Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour) Read online

  “Walter Zorn, ” the news report began, “ who for the past ten years had lived in the Five Cities area…”

  Then they showed another photo of him-this time in uniform, receiving some kind of commendation.

  Just like Miguel had said, there was the blotch of reddish pigment on his left cheek.

  My eyes went wide .

  Zorn. There couldn’t be any doubt. He was the cop who’d been looking for Evan.

  And now he was dead.

  He had been stabbed in his home during the night. In Santa Maria, fifteen miles down the coast. A neighbor had called the cops after hearing a scuffle. There were no immediate suspects. He hadn’t seen the perpetrator.

  Something truly horrifying took shape in my mind:

  Zorn had just been murdered, and Evan had died suspiciously the week before. They’d been in contact with each other.

  Could their deaths be connected?

  Then, my whole body crashing to a stop: What if my nephew didn’t kill himself after all?

  I dressed, finished packing in a daze, my hands and chest tingling with something I couldn’t figure out.

  I had a plane to catch.

  I zipped my bag and headed for the door. Suddenly I heard the lead-in for a different story:

  “Could a tragic local suicide possibly have been prevented? News Eight’s Rosalyn Rodriguez reports on this disturbing case when we come back in a minute.”

  Evan’s.

  The report came on and it was mostly fair, bouncing back and forth between Evan’s psychological issues and the suggestion that the hospital might have wrongly sped him through the system. They showed Gabby, a mother’s heartbreak etched in her face, and then flashed to me: “ The police seemed to have just washed their hands of it…”

  I didn’t remember even saying that, but there I was…

  They also managed to get a statement from a Dr. Vargas, the medical center’s chief of staff, who supposedly had been away.

  But there he was. “We delivered a full report of Evan’s stay in the hospital to the family today. There are guidelines for privacy and disclosure we have to abide by, and despite this tragic ending, we feel the state-sponsored home he was assigned to, as well as his treatment here, met all established benchmarks of professionalism and care. The hearts of everyone here go out to the family.”

  Established benchmarks of professionalism and care, my ass!

  I hurried downstairs and threw my bags in my car. I paid the bill, said good-bye to the Cliffside Suites, and headed up to the freeway.

  I had five hours to my flight. I should be at LAX in three, with time to spare. I pulled onto the freeway south, my gut still throbbing with something I couldn’t put aside.

  Evan. Zorn.

  I told myself I had to put it behind me now. What could I do? What did Charlie even want me to do? Evan had climbed up there in the dark. He had gone off his meds. Anything could have happened. A couple of days before, he’d been in a raging, almost homicidal state. He tried to buy a gun.

  What the hell else for?

  This retired detective, whoever he was, he was a completely different person. Who happened to intersect with Evan. His death probably had nothing to do with him.

  Maybe I’ll become a cop. They want me to take the test…

  C’mon, Jay. I focused back on the road. He was talking to the fucking furnace when he said that!

  I thought of what was on my plate back home. What I had committed to in the morning. Stacey.

  Here, there was only grief. And questions that would never have answers. That no one wanted answers to.

  The kid was dead, Sherwood said. Next time he would have taken his parents with him. What did it even matter?

  It damn well did matter.

  Zorn and Evan. Something connected them. And I was the only one who saw it.

  I brought to mind Evan’s face at the mortuary. Gabby’s tears. Then Charlie-the day his son was born. Promise me, Jay, that whatever happens, you’ll be there for him. Promise me, you’ll take care of him, Jay.

  Promise me.

  You have my word, Charlie.

  I felt this sense building inside me that I was about to do something completely crazy.

  I made it as far as the next exit and turned the car around.

  Two minutes later I was back at the exit where I’d just gotten on and wound down the hill to Charlie’s apartment. I left the car under the carport and ran across the courtyard. It was barely seven thirty A.M. They normally didn’t get out of bed until around eleven. I banged on the front door.

  “Charlie! Gabby, let me in!”

  “All right, all right…” I finally heard my brother’s voice. “Who’s there?”

  He opened the door, standing in a T-shirt and boxers, his hair loose and wild. He looked at me, befuddled. “Thought you were heading home, Jay.”

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

  He shook his head, scratching at his beard. “Should I? No.”

  “He was a retired detective. From down in Santa Barbara. He was killed last night. Here .”

  He blinked back at me. “What does he have to do with us?”

  I thought I saw something in his eyes. Maybe there was something in my question, some new conviction jolting him out of his ruined life, the ever-present grief he hid in.

  But I just looked back at him, like a man who had finally accepted his vow. “Something just changed.”

  PART II

  Chapter Nineteen

  My first call was to my office.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  My next call was to Kathy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I just got Avi to cover it.”

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

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

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

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

  “Okay.”

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

  Chapter Twenty

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

  A sign on the outside walkway read DETECTIVES UNIT.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I grabbed my blazer. “Thanks.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “A name?”

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

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

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

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

  My heart sank.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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