Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

“Thanks, Miguel,” I said.

They backed out and I watched them drive away. I reminded myself I was leaving. Come morning, I was going to be in my car, on the way back to LAX. Then on a plane. Home.

I had things pulling me back.

But I couldn’t suppress the weirdest feeling, like the world had suddenly shifted.

Something just changed.

And a thought wormed into my brain, ever so slightly: What if Evan wasn’t quite as crazy as everyone thought?

I barely slept that night.

I tossed and turned for most of it, my blood racing. The echo of what Miguel had told me going back and forth in my mind.

They want me to take the test to become a cop…

I kept thinking, What if Evan’s ramblings might not have been total delusions after all, but were twisted with a thread of truth? Reality.

Why did an old detective need to find him? What could he have been caught up in? I kept hearing my brother’s voice: What if he had gone up to that ledge just to think? My son would never have killed himself.

I rose up. What if that stupid missing sneaker did actually mean something?

At two, I tossed off the covers and stepped out on the terrace, letting the breeze from the ocean cool my face. Listening to the whoosh of the dark sea against the rocks.

Did any of this make the hospital less responsible? No. They still bungled it. It didn’t change much. It wasn’t going to bring Evan back. Or alter my brother’s grief.

You’ve got to be on a plane in the morning, Jay.

My wake-up call shook me out of a deep sleep at just before seven. I had a one P.M. flight out of LAX and it was about a three-hour ride. Stacey Gold was being admitted that afternoon. I called in and told my secretary I’d be ready to scrub in at six A.M. tomorrow. I checked that everything was set for her operation.

Stacey was seventeen and was starting at Boston College that fall. The surgery had forced her to push back her start date. Though two years younger than Sophie, they had been in a dance class together a few years back, and in the summers, she worked the refreshment cart that drove around the course at our golf club.

A month ago, she started experiencing a throbbing in her right thigh near the groin and felt pressure on the pelvic nerves. An MRI discovered an aneurysm leading into the iliac artery. I had to feed a stent through the femoral artery. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was the only way to relieve the pressure; otherwise there was the risk of it bursting.

I turned on the Today show and hopped into the shower. Afterward, I stood in my towel shaving. On the tube, they were talking about a missing toddler in Tennessee and then they switched to the local news.

“A retired Santa Barbara detective is found murdered in his Santa Maria home…”

It took a moment, until the words “Santa Barbara detective” slammed me head-on and I ran to the screen.

They had the victim’s photo there. In his early sixties. A hard, square jaw, wrinkles around deep-set eyes.

What had Miguel told me? The cop was around sixty. White hair.

“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.