Andrew Gross - Eyes Wide Open (aka Killing Hour)

He glanced at the photograph of his wife on the credenza.

Dorrie, you’d probably say I was crazy for doing this, wouldn’t you?

No. Sherwood chuckled to himself. She would not.

What she would say was, God’s given you a second chance, Don, so why not use it, right?

He had this job courtesy of a friend in the sheriff’s department. Mostly in recognition of what he’d put in for the past twenty-five years. And he was good at it. Usually, no one was down his back. He didn’t have to solve murders anymore, just figure out if they warranted solving. And pass it along. He didn’t have to beat the leather all around town-chase suspects, appear in court, buck up against the state authorities. Or put himself at risk…

The press didn’t get on his back, making life miserable.

It was a nice, stress-free existence, a way to end his career. And he was lucky it came his way. After he’d gotten sick, the position had opened up. Perokis, his lieutenant, always gave him a lot of space. He’d earned a certain respect. He did his work; cases got disposed of; the files went down. And like clockwork, others always came.

Then this one. He didn’t have to get deeper involved.

It was just that this nagging voice had been needling him over the past week-telling him that maybe he hadn’t done all he could. Maybe there was something there, these threads of doubt knitting together. Now the voice had turned into a jabbing presence in his mind.

Dorrie’s voice.

And what had happened to the doctor last night only intensified the voices even more.

He stared at the mountain.

What if Erlich was right? What if Zorn’s murder was connected? What if he had known something he was trying to share? Warn them. What if the “eyes” did mean something? What if Susan Pollack was the woman the street vendor had seen?

He rubbed his jaw-the joint felt like someone was sticking a needle in it. It was telling him to back off. He had already turned this case over. Let the solved cases be.

No, he knew, it wasn’t saying that at all.

He glanced at Dorrie. God gave me a second chance, huh?

It was saying, Use it.

He chuckled, cradling the phone against his shoulder, and punched in the number. So how come it feels like my last?

After a few seconds, someone picked up on the other end.

“Meachem,” the voice said. “Las Vegas Homicide.”

“Detective Meachem, my name is Don Sherwood. I’m a detective with the coroner’s office of San Luis Obispo County. In California.”

“San Luis Obispo? I’ve got a sister up there. She works at the college. What can I do for you, detective?”

“I need a favor, if you can. You had a floater a while back. Name of Greenway, Thomas. He was found facedown in his pool. Ruled a suicide. It does go back a ways.”

“Greenway?” Meachem seemed to be writing down the name. “How long?”

“Eighty-eight,” Sherwood said.

“I didn’t say how old. I meant how long ago.”

“Nineteen eighty-eight,” Sherwood said again, awaiting the response.

“You must be kidding,” the Las Vegas detective said after a long pause.

“No, I’m not kidding,” Sherwood said, turning away from his wife’s gaze. “I know it’s been a while, but I need to take a look at that file.”

Charlie’s ranting earlier didn’t help me with anything. I still had to find out whatever I could about how he and Zorn once fit together. When I got back to the motel, the front desk said there was a package waiting for me.

It was Greenway’s book on Houvnanian. I had ordered it two nights ago online. It was fittingly titled End of Days .

I took it out back to the bench along the promenade. It was a clear, bright day; the surf was high. Waves crashed onto the rocks below. Pelicans danced out of the spray, searching the surf for a meal.

I opened the book. The first chapter began with a retelling of that horrible night, September 7, 1973. “ The first sign that absolute hell had arrived at Paul Riorden’s doorstep was the site of three rattily clad visitors at his door…”

I dove into the next few pages-Houvnanian and his cohorts barging in, taking out knives and guns, tying up the four people at the dinner party, along with a servant in the kitchen; the victims’ outrage and anger shifting to premonitions of doom and fear as, one by one, they watched, whimpering, begging, as their friends were barbarously murdered, fighting against their own impending end.

I got the chills.

I flipped to the index and, on a lark, searched for my brother’s name. It didn’t surprise me nothing was there. He hadn’t been there then. I flipped to Walter Zorn, and fittingly, his name appeared on several pages. One by one I turned back to them.

“Walter Zorn had been a decorated Santa Barbara patrolman who, at the age of thirty-one, earned his coveted detective’s shield. ” He started out in Robbery. Violent crime in tony Santa Barbara was rare, homicide rarer still. It mentioned how Zorn had been hit by a car while chasing after a burglary suspect as a young cop, sustaining a broken femur that never properly healed, causing him to walk with a slight limp for the rest of his life.

I wondered if Charlie had ever read this.

There were dozens of photos. Long-haired hippie types, in the dress of the times, taken on the ranch. Gardening, climbing rocks, playing music, together. Head shots of the nine victims. The grounds where the crimes were committed. Lots of photos of Houvnanian and all the perpetrators. The grisly crime scenes. I found one of Walter Zorn and Joe Cooley, his lieutenant, outside the Santa Barbara courthouse. A younger version of Zorn, his facial mark clearly visible.

I also found a photo of a large group at the ranch in happier times. Singing. A couple of them were playing guitars. It was taken in April 1973. Five months before. On a whim, I studied the faces closely, looking for Charlie. It was sort of a relief when I didn’t see him there.

I began to flip around. Zorn had been recently promoted to detective and he happened to be on duty the morning following the murders when a gardener arrived at Riorden’s home and discovered the grisly scene. It took most of the next two days to even process what they had found-it was so chilling and bloody even for veteran investigators. Later, they were called to the Forniciari home in neighboring Montecito when their daughter went to visit and came upon the scene.

Although his lieutenant, Cooley, was in charge, Zorn seemed to play a pivotal role in the investigation. It was he who-upon talking to Riorden’s sister, Marci, about who might possibly have a motive to do this to them, and then later to his ex-wife, Sandy-first put together the possibility that people who lived on Sandy’s property up near Big Sur might have been involved.

Fingerprints and articles of clothing had been left behind-prints in blood smeared into words on the victims’ chests: “Judas,” “betrayer,” “whore”-but in the beginning they all led nowhere because they belonged to people who were not in the national criminal data bank. There was also a bandana, a black poncho, and a set of gardening gloves left at the Forniciari estate, which were ultimately matched to the perpetrators and ended up as key pieces of evidence in the case.

Suspicion quickly pointed to the Houvnanian “family,” who’d had a series of disagreements with Paul Riorden and had been rebuffed by Forniciari.

But determining who had actually committed the ritual-style killings took some sorting out.

Houvnanian was first taken in on minor illegal occupancy charges, because he and his group had repeatedly ignored legal notices to vacate the property. Several of his followers were also detained on drug possession charges. Ultimately, fingerprints began to match up; several witnesses had spotted the ranch’s white van not far from the Forniciari estate. The horrific picture began to be put together.