smiled from the woods.

Her blood stirred with an exhilaration she had not felt for many years. Susan, that shell of a dried-up woman, who had dutifully done what was asked of her, was dead now.

But Mags was very much alive.

You never left me, all these years. Not for a single second. Our thoughts have always been entwined. I know it was me all along who nurtured you. The one you truly wanted. The others were just the playthings who threw themselves at you. They were candy to make you smile. But it was me, your Maggie Mae, your Mags, who was your music. Who gave you the will to do what had to be done.

Who was your true music!

She saw movement coming from the car. Charlie and his brother got out and went inside.

Well, wait till you see what the music has in store for you now, Charlie.

Her thighs felt alive, moist for the first time in years. Isn’t that what you said, my love? That nothing could ever be evil, not if it comes from love.

And what greater love could I have shown for you? This is my gift. I am yours whenever you want me. I always have been.

I know you can hear me , Russell. There are walls, but what is between us cannot be kept out. It knows no walls.

“No one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner.”

I have never forsaken you for a second, my love. You gave me the gift of love back then. You protected me.

You left me behind.

Now I give it back to you. In full.

Chapter Sixty

A short while later, Sherwood knocked on the apartment door and I spotted him through the blinds.

I was glad he had come alone. Charlie had barely moved in twenty minutes, sunk into the couch, his head in his hands, staring into space.

I let him in.

“You all right?” he asked, giving me a look that was different from any I had seen from him before.

“Yeah. Thanks.” I nodded grimly, blowing out my cheeks.

“And Gabriella? I checked at the hospital.”

“She’s doing okay too. Take a seat.”

He glanced at Charlie, lowering himself on the threadbare ottoman. “You said you had something important for me to see?”

“I think you’ll think so, Sherwood.” I handed him the photos Charlie had shown me of the woman named Sherry. He leafed through them, stoically and detached at first, then wincing once or twice as he grew increasingly somber. “Who is she?”

I looked at Charlie to reply, but he just stared straight ahead.

“Her name was Sherry,” I answered. “She was a friend of my brother’s from a long time ago. They were together back then. On the Riorden Ranch.”

“Oh.” Sherwood nodded, putting together what these photos, sent to Charlie, meant. “How did you get these?”

“In the mail,” Charlie said from behind his hands. “Just after Evan was killed.”

“You know who sent them?” Sherwood inspected the envelope. The postmark was local. No identifiable markings. No return address.

He shook his head. “No.”

“You must have some idea.” He glanced through them again, waiting for Charlie to answer. “When was the last time you were in touch with her?” he asked after a stretch of silence.

Charlie shrugged. “Over thirty years ago. We stayed together for a couple of months after we moved on from the ranch. We hitchhiked across California. To Arizona. Sedona, if I remember.”

“If you remember?”

“We were only together for a couple of months. I hitched around everywhere back then. We hung around for a while in the desert. Did a lot of drugs. Then I moved on.”

“You moved on?”

“Picked up.” My brother shrugged. “With someone else. I never knew what happened to her.”

“So only someone who knew you from back then-from the ranch,” Sherwood said, “could have put the two of you together?”

Charlie nodded weakly. “Yes.”

“And how would that same person know where to send these to you now?”

This time Charlie looked up. His face was a beaten blank. “I don’t know the answer to that question, detective. These past days, I’ve asked myself that a hundred times.”

“But you now know why… ?” he pressed, and glanced at me. “ Why they would have sent this to you?”

“Yes,” Charlie said, moistening his lips. “I know why.”

“Her name was Sherry,” I said, picking up the photos, “but she went by the name Katya back then. You remember how Susan Pollack said everyone had their own names on the ranch? Susan was Maggie, short for Magdalena. Houvnanian was what?” I looked at my brother.

“Paul,” he said softly.

“Paul,” Sherwood said. “You mean like from the Gospels?”

“No.” Charlie sniffed with a slight smile. “McCartney. He thought he wrote directly to him.”

Sherwood smiled drily too. “So who is this woman?” The detective looked at Charlie and then at me.

“Initially, the police were led to Houvnanian by the threats he had made against Riorden,” I answered. “And by Riorden’s sister. Also, the ranch’s white van was spotted in the vicinity of the crime scenes. He and a few of his inner circle were picked up and held in the local jail on trespassing and minor drug possession charges. Walter Zorn and his team went around the ranch and questioned people there. Some of them closed ranks. Others apparently decided to talk. It’s all in Greenway’s book. Katya- Sherry, ” I said, correcting myself, “was one of them.”

Sherwood fixed on Charlie, the truth starting to settle on him. “I guess what I’m about to hear is that you were another, huh, Mr. Erlich?”

“Yes.” Charlie rubbed his beard. “I was.”

“And what was your name back then?”

“Chase.”

“Chase…” Sherwood let out a breath. “So what was it you told them, Charlie?”

“It’s all detailed in the book,” I said. “Walter Zorn and Joe Cooley conducted the initial interviews. Katya first revealed the identities of those who went along with Houvnanian to Santa Barbara. Charlie led them to a pond on the property where some of the evidence had been buried. A bandana. A poncho. Articles of clothing worn during the murders. Ultimately they found the murder weapons there too.”

“So you testified against them, Mr. Erlich. You were part of the trial?”

“No. Once the evidence against Houvnanian and the others became overwhelming-they had prints, the murder weapons, their own incriminating confessions-the names of those followers who talked were concealed. Their testimonies weren’t needed at trial.”

Charlie looked up. “We were only there for the damn music. And the drugs. Russell had this ring around him. People gave him whatever he wanted. He made it feel like you were blessed to be in his graces. We weren’t into what took place down there. When it happened, we just wanted to get out.”

“You and Katya,” Sherwood said to him. “Sherry.”

Charlie nodded.

“You see it now, don’t you?” I asked Sherwood. “How it all fits. Susan Pollack was with Evan when he went up to that rock. And I have the proof.”

“The proof? ” Sherwood said, furrowing his brow.

I showed him the sneaker. Evan’s sneaker. Sherwood’s gray eyes widened. He knew exactly what it was, because he had seen the other one, on Evan’s body.

“When did you get this?” He stared at Charlie.

“Last week. It was left in the trash.” He sat there with his elbows on his knees, ashen.

“This is all about Charlie,” I said. “They’re torturing him. Just like they did to that woman. They tried to kill Gabby today. And me. They’re trying to make him bleed for what he did. Zorn knew they had found him and tried to warn them. That’s why he reached out to Evan.”

“So you knew about this?” Sherwood fixed on Charlie.

“Evan said the police had been talking to him. He said they wanted him to help us. To make us safe.” Charlie cradled his forehead in his hands. “My son was off his rocker-just like me, right? It sounded like more of his ramblings…”

“It probably was ramblings by that point,” I said. “He probably didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.”

“Instead I let them kill him,” Charlie said. “I let them take him away…”

I placed a hand on my brother’s back as he sobbed, forcefully, into his beard.

Sherwood picked up the top photo. “Can you give me any information about her? Where she might have been living lately? Her family? Even a last name?”

“Myers. Sherry Ann Myers.” Charlie looked up glassily. “At least that was her maiden name. She was from Lansing, I think. In Michigan.”

Sherwood fit the photos back in the envelope. He wrapped the sneaker up in the towel and stood up, meeting my gaze in a corroborating stare.

He went over to the door. “I don’t think you could have helped your son, Mr. Erlich, if that’s what’s on your mind. We still don’t know what happened to him up there. But you damned well could’ve helped the investigation. By sharing this earlier.”

He gave a final look to me and left.

Charlie waited awhile until we heard his car start up outside. “You can go now, Jay,” he said, still hunched over.

Gabby was still in the hospital. I didn’t want to leave him. “Maybe I should stay.”

He lifted his head and looked at me with swollen, bloodshot eyes. “No, I mean tomorrow. It’s all out now. You can go back home.”

I squeezed his shoulder and said, “We’ll see.”

At that moment, I thought he was simply caring for me. For the time I had spent there, away from my family. Now that the truth had come out.

A day later, I wished I’d heard him more clearly.

Chapter Sixty-One

Russell Houvnanian’s five-by-ten cell was dark and dim at night, but he was still able to conjure Charlie Erlich’s face.

Chase.

Though he hadn’t seen him in thirty-five years, he’d memorized every line: the slant of his chin, his ground-down teeth, the bad-boy glimmer in his eye. He also saw the image of his younger brother-at their father’s fancy home in the Hollywood Hills. It was no surprise to see him again the other day after all these years. In fact, it was damn well the highlight of his month! He’d seen him dozens of times over the years in his dreams.

With a smile, he also brought to mind the face of their father.

“Mags,” Houvnanian whispered in the night, “my beautiful Maggie Mae. I could touch you as if I was with you now. You can feel me, can’t you? I told you, didn’t I, that what was done from love could never ever be bad or evil? Only twisted that way. I told you to trust me over time and I would give myself to you in a way I have not to any others.

“And now it’s time.

“You will do this, and I will come to you, my Mags, like I’ve always come to you. Like I have always traveled from these walls and been with you in the night.

“You were always my little sweetness, you know. My muse.”

On his cot, Houvnanian raised up his knee, a smile etched onto his face.

Even behind these walls I can fly. I can walk your streets. I can be among your children. I can fuck your daughters.

He’d waited thirty-seven years; what was another day or two?

Enjoy what’s left, Charlie boy.

I always told you the master would one day be home.

And now I’ve come a-knockin’!

Chapter Sixty-Two

The next afternoon, Sherwood sat in his office, staring at a file.

A gradual transformation had taken place. He no longer believed that Evan Erlich had climbed up that ledge and jumped off on his own.

The shoe proved that.

He still didn’t know what happened up there. In truth, he still had nothing-nothing even a twelve-year-old might consider evidence: no proof, no witnesses, nothing directly linking Susan Pollack or anyone else with any criminal actions. Other than these horrible pictures Charlie had given to him.

And the file on his desk that had come back a short while ago. Inching him closer to the realization that from his cell, possibly starting years ago, Russell Houvnanian was engaged in a process of deadly revenge.

That Greenway’s and Zorn’s deaths had been part of it. That Susan Pollack might have been aiding him.

That Evan was the way they got to Charlie.

And now, thanks to the doc, he also knew why.

Sherwood thought back to the remote house up in Jenner. The navy Kia the doc said matched one he had seen outside his brother’s house. The testimony of the street vendor at the rock. They all began to fit in, into some shifting puzzle that was starting to take shape. He knew how skeptical he had been, how simple it had all seemed only a week ago.

A flashing eye-no more than a Cracker Jack prize, found in a boy’s pocket at the bottom of the rock.

Sherwood now accepted that Susan Pollack might be involved, but she surely wasn’t alone.

Thomas Greenway was killed in Las Vegas back in 1988. Susan Pollack was still at the Frontera Women’s Correctional Institution then. Walter Zorn might have been getting on in years, but he still weighed more than two hundred pounds and had fought for his life while being strangled. The doc was sure that it had been a man on the phone threatening him.

Sherwood looked at the open file. This cinched it.

Now it was only a question of what he would do.

It had come in an hour ago, from the FBI’s ViCAP system, a data bank of details on most violent crimes.

He had run the details from the photos Charlie Erlich had given him.

Her name was Sherry Ann Frazier. She lived in Redmond, Michigan. A small resort town on the UP. She was fifty-two years old and had been found beaten and murdered in her home by her daughter eight days before.

There was a local police contact on the file. Some young detective named Arlen Douglas. Sherwood had rung him up. The kid seemed a bit green. What kind of things even happened up there on the Upper Peninsula anyway? A moose wandering into town? Geese sightings? Sherry Ann Frazier lived alone. She was recently separated. She ran a bakery in town. No one had any clue who’d killed her. There were no prints or fibers left behind. Nothing was taken from the house. They clearly didn’t have many homicides in Redmond. The case had gotten nowhere.

“I want you to take a look at the files,” Sherwood told the young detective, “and tell me if you can find something for me.”

“Sure,” the kid had replied, empty in the biggest case of his career. “What?”

“An eye,” Sherwood had told him.

“An eye?”

“That’s right, or anything else that resembles one. On the body. Or maybe left around the scene.”

Ten minutes later he called back. A little confused. They had found something actually. Not quite an eye, Douglas had said. But something… Something they hadn’t been able to figure out.

Something weird.

He said, “The coroner found a contact lens. In her right eye…”

“Only the right eye?” Sherwood asked, his heart rate picking up.

“Just the one,” Arlen Douglas confirmed. “But that’s not even the point. According to the ex-husband and daughter, Sherry Ann Frazier didn’t even wear contacts. Or glasses. She didn’t need them. Her vision was fine. Pretty weird , huh?”

“Crazy fucking weird,” Sherwood said.

Through the door, Sherwood saw his boss, Phil Perokis, come back into the office. He said good-bye, got up, grabbed his files, along with the incident report on the car fire yesterday and all that Charlie had told him.

He was about to head after Perokis when his desk phone rang. He grabbed it, answering sharply, “Detective Sherwood here.”

“Detective, it’s Roland Martinez,” the caller said. “From up in Jenner.”

Earlier in the day, Sherwood had called up there as well. Martinez was the detective who had happened to pick up his call. He had asked Martinez to ride up to Susan Pollack’s spread on Lost Hill and check on her whereabouts.

“Thanks for getting back to me, detective.” Sherwood sat back down. “So what’d you find?”

“What’d I find? You ready?” He sounded almost annoyed. “There was a gate up across the driveway. Newspapers scattered on the road. Two days’ mail. I went in anyway. No car in the garage. No sign of anyone around. Even the front door was bolted shut.”

Sherwood didn’t like the sound of it. “Thanks.”

“Something else though…” the detective went on. “I smelled something coming from the back. And I’m talking wretched. Thought it might have been a body. So I went around the side.”

Sherwood waited. “What did you find?”

“A bunch of fucking chickens, detective. All with their throats cut. Blood everywhere. You know whose place it is, don’t you? I checked. The county has it registered to a Susan Pollack. You know who that is, don’t you? This doesn’t exactly sit well up here. Anything I should know?”

“If there is,” Sherwood said, “I promise I’ll let you know…”

He hung up. He knew what it all meant. She had said those chickens were her only friends these days… He felt the hairs raise on his arms.

She wasn’t going back there.

Sherwood saw the lieutenant’s door open. He took his jacket and stood up again; then something stopped him and he put back down his files.

Whatever it was you got that second chance for, he heard a voice say, this is it.

He sat back down. He felt a pain throb in his abdomen. He said a thank-you to Edward J. Knightly. For all the good work he had done.

He lit up a cigarette he’d been saving in his drawer, then wheeled his seat around and sat there staring out at the hills.

Chapter Sixty-Three

Charlie took an extra Xanax along with his usual pills that morning. He felt totally wound up, his heart racing at twice its normal speed.

First, he went and brought Gabby home from the hospital. She was still a little woozy and in shock; she’d been prescribed four milligrams a day of Klonopin, just like himself. Otherwise, thank God, she was fine. She walked into the house, looking a little perturbed at the mess Charlie had let accumulate-his papers and old music strewn all over the couch, dirty plates thrown in the sink-and she snapped at him for always being in his own world, especially with what had happened.

He sat her down at the table. “Gabby, we have to talk.”

He could no longer hide the past from her. Or pretend it had not caught up to them. He had put her in danger now.

She could see his anxiety, how he couldn’t sit still. “What’s wrong, Charlie?”

“It’s all coming apart, Gabby.”

“What is coming apart?”

As calmly as he could manage, he told her about the photos he had received days before. The ones he had hidden from her. And the horrible things that had been done. How Sherwood had taken them, but he still described them one by one, what his old friend’s killer had done to her.

“Who is this person? ” Gabby looked at him, befuddled, recoiling as he described Sherry’s terrible wounds. “Who would do this to somebody? Like some dog.” The more he told her, the less she could even believe it.

“Gabby, there are things I haven’t told you. Things about me, before we met.”

“This is what your brother has been saying, Charlie.” A deepening apprehension robbed the color from her face. “This is what he wanted you to admit. He-”

“Listen to me, Gabby.” He clasped her hands and slowly, his mind remarkably clear for once, told her of his time on the Riorden Ranch.

Who Sherry was. And Russell Houvnanian-a name Gabby had never heard him utter in all their years but, it now became clear to her, had influenced every day of their lives together, even how they had raised their own son, and how they had hidden like fugitives, shrunk from any chance to raise themselves up.

And finally, he told her who Zorn was. How their paths had crossed years and years before.

Gabby saw it all now. A fog opening up. And the cruelest part was Evan.

“Why, why wouldn’t you ever let him leave, Charlie? When your brother invited him? You said it was because we needed the state support for us all to continue to live. Otherwise we would die. But I see it now… That was a lie. You never wanted him to leave. You never wanted him to have a chance. Why, Charlie…? ”

“I was scared, Gabby. It was the only way I could protect him.”

She pulled back, a sudden judgment flashing in her eyes. “You did this to Evan? All these years. To your own son. You kept him from being someone. And why ? Because you feared they would find you? That they would do these things to you too? You said it was out of love, but it was this ? You took this out on our son, Charlie?”

“No. No.” He shook his head, but the answer was on his face. In his guilt he felt that it was true.

“You held him here. For what? For the money he received from the state. So we could continue to hide? All these years. Because without him, we had nothing? Your brother begged him to come to New York. When he had a chance, Charlie-to give his life a chance. Things we couldn’t give to him.” Tears shone in her eyes. “When he was not so ill…” She grabbed him by the collar. “You stole our son’s chance in life, Charlie…”

Then she put her face in her hands and started to cry.

“Gabby, you’re not seeing it. What happened yesterday to you was part of it too. They found us! They’re trying to hurt me for what I did back then. That’s all that Zorn was trying to tell us. We have to get out of here.”

“Get out of here? ” Her face grew taut with rage, and she laughed, a scornful, challenging retort, staring back in his eyes. “ To where? To where, Charlie? We have no money. Our car can barely make it around town. There is no place to go. The past is here? Then it has found us both, because you have sucked me in too. We are in the same prison as this man who wants to hurt you, Charlie. And we have been for years!”

“I’m not going to let them hurt you, Gabby.”

“You’ve already let them hurt me, Charlie! They cannot hurt me any more .”

She wept, seeing it all for the first time. Their twisted, pathetic fate. Charlie just sat there, his hands spread, unable to comfort her. He tried to think what to do.

“Where are these pictures?” Gabby asked, looking up and wiping her eyes.

“Sherwood has them.”

“Why?”

“To find out who Sherry is now. And to find out who killed her.”

“And Jay? Has your brother seen them too?”

He nodded. “Yesterday.”

Anger swept onto Gabby’s face. “So you knew this man? Walter Zorn. And you knew that our son was trying to tell us something. The truth. This is something I just cannot believe.”

Charlie shook his head and wiped away a tear. “No, that’s not the way it is.”

“Yes. Yes, it is the way it is. You struck a deal, years before. A deal with the devil! And now that devil has taken our son.”

“And it may take us too, Gabby.”

“For me, there is nothing left to take, Charlie. It’s all gone.”

“No, there is something else.” A knot tightened in Charlie’s stomach. He felt like his world had fallen apart. “There’s one more thing. Last week, I found something else too, Gabby.”

Chapter Sixty-Four

He told her about the sneaker.

Evan’s sneaker. The one he had found in the trash a week before.

The one that proved that Evan hadn’t killed himself. That he hadn’t been alone up there.

“You found his sneaker? ” Gabby looked at him, confusion spreading over her face.

Charlie hung his head. “Yes.”

“And you didn’t show it to me. For a whole week. You let me think all along our son had killed himself?”

“I couldn’t, Gabby. I was scared to. It would have brought everything out.”

“Everything? Everything that is more important than our son?” Her eyes became bright with anger. She slapped him. Charlie didn’t make a move to defend himself. She hit him again, a flood of emotion rushing into her cheeks. “ How, Charlie? How could you have held such a thing from me?”

“I’m sorry, Gabby. I was scared. Scared for what it meant. I would give everything to take it back.”

“Where is this sneaker? What did you do with it, Charlie?”

“I had to give it to Sherwood. It’s evidence. But you know what it proves, don’t you? This proves he wasn’t alone up there.”

“I know, ” Gabby said, raising her fist to strike him again. “I know…” Then, lowering it, tears staining her cheeks: “Our son, Charlie… Our poor son.”

She fell into his arms, sobbing, her tiny fists coiled against him, and he clutched her, tighter than he had ever held a thing in his life.

“Don’t hate me,” he said. “Don’t hate me.” He couldn’t bear to lose her too.

“I don’t,” she said into him, her tears on his shirt. “I don’t.” She lifted her head, eyes shining. “Our son is here. I can feel him, Charlie. I can feel him in this room.”

“I can feel him too,” Charlie said. Then he choked up, realizing that whatever had befallen Evan-his innocent, only son-had been aimed at him. Had been meant to hurt him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Evan…”

He sat down at the table, like a mound of broken bones. He was sobbing too.

“There was a note,” he said, drawing in a breath. “In Evan’s shoe. I didn’t give it to them.” He ran over to the chest. He dug through one of the folders in the bottom drawer and came out with it, and brought it to her.

She read it. Then put it down on the table.

The handwritten scrawl read: “ Music’s over now, Charlie. Want to know how it all ends? ”

Gabby’s eyes shook with ire. “Who would do this to us, Charlie? I want to kill these people.”

“I need to show this to Sherwood,” he said. “And to Jay.”

“No, no,” Gabby said, holding his arm. “They don’t have to see this.”

“They do. It’s possible that-”

“No.” Her tone was adamant, but there was a gentleness to it too. She placed her hand on top of his and gave him a soft smile. “What is left for us, Charlie? You know this as well as me. It’s over for us. Your brother has everything. Everything we have not. Yesterday, he could have died as well. For this ? For whatever we have brought him? No. This is our business, Charlie, these people. Our fate. Let him be free of this.”

It took a moment for him to completely understand. And it scared him. “No, it’s my fate, Gabby. You have to get out of here too.”

“No .” Her hand was still on his and she squeezed. “We both know there’s nowhere for me to go.” She brushed his hair away and put her hand on his face. “I’m sorry, Charlie, what I just did. You are my husband and I stay with you, whatever fate has in store. You ask me what I want? Okay. What I want is to know the truth, Charlie. To hear it from them. The real truth about my son. What I want is the one chance to look the person who did this to him in the eye. Who made me feel like my boy was crazy. Who sent this to you-our son’s shoe-as a trophy, to torture us. I want to show them that we are not animals, Charlie. To make us suffer this way. This is all I want now. Nothing more. You see? What else is left for us?”

Charlie’s hair fell around his face like a shroud. He knew she was right. Their time was up. He wouldn’t put Jay at risk. It was their fate. He squeezed her hand. It was trembling, but at the same time, it was strong too-like the light in her eyes. You are wrong, Gabby, he was thinking, there is something else we have left, one thing no one can take from us .

“My whole life.” He gazed at her. “Has been a tale of wrong choices. All the drugs and my time on the road. How I threw away the one chance I had. All of them wrong. All but one …”

Tenderly, he wrapped his palm around her hand.

He kissed her. It had been years since they really kissed. Felt in their hearts the charge of what had brought them together.

“You couldn’t help it,” Gabby said, placing her head gently on his chest. “You were sick, Charlie. Evan was sick.”

“No, I could help it,” Charlie said. “I could.”

He pulled away and picked up the note. He read it again, and for the first time in a long time, years maybe, he felt perfectly clear. He said, “I can never make it right, not now. But I know what I can do to make it end.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

Sherwood’s call caught me just as I was coming back from a late-afternoon jog along the shore.

His tone sounded peremptory. “I have a few things…”

I sat down on a bench near my hotel. “I’m listening.”

“I got some word back on your brother’s old girlfriend. Her full name was Sherry Ann Frazier. She did live in Michigan. In a town called Redmond. On the Upper Peninsula.”

“Michigan. ” Charlie was right!

“Apparently, she was killed eight days ago. Her body was found in her home by her daughter when she arrived for a visit. She ran a small bakery in town and was separated from her husband. She lived out in the boonies by herself so no one caught a glimpse of anything suspicious. Nor was there any knowledge of anyone who would want to do her harm.”

“So they don’t even know if it was committed by a man or a woman?” I asked, wondering if Susan Pollack had done it or someone else.

“No.” Sherwood exhaled. “They don’t. But something did come up you might find interesting.”

“Okay…”

“I asked a Detective Douglas up there if there were any distinguishing signatures that might fit into our own case profiles. Like with Zorn or Greenway or Evan, if you know what I mean.”

I said, “You’re talking eyes, I assume, right?”

He didn’t respond right away, but his silence suggested I was on the mark. “At first he had no clue what I might be talking about. Then, ten minutes later, he called back. It seems the coroner there had found something worth mentioning.”

My heart rate picked back up. “And what was that?”

“The victim was wearing a single contact lens. In her right eye.”

“Only her right eye?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what sounded so strange about that. The woman was beaten and repeatedly stabbed. She’d probably fought for her life. The other lens could’ve fallen out at any time.

“That’s right,” Sherwood said. “Just the right. But that’s not what was interesting… According to everyone there, Sherry Ann Frazier didn’t wear contact lenses. They even checked with a doctor in town. Her vision was fine. She didn’t even wear glasses…”

My heart came to a stop. One lens. An eye! Watch! “Jesus, Sherwood, you know what this means…?”

“Before you tell me what I already know, doc, I asked another detective up in Jenner to check in on Susan Pollack for me.” The gravity began to deepen in his voice. “Just to make sure she was still there.”

“And was she?”

“No. The gate was up blocking the driveway. A couple of days’ worth of mail and newspapers was in the mailbox.”

“You know why, Sherwood, don’t you?” My blood began to rush like rapids. “Because she’s here ! She’s here, and she’s not alone. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know that, doc,” Sherwood said resignedly. “Look, I worked it out with a few friends to keep a heads-up out there for her car. I can’t have her arrested-you understand that, right? So far we can’t prove she’s done anything wrong. But I can damn well have her brought in. And let her know that we’re onto her.”

“Thanks. And what about Charlie and Gabby, Sherwood?” They were exposed. I felt a drumming of alarm.

He sighed. “Don’t worry about them. I have a car watching their apartment. Twenty-four/seven. I’m actually handling the late shift on that. I’m heading home now.”

“Okay, thanks, Sherwood. Thanks.”

“One last thing…,” the detective said, and took a long pause. “You know those chickens Susan Pollack was raising behind the house?”

“Yeah,” I replied, wondering why he would bring them up. “Her buddies…”

“The detective I sent up there said he found them. Apparently they’re all dead. Throats cut. You know what that means, don’t you, doc?”

“Yeah.” I felt a shiver travel through me. “I know what it means.”

It meant whatever Susan Pollack was planning, she wasn’t planning on going back there again.

Chapter Sixty-Six

After we hung up, I remained on the bench, staring out over the cliffs, sure that something terrible was about to happen.

Cooley. Greenway. Charlie’s old girlfriend in Michigan. Zorn.

Evan .

It was like this whole thing had been some kind of long, orchestrated countdown leading directly to Charlie. And if Susan Pollack was there-an “if,” but one I felt sure about-it meant whatever the countdown was leading to was happening now.

I had to warn Charlie and Gabby about this.

“Dude!”

I looked up, shaken from my thoughts, and saw Dev, the panhandler.

He was in his usual worn Seahawks cap, the same old woolen plaid shirt over his straggly carpenter’s pants, with beat-up sneakers. “How’s it going, Jay?” He lit up a smoke.

This time, his overly familiar use of my name rubbed me the wrong way. And anyway, he was about the last person I needed to deal with right then. I realized how foolish it had been to make him a part of what was going on. I shrugged, barely meeting his gaze. “Just watching the birds.”

“The birds are gone, I hear. Cleared out everywhere. Used to be all over the damn place… Now look at them. Like everything around here. Gone. Maybe they got a sixth sense or something… So, hey, I was wondering, you ever find that dude?”

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t.” Then I remembered I still owed him some money. I reached in my pocket. I wasn’t even sure if he had followed through or not.

“Nah…” He waved me off. “Save it, man.” He took a drag off his cigarette. “You gave me enough already. I didn’t do much for it. Anyway, I’m cutting town.”

The guy was just being friendly, but he was the last thing I needed right now. Anyway, I’d brought it on myself. “Leaving?” I tried to act surprised and looked around. “All this?”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Paradise, huh? Isn’t that what they say? Look around, Jay. Nothing but busted dreams around here. Anyway, my reasons for relocation here are coming to an end.”

Reasons for his relocation . I tried to read the smile upon his face. “Where you heading?”

“East .” He shrugged. “Who knows, maybe New York.”

That surprised me. “I’m from New York,” I said.

“That right?” Dev grinned, one as wrinkled as his trousers. This gave me the uneasy feeling that I was telling him something he already knew. “Maybe I’ll look you up there.” He smiled.

Something in his slate-colored eyes locked on mine. He was making me uncomfortable, and what I needed to think about was what Sherwood had just told me, not him. “Maybe you will.”

The guy just stood there for a while, like a bent stick, his clothes ripped and way too big for him, and took another drag on his butt. The conversation had gone on about as long as it was meant to.

“Well, adios,” I said. “I have to get back. I wish you luck.”

I was about to put out my hand; then I hesitated. He didn’t seem to want it anyway. He just smiled at me with an odd steadiness, which at first I thought was just the sum of the million differences between us but later realized was something far more.

He took a final drag off the cigarette and tossed it on the path. He rubbed it out with his sneaker.

“See you around, doc.”

Chapter Sixty-Seven

He backed down the pathway with a wave. I watched him go, his hands in his pockets, stopping a couple along the way to hit them up for a little cash. He pocketed some change and, pleased, seemed to look my way once more. Then he disappeared around the bend.

That remark about back east- Maybe I’ll look you up there -didn’t sit well with me at all.

I’d let things go way beyond where they should’ve.

I glanced at my watch-it was going on seven P.M. I thought about calling home but didn’t want to worry anyone. I figured I’d shower and change and head over to Charlie’s. Check out the protection Sherwood had arranged for them.

A nervousness ground in my stomach, and it took maybe thirty seconds until it hit me just what it was.

What Dev had said as he walked away. See you around, doc.

My head suddenly throbbed. I wasn’t sure, but I couldn’t recall ever telling him I was a doctor.

I sat there, going back over my three interactions with him. The first time we met, in my first few days of being there, he had come up to me, asking for a handout. For Veterans Day. Every day is Veterans Day when you’re looking for something to eat! You’re in my office, brother.

“Brother,” “doc”… Maybe they were both just similar expressions of familiarity.

The next time he’d been cozier, asked what I was reading. End of Days, huh? Now there’s a book I can surely relate to. My life’s resembled the End of Days for years!

Or had I asked him how things were going? I couldn’t recall.

But if he had wanted to find me, I wasn’t hard to spot.

If he’d been somehow interested in Charlie.

I was taking my brother around, getting involved with the police. I’d even accompanied Sherwood when we went to see Susan Pollack.

And then to Pelican Bay!

Suddenly my heart started racing. I ramped back to all the things Dev had said to me. One in particular hit home: Days ago, when I gave him the thirty bucks and joked about his getting out of town, he’d come back that he had been recently.

Out of town.

This time my heart jumped like a needle indicating a seismic tremor.

Michigan. That was where he said he’d been. Seeing an old friend.

In Michigan .

Where Sherry Ann Frazier had been killed.

Suddenly that tremor rocketed around inside me like an 8.0!

I put my hands to the sides of my head, desperately trying to recall the voice I had heard on the phone in my hotel room, the man who had threatened me. The one who had left the lit cigarette outside my door. My heart was pounding now. Yes, it could be . I’d never even thought in that direction. Why would I have? But there was a similar sort of accent. It was possible.

Oh my God. It was all right there in front of me.

I was leaning forward, elbows on my knees, my head throbbing, and I realized I was looking directly at the walk path.

At the butt Dev had just put out.

I scanned down the pathway, searching for him, but there were only a few stray pedestrians in sight, not him.

I bent down and picked it up between my fingers.

My stomach started to climb its way up my throat.

Salem . Salem was the same brand as the one left outside my door!

I started to feel the sweats come over me, recalling those horrible images of Sherry Ann Frazier in Michigan. The police pictures of Walter Zorn strangled. The eye carved gruesomely into his tongue.

Could Dev be the one who had called me? Allied with Susan Pollack?

With Houvnanian .

Jesus, I told myself, calm down. This could all just be your own crazy paranoia, Jay . Dev could have just as easily bummed that butt from someone down the road. I stood up and looked down the path again. I almost felt him watching me, observing me coming to the conclusion. Enjoying this! I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Call Sherwood?

It would just be another of those countless uncorroborated fears: Susan Pollack at the rock with Evan; the black or dark blue Kia outside Charlie’s apartment; my brother’s thirty-year-old lyrics echoed by Houvnanian.

This time I needed something more. Something real.

And suddenly I realized that I might have something more. Something that could pin Dev to this.

I wrapped the butt in some paper and headed back to my room.

I hurried, my heart beating rapidly now. I looked back around, like he was watching me out there. Toying with me.

I got to my wing of the motel and bounded up the outside flight of stairs. I hurried down the hall and jammed the card key into the lock. It took a couple of times for it to open and I let the door shut behind me, switching the metal bolt, just to be sure.

I went over to the bed and took the book off my night table.

Greenway’s book.

I flipped it open, skimming to where I wanted to go. My blood certain that this was it.

I located the insert of photographs. All the shots of Houvnanian and his other conspirators. The evidence photos: the guns, the knives, bloody clothing. Their VW van.

I’d been through them all before.

I searched until I found the photos taken on the ranch. There were two or three of the “family” all gathered around-drifters, hippies, outcasts, as they were in their days there. Making music. Working the farm. Gethsemane. Their paradise, before their world collapsed.

One shot was of a group sitting out on boulders they had cleared from a field. The same one I had searched for my brother’s face only days before.

I recognized a younger Susan Pollack. She was there.

As were Sarah Strasser and Carla Jean Blue, who had participated in the killings.

And some other names I recognized.

But no Dev. He wasn’t there!

I skipped a few photos ahead. There was another group shot of them, this time clearing brush for their vegetable garden. I’d read that there was always a lot of work that had to be done there. Two of the gals were raking soil. Carla Jean again. And Tel. And another guy in a long ponytail, planting, who looked vaguely familiar. But when I checked, his name was Scott Oulette.

It wasn’t him.

Three or four others were standing around holding tools. None of them even resembled Dev.

Damn.

I was about to give up when behind them I noticed someone perched on a small, dilapidated tractor.

My breath stopped. It was like a hand had put its icy fingers around my heart-and squeezed. I bore in on the face.

And I felt my blood about to explode.

It was the same person, except his hair was long then, a thin dark beard on his chin, wearing a bandana. He was grinning innocently, one arm on the wheel, but I could see it, as clearly as I could see the faces of my own kids when they were young.

I looked among the credits for a name.

And I read it twice, just to make sure I had seen it correctly.

Devin Dietz (on tractor).

I put down the book and just sat there for a while, everything slowly sinking in. I knew I had to call. I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. I located my previous call-to Sherwood-and pressed Redial .

He answered on the second ring, sighing when he saw who it was from. “What’s going on there, doc?”

“Susan Pollack’s accomplice,” I said, trying to hold my voice together. “ I know who it is! ”

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Sherwood grabbed his gun off the kitchen counter and strapped on his holster. He’d made a vow, a few days back, he wasn’t sure precisely when. Maybe it was after Pelican Bay. Or when he’d heard about the lyrics to Charlie’s song. Or maybe it went all the way back to that dollar bill in Thomas Greenway’s stomach.

Or maybe back to the doc asking what that new liver had been for …

If it was going to end in a fight, he’d be the one to end it.

He put on his jacket and touched the picture of Dorrie good-bye, pressing his fingers to her smile, just as he did every time he went out on the job.

“The guy’s a panhandler,” the doc had said, excited. “Near my hotel. He’s pushed his way into my life. I didn’t realize it-but for the past few days, I think he’s been stalking me.”

“Stay where you are,” Sherwood had instructed him. “Whatever you do, don’t leave. I’ll be right there.”

It was time to end this thing-and now.

He headed out the kitchen door. His Camry was parked in the drive outside. He had about a fifteen-minute ride from where he lived to the Cliffside Suites motel. He needed to warn the patrol car he had stationed outside Charlie’s apartment to be on alert, but he decided he might as well do it from the car, on his way.

He crossed around to the driver’s side, this weird sensation flashing through him: how Jay Erlich had wormed his way into his life, past his defenses. It had been a long time since he had let anyone in. One day there would be very little he would miss in this life. His friends had all moved on, down to San Diego or Arizona. The people he really loved were gone. But this past week … He chuckled. Something had awakened inside him. Something he hadn’t felt in a long while. Something vital. Over people he had never even heard of or given a rat’s ass about just a week before.

Funny, he thought to himself, how these things go. You never know what’s really important to you, until-

As he reached for the door handle, he heard a rustle from behind him.

Then he felt the most excruciating shock of pain cleave deep into his back.

The next thing he knew he felt the pavement, cold and firm against his face. Something sharp and body-splitting deep in his back. The air rushed out of him. He didn’t know what had happened, only that he couldn’t move and that it was bad. He tried to inhale, but it was like there was a hole in his air sac, his breaths leaking out of his back.

Turn over.

Before he could, he heard a loud grunt and felt another bone-splitting blow bury into his upper back. The pain almost sheared him in two. He tried to reach for it. He tried to power his brain through the pain-What had happened? What was there to do?-with whatever clarity he still possessed.

He had to warn the doc. He was in trouble too.

That was all.

But he couldn’t move. A warm, coppery taste was on his tongue and he saw blood trickle down the driveway past his face into a growing pool. Damn . He tried to force himself up, like an animal fighting for one last breath-one last rush-but then another cracking jolt cleaved through him, his spine splitting in two.

“Ahh…, ” he groaned deeply. He reared back around and saw, almost with a glint of amusement, what appeared to be the wooden handle of an ax.

Chickens, he thought, and lay his head back down. Damn.

“Don’t…” He heard a woman’s voice. It was more of a plea than a command. His mind was fuzzy. “Please, don’t. We told you to stay out, you dumb bastard. If you had…”

There was another, spine-splitting blow. No longer pain, just numbness and cold. All the air sucked out of his body from his back.

He felt sad to have let the doc down. Not to have finished what he vowed to complete.

He knew it was time to let go, but as he did, something else came into his drifting mind.

He struggled forward, like a snake cut in half continuing to slide on his belly. His fingers gripped the pavement, now like sand. Each small measure forward consuming most of what was left of his strength.

And he crawled, down the driveway, every inch labored and life-emptying, like a strong current fighting against him, keeping him away.

No, not this time, it wouldn’t…

He looked up to the shining, sunlit sight. He could almost touch it. Just a few more feet.

Please…

Sherwood opened his eyes. The driveway was gone, and instead of asphalt, soft leaves and moss brushed against his face. Green and cool now. The soothing tide of the river felt good against him.

Just stay with me, son. I’ll be there.

Through the haze he saw the blue craft up ahead. He kept forcing himself, pushing against the current, against the dissipation of everything inside him. To get there. “Please, please, please, son, please…”

He reached out, desperation in his voice.

He made it. He felt the smooth, slick exterior of the fiberglass hull. The bright white stripe. His heart in panic, he turned it over and looked inside.

There he was. Kyle, all huddled up inside. Smiling at him. In his helmet. In the River Tours T-shirt they had bought him at the check-in station. The greatest joy he had ever felt coursing through him. Welcoming him.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Kyle said, reaching to hug him. “I’m okay. I’m here.”

Chapter Sixty-Nine

I hung up and waited, sitting on the bed, my right leg bobbing crazily. I didn’t know what to do.

I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t afraid. The guy was stalking me. Mocking me, in the same way Houvnanian had. He was saying good-bye. My reasons for relocation here are coming to an end. What reasons? With Susan Pollack unaccounted for, it could only mean that whatever they had planned for Charlie and Gabby was going to happen soon.

I grabbed my phone again and punched in my brother’s number. I let it ring six or seven times- C’mon, Charlie, Gabby, pick up! -but no one answered. Finally the message recording came on. Gabby. “Please leave a number… We will get back to you.” Shit .

I didn’t know if they even checked these things.

“Listen, Charlie …,” I blurted after the beep. “It’s Jay. I need to talk to you about what’s going on! It’s vitally important you call me back. Please…”

I hung up, not feeling good at all. Thirty seconds went by, and it felt to me like ten minutes. I must’ve glanced at my watch three times. They wanted me out. They wanted to face this alone. Something could already have happened! It was driving me crazy. I didn’t know what to do.

Only that, in that moment, I knew I couldn’t wait for Sherwood another second. I had to do something. Why wouldn’t they answer? It was possible, even likely, that while I sat there, something was going down right then.

I threw on my jeans and a shirt and grabbed my car keys off the desk. I opened the door and headed out, phone in hand. I figured I’d let Sherwood know what I was doing on the way.

I never saw a thing, only felt the impact of a two-handed swing from the side, as if a baseball bat had slammed into the side of my head.

I fell against the wall.

“Jeez, doc, where you headed so fast? You and I still have some things to talk about, no?”

The next blow struck me solidly in the face, the butt end of a large gun. I staggered backward through the half-closed door, attempting to catch my balance.

“You eastern folk…” The voice was like a faraway echo in my brain. “Always in such a big rush to go everywhere…”

The third shot almost knocked me down.

I was pushed back into my room, my head completely dazed, my legs rubber.

“Sorry, doc.”

He hit me in the stomach, sending me to a knee, and when I looked up, it was as if every bit of air had left my lungs and I heaved in desperation to draw a breath.

Dev was in the doorway. He let the door close tight behind him with a loud and very foreboding click.

This was bad.

Through my haze, Dev was grinning at me. “Maybe I’ll just take you up on that invitation a little earlier than you planned. That fine with you, doc?”

I could make out the gun in his hands, heavy and oversize, sending a tremor of fear shooting through me. My car keys were on the floor and he bent down and picked them up, catching them once in his palm. “I don’t know, I feel like we still have a few things to hash out. No reason to rush out now.”

I put a hand to my face. Warm blood streamed down the side. My brain was numb and clouded, but not so clouded that I didn’t realize I was in real trouble here. I flashed to Zorn and Greenway. And that woman from Michigan, her body all cut up. A chill shot through me. “What are you doing, Dev?”

“C’mon, Jay.” He laughed. “I may not have the fancy degree and all, but don’t play me for a complete fool.” He went over to the bed and picked up the copy of Greenway’s book I’d left there, opened to the photo of him on the tractor. “Man, I was a handsome bugger back then. A little lost, perhaps, but, hey, we all were. They called me Mal …” He tossed the book back on the bed and shook his head at me sympathetically. “Jeez, I couldn’t have laid it out for you any prettier, could I, Jay?”

I pushed up onto my feet and tried to run at him-all I could think to do-but he caught me on the side of the head with the gun butt, a blast ringing out this time and something thudding into the wall above the bed, creating a quarter-size hole.

I crumpled onto the floor, my head exploding.

“Damn, doc.” He chuckled, wide-eyed. “This thing really works. You know, it’s been a while.”

I flashed to Sherwood. He was on his way. “You don’t need to do this, Dev. I just called the police. They’ll be here any second.”

“The police …” He didn’t exactly seem worried. “If by ‘police’ you mean your ol’ buddy Sherwood… Hmmph, I’m afraid I have to inform you, doc… He’s just a shade under the weather at the moment.”

Sherwood. He was my only hope.

That’s when my fear really began to escalate. I knew now there was no one coming to the rescue. I was going to have to fight for my life.

Now.

I wasn’t a small guy. I’d played lacrosse in college. I kept in shape- forty-year-old shape . Like eighteen holes of golf or thirty minutes on the treadmill. Not fight-for-your-life kind of shape. Dev wasn’t exactly Rambo, but I knew the things he had done.

And my head was bursting.

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked, scanning around the room for something I could use.

“What am I gonna do? That’s a really good question, doc. One you probably should’ve worried about a little earlier in the game. Like when I asked you nicely to get back on that plane and go on home. Or before you had to visit Russell. Now it’s just a little late for asking me that, don’t you think? Now you’re, like, part of the music. Know what I mean?”

He stepped back, drawing the curtains closed. The room became dark and a chill shot through me.

My gaze swung to the night table and I grabbed a lamp there and lunged at him with everything I had.

It was a desperate act, and the electrical cord caught in the wall. Dev easily fended it off. With a backhanded swing, he drove the gun butt across my face and sent me reeling again, blood filling up my mouth.

Like an animal, he took the same lamp, yanking it free from the wall, and cracked it into the side of my head. I felt my eyes roll back. No, Jay, you can’t let him win. If you do, you’re dead, echoed in my brain. I tried to get up again, thinking I could bull-rush him and take him down to the floor, but I was like a bloodied, beaten animal about to be put out of its misery, everything reeling and slipping away.

I suddenly found myself on my knees.

“What to do…?” He shook his head and chirped. “Just what to do … ?” He spun around the desk chair and sat, facing me.

My brain struggled to clear.

He picked up the remote from the desk and turned on the TV. It was Everybody Loves Raymond . It was bizarre. I recognized it instantly. The one when Ray and Robert go out golfing when Deborah thinks he’s working on his novel …

He turned the volume up high.

He sat there and shrugged, his steely eyes glinting with this remote, mirthless smile. “Oh, who needs this, ” he said, and tucked the gun into his belt and came back out with a six-inch blade. “I think you already know, doc, there are people who seem to think I’m quite the artist with this thing.”

I tried to stagger up one last time and he just pushed me with his boot, sending me down to the floor.

“I truly wish you’d just kept that cute little nose of yours out of things, doc… I kinda like you, I really do.” He kicked me over, faceup. I tried to push my way up one more time, but he pressed his foot onto my chest. My strength was gone. There was a look of inevitability in his coal-black eyes. “But I guess it’s a little late for the big show of affection now.”

I saw the blade dance before me and felt a pain across my cheek, blood trickling into my hands.

“Whoops! ” he crowed.

Then with a gleam in his eye, he dug the blade into the nape of my neck, under my chin. A spasm of absolute terror sped down my spine. My eyes shook with tears, tears of just how very stupid I had been. How I’d stepped into something I had no business in. And now I was about to pay for it with my life.

“You killed them,” I said, glaring with whatever strength I still had. “Zorn. Greenway.”

“Ancient history, doc. What we oughta be a bit more focused on is what’s going to happen to you.”

“And Evan,” I said, glaring into his dull, animal eyes.

At that, he sort of chuckled and shrugged impassively. “Let’s face it, doc, it wasn’t like we were robbing the world of a future Nobel Prize winner, don’t you think? But we did think it might get a rise out of his old man.”

A last wave of anger went off in me, and I lunged for his throat. He hit me in the face with the blunt end of the blade and his fist, darkness rolling in front of my eyes. When I opened them again, he had the blade under my chin.

“You know the score here… I give this blade a little twist into your carotid artery, you last what, ten, fifteen seconds, before irreversible brain damage begins to occur? Thirty, maybe, at the most, before you bleed out.”

Yes, those were about the numbers.

“Now this may hurt a little, doc…” He laughed. “You know, I bet you’ve probably said that to people a thousand times.”

He seized me by the collar. I was listing in and out of consciousness, trying to will myself not to give in.

“Your brother and his wife are going to be dead soon.”

His words reverberated through my brain like far-off echoes, echoes that filled me with remorse that I couldn’t do anything about it. And dread.

And sadness. For Kathy and Maxie and Sophie. Knowing I would never see any of them again. Thinking of the agonizing way they were going to hear of how I died. Probably believing I’d lost my mind out here.

“Oh, and one last thing. You better listen closely, doc…” He raised my face, so close to his I could almost feel his smile, the intensity of his eyes.

And as I passed out, he said the words that turned my last nightmare into an even greater hell.

Chapter Seventy

Officer Tim Riesdorfer had been on the job only a little more than a year now, but that was long enough to know he hadn’t been handed the plum assignment that night.

He sat in his patrol car down the block from 609 Division Street, watching the ground floor apartment on the other side of the courtyard.

Maybe he’d pissed off his sarge by being a little overzealous with that tourist in town the other night, catching him making an illegal turn and not liking the guy’s attitude and all-and showing him who was boss by slapping on the cuffs and threatening to throw his ass in jail.

Okay, he knew he got a little jumpy now and then. I mean, he’d spent eighteen months in ’Stan, and if that didn’t make you jumpy, nothing would. But being pulled off his regular assignment and told to sit here all night by the tracks and watch over this rat trap… As what? A favor for some coroner’s detective. Not even a real cop.

All he was told to do was watch out for this car-and if he saw it, to radio in.

Not even go for the arrest!

He glanced at the two APBs on the passenger seat. One was for the car: navy Kia wagon with the license plate 657 E4G.

The other was for a woman, Susan Jane Pollack. A photo from DMV. She looked like she was around fifty. Short, light brown hair. Not pretty. So far he hadn’t seen anyone down here but two teenagers, winding their way into the woods, most likely on their way to get high.

By all means , light one up on me!

Suddenly something caught his attention. A vehicle turning into the building, into the carport.

He rolled down the window, focusing on the model and the plates. Nah, it was a Honda. A person stepped out. One motherfucking, heavyset Latino, not a woman at all, who went around the car and opened the hatch. He watched the dude head into the courtyard with an armful of groceries, climb the outside stairs to his second-floor apartment.

Hot shit, Timmy boy.

He heard Dispatch send out a call for an officer to be sent to 407 Hilltop. A domestic dispute. He was only a couple of blocks away. He could be on the scene in seconds.

Anything was better than this.

He went to ask permission to investigate when suddenly there was a rapping on his passenger window.

It was a woman. Dark glasses and a kind of baseball cap down over her eyes. Her short hair barely peeking through. She was trying to ask him something, indicating for him to lower his window.

He did, just slightly, leaning forward. “Sorry, I’m off duty, ma’am…”

She asked, “Do you know where 730 Division would be?”

That was just down the street, in the other direction, which Tim Riesdorfer was about to tell her when his eye went from her face to the photo on the seat, and he felt his whole body jolt like when his convoy was ambushed as he noticed the slightest resemblance in her eyes.

Instinctively he reached for his gun, leaning toward her, but the only thing that came out of his mouth was “ Hey…”

The initial shot burst through his jaw and out the side of his neck, blood suddenly all over his chest. No pain, no panic, just this sense that he was really, really confused, and he turned toward his lowered window in the direction of the shooter…

The second shot was only a bright yellow spark that made his world colorless forever.

Chapter Seventy-One

I blinked.

My eyes opened.

I tried to turn, my head seemingly held in a restraint. My arms and legs were numb. My thoughts completely blurred. I ratcheted my eyes from side to side.

As I tried to get my bearings, I heard a voice:

“We’ll be arriving at the hospital in five minutes.”

How was I alive?

There was a mask pressed over my face, oxygen flowing. I stretched my eyes and saw a green-clad EMT, a woman. Red hair tied back in a ponytail. I felt an IV tube coming out of my arm. My vitals beeping back on a monitor. The EKG needle going crazy.

“You were attacked,” the med tech said. “You’re on the way to the hospital. Just hold on…”

Through the haze, I strained to recall what had happened.

I remembered running back to my room, looking frantically for something. A book? After that, everything was a complete blank. I felt a stinging pain on my neck and a throbbing on my palm. I lifted it slightly to look. It was wrapped in gauze.

Then it hit me, there was something I needed to say …

Something important .

“I just want to prepare you,” the EMT said. “When we get to the hospital, we’re going to wheel you into the ER. They may want to ask you some questions there, if you can concentrate. About what happened, who did this to you.”

I know, I said to myself. I know all this .

I suddenly remembered. I’m a doctor…

My brain was buzzing. I tried to focus. There was something I needed to tell them.

Was that it?

No, it was something much more vital, but my mind was totally clouded and whatever it was bobbed farther and farther away on a wave of unconsciousness, drifting out to sea …

I could hear by the beep that my heart rate was slow and my blood pressure was falling. You can’t let me die.

I heard the siren and the ambulance swerved into a turn. I tried to speak and latched on to the tech’s arm.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’ll be there in a minute. You’re a lucky man your door was left open and people found you when they did…”

Door left open…?

I suddenly saw Dev, the knife at my throat. Saying good-bye to Kathy and the kids. Knowing I was about to die.

And then the words he had said as I slipped into darkness.

Words that jarred me all over again-my mind sliding backward; my pulse starting to dive; the beeps growing louder and louder as I conjured up Dev’s face, his chilling smile, and his knife dancing before my eyes:

“We’ve got your son.”

Chapter Seventy-Two

I woke again just as we arrived at the hospital. My head was still in a daze, and woozy.

The EMTs briefed the ER doctor and a nurse they had radioed ahead to. “Patient’s name is Erlich, Jay… Lacerations on his hand and arm. Cranial trauma. Blood pressure one sixty over eighty. Heart rate one thirty… He’s been drifting in and out of consciousness…”

“Okay, sir,” the Latino ER nurse said confidently to me, “we’re going to take care of you now…”

They eased me out of the ambulance and onto a gurney. I grabbed the ER doctor by the arm. Even my own voice was a reeling echo. “I’m a doctor. I need a policeman.”

“We’re all aware of that. You can be sure a detective will be here shortly. In the meantime we’re just gonna check you out.”

They wheeled me inside the ER, a nurse stabilizing the IV line alongside. I knew my brain was still swollen from being beaten, and most likely, I had a concussion. And multiple lacerations. Even dazed, I knew they’d be sending in an investigative team when they checked me out. That was standard procedure.

I still didn’t even know what I was doing alive.

Suddenly I flashed to what Dev had said as I blacked out.

About Max.

I had to let Kathy know.

I tried to force myself up, tugging against the binds. “Hold on there, sir.” The ER nurse restrained me. “We’ll have a room set up for you as soon as we can check you out.”

“No, no, you don’t understand…”

I was seized by an onrush of panic. My mind was still in a haze. I had no idea how much time had elapsed since Dev had attacked me. He had told me Charlie and Gabby were next. They might even be dead by now. Or any minute, as I lay there.

I grabbed the nurse’s wrist and tried to force myself up. Even words were difficult. “ My brother, I need to call him…”

“Someone from the detective’s unit is on his way,” the nurse answered me. “They’ll be here soon.”

Soon? Soon wouldn’t work. I need someone now!

I fell back, still numb, and they wheeled me into a hallway in what appeared to be the triage area. “We’re just going to leave you here for a moment while a station opens up. It’ll only be a minute. Then we’ll check you out…”

Slowly, I felt my wits beginning to come back to me. My head throbbed and my recollection of the beating was a blur, but I knew I couldn’t wait around for some detective to arrive. And then have to explain the whole thing to him. Dev had said my brother and Gabby were in danger. And I needed to find out about my son. Fear and worry seemed to cut through the haze.

I needed to do something- now .

I saw that I was alone outside a line of curtained treatment rooms. The two EMTs were no longer around. The ER nurse had gone to get an admitting form. A few patients were crowded around the admitting station, clamoring to see a doctor.

I had to get to a phone.

I raised myself up. My head felt about twice its normal size. I was still wearing the clothes I had on when I was beaten, and there was blood dried all over me. Every minute I waited was a minute Charlie and Gabby might be in trouble. My thoughts suddenly flashed to Sherwood-what had happened to him?

But my first priority was to call Kathy about Max.

I pulled myself up to a sitting position, steadying myself on the gurney rails, trying to determine how I was going to explain everything to a new detective.

That was when I knew I had to leave.

Impaired or not, I had to find out about Max. And I had to go to Charlie’s.

I looked around and, for that second, couldn’t spot any of the medical team who had wheeled me in. Or the EMTs. I disengaged the IV, slipping the needle out of my forearm with a sharp sting; grabbed a sheet off the gurney; and dabbed away a spot of blood. A Hispanic mother and son who’d been injured seemed to be occupying the attention of the front desk.

I pushed off the gurney and headed in the direction I had come from, fully expecting to hear someone shouting, “ Stop! Stop! ” any second, but no one did. I thought about going to the front desk and calling the police, but whether my reasoning was rational or flawed, the voice inside my head kept on telling me I had to get out of there now.

I ran toward the exit.

Chapter Seventy-Three

“I can still see the police car out there,” Charlie said, peeking through the curtains at the vehicle in the shadows across the street.

He and Gabby had sat around all afternoon and into the night, looking through old photos of their families and Evan as a kid. They hadn’t told anyone about what they had found. Evan’s sneaker. They had decided that this was their fate to bear. How they wanted this to end. They’d decided not to put anyone else at risk. Especially Jay. This was where all the reversals of their ruined lives had led them. Charlie strummed a few of his songs on the busted Stratocaster. The splintered neck to his acoustic guitar sat on the mantel above the fireplace. The broken body leaned against the wall, like a boat without a mast, a reminder of all his busted dreams.

Periodically he stirred and jumped up to the window, whenever they heard a noise outside.

“It’s just someone passing by,” Gabby would say.

“He’s still just sitting out there,” Charlie said, parting the curtains.

“Look,” Gabby said. She went to show him the album. “Do you remember this?”

The photo was of Evan, Charlie, and her at Hearst Castle, sixty miles up the coast. Evan was sixteen then, already more than six feet and fully grown. That was the last time they had left their town. He still had that innocent, freckled face. The truth was, even at that time, he was already taking his anger out on them, beating up on them, using slurs and ugly names. Threatening to kill them one day. Yet there they were-smiling, a family. The same day they had watched a colony of sea lions on the rocks.

Gabby smiled tenderly. “We had some good times, didn’t we, Charlie? We did.”

“Something weird is going on out there.” He was ignoring her. “The passenger window, it’s been down for a while. I can’t see anyone in the car. What if something’s happened, Gabby? What if something’s gone wrong?”

He was ranting, Gabby knew. But this time he actually had something to fear. She went over to the window and looked out too. “Of course, it’s dark. The streetlamps are out, this godforsaken place… Come back over here and sit with-”

They saw it at the same time. Both their eyes grew wide. They gasped in unison.

A woman. Outside. In a cap pulled down, with her hair barely showing through. Standing there, staring directly at them. Like a ghost had suddenly appeared.

Gabby, whose imagination ran to things like that, screamed.

The woman stood there in the cone of yellow lamplight, smiling at them.

Then, in the next instant, she headed toward the front door.

“Charlie, quick! ” Gabby shouted. “She’s trying to get in.”

Charlie darted to the door just as the woman got there, twisting forcefully on the handle.

“Charlie, make sure it’s locked!” Gabby instructed him, her heart flailing.

They heard the handle rattle as she kept tugging on it. Frantically, Charlie clung on to the other end. This wasn’t right. They were supposed to wait for instructions. Not here. Even locked, it felt like she might tear the handle off the door.

He looked back at Gabby, his eyes white with fear.

“Who is it, Charlie? Who is that woman?” Gabby screamed.

She had changed. She was only a shadow of what she looked like back then, Charlie thought fearfully. A grotesque shadow. He hadn’t seen her in thirty-five years.

But he knew. He knew who she was. And he knew why she was here.

“Gabby, call the police!” Charlie said.

She backed away, immobilized with fear. “I can’t, Charlie, I can’t! I’m scared.”

“It’s locked!” he said, trying to reassure her. “She can’t get in. Just call! ”

Suddenly from behind them they heard the clinking sound of glass splintering.

His heart almost climbed through his chest.

Someone was coming in.

Charlie ran around to the kitchen almost like someone reacting to multiple leaks on a sinking ship. He grabbed a chef’s knife he had left out on the counter.

A hand had already smashed through the pane and was reaching in, twisting the inside lock.

It opened . It was too late .

Charlie lunged at the hand with his knife, but the door thrust open, smacking into him like a linebacker powering him to the floor, the knife clattering off to his side.

A man entered. He and Gabby stared at him in fear, Charlie from the floor. The intruder wore a torn flannel shirt and soiled baggy pants, his hair receding under his cap, with long sideburns and a thick mustache.

“Who are you? ” Gabby looked at him with terror. “What are you doing in my house?”

“Get on up, Charlie,” the man said, his grin suggesting any resistance was useless. He shut the door behind him. There was a gun in his hand. “Don’t go for the knife, guy. You’ll ruin all the fun.”

Charlie sat there on the floor, transfixed by the blade. He would do it, he thought, go for it, try to end it here. But who would protect Gabby? And there were things the man knew that he and Gabby needed to hear.

So he just sat there staring, at what he knew was the end of his life. “Hello, Dev.”

Chapter Seventy-Four

I headed out the same doors I had entered-my head still throbbing, my steps unsure.

I spotted the medical van that had brought me there parked in front of the entrance. I looked around for a policeman, at the same time wondering just how I was going to explain things. A bloodied man, staggering about, barely coherent. Going on about how his son was in danger back east. And how the only detective who could corroborate his story was possibly dead. How he had to save his brother and sister-in-law.

How would that go over? It sounded insane. They would probably just escort me back inside and order a sedative.

I had to do something.

I ran out of the drop-off area and made my way, disoriented, onto the street. I spotted a taxi parked in front of the hospital. I headed toward it, shaking out the cobwebs in my head, trying to remember Charlie’s address and what the hell I was going to do when I got there.

I climbed into the back.

“Six-oh-nine Division Street,” I told the cabbie. “In Grover Beach.”

The driver, a Pakistani, barely even looked at me, putting the car in gear. “Okay, sir…”

He pulled a U-ey and headed in the opposite direction. I sank back into the seat. Within seconds, I was clear of the hospital. The craziness of what I was doing was starting to sink in.

I leaned forward. “Do you have a cell phone?” I asked.

“Yes.” The driver nodded. “I do.”

“Can I borrow it? It’s an emergency. I’m a doctor…”

The driver turned and actually eyed me for the first time, and warily. Who could blame him? I was disheveled, bloody, and barely coherent. He hesitated, probably wondering if he should pull over and tell me to get the hell out.

“Please, it’s a police emergency,” I said again. “My son’s in danger. I’m a doctor. I need to call my wife.”

Something must have convinced him, because after thinking a second, he pulled his phone off the seat next to him and handed it back to me.

“Thank you,” I said, grateful, meeting his concerned eyes.

The first call was to Kathy. I could barely punch in the number, I was so nervous and disoriented. Dev had said they had Max. I could barely hold on as I heard it ring.

“Hello?”

“Kath, ” I shouted as she answered. I saw the clock on the taxi’s dashboard. It was eleven P.M. back home.

She heard the disturbance in my voice right away. “Jay, what’s wrong?”

“Kath-where’s Maxie? ” I asked. “Is he okay?”

“Max? I don’t know, Jay. He’s out at a friend’s. He said he was studying. What’s wrong?”

“When was the last time you heard from him?” I asked her.

“The last time? I don’t know. A couple of hours ago. He said he’d be home by eleven. Why?”

“Kathy, you need to call him,” I said to her, “ now .” My heart was leaping around like a cod in a catch bin. “He could be in trouble. Do it for me, Kathy. Now .”

“Jay, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“I can’t tell you right now, but please, please, Kathy, just do it. Call him. While I’m on the phone. Now! ”

“Okay…,” she answered tremulously.

I figured she was in bed. Reading. She got up and ran to her phone. The next seconds seemed like an hour to me. My hands were shaking. Like most doctors, I was a guy who didn’t rush to assumptions, who always waited for the facts to determine a course of action.

But my mind was rushing to the worst now.

Finally she came back on the line. “There’s no answer. Jay, tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Kath, I just need you to listen. Call the police. Tell them to look for him. Tell them where he was. Give them his license plate numbers.”

“Jay! You’re sounding crazy. I don’t know the plate numbers. You’re scaring me!”

“Kathy, please, just do it, okay! Someone here said they had taken him.”

“Taken him? ” She became apoplectic. “Jay, tell me what’s going on!”

“I can’t. Kathy, I can’t. I’m sorry. Just do it for me. Please. I’m on my way to Charlie’s. They could be in danger too. I know how this all sounds. I know it’s crazy. But just call the police. Call the house where he was at.” I looked at the clock. “You can call me at Charlie’s when you know something. Okay? And, Kathy…”

I knew I sounded crazy. I also knew I had no idea how the next minutes might turn out. I couldn’t say it before, but now I could. And I did. “I love you, honey. And the kids…”

All she could say back was, “I love you too, Jay.”

I hung up. The driver must have thought I was crazy. “ How long? ”

“Long?” He turned around.

“How much longer until we’re there?”

He shook his head; his eyes went wide. “Five, six minutes…”

The palm of my right hand was throbbing. I hadn’t even noticed it since I left the hospital in such haste. I bit off the end of the tape and began to peel away the gauze, not sure what I would find.

It was covered in antiseptic cream.

I rubbed it on my pants and my heart almost climbed through my throat.

The ugliest cuts were there. Four slash marks dug in the skin-from Dev’s blade. Each a kind of a half semicircle.

I had seen them before, but now they were staring back at me. As a gruesome reminder. On my own hand.

An eye!

A feeling of nausea rose up through the waves of pain. My next call was to Sherwood. His cell number was embedded in my head. Dev had made me believe he was in trouble, or even dead, but how could I be sure?

The call went through, his phone rang-two, three times. No one picked up. My pulse buzzed like a bass guitar. Come on, answer, Sherwood. Please… Now it was five rings! To my dismay, it transferred into voice mail. “You’ve reached Detective Don Sherwood… Please leave your name, a message, and your number. I’ll…”

My body was flooded by a sensation of dread. He wasn’t picking up. Which wasn’t good. Dev’s mocking smile came into my mind. If by “police” you mean your ol’ buddy Sherwood… He had become a friend. And I was both nervous and scared for him.

I struggled through some kind of hurried, rambling message. “Sherwood, it’s me. Jay. I’ve been beaten. By the guy I mentioned. It’s after eight. I’m heading to Charlie’s now. If you get this message send someone there. Please, Don … And God, I hope you’re all right.”

I hung up, pushing back the most horrible feeling something terrible had befallen him. He had said he was on his way. If he had been he would have found me at the motel. The EMTs would have mentioned it.

“I have to make one more call,” I told the driver.

This time to Charlie.

His number rang. I let the line ring and ring. Each was like a sharp blade cutting into my heart, taking a piece of me with each unanswered tone.

Where could they be?

No one picked up.

I was starting to get really scared now. And I wasn’t sure what to do. I handed the phone back to the driver. The neighborhood began to look familiar. We were on Costa Verde Drive now, only a few blocks from their place. The driver stopped at a light. Each second was like an eternity. He turned on Fourth and started to go up the hill.

“Call the police,” I said. “As soon as you drop me off. Tell them to come to that address. Six-oh-nine Division. Apartment two. Tell them there’s a possible homicide in progress.”

The driver looked at me, scared.

“Just do it, ” I said. “And I’m sorry. I can’t pay you now. I’m staying at the Cliffside Suites. You know it?”

He nodded. I don’t think he cared about being paid now.

“My name is Erlich. Ask for me there. I’ll leave money. I promise.”

We were only a block away, but Division was a one-way street and he’d have to wrap around the block, which I couldn’t wait for. I actually saw Charlie’s building. It would be shorter if I ran.

“I’m getting out!” I said. “Thank you for the phone. Now call…” I put my hands on his shoulders and squeezed. “Please…”

I jumped out and headed down the darkened street. One side bordered a thicket of trees, the train tracks. I glanced behind me and saw the taxi drive away. I prayed he would follow through. My pace was erratic, my balance off, my brain still woozy. But I had regained my wits now and I prayed I wasn’t too late. That Dev hadn’t already gotten there.

Your brother and his wife are going to be dead soon…

I got to the carport of his building. The dimly lit courtyard.

I glanced across the street and what I saw there made my spirits soar.

A police car . Stationed outside. Like Sherwood had said. Parked in the shadows.

Thank God!

I hurried over. The car’s lights were off. The driver’s window appeared to be down. I could see a huddled shape behind the dash.

“Officer, officer! ” I yelled as I ran up. My heart was ricocheting off my ribs. “I need some help.”

I got to the car, put my hands on the window. “Officer, my brother’s inside that house and-”

My stomach almost came up my throat at what I saw.

The cop inside, his cap off, head slumped to the side, blood all over the top of his neck.

And a bright red circle dotting the center of his forehead.

Chapter Seventy-Five

“So many things to go over, Charlie. So many years…”

Dev had let in Susan Pollack, the woman Charlie knew as Maggie, and they had their guns out, grinning. “And the little woman. So nice to finally meet you. So where to start?” He picked up the splintered neck of Charlie’s guitar that sat on the mantel. He whistled sympathetically. “Man, that must’ve put a dent in the ol’ music career…”

“What do you want with us, Dev?”

“What do I want? What could we possibly want, Charlie? When it comes to you. Hey! ” He placed the guitar neck back on the hearth. “How’d you like the pictures? I made ’em up just for you.”

His eyes grew wide, flashes of relish and enjoyment in them. “I’m thinking definitely some of my best work, don’t you agree? As I remember, you two were kinda cozy back then. Man, it was sure a bitch to find her. She’d really lived quite the regular life since she left you…”

“You didn’t have to kill her, Dev. She was just a kid back then. She wouldn’t have hurt a fly.”

“Of course we had to kill her, Charlie. I mean, you see that, don’t you? That it wasn’t even about her, anyway. Not about her at all.” He sat across from him, spreading his knees. His gun bobbed against his thigh. “That was about you, mate. We had to kill her because we wanted to make the point to you . You get it now?”

“Yeah, I get it, Dev.”

“I mean, you knew what the score was, Charlie. Chase . Buckaroo. You knew even back then. When you brought those pigs into the garden, the rest of us had to do what ? Clean up the mess. Right? It’s like with the Bible, Charlie. Ain’t no statute of limitations on betrayal.”

“That was all more than thirty years ago, Dev. We’ve lived out our lives.”

“Thirty years…” The words had a certain importance to them. Dev looked over to Susan. “He wants to know what thirty years is, Maggie.”

“Thirty years is what I gave up,” she said to him. “Over ten thousand days, Charlie. Each one spent counting the hours. Marking them off in my head. Until I could do what I was spared to do. What Russell wanted me to do. He knew part of his flock was weak. That they would betray him. That was why some got to go with him and others had to wait behind. So they would be here one day…”

“Russell was crazy, Maggie! He murdered all those people. Now you’re as guilty as him. What you’ve done is evil.”

“Evil? ” Susan Pollack chuckled and dangled her gun. Her smile was mirthless. “Don’t you remember nothing is evil if it’s done from love, Charlie? And your son… That was done from the greatest love I knew.”

“Evan?”

The woman he knew as Mags’s eyes bore in on him. “I gave up my life for him. For Russell. What did you give up? You gave up nothing, Charlie. So you had to pay.”

“What did you do to my son?” Gabby said, glaring at her.

“What did I do to your son?” Susan laughed and looked as if she was talking about a dying insect. “Your son was a confused little child who didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.”

“No, he was innocent,” Gabby said, standing up. “He was sick.”

“He was crazy, you stupid bitch. I learned more of what was in his heart in an hour than the two of you knew about him your whole lives. He wanted to kill himself out of spite just for the pain it would cause you. He hated the two of you- you both ! But he was afraid, just like you were always afraid, Charlie. The little coward didn’t have the guts to do what had to be done.”

“What did you do to him? ” Gabby’s face became twisted with horror and rage. She took a step toward her, and Maggie raised the gun to her face, aiming it at her with two hands.

“Gabby, please…” Charlie tried to stand and go to her, but Dev lifted his foot and kicked him back onto the couch.

“You’ll have your own turn, Charlie boy.”

Gabby stared into Susan Pollack’s impassive face. Tears suddenly glistened in her eyes, the moistness slowly trickling down her cheeks. “ What did you do to him? ” she pressed.

Susan Pollack merely smiled.

“Please. You were there with him. Tell me. I need to know. Do what you want to me, I don’t care. But I need to know. It’s all that matters to me now.” She took another step toward Susan, not menacingly, more like imploring her. “Somewhere in your heart you are a woman too. Can’t you see? Our lives are over. They were over the day he died. So tell me, I beg you, please. It’s all that matters now. What happened to my son?”

Susan Pollack raised the gun and aimed it at Gabby’s face.

Charlie’s chest flooded with fear. “ Gabby, no! ”

Susan gave her a smile. Then she lowered the gun, eyes bright with delight. “You really want to know? He said I was his angel. So I did what an angel does.” She grinned. “I showed him the way.”

Chapter Seventy-Six

He stepped out on the ledge once again, trembling. He gazed at the million lit candles far below, heard the whoosh of the surf crashing onto the rocks.

“Just fly, Evan…”

“You mean like this?” He spread out his arms.

“Yes,” his angel said, “just like that.”

He wanted to, he told himself. He really did. He wanted to end it, end the pain and hurt; end the confusion and the voice and all the disappointment that he knew he caused. His mom and dad had turned him over to the police. They had abandoned him. Put him away. How can people who love you betray you? This was the way…

He took another step, leaning forward.

But he couldn’t. He just stared out at the lights and started to cry. He realized how mistaken he had been. The things he’d done. His part in the hurt he had caused. He flashed to his mother and father. He imagined what it would be like, their hearing the news, and instead of relief and joy, he saw how devastated they would be. How, through it all, they still loved him. Through the cursing and the anger and the fights, that’s what he saw there.

They loved him.

And he loved them.

This wasn’t the way.

“I can’t,” he said, stepping back from the edge. “I can’t.”

“Just let God take you, Evan. I’m your angel. You know that, don’t you?”

“No.” He shook his head. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “I want to go home.”

“You cowardly little shit,” the voice said, her tone hardening. “Do what you’re fucking up here for. Do what you have to do.”

“No!” He turned and stared, and suddenly saw an ugly, foreign face, a woman he had never seen before. Not his angel. Not his inner voice. “Who are you?”

“I’m not your little angel, you ignorant shit.” The woman’s face was now twisted in disgust. “I’m your hell, boy! And your hell is here. Now do it! You want to die? Well, I’m here to bring you to the promised land. There’s no turning back. Your parents don’t give a shit. They hate you just the way you hate them. Now do what you came here to do.”

“No-I see it now,” he said, the moon illuminating his face, slick with tears. “I came up here to see God. And now I’ve seen him.” He turned to the panoply of lights, the millions of candles assembled before him. “Look, I understand it now. I see-”

“You see nothing, you stupid, drugged-out worm! You wouldn’t know God if he was with you now.”

“He is,” he said, ignoring the taunts. “I can feel him. He’s-”

“Then let him save you,” the woman said. She threw her weight against him, forcing him toward the edge. His heart started to race. He tried to gain his balance, stumbling over a rock, his right foot coming out of his shoe.

“Dad!”

“Your daddy isn’t up here,” the woman said. “Just me. That’s all.” She pushed him again. This time he tried to grab on to her and spun his arms, teetering.

“You want your parents, little boy? You’ll be with them soon enough. Tell him that, Evan. When you see God. Tell him Mommy and Daddy are on the way.”

She taunted him again. He tried to latch onto her, the angel he had trusted, but found only air.

He stared down at the bottom, terrified. “Mom!”

She pushed him one last time, and he spun, seeing clearly now that the lights weren’t candles at all, but streets, homes, cars, and that the choir below wasn’t angelic voices, but waves crashing, hitting the rocks.

Yet, instead of fear, something else entered his heart as his arms fluttered, unable to stop his fall.

Something welcoming. For the first time, a kind of attachment.

Everything seemed to reach out to him in a friendly way.

Mom, Dad…

He reached out, trying to grab on to them.

But it was only the night he held, the endless starry night.

Chapter Seventy-Seven

“You killed him! ” Gabby stared uncomprehendingly at Susan, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You killed my son.”

“I merely did what the gutless little shit didn’t have the balls to do himself,” Susan Pollack replied. “I showed him the way.”

I heard this, pressed against the front door, having crossed the courtyard to Charlie’s apartment. Susan Pollack’s spiteful re-creation of Evan’s death, and Gabby’s heartbroken reply.

I had the dead officer’s gun with me.

The curtains were drawn, but the door was still slightly ajar, and I could hear what was happening inside. I prayed that the cabbie had done what I’d begged him to and called the police. Through a slit in the curtains, I saw Dev and Susan Pollack holding guns on Charlie and Gabby.

I was the only one who could help them now.

“You’re not an angel,” Gabby said, her gaze blazing like a furnace bursting with hate. “You’re a monster. You killed him. You’re the one who should die. This monster killed our son, Charlie…” She was starting to lose control. “I cannot live with that.”

“Dev, please! ” Charlie turned to him. “You’ve got what you came for. Here I am. Can’t you see she’s suffered enough? She’s done nothing to you. Let her go.”

“Let her go? ” Dev cockily wagged his gun. “That’s where you’re wrong, old friend. She’s done everything to me. She’s your wife, Charlie. She’s the mother of your son.”

Helpless tears ran into Charlie’s gray beard. “ Please .”

Dev just shook his head. “Sorry, mate. No can do.”

“I waited thirty years,” Susan Pollack said with a gleam in her eye. She raised the gun to Gabby’s face. “You want your little boy so bad…” She cocked it with both thumbs. “Be sure and tell him hello from me.”

I couldn’t wait any longer. I burst through the door.

Susan Pollack spun, surprised.

I trained my gun on Dev, who sat there with neither shock nor real concern on his face. More like amusement.

In front of the hearth, Susan Pollack’s gun had fixed on me, her hands shaking.

My problem was, I couldn’t just start shooting.

They had Maxie.

“Drop the gun, ” I said to her, the dead policeman’s gun trained on Dev.

Dev just sat there, his gun dangling nonchalantly against his thigh, actually facing Charlie. “ Gonna kill me, doc? Bad policy, wouldn’t you say, all things considered…?”

“Get out of here, Jay,” Charlie said. “Please. Get out now. This is our fight.”

“It is my fight, Charlie. They’ve got Maxie. The police are on their way.” I looked at Susan, not knowing if she would respond to reason. “There’s no way out. You shoot me, I shoot him.”

“Loosey-goosey, huh, doc?” Dev grinned. “That’s how you want to play it? Well…” I saw him firm up his grip on the gun. “Just the way I like it, I guess…” He shifted toward me. “Though I was thinking, surely a guy with such a fancy degree would be smart enough to have been a long ways from here by now…”

There was a kind of chuckling, almost fatalistic quality to his tone, and it made me worry. Almost as if he sensed he had the upper hand.

We both knew I couldn’t shoot him dead.

That was when Gabby turned to Charlie, her cheeks tearstained, a kind of finality on her face. “I am sorry, my husband…”

Fear in his eyes, he suddenly realized what she was thinking.

“I am sorry…” She shook her head. “But I cannot live in this hell anymore.”

“Gabby, no, no!”

She lunged, surprising Susan Pollack, who brought her gun back in a defensive gesture. Gabby barreled into her, driving her back into the stone mantel with the fierceness of an enraged animal.

Susan uttered a horrific, garbled scream as she went backward. Her mouth parted in a frieze of disbelief and horror.

Her throat impaled on the jagged neck of Charlie’s guitar.

I heard the muffled blast of a gun firing, Susan’s gun, but not before Gabby wrapped her hands around Susan’s throat, forcing her harder and harder against the hearth, the splintered wood ripping through her larynx like a sharpened lance.

The gun fell to the floor amid her twitching, guttural rattles.

“You killed my Evan! ” Gabby kept her hands on Susan, her eyes ablaze, squeezing the remaining life out of her, looking directly into her face.

We all just stood there frozen.

Gabby finally let go, Susan remaining upright for another second or two against the fireplace. Then she slid, her rattles ending, to the floor.

Gabby turned, holding her abdomen, blood on her fingers.

That’s when everything went crazy.

Dev whirled and the next thing I knew, his gun went off, and I felt a scorching pain in my abdomen.

I looked at a bloody, jagged hole in my shirt.

I spun against the wall, my gun seeming to fire on its own. Three times .

One bullet tore into Dev’s shoulder. Another found its way into his thigh, causing him to double over and cry out. The last shot shattered the mirror behind him.

He looked at the hole in his thigh, blood seeping through. His wounds seemed only to make him madder. He looked back up at me, his eyes ablaze. “ You fucking sonovabitch! ”

He raised his gun toward me.

I heard Charlie yell out, “ No…”

He threw himself into Dev, Dev’s gun firing off wildly, Charlie’s eyes widening.

They struggled for a few seconds, the gun kicked away, my brother’s face twisted with pain and rage. I pointed my gun, tried to tear them apart, but I couldn’t get a clear shot at Dev and I was fearful my next shot might kill him before he told me where Maxie was. There was blood around, but I couldn’t tell from whom.

I tried to pull my brother off and get my gun on Dev, but Dev grabbed an iron poker from the fireplace, hurling me against the wall, and swung it against Charlie’s head. Then he pulled himself to his feet, turning his gaze on me. “I gave you every fucking chance in the world.” He swung the poker at me and I dodged it, my ribs on fire. I wanted to kill him more than anything I’d ever felt, but I couldn’t.

Not until he told me what I needed to know.

He was like some savage animal made even stronger by being wounded. He charged at me, grimacing. Then he hurled himself on top of me. He grabbed my arms, trying to wrestle my gun away.

I knew my life was only as good as my strength to hold on. But he was lit up by some animal fury, his hands tightly wrapping around mine, my fingers pressed against the trigger guard. I began to feel the gun inexorably make its way toward my chest-my strength eroding, my side feeling like it had been scorched by flame-and I fought with whatever strength I still had to fend him off.

But I was losing.

“I don’t know, I thought you were a smart guy, doc.” Dev grunted, eyes ablaze, his blood smeared across his shirt and mine.

“Where’s my son? ” I said, straining.

My chest tightened and my eyes grew wide as the muzzle kept shifting toward me.

I no longer had any certainty whose fingers were on the trigger. I was terrified that it would go off and that my son might never be found. I had already been about to die once today. Now it was happening all over again.

Dev’s large hands seemed to envelop mine, my life, Maxie’s life, in the balance. I felt with rising alarm his thighs shift over mine, his fingers about to squeeze, my breath held back in panic for what I was sure was the inevitable explosion in my chest.

Please, Jay, please, you can’t let him win.

Then I heard it go off.

I screamed-braced for the sensation of the bullet tearing through me.

I didn’t feel it.

Then I heard another shot.

Dev groaned, his viselike grip on me beginning to relax.

I looked up and saw my brother, one hand pressing a red hole in his own stomach, the other holding Dev’s own gun.

Dev reached for his back, grasping at it like he was trying to pull a knife out of himself.

“Move away, Jay,” Charlie said, his eyes like a furnace. “Just get away.”

“Charlie, no. Don’t! ” I begged him to stop. “He has Maxie!”

Dev’s face twisted, his flannel shirt matted with blood, and he let out a groan and fell off me.

I looked around. Susan Pollack was sitting on the floor with a shard of wood through her throat, a hand stuck to each side.

And Gabby… Poor Gabby … My sad gaze fixed on the sight of her slumped against Susan Pollack’s legs, her eyes completely still and wide.

Charlie sat holding the gun. “I’m sorry, Jay, get away. He killed Evan. I want him dead.”

“Where’s my son?” I yelled at Dev.

His eyes rolled toward me, gloatingly.

“Where’s my fucking son! ” I said. “Tell me, or I’ll let him kill you, so help me God.”

Dev smirked and spat a glob of blood out of his mouth. Wobbly, he pushed himself up to a knee and grinned. “Tell your brother to take his shot, doc. Then we’ll see where it goes, huh? We’ll see who wins.”

Pressing his thigh and reaching around to his back, Dev winced in pain and staggered toward the open door.

Charlie raised the gun again, and I could see him trying to summon the strength to squeeze off one final round, his aim wavering.

I begged him, “Charlie, please, no…”

He trained the gun on Dev’s midsection. He strained in anguish to find the power. His eyes lit up with hate.

Then he just silently set it down.

Dev grinned and turned to me. “Enjoy the ride, doc.”

Coughing blood, his hand reaching for his back, he slipped through the door.

I went over and took the gun out of my brother’s hand. I saw a hole in his chest that was bleeding badly. He needed attention fast. I checked the wound on my side. It was ugly and red, but I was pretty certain nothing vital had been hit. Charlie looked toward Gabby, who was slumped against the wall next to Susan Pollack with an open, lifeless gaze.

I said, “I have to go after him, Charlie. Just hang in there, please…” He stared back blankly at me. “Keep pressure on your wound. Here…” I put his hand there. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t die…”

He nodded, eyes sagging behind his wild hair.

I ran out the door. It was dark, the courtyard erratically lit. Some people had come out of their apartments. “ Call 911! ” I shouted. “There’s people dead in there. My brother’s barely alive. Help him! ”

My abdomen was on fire and when I pressed my hand to it; blood leaked out.

Don’t let me bleed to death.

Twenty yards ahead, I caught the sight of a figure staggering into the darkness. I followed, spotting dots of blood on the pavement. He was probably headed for the woods across the street along the tracks, but I knew there wasn’t far he could go. My biggest fear was that he would die-that I would find him rolled on his back, glassy eyed-without telling me what he knew about Maxie. I headed after him onto Division Street. I saw him up ahead, one arm hanging limply, dragging his leg.

I pointed the gun in his direction and squeezed off a shot above his head. “ Stop, Dev . It’s over. There’s nowhere to go.”

He took two or three more steps, unsteadily. Then he did stop, at last. He turned slowly, blood oozing from his mouth. He had a crazed look in his wolflike eyes, a mixture of fury and defeat.

Suddenly I heard the wail of sirens. From all directions.

Dev whirled, almost losing his balance, and faced two police cars that had turned onto Division Street. Flashing lights everywhere.

I set the gun down on the pavement and raised my hands. Police leaped out of their vehicles, weapons drawn, shouting at both of us, “ Hands in the air! Get down to the ground! ”

“Don’t shoot! ” I yelled. “Whatever you do, don’t shoot. He’s got my son.”

One of them knelt behind their car door and pointed his gun at us. “ I said put your hands in the air and get onto the ground! ”

Nervously, I crouched down, lowering my knees to the surface of the road, hands raised.

Dev just stood there, ignoring their commands. He shifted back toward me. “Want to know why you’re still alive, doc?” he said, almost smiling.

My hands were in the air, an eye on the approaching officers. “Yes, I do.”

He winked. “Because you still have work to do. Things yet to find out.”

“Tell me what you did with Max, Dev! Please!”

More police arrived on the scene. Six or seven had now basically encircled us, barking for Dev to get down.

“Don’t shoot! ” I hollered, raising my palms. A couple of them were approaching, weapons drawn. “He has my son captive.” Then I turned to him again. “What do you mean, Dev, things to find out?”

“Ever play cards, doc?” the bleeding killer asked.

“No.” I shook my head. “Not since college.”

“You oughta.” He stretched a smile.

A heavyset black policeman came up, pointing his weapon directly at him. He shouted, scaring the wits out of me, “Put your hands above your head and get your ass down. Now! ”

“You know the jack of hearts?” he said, turning away from him.

I nodded.

“You should. I think you might learn something from it. That card just might have your future in it.”

The jack of hearts. I had no idea what he was talking about.

The officer bellowed one last time. “ Get on the fucking ground! ”

Dev seemed to smile, glancing at them, then back at me. “ Me -my future’s run out.” He finally raised one hand high in the air, as if complying-but with the other, kind of in slow motion, reached under his shirt and came out with a knife. The same one he had waved in my face at the motel. That he had used to cut me.

I pleaded, “ Dev, don’t .”

“I think you remember.” He grinned in my direction. “Some people feel I can do just about anything with this thing… The jack of hearts, doc. Don’t forget. One day it’s gonna give you a real smile. The day the devil sprouts horns.”

He started to come toward me, the knife in his fist, raised high.

“Don’t do it,” I said, almost helpless, “please.”

His pace picked up.

Now the police were really pointing their weapons at him and screaming.

“Don’t shoot, ” I hollered, “ please don’t shoot! ” getting up and putting out my hands to push them back.

Suddenly, a couple of them trained their weapons on me. I was almost crying. “Don’t shoot. He’s got my son. Please! ”

Dev got about five paces away. I never budged. I saw only Maxie’s fate in his mad eyes, slipping into darkness.

“Don’t! ” I screamed. “ Don’t! Please! ”

The next thing I heard was a deafening barrage of shots-maybe six, eight, ten echoing pops. Bullets tearing into him, ripping into his clothes with flashes of yellow and orange, the stench of cordite everywhere.

Dev was blown onto his back, the knife clattering against the pavement. From there, he just sort of raised his head and grinned at me. You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out.

That was all.

Panicked, I scrambled up to him, against shouted commands to stay where I was. He was making wheezing, guttural noises. Blood seeped out of his mouth.

“Please, Dev, please. Where’s Maxie?”

“Damn” was all he said. “I thought I would see him.”

“See who? ” I asked. “ See who? ” The cops were pulling me away.

His eyes rolled back and what he grunted last explained it all.

“Russ.”

Chapter Seventy-Eight

A moment later I was surrounded by cops, their weapons still drawn, barking commands I didn’t hear.

As they pulled me away, it hurt like hell. I told them my brother was dying back inside the apartment and two additional bodies were in there.

After a quick explanation, they let me go back to the apartment.

Poor Gabby was slumped at the feet of Susan Pollack, dead. Charlie was resting where I had left him propped up against the wall.

“Charlie, ” I said, kneeling down next to him. There was blood all over his palm and a lot more congealed on his shirt.

“Where’s Gabby?” he asked in a hushed voice, staring glassily.

“She’s here, Charlie, she’s here.” I didn’t want him to see her. I didn’t want that to be his last sight.

“She’s dead, isn’t she, Jay? I know she’s dead.”

“Yes,” I said, even as the life slipped away from him. “She is.”

“Evan didn’t do it, Jay.” His eyes showed a sparkle of vindication. “He didn’t jump. She pushed him. He said he wanted to come back down. To be with us. It was just as I said all along, right?” He smiled. “I’m sorry, little brother, for dragging you into all this.”

“You didn’t drag me, Charlie.” Tears in my eyes, I squeezed his bloody hand. “I just wanted to help.”

“Help?” He smiled affectionately. “How could you possibly help me?”

“I know.”

“I want to touch her, Jay.” His hand fell to the floor and reached toward her body. “I need to feel her one more time. Please…”

I pulled Gabby’s arm toward him and he was able to press his fingers over her cold palm.

“She’s all I have. She’s the only thing in my life I didn’t manage to destroy. Because she loved me, Jay. And Evan too.”

“I know she did, Charlie. I know.”

“I hope your boy is okay, Jay. I really do. You know that Evan always liked him… He really-”

The sound of the phone ringing pierced the room. Suddenly I remembered I had told Kathy to call here. About Max. My heart picked up.

“I’ll be right back.” Holding my side, I went over to the table where the phone was. Nervously I picked it up. I was so scared, I could barely get a sound out of my mouth. “Kath?”

“I have him, Jay!”

“You what?”

“I have him. Maxie’s okay!”

“You do? ” My eyes immediately flooded with grateful tears. The words soared through me like the happiest thing I had ever heard, just as they had on my wedding day when Kathy said, “I do,” or when the doctor who delivered Max said, “Dr. Erlich, you’ve got a great-looking boy!”

“He’s here. He was just on his way back home. From Chris’s. I don’t know what you thought, honey, but Max’s safe. You want to hear his voice?”

“Yes,” I said tearfully. “ Yes . Put him on.” He’s safe.

“Hey, Dad.” I heard my boy’s uncomprehending tone, about as droning and impassive as if I had just stuck my head in his room and asked if he had a good day. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, Max, I just-” I put my hand to my face and the tears started to come unchecked. Some were from absolute joy, at knowing everything was somehow going to be okay, at making it through it all alive. And some were from grief. For Evan and Gabby. How it had cost people I loved their lives.

For Charlie.

“Dad, you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said. I caught myself and sniffed against the sobs. “I love you, Max.”

“I love you too, Dad,” he said, unsure.

“Put Mom back on.”

I waited a few seconds, trying to regain my composure.

“Jay?”

“Some things have happened here, Kathy. Bad things. And I want you to be protected. Call the police. I’ll be in touch. I promise. Soon .”

Kathy pressed, scared. “What kinds of things, Jay?”

I didn’t know why Dev had said what he did, about my son, if he didn’t have him. Or why he had let me live with just a mark on my hand when everyone else had died.

Or what he meant by You still have work to do, doc. Things yet to find out. The jack of hearts.

I still felt fear.

“I love you, honey,” was all I said. “I gotta go. I’ll call you, I promise.”

I hung up and went back to see Charlie. “He’s safe!” I said, kneeling back down. “Max is okay…”

But Charlie’s eyes were fixed and still, strands of long, graying hair covering his face, a peaceful stare.

Peaceful, maybe for the first time ever. His fingers curled warmly around Gabby’s.

I started to cry.

“Oh, Charlie…” I sat down next to him and put my arm around his shoulders. I drew his bearded face gently down to me.

One of the policemen came over. He stood above me and looked at me, as if trying to sort it out. “Your brother?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. I stroked his face gently and spread the hair out of his eyes. “And my friend.”