Eyes Wide Open Read online

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “At the coroner’s,” Charlie said. “They’re doing their autopsy and tests. We can’t even see him.”

  Gabriella wiped her eyes. “He called me, you know. The day before. I asked, ‘Are you all right, Evan? You know I love you, don’t you, my son?’ And you know what he told me? He said, ‘I’m gonna make the best of it, Mommy.’ Make the best . . . Does that sound like some kid who wanted to kill himself the next day? They say it’s a suicide, but it doesn’t sound like that to me. You know what I think? I don’t think my son would kill himself. It sounds like murder, Jay. By the state. They took my son and screwed his head up on drugs, then dropped him in a place that wasn’t right for him. They murdered him.”

  As a doctor, I was always quick to assume that the system handled things correctly. Sure, mistakes were made, but generally it did things right. But as an uncle, I couldn’t disagree.

  It was like murder.

  We sat around in silence for a while. Charlie and Gabriella just hugged each other, helpless and crying. Then Gabriella got up. She cleared the table, put the coffee mugs in the sink, and ran the water over them. Then she turned and faced me, her palms back against the counter. “At the end, it was very, very bad, Jay. You have no idea. Our son never left the house. He would just sit there, on that couch all day, never even talk, just smile at me. You know that little smile he had, like he had the whole world figured out. Like he knew the truth and no one else did.”

  “I know it.” I wasn’t sure whether to smile or shake my head in sorrow. I smiled.

  “He said to me, just last week, before he did this . . . He said, ‘I think maybe I’d like to be a cop. Or an FBI agent.’ He said he was talking to the police and they wanted him.” She cleared her throat derisively. “A cop? My son barely left the house. He didn’t talk to anyone, Jay. No friends. No girls. Not even us. Only to the fucking furnace! He was dreaming. Like he always did, Jay—dreaming.” She looked at me. “He might never have gotten better—I understand that. But he didn’t deserve to die.”

  She came back to the table and sat down next to me. “We took care of our boy for twenty-one years. Then we give him to the state—for four lousy days . . . And he’s dead! Maybe we don’t deserve medals, Jay. But we damn well deserve to know why, don’t we? We deserve to know why my son had to die!”

  I looked back at her, my gut tightening.

  Years of the differences between us peeled away.

  I said, “Yes you do. You damn well do deserve that, Gabby.”

  Chapter Seven

  My life had been easy, to this point.

  I mean, we’ve all faced hardships and disappointments. I was no genius, but I always did well in school. I could whip a mean underhanded crank shot that got me a ride to Cornell; I married the girl of my dreams. We raised kids who seemed to be equally achieving, who were polite and self-assured and didn’t seem to mind being around us.

  I’d worked my butt off to get where I was: I’d put in the eighty-hour weeks and still remained on call twice a week. We had friends; we went on bike trips to Spain and Italy. For my fortieth birthday I got myself flying lessons and now had my own Cessna. Two years ago, when it came time for the hospital to name a new head for our department, the chief of staff didn’t hesitate and turned to me.

  Still, I felt like I’d barely broken a sweat in life. The world always seemed to open up just enough for me to slip through. But for Charlie, the world always seemed to close at every chance and shut him down.

  I don’t know if I was a good brother. I don’t know if I ever lived up to that vow I made regarding Evan. I knew I’d always done just enough to keep them from sinking.

  Enough, but no more.

  Maybe it was too late to put myself on the line for Evan.

  But I could damn well start doing it for Charlie and Gabby now.

  I checked myself into the Cliffside Suites, the nicest of the motels perched along a high bluff overlooking the Pacific. My room was at the end of a long outside corridor above the parking lot. Inside, it was clean and large and I stepped out through the sliding glass doors to the terrace with a panoramic view of the ocean and the steep cliffs below.

  I threw myself on the bed and thought about Evan and his last visit to our house. How everyone thought he was so weird, no matter how much I tried to defend him: He was smart. The odds were stacked against him. He was my brother’s son.

  “He doesn’t even know how to order food, Dad,” Sophie had said. “He always seems a bit stoned out.”

  “He does spend a lot of time off in space,” Kathy said. “You have to admit he’s a bit weird.”

  I told them, “He’s on medication, guys. Cut the kid some slack.”

  “I’m sorry, but he gives me the creeps,” said Maxie. “How much longer is he going to stay?”

  I spent the next couple of hours watching a baseball game and picking at a burger from room service. Around four my phone rang. I was happy to see it was Kathy.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey . . .” I exhaled wearily.

  “You sound exhausted. How are they doing? I called a little while ago, but neither really wanted to talk.”

  “Devastated. How else could they be? You’re not going to believe how it happened, Kathy.”

  I told her everything I’d learned. How Evan had been looking to buy a gun. How he was taken in and put in isolation after trying to beat up Gabby, and then released after only a couple of days. To the care of a halfway house that let him walk out the door.

  “That’s just so awful, Jay.”

  “Someone has to get to the bottom of this for them. They’re not capable. It’s tearing them apart.”

  She hesitated just a bit. “Get to the bottom of what, Jay?”

  We hadn’t always seen eye to eye about things with my brother and Evan. Usually, it was how we were always coming to their rescue. First, for a nicer place for them to live. Then tutoring for Evan. Then when he smashed up the car. And finally bailing them out from under all that credit card debt. “When do they try, just a little?” Kathy would say. “Gabby can work. Our kids get summer jobs; why not Evan?”

  But mostly, it was that incident with Max.

  It was on Evan’s last trip east. He and Maxie were playing a little one-on-one in the driveway. Something set them off. Things always seemed to cross the line with Evan.

  I was in the den, flipping through some medical magazines. Suddenly I heard screams. Sophie’s. From outside. “Get off, Evan. Get off! Mom! Dad!”

  I bolted up.

  Somehow Kathy, who was in the kitchen, got there ahead of me. She jumped on Evan’s back, Evan’s arm wrapped around Maxie’s neck; Maxie was turning blue.

  “Evan, let him go! Let him go!” Kathy screamed, but at six feet, close to two hundred pounds, Evan was too big for her. “You’re going to kill him, Evan!”

  “First he has to take it back . . .” Evan squeezed tighter. “Right, Max?”

  Max couldn’t take anything back. He was gagging.

  Kathy screamed, unable to pry him away. “Jay!”

  I got there a second later and ripped Evan off by the collar, hurling him across the lawn.

  My nephew just sat there, eyes red, panting. “He called me a frigging freak!”

  Max had had bronchial issues from the time he was three. He needed a respirator back then, twice a day. His face was blue and his neck was all red and twice its normal size. He was in a spasm, wheezing convulsively.

  I knew immediately he had to get to the hospital. I threw him in the car and told Kathy to get in. I called ahead to the medical center. In eight minutes we were there. They immediately placed him on oxygen and epinephrine. His airway had closed. Acute respiratory distress. Five minutes more and he might have been dead.

  When we got back home, Evan tried to say he was sorry.

  But it didn’t matter. Kathy never quite forgave him. She wanted him out of the house.

  The ne
xt day I drove him to the airport and he was gone.

  “I need to get to the bottom of why he was let back on the street, Kathy,” I answered.

  She didn’t respond right away. “Look, I know I haven’t always been the most supportive when it comes to this . . . You’re right, they need you, Jay. Do what you can. Just promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Just promise me, this time, you won’t let yourself get drawn in. You know how you always get when it comes to your brother.”

  Drawn in . . . Meaning it always ended up costing us something. I didn’t want to debate it, and the truth was, she was probably right.

  “Deal,” I said.

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning, I called the county coroner’s office and set up a meeting with Don Sherwood, the detective handling the case—the only person, Charlie and Gabby said, they could get any straight answers from.

  He was the one who had knocked on their door two days earlier and asked if Evan was their son—he had ultimately been identified through fingerprints from his police record—and after asking them to sit, showed them the photos of Evan in the county morgue.

  Sherwood said he’d be nearby in the early afternoon and we could meet at the station in Pismo Beach around one P.M. I told him we’d be there.

  My next call was to the psych ward at the Central Coast Medical Center. I asked for Dr. Derosa.

  The nurse who answered asked who I was, and I gave her my name and told her that I was a doctor from back in New York and Evan Erlich’s uncle. She kept me on hold awhile and finally she came back on saying how very sorry they all were, but that the doctor would be out all day on an outside consult and would have to get back to me.

  I left my number and said that I’d be around only a few days. I figured I’d hear back in a couple of hours.

  A few minutes before one, I went with Charlie and Gabby to the one-story police station on Grand Street and met Detective Sherwood in a small interrogation room there.

  He seemed to be in his midfifties, ruddy complexioned, with a husky build and thick salt-and-pepper hair. He stood up when we came in, gave Charlie a shake with his thick, firm hands and Gabriella a warm hug. Charlie had said Sherwood had worked for the local PD and coroner’s office for more than twenty years.

  “How’re you holding up?” he asked them, motioning to us to sit down at a table in the cordoned-off room.

  “Not so good,” Gabriella said, shrugging sadly.

  Sherwood nodded empathetically. “I understand.”

  “This is my brother, Jay, from New York,” Charlie said. “He’s a doctor.”

  The detective sized me up—my blazer; an open, striped dress shirt; jeans my wife had picked out for me—and showed a little surprise.

  “Thanks for seeing us,” I said.

  “No problem at all.” He nodded. “Very sorry for your loss.”

  “My brother and sister-in-law have a few questions they’d like to ask,” I said. “Not only about Evan, about what happened . . . but also about his treatment at the hospital. How he could have been released after just a few days and put in a place where he was essentially allowed to roam free. I’m sure you understand how this isn’t sitting well with them.”

  “I know you have some issues.” He looked at Charlie and Gabriella. “We’ve scheduled an autopsy and a toxicology lab later today. But I’m happy to fill you in on the details of what I know.”

  “Thank you.” Gabriella nodded gratefully.

  “Some time late Thursday afternoon,” the detective said, opening a file, “Evan apparently left the halfway house in Morro Bay saying he was going to take a walk.”

  Charlie narrowed his eyes. “A walk? My son was medicated.”

  “The woman who runs the facility suggested she took it as a positive sign. His first day there, he’d been pretty withdrawn.”

  “They told me they were putting him in a restrictive facility,” Gabby said bitterly. “That woman killed my son.”

  I squeezed my palm over her clenched fist to calm her. “What happened then?”

  “Some time that afternoon it appears he wandered down to the rock in the bay and found a path up on the southwest face. He was probably up there a considerable time. Some time during the night, at maybe two or three A.M., it appears he fell from a large height onto the rocks below. We can approximate the time from the body’s temperature”—he turned to me—“as I’m sure you understand.”

  I nodded. The lower the body temperature, the longer the body had been dead.

  “He was discovered early the next morning by two clammers at seven A.M. The coroner’s finding is that your son was killed on impact. The wounds on the top and back of his skull are consistent with his belief that essentially Evan did a back dive from a height of around a hundred and fifty feet and hit here . . .”

  Sherwood placed his palm on the back of his head.

  “Oh, God!” Gabby’s hand shot to her mouth. She crossed herself.

  Charlie just sat there numbly and shut his eyes.

  “Are you okay hearing this?” Sherwood asked. “It’ll all be in the coroner’s findings when we’re done, which you can read at a later time.”

  “No, we’re okay,” Charlie said. “Go on. You’re sure it was a suicide? He could have just fallen, couldn’t he?”

  “I suppose there’s always the possibility, but there were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms that might’ve come from trying to brace an unexpected fall. The first part of him that contacted the ground was his head. He seemed to choose a location that had an unencumbered path to the rocks below. Not to mention what his motive would be in even being up there in the first place, at night. I’m sorry, but I’m not exactly sure what other ruling there would be.”

  Charlie fidgeted in his chair. “Did anyone see him climbing?”

  The detective shrugged. “Not to my knowledge.”

  “The first time you saw us you said he was missing one of his sneakers?”

  Sherwood nodded blankly. “That’s correct. Yes.”

  “Did you ever find it?”

  “No.” The detective looked at him quizzically. “Not yet.”

  “So maybe he was just climbing,” Charlie said, pushing, “and just slipped. He always kept his laces undone. Maybe that’s what did it. Maybe he just lost his footing up there. That could be right, couldn’t it?” His question had an air of desperation.

  “Look, we’re looking into everything,” the detective said, “but we have to make a determination and given when he left the recuperation facility and the time of death, taking into account his state of mind and how long he was up there . . . I know how painful this all is. I know how tough it was not to have been notified for so long and to have seen the story on the news. Just know, we’re doing everything we can.”

  Gabriella started to weep. She took a tissue out of her purse. “I want to see my son.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible right now. They’re finishing up the autopsy and toxicology findings. Anyway, the trauma was quite severe. There’s going to have to be a bit of reconstructive work done . . . Maybe in a couple of days.”

  Gabriella put her hands in front of her face.

  “Look, I’m no psychiatrist,” I said, a hand on Gabby’s shoulder, “but one of the things my brother and sister-in-law are trying to deal with is why Evan would have even been released from the county hospital and transferred to that facility in the first place, given that only a couple of days before he tried to purchase a weapon and had been removed from his home in a pretty violent state, put on suicide watch, and heavily sedated with a mood-altering antipsychotic. I’d like to talk to the doctor in charge of his case. I don’t understand how they could make a determination to just dump him back on the street.”

  “They didn’t dump him,” the detective said. “They put him in a state-approved halfway house. Maybe not the best suited, as it turned out . . . I know where you’re heading. But I
’ve looked at the doctor’s reports. He was deemed to be stable and mentally capable upon his release. He told them that he no longer harbored any desire to terminate his own life. He was over twenty-one. They’re only permitted to hold him against his will for a matter of days.”

  “This kid could have been a hazard to anyone,” I said, “if he followed through on that weapon, not just to himself. You’re saying all you have to do is claim that you’re no longer suicidal and they can put you back on the street?”

  “Not can, Dr. Erlich. They have a legal obligation to do so. It’s the law. If they don’t feel like he’s an imminent threat. As I say, he’d stabilized. I didn’t want to say this myself, but apparently he’d informed them there he did not wish to return back home upon release. They process thirty or forty people a week through that ward. They found a bed for him at a smaller facility, where he’d receive proper attention . . .” He turned back to Charlie and Gabriella. “I promise you, everyone is extremely sorry about what happened.

  “In the meantime,” he said, placing a folder on the table, “I do have some things for you . . .”

  He took out a large manila envelope and pushed it across the table. “Your son had these in his possession at the time . . .”

  Charlie and Gabby’s eyes stretched wide.

  There was a large plastic bag inside. I saw a couple of dollar bills and some loose change. A metal-link key chain with a single key attached. A crumpled candy wrapper. And something else. . .

  Gabby pulled it out.

  It looked like one of those cheap plastic holograms that came from a Cracker Jack box. An eye—wide open if you looked at it straight on. Then it closed, in a kind of wink, when it was shifted the other way.

  “Evan was always picking up stupid stuff off the street.” Charlie shook his head forlornly.

  “He went around collecting recycling,” said Gabby, eyes glistening. “For the money. He would go through people’s things—their garbage. Bring things home. People’s shit. You wouldn’t believe what was important to my son . . .”