Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

“Well, actually, he’s dead,” Sherwood told her.

“Hmmm .” She grunted with a slight smile. “Definitely seems to be in the water lately.”

“He was murdered. Three days ago. In his home. In Santa Maria. Thirty miles south of Morro Bay.” Sherwood stared at her. “Any chance that you’ve been there ?”

Susan Pollack met his stare and took a long drag on her cigarette. Her amiable expression shifted. “I’m not sure I like where this is going, Detective Sherwood. But I’m still interested in finding out what any of this has to do with me.”

“Zorn handled the Houvnanian murders. A week or two ago, before he was killed, he was observed in conversation with Dr. Erlich’s nephew, Evan. It seems the boy’s father, Dr. Erlich’s brother, had a connection to Houvnanian himself back then.”

“Now this is getting interesting. What kind of connection?”

“Apparently he resided on the Riorden Ranch for a time. I don’t suppose you might’ve overlapped or even remember him. Charlie Erlich…”

Susan’s Pollack’s birdlike eyes narrowed, like she was focusing back in time. “I may. Or may not, as you say. People were always moving in and out of the ranch. We may not have even been there at the same time. Anyway, we all went by different names back then. Mine was Maggie. Maggie Mae. For Magdalena, actually, not for the song.

“Anyway”-she looked back at me-“your brother’s son is dead, and he had some kind of random connection to this detective, Zorn. Now he’s dead…” She turned to Sherwood, the lightbulb going off. “And I’ve been recently released. I think I get it now.”

Sherwood nodded. “We’re trying to find out if Detective Zorn’s connection to Evan was, indeed, as random as you say.”

She rubbed a finger along the side of her face, knocked the ash off her cigarette. She came back with the faintest smile. “Just so you know, detective, I haven’t had any direct communication with Russell Houvnanian in more than thirty years. I’ve taken responsibility for what I’ve done. What I helped to do. I’ve expressed remorse. I’ve paid my debt. I was a deluded twenty-year-old who was in love. I didn’t kill anybody, Detective Sherwood. I didn’t get in that van.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am-”

“I’m fifty-seven now,” Susan Pollack said, cutting him off. “I’ve forfeited most of my life. I’d like to find some way I can make up for the pain I’ve caused. Counseling, animal rescue, I don’t know what form. The last thing I have on my mind is the ‘old days,’ detective. I think you can understand that. That’s the best answer I can give.”

She turned to me. “I’m sorry about your nephew, doctor. I’m sorry if it’s opened a bunch of wounds and old things that were better off kept closed. But I haven’t been to Morro Bay. Or Santa Maria. Or seen Detective Zorn. Or knew of your nephew. Now, I know you’ve had a long drive up here. Is that all?”

Sherwood looked at me with an air of disappointment. As if he was saying, Sorry, her cooperation is 100 percent voluntary at this point. He seemed ready to get up. “We won’t trouble you any longer…”

I fixed on her. “Both Evan and this detective Zorn had something strange on them at the times of their deaths. The image of an eye. An open eye, staring. Does that mean anything to you?”

Susan Pollack shrugged. I noticed the slightest tremor in her jaw. “No. Should it?”

Sherwood looked at me, eyes burning, but I continued on. “Do you mind if I read you something, Ms. Pollack?” I knew we were about to walk out the door with nothing and that would be the end of it. We had no proof, nothing to pin her to any of the scenes, no evidence to compel her to cooperate, and nothing on Houvnanian, who was in jail.

All we had were these unrelated pieces of the jigsaw I was trying to fit together. I needed to know for sure.

“Russell Houvnanian made a statement at the time of his sentencing. It was about him possibly coming back one day. To take revenge. Do you have any idea what this means?”

I pulled out the paper from my jacket and tried to judge her reactions as I read. “ ‘On that day of judgment, or even the hour, no one will know… Not even the sleeping child will know. Only the father. It’s like a man who goes away for a long time…’ ” I glanced up, watching her watching me, the slightest veiled smile in her eyes. “ ‘No one knows when the master will choose to come back, or in what manner… Watch,’ ” I read, “ ‘lest he come back suddenly and find you sleeping. Watch…’ ”

“I think it’s time for you both to go now.” Susan Pollack rubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “I’m sorry you had to come up all the way here.”

Sherwood stood up with her. “We appreciate your time…”

“Did you know my brother?” I asked, my blood heating.

She didn’t answer. She just motioned us to the door. “I’m sorry for your loss, Dr. Erlich. For your brother’s loss.”

“Did you know him? His name was Charlie, Ms. Pollack. He had a beard and long black hair.”

She waited for us to step off the porch. I followed Sherwood down, sure I had struck a nerve, but one I’d never be able to follow up on.

Then she called back-not so much in answer to my question, but with what seemed a kind of taunt. “He was a musician, wasn’t he?”

Blood rocketed in my veins.

Then she smiled, putting back on her work gloves. “I hope you have a good trip back.”

Outside, we headed back to the car. I exchanged only the slightest glance with Sherwood. I was frustrated. I knew we had come away with nothing. Nothing to follow up on. Nothing to tie her to Evan’s death in any way.

He went to the driver’s side and eyed me, silently telling me to get in.

“Wait one second,” I said, suddenly remembering something.

I went over to the garage, Susan Pollack watching me. It was more like a dilapidated barn with a rolling wooden door on tracks. The door was open. I swung it to the side just a little and peered in.

I thought back to the night outside Charlie’s apartment. I brought to mind the person in the car. Flicking her cigarette. Staring at me.

A Kia wagon. Navy.

A car just like this.

I headed back over to Sherwood and got back in the car. I looked up at the house and saw Susan Pollack in the doorway, smiling at me, petting her dog.

“I know it was her.” I turned to Sherwood as soon as we got back on the main road.

He put on the brakes, veins popping on his neck. “What do you think you were doing in there?”

I knew I had crossed the line. “We had this one chance,” I said. “I was only trying to figure out what she knew.”

“Yeah, well, you leaked a confidential piece of evidence in the homicide investigation of an ex-police officer. The knife marks. Maybe in the ER, doc, you call the shots. But here you’re no more than a guy who’s come in off the street with no insurance. That wasn’t something she needed to know.”

“All right, I’m sorry,” I said, taking a breath. “But she’s part of it, Sherwood.”

“Yeah? What did she say that made up your mind?”

I told him about the car I’d seen three nights ago outside my brother’s apartment. The person in the cap watching me.

The same car I was sure I just saw in Susan Pollack’s garage.

“Someone staring at you? ” he said, his nostrils flaring. “Sort of like I am now.”

“I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. I don’t know how to describe it, but I know they were watching me. Or Charlie. As they drove away the window went down, and they flicked out a cigarette butt my way. It was like a warning, Sherwood. It gave me a chill.”