Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

It was getting late. Heading on six. The sun was low in the sky behind the rock, creating a beautiful orange crown. A Dodger game had started at four, and he’d like to catch the end of it with a beer.

He’d given it his best. He promised himself this was the last effing time he would get caught up in this. Sometimes no matter how hard you believe in something, you just can’t make it the truth.

He headed to his car. There was a long-haired souvenir peddler in a tie-dyed T-shirt packing up his stand. Cheap, bronze-plated re-creations of the rock. T-shirts with its image on the front. Pennants. Guidebooks.

A tiny chunk of sandstone contained in a plastic dome, the inscription GUARANTEED PIECE OF THE MORRO BAY ROCK on the plastic base.

Sherwood went up to him. “You out here on Thursday afternoons?”

“Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays… Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays too,” the ponytailed peddler replied, loading a cardboard box into his SUV.

“What happens Wednesdays?” Sherwood asked him.

“Wednesdays, I’m there .” The guy grinned, pointing to the other side of the road.

“Comedian.” Sherwood pulled out Evan’s photo. “Any chance you saw this kid?” The merchant continued to pack up his wares, glancing at the photo. “Last Thursday,” Sherwood said, clarifying. “Around this time. Would’ve been headed toward the rock.”

“He the kid who took the dive?” the man asked.

“Could be,” Sherwood said, showing displeasure at the guy’s choice of words.

“I seen him.” The vendor nodded. He taped up a box and lugged it over to his van.

“You’re sure?”

“You a cop?”

“Coroner’s office,” Sherwood answered. “San Luis Obispo.” He took out his badge.

“No worries.” The man waved him off. “The dude came by here about five twenty-five or so. Headed up that way.” He sort of pointed with his chin. To the rock. “Guess the rest is history.”

“You’re sure it was him?”

“Sure I’m sure. He stopped here.”

Sherwood felt a spark light in his chest, like a fire to kindling.

“He took a look at one of my things. This…” He picked up the piece of the rock in the dome. “Seemed fascinated with it. Here, take it; guaranteed to change your luck-that jumper dude excluded, of course. One day I might just drop your name when someone asks to see my license.”

“You say he was headed toward the rock?” Sherwood asked, stuffing the souvenir into his pocket. “Anything else?”

“One thing…” The peddler put down his box. “The dude wasn’t alone.”

Now the spark became a charge of electricity shooting through Sherwood. “What do you mean?”

“Someone was with him, that’s what I mean. A woman. Older. I remembered thinking then it could be a kid and his mother, tourists. But given what took place, that doesn’t seem likely.”

“You sure it was a woman?” Sherwood asked.

“Damn sure.” He pointed to the road. “She was standing right over there.”

The jolt in Sherwood’s chest had now become a jumping live wire. He reached into his jacket and came back out with the newspaper photo. The one of Susan Pollack leaving jail. “This her, by any chance? The woman you saw?”

The vendor scratched his head, pressing his lips together, foggily. “Can’t be sure… She was in kind of a blue sweater and a cap. And she had on sunglasses. She put out a cigarette on the road.” He shrugged. “Could be. I was packing up. Sorry. I don’t know if that helps.”

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

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

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

Kathy was pushing hard for me to come home.

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

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

“This seat free?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m sorry about that, doc.”

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

“Susan Pollack.” The detective looked at me.

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

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

“You found something, didn’t you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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